Micro-Interview: Mariush Minkov, Sr. Product Manager
308 words.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Mariush Minkov is a Sr. PM at Form3, a company that offers a fully managed, payment technology platform for Financial Institutions as-a-Service.
In under 500 words, he shares:
What he wishes he’d known when he started as a PM…
Some lessons from his biggest product failures…
His approach to shortening his product management learning curve…
And more…
Enjoy!
“How did you get into product management?”
It was 50% intentional and 50% chance. At some point in my career, I was looking for a high-impact individual contributor role when a friend and former colleague referred me to a great company that needed a profile like mine. I ended up being hired as a Product Manager and this is how it all began.
“How do you start your mornings at work?”
Checking Slack and catching up on what’s going on in the company and outside. Then building a plan for the day that is split between meeting blocks and focused time.
“What do you know about product management now that you wish you’d known when you first started?”
How to drive prioritization decisions in the context of the current goals and product lifecycle stage. And more importantly – what not to prioritize based on it. For example, working on user requests will improve customer satisfaction, but it’s a poor strategy if your primary goals are to acquire new customers or expand to another market segment.
“What did your biggest product failure teach you?”
When defining a new product release, do make sure your marketing team is excited about it. That’s more important than making the engineering happy and will prevent you from spending your gold (i.e., engineering resources) on something the market won’t appreciate.
“What’s the #1 thing that has helped you shorten your product management learning curve?”
The courses at Pragmatic Institute are probably the learning resource that has impacted me the most. It gives a healthy amount of theory that is easy to put into practice and helps you reach a new level of understanding of what you already know.
“How do you stay updated on the best practices in product management?”
Frankly, I am not sure I manage to stay updated even when I spend all my time learning stuff. I usually search for resources (books or blogs) on specific problems that bother me now and try to put the learnings into practice. As a general source of PM updates, I usually refer to my LinkedIn feed – there’s always something interesting to read and watch there.
Some of my favorite sources are Ask Gib, Deb Liu’s Perspectives, and the Pragmatic Alumni Community