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Reasons to join a startup now — as a new or aspiring product manager
I’ve spent the past few years learning from many product managers. From my own experiences helping to scale a startup team & product, I wanted to provide a few useful tools and resources that will help new and aspiring product managers. This will be the start of my series: I want to provide the most important lessons I’ve learned. I’m looking to help those who are new to product management, those who are looking to grow in their product careers, or those who are looking to break into the space.
In part one of this series, I will focus on five reasons why you should work at a startup.
“It’s not your Y intercept, but it’s your slope that’s important.” — Paul Buchheit, Managing Partner at Y Combinator
Five Reasons Why You Should Work at a Startup
1. You learn to ship quickly and adapt — as well as learn through trial and error.
You learn to build from 0 to 1 and at scale, and this is a lifelong skill that will benefit you as a PM, founder, or any type of business owner one day. You will ship successful and unsuccessful MVPs. You will iterate on existing features until you believe they perfectly solve your customer’s problem. Your work will never truly be complete, and that’s the best part of the journey of being a PM. There’s always a new customer problem to solve or challenge to overcome. Your features, products, and ownership will directly impact revenue of the company. As a PM at a startup, you affect the core strategy and learn how to think. Your ownership will be real, and your experiments will have a true impact.
