Confianzys Consulting is a Product Management Company

What Product Management do Start-ups need? November 29, 2010

Given that start-up founders and teams comprised a good part of the audience at the recently held NASSCOM Product Conclave in Bangalore, naturally, one of the questions that arose at Gabriel Steinhardt’s session on The Real World of High-Tech Product Management was: Do start-ups need product management?

Less openly articulated were the fears that many technologists have: that processes kill innovation, that the market doesn’t know what it wants, that product marketing will “takeover” the product ownership.

In this context – for start-ups, it would be helpful to look at product management as an activity than as a function or specific designation. Product Planning, in particular, starts with the identification of a market-relevant problem, the solving of which is within the firm’s capabilities. This runs contrary to the way many start-ups begin – with a technology or capability or product that they seek to market.

Making this shift from product as starting point to market-problem as starting point is one of the most critical shifts that start-ups need to negotiate. If this shift is made, whether or not a small team has a person called a ‘product manager’ is a moot point.

As Gabriel pointed out in his session, start-ups run on few resources and multi-tasking. Business owners or engineers may play the role of product planner. When the start-up grows into a larger entity with multiple customers, products or geographical markets, roles can evolve into full-fledged planning and marketing teams; the product planning and marketing process will need to be better defined to prevent role conflicts and ensure efficiency.

Until then, what is essential is the eye on the market and a method to understand it. Without this activity, start-ups are likely to end up shooting in the dark and taking their chances.