How To Learn Product: What Makes A Successful Product Manager with Cameron Curry and Yonas Dinkneh

Episode Transcription

Cameron Curry:

My first taste understanding how much of an impact product management has on a company because you're selling your software products to everybody. You're at the forefront of everything that happens around the company. Everything revolves around the product.

Christian Beck:

This is a Better Product original series on How To Learn product. I'm Christian.

Anna Eaglin:

I'm Anna.

Christian Beck:

It's week three of our How to Learn Product series. Before I introduce this episode's topic and guests, a quick invitation for you to join our community, where you get exclusive access to series like this one, along with events to connect with other like-minded professionals. As we've told you many times before, but if you still haven't, you can join at betterproduct.community. All right, I've done my marketing duty. Today, we've got Cameron Curry and Yonas Dinkneh on the show who are product managers at parlor.io. A feedback app that serves a missing link between product and customer teams. Each of them has distinct paths for getting into product.

Along with their roles at parlor.io, they also host a podcast called Without a Roadmap. A show specifically created for, you guessed it, product managers, which I highly recommend. Not just because you will be hearing Anna on the show in the next few months. In our conversation you'll gain their perspective on what makes a successful PM. Mistakes that can be avoided and how a passion for this role translates into a longterm career. An interesting thing to note is that both Cameron and Yonas are early in their PM careers, giving you some practical applications for how to get started if you're new to the industry and how to set yourself up to be successful. Here's how they both got started.

Cameron Curry:

For me, I didn't even know what product management was actually. I was a senior at Boston University just applying to jobs, and I knew I wanted to work in tech and along the lines of working in technologies. Then I came across a product specialist role from Optum. I clicked on the link and it looked interesting. I applied to it. I had an interview and during the interview, we didn't really go into anything about product management specifically. Kind of just talked generally about who I was and what I could bring to the table. Then the next week, I was fortunate enough from one interview to get the job. Then after that, I pretty much just sent the interviewer a question like, "Hey, what can I do to prepare for the job when I start in a couple of months?" He was just like, "Just read about product management stuff." I just did what everybody else does when you want to learn about something, you just go to Google, type in product management and see what you find. Then pretty much I just learned product management, or the basics of it, on the job, on the fly.

Christian Beck:

That's Cameron sharing his start. Here's Yonas.

Yonas Dinkneh:

I kind of fell into product management pretty serendipitously. Back in sophomore year, I was going to Tufts and I was on a step team then, so I was basically on a dance team. We were invited by a former captain of the team to perform at an event that he was hosting at something called Creative Mornings in Boston. We came and we did a performance and I got to see him talk. It's like, this guy sounds pretty interesting. This guy actually turned out to be a Keith Frankel. He was the chief product officer at Firecracker at the time. I just was in the mode of reaching out to people, networking, trying to figure out what it was I might be interested in doing as a career.

We got coffee and learned more about him. He took a liking to me and actually on the spot offered me an internship for that summer. Slowly realized that what Keith was doing as the chief product officer was what interested me the most. I started basically working under Keith as an associate PM, helping him out and learning through his mentorship along the way. I don't have the typical story of grinding it out and taking courses online and reading all these books. I was super lucky to find a mentor and was able to teach me through that. Interestingly enough, Keith is my boss now at Parlor. I've definitely been able to skip a couple of steps in the process, but it's a story of the importance of networking.

Christian Beck:

Both Cameron and Yonas essentially launched their post-collegiate careers in product management, which often isn't the case. Yonas pointed out directly that the importance of networking cannot be overstated. With that context in mind, let's jump into the full conversation, starting with Cameron reinforcing the power of building relationships.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah, so how I got to Parlor and how I met Yonas and everybody is, I was at Optum for about a year and a half, started off as a product support role pretty much. Then I transitioned to a full time product owner for about a year. Then during that time, I realized that I wasn't really interested in the healthcare space in product management. I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to do and get involved. I started just floating out my application to places. Started doing interviews. During that time, it was about a six month process, I wasn't having any success and then I was on LinkedIn.

