Betsy Streeter provides a recommendation on how to let out your creative monster in 2 easy steps.

Other Articles:

• Does Your Content Marketing Make You Different? (myventurepad.com)
• B2B Marketers Need to Look Beyond Decision Makers (thecustomercollective.com)

So how long have you being doing Product Management?

I have over 18 years of product management experience. I have worked on many products, building my experience over 5 distinct “phases”. I began my career as a highly technical product manager working on submarine design for 5 years. After business school, I worked at Intuit for 5 years where I led Quicken product management and also launched an online brokerage. After Intuit, I led product management at Friendster.

After Friendster, I consulted to startups as interim VP of Product Management; my clients included companies such as YouSendIt, Box.net, Xing, and Epocrates.

My latest phase is as CEO and founder of my own startup: YourVersion,  a real-time discovery engine that helps users find new, relevant content tailored to their interests. I regularly speak about Product Management at tech/startup events such as the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, Startonomics, Facebook Fund REV incubator, and Stanford.

As you look at product management, do you see yourself more of a product person or traditional marketing?

While I have an MBA and consider myself to be a good marketer, if I had to pick, I would say that I am more of a product person at heart. I started hacking on a Commodore 64 as a kid, I have a BS in Electrical Engineering, and my first job out of college was designing submarines.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time building up my business and marketing skills. But at the end of the day, what I most enjoy is building a product that wows customers. I do feel that on the Web, the traditional lines between product and marketing are getting blurred. Many successful web companies excel because they understand and value that integration and have employees who are strong in both areas.

Since you’ve usually been in a head of product management role as part of a larger team, what was the biggest challenge to transition into starting your own company and being a CEO?

I have always taken a broad view of product management and consider product managers to be product and business owners, responsible for the overall success of their product (i.e., “the CEO of their product”). In all of my product management roles, I’ve had this broad scope.   Before YourVersion, I had been living in the early-stage startup ecosystem (which I love) for a while and was pretty familiar with it. For example, I had moved to Madrid for several months to help a friend get his new bootstrapped startup off the ground. As a result, while YourVersion was my first time starting my own company and being CEO, the change in role wasn’t a big adjustment.

The biggest adjustment was probably (in the early days) not having a team to lean on. For example, I had to do a lot of the initial coding myself. I enjoyed it for a bit, but when it’s mainly just you doing the work (even with a couple of part-time colleagues helping out), progress is much slower than when you have a larger team . The team has since grown and we are able to make much faster progress.

YourVersion has seen some great traction post launch, what is it and what problem does it solve?

The Web grows larger every day, on the one hand offering more useful content, but on the other making it harder to find the content you care about. Staying on top of your interests isn’t as easy as it should be. YourVersion is a real-time discovery engine that continuously discovers new and relevant web content tailored to your specific interests. You can then easily bookmark and share pages via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

YourVersion harnesses the collective intelligence of our users, so that the results grow increasingly better as more people use the system. YourVersion launched at the 2009 TechCrunch50 Conference, winning the People’s Choice Award.

How is addressing the needs of users integrated into your product delivery process?

Addressing user needs is a core part of my DNA and therefore a core part of YourVersion’s DNA.  Intuit was the best place to learn about customer-centric design, and I left there with a lot of great training and best practices that I’ve applied over the years. From when we launched YourVersion’s private beta to when we launched to the public, I personally conducted over 80 1-on-1 usability/user feedback sessions with new users. As we rolled out new features, we would solicit user feedback on them within days. We would react to the feedback, make changes, and launch the improvements very quickly. It was very rewarding to see the progress of our fast iteration loop from launching a new feature, getting user feedback, and launching the improvements. I was focused on ensuring we had what I call a compelling “first-time user experience”.

One of our developers noted that our process was similar to the making of a samurai sword, whose strength comes from many repeated cycles of heating, folding, and hammering. All our hard work paid off at TechCrunch50; after my demo on stage, YourVersion received a very nice compliment from Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, who said: “I thought the attention to detail and the usability testing was really obvious.”

We also make it very easy for users to give us feedback on our website. Every page has 3 links to our “Feedback” page.

