Git With It: Founding PM Panel
The founding PM has an incredibly opaque and difficult job...and yet simultaneously one of the most important that most early-stage companies will ever hire. When done right, early PMs become force multipliers for technical founders and their teams.
So what does a founding PM actually do? How is the role different from later-stage PM work? And when should you actually hire one?
In this episode of Git With It, I sat down with two founding PMs to unpack the realities of the role: Karishma Irani (VP of Product at Scribe, founding PM at New Relic) and Tabish Gilani (Head of Product and Growth at Kajabi, founding PM at Replit).
Some highlights from the discussion:
Part of the job is to prove why you exist at all
A founding PM needs to be comfortable with ambiguity and willing to do whatever it takes to help the business succeed. This means you might find yourself:
- Talking to users and hopping on support tickets
- Setting up data infrastructure and analytics campaigns
- Figuring out go-to-market strategy
- Streamlining the release process or sales enablement
- Working with engineers to define and ship the MVP quickly
When Tabish joined Replit as their founding PM, he expected to focus on growth, but ended up becoming a de facto data engineer first, building out their analytics infrastructure from scratch. When Karishma joined LaunchDarkly as an early PM among 30 product-minded engineers, she had to figure out where she could add value – which turned out to be process improvements that kept the revenue team from being blindsided by releases.
The key is being flexible, curious, and focused on creating value wherever the gaps are. And if that’s not you…you probably shouldn’t be a founding PM.
Finding "PMF fit" – Product Manager-Founder fit
Every PM’s job, to some degree, is about the building and maintenance of trust. For founding PMs in particular, a disproportionate amount of their work is getting the founders (and the early team) to trust them.
The best founding PMs are comfortable working with founders who have a strong product vision (there will be arguments) and help build the strategy to execute it. They need to be “type A” personalities who aren’t afraid to say no to the founder when needed, while being direct and cutting through the BS.
Building credibility means shipping something valuable early, testing the product constantly, talking to power users, and getting your hands dirty.
For technical founders specifically, a founding PM can take on responsibilities like sprint planning, GTM strategy, and customer calls – freeing up the founder to do what brings them joy, like writing code.
Speed beats perfection (again)
An early mistake is the idealistic belief that “If I build a better product, more users will come and they’ll want to pay us more.” Reality is messier.
In founding PM work especially, in some cases 80% of what you try won’t work at all! That’s fine. The biggest mistake is letting things go on for too long. The speed at which you ship and learn is what allows a team to scale fast. Don’t get attached to every single thing you’re building.
Watch the full panel discussion for more on working with technical founders, when to focus on growth, and how the PM role evolves as the company scales.