After each of my interviews or phone screens with a recruiter for a company, I would send them a LinkedIn request on LinkedIn just to get connected with them. Funny enough, when Keith posted something about Parlor raising a round of funding and moving to Boston, getting an office on LinkedIn, one of those recruiters I was connected with, was a connection of Keith. He liked Keith's post and that showed up on my feed. I saw it. I said, "Hey, you know what? I might as well send Keith a message in an email saying, 'Hey, I know you're not looking for any product roles, but I'm happy to try to learn anything I can and be part of your startup.'" He messaged me about a day after, got a coffee the next week. Then two weeks later I was part of Parlor.

Christian Beck:

This is interesting because Anna and I talked to, so we both got master's degrees from the same HCI program at Indiana. We talk to graduates there a lot too and they're always asking us about reviewing their portfolio and all this stuff. More and more just say you have to network, you just need to reach out and meet people. You don't have to just wait for the job posting to come out and just apply for the job and just sit there and wait, you just stay active and go find those things. You guys just kind of prove that right there with your story. I mean, there's definitely open jobs that are out there, but you stay focused and you don't know what opportunities there are. That's great.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah. One thing Keith has told both of us is that the reason why he really wanted us a part of his team was because we took the initiative to send that cold email, to go out of our way and ask him his thoughts for a job. That's not something that's easy to do. It's very uncomfortable for most people to go ask somebody else for advice or for mentorship or for a job even. That's one of the big reasons why he brought both of us along on our journey so far.

Christian Beck:

Yeah, that's great. I used to be scared of emailing until I had to do cold calling for sales on the phone. Now emailing seems like a walk in the park.

Cameron Curry:

Right. Yeah.

Christian Beck:

It was just be thankful you don't have to do that. You said something interesting that I'm curious both of your opinions on. Cam, when you were talking, you said you weren't really interested in healthcare for PM. That got me thinking, how important do you think the industry you operate in is for PM? Do you think the interest in PM is highly tied to the industry you choose? Or do you think it's sort of, those are two separate things?

Cameron Curry:

I think they can be separate things, but for me personally, I think they have to be intertwined because when I'm really passionate about something or really excited about working on something, I just throw myself full in a hundred percent, just try to do everything I can just because it's something that I enjoy doing. I enjoy building a product that I know I would find value in myself. I think to me it's just my passion and what I work on has to be super intertwined just for me to give my full go at it.

Yonas Dinkneh:

Yeah, I would agree. I think it's super important. I feel like I couldn't see myself being a product manager for, I don't know, a tool for carpenters. It's like, in order to dive deeply into a product, it requires that you almost become a domain expert in the space. For that to happen, I feel like you have to be passionate about the space. That's the nice thing about working for Parlor, is we're both passionate about product and we're selling to product teams. Just kind of, there's a lot of overlap in our interests and also just the ability to just learn things that's not only going to help me in my current role, but also in my future as a PM.

Anna Eaglin:

You both have spent a lot of time with obviously really awesome product people. The people that you work with, the people that you have on the podcast, even the topics that you take on and discuss, I'm curious if you have seen patterns, or what do you think makes a good PM? Yonas, why don't we start with you?

Yonas Dinkneh:

Yeah. I feel like the biggest pattern is that everybody is basically figuring it out as they go. I think if you were to associate a skill to that, it's kind of like flexibility. Wearing many hats is very common, especially at early stage startups, Cam and I are dealing with that right now. I think being able to kind of jump from one task to another, and oftentimes things that don't seem very connected is really important. Being able to compartmentalize and be organized enough to jump from those pieces. I'd say the second big thing is curiosity. Like I just said, you have to be super involved or excited about the space that you're in, in order to dive in and bring your whole creative self to the problem solving process. In order to do that, you have to be curious and you have to be deeply engaged in the work that you're doing. Without that, I don't think I would be able to come into work every day.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah, to piggyback off of what Yonas said about curiosity. From the people that we've talked to on our podcast, a lot of them have started off in different roles other than product management. The way they got into product is because they just became curious about the product they were working on. A lot of them were more customer-focused, so they were interacting with the customers and having to deal with the product and teaching the product and educating their users on how to use the products. That came with, sometimes, bugs popping up in the product and having to debug the situation and see how the product should work. How it should function and trying to bring a solution to that for the customer that they'll find value of. I think a lot of it is, like Yonas said, curiosity, willingness to learn, and then also having the customer at the forefront.

