Micro-Interview: Hristo Zahariev, Sr. Product Manager | Cubby
đĄProduct management tips & tricks in 360 words.
Hristo Zahariev is a Senior Product Manager at Cubby, a self-storage platform revolutionizing how owners/operators manage and market their portfolio in a $43B vertical market in the USA.
In under 500 words, he shares:Â
How he got into product managementâŠ
How he starts his morning for maximum productivityâŠ
Some of his sources of learningâŠ
And moreâŠÂ Â
Enjoy!
âHow did you get into product management?â
Iâd say it was a mixture of an ounce of luck and my openness to new challenges and learning new things. Ten years ago, I was headhunted for a product analyst position at Experian, which was the company's first product role opening in Bulgaria. I only had a 40% match on my CV when looking at the job description, but I managed to compensate for it with my ambition to learn and my previous experience in business analysis and project management.
âHow do you start your mornings at work?â
Thirty minutes with a cup of coffee, a calendar, and a paper tablet. I start by validating the one thing I will finish on the day, no matter what happens. I would allocate a slot, usually 2-3 hours, for deep work on that item, with no phones, emails, or meetings during that slot. I would review my product dashboard and plan for any second-priority items per the remaining capacity.
âWhat do you know about product management now that you wish youâd known when you first started?â
The number one job to be done by a product manager is to establish a sense of common context across the teams in the company on who we are building the product for, who is using it, and why they are willing to pay. How you achieve this common context doesnât really matter in terms of choice of tools, product activities, frameworks, etc, as long as you get that outcome.
âWhat did your biggest product failure teach you?â
Donât force fancy and complex features that donât bring significant customer value into roadmaps just because some of the HIPPOs say so. Use assertive communication and data to push back.
âWhatâs the #1 thing that has helped you shorten your product management learning curve?â
Switching my mindset from operational output-driven to outcome-driven, I.e., starting to use more customer user journeys and personas and speaking to customers more.
âHow do you stay updated on the best practices in product management?â
Some books like âBuild What Mattersâ are good. Also, following key product people and groups on LinkedIn who share lots of stories and ideas with the rest of the community helps you stay updated by spending 5-20 minutes daily. Pawel Huryn, The Product Folks, and David Pereira are good places to start. You can also start following Steve Nouri and Ruben Hassid on practical tips and tricks regarding using AI like GPT in your day-to-day professional life for data analysis, market research, product documentation, etc.