#28 Understanding Your Customers to Find Product/Market Fit
Jim Semick has worked for more than 20 years in Product Management. About 8 years ago he was looking for the next big challenge in his life. He quit his full-time job with two kids and no clear business idea. What he had back then was a great and motivated co-founder as well as the vision to make Product Managers' lives easier.
In this episode, Jim talks about the importance of having a clear vision of how to build a company with your co-founder before you even have a business idea. Next to that, Jim shared what he did to identify a problem that was worth solving which later translated into his company ProductPlan.
Jim on the Internet:
Website: https://www.jimsemick.com/
Jim's books & articles: https://www.jimsemick.com/writing/
ProductPlan: https://www.productplan.com/
Linkedin: @jimsemick
Twitter: @jimsemick
Podcast minutes
Table of content
0:30 - Intro Jim Semick
3:40 - From Product Manager to founder
6:20 - Evaluating & entering markets
13:45 - Dealing with uncertainty as a founder & former PM
15:30 - 30 in-depth customer interviews
17:20 - Bootstrapping instead of raising money?
19:50 - Reducing uncertainty the lean way
25:50 - Making the first hire to build a new product
28:05 - Why you don’t need to raise money
33:00 - Two things you should know when you’re working on an idea
How you did move into the world of Product Management?
Jim: My path to Product Management and eventually to become a founder is a little bit crazy. I have been in product management and the product industry for software products for about 20 years. And in talking with a lot of other product managers, my path to becoming a product manager is similar, which is why we got thrown into it.
The path to Product Management isn't often a direct path for most people. They find themselves in an industry and they are asked to become a Product Manager because there really isn't a career path for it. And my experience has been with technology for about 25 years.
I was working as an author, technical book author, as an instructional designer, creating coursework and classes for technology, and then eventually becoming a Product Manager at a software company and a couple of different software companies helping to validate and build new products new some of the earliest B2B software as a service product and then eventually about eight years ago I decided to take the plunge and become a founder of a software company.
So, my path was a little bit convoluted it's not a clear path to where one goes to school and then eventually winds up doing what they had intended to do.
But you know, every step along the way I realized what I enjoyed and what I was good at and decided to pursue that further until I'm now co-founder of, as you mentioned, ProductPlan, a B2B software company, building product roadmap, software, and I'm loving it.
Making the step from a Product Manager to a founder, what was the most challenging thing for you back then?
As a Product Manager and for those people who have worked in product before, this will resonate that as a Product Manager, you're often, responsible, you have a lot of responsibility, you have a lot of stakeholders within an organization to please, and yet you're the master of none of them.
You often don't have direct reports. You have very little true authority. And so you need to lead through communication, by influencing people to your vision and your way of thinking. So moving to become a founder is a little bit different where you are an authority, and you can dictate what happens with the product with the company.
Of course, you have a lot of people that you're hiring and trying to discover new markets and trying to figure out what that product-market fit is. And so the path I think it's a natural leap to go from Product Management to becoming a founder, an entrepreneur, and yet the responsibilities are significantly different.
Even though most Product Managers will tell you that it's a stressful position and thoroughly enjoyable. I would say that it prepared me for the stresses of being a founder.
What are the best ways to evaluate if there is Product Market Fit?
… tune in to learn more!
