I’m finding it difficult to find product managers who have built products from 0-1. Essentially taking an idea that the board gives doing market research and then going out and executing on it. I find that most product managers can’t handle the massive ambiguity of starting from scratch.

i’ve interviewed people who say they done it but when I start to ask some questions about how they would approach it it seems like it’s from a standpoint of an already established product (cont)

How much do you pay for your PM roles? You're talking about a very small subset of PMs, and for me, I also believe prior technical experience is a must. However, to attract those kind of candidates, your company also has to have a bit of prestige and pay above market.

I am one of those product managers with experience taking products from 0 to 1, but currently not working by choice. I learned those skills working with companies that are/were leaders in their industries such a Sieble and Oracle. You may want to look for people with that background. They problem is not with employees only though; many companies do not invest in providing their employees with the right leadership, strategic clarity, frameworks, goals, etc. to conduct the right market and product research. Many just want to hire 'unicorns', provide no leadership, nor the resources requires. As a reference, in those companies I mentioned where I got my training, all levels of management were involved in product and go to market programs, they rolled up their sleeves and provided input when it was warranted.

If you’re not looking at entrepreneurs, you’re looking more for a journeyman-type who’ve worked at small companies because that’s where you can find a way to wear a lot of different hats. People usually have T-shaped skills, so more specialized in one or two areas. Big changes like what you’re describing aren’t embraced because of the big step backwards or too many laterals. It also depends on what kind of “product” you’re talking about. Is it a true product, a service, what’s the life span and the plan there. I’ll share that I have deep expertise in strategy, market research, analytics, product ownership, product support, management, etc. I have tech teams who design, build and support. I know enough to be dangerous in design, data architecture, technology, go-to-market execution, in general and no experience with the financials. Id feel pretty lightweight based on what you’re asking for and make more than what you mentioned, factoring in bonus.

Generally speaking, teams build end-to-end. They bolster each other’s weaknesses or lack of interest / passions. In a large company, a team might own part of a product or process, very few own end-to-end.

I think some of that is because some product manager have both strategy and product management as part of their roles but MOST are product/tech focused on existing systems or products. I work at an org where im the strategist and do that identification of new product and opportunity sizing and partner with a product manager or engineering architects to align technical specs and then product carries the execution to launch and maintenance.

As a director of strategy, do you have experience launching products from
0-1 while working day to day with engineering?

Anyone well versed in agile, enterprise architecture and has the experience to work at board level would solve this problem. The question is why there is ambiguity. Strategy at board level should not create ambiguity.

I honestly didn’t do any sort of market research and building from scratch in my company as a product manager until I was moved into (due to a reorganization) the global team and my responsibilities grew from just product management to Product Managenmet and Product Development.
Also, just to mention, I’ve noticed It’s quite interesting how different organizations have different expectations/responsibilities for someone labeled a Product Manager.

As an engineering leader, former product manager and serial entrepreneur, I'd say that they are different skill sets and in most cases, different career paths. There are also some inherent biases that come into play.

Product Managers: Some PM's, perhaps many, that work in mid sized to enterprise orgs will spend too much time looking inward for product roadmaps. They take their queues from the CTO or the director of strategy on what the product should do. I've also seen them use consultants to determine the next great thing. What far too few do is actually go talk to customers and front line employees about what they want and need in the product. Even fewer will speak to former customers or lost prospects to actually understand why they left or lost the opportunity. But those sorts of customer insights are crucial to understand the What and Why your product should actually be. The most impressive PM's will do an even deeper dive than that - a 5 Why analysis on successes and failures of current products to understand the product's features and functions.

Software Engineering Managers: The software engineers need the PM's to give them a specific goal and use case so they can build that development roadmap along with the budget and schedule. The more details the better obviously but what's often missing is the counter details of what not to build. I've seen some very successful SE managers who also played the PM role and could therefore translate the product roadmap into the development roadmap. Even more importantly is the iterative feedback loop of getting an early version of the product into a customer's hands to solicit feedback and revision. I've seen many PM's and SE teams avoid that messy task but it can be crucial to improving the product. I think that Apple does this really well. Intuit used to be excellent at this but they seem to have abandoned this practice.

