The Art of Product Management with Sachin Rekhi (ENG’05 W’05)

Product managers drive the vision, strategy, design, and execution of their product. While one can often quickly comprehend the basic responsibilities of the role, mastering each of these dimensions is truly an art form that one is constantly honing. In this presentation I'll share my lessons learned over the last decade as a product manager in Silicon Valley on the art behind each of these dimensions of product management.
Sachin Rekhi is a serial entrepreneur and product leader who has spent the last decade developing innovative products in Silicon Valley.
Sachin most recently founded Connected, a professional contact manager that was acquired by LinkedIn in 2011 and re-launched as LinkedIn Contacts. He went on become head of product for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn's flagship offering for sales professionals.
Prior to Connected, Sachin founded Anywhere.FM, a web music player that allowed users to upload, play, and discover music online, which was acquired by imeem in 2008. Sachin started his career at Microsoft as a product lead on Visual Studio, Microsoft's developer tools platform.
Sachin recently left LinkedIn and has been advising early-stage startups on product strategy, design, and growth.
#productmanagement #productmanager #Sachin #Rekhi

[@athensf]

13:24 Vision 19:36 Strategy 31:48 Design 42:25 Execution 57:06 Q&A

[@boneyardconnection]

Thank you

[@omk2990]

such people are the backbone of society

[@AbhinavAthankar]

Thanks

[@aasthasoni6696]

People like you are so precious.

[@juansebastiangonzalezuruet6899]

Wow! 1. Great storytelling 2. Great career path 3. Great personal marketing This seems so contemporary, it's incredible this was 7 years ago! BEFORE COVID19. He even predicted a little Slack boom 💥 I read some other comments about how this guy changed so many times in his careers but it's actually THE SAME! 1. You want to develop your passion for tech (Engineering) 2. You want to develop your passion for business (Financing) 3. You get your perfect job as Product Manager 4. You use what you learned from your PM job and create a product of your own 5. You used your knowledge on business and actually be able to EXIT .... TWICE! 6. Use all this to now help other people What a beautiful life journey, the very same one I've been pursuing

[@unssnu100]

This guy is such an amazing communicator and manager. It's understandable why he gets all the good jobs.

[@muratsafarov3169]

The talk is very well structured and insightful. Glad that I've discovered Sachin. Looking forward to see his other lectures.

[@mngator2]

You just talked and entire semester class in one presentation

[@mccrispysparks]

Yup.. Awesome, though!

[@priceandpride]

it sounded like a end of year presentation

[@Mayaadyby.]

Wow! the knowledge, the golden experiences, the energy, the smile are incredible!

[@seematomar6669]

Amazing , hats off to Sachin Rekhi, on of the great presentation I have seen so far with such great precision!!

[@evelynmh24]

Great presentation and examples. Clear and concise, I appreciate the information you provide in your website, very helpful.

[@bigdlamz]

One of the most technically perfect presentations ive ever seen. Saved for rewatching .

[@shamla08]

Amazing Presentation! Loved the examples.

[@BrendanPramjee]

Really great presentation! Fantastic resume as well

[@richamisrasf]

Thanks so much, Sachin! Very useful presentation.

[@philomenaobasi2042]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 It was really incredible listening to you speak, thank you Mr Rekhi. 🙏🏻

[@ryancsf]

Solid presentation. Thanks for sharing this with the world! This talk is still incredibly relevant 5 years later. Great resource for PMs and aspiring PMs.

[@hammadmurtaza1043]

Still relevant!

[@amangoyal5918]

Awesome presentation. Recommended for everyone who wants to be a pm or is already a pm.

[@sabreenkaur7000]

Absolutely amazing and very clear and concise presentation on the subject. It makes my role as a PM so much clearer. Thank you

[@OlgaCh..]

It's the most useful video about the product management I've ever seen. Thanks!

[@garglucky]

you gotta watch this video at least twice!! amazing!!

[@BalamuruganRathinavel]

Awesome presentation. Great resource for Product Managers

[@timothyskrylnik1254]

Grate presentation! Many practices and insights!

[@Ymahtani]

This talk is gold!

[@felipebranford]

Best video I have watched on the topic of Product Management

[@SethWieder]

Excellent talk, thank you for recording and posting this. It's helping me grow my career.

[@abhyunnati8589]

The flow deserves huge round of applause

[@alexandrasiu5406]

great presentation.thxxx

[@StartUpK]

Great presentation great 👍🏼

[@arun2789]

This is too good! @sachin!

[@SureshThammina]

Thanks Sachin for a great presentation! Clear and crisp about 4 dimensions

[@thecoffeehog]

Loved the presentation, got to know a great deal about product management, difference of scope for a product manager at a startup and at a corporate.

[@tope3910]

Amazing content and delivery! Thank you, Sachin.

[@bolajiolayiwola3136]

This is such a brilliant presentation

[@will2tao]

This is an insightful look into product management and business management. Thanks!

[@Amanabouba]

Thanks a lot, it was brilliant!

[@abcd123906]

Great presentation, and lots of good, concrete examples.

[@kevincannon2269]

He transitions seamlessly from solving a problem (reconciling multiple user ids across services) to pushing something on customers they didn't ask for (crm tool to "be more effective" with their relationships). This sounds a lot like social media leveraging FOMO to increase engagement. I'm not convinced what he created actually provided value to society.

[@ayushj3292]

Great presentation, loved it. Thanks Sachin for putting it up.

[@exto10]

Good presentation 17:06 . Landed beyond my expectations.

[@aminmaqsood]

Incredible presentation. Hats off to all storytelling, hitting the bull's eye at every point.

[@bisonvb8524]

So to be clear, he does engineering and finance and then wants to do product management in tech. Falls in love with the role then quits for a start-up.. Talk about finding your path:)

[@shashibhushanrajput2461]

Also can be viewed as trying a lot of things and experiencing it all

[@maxverdi4007]

Jack of all trades, master of none

[@Andre000Lucas]

​@@maxverdi4007 no shame in It tho. In todays word most things change too fast. Learning enough to bring the results you want to acomplish is good enough.

[@slayden633]

⁠@@maxverdi4007higher you go in any career that’s what it entails, im a senior engineer going for my mba now. Guys go and entire career in engineering and have zero clue how business works. Can’t ever pivot

[@slayden633]

Lmao that’s literally the exact career path into PM and business in tech. You need both lol

[@ashishdadhore]

I didn't pause it, straight till end :), best value about this presentation was a new angle of the PMing thing, above that, energy!!

[@borisschwartz7498]

Great presentation. Very professional. Thanks.

[@VibingTech]

Really love this, so much value I can’t believe am getting this for free.

[@tidbitbuzz444]

great presentation!

[@0070vishal]

please open closed captions of it

[@DaleHitchcox]

Thanks for the talk! Good stuff! I suggest you talk without the ums and ahs to remove those irritations from your otherwise excellent communication. Silence shows confidence and power.

[@mittyg123]

Excellent Presentation!

[@hamidalvandi8331]

that so good and very useable

[@mustafabedawala7868]

Solid presentation!

[@terryliu3635]

Awesome video!!

[@vinaykumarsingu5130]

Looking at the PMF Hypothesis points, I am really wondering how companies like whatsapp, Zomato and PAYTM would have started since none of them pass most of the checklist items especially on monetization

[@tewodroswakjira8776]

I highly recommend for PM our there

[@PremJay]

Great presentation and information but I would describe strategy as making the right choice - an opportunity to prioritize given the resource constraints (in other words if all of us have un limited resources, then we wont need strategy).

[@hadrianguangxianhe1449]

Thanks for sharing

[@gokeakingbade8160]

Very great presentation. 1:00:50

[@CopycatStudiosLA]

I think these videos should be renamed sachins resume

[@samsonsamsonov243]

Good stuff

[@oooooommmmmm]

Thank you!

[@anaduran8710]

Great talk Sachin. My only feedback is that for future talks consider having a more diverse pool of leaders in your examples.

[@shivamanand6112]

examples?

[@bhavyamarora3894]

🔥🔥🔥

[@CaptainMacNasty]

To speed up the entire Persona Discovery Process, I downloaded over thirty example personas and dozens of photos from the web. Now, when I need some personas, it's just a cut and paste exercise, with a little demographic massaging of the persona "people". Not the "correct" approach, but a lot faster.

[@muhammadasif-vy9gn]

Great prestation .

[@kclacrossestud]

I started as a product manager 10 years before this guy. It was not the Wild West. There was an established professional discipline. He didn't invent product management ... it was well established before he graduated. Maybe a bit of research of things beyond his experience might set some better context. I assume that he already knows this at this point in his career.