We also use user surveys to proactively solicit both quantitative and qualitative user feedback to help us understand what our users like the most, dislike the most, and how we can make the product better.

I am also a big believer in using metrics to help build your understanding of how users are using your site and to identify how you can improve your product (see my presentations).

As organizations go to market with new products, one of the key challenges I’ve seen is getting that first big win – an super positive analyst write-up, an award, the first customer or first 10,000 users.  What is the big win so far for YourVersion?

I’d say the biggest win for YourVersion so far has been winning the People’s Choice Award at TechCrunch50. We launched to the public that day, and winning put us on the map and built awareness of YourVersion with a lot of people.

As a result, Robert Scoble saw my demo on stage and tweeted “Last session of day rocks. http://yourversion.com is now in my ‘must try’ list.”, which led to him conducting and posting a video interview.

In many ways, winning at TechCrunch50 was our “head bowling pin” (to use a metaphor from Geoffrey Moore’s “Inside the Tornado”) because that win helped us get invited to demo at other startup events where we also won the People’s Choice Award: SFNewTech, FailCon, and the Play Berkeley Digital Media Conference. Winning at all these events led to press coverage in TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Wired, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, and NBC News. That in turn made recruiting new team members easier. So winning the People’s Choice Award at TechCrunch50 created a strong positive spiral. The event wins and the top-tier press coverage give YourVersion a high degree of credibility with the press, prospective users, prospective team members, prospective partners, and prospective investors.

So why should I use YourVersion over other alternatives?

YourVersion is better than other ways of staying on top of your interests for several reasons. First, it’s very easy to use and by aggregating relevant content in one place it allows you to stay on top of your interests in less time. Second, YourVersion is highly personalized, allowing you to add any interest you like. Third, YourVersion is the most complete discovery solution, offering bookmarking and sharing funtionality as well as a free iPhone app and Firefox toolbar. Finally, YourVersion learns from its users and harnesses their collective intelligence to deliver results that grow increasingly better over time.

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PCampATL has been a great time.  Good discussion, networking and session facilitation. Great job by @jbrett and the rest of the volunteers.

Many thanks to the folks that attended the session and provided your insights on the things we get bogged down on.  Based on the discussion, it is clear we all get bogged down in the daily noise, the tactical and the stupid things which stop us from doing the right things for the business.

Related Product Management Articles:

• Not everyone’s strategic and 4 other things to think about before you finalize the company’s 2010 goals
• The State of Product Management: Tweets, Conversations and Near Quotes….
• The 4 PM Confusion in Technology Companies

I really wouldn’t want one of my customers sending emails like this one I got today from Hertz.  As if being on the news wasn’t enough for Toyota on this recall and major rental companies choosing to opt out on Toyota until addressed, now one of their larger fleet customers is letting their customer base know – “we will make every effort to switch you to another brand (e.g., Nissan, Ford, GM) as quickly as possible.”

This note also makes for great customer service by Hertz.  I really hope similar notes went out to all email addresses Hertz had for the coming days/weeks.

Safety first just might mean 1 brand does well in this recall nightmare.  Another thought, they could have just been inundated with inbound customer service calls asking for a non-Toyota rental, whatever the reason I still liked the note.

Related articles:

• Ghosn: Toyota woes will be temporary (cnn.com)
• Honda, GM Gain Buyers’ Favor Amid Toyota Recall, Edmunds Says (businessweek.com)
• Toyota recall could help North American automakers (ctv.ca)
• Toyota to recall 2.3 million more vehicles as its troubles continue (businessweek.com)
• Toyota has few details on gas pedal solution as recall expands (thestar.com)
• Toyota extends massive safety recall (financialpost.com)
• Toyota safety recall spreads to Europe, China (windsorstar.com)
• Hertz, Enterprise, Avis remove recalled Toyotas (money.cnn.com)

Slide week is just about over, at least here. I have at least another 4 days heavily invested in PowerPoint.

While MindBody’s revenues are not as big as Google or Facebook, they are growing very strongly and there still larger than Twitter. 

Here are the 14 tips that Rick laid out in the SoftwareCEO article. 

