Do not index
Do not index
CTA Headline
CTA Description
CTA Button Link
We asked 6 Product Managers and 1 Growth Product Manager what they think about the Growth Product Management role. We also sourced voice notes & sat down on 1:1 calls to understand the differences between a PM and a Growth PM.
Read on 👇🏻
TL;DR
- There are two types of problems inside any product org - User & Business
- Growth PM focuses on solving business problems. Acquire more users, retain acquired users or monetise them.
- PM focuses on user problems - Build products & features to solve problems for users and give them a better experience.
- Core learnings after looking at Growth PM JDs across different industries
- Some experience as a PM is always welcome (esp in a the same/ adjacent industry)
- Industry experience is important because it helps you understand the constraints & competition.
- Soft communication skills to manage stakeholders is also extremely important.
- What does the day-to-day look like for a Growth PM?
- Sync with teammates & check up on the status of the current experiments.
- Check the analytics dashboard or sit down with an analyst to understand the results of experiments.
- Speak to users to & send out surveys to understand user’s core motivation & JTBD.
- Derive insights from data & understand how it affects the funnel from acquisition → retention → monetization.
- Soft skills required for a Growth PM is similar to a PM
- Lead through influence
- Communicate with stakeholders & know how to get buy ins for growth experiments
- Empathy for the user & their problems
- A hunger for rapid experimentation to get to the source of truth
- Hard skills required for the success of a Growth PM
- Fundamental understanding of how marketing works & why consumers buy/ use your product.
- Understanding the different growth levers inside the product.
- Ability to develop designs with user experience at the forefront.
- Deploy experiments without developer bandwidth (no-code tools).
- Question to ask before applying for a Growth PM role
- Are you willing to create an impact by solving for revenue growth?
- Do you understand the market or are you curious enough to learn about the market?
- Do you understand the fundamentals of marketing? - Great Growth PMs are great marketers in disguise
- Do you enjoy looking at data and deriving insights from it?
- Can you create basic MVPs on design and deploy them for rapid experimentation?
- Do you enjoy growing products or building them? - While building is an art, growing is also a separate art in itself.
- Are you willing to teach & empower designers, developers & all other cross-functional stakeholders on growth?
- What are some career ladders to becoming a Growth PM? (explained in detail with examples inside)
- Product Analyst
- Growth Marketing
- Product Marketing
- Program Manager
- Consultants
- Ex - Founders
- & more
- Questions to ask before accepting your role as a Growth PM?
- Does the product have a PLG motion?
- What is the problem statement & what levers will I be owning?
- Is someone already working on this problem statement?
- Who will I reporting to?
- Who will be my cross-functional stakeholders?
- For leaders & founders - When should you hire a Growth PM in your org?
- Do you have PMF?
- Do you have at least one sustainable growth channel?
- Do you have the resources to support the Growth PM?
- Is your organisation data-rich or do you have a data culture?
Btw, we also break down detailed business models and create growth strategies for some of the most famous internet startups in India. Our favourite ones include the Zepto Business Model & Meesho Business Model breakdowns.
We’ve also created loaded templates 💪🏼 to make your life as a growth operator easier.
What does a Growth Product Manager do?
To understand the job of a Growth PM, you need to understand the two types of problems that exist in an organisation
You could go even more granular & say that solving a user problem is a focus on solving user experience along with high NPS. But solving a business problem is way of using tech to solve acquisition, retention & monetisation.
Here’s another example of a user problem
Problem Statement → Make the onboarding process easier for restaurant owners
While it might have a direct revenue impact, this problem statement is focused on improving user experience >> revenue. Revenue is a good second-order effect to have here. An action item here would be to build a dashboard for restaurant owners.
Here’s another example of a business problem
Problem statement → Expand Swiggy to 500 cities
Rather than build features that would make the product more sticky or the customer experience better, the focus is on growing the business. The question is not just about the logistical challenge but also about how you acquire restaurants & users in these 500 cities.
Btw this was a real problem statement that Saurabh Jain (GrowthX Member) cracked during his time in Swiggy.
