Adam Shain leads a fascinating career that weaves product and marketing skill sets together. With an MBA from Babson, and an undergrad degree from Brandeis, he has worked for Google, Intuit, Wordstream, Teikametrics, and other companies finding creative solutions to challenging product management and marketing problems.

I caught up with him during a recent project to find out more about the way he thinks about problem-solving and the startup ecosystem.

Q: What parts of growing up as a kid do you think influenced this choice to go into Product Management?

A: I was in high school during the mid-nineties, when the Internet was really becoming mainstream. I loved the stories of the high-flying startups that were using this cutting edge technology to profoundly change the way that people lived. Things were moving rapidly and unlocking lots of potential for consumers and businesses. I wanted to be a part of it!

Q: I find that life is always changed significantly by chance meetings or interactions. Do you have any stories like that related to your career?

A: Definitely. After studying neuroscience in college I spent several years living in Israel. My wife and I arrived super early for a concert (my wife misread an analog clock) and while we helped set up chairs, I met Charlie Kalech, who ran a web design and marketing firm called J-Town Internet Services.

Charlie was looking to hire somebody to help grow his PPC practice and I had just completed a stint at a startup learning about web analytics and AdWords. At J-Town I ran PPC and SEO campaigns and managed everything from our DNS server to our monthly cash flow.

Q: How do enterprises think differently about their products compared to series-A startups?

A: Enterprises already have both product-market fit for a core product that they have built a business around. They are looking to defend their customer base by expanding the product to meet new client needs or expand it through internationalization or localization. They are also looking to create complementary offerings that leverage their existing customer relationships. 

Startups are in a different position. Early-stage startups are still looking to find product/market fit and spend their time testing and iterating to ensure that the problem is well understood and that the customer fully values the solution. By the time a company has reached series-A, they know that they have a worthwhile product and the main challenge is to scale. Can they reach their target customers in a cost-effective way and show them the value of the solution without needing to overservice them?

Startups at this stage are also very focused on engagement and churn. They should be putting in place tools to capture and analyze how customers use their software so that decisions are data-driven.

Q: Do you find different approaches to product management within startups that have a founder with development, marketing, or sales backgrounds?

A: Startup founders come in all shapes and sizes and it doesn’t make sense to pigeonhole them based on background. However, it is fair to say that different founders have different prerogatives that shape how their product is built. For example, sales-driven organizations, particularly for enterprise sales, may work very closely with a small set of customers to define the product roadmap or the functionality of a particular feature. In these organizations, it is also common for net sales, rather than customer benefit metrics, to drive prioritization.

On the flip side, if a founder cares only about the elegance of the technology, it can lead to either the wrong product being built or resources that are unnecessarily spent along the way to getting there. Paul Graham, the founder of Y-Combinator, famously encourages founders to do things that are NOT scalable first so that you can see if they work before spending the time to make a scalable version.

Q: Who are some of your heroes?

A: It’s cliche, but I really view my parents as heroes. My father owned small businesses ranging from restaurants to retail stores. He believes strongly in doing the right thing for the customers, whether that means low prices or excellent service, and always acts with integrity. My mother raised four children while beating cancer (three times!). She is always upbeat and somebody gave each of her children exactly what they needed.

On the software side, two seminal figures are Scott Cook and Steve Jobs. Scott because of his commitment to delivering customer benefit (before it was trendy) and Jobs for creating or revolutionizing at least 5 different industries (PCs, digital animation, cellular phones, music, tablets).

Q: What was one of your favorite products to work on?

A: Building the AdWords Grader for WordStream was one of my favorite things to work on. We were able to give advertisers insights into how their PPC accounts were performing and provide targeted recommendations to help their businesses while establishing WordStream as a partner in their success.

Q: Why was it challenging?

A: This hadn’t been done before. While there were a lot of grader-esque products that would let you know if you were following best practices, nobody was able to really answer the question of “how am I doing?” We had to determine the right metrics to show, how to provide value with each metric, and how to actually grade the account. 

Q: You’re writing a children’s book now? Are you able to take the product hat off and not try to manage the process like a product?

A: No! We’re in the process of creating several mock-ups so that we can begin collecting feedback on artistic styling and prose. We’re essentially a seed-stage product at this point. Once we nail down the product-market fit we’ll start thinking about scaling.

Q: What experiences led you to this project?

A: I’m a father of four and my children have a way of saying profound things from time to time. I love tapping into their creativity to create something that people love. I also have a cousin who is a fantastic artist and I’m excited to share her talent with more people.

Q: When is it better to leave conventional rules behind when managing and creating products?

A: It’s all a question of balancing time and resources. When you have to move faster than a conventional company, you often need to find an unconventional way of approaching a problem. That doesn’t necessarily mean reinventing the wheel, but it does mean looking at a problem with fresh eyes and being open-minded about trying out different processes.

Q:What are some common barriers to effective product management that you’ve experienced in the past?

A: Some barriers include:

• Lack of an overarching strategy (for either the product or the company)

• Too much/unknown technical debt

• Dysfunctional organizations where functions are fighting with each other

• Lack of data/contradictory data inhibiting decision-making

• A lack of clear communication channels (both internally and externally)

• Focusing on the solution and not the problem

• A lack of alignment of goals throughout an organization

• Jumping straight into tactical solutions before fully considering the strategic implications

Check out some of the other Growth Marketing interviews here.