Ken Norton
Partner at Google Ventures, formerly PM at Google. Always brings the donuts.
Discussion
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
Hi - I’m Ken Norton, partner at Google Ventures, former PM at Google, and product management enthusiast. I always bring the donuts -- ask me anything!
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Ken! The path to become a product manager is much less clear than other roles, like engineering or design. As a former product manager, several people have asked me how to get into this role. What advice would you give them? What resources/articles would you recommend to hopeful PM's?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@rrhoover Hi Ryan! I stumbled into PM somewhat accidentally because I didn't know anything about it when I started my engineering career. My advice to people who want to get into PM is to look for opportunities in their day job to expand their horizons. If you're an engineer, look for ways you can get exposed to more of the business - joining sales calls, answering support tickets, helping out with marketing collateral, etc. Broaden your horizons!
Mandy Kakavas
@mkakav · Communications, Google Ventures
@kennethn @rrhoover Hi Ryan! For further reading check out:
How to Hire a Product Manager: https://www.kennorton.com/essays...
12 things product managers should do in their first 30 days at a new company: http://thenextweb.com/entreprene...
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
erickuhn19
@erickuhn19 · Product Manager at FIS
@kennethn What are the top 5 books you would recommend to Product Managers? (or as many as you can remember)
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@erickuhn19 The most important business book of the last 50 years is The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, and every product person should read it. Other favorites on my must-read list: High Output Management (Andy Grove), Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz), Lean Startup (Eric Ries), Innovator’s Solution (Christensen’s follow-up), Design of Everyday Things (Donald Norman), Inspired (Marty Cagan). I once tweeted a photograph of our PM bookshelf at the GV office [1], if you can make out tiny text and want LOTS of recommendations.
Four (non-PM) books I’ve read recently that I enjoyed: Superforecasting, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sixth Extinction, and Dead Wake.
[1] https://twitter.com/kennethn/sta...
Klajdi Turlla
@klajdi_kl · Product Manager, MPAY Albania
Thanks for taking the time. Two questions:
Much debate is around technical and non-technical Product Managers. Whats your take on it?
As a non-technical product manager in a small company what is the best path to implement Scrum, the one of Scrum Master or Scrum Product Owner?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@klajdi_kl this is an excellent question. Requiring that PMs have a CS degree was a reaction to bad experiences many engineers had working with PMs who didn't understand the technology. Requiring a CS degree was a statement, but it's an overreaction (hint: I don't have a CS degree either!) I've often said that PMs need to be *technical enough* which means they need to understand the technology at a deep enough level to get credibility with their engineers. So I'm not in the requiring a CS degree camp.
Re: implementing Scrum. Any changes to process require buy-in from everyone, so if the members of your team aren't on board, you won't have success. When convincing people to try something new, always approach it by helping them understand how it will make their jobs easier.
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
What technical skill did you learn in PM that most helps your current role in VC? What was the hardest adjustment?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@andrewmettinger Spreadsheets :-) Seriously, understanding how to turn data into insights. In VC you're constantly asked to evaluate different businesses, and you need to have a good foundation in interpreting financial projections and the like.
Biggest adjustment? When I first started at GV I didn't think I'd have much to offer to companies that weren't in consumer or enterprise software. What could I offer a company that's curing cancer? Pretty quickly I began to learn that organizational and process challenges are the same, and that even if I didn't know anything about the company's core business I understood the challenges they faced putting together teams that are working effectively and deciding what's important.
erickuhn19
@erickuhn19 · Product Manager at FIS
What is your take on Product Design Sprints the GV Design team uses? Have you had the chance to be involved in one?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@erickuhn19 I love them. I've seen amazing results where teams worked together in 5 days to come to an understanding of the problem they wanted to solve and then tested it with real people. It's keeps you incredibly focused. PMs are a critical part of this, and I've heard nothing but enthusiasm from PMs in the portfolio who've been through sprints. (If you're wondering about sprints, check out the GV Design Library if you're curious to learn more.)
erickuhn19
@erickuhn19 · Product Manager at FIS
@kennethn Totally agree, I've had good success with PDS in the last startup I worked with, but looking to integrate the methodology into a much bigger company for my next PM role. This book was also a great read for learning more about them: http://www.amazon.com/Design-Spr...
Jonathan Zazove
@jzazove · designer + engineer
Which product that you worked on are you most proud of and why?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@jzazove hard to pick, but if I had to I'd say Google Calendar. When I started on the project it wasn't taken seriously by anyone in the industry. When I moved on, we were powering millions of enterprises and had displaced entrenched competitors. I'm sorry about all your meetings though, that I won't take credit for :-)
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@kennethn thanks so much for joining us today! During your career to date, what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given? Flip side - what's the worst?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@ems_hodge *Best Advice*: Jonathan Rosenberg, former SVP of Product at Google used to ask all the PMs on his team to write their resume in 10 years. Where do you want to be? I was skeptical until I did it. I realized pretty quickly that my resume in 10 years didn’t say “CEO.” I didn’t want to be a CEO. But I hadn’t explicitly stated that, and in many ways the PM career path defaults to the CEO career path. Knowing I wanted something different helped me be more deliberate about my career decisions and communicating my goals to others.
*Worst Advice*: at my first programming job out of college I got excited about the web (this was 1994-1995). I couldn't get our management excited about the internet and eventually decided to move on. Worst advice came from my boss who said the internet reminded him of CB radio. "Years ago truckers used CB radio, then it became a fad and everybody had a CB radio. Know who has a CB radio now? Truckers. The internet is a fad." I didn't listen to him :-)
Sherwin Wu
@sherwinwu
@kennethn What do you think is the future of search? Do you think the "lookup" experience on the internet will be the same 20 years from now?
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@sherwinwu years ago when I was at Yahoo! we believed that search should be personalized and anticipate the user's needs. We used to say "Go beyond the SERP (search engine results page)" I'm amazed looking back at how much of that has come true. Search has broken out of the box (hehe) and it will continue to do so.
Ross Simmonds
@thecoolestcool · GetCrate.co + Hustle & Grind
Ken - I've got two questions:
1) What advice would you give an entrepreneur looking to raise capital but has a small network in the venture/angel world?
2) I'm stealing this one from Peter Thiel - What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Thanks for taking the time!
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Ken Norton
@kennethn · Partner, Google Ventures
@thecoolestcool Excellent questions.
1. Look for ways to stand out. VCs and investors see lots of pitches in any given day, and anything that stands apart always catches your eye. Same kind of advice you'd give someone looking for a job actually. Don't be afraid to lean heavily on contacts you have, even ones that may be a few steps away. A referral from a friend of a friend of a friend always carries more weight than something cold.
2. A startup shouldn't hire a product manager too early. It's counterintuitive because conventional wisdom seems to be that it's a critical first hire, but there's danger in bringing in extra cooks too early. Startups I work with are often surprised when I tell them it's too soon.