Christian Beck:

You guys started Parlor at about the same time, right? Is it September in 2019?

Cameron Curry:

We're Parlor twins.

Christian Beck:

What is that like for an early stage startup? I think a lot of, every startup has their different journeys and how much they invest in product. I'll be honest, a lot of them that are at the stage that Parlors at wouldn't even be hiring two, let alone two at the same time. What drove that and how do you both work together inside Parlor?

Yonas Dinkneh:

Yeah. Before Cam and I came on, the team was basically just the product teams. The thought to bring on two more product managers onto that was definitely interesting. We were both employee number five, we like to say, I mean five and six, but we started on the same day. I think the reason that, it was kind of strategic bringing two earlier career PMs on at that moment because we are malleable and can do the work that is required of the team, whether or not it's completely product. A lot of the stuff that we did in the earlier days was product marketing.

Obviously a lot of the general product management, project management tasks, but a lot of marketing as well. Just taking somebody that's early in their career, they're going to be more willing and flexible to do what the company needs at that moment. I think that was a pretty good fit for the two of us, like while we're getting all of this product experience, we're also learning everything else in the business. We're willing to do that because we're not some like snobby, senior PM coming in, who has this idea of exactly what they want to do on a day to day. Cam, you could talk a little bit about how we work together. It's changed. It's evolved a lot.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah. It has changed a lot. I would say the first, probably six months, we did a lot of the same things together. Especially the first month. If we had to write stories for a new feature, we'd just do it together and we would review it with Keith and it was that sort of hands-on mentorship just because I felt like Keith really wanted to mold us in the direction of how he wanted product to be run at his company obviously. Then, I think over time, we've started to figure out our own paths and based on this pretty much what we enjoy most out of not only being a product manager, but what we also enjoy just being part of a company.

I can be doing more discovery calls with prospects. Dealing more with the engineers and the management of engineers and with the VP engineering obviously, or just any technical stuff we have to do on the back in terms of integrations, APIs, all that fun jazz that people like to geek out on. Yeah, I think it just, we kind of just evolved into our own two different people. Unfortunately, even though we're still twins, but I think just the nature of us both being different people and both having different preferences in what we want to work on and what excites us the most.

Christian Beck:

Reflecting on that. Do you feel like the people who brought you on knew that about you two, that you would be complimentary in some way? Or did you think that sort of happened over time?

Yonas Dinkneh:

There's no doubt about it, Cam and I both being young black men, there's obviously going to be some complimentary aspect there. I think there was some thought that went into that, just obviously from the company's perspective, but also making sure that we're comfortable working with one another. I think just having that affinity helps, but outside of that, I don't think there was any understanding of what our particular skill sets would be or whether or not they're complimentary. I guess Keith and I had worked together previously, but I think Keith's idea, I keep throwing Keith around, he's the CEO at Parlor, is that you can put somebody who's competent into any role and they'll succeed with good leadership. I think he saw that in both of us and figured that if we were put under the right circumstances, we'd be able to produce good work and naturally kind of just gravitate towards the skill sets that we each have. That's kind of what's happened, so I think it's worked out.

Christian Beck:

I'm a designer by trade and usually I can tell if I've done a good job if people can do things, or if somebody just compliments me and says, "Hey, that's a really good design." That's usually a way I know I've done a good job, but it's not really like that with PM. No one's like, "Hey, that was, you really managed that product well yesterday." I'm curious for both of you, how do you know you're doing a good job, especially when you're early in your career?

Cameron Curry:

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we kind of talked about that in one of our podcast episodes about a month ago, just self-assessing yourself as a product manager and how do you continue to grow and become better? It's pretty a mixed bag I would say. It's kind of hard to, like you said, to say, "Hey, that product was really well done," because as a product manager, you're not really, in my opinion, you have a designer who designs the product and then you have the engineers who code it. If something looks good, you give the kudos to the designs. If something works well and functions properly and there's no bugs, you give the kudos to the engineer because those are the ones, people that are actually building the product.

