Hey blinds! I have 3 years of PM experience at a medium sized tech company and just over a year as a Co-founder. Long story short, I cofounded a startup to build a platform for the foreign labor recruitment industry - that allows farms, forestry and landscaping companies hire seasonal workers from Mexico, Guatemala, etc. I pretty much single handedly did all the leg work - product design, wireframes, UI/UX mockups, requirements, etc. Then hired really good developers including one ex-google engineer to build the MVP within 7 months. We received an offer from the largest foreign labor recruitment agency in the US for good $$$ amount. While my co founder is deciding to stay in the company after the acquisition mainly because he’s been a recruiter himself for like 9 yrs (thats all he knows - facilitie labor from overseas), I want to move on just simply because of the industry, monopolies of a few big US agencies (my clients) who have dominated this space for 40+ years and simply treat foreign workers like numbers in an excel sheet. Lots of corruption, lots of illegal activities that I can’t just tolerate and be around with. So I’m transitioning out gradually as the team and product can’t really function without me. I went to a top public school, while my degree is STEM, it’s not cs or any engineering degree. But I never let this get in my way. I worked my ass off at my first and only company I worked for to get promoted to Senior Product Manager before starting my founder journey. I don’t really see myself enrolling into a top MBA program. I simply don’t see any value other than networking there. I never really took a stab at these big companies before. A few friends suggested i might enjoy working at a big tech and help build products for “billion people”. Today I applied for a PM role at Google through a referral. I see all these posts about interview questions, rounds, etc. I’m thinking of applying myself to prep a lil bit. While prepping I’m thinking of taking a shot at Meta and Tiktok If y’all beautiful and wonderful people can send me referral. Hearing without referrals, you dont even get that first phone screening. Any other exciting companies & projects you think I should work let me know here. Just joined this community today any advice, insights and comments would be appreciated YoE 4.5 years TC - 0 currently Got a big payday though - north of $2.5m. May not be as much for some of yall founders here, but pretty good enough for me considering my background and the facts that odds have always been against me #pm #product #productmanager #productmanager #bigtech
2.5m is a lot, for people like me that's retirement money right there, it's great you've done it already. Would love to know more about your startup founding story, howd you go about doing this idea initially? As in were you hoping to be bought out from the start? It's so niche. I'd love to have this kinda turnover in 2 yrs time.
Dm