Getting the First PM Role

"I want to be a Product Manager." I get this all the time from MBA students. When I ask them what kind of PM they want to be, or what problems they want to solve, I get silence.

Here's the analogy I use.

Saying "I want to be a PM" is like saying "I want to sit in the window seat on the left side of the train." 🚉

Ok, but *where is the train going?*

What do you feel drawn towards? Are you excited about solving consumer problems? In finance? Healthcare? Climate? Are you excited about working in a scrappy startup or do you prefer to be in a big company that has some structure?

Where the train is going matters more than the seat you take.

A PM at a big bank is doing something very different from a PM building a lending app. A PM in an early-stage company is nothing like a PM in Big Tech.

If you don't care about the problem space, industry, business model, you're just trying to get a seat on a random train hoping for a good view.

And here's the thing - your first seat might not even be PM. 🎟️

If you know you're on the right train, take *any* available seat. Operations, marketing, sales, customer success, sales engineering - these roles can all help you build the skills, context, and relationships to eventually switch seats into PM.

If you get the window seat right away, great. But if not, don't stress. Just get on the right train, see everything you can, and be ready to move when the opportunity comes.

Enjoy the ride!