To me, I would say, I think just the overall execution and organization of taking that feature from idea or that bug from noticing the bug to actually providing the solution for the end user and how that entire process was actually run. Was it clearly defined? Were there less questions popping up during the actual development of between the engineer asking the product person or the engineer directly asking the design? Hey, should this be this way or should it be that way? I think, thinking longterm about the macro and the micro levels of product management, how should a feature, or how should a bug be fixed or how should the feature actually work? Then also the micro part of it is, all right, what's the mini label on this button? What should it actually say? So that it's clear to the end user what it actually does.

Yonas Dinkneh:

Yeah, and if you had to put in some figure to it, which I know a lot of data-oriented people like to do, you could look at the speed to actually pushing something to production. If you're on top of the designer and the design process, making sure that everything that they're doing is in line with the expectations and working well with engineering to define their tasks well, then there should be a pretty smooth QA process. The facilitation of that as a product manager, when done right, should get things out quicker. I think that you can gauge your, how well you're doing by how quickly you're building. That might not always be the case. Sometimes certain things take longer for unforeseen circumstances that are kind of out of your control, but if you had to try and tie it to something, then I feel like that's pretty close.

Anna Eaglin:

I'm curious, what are some mistakes or things that you didn't know about that you learned the hard way that you would go, that were like really good to know and have really made you better PMs?

Yonas Dinkneh:

You want me to take that one? Sure. Yeah. This is the tough one. Even for people getting ready for interviews, that's always the toughest thing to prepare for is like, describe a mistake you made. Not overly communicating is something that I'm almost always mad at myself for doing, because as a product manager, one of those huge skills is great communication and maybe over-communication isn't a great way to put it, because if you're communicating well, you shouldn't be over communicating. Especially as early stage PMs or people early in our career, we clearly don't know everything and there's a good amount of oversight in the work that we do. It's not like anything that we do isn't going to be seen by somebody before it goes live in the product. Just getting ahead of things that you think might cause roadblocks in the future by just communicating effectively is usually, when I don't do that is when I find myself making mistakes that I regret later. Keeping on top of your teammates and making sure that you're actively engaging across all stakeholders, is something that I think is a good checklist thing for any early career PM.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah, I would agree about that in terms of communication. I think probably my biggest mistake or failure probably goes back to when I was at Optum. I was in charge of, it was like my first big assignment, my big project to deliver this one feature all the way through delivering it to our customers. Part of that, Optum being a large corporation, they have all these security standards you've got to be mindful of before you actually release something and while you're building it. We got to about two weeks before we were ready to release this new feature. Then all of a sudden, when we're doing the security checks, engineers were, we weren't compliant with security.

In order to become compliant, it would take another four to six weeks to fix everything because we pretty much had to rebuild it from scratch. I wasn't aware of any of that because, not an excuse, because I just didn't know about any of the security stuff, because I'm a young guy, first year out of college, just trying to build something and get it done as quick as possible. That ended up delaying the entire release for the whole company for the four to six weeks until we actually finished that one feature. That was probably my biggest mistake, is just not being mindful of how much of an impact product has for the whole company.

Christian Beck:

How do you build that awareness, Cam? The mistake that you made of not being aware, sure, you don't have much experience, but I'm curious, have you picked up anything that helps you now when you go into it? Any techniques or tools that you're using to actually increase the number of things you're aware of so that you minimize that from happening later?

Cameron Curry:

I think it just comes with experience. I think that was my first taste in this understanding how much of an impact product management has on a company, because you're selling your software products to everybody. You're pretty much at the forefront of everything that happens around the company, as far as communications to the public, communications to your clients, everything revolves around the product. I think it just comes with experience, but as far as tactics, I think you can just start making check lists as you experience those steps. Like, all right, hey, I have this legal, I have the security checks I have to do to make sure what I'm building is compliant before you actually release it to the public. Just to make sure that you're checking all the boxes and you don't have to hit that snag where you have to delay everything four to six weeks, or however long it may take to actually fix what you didn't do before.

Christian Beck:

It seems like having relationships inside the company is a vital part of being a good PM as well. Looking back over the last eight, nine months for you all at Parlor, what was that immersion experience like for you? You've got to figure out the product and the customers, but also internally. Where you both sort of figuring that out and finding the right people to learn from inside of Parlor as you were getting immersed?