1. It has to be SaaS
2. Be prepared for some challenges with SaaS
3. If you have the customer base, private equity may be better than VC
4. Seek investors who want to collaborate, not dominate
5. Aim at a boutique market
6. Narrow your sights so you can be a significant player
7. Know the related micro-verticals you can expand to
8. You can’t beat the big boys, so join them
9. A friend may not be your best partner
10. Don’t fight in front of the kids
11. Price your software low enough to avoid cutbacks
12. Publish your customer list
13. Use agile development to respond quickly to customer feedback
14. To create raving fans, offer your customers concrete business advice

 You should click through and read the entire seven page article to get the color commentary on these tips.

Disclosure: I conducted the technical diligence assessment for MindBody’s investors.  John Mecke is the Managing Director of DevelopmentCorporate, an Atlanta-based corporate development advisory firm.  He blogs primarily at www.developmentcorporate.com.

‘Tis the season for strategic planning for most of us it started in September and for others they are trying to finalize/solidify their 2010 plans (roadmaps, budgets, hiring plans…).   Ok, so maybe this post is a little late for 2010, but bookmark this for next August or 90 days before the end of your fiscal year because the same craziness comes up every year.

I’ve been talking to a bunch of people of late about how their gigs are going, what does 2010 look like and some folks are hiring, others moving to new roles some are still just out looking for a new job and 2010 looks like it could be a crazy year for product managers and software companies in general.

With the job market as it is and the ever increasing pressure for products to perform better than they did last year, product management is already crazy for many.  If you have been out there looking for a new job, you know exactly what I mean.  Folks have been asking my opinion of this company or that role and honestly, I’m not the guy to talk to, so I’ve been referring folks to a post I really like from Gopal Shenoy on how to evaluate a PM gig.  Everyone and every company has different views of what product management does and what they need from a product manager.  The same is true about developing the annual plan, team goals and strategic plans.

So as I got to thinking about what folks hiring a product manager should think about, how I’m personally going to set goals for my team and what leaders need to keep in mind when crafting their 2010 plans to make everyone successful, I kinda came to a realization that there just might be a disconnect for some on planning, goals and how to align the product organization to the strategy.   I’m not sure how all of these ideas meshed, but for some reason I think they do, since in many organizations Product Management is the carrier of the strategy torch and plan execution in many organizations.  Even in organizations where they don’t drive the strategy or even participate in the development of the next year’s plan.  Yup, back to that whole “all of the accountability and none of the authority” thing.

Ultimately we all need a baseline to plan from regardless of the role product management has in annual planning or strategy development.  We also all need a way to gauge the progress of the organization, team members and leaders, so the annual strategic plan is as good as anything to track effectiveness, I guess as long as it can be tied out to “doing the work” and achieving the goals.

In general, most businesses need to understand what new ideas could be pursued (everyone has ideas), what are the investor/leadership expectations, key areas of functional/tactical ownership and the general product management model needed to successfully execute an annual plan and overall strategy development for a company or product line.   Of course, what a company needs varies based on general market conditions and where your product/company is from a maturation level.  To that end, here are 5 things to think about when evaluating your organizations 2010 strategic plan, the roles and the expectations for a product and/or a product manager in your initiatives and plans.

Not Everyone’s Strategic

This is an important one.  Not just for deciding how to implement product strategies, but also to develop a strategy and execute it.  In some businesses, it is hard to identify who owns strategy development and who is responsible for executing the tactics.   Not just who is responsible for execution, but how are you going to track the progress and report on it.  Regardless of what world view you have, you need to have a stake in the ground on who owns what and what is required to exit with an approved strategy and plan for 2010.  Below are some models which we all know exists:

• Product owns strategy
• The CEO/CTO/CMO owns the strategy
• A committee owns the strategy
• No one owns strategy
• Your competitors drive your strategy

No single one of these is worse than an another – well ok – maybe the competitor one is the weakest, but depending on where you are competitively it could be a valid mode to pursue, not sure it is strategy though, just a bunch of tactics which in hindsight has the appearance of strategy.   I guess the “no one owns strategy” one sucks too, but that is probably fictional and doesn’t exist, but I had to put it as an option.

