Hopin, tech scaleup (1000+ employees), platform for organizing virtual events and conferences. Growing extremely fast.

I am Senior Product Manager.

I manage the part of the platform called stage and post-event experience - Replay, where attendees can access all content. High level product role, with lots of autonomy and goal of achieving 10x growth thanks to unlocking new product opportunities.

How big is it?‍

16 team members:
1x Engineering manager / 7x Engineers / 1x QA, QE / 1x Product Analyst / 1x Product Attorney / 1x Product Marketing Manager / 2x ux/ui designers / 1x UX researcher / 1x Product champion - representing customer success.‍

Where are your teammates located?‍

All across the world: United Kingdom, US, Uruguay, Honduras, Bulgaria, Hungary.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

I am responsible for setting the vision and strategy for product, ruthless features prioritization and saying NO more often than I say YES. I also make sure our triple ball snowman doesn’t melt and fall, meaning commercial, engineering & design are aligned and motivated to give their 100% every day.

Over communication on all channels, even when it feels like repeating yourself, alignment is key.

Listening attentively on calls, not trying to do million things at once.

Slack organization.

Provide a protective shield on your team, so they don’t get anxious when a number of new requests, changes and requirements are rocking your boat. 

Making sure that everything goes through you as a manager/leader to assess what's important first and push back before disrupting their precious focus time.

Brainstorming, ideation and team decision making -> usually the dominant personalities thrive in expressing their opinions, whereas others don’t feel that comfortable, hence a mix of team meetings combined with 1:1s when everyone is open to share feedback is crucial.

Dedicated Vibe team comes up with various crazy ideas like: 

1. Hopin got talent - where some team members share their talents (playing guitar and baby dancing in the background, rapping duet between two colleagues from two different continents).
2. Quarterly Nominations for our Hopin heroes, with awards in the categories that are our main company values like #no ego  #one step ahead  #prioritize impact.

Quiz with silly photoshopped pictures of each team member and guessing which one is real.

Just chit chat.

We use our products: sessions and stage product to meet on the forum, with plenty of engagement tools like: polls, Q/A and integrations like kahoot and slido.

I personally organise Product All Hands for all Product managers and product people in the company, that we stream live through streamyard (part of hopin) and have team members commenting in the chat, we display these comments on screen, always find funny videos at the start and make a bit of a show, but most importantly share with each other the findings, always giving these funny names: ‘Analytics Ninja’ or ‘Steve Jobs moment’ presentations.

Alignment is key. Over communication on all channels, even when it feels like repeating yourself, listening attentively on calls, and not trying to do million things at once. Product podcasts and newsletter.

But still a digestible daily dose of product news that are relevant to you is needed!

At Hopin we encourage everyone to use yearly self development budget, on best in class courses, like Reforge, that became our partner, and as a Plan manager my goal is to not only to negotiate a solid company discount 😁  but also make sure we grow as a PM community and share ideas on the forum that we have learned from the best world product leaders.