Watch it here 👇🏻
A growth PM fundamentally only focuses on solving business problems. Acquire more users, retaining acquired users or monetisation. One of the major KPIs of a Growth PM is not to build the product but to figure out ways to grow the business.
Let’s also discuss JTBD of each function
Who is a Growth PM then?
A Growth Product Manager is someone who solves business problems using software.
Growth PM vs a traditional PM
Facts | Traditional PM | Growth PM |
Goal | Build the product | Grow the business |
Company stage | Sometimes hired even before PMF. But ideally should be hired after PMF to prioritize and guide the product-building decisions | Hired after the product reaches PMF. But usually hired at the mature scaling phase. |
Focus | Focused on building features, upgrading existing features, feature usage, etc. | Focused on increasing user base, user engagement, or revenue |
Key Soft Skills | → Communication
→ Leadership
→ Emotional Intelligence
→ Ability to switch between micro & macro thinking
→ Ability to adapt to market changes quickly
→ Stakeholder management
→ Negotiation skills | A Growth PM also needs a combination of all these skills to succeed in their career. However there are some smaller nuances which can help with their growth like 👇🏼
→ Understanding of the core user JTBD
→ Understanding of the growth mindset in the org
etc.. |
Mindset | → Spend a lot of time thinking & building for a better user experience & solving user problems | → Spends a lot of time thinking & building to find more users or grow the revenue share from existing users |
Key Hard Skills | → Project planning and scheduling
→ Budgeting and financial management (at least for the product they own)
→ Risk management
→ Product quality management
→ Scope management
→ Stakeholder analysis and management
→ Contract management with technical & non-technical peers
→ Technical expertise (crucial for tech first products)
→ Reporting and documentation skills | → Data fluency
→ Ability to get insights from Data Analysis
→ Working with Data - SQL or other languages
→ Writing
→ Ability to present ideas
→ User Research as a hard skill
→ Ability to run experiments and diagnose them
→ Statistical Analysis skills |
Working mindset | Build products & features that matches their JTBD | Build products & features that help you grow the business |
Who’s their primary stakeholder? | The customer or user. | The business. |
Growth PM vs Growth Marketing Manager
Facts | Growth Marketing Manager | Growth PM |
Goal | Grow the business | Grow the business |
Company stage | Hired after PMF to grow the business | Hired after the product reaches PMF. But usually hired at the mature scaling phase. |
Focus | Focused on growing business through marketing levers. | Focused on growing business through marketing & product levers |
Key Skills | Growth marketing managers need to understand the brand, customer & market. On top of this they need to understand the
→ Different marketing channels
→ ICPs
→ Budgeting and financial management
→ Stakeholder analysis and management | A Growth PM needs a combination of all these skills a PM might need to succeed.
On top of this they also need to understand the fundamentals of
→ Marketing
→ Product-led growth loops
→ User buying patterns |
Mindset | → Spend a lot of time thinking about growing the product through marketing channels. | → Spends a lot of time thinking about ways to get more users through product levers. |
Working mindset | Build more marketing channels to help you find the right users. | Build products & features that help you acquire more users/ monetise them. |
Who’s their primary stakeholder? | The business | The business |
ㅤ | ㅤ | ㅤ |
Also if you’re wondering, here’s a quick video explaining growth marketing👇🏻
If you’re fascinated about growth and want to become a Growth PM, check out the GrowthX Membership. Get access to structured learning, a curated community & orbit
changing outcomes – in one membership.
Join the top 1% of growth talent today 💥
Breakdown of Growth PM job descriptions
1. Here’s an example of a JD from LeadSquared - a Sales CRM platform.
The requirement of expertise on SEO, esp programmatic SEO shows that it is one of their core channels for Leadsquared.
What are the skills you need for this?
2. Here’s another from a Growth PM at Rupyy
Most organisations prefer someone who has worked as a PM before. This is because of the structured thinking, extreme ownership & business acumen you build in that role.
3. Here’s another from the Times Internet
The Times Internet takes it a notch higher with about 5 - 8 years of experience as a PM.
4. Here’s another one from Binance
Binance does this well by explaining this role will focus a lot on ‘referral’ under the acquisition lever. Yet again the requirement for PM experience is strong.
What are some common themes from all these JDs?
- Most common is some experience as a Product Manager: 🛠️ Since both the PM & Growth PM are about building things and deploying them, this is sometimes a non-negotiable. But again, a Growth PM is focused on building things that move the business >> improving user experience!
- The second common theme is industry experience: 🏭 The nuances of building a product in Fintech is very different from an Edtech. This is where industry knowledge will help you get the right users while also understanding the constraints & competition in the industry.
- The third theme is cross-functional stakeholder management skills: 🫂 When you’re a PM, you are not building things alone. In fact you are getting things done through a team of designers, engineers, marketers & data analysts. The same happens with a Growth PM. You are building things (collaboration with developers & designers), curating insights from data (data analysts) & testing out new channels (collaboration with marketers & designers)
What are some soft skills required for the success of a Growth Product Manager?
Just like any PM, the soft skills are straightforward - Understand the user, why they buy & what guides their buying decisions.
- A mindset of Experimentation
- Empathy for the user & their pain points
- Ownership to see projects through to execution
- Ability to lead through influence
- Ability to communicate with stakeholders
- Ability to present data & insights to stakeholders
- Understand how to sell experiments inside the org
- Understand how to build relationships inside the org.
What are some hard skills required for the success of a Growth Product Manager?
The hard skills are where the nuances get more interesting between a PM & a Growth PM.
- Work with stakeholders and see projects to execution.
- Create designs & mockups without any oversight
- Consume data and derive insights from them.
- Quickly deploy experiments with no-code tools
- Fundamental understanding of how marketing works.
- Understanding of the different growth levers inside the product
- Developing designs with user experience at the forefront.
- Understanding of how Growth loops work.
What does the day-to-day look like for a Growth PM?
We sat down and spoke with a couple of GrowthX members who are Growth PMs. After hour-long conversations, here’s a rough breakdown of how their day might look like.
Communication 🤙🏼
One of the core things a Growth PM does is sync with teammates & check up on the status of the current experiments. Based on the culture of the org, this process can be an on-call standup, async Slack updates, or a mix of both 💪🏼
Data data data 📈
The next crucial item on the daily list is looking at all the data points. A Growth PM usually does this by looking up the analytics dashboard. Sometimes they might also depend on a data team to help them with daily insights. Yet again, how this is done depends on the internal culture of the org.
User research 🚀
This one is fairly straightforward and is quite common between both PMs and Growth PMs. User research & user interviews are one of the common things both of them have to be strong at. A Growth PM has to speak to a ton of users to understand their core motivation & JTBD.
The goal is to find the most ideal ICPs for the product and think about ways to acquire more like them. If a Growth PM is focused on the engagement and monetization levers, this will give them more ideas on which ICPs to prioritize and which experiments to run at scale 🦾
Deriving Insights from Data 📊
We know what you’re thinking -” How is this different from looking at data?”
Growth PMs have to look at data every day to make sure all their user funnels are performing optimally. They also need data to figure out how their growth experiments are performing at various stages and growth levers in the product.
But analysis gives them a peek into how running a micro experiment on one subset affected their retention or monetization numbers. Data analysis is done to not maintain but to deeply understand users and the outcome of the experiments they’re performing.
What are the key metrics a Growth PM should track?
The focus for the Growth PM is the business >> users. Sure they still need to understand the user, but their focus is on moving business metrics >> solving problems for the user. Every metric that allows a Growth PM to acquire, activate, retain & monetise users must be measured.
Questions to ask yourself before applying as a Growth PM
1/ Understand Impact is what you are hired for 🚀
One of the core reasons someone hires a Growth PM is to grow the business (Duh!). This means that you are signing up for a role that creates impact (revenue impact) above everything else and this means that there will be pressure to deliver. If you’re willing to become a Growth PM you need to be willing to create impact by solving for revenue growth.
