Succeeding as the First Product Hire in a Startup - Usama Khan, Stage TEN

<p>Being the first product person in a company is similar to being a detective. You have to expose, articulate, prioritize and map out the founder’s vision. Sometimes you’re met with skepticism and other times you’re misunderstood. Tune in for this PM’s story of being the first product person in his company. </p><p><strong>About Usama Khan </strong><br>Downloading the founder’s vision onto a product roadmap was Usama Khan’s job when he first started out at Stage 10 where he is Head of Product. He was the first product person there. Today, he leads a whole product team there. Usama has been working in the product space since 2013. He believes that one of the most valuable skills a product manager should hone is their ability to communicate and articulate the reasoning behind the decisions they make. </p><p><br><strong>SHOW NOTES:</strong><br>00:00 | Who is Usama Khan?<br>00:37 | Being the first product person joining a company<br>03:18 | Framework for uncovering the founder’s vision <br>09:22 | The hardest part of running a product department alone <br>13:39 | Building a product team from scratch <br>14:20 | Marginal improvements vs. shipping fast<br>18:58 | Differentiating your product from clones/copycats <br>25:50 | 3 expectations every product manager has to juggle <br>33:27 | Fireside questions (researching your questions, understanding user behavior, prioritization, why data metrics aren’t enough, why product managers are misunderstood)</p><p><br><strong>QUOTES:</strong><br>[04:54] “When you have access to the founder you can try and understand, from his or her perspective, where they want to take the company, what’s the intention, and what their board thinks about it.” <br>[33:54] “If you’ve thoroughly researched what you want to know from your users and stakeholders, you usually get better answers.”</p><p><br><strong>Follow Usama Khan: </strong><br>https://www.linkedin.com/in/usamashahidkhan/ </p><p><br><strong>Work with Crowdlinker:</strong> <br>https://www.crowdlinker.com/contact </p>