The decision to hire a CPO will forever reshape a startup's trajectory. Who is chosen as they hire and the decisions they make will define a company’s success and growth (or failure).
With over two decades of product management and leadership experience, we sought the insights of Michael Park. Michael is an accomplished product executive with a strong commitment to creating exceptional products that delight users, drive revenue, and foster the growth of product teams.
His experiences and recommendations provide a roadmap for navigating the challenges and opportunities when pursuing exceptional product development and organizational success.
A standout trait among early Founders is their resilience in the face of failure. This ability to rebound sets them apart from employees who may be less tolerant of pivots.
When a Founder brings on a product leader, they essentially outsource this innate resilience and recovery capacity, so assessing how a potential product executive has navigated and improved decision-making during career setbacks is crucial.
To borrow from Mike Tyson, “We all have a plan until we get punched in the face.”
Founders should establish their own expectations for a rebound or bounce-back Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to better measure how their CPO hire rebounds from challenges.
While conventional hiring practices focus on challenges and learning experiences, it’s equally vital to delve into the recovery process from failure. Curiosity about the candidate’s emergence from failure is crucial.
When interviewing, engage in the specifics of the CPO’s recovery process. This sheds light on their approach—whether reactive, defensive, blaming, systematic, reflective, or transparent.
Pay attention to how they discuss it; does it come across as arrogant or humble, a gloss-over, or an appreciation of the experience? The ability to fail fast and learn aligns with agile methodologies, but founders need to assess if this extends beyond product processes and into the character of their potential hire.
When Michael revamped BombBomb’s self-service customer journey, it took 18 months. Initially, it gained momentum but faced challenges in achieving consensus on prioritized problem-solving as the effort progressed. A critical factor for regaining momentum was identified: the introduction of a Growth Designer into the process.
While dynamic Growth Product Managers are often prioritized in hiring strategies, his experience emphasizes the complementary skills of a Growth Designer. They excel in translating abstract concepts, untangling stakeholder interests, and navigating complex outcomes in what he termed the “War on Paper.”
Product-led growth (PLG) strategies have broad implications across marketing, sales, and product. However, obstacles like billing processes, data warehouse implications, and user workflow dependencies (to name a few) impede progress without stakeholder involvement in product discovery.
A skilled Growth Designer, proficient in visually distilling complex ideas and options, improves product management’s tempo and transparency in decision-making. If an organization is still developing product discovery practices, he highly recommends Teresa Torres’s book, “Continuous Discovery Habits.”
Ultimately, for the PLG team to function effectively, engaging in distillation and provocation before engineering begins is crucial. While this is a general principle for all product development, it becomes even more acute for PLG topics. Hiring the right Growth Designer streamlines this process, becoming pivotal in topic discovery and supercharging the iterative process. I strongly advise against skipping this role.
Being a category pioneer comes with a hefty price tag! The funds invested in development not only serve the innovator but also establish the playbook for future competitors, potentially resulting in a crowded landscape if successful.
As competition escalates, CEOs and Founders encounter a pivotal decision—adhere to a narrow focus to emerge as category leaders or broaden their horizons by incorporating complementary segments.
As Chief Product Officer for BombBomb, Michael strategically positioned the brand as the top personal video solution in proptech, aiming to dominate that specific category. This strategy proved effective until increased competition and the shift to remote work. In response, they embarked on an 18-month journey to broaden the scope across industries.
Discussions on narrow versus wide often center around marketing and financial considerations; however, having experienced both approaches, he suggests considering the customer and product perspectives.
While business development perspectives appropriately take the forefront in these discussions, he believes these questions will spark curiosity as a team grapples with these impactful customer considerations.