No matter what your model for strategy development/approval, unfortunately we often forget someone has to actually execute the strategy and it’s hard to acknowledge one’s activities or contribution is tactical and you need to try and not have folks who have a purely tactical role participate in the strategy development.  For some reason I just can’t get a Caddy Shack quote out of my head when this came up in a discussion about 2 months ago (which is when I started this post), here’s the quote:

Danny Noonan: I planned to go to law school after I graduated, but it looks like my folks won’t have enough money to put me through college.
Judge Smails: Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

When trying to build out an organization, leaders of companies need to figure out who owns the strategy for what part of the business, because without a clearly defined owner of the strategy, who owns the execution and what are the success criteria it’s  probably going fail.

Also, it’s not like everyone enjoys participating in strategy, but some do indeed think being locked down in a meeting room at a semi-local resort is just the best.   I had a surprising conversation the other day with a sales guy who had the following to say, which was refreshing: “while I like participating in all of these strategic discussions, I do have to sell the product sometime – I wonder if there is a correlation between the time my team and I are in meetings and quota attainment?”

Every Functional Group is not Created Equal

Emotions, Anecdotes and one-off Sales cycles have no place when rebranding, repackaging or creating the next year’s plan.  Each of these may make for compelling discussion fodder, but market trends, sales velocity and product competitiveness should be the key things you look at as you look into 2010 and beyond with your strategy.

Just as product managers have no business writing code, creating logos or setting sales quotas other groups need to understand that good product managers aren’t building a product for the next sales cycle, but the next 3 years of sales.  It’s always the time horizon thing which is the toughest to understand when it comes to strategy.  Some strategies just might take 3 years and most businesses don’t take that into account – I digress.

Remember the Market

No question the market is changing – the race to free, the full on emergence of WOA/SOA and the ever growing value available via open source are challenges for every product manager.  For many of us, this just isn’t a lot of fun and it is impacting pricing, profits and customer retention for many a software company.  Revenue and profit are always one of the most interesting parts of product management for me, but there seems to be a trend in businesses becoming increasingly Top Down in their business plan expectations. Putting in place strategic plans and revenue goals which aren’t acknowledging large scale market dynamics, historical execution or competitive pressures which is becoming the norm for many folks out there.  I like optimism, but only if it is tempered by facts.

Warning the Objects in the Rear View Mirror only Look Like a Good Idea for a New Strategy

Recent successes in sales cycles are often the most salient thing organizations remember and often create the basis for the next big thing.  If in the last 2 quarter you successfully closed deals of a given type, it doesn’t mean that should be your strategy moving forward.  Could just mean you closed some deals and sometimes it’s just the sales leader or a given sales person with the right skills and Roledex to sell a given type of deal and not a market signal.

I worked on a deal once worth ~$26M in contract revenue for a SaaS offering and once that deal was done it became the strategy to win more of those.  Actually I think the CEO quote was “See if we can win 1 $26 million deal we should be able to win 5 or 6 a year”   To that end, we did in fact we divert all resources to better support that type of deal.

While every company wants 7 or 8 of those types of deals a year to change/improve the revenue arc, it may not be possible.  No really. You just need to think about how many of those transactions exist in the marketplace to come to that realization and need to understand why did you actually win the deal and how beneficial are those types of deals to the bottom line before you pursue a strategy which search for the market anomaly.

Don’t get me wrong, killing whales is exciting, organizationally motivating and just a great experience to have, but it is also the least non-repeatable for most companies.  Blind squirrels do find nuts every now and again afterall.

It’s not just sales execution anomalies which appear historically and look like proof points for how to move forward, analyst write ups, press clippings and repackaging events can have significant near term and mid-term impact for a business, but they often don’t have the staying power to position a company for success over the long term.  The other item which also confuses some folks are strategic aqusitions with crazy exit valuations in an adjacent segment or a segment which have no relationship to your current market.  At the end of the day it doesn’t matter because some executive read about it on the airplane or talked to someone at dinner the other other night and now your CEO just can’t get it out of his or her head that a 4X revenue multiple is a realistic exit valuation in the next 3 quarters when your spinning off 12% EBITDA.

I can only add that Cisco or Google are probably not going to buy you, so don’t use their recent acquisitions as the central proof points to drive your 2010 strategy and exit plan.

