Shanu Trehan, SF, 02/10/2016

1. Startup Vs. Big Company
Accessing whether you want to be a PM
At a large or small organization
/Productschool @ProdSchool /ProductmanagementSF

2. Startup vs. Big Company
Shanu Trehan
- Senior Product Manager,
Sephora
- Worked both at startups
(Swappable, Rental
Affairs,Stirring Minds)
and big companies
(Restoration Hardware,
Sephora)

3. Startup vs Big
Company
Assessing whether you want to be a PM at a large or
small organization
Shanu G. Trehan

5. Guliani’s
• 7yrs, Retail Diamond Jewelry & Manufacturing business, 800K Revenue during worst
economic downturn
Lemon Interactive
— Simplistically put a design house where I learned the ins and outs of various open
source as SaaS (Personalization & Recommendation Engines), PaaS (Gamification,
Loyalty Programs) CRM’s (Salesforce, Merkle), and new mobile initiatives.
Swappable
— Mobile app that allowed you to give, receive, manage, and swap gift cards
Rental Affairs
• Mobile maintenance request app

6. Restoration Hardware
• First Senior ecommerce Product Manager hired to grow the team, create
processes, manage my own product with P&L visibility.
Sephora
• Own the Loyalty Platform: Beauty Insider, manage, hire, and mentor a team

7. Startup vs Big
Company
Assessing whether you want to be a PM at a large or
small organization
Shanu G. Trehan

8. Agenda
— Introduction
— Marshmallow Challenge
— Ted Video Snip-it
— Analyze/Relate the Marshmallow Challenge with Questions
From Audience
— Similar Pattern: Small vs Big
— Start-Up Pros & Cons
— Corporate Pros & Cons
— QA

9. The Marshmallow Challenge
Group Size:
No more than 3-5 people to a group
Time:
• 5 minutes of introductions within group
• 18 minute activity
• 5 minute video
• Discussions

10. The Marshmallow Challenge
Materials:
Tape, String, 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, 1 marshmallow, Scissors for
sharing
Activity:
— Divide groups into teams of 3-5
— Each team to receive the materials and location of “scissors to share”
— Each team has 18 minutes to build the tallest, free-standing structure
using the materials supplied to each group. The marshmallow must be
attached to the top of the structure you build. After 18 minutes, I will
measure the height of each structure that remains standing with the
marshmallow on top. The winner is the team whose free-standing
structure is the tallest
— I will give you all a 1 minute warning. Reminder: the
marshmallow must be on the top of the structure, and that the structure
itself must be free-standing when the activity concludes. Questions?

11. 11

12. TED: Marshmallow Challenge

13. Takeaways & the Comparison
Takeaways
— A simple team-building exercise
— What makes for the most successful teams hopefully surprised you
o Design truly is a contact sport
o It demands that we bring all of our senses to the job, and that
we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing
to the challenge that we have at hand
Why I chose this exercise?
— What startups can take away from the MC is that bigger teams
and higher incentives are no substitute for having the right skills
and the right process in place.
— Wujec found that larger teams performed increasing worse
than smaller teams, and incentivizing them with a reward did
not make up for the fact that they were not using the right
process.

14. The Pattern
Ask product managers in large companies about their frustrations and
challenges, and they complain about:
v too many processes
v too many checkpoints and people involved in decisions
v poorly defined roles
v too much to do
v too much time spent on current “legacy” customers
v too much focus on new “cool” technology, and no time for strategic planning
Ask product managers in start-up companies, and they complain about:
v the lack of defined processes,checkpoints, and roles
v their feeling of being buried
v lack of customers and a regular revenue stream
v too much focus on new “cool” technology, and no time for strategic planning
But, the grass isn’t always greener in a startup

15. Size Agnostic: PM Processes/Responsibilities
Corporate:
• Define the roadmap for your
area/assigned product
• Ensure roadmap meets
goals/objectives of company
• Responsible for prioritization of
roadmap and that there are clear
specifications
• Work closely with team that builds
(engineering), designs (UX/UI), and
launches; as well as key
stakeholders in the company
• You will iterate to get desired quality
while working collaboratively
Startup:
• Fundamentals remain the same
o PM could be the CEO as company
grows CEO shifts into their role and
hires a true PM
• Might have to be a “jack of all
trades”
o Ex: User research yourself
• Flexibility
o Ex: Ever changing roadmap
• More time doing the work
o Ex: Less territory wars, or
evangelizing your team, etc

16. Same Pattern & Process: Why so different?
A startup is building a product as their lifeblood
An established company is building products under
the claim that the new product will not make or break
the company
In my opinion; neither a startup nor an established
company is a scaled version of the other. But instead,
the entire ideology behind building products is
distinct to each; therefore each has has its own
“product management style/feel”
The Ideology Behind the Two

17. Start-Ups: The Pros
— Momentum/Urgency
o Essential operating with a gun to their head
o Want to make products quickly, so they can measure and adapt
— Responsibility, accountability, impact
o Put in a position to make a huge impact
o If you do amazing work; entire company and all of its customers will benefit from it. You’ll
be loved for it.
— Ownership & Leadership
o High visibility; if you’re awesome you’ll be able to grow and move up in your career far
faster. Your career will be accelerated in a major way by joining a startup.
o (BC-Years and years to become a leader with big ownership); hierarchy
— Communication directly with customers & Transparency
o Closer to the customer, quicker insights
o Customers can provide support but more importantly to solicit feedback
o One goal, one mission, fewer layers
— Be a part of something bigger than you
o Making something from nothing, with people who are in it for the same reasons you are
o Might become something big, something meaningful and different. Excitement is
amazingly powerful
o Idea to reality, thinking outside the box, breaking boundaries

18. Start-Ups: The Cons
— Multi-tasking, Jack of all Trades, Many Hats
o Room for few Specialists: Don’t need you to be really, really good at that little
thing you spend all your time on
— Being a creative, innovative force inside the org
o Your it! Can’t learn from others in the company
— Comfort with rapid failure
o Can’t be afraid to fail
o Failing is a way to learn
— Decisions made on conserving/growing capital
o Minimum quality control, ex Swappable: X Amount Fraud
o Release earlier with fewer features than they are comfortable with
— Lack of Resources, Time Commitment, Little to no Work-Life Balance
o Cash constrained resources
o Operating with a gun to your head (aka pressure)
— Risk
o Financial or career risk is debatable; just ask anyone who’s been laid off from a
large company

19. Big Company: The Pros
— Repeatable Products, Revenue, and Profits
o Significant resources to launch complete products in large markets
o No one losing job if a product fails
— Financial Incentives
o You: Base pay higher
o Company: Making money
— Security
o Pretty damn hard to get fired if your doing your job
— Your not alone
o Team of product managers from whom a new person could learn
— Success of your product is clearly defined and agreed upon by others before
you even hear of the project
o Growing what is already successful
o Brand Prestige

20. Big Company: The Cons
— Government/ “VP” Regulation
o Hire Smart People yet their telling them what to do every minute
— Politics, Layers of Decision Makers, & Red Tape
o Need approval for everything b/c your executing someone else’s plan
— Comfort with slow, often frustrating, progress
o Don’t iterate continuously
— Creativity Killers
— Earn Authority and Lead by Influence
o Product managers are usually leaders in their organizations. But they typically
don’t have direct line authority over others.
— Presentations
o Decks

21. QA
Can you blaze new trails, or do you like a well-worn
and defined path?

22. Upcoming Courses
www.productschool.com
jake@productschool.com
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23. How to manage major features
on existing products
– Feb 17th, Wednesday, 6:30pm
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