Entrepreneurs: Good entrepreneurs can play both the PM and SEM roles but it's rare to do both well. What's an even worse practice is that too many entrepreneurs have their idea for the product but don't validate it with enough customers to see whether their idea is actually valuable to the customer. No one likes to hear that their ideas are stupid so they avoid that step. So many build products that are wonderful in some fashion but have no real market value. But when it works, it's like catching lightning in a bottle. That's the 10X play that VC's chase.

So bottom line, you're likely looking for an entrepreneur who played both the PM and SE manager role while doing real customer discovery and validation research. Or you're looking for the SEM or PM who was a former SEM who will do customer discovery with clients, former prospects and forward facing employees (client support, sales engineers, etc.) to learn what the market actually desires and can translate that into a product development roadmap that can get you from 0 to 1 to 2.

Ironically, when I interview more entrepreneur based individuals, they can do this, but they lack true product management skills.

Have others found finding individuals with the skill set difficult?

I agree - so hard to find. Look for someone with experience in test and learn environment and solid decision maker.

Lots of good replies so far -- from my perspective, the different stages often require different natural aptitudes -- the 0-1 stage has to combine innovative thinking with practical experiences to avoid a runaway sink hole. Might be interesting to connect directly on this and talk through some of what you are looking for more specifically and lay out some of the criteria people should apply around.

As a plug for myself, i would enjoy both holding the role you need or mentoring/coaching the team you do have to execute the 0-1 plan properly. Just saying ...

I have experience of starting from 0 as a developer and then transition into PM role to take the product to 1. Very few people get the opportunity to do this, forget being a PM from 0 to 1 life cycle.
I believe the product comes into being with some level of system design, feature/UI planning and programming and then the other aspects of Product Management become relevant.

Just my 2 cents. Finding Product Management resources that have developed a product idea from concept to launch/deployment is typically more common in tech/software and most people can't do this. I suggest looking for the person and not the "skills". I've personally done this for multiple products and would say the key is search for those with significant product growth experience and very good big-picture business acumen in Product Management, Voice of Customer, Sales, Marketing, and Project Management who can truly understand and with the experience to take on a product from concept to launch.

Where can I submit an application if I believe I have the skills you are looking for?

It seems recruitment is not working at the moment. I’ve built multiple enterprise level SaaS applications from scratch, always in a startup environment for both b2b and b2c with thousands of end users.

Applications covering CRM, client accounts, property management, customer portals, tenancy onboarding, data warehouse, ETL, multi brand websites, API integrations and much more.

I’ve been a developer, team lead, Director of and covered all roles in the SDLC, have always been the product owner for all products. So I have a vast experience of taking an idea / a problem / challenge from initial thought to delivery to production.

Yet I’ve applied for hundreds of product owner / product director / VP of product over the last four months and yet to have a single response to any of them.

So coming back to your question it sounds like you may need some more filter questions on the application to make sure only the people you want get through. Easy Apply must be making it impossible to filter out great talent like me when there are 500+ applicants!

I am taking a guess at this, maybe the reason why you cannot find a Product Manager that has taken a Product from a concept and drove it through execution and delivery is that maybe you are speaking with more junior-level Product Managers. I have seen a shift in Product Management in the last few years. People who graduate from college and then instantly feel that they can fill the shoes of a successful Product Manager. If you interview Leadership-level Product Managers they have more of strategic approach and usually understand all facets of Product Management. Business, market and all of the components of a proper launch. Interview and hire the more senior and experienced Product Managers and they will have the skills/experience and knowledge you are looking for. Senior level people will come at more of a premium, but at the end of the day, you will have a successful launch, as you pay for experience and the more Senior person will know the potential pitfalls ahead of time and avoid them.

What’s hard about it? You just can’t recruit from FAANGT, because Elon’s busy and Jobs is dead.

My reaction to this is :

Your trying to go too junior in your candidate search, or you're skimping on compensation to attract talent that has a long enough career to do what you're asking.

Comfort with ambiguity is a result of mastery in our craft.

Because of IT business keep hiring people without IT knowledge, I highly recomend you to visit IT vendors and disti. to check their sales department and product department, they are only focus on sales even target people no need product :) tech support and tech info are not piority :) that makes knowledge people to stay away from product manager roles :) or make it hard to get that role :)

I do understand how to do this, speaking business model canvas value circulation growth and PMD/USP, sales funnel, customer engagement, acquisition
If you are still looking, I'd like to learn more about the product!