73: ABCs of Platform Product Management

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Soumeya Benghanem welcomes Arjun Subramanian as they discuss platform product management. This is one of the most challenging roles in product management as they are the ones who have to work closely with the engineering team to ensure that the product is well-maintained. For those PMs who are interested in this role, in order to be successful in this field, you need not only to understand the core technologies but be able to look at the long-term scalability of the product.

Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.

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What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:42 What is a platform product?
• 07:42 Platform as a channel of delivery
• 12:05 Building a platform too late
• 16:09 Platform economics
• 17:48 Metrics of success for platform
• 21:47 Measuring cost savings
• 25:05 Mean time to recovery
• 26:39 Funding the platform team
• 29:38 Who can be a platform product manager?
• 34:22 Platform PMs need to be more technical
• 36:50 Edutainment
• 38:25 Advice for PMs stitching technologies together into a single platform
• 42:21 Building a unified user experience
• 44:27 Final thoughts