2/ Do you understand the market? 👤
The buying cycle and who you’ll be selling to will be very different from a B2B (Yellow AI) to a B2C (Swiggy) company. The growth levers and channels will also be vastly different.
Even for two B2C companies the levers for growth can be very different. Think a Swiggy & a Jupiter app. Having some level of understanding of the market & user is helpful. Even if you don’t have depth in the market, are you curious enough to learn quickly?
3/ Do you understand the fundamentals of marketing? 🗣️
Great Growth PMs are great marketers in disguise. You need to understand why someone buys your product & what are their objections to buy. You need to understand the intrinsic motivation for someone to use the product and double down on levers with this insight. Also if you’re a Growth PM focusing primarily on acquisition, marketing needs to be your strong suit (non-negotiable).
4/ Are you excited to look at data? ➕
Every decision that you make will be backed up with some form of data. If you have never enjoyed looking at data and deriving insights from it, please don’t become a Growth PM.
Because any product/ feature you will be building is for acquiring more users/ retaining them/ monetising them. This means revenue growth. If you can't understand which experiments/ which subset of users are leading to revenue growth with data, don’t become a Growth PM.
5/ Are you excited to look at different user funnels? 📈
You need to break down your user flow into funnels to see where drop-offs happen. You need to break them down by channels, user JTBD, campaigns & more. Yet again this takes us back to the data insight. If you can’t learn from funnels and retention curves, you have zero learnings from your experiments.
6/ Do you have a basic understanding of UI/ UX design? 🎨
A Growth PM thrives on rapid experimentation. If you are dependent on a designer to get even basic mockups done, you become a bottleneck. While you don’t need to create prod-ready designs, you need to create at least basic MVPs and deploy them.
7/ Do you enjoy growing products or building them? ⚒️
Some folks just enjoy the art of building valuable products, while some enjoy bringing more users and scaling revenue for a product that’s been built. There’s a lot of nuance that needs to happen to build a good product.
Yes nuance is important for growing products as well, but the skills are completely different. A Growth PM needs to understand the nuances of funnels, data & marketing over other fundamental PM skills as well. A Growth PM also needs to consider brand positioning so that the experiments they deploy are on brand.
8/ Are you excited to test your hypothesis with rapid experimentation? 🔥
Growth PMs thrive on crazy fast execution and short feedback cycles. Experimentation is your bread & butter.
9/ Are you willing to teach others to focus on growth? 💎
As a Growth PM, most of your levers are with the product. And making changes to the product means you need to work with developers, designers & other cross-functional stakeholders. More than stakeholder management, you also need to empower them by explaining the reasoning and thought process behind each piece of experimentation.
When you teach, you empower.
When you empower, you enable the entire org to think in terms of growing the product.
10/ Do you have product & business acumen? 🤔
This is probably what makes the cream of the Growth PMs out there. Do you understand the constraints of the business and suggest growth experiments accordingly?
Think about product positioning, constraints of the business & more.
If you’re fascinated about growth and want to become a Growth PM, check out the GrowthX Membership. Get access to structured learning, a curated community & orbit
changing outcomes – in one membership.
Join the top 1% of growth talent today 💥
What are some career ladders to become a Growth PM?
We spoke to GrowthX members and also went through LinkedIn to understand the different ways in which someone can become a Growth PM. Apart from the commonly known PM → Growth PM transition, here are all the other ways we’ve seen the career ladder unfold.
1/ Product Analyst → Growth PM
Your moat
Growth PMs thrive on data which makes it perfect for product analysts. Also the fact that you closely with other product managers & developers gives you a lot of context about the role.
What additional skills do you need?
How to pick and run experiments?
How to lead through influence?
How to use product levers to grow/ monetise your product?
2/ Growth Marketing → Growth PM
Your moat
You are already working on the same problem statement (business growth), but the only difference is your levers for growth (marketing channels >> product)
What additional skills do you need?
Think growth using product levers >> marketing channels
How to work closely with developers, designers & other cross functional stakeholders?
