Productized Podcast — Margaux Muller — Moving into PM from a non-tech role and went up the ladder
On last week’s podcast, we talked with Margaux Muller, Senior Product Manager at Contentful. With an interesting career, now specialized in both the B2B and B2C sector, Margaux worked in professional services then transitioned to the Product world.
We covered:
🧠 Getting into the PM world coming from a non-technical background
🤔 Product differences when it comes to B2B and B2C
🤩 What is it like to work at Contentful
💥 Advice for beginners on their first product
💯 The most important thing a company can do when it comes to product
🦄 The importance of forward-thinking companies
🚀 Onboarding experiences for future PM’s
👍🏻DO/Don’t👎🏻 when you apply as a PM Assistant
🤯How and why a company should not become a feature factory
About Margaux
Hailing from France, Margaux started her Product career in San Francisco after 3 years of working in professional services. She went from Product Manager to Senior Product Manager then Lead Product Manager at SmartRecruiters — working on both B2B and B2C products. She is now a Senior Product Manager at the amazing Berlin scale-up, Contentful.
When she’s not solving customer problems or rockin’ with the engineers, you can find her making food, trying out new recipes or deepening her knowledge in wines.
She’s also spending a lot of time participating on diversity and inclusion initiatives, internally in the companies or helping find people jobs, reviewing resumes, giving advice etc (the benefits of having worked for an Applicant Tracking System is that she knows the ins and outs of the recruiting trade).
Time notes
[02:38] Maragux’s journey from a non-technical background to PM
[05:00] Moving from eastern France to San Francisco
[6:00] Recruiting experience and the McDonald’s example
[8:30] Transitioning to the B2B sector
[9:40] Product management in B2B vs B2C
[13:08] Margaux’s perspective from inside Contentful and the company’s vision
[15:40] Getting the new feature @Contentful out
[18:30] Advice on where to start with your first software product
Your product process has to be simple, lean and function like a well oiled machine.
[22:14] What’s the single most important thing when it comes to a product a company can do to be successful?
[23:32] How big is the team at Contentful and what are you working on?
[26:26] The recruiting experience for PM. Mc Donald’s channel experience and good employee onboarding examples.
[28:10] What to do/not do when applying as an assistant PM
[30:20] How should companies avoid becoming feature factories and focus more on the customer problems?
[34:00] How to get in touch with Margaux
Margaux’s 📚 recommendations:
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📕The Making of a Manager — Julie Zhuo
Product inspiration from the weekly readings on:
The Productized Podcast is produced by Productized — a series of interviews with product innovators, successful makers, and entrepreneurs. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to productize.
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