What is product management?
How do you turn ideas into products? This is one of the biggest questions in business. Everyone from entrepreneurs to global corporations needs to be able to answer it if they want to make something that will make a difference and inspire consumers to buy it.
In our latest workshop T&E Ladder examined the importance of product management and how students can prepare to work in this emerging job sector.
Our speaker was Clement Kao, a product manager at Blend, an enterprise tech company focused on consumer banking, and co-founder of Product Manager HQ. Clement has written two books about product management and more than 70 articles about various aspects of the sector.
Clement graduated from UC Berkeley with a double major in Business Administration and Molecular & Cell Biology.
These are some of the highlights from Clement’s presentation and Q&A session with our audience of high school students.
What is the most important skill you think a product manager needs to have?
Clement Kao: “I think there’s really only two skills that you need. The first skill is empathy. You really want to think about what other people need or want, because you can’t get anything done unless you know what other people want or need, right?”
“The other critical skill is learning how to learn. I think a lot of your high school students, and kind of one of the things that is very interesting to think about is you’re an expert at learning, right? Like you’ve been learning things ever since first grade or kindergarten, right? And so you want to think about how can I learn things even faster? How can I better understand an industry or a user or their pains or my competitors? Because those are the things that will help you step up from the competition.”
“One of the meta things that I want you to take away from today is, as you complete high school, and as you complete college, you know, as you take on any other education, don’t just worry about your grades, like yeah, grades aren’t for him, that’s fine. But worry more about am I learning as quickly as I possibly could be because the faster you learn, the more you’re going to be able to create a real idea in the world, that creates a lot of value.”
What kind of classes and activities do you think someone should do in college to prepare for a product management career?
CK: “Different kinds of companies look for different kinds of product managers, right? So, if you’re trying to be a product manager at Google, or Facebook, they have different pains from everyone else — their pain is that they want people who are going to be able to work really technically.”
“So for those companies, you’re going to want to actually go take some of those coding classes, right. But if you’re working for a company, who’s on the East Coast, most of those product companies begin from a financial perspective, they care a lot about; Do you understand what a viable business model looks like? And so you don’t want to take coding classes. If you’re trying to join a company on the East Coast, you want to take business classes, you want to take accounting, finance, Econ.”
“So it really depends on what kind of company do you want to come chase you? Like, you need to understand your customer and your customer? Is the company that’s trying to hire you? What is their pain, right?”
“It’s all about thinking about people, thinking about companies as customers, and really trying to understand, okay, what is their pain? And then working backwards from that pain to figure out? Okay, what is the thing that I should do to get them interested in me?”
What clubs should students join in school or university if they are interested in becoming a product manager?
CK: “One of the things to keep in mind is product management is a very new career, right? Like it didn’t really exist a while back, honestly, like even entrepreneurship, like, like tech, entrepreneurship didn’t really exist back then. And so one of the things that I actually think is even better, is, instead of trying to find a club to join, make your own.”
“When you make your own club, this gives you the excuse to go talk to entrepreneurs, or product managers to come in and speak on your behalf, and gives you that access to them in a way that you wouldn’t have had before.”
“I say this from my own personal experience. So back when I was at UC Berkeley, I created my own entrepreneurship club, because I want to learn about entrepreneurship, and I couldn’t find an entrepreneurship club at Berkeley, that I really wanted to be a part of. . . so I created my own club. And we wound up having I think, like, 60 members within a couple of semesters.”
“One of the things that I want people to really take away from today’s presentation is not even so much, how do I make a product? Or how do I test my idea? I really want you to think about what is something that is painful in your life, or in the life of your friends and your loved ones? And go try to solve that pain yourself. Because when you do that, that unlocks a lot of new opportunities, whether those opportunities are networking opportunities, job opportunities or entrepreneurship opportunities.”
“The thing is, when you find out that there is a pain, and then you can solve that pain that creates value in the world. And then you can go and capture that value.”
You can check out more of Clement’s writing and ideas about product management on Product Management HQ.
Future T&E workshops include:
- How to fund YOUR startup — Saturday, December 5, 8–9 PM EAT
Venture Capital and funding models. How can you navigate the world of startup funding?
- She’s changing the world — Saturday, December 19, 8–9 PM EAT
Women in Entrepreneurship. Why diversity matters and what we can do to promote it.
* Workshop dates are subject to change.
T&E Ladder wants to use technology and entrepreneurship to open doors for students.
If you would like to get involved there are lots of opportunities to participate in and support this program!
High school students — Get involved by following our social media pages and attend all the exciting events we have planned for you all. Elevate your education experience to the next level.
Professors, Entrepreneurs, Investors, Mentors — Get involved by offering your support in leading workshops and participating as judges for our competitions. Become an inspiration to young innovators.
Passionate individuals — Reach out to us and we can help you join the team to create an impact. Whatever your skill set may be is helpful to us. Volunteer to bridge the digital divide!
Everyone — Follow our social pages, attend events you are interested in and reach out to us with any ideas, collaborations, or contributions you may have. We are looking to grow and impact as many students as possible.
For more information and/or questions, please contact us at: techandentrepreneurshipladder@gmail.com
Make sure to check out and follow our social handles:
