OC1 and OC3 - Product Manager of a Saas Startup

Stage 1
#1

Hello great people of the Forum can you help me with the accuracy of my evidences for OC1 and OC3. I am a product manager of SAAS startup which lives with Product-Led Growth Principles since its beginning, first employee after the founders, the startup managed to proceed to the scale up phase and generating revenue while growing for the last 5 years, also got invested successfully. We started in Early 2018

For OC1 I am planning to offer:

a) The monthly recurring revenue and yearly recurring revenue graphs that are growing fast with the releases that I have made and the product’s journey from zero to really solid traction (Millons yearly), revenue coming from more than 50 different countries, for the last 5 years (I can get a reference here from our CEO if required, what do you think?)
b)The growth in the number of active companies using and paying to our tool over time (close to a thousand), and the number of end users who has interacted with our products every month for the last 2 years (millions of people)
c) External Evidence such as Reviews in one of the most popular Customer review platform (G2), the leader badges my product has earned in its industry from G2.

OC3

a) The main features of the product versions and their specifications that we have released while I was the product manager since 2018 in the company, with our CTOs support letter stating that I was the one who took care of the product management operations.
b) Increase in my salary and bonus payments after my outstanding contributions to the company during 2022.
c) External resources such as the Product Hunt launches where my product was 1st of the day, 1st of the week,. Our Appsumo launch, where more than 500 accounts for our product was sold out within 2 weeks.

I would like the listen to your thoughts and I really appreciate your help to the candidates and the community.

1 Like
#2

OC1 should display innovation in the field while OC3 should display impact . In your case it seems that both are displaying impact, which won’t work IMHO.

#3

Thank you for your reply @Ido_Moshe

Based on your feedback for OC1:

Is it better if I replace the evidences with:

a) positioning our product for a new unique user persona, new features and upgrades of the product developed accordingly, and evidences that the project is live and completed by myself.
b) the return of this innovative project in terms of revenue.
c) External evidence such as competition reports and user reviews based only on this new developments and new persona type (G2 reviews)

#4

I must admit that I find OC1 to be the hardest OC to understand.
It’s also the OC with the least information and examples.

How do I demonstrate that I have a proven track record or examples of innovation in the digital technology sector as a founder or senior executive of a product-led digital technology company OR an employee working in a new digital field or concept?

If I understand correctly from your post, you are not a founder or senior executive and therefore you should qualify for being an employee working in a new digital field or concept.

The only information about it is this.

If you are an employee working in a new digital field or concept, this must be clearly demonstrated, for example by providing a patent application (patent should include verifiable ID on Google Patents).

I might have taken this path myself, I co-authored 2 patents, but I really don’t know how to clearly demonstrat something is new when I personally believe most business differ from one another in less than 0.01% :slight_smile:

To sum it up, I don’t feel qualified to answer questions about OC1, wish I knew better myself.

#5

If you are one of the founding team member and your work is presented as a senior executive on the company, you can show detail of the product development and give details on why it is innovative.
The listed evidence for OC2 also looks ok.

For OC3 get a detailed letter from your employer to confirm your impact, you can also use your employment contract and evidence of the process developed.

#6

WDYM? I was a founding team member at three startups but that’s not a senior executive position. How would one have their work presented as such?

#7

Honestly you are overthinking the word innovation… Read your post again…

For OC1 I am planning to offer:

a) The monthly recurring revenue and yearly recurring revenue graphs that are growing fast with the releases that I have made and the product’s journey from zero to really solid traction (Millons yearly), revenue coming from more than 50 different countries, for the last 5 years (I can get a reference here from our CEO if required, what do you think?)

With the release you have made - that is the innovation you need, so build on that. Start your evidence based of that. Talk about the problem being faced (Slow growth, Slow revenue, Slow traction)… How you ideated and come up with the process and how you built this innovaton (The feature ideation, PRD, Product scope, Software requirement document, user stories etcc… atach them as proof using google docs).

Then end with the result and metrics that was achieved below.

b)The growth in the number of active companies using and paying to our tool over time (close to a thousand), and the number of end users who has interacted with our products every month for the last 2 years (millions of people)
c) External Evidence such as Reviews in one of the most popular Customer review platform (G2), the leader badges my product has earned in its industry from G2.

But spend rather google number of lines and paragraph to detail out the innovation part.

#8

Thank you for the reply @Francisca_Chiedu

I did not provide anything for OC2, which part exactly do you think “looks okay?”

#9

Thank you for your message @Smithorian, that makes so much sense :+1:

#10

I’ve interviewed a few product managers, perhaps you will find their stories helpful / inspiring: