Ashley Phillips isn't afraid to ask questions. In fact, it used to be her job.
Working as a journalist in NYC, Phillips accepted her first tech assignment in the late 2000s: to cover the launch of a new product called the iPhone.
In the background a fast-growing startup called Twitter was making headlines. A surge of new Internet tech was barreling toward shore and Phillips caught the wave.
"It was a little bit of an unknown, but everyone that I talked to was just really passionate about what they were doing, and really, really smart. And I think that, in and of itself, is part of what got me inspired to kind of extend my horizons a little bit about what I could do with my career."
And so from ABC News to Nickelodeon, Ashley Phillips got her start in Product Management.
Today Phillips is a Lead PM for Commerce Products at everybody's favorite P2P payment application, Venmo.
We caught up with Ashley at Venmo's office in Chicago to learn about her earliest self-discoveries on the job, and to compare notes about the pleasures and perils of working in startups vs. working in large organizations.
Also covered:
- Is a startup really the right environment to learn product?
- Learning to let go of process as you scale
- A pro secret for eliciting honest customer feedback
Press play below to listen to the full interview.
I think the way that I describe the similarities between the journalist role and the product management role is that, in journalism, you get to ask as many questions as you want, and basically, pick a topic and just learn as much as possible about it. Very similar to some parts of product management where you're just asking questions, asking tons and tons of questions, and it's not just that you have permission, you're pushed to do so." Ashley Phillips, Product at Venmo
In this episode:
- Where do startups go wrong with implementing OKRs
- Can OKRs really scale for enterprise?
- What are pipelines and how do they change the way we think about product roadmaps?
In this episode:
- From retail to product management
- Why relationship building is the number one required skill a product manager could have
- The value of having confidence with humility
In this episode:
- Establishing a clear vision of your career path
- Using metrics to answer burning product questions
- What product managers can learn from biology
