Journey to Product Management
In my quest to pivot to Technology, I have held many informational interviews and have heard a multitude of ways to enter this ever-expanding industry. I now have the great fortune of being accepted into the EDGE UP 2.0 (Energy to Digital Growth Education and Upskilling Project) “Product Management — Specialization in Digital Marketing” program. In my current course, “Introduction to Project Management and Product Leadership”, I have been given the assignment to conduct an informational interview with a Product Manager (PM) in a company that I desire to work for. For this, I had the pleasure of conducting an informational interview with Wade Lahring, who has been a PM at Benevity for over 3 years.
Benevity in a Nutshell
A bit of background before I dive into our discussion. I’ve been following Benevity for about a year now. Janeen Speer, Chief People Officer, spoke highly about the gender balance as well as DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging) at the September 2021 Tech West Collective conference. My jaw dropped when I heard her say that 71% of the executive team, at Benevity, are females (something unheard of in Oil and Gas, my former industry). So, I thought to myself, I must investigate this company.
Through my investigation, I found that Benevity is in short, amazing. Below are some quick stats:
· Benevity is a Calgary-based B2B company that provides charitable donation-management and grant-management SaaS platforms.
· Founded in 2008 by Bryan de Lottinville, who previously worked as COO of iStockphoto (sold to Getty Images in 2006), with a team of four software developers.
· In 2016, Benevity was the third-fastest growing start-up in Canada with over 5,800% revenue growth.
· In October 2019, Benevity raised $40 million in Series C funding from existing investors JMI Equity and General Atlantic, which valued the company at near US$400 million market cap.
· In December 2020, Benevity achieved unicorn status when Hg Capital purchased a majority stake in the company for US$1.1 billion.
· Some of its 650+ customers include Nike, Coca-Cola, Google, Visa and Apple.
Bryan de Lottinville in 2008 recognized that there was a gap in the straightforwardness of employee donation and volunteering and created Benevity to fill the gap. The company’s products manage and track their employees’ charitable giving, promote charitable giving and volunteering, while reducing the costs of companies processing donations themselves. Ultimately, it uses a SaaS approach to ensure simple, secure and easy giving that makes user-driven philanthropy part of everyday life.
Wade Lahring’s Journey to Product Management
When I found Lahring’s profile on LinkedIn, I was excited to speak with him since he had a non-traditional background for a Product Manager. Lahring’s degree is in Business Administration Marketing and Management, and has an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor. However, upon graduation, he knew he wanted to be a Product Manager, a role typically for individuals with a combination of technical and business skills.
He joined Benevity in 2016 during the company’s rapid growth phase and when there was a high potential for upward mobility given the limited number of employees. When he first started, he was a Relationship Coordinator, but then quickly moved to be a Relationship Manager followed by a Product Manager. How did he accomplish this? And what makes him successful in this role?
He attributes his success to the following:
1. Believed that there would be a path for him to become a PM
2. Trusted in Benevity, its growth trajectory and values
3. Informed anyone who would listen that he wanted to be a PM.
4. Volunteered at Product YYC where he got to meet and form a network of PMs to help inform his decisions.
5. He had a super boss that provided him with career coaching and helped him achieve his goals.
What makes him successful in this role and how has he overcome challenges:
1. To fill out his technical skills, Lahring took Codeacademy courses for about a year, and got to the point where he built a website (using HTML, CSS and Javascript) hosted on AWS. This allowed him to better communicate with his technical teammates.
2. Spent time laying the foundation in previous roles to understand Benevity’s business.
3. He has a lot of hustle.
My Pivot
My concern with my pivot is that I do not have the technical skills that will allow me to be an effective communicator with my technical teammates. So, as I probed further on this question, Lahring mentioned several individuals he knew that used the strategy of coming into a tech company with no technical skills, learned the business, filled in the software gaps and developed a reputation/trust to move to a PM role.
He indicated that it’s rare to get a PM role without prior PM experience. Equally rare is to find Junior or Associate PM roles, unless with very large (Google sized) companies, but even then, it’s just based on post-secondary credentials. Thus, his advice was to either find a rapidly growing company or a start-up, where they may take more risk since they struggle to find people, if I wanted to start out my career pivot as a PM.
If I am to take the less direct approach to being a PM, Lahring’s advice was to be open to anything tech and to let people know that I’ve had a great career in oil and gas and I’m looking for an exciting new opportunity in technology where I can apply my business skills.
Where would I fit in a company like Benevity?
Yes, I had to ask this question! As I mentioned earlier, I really want to work for this company. Lahring explained that roughly 1/3 of the company is dedicated to Client Success, which includes implementation (initial software rollout and further client support), 1/3 technical (designers, developers and product managers) requiring specialize degrees, 1/3 makes up HR, marketing, sales, finance and operations. Based on my background, he could see an entry into the company from the side of Client Success or Operations.
Success of Benevity
To finish off our conversation, I asked Lahring why he thought Benevity was such a successful company. Firstly, the company was funded out of pocket by Bryan de Lottinville for the first two years and they had a great team behind him. Secondly, the original founding team was smart and were killing the incumbent company, JK Group, where everything was paper transactions. Benevity “simply” moved this online and were first movers in this space.
Despite being well funded, well managed and having a solid platform, Lahring recognizes that Benevity cannot become complacent, as once they were the disrupters and now, they’re trying to be disrupted.
Stay Tuned
Investments and growth in technology will not stop in our lifetimes and with more individuals making the switch to tech, I hope that I can inspire others with future blog posts about the EDGE UP course work, other informational interviews and my overall journey.
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