YouSaid · the spoken record

Annie Pearl

lines on the record: 63
first: 2023-02-26
most recent: 2023-02-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“See, when I joined about two years ago, I think the company was about 150 people, and I think we're about 600 now, and then the product team, there were about 15 product managers and designers when I joined, again, about two years ago. And I think we're around 60 this year.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And are we doing is this really an APM program for internal folks? Is this external? Are we going to be really trying to promote this? So I think there's a lot of ancillary activities around the actual program itself that have to be taken into consideration to make sure that it is actually very successful.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think when we built this hitbox, so kind of drawing on that experience, it was a lot of work, right? If you're going to do it, you want to do it really well and you want to create an environment where you can help the associate product managers be successful. The goal is to ultimately graduate everyone from the APM program into being a product manager. And so I think it takes a lot of attentionality. And for us, it took a lot of work, right? We had to make sure we had clarity around the interview process. We had to make sure we had clarity around expectations in the role. We wanted to have a training element. We wanted to make sure that, again, we're setting people up for success. So I think companies have to be at a stage of scale where they can really invest and they have the excess capacity to build the program in a way. I think that's going to help make sure everyone who comes through it has a chance at really learning, growing, and ultimately being successful.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have the relationships, you can show your work really well. The other thing I would say is, you know, when I think about folks who have successfully transferred over, I think they tend to have a couple characteristics, right? They're usually very curious. They tend to be really passionate about the product and kind of solving customer problems. And sometimes they've even like tinkered with a side project as a way to kind of hollow in their PM skills. So I think as you're thinking about making that transition, those types of characteristics really showing eagerness and interest in the product itself and solving customer problems are also great ways to get noticed and increase your chances.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, the sort of the folks who started it all was Google, right? With the Google APM program and Meta obviously has a pretty strong, robust APM program. But as I mentioned around Box, I think those are obviously very, very competitive and most people want to get into them. It may be better to try and find a company like a box or a company that's a bit earlier stage, not as scaled to think about looking at those APM programs. And I'm sure if you want to go to glassdoor.com where I used to work at Glassdoor, so had to, you know, throw that in there, you could search for associate product manager, and I think you'll find a whole host of open roles that you might be able to apply to.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I've brought a lot of folks over internally through the path of someone's really interested in product. They express their interest in they want to help. They want to learn. They're eager. They're curious. And so they make that really well known and they're even willing to do some work on the side to help out and really show and demonstrate the skills before they have the job. So I've seen that one to actually probably bring bring the most folks over in my role in terms of being on the product leadership side.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Subject matter expert. So, you know, you'll say, Hey, I want to make sure we have subject matter expert in our CS team on this area of the product, and they'll partner really closely with the product manager and designer within that area.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. And then another sort of flavor of that is, you know, sometimes companies will have these sort of SME programs.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some sort of product adjacency. Maybe you're in customer support, implementation, or maybe you're a sales engineer, but you can kind of look at the internal job board and find junior PM roles that are posted. And that's one way to make them move. So that's kind of on the formal side, like APM programs and just applying via internal job boards. I think on the informal side, really two suggestions here. The first one is to kind of seek out opportunities to kind of shadow or partner closely with a product manager and maybe even offer to take on some work. So some of the kind of best PMs that I've brought over to product from kind of other functions, they really start by expressing interest in product and then start partnering closely with the product manager and maybe”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got what I'll call lucky, which is I kind of stumbled into product management after law school and joined the founding team of a startup and ended up doing product management there. But when I think about folks who are looking to get into product management, I think there's really two paths. I think one is kind of more formal in nature, right? There's associate product manager programs out there and many scaled companies, Google, Meta, all have APM programs that you can formally apply to. And actually when we were at Box, much earlier stage company than either of those companies I just mentioned, we actually created an API program to help grow our bench of merchms. So I think you can actually find APM programs even at smaller, earlier stage companies than even kind of big tech. So that's one, it's just formal APM programs. I think another kind of more quote unquote formal way to get into PM is really by just directly applying to a junior PM role where there's no expectation of any sort of experience. I've usually seen this work best when you're kind of already working somewhere.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Times to email are two things that I do to really make sure that it's not awkward and it doesn't put the burden on the other person.”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right. Well, I love this question to kind of kick us off. We actually have a whole blog post about this. If you're curious to learn more, but I think at a high level, I think I recommend first really just kind of opening the door for the person you're trying to schedule time with to share their availability first, right? So instead of just sending the link, I usually start the email with something like, you know, looking forward to connecting, feel free to share. Sometimes you're available or easier, you can choose, you know, to find time on my calendar using the Calendly link here. So opening the door to let them choose before you offer up your Calendly link, I think is a little bit of a subtle way to let them take the lead if they want. The second piece I would recommend too is once you kind of open that door, you can kind of further reduce the effort on the recipient by adding times you're available directly in the email. So when you go to Sheri link, there's an option to add times to email and you can then just paste those directly into the email you're creating. So that reduces yet another sort of point of friction to ask the user to click the link and get taken to Cal only. So opening the door and then adding”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Strategy is really just an integrated set of choices that outline how you're going to win in whatever marketplace you choose, right? And so a good product strategy is going to answer questions like what's your sort of winning aspiration, but maybe more importantly, where are you going to play? What are the markets you're going to go after? What are the segments of those markets? What are the personas in the segments of those markets? And then how are you going to win with that target audience?”
2023-02-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source