Here’s another example of a Growth Marketing → Growth PM journey 👇🏻
Here’s another example from a GrowthX Memeber who made the switch from Growth Marketing - Growth PM (or Product Manager - Growth) 👇🏻
Product Marketing → Growth PM
Your moat
You have a deep understanding of the customer & user journeys. Also GTM is one of your huge strengths.
What additional skills do you need?
Deriving insights from data
Ability to work with cross functional stakeholders like product design & engineering
Using product led levers >> marketing levers to drive business growth
Program Manager → Growth PM
Your moat
You understand how to do GTMs well and pick the right channels. Marketing is also one of your strengths which means you are good at understanding users & why they buy.
What additional skills do you need?
Making data your best friend
Using data to derive insights and guide your experimentation
Using product levers to grow the business
Associate Product Manager → Growth PM
Your moat
Working as an APM, you’ve already learnt the skills to build. You also have a fundamentals understanding of how funnels & user journeys work.
What additional skills do you need?
Switch from build for users → build for business growth
Experimentation mindset
Fundamentals of marketing & growth
Here’s another example of the same career journey
GTM Consultant → Growth PM
Your moat
You have worked across industries to do one thing - grow the business.
What additional skills do you need?
Build depth in one industry
Using product levers to grow the business
Work closely with cross-functional stakeholders like Engineering
Ex-Founder → Growth PM
Your moat
As a founder you are already solving for both the users & business. The ability to switch between macro → micro → macro is your moat. Also the speed of execution and high autonomy helps.
What additional skills do you need?
How to manage up?
The art of finding alignment before deploying things
How to lead through influence?
Here’s one more example
And here’s one last example
Performance Marketing → Growth PM
Your moat
As a performance marketer, ICP, positioning, funnels & data are your bread n butter. All of these skills will come in extremely helpful in your stint as a Growth PM.
What additional skills do you need?
Nuances of growth
Using product levers to grow the business
Stakeholder management with developers & designers.
Category Manager, Lead → Growth PM
Your moat
You understand how to break down a huge problem statement into smaller levers. You also work with a core focus on revenue growth.
What additional skills do you need?
How do user journeys work online?
Managing online GTM
Running experiments and using data to prove your hypotheses
Here’s another example of the same career journey
Community Manager → Growth PM
Your moat
You have a fundamentals understanding of working with people. You also know how user experiences work offline.
What additional skills do you need?
Ability to make data your best friend
Understanding how to run experiments and validate that with data
Understanding how to work with cross functional stakeholders like engineers & designers.
Founder/ CEO’s office → Growth PM
Your moat
A founder’s office role prepares you to approach breakdown complex asks in a structured way & deploy them.
Being a PM or a Growth PM requires a very similar set of skills.
What additional skills do you need?
Cross functional stakeholder management (esp developers, designers, marketing, sales & CS)
Ability to create hypothesis, experiment and take feedback with data
Ability to solve problem through product levers >> marketing levers
Analytics Manager → Growth PM
Your moat
Analytics and data is one of the core hard skills for a Growth PM. Plus you also have a fundamental understanding of how product teams use data to make decisions.
What additional skills do you need?
Cross-functional Stakeholder management
Fundamental understanding of growth & marketing
Mindset shift from derive insights → derive insights and use it to grow the business.
If you’re fascinated about growth and want to become a Growth PM, check out the GrowthX Membership. Get access to structured learning, a curated community & orbit
changing outcomes – in one membership.
Join the top 1% of growth talent today 💥
What is the litmus test for applying for a Growth PM role?
There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation when it comes to a Growth PM role in the Indian startup ecosystem. Expectations between the title and your day to day might be extremely mismatched also.
Getting a title as a Growth PM is easier. But to ensure you’ll also get the day to day responsibilities of a Growth PM is a whole another ball game.
Here are some questions to ask before accepting your role as a Growth PM 👇🏻
1. Does the product have a PLG motion?
All your core levers are product led if you’re a Growth PM. When PLG is not one of the primary GTM motions, then you need to dive into the problem statements.
