✨ Announcement: Applications for my PM course now open ✨
This is the course I wish I had when I was starting out. It’s targeted at new PMs (<2 years experience), and will run 11/29-12/17. The course is part-time (evenings PST), and fits into a busy PM schedule.
In addition to live lectures, practical assignments, group breakouts, and getting to know 100+ other early-career PMs, you’ll also learn from amazing guest speakers: Ken Norton, Shreyas Doshi, Jackie Bavaro, Andrew Chen, and Adam Fishman.
Dozens of students who took the previous course credit the course with helping them get a promotion, land a better gig, or simply become more confident in themselves.
Topics we'll cover:
- Leveling up your strategic thinking and vision
- Strengthening your written and verbal communication
- Collaborating and influencing your peers more effectively
- Mastering the art of shipping on time while keeping your team happy
- Gaining confidence as a PM
- Leveraging user research, metrics, and stakeholders to prioritize
- Delivering better presentations
- Understanding what separates good PMs from great PMs
- …and much more
Become a more confident PM, armed with a toolkit full of actionable advice, tactics and frameworks to immediately put into action.
Spots are limited, so apply now 👇
Pro tip: Ask your manager if you can expense this to your learning and development budget.
Q: How do I make the transition from a product manager to a growth PM? I’m a recent graduate with no technical background (from business school), and I’m new to PM and wondering how I make the transition into a growth-focused role.
Though the difference between a regular PM and a “growth PM” isn’t as big as you may think—most PMs are responsible for driving business growth one way or another—there are indeed roles where your job is solely to drive growth. A few examples:
Four years into my PM career, I made this transition myself, moving from a generalist role to a growth role (driving Airbnb’s supply growth). I had a feeling that growth work would be super-interesting and that deepening those skills would pay off, so I made an effort to make the move. I’m really happy I did.
My approach to making this transition was simple—and I would suggest the same approach to you:
- Ask
- Learn
- Do
1. Ask
This probably sounds exceedingly obvious, but start by telling your manager you want this, e.g.
“Hey, manager, I just want to let you know that I’m really interested in product growth, and I want to get into a growth-focused role as soon as I can. What do I need to do to get there?”
This step alone was the primary reason I got the chance. My manager knew it was important to me, so when an opportunity arose (about six months later), they helped me grab it. Use the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon to your advantage.
And don’t just ask once. Keep telling them. Ask them to work together on a plan to get you there. I suggest starting by identifying the skills you’ll need to be successful in the role and then putting together a plan to build them while in your current role.
2. Learn
Next, get smart about growth. Here’s a lesson plan to get you started (maybe find a buddy and explore one topic a week):
1. Experimentation
- Learn the basics of A/B testing
- Learn about p-values, power, and significance
- Learn about fostering a culture of experimentation
- Learn about the benefits and pitfalls of building with data
- Take the Reforge Experimentation + Testing course
2. Growth strategy
- Learn about the history of the growth role
- Learn about ways to drive growth
- Learn about principles, processes, teams, and tactics
- Learn my favorite high-level growth framework
- Learn about funnels
- Learn about loops
- Take the Reforge Growth Series
3. SEO
- Learn the basics of SEO
- Learn how to do SEO
- Learn how to run SEO experiments
- Learn about content-driven growth and winning at SEO
4. Performance marketing (aka paid growth)
- Learn the basics of performance marketing
- Learn how to make and run an online ad
- Learn about CAC
- Learn how product can automate ads
- Learn about the downsides of paid growth
5. Virality
6. Conversion optimization
- Learn the basics of funnel conversion optimization
- Learn tactics to improve conversion
- Set up analytics and track conversion within your funnels
7. Data and SQL
- Learn about SQL in a course or online, and start running queries
- Take a class on statistics and experimental design
3. Do
Learning theory will get you only so far. Find time to do some actual growth work. As someone smart said, “Do the job you want.” Demonstrate to yourself, and others, that you can do this work and be successful.
A few suggestions:
- Design and run a handful of experiments. Here’s a template to get you started.
- Identify your company’s primary growth engine.
- Run a Facebook ad and an AdWords ad.
- Analyze your company’s SEO health.
- Ask your existing growth PMs if there’s anything you can help them with, in an effort to learn.
- Find a gig that lets you do growth immediately.
- Finally, JUST DO IT
If you’ve got a story to share about how you broke into growth, I’d love to hear it 👇
📚 Further study
- The growing specialization of product management by Adam Fishman and Keya Patel
- Reforge blog and courses
- Demand Curve growth course
- Netflix’s blog on experimentation
- Casey Winters’s blog
- Growth & User Acquisition newsletter
- First 1000 newsletter
Thank you, Che Sharma, for feedback on this post. Have a fulfilling and productive week🙏
🔥 Featured job openings
- Enterpret: Principal Product Manager (NYC)
- Launch House: Growth Associate (Remote-US)
- Hyphen: Senior Software Engineer (LA, San Jose, ATL, Remote-US)
- Rapchat: Data Analyst (Remote-US/EU)
- The Parent Company: Product Manager - Consumer Growth (Remote-US)
- Spokn: Head of Product Design (Remote-US)
- Custom Ink: Senior UX Architect (Fairfax VA, Remote-US)
- PadSplit: Senior Product Manager (Remote-US)
- Matter: Design Lead (Remote-US)
- Papaya: Director, Product Management (Remote-US)
- Airtable: Engineering Manager, Monetization (SF)
- Catalog: Design Director (Remote-Global)
Browse more open roles, or add your own, at Lenny’s Job Board.
🧠 Inspiration for the week ahead
- Listen: Tim Ferriss with Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant talking about web3
- Read: Learn to hire well by Hunter Walk
- Learn: How to launch on Product Hunt, a detailed guide by Xavier Coiffard
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Sincerely,
Lenny 👋