Yonas Dinkneh:

Yeah. It's a pretty unique case for me, because the four co-founders of Parlor I had all worked with previously. They all actually came from Firecracker, the last company I worked at. That's a huge benefit for me, the kind of sense of comfort that I had working with them. Not being afraid to ask the stupid questions was something that was a huge weight off my back, because I feel like I have a stupid question maybe 10 times a day. Sometimes it's a good question, but the fact that I'm not afraid of reaching out to our head of product or VP of engineering with that question is kind of makes my day easier. I can imagine the next company I work for, if I don't know everybody, probably force me to do a little bit more research, make sure I'm asking the right questions. I think when you're in the learning process it's super important that you feel comfortable, so I'm definitely really lucky that I had that experience with them before.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah, I'll say for me it was probably a lucky case for me just because when I started Parlor, there was only four other coworkers that I had to know. It was pretty easy in that front of just learning all just four of them, including Yonas, but I talked to Yonas every day. That was a little easier, but the other for, and they were super welcoming and friendly and the environment they built and the culture they built at Parlor is that everybody's welcome to share their opinion and that if, even if you don't agree with somebodies opinion, that's welcome. One of our cultural values is dissent is constructive. Having the confidence and knowing that they're going to back me when I share my opinion was super helpful, and knowing that from day one. Then, as we've grown, we've luckily only added one or two people at a time. We haven't had to really adjust knowing a whole big group of people since we are pretty small at this point.

Anna Eaglin:

I think that's super important. We've talked to PMs who are in or have left environments where PMs are highly competitive with each other, trying to [inaudible 00:22:46] or trying to get resources for their team. They're trying to make sure their resources don't get taken away. I think it sounds like you guys have a really good culture there, where you can be open and you can ask these questions and you don't have to worry about fighting each other politically for things, which is really nice.

We talked to product managers from Pendo and Product Board and I'm always curious, it must be really hard to build a tool where PMs, to be a PM building a tool that PM's will use. Other product managers as your customers. They seem, like doctors are the worst patients, it seems like product managers would be really challenging customers. I'm curious what that is like for you being PMs. Then also, it seems like looking at the website, you're very involved with your customers as PM's. Cam, you're right there on the website as the PM who's going to help me when I buy Parlor. I'm really curious what that's like for you both.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah, it's definitely interesting. Like you said, we're heavily involved with all of our customers. As product people, you're obviously very opinionated on how products work. Since you're supporting product people, they always are asking you questions and they're always having, sharing their opinions on how your products work by itself already or how you can improve your own product or just when they have bugs, they're very vocal about expressing the need for how this should be fixed and stuff like that. I think it's also very helpful, because you get to communicate with more product people and that in turn helps you become a better product person because you get to see how people think differently from how you think of how a product should look. It just kind of reinforces the fact that you've got to take into account all different perspectives when building your product, whether that's internally, from different people that aren't involved in the product on the day to day, for marketing sales folks. Then also from your customers, how is a new feature or update to a new feature going to impact the customer experience?

Yonas Dinkneh:

Yeah. It also goes back to the point that most product people don't have it all figured out. I think we kind of take a stance as domain experts in this space. I think through that, we're kind of opening ourselves up to product people leaning on us for our expertise. I think it makes it a lot easier when we do have really experienced product leaders on our team who are leading the direction of the product, but also making sure that we are well-versed in all of the best practices that we speak of. I think that's kind of important, is when you're selling to product people, you have to, they're going to kind of see through the BS. You really do have to be thoughtful about every decision you make. I think that's partly why as PMs, Cam and I are also discovery specialists for every company that is a Parlor user. We're there to help them with best practices and they lean on us for basically any information on how to improve their user feedback process.

Christian Beck:

Yonas, earlier you said, you referenced snooty senior PMs, and I give that backdrop because I feel like with you all's show, and just the way that you've talked about being open about mistakes and even sort of describing not being experts or figuring things out along the way. What I would love to know is how do you keep yourself from becoming said snooty senior PM in five years? What's your plan to keep that authenticity and self-awareness and maybe humility that you guys have today?