2. What is the problem statement & what lever will I be owning?
Ask the recruiting manager for the problem statement you’ll be owning. If it’s focused on building for the user >> building for the business - you are a Product Manager. Also if the problem statement is around business growth, ask for the lever/ levers you’ll be owning.
You need to have product led levers >>> marketing led levers if you want to have the highest impact as a Growth PM. For example, in the case of Zepto, paid FB ads is a marketing lever, while Zepto passes is a product lever.
3. How is access to data inside the org?
Data is your best friend when you’re a Growth PM, PERIOD!
All your experiments and hypothesis will live & die on data. Ask how important product/ business decision are made to understand the importance of data inside the org. If the org is not data led, you will have problems for everything from getting the right tools → stakeholder management → building a data culture.
4. Is someone already working on this problem statement?
If they already have people working on it, it can be a great way to understand how the team works. It will also give you insight into how experimentation is handled because that’s core to your job as a Growth PM.
5. What kind of support can I expect in terms of tools & resources?
Very important to understand the kind of tools & people you will get access to. If you’re working on a consumer SaaS platform but don’t have a data analyst, then it is a problem. Your time is better spent running experiments and iterating on them, over stressing about pulling data → deriving insights from it.
6. Who will I reporting to? Who will be my cross-functional stakeholders?
Every org is different in terms of how it is structured. But you want to report under someone who understands experimentation & the idea of deploying MVPs >> complete products.
Structured thinking is great. Second order thinking is also neccesary. But perfectionism is not ideal as it will kill most experiments at it’s infancy
Done wrong it will kill the velocity of your experiments and prevent you from creating high impact inside the org.
Exclusive for leaders & founders 👇🏻
This section is for any leader or founder looking to hire a Growth PM inside their org
Questions to ask before you hire a Growth PM in your org 🤔
The litmus test for a Growth PM is very different from a traditional PM. Hire one at the wrong time and you end up with wasted energy & resources on both fronts.
✅ Do you have PMF?
Way too many growth operators have not met their full potential because the product was not ready. So even before you think about hiring a Growth PM, double down on your PMF metrics. Some very simple questions you can ask yourself to understand PMF 👇🏼
- Do you have good retention rates over a 30 day period?
- Are customers willing to pay for your product?
- Do you see users talking about your product to their friends & peers?
- Are users coming back at least once after signing up?
If you haven’t even reached PMF, hiring a Growth PM is the last thing you should do ☹️.
✅ Do you have at least one sustainable growth channel?
If you have PMF, the very next question is about the growth channels you currently own. Do you have at least one channel that is consistently bringing in users?
This helps with one of two things 👇🏼
- It gives your growth PM some time to scale & compound in the org
- It gives them a fresh dataset of channels, user & behaviours to understand the product
✅ Do you have the resources to support the Growth PM?
A successful Growth PM does not operate alone. They need a great team to support them with all their experiments. This includes
- Developers
- Data Analysts
- Engineers
- Marketers
It’s okay if your Growth PM could have at least some shared resources with other teams to start with. They will also need access to tools like CRMs, A/B testing tools, landing page builders & more.
Without support on the financial and personnel front, you will not be setting your Growth PM for success 💪🏼
✅ Is your org data-rich?
This is probably the most important question to ask before you think about hiring a Growth PM or any growth operators. Growth PMs are heavily reliant on data to
→ Run their experiments
→ Validate the outcomes of their experiments
→ Create hypotheses and test them in the first place
So always ask yourself
→ Do we have a fresh supply of data?
→ If not, what will it take to build that pipeline of fresh user data
Finally, ask yourself if you have a ‘data’ culture to start with.
Having data is one thing, but looking at user data, collecting insights and using it to guide your ‘BUILD’ decisions is a whole another ball game. If your org culture is not data-driven, the Growth PM will have a very hard time getting all stakeholders in sync with their decisions.
That’s all for this piece
If you had some feedback or want us to add something to this piece, feel free to tell us here.
Written by
GrowthX Editorial Team
Growth can be achieved in a profitable, scalable & sustainable way. That’s what we write here, one blog at a time 🚀
