Product Management at start-ups v/s MNCs
Product Management at start-ups v/s MNCs
Product Management, UX, Startups, and more — freshly curated by Zeda.io
Hello, all you product-loving folks! 🥰
Welcome to this week's edition of Product Café, your weekly cup of coffee for everything product management, startups, and more. ☕
Did you know? 💬
According to a study by the 280 Group, 30% of Product Managers cite internal politics as their biggest challenge.
Credit: https://airfocus.com/blog/surprising-product-management-stats/
Different companies and their Product Management processes!
I was talking to two of my friends a week ago. Both being Product Managers at different companies, I was surprised to see how one of them was struggling and loaded with work while my other friend was pretty comfortable with his role. That’s when I realized that Product Management isn’t the same everywhere. The responsibilities and scope vary widely between different industries and company sizes. So if you’re currently working in a start-up or an MNC and want to know what it’s like to switch, here are some differences you can take note of:
1. Responsibilities
In smaller companies, Product Managers end up wearing many hats irrespective of whether they like it or not. This includes project management, scrum mastering, and even marketing. You will be expected to find the product-market fit, talk to customers, set the product roadmap, manage the release plan, handle customer support, marketing and so much more. In short, the success of your product will largely depend on you.
Whereas in a bigger organization, responsibilities are very structured and defined. You will mostly be responsible for product strategy and prioritization, while other responsibilities will be taken care of by Technical PMs, Marketing, Engineering, and Project Managers. This means that the entire product is not dependent on your individual performance.
Credit: https://productcoalition.com/product-management-in-startups-vs-mncs-27902f15fd4c
2. Vision
Since smaller companies usually just have one product, the product vision will be the same as the company vision. You can make decisions autonomously since you will be owning the entire product.
Whereas in bigger companies, PMs have to interact with other PMs who own different parts of the product. This means that your vision will have to align with that of other PMs. Decisions also cannot be taken autonomously since decisions you make will directly affect other parts of the products as they are all interrelated. There is a lot of hierarchy and multiple teams you have to present your idea to before it gets approved.
3. Product Development approach
Since a smaller company doesn’t have an existing product or a well-defined process for building one, it can seem very chaotic until a well-defined process is established. The product development process is seen to be quickly evolving and tends to be fairly flexible until the product reaches maturity. In short, PMs in start-ups have to be mentally prepared to go on a roller coaster ride day in and day out till they evolve their product from an MVP to a fully-functional one.
However, in a bigger company, where there is an existing set of products and a well-established process for developing them, there is much less noise when developing new products. This is because they use their previous processes as templates when developing new ones. Although much less chaotic, this can also slow down the process as there are a lot of checkboxes to be fulfilled before going through the different stages of development.
Credit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-differences-between-being-product-manager-startup-dima-tokar/
4. Learning-curve
I think it’s a known fact that many of us move to smaller companies just for the learning aspect. This is the same case with PMs as well. In smaller companies, you are directly communicating with innovators, customers, and business owners who are involved throughout the whole process from when the idea for the product is born to putting up the finished product on your website. This helps you understand your product in and out from different perspectives, and use cases.
In MNCs, since PMs only own a part of the product, their learning is also limited to that part. The tasks that you do might become repetitive over the years and the learning curve will end up flattening out.
Credit: https://www.myrealdata.in/blog/working-in-mnc-vs-startup/
5. Impact
At smaller companies, since you’re working with a rather small team and the product is yet to take off, your contribution will be of high depth. This means that your effort will greatly affect the product but only serve a few users. In short, high depth = greatly impacts the product and low breadth = serves only a small user base.
However, in larger companies, you’re working with a bigger team and serving a larger user base. Here, even though your product ownership is small, the impact is huge as it affects many users. This means that contributions by PMs in larger companies have a larger breadth but less depth. In short, low depth = Does not have huge impact to the product and high breadth = HIghly impactful as it serves a huge user base.
S=Small company, M=Medium company, L=Large company
Credit: https://productschool.com/blog/product-management-2/difference-pm-small-company-startup-vs-large/
Product School uses this easy-to-use framework to help us understand how PM functions vary across different company sizes.
Song of the week 🎶
You can thank me later! :)
In other news…Instagram to allow users to pick a “profile song”! 🎧
Following the 2006 era of Myspace, Instagram is now reportedly working on a feature that will allow users to pick a profile song. In addition to the song of their choice, users will also be able to add an optional caption.
Mobile Developer and notable leaker, Alessandro Paluzzi said in a tweet said that the song will appear at the bottom of your bio and will allow other users to play the song from your profile.
What’s brewing on Zeda.io’s side? ☕
From the what, why, how, and when, we’ve done our research and composed this neat guide on how to identify your north star metric and lead your product to success.
Read the blog here: https://zeda.io/blog/identify-your-north-star-metric-product-success
That’s all folks! Have something you want to share? Put them in the comments below and we’ll get back to you soon.
See you again next week! 🥂
It’s hard to explain what a Product Manager does, we get it. But you know what’s not that hard? Sharing this newsletter with your friends and colleagues!
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