Yonas Dinkneh:

I actually, I wouldn't mind being a snooty senior PM in a couple of years. Maybe I regret putting that out there on the public record now.

Christian Beck:

[crosstalk 00:26:28] Not to self, follow up with Yonas in 2025.

Yonas Dinkneh:

Well, yeah, that's a fair point. I think it's just about being honest about the kind of trials and tribulations of product as you go through it. The reason we started Without a Roadmap is because we saw that most of the podcasts and content that you see out there from product folks is coming from heads of product, directors of product, people who speak as if they're the end-all, be-all of product knowledge. I think that might be the case, but as most of us know, there's really no silver bullet answer when it comes to doing product right. It's so variable and every company is going to work differently. I think just if we're going to continue putting the senior PM in the future, it's just kind of being open to the understanding that everybody's still figure [inaudible 00:27:24] and that there is no right answer. Even if you think you have it.

Christian Beck:

I always think it's kind of like when my son goes to basketball camp and he's been to Victrola Depot's basketball camp, he doesn't actually run the drills because it wouldn't translate to anybody. Instead, some guy who never really got taller than 5'11" runs the drills, because it's a little more easier to follow. I feel like when you think about seniority in PM, I really liked that you all focus on the journey there because there's a lot of value to sort of learn from people that are on that journey. I mean, yes, there's some people that talk like they know more than they really know, and then there's some that are just so good at something you're like, "I don't even know how to implement what you're doing with 20 years experience when I'm just starting out." I think it's great that you capture people on that journey, because there's a lot to learn that way. You mentioned this a little bit, but looking back over the few months that you've been doing the podcast, has it helped you in your own career as a PM?

Yonas Dinkneh:

I think the biggest part is the personal branding that you get off of it. It's kind of hard to show what you've done as a PM, at least in a physical sense. I think a podcast is a great thing to point to in the future of like, "Hey, look, I've been doing this work," but it's also been the types of guests we've had on the show. We've had product marketers, we've had engineers, we've had customer support folks and it's kind of been out of a desire to, obviously from a marketing perspective, get people listening to the show from outside of just the product realm. We love to sell Parlor to just about anybody, whether or not you're on a product team, but it's also helped us better understand those roles and how they approach user feedback, because that's what we end up tying a lot of the conversations back to. It's kind of like a really time-intensive user research interview process, if you want to look at it that way.

Cameron Curry:

Yeah. I would say for me, it's just been a great learning experience just talking to other PMs, other people in other areas that I don't have much experience with. Just learning how they work, how they talk to users, how they interact with users, how they interact inside the company in terms of talking to the product, or if products talking to customer marketing folks. Just super helpful and also just therapeutic to hear that everybody else is also is figuring things out as they go. I just think it's been super helpful to just know that we're not alone in this journey, because I feel like as product people, you can be pretty lonely because you have the, like you said, sometimes there's the competitive aspect of product management.

There's not really that much big upping your fellow coworkers when you're an engineer and they, "Hey, this person built this super well and super easy to understand." Or if you're a designer like, "Hey, compliment other designers on their work." I feel like with product it's always that kind of competing aspect. Sometimes it also becomes defensive when people are giving you feedback that you don't agree with, you can sometimes become defensive because you spend all this hours thinking of how the product should work and designing it and all that stuff, that you become defensive and not really appreciating the feedback of people that are giving you. In the long run, it all makes their product better, for the most part,

Anna Eaglin:

That's a really interesting way to think about it. It's like one thing we have is product people who aren't necessarily individual contributors on the technical side or the design side it's like one thing we have to share with each other is our philosophies of how we do things and how we go about it. That's how we build this product community. Well, we appreciate your time so much and appreciate your candidness and your insights. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today.

Christian Beck:

Again, that was Cameron Curry and Yonas Dinkneh. Next week, we'll continue our series on How to Learn Product with a special episode.

Anna Eaglin:

Thanks for listening to the show this week. If you're looking for more resources on how to design, build, market and sell better products, then head over to betterproduct.community to join, well, the community. As always, we're curious, what does better product mean to you? Shoot us an email at podcasts@innovatemap.com.