Career path. Part-1 Your passion and skills

After a long break, Mike finally returned to his blogging habit and is now fully committed to it. #hurray

This time Mike is going to talk about the way people apply for a job, and the types of mistakes they might make during the long (full-time job) job

1. Think about "What you want to do NEXT"

Before moving to the SF Bay Area, questions like "What are you passionate about?" or "What do you WANT to do?" were more cliché for him than anything else. But after spending a couple of years in the area and being surrounded by such an intense and competitive startup environment, he realized that it's the mindset and not the skills-set that drives success in entrepreneurship. This distinction is lost in situations like the endorsement option on LinkedIn for "Entrepreneurship" as a skill.  For a successful start you better think about what exactly it is that you want to do next, because your thoughts will lead the way you talk to people, the way your facial emotions and micro-emotions are match or mismatching with your words, etc.

Exercise: This is a social-behavioral test. Take a moment and spend 5-10 mins of your time on this. Take a pen and paper. Draw a line down the middle of the paper, creating 2 columns. Name the first column: "What I can do". Name the second column: "What I want to do". After you have the sections ready, Mike would like to ask you to think about each question for about 5 minutes and write down 3 bullet points for each section. You don't need to complicate the list - keep it short and simple.

(Example: I can do coding, I can do photography, I can do teaching/coaching/mentoring)

Take another 5 minutes to think about what you WANT to do.

After you finish with these tasks, compare the columns. Don't be surprised if the the second set of 3 bullet points does not match the 3 on the first one.

Note: If you have a 100% match of the left and right sides, you probably fall in one of the following 3 different categories:

1.     You are a Unicorn, and you don't need to read this (apparently you will find the position you are looking for).

2.     You are a full-time employee and are just dreaming now, so you better do something useful. :)

3.     You are cheating at some point, which means you have fears regarding your "What I can do" side.

Now, when you have done the exercise and found differences, think about how the left side can interconnect to the right side.

Let's break it down here:

What I Can Do What I Want to Do Coding Photography Teaching Travel Teaching Sports

Clearly, you can see some overlaps here. Here are some examples of what you can do, so you will have a sense of your skills and passion match.

• Create a web site to teach photography to travelers
• Create a news portal about sports activities and post pictures from sporting events
• Travel, be a freelance developer, and teach photography

These 3 bullet points are only some examples of the things you can do if you pick an entrepreneur adventurer lifestyle. Alternatively, you can apply for a job, where your skills and passion will meet. And Mike is going to talk about the details of this alternative next time.

To be continued... 

Simplicity, life experience and the story behind success

Mike wants to tell you a city legend...

Once upon a time, there was a team of four humble guys living in a small mountainous country and working hard to create something different, something unique, something magical, like never before... They were artists, animators, architects and engineers.

Throughout many years they were struggling with no electricity and gas, with no food and with lots of depression in a country challenged by a tough history.

But they never gave up and kept dreaming about magic, something which should be easy and simple, but at the same time, interesting and engaging...

One late evening, one of the friends was playing with his kid and showing shadow puppets in a dark room where a candle was the only source of light. And all of sudden, he has been flashed with Eureka effect. He put his kid asleep and rushed to his friends to share his idea and excitement. Next morning they rolled up their sleeves and started bringing it to a reality.

And...

On 8th of June, 2015 Shadowmatic got a prestigious Apple Design Award at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2015. 

Shadowmatic is an imagination stirring puzzle where you rotate abstract objects in a spotlight to find recognizable silhouettes in projected shadows, relevant to the surrounding environment. The game combines stunning visuals with relaxing and captivating gameplay. It features 9 rooms, each flavored with unique concept, atmosphere, and music.

The bottom line of the story - Never give up, struggle or as Steve Jobs said, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." 

Good vs. Bad Product Manager

Mike was reading interesting book of Ben Horovitz, called "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" and this article is really remarkable and worth to read.

Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence.

A good product manager is the CEO of the product. (It's actually enough said to don't read rest of the article, but please DO)

A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. The are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails. A good product manager knows the context going in (the company, our revenue funding, competition, etc.), and they take responsibility for devising and executing a winning plan (no excuses).


Bad product managers have lots of excuses. Not enough funding, the engineering manager is an idiot, Microsoft has 10 times as many engineers working on it, I'm overworked, I don't get enough direction. Barksdale doesn't make these kinds of excuses and neither should the CEO of a product.


Good product managers don't get all of their time sucked up by the various organizations that must work together to deliver right product right time. They don't take all the product team minutes, they don't project manage the various functions, they are not gophers for engineering. They are not part of the product team; they manage the product team.

Engineering teams don't consider Good Product Managers a "marketing resource." Good product managers are the marketing counterpart of the engineering manager. (This is one of the most misleading things in StartUps)


Good product managers crisply define the target, the "what" (as opposed to the how) and manage the delivery of the "what."

Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out "how". Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally.

Good product managers don't give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally. (Another rule to note down)


Good product managers create leveragable collateral, FAQs, presentations, white papers. Bad product managers complain that they spend all day answering questions for the sales force and are swamped. Good product managers anticipate the serious product flaws and build real solutions. Bad product managers put out fires all day. Good product managers take written positions on important issues (competitive silver bullets, tough architectural choices, tough product decisions, markets to attack or yield).

