You’re a smart and motivated product manager who’s been running with the PM role for a while, and you’re considering making the plunge to work for an early, pre-PMF (product market fit) startup. Perhaps you’re considering a change from corporate life where you got started. The abundance of successful startup stories has created a halo effect that startups are fun, exciting, and profitable. As a result, many believe that working for a startup sounds desirable. In my experience, this is true. There are pitfalls however. Keeping your sanity may depend on ensuring you’re a good match for this exciting career path before you make any rash decisions. The following traits can help you determine your likelihood for success before joining a pre-PMF company in a product role.

TIMING

The stage of a startup company’s lifecycle matters when looking for product manager roles. A startup’s founder is the default first product manager. They provide the vision, assemble the core team, and drive development based on their knowledge and intuitions of the chosen market space. At this point, the entire team might fit in a garage or living room. With growth and hopefully early success, however, the founder CEO becomes increasingly busy running the company. E.g. Recruiting, fundraising, finding office space, managing the board, and much more. This opens demand for a dedicated product manager. This generally becomes necessary once you exceed 15+ engineers and the founder can no longer multitask between being the CEO and the PM effectively. This probably won’t happen until after the Seed round, and possibly not until after the Series A round.

At this time, team size may still be minimal, the product may still be pre-PMF, revenue and processes may be non-existent, and every employee besides you might be an engineer. This brings up an important point. If a startup needs you among their first 10 or 20 employees, they need what you bring to the table on day one. At a minimum this includes product management experience, but may include operational experience in roles including business analysis, engineering/computer science, or product marketing. It may also include domain-specific expertise which can take years to build. E.g. Enterprise technology.

The product manager role is a critical hire to drive product leadership, direction, customer and competitive research, positioning, and ultimately product and company success. This is by no means a comprehensive list of responsibilities. To ultimately be successful at an early stage company before you start, you should also ensure you have the right motivations and constitution.

MOTIVATION

Startups move fast; especially in the early days. There is so much to do, and from the product management perspective, you are the go-to person for everything. Above all, align your motivations with your reason to join. As an early PM, there are many positive reasons to take this role. The best reason in my opinion is accelerated professional education. In a high-responsibility role at a fast-moving company, you will own all things product while also being required to provide coverage in not-yet-hired domains like marketing, sales engineering, technical writing, business and partnership development, and more. This cross-domain work creates a pace of learning far greater than traditional PM roles at large companies.

You will also have the opportunity to define and build a product that will grow a successful company and outlast you. You will see your direct effort pay off with happy customers. You might even change an industry and leave a legacy. Even if your results are not as large as this, working on it can be great fun and very satisfying. If being a founder is in your future, this also gives you a front-row seat to building a business.

Don’t do it for the money however. Given startup pay scales the rate of startup failure, you stand a much greater chance of earning outsized money in a more mature technology company. Read, How to get rich in tech, guaranteed for an easier path to financial gain.

AMBIGUITY THRESHOLD

If you are a person who needs structure in your work life to be successful, an early startup may not be for you. In fact, you may need to unlearn some of the habits you gained while working for that big corporate company. Your ability to work within ambiguous circumstances and rapidly shifting sands while still making progress is what can set you apart for joining a startup. Startups start bare bones with little more than a vision. Everything else is built by you and your fellow team members. The pace and opportunity cost do not afford time to train for skills and provide high management overhead in the early days.

GRIT

This one cannot be overstated. Startups are bumpy ventures with high highs and low lows. You will face many pressures internal and external; most of which only get more intense over time. In the early days, you need to find users and customers while building product with imperfect information. Your unknown CoolName.io company name alone won’t get your outbound inquiries replied to nearly as easily as your BigCompany name did. Getting traction is an uphill battle.

Once you pass funding milestones, your investors and your board’s expectations rise as well. Sales and revenue expectations are codified, measured, and tracked weekly. Your VP of Sales and CEO don’t want to hear how the product is hindering sales. The engineering team and company is looking for direction, customer intelligence, and the answers. Your job could be on the line. Grit does not solve these problems, but it sure helps you be resilient. You will need that to apply the effort and diligence in turbulent times to get to better times. Grit and callouses have much in common.

RISK

Early, pre-MVP, year one startups are inherently risky. This is well known. If considering joining a startup, you must decide if this is acceptable to you. Can you deal with a company flame-out emotionally and financially? Can you afford to not work for several months post-detonation? If no to either of these, think hard before pulling the trigger. Consider as well, that startups at Series B and later have significantly less risk while still being very interesting places to work and grow. I recommend looking at the ‘Decreasing risk of failure’ and ‘Increasing company value’ curves in this article from Dee DiPietro. This may help you visualize which lifecycle stage of a startup best fits your risk profile.

MAKING THE DECISION

If these descriptions sound like you and you’re looking for the ride of your life, I challenge you to take the leap. You don’t need to be the very first PM and the startup does not need to be as early as Series A. Join an ambitious company in the early years and you will find out if you really can withstand the ambiguity, the difficulty reading the market and finding product market fit, and fighting to grow your business. You will gain skills you never possessed and learn a ton which will benefit your career for years to come. You will have difficult days and weeks, but in the long run you will not regret it. You never know, you might also get an outsized return for your investment. YMMV.

Incredible additional resources: The Hard Thing About Hard Things, AVC, Recode Decode, SaaStr, 20VC, a16z, Acquired, plus so many others.

Image credit: https://unsplash.com/@oliverthomasklein

ABOUT LUKE

Luke Congdon is a career product manager living and working in Silicon Valley since 2000. His areas of focus include enterprise software, virtualization, and cloud computing. He has built and brought numerous products to market including start-up MVPs and billion-dollar product lines. Luke currently lives in San Francisco. To contact, connect via luke@lukecongdon.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecongdon/.