You Might Just Want a Product Generalist for Your Plan

In the spirit of not everyone’s strategic, this may also apply to product managers (sorry Steve Johnson).  Sometimes product just tows the line, hits the delivery schedule and executes the launch – not exciting, but reality.   For example, I’ve heard folks from at start ups that product management washes bottles, does demos, creates sales presentation and just about any other menial task another department doesn’t want, but could loosely be associated with a product.

For some organizations this is spot on for what they need – a product generalist. This is important to know when you are looking to hire a new person, align your organization to expectations or just to execute your 2010 plan.

While I don’t subscribe to the generalist approach, I do know that PM’s do in fact serve a general role at times and it is required, but for some company’s this is all they expect from a product manager and that’s ok since after all the world does need ditch diggers and people that can create pretty product roadmap slides and do demos.

If you are in one of these companies or if your plan requires more generalist skills you need to make sure you find the right person to fill the bill.  The best hire for that type of role is the really articulate support guy/gal who gives good demo while staying on top of a great deal of random tasks while interfacing with customers.

There is always the more important question if you are looking for a generalist – Do you have enough Solution Consultants, Support personnel, Facilities people and Development Managers?

Hopefully you have your plan in place, it’s rational and y’all are ready for execution in the new year, if not there’s always 2011!

“Yeah so I’m expected to run all strategy, product lines and market facing activities with no direct influence on development and a Sr. Manager title.” – Sr. Product Manager – 12/08/2009 at ~11:30 am

“It’s not like you can assume business as usual” @Brioneja

“So the market is requiring contractual service levels and the customer support folks say that’s unacceptable and aren’t going to do it.  Yeah – that should be a CEO level discussion topic.” – Dir, Product Marketing – 12/08/2009 ~1PM

“So I had to spend like 85 person hours of cross-functional time to convince everyone that promotional marketing required a process based approach and why a value/problem based approach was the better idea over offering a 50% discount” – Product Manager – 12/08/2009 6PM

“Dude, I’m so glad I’m a technical product manager – those folks who don’t have a specified role with expectations can’t be having fun.  All I have to worry about is exiting the sprint, doing demos and training folks.” – Product Owner – November

“Is it roadmap update season already?” – Product Management Evangelist

“Last time I checked, you have a quota and I have a P&L – we have different time lines on our goals for the business.” VP, Product – October

“I need suggestions for managing ideas from anywhere into, through, and out of the product dev cycle. Software? #prodmgmt” – @DanielRunion

“Just give me the goals, a bunch of poorly written epics and I’ll give you a finely groomed backlog” – Product Owner – November

“Roadmaps are evidence of strategy. Not a list of features.”  – Product Management Consultant

“So we are working the third strategic plan of the year, of course you need the next big thing before the first one’s 50% done.” – Product Marketing Manager – Early November

“Going to be tough working there… I’m thinking I can’t triple the product revenue with reduced resources and the same marketing budget the last guy had.  Does that make me negative?… Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna take the job though.” – Soon to be employed Director of Product Management. – 11/20-ish

“I guess it’s exciting to be in charge of the biggest piece of shit in a dying market” – Dir, Product Management 12/4

“I’ve got 18 months of cost reduction and platform consolidation to wring out profit.  Next year’s metric is going to be so easy.” – Sr. Product Manager – 12/13/09 2PM

“Don’t get me wrong, I think big thoughts all day long and I like it, but at some point we need a decision and might just need a little time to build it.” Director of Development – 12/10.

“Is connecting online to Product Managers in your locale important?” @trevorrotzien

“roadmapping session drinking game: drink when you hear the word “refactor”" – @ptyoung

“I just chuckle at my “I see stupid people” coffee mug, I rotate that with my Pragmatic mug – “your opinon although interesting is irrelevant” – the sad thing is no one has called me out on it after 18 months – REALLY?!?!” – Interim Project Manager in search of Product Management Gig – 12/14/09

“I think CEO”s are beginning to think Product Marketing is the new MARCOM.”  – Product Marketing Consultant, 11/24

“in an adolescent market, a 1% position is completely unsustainable.” - CrankyPM