[@mitchqqqqqq]

everything in the 'design' part was a description of UX

[@delatroy]

Mitchell W there’s a lot of overlap across design, user research, marketing and product. Hard to clearly delineate roles and responsibilities and different company’s interpret and employ the roles in different ways.

[@whitney7621]

Amazing stuff. Only comment I have is that he is clearly a good looking engineer so even if the PM hiring criteria is based on looks he still woulda gotten the job lol

[@Chronussmartwatches]

Am I the only one that had noticed that a man who was enjoying the yummy ice cream during the lecture ? :)

[@AyushJain.YouTube]

I noticed too :D

[@dalanium98]

become obsessed with the problem - love that shift in pov

[@almirshithalmirshith235]

What is product hexagon theory?pls give an explanation

[@sagarjaid]

YC took notes from this class 😄

[@citrinehills7131]

do you have to be in IT or engineer to do a product management program?

[@kennygo5053]

How to say like that stucturely perfect?

[@cesarbravo822]

I talked my way into a PM position and I’m panicking! Any book recommendations?

[@TheSachinRekhi]

I find the best resources are still blog posts across the web. Here is my collection of top resources: www.sachinrekhi.com/top-resources-for-product-managers

[@shwethajagannath9396]

1) Swipe to Unlock, 2) The Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms by David S. Evans

[@fadelmuhammad140]

Inspired

[@topproduct3342]

good

[@rajanmahawar442]

Ahh how exactly

[@emrek2576]

the guy eating at 08:15 hahaha 😂

[@Ken-ul6ll]

It’s pronounced: aa・Kuh・taip

[@amansingh-os9gd]

canc someone elaborate on "your margin is my opportunity"

[@rajkmi007]

its like you buy something @ 10 and want to sell @ 12......your margin will be 2, but other person take it as an opportunity by selling @11 with low 1 profit....he will for sure sell more and then what he earn put in his seller business to bring down the cost and sell at more low price to end customer and gain in numbers and when he has numbers then he has more opportunity to sell other thing to his customer associated to his platform and grow

[@fleur257]

The only thing MBAs do well is talk !

[@greek2701]

34:22

[@theokaralenka]

AWS is a low cost cloud provider? really?

[@OvenBakedCookie]

Skip his career intro: 8:00

[@outkastedgoth]

bowaseer

[@abhijitv]

five stars

[@marcelosilveira7079]

Getting emotion when you use LinkedIn?! Haha that's pushing a little, huh?

[@nofavors]

This was 7 years ago so probably outdated to some extent. NPS is not a good indicator of user delight. Design should be neasured through business outcomes and user outcomes.

[@RahulKumar-vr4cm]

Wharton School Of Business.

[@jasmirwalia]

Voice over

[@saraphilip5885]

34:00 - fall in love with the problems - keep iterating on the solutions - develop personas ( archetypes of the users), help understand the mentality and psychology of the users. 44:20 - Execution Loop: Define, Validate, Iterate (based on what you've learned) - Decision rights - Favour decisions today over decisions tomorrow - moving forward. - Type 1 decisions, the ones that are irreversible, to be given top priority. Type 2 decisions, ones that are reversible - could be delegated.

[@operationremodel]

Nothing new here, next

[@padmapadma3302]

Pamvidiya

[@titusp9488]

this guy maybe smart ...but talk way too much to get to a point ...

[@Baramburum123456]

Another corporate jark is summarizing two books he has ever read to find another job.. if you hire this simple-thinker you will lose your business

[@marcelosilveira7079]

What are the names of the books?

[@mreider]

"Back in 2005 there wasn't much literature about product management." Wow. It's like the entire discipline was unknown before your generation appeared! Arrogance and ignorance all rolled into one.

[@wickedbass]

It's merely a statement about documentation or resources for product managers. There was no arrogance or ignorance in that statement.

[@anonymo294]

The irony of your comment would be hilarious if not for the tone of it.

[@Holistic_Islam]

Matt Reider He was talking in terms of available resources and not in terms of knowledgeable individuals.

[@albokohustu5777]

Now, now. You know that if he said "I was an engineer and didn't study business and didn't know about the extensive research and study that has been done on managing products" he couldn't appear to be the white knight riding in on his horse to save us dweebs from our sorrows. He and the other so called "bootstrap pms" need to say there was nothing before them in opening their talks. It endears them, or something.

[@tequilajoe518]

Worst comment and absolutely wrong interpretation of his statement...definitely reeks of your arrogance

[@shanedevane]

bs