Bad product managers voice their opinion verbally and lament that the "powers that be" won't let it happen. Once bad product managers fail, they point out that they predicted they would fail. Good product managers focus the team on revenue and customers. Bad product managers focus team on how many features Microsoft is building.


Good product managers define good products that can be executed with a strong effort. Bad product managers define good products that can't be executed or let engineering build whatever they want (i.e. solve the hardest problem). Good product managers think in terms of delivering superior value to the market place during inbound planning and achieving market share and revenue goals during outbound. Bad product managers get very confused about the differences amongst delivering value, matching competitive features, pricing, and ubiquity. Good product managers decompose problems.

Bad product managers combine all problems into one. Good product managers think about the story they want written by the press. Bad product managers think about covering every feature and being really technically accurate with the press.

Good product managers ask the press questions. Bad product managers answer any press question. Good product managers assume press and analyst people are really smart. Bad product managers assume that press and analysts are dumb because they don't understand the difference between "push" and "simulated push." Good product managers err on the side of clarity vs. explaining the obvious.

Bad product managers never explain the obvious. Good product managers define their job and their success. Bad product managers constantly want to be told what to do. Good product managers send their status reports in on time every week, because they are disciplined. Bad product managers forget to send in their status reports on time, because they don't value discipline. (Soooo True)

Top-5 soft skills for good product manager (PRM)

Mike was wondering about "what's the human qualities for good product manager" and after spending hours on variety of different product lines he came up with a list of top-5 for product manager.

Here they are:

1. Ability to listen  and hear the team.

This is sounds a bit naive at first to lot of people, who will immediately say something like: I can listen, I'm a good listener. No, that's not what I mean, and see you already missed that part if you thought so. Usually professionals are experiencing two type of challenges:

a. ability to listen and hear,
Sometimes it's a bit hard to listen opinion of junior software engineer, who can be fresh grad from college, and be passionate about making the world better. Sure, your opinion as experienced product manager is more deep with a more comprehensive understanding of possible obstacles, but junior PRM has this unique ability to think out of the box for the first 2 years after joining to new company/team. Unfortunately, this quality is something we lose with a years of working in company, like the ability of new born kids to swim.

b. ability to digest/process the information

Often, when PRM hear the feedback from all those people, who are contributing for the prosperity of the business, can lose the track of ideas with a challenge to vet them from not very useful suggestions afterwards. What is why it's important for PRM to make a notes (as much as s/he can) in order to add them to roadmap. This is a bit unique quality, which is coming by default for some of us after we born. for rest of us, it's something we should gain in school or college.


2. Enthusiasm and ability to inspire people 

Mike can talk about this for hours, because he knows that it's vital for leaders (managers) who can be full of energy to infect (inspire) people with own enthusiasm. and he is not separating these two as 2  independent qualities, because, you can be Enthusiastic to get stuff done, but with absolutely terrible ability to inspire people, even if you right for 100% and can really bring a value to product. In that case, your enthusiasm might be considered (this is actually sad :) as micromanagement. Or totally opposite situation, when you have born quality to inspire people (maybe it's your Quan), but you just don't have enough enthusiasm to inspire people (maybe you busy, maybe you tired, maybe you married :) Just kidding #NoIntent2offendMarriedPeople)


3. Good proposition of politeness and ethic

 Mike intentionally made a joke on #2 to make a point that PRM should be polite enough to clearly see the line s/he should never cross. And it's not about business matter, it's about general attitude of PRM to know "how to win friends" And even though some people will say He is not my friend, he is my colleague) you should still treat them as kind as you would treat your friend.

4. Persistence, can-do/will-do/let's-do

This is another important one to keep on mind, because persistence lead to better results and that attitude can-do/will-do/let's-do helps you to make it happen with your team, because remember, Team is delivering the product, not really you. But as a PRM you should be persistent and inspirational enough to them to let you lead. And the best motivator for that is to start replacing your vocabulary from "I to We" and even from "Can-do to Let's do" (Example: Let's go Giants!)

5. Good speaker and ability to delegate things to people.

This is a big deal, as for PRM is absolutely important how to talk to people, who are above you in corporate chain and peoples are reporting to you. I think you can recall some guys from your childhood, who were dealing fine with everyone, with bullies and with other kids. This ability to negotiate, deal, find a common language and etc. is another quality you can have.
Great news for those, who were not great communicators at childhood, you can still learn it, by taking toastmasters classes, public speaking etc. Because all you need, is to care less about possibility to be wrong and be criticized (all we wrong, all of us done mistakes)

Disclaimer: Your opinion might be slightly different from Mikes, so please take it into account when you read it:)

My Story

StartUp-Man is a super hero from San Francisco.

He was born & raised as a normal kid. Moved to SF, graduated from Stanford. 

But one morning, after the Giants win party, having hangover, he realized, that he has some special power, a power he never had before.

 Abilities such as: comprehensive understanding of big data, ability to do fast prototyping, UX/UI design, User stories and personas.

So, he got his superhero costume, wax his beard and fly on a fixed gear bike to win new horizons of the startups...

But before he left Mike said: " I'm gonna be successful to pay my rent"