Product Management, Youth and the Start Up

I'm a big fan of youthful exuberance in start up companies.  When things go right, they are good, high five type team members to have around.  But when things go sideways, the good ones turns to amazing if you are really lucky.  They work amazingly hard, overcome obstacles, and generally pull rabbits out of hats. All with the cheer and excitement many of us older types sometimes can't/don't muster up.

In addition, one of the things I've always tried to do in every start-up is get somebody to do Air Traffic Control. Meet Adam. 

Adam Bullied is the Product Manager for virtually all of the things that MusicIP (my portfolio company) has, is, and will be developing.   Adam started out as an intern at another portfolio company of mine, Truition, and quickly gained a reputation of being smart, aggressive, and deeply committed to shipping products that customers will pay for.  He moved over to MusicIP and continues to excel at product management.

I point all of this out to you because he recently wrote a post called "Not being the CEO" in which Adam talks about the too big for the britches kind of things which can happen when people go on power trips.

"I’ve heard stories from PM’s getting chewed out for walking into meetings thinking they run the show. In reality, a PM runs very little of a show, even if they have their own team. They greatly rely on key players to help get their job done - and they don’t have authority over those people!"

You should go read the whole post at it is very good.  It is good because Adam's observations are correct, but more then that, it is good because here is a guy in his 20s that gets it when it comes to teamwork, relationships, getting some wins and generally doing the right things in being successful.  And he gets it without 100 years of experience under his belt.

While this post might look like an advertisement for my portfolio companies, I'd like to believe it is a more walk the talk point.  I believe in getting young talent and giving them a shot. You should consider this group when building your start up. By way of another example, over at PlanetEye,  Slava Sakhnenko is a recent (re: young) guy that is blowing the doors off most product managers with 20 years experience in his quest to build the PlanetEye offering. 

My advice to you:  Tap into the interns that are all around you.  At College, University, even high school.  Grab the talent when you see it, teach em the right stuff, and watch them shine.   Don't get hung up on that (sorry, Steve)Harvard MBA rather watch for the raw talent that can be harnessed.  Don't think of them as 'the kids' rather push them to punch above their weight class.  Treat them like members of team, give them lots of responsibilities and excuse the occasional bumps along the road. 

This a great resource pool that often gets overlooked.

Pesky disclosures:

All the companies above are in our portfolio.

Adam used to date my daughter but that's over.  They got married.

Comments

[Dan Hounshell]

Jason Alexander just made a post on his blog about the Telligent internship program for this summer that fits nicely with this post:
http://jasona.net/archive/2007/04/02/telligent-internship-program.aspx

Are you two in cahoots?

[Rick Segal]

Hi Dan,
Thanks for stopping by. Heh, I don't think so but I'm glad I'm not the only one with this thinking.

best,

>R<

[Thomas]

Young = Cheap.
You VCs can be so transparent.