Jacqueline Sigler of GoDaddy: Product Managers Think Holistically
Think more holistically about your customers’ experience with your product shared Jaqueline Sigler at GoDaddy, for my interview series Austin Voice Of Product. Our interview has been edited for clarity.
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Austin VOP #104
What was your path to product management?
Product management is a very unique role with many paths to get there. Mine started following close to nine years in finance; I worked for a public financial software and data analytics company, in a couple of roles but primarily in corporate strategy and mergers and acquisition. I really liked that role and there are aspects that I carried forward. It was cross-functional where I interacted with stakeholders across the organization; additionally, no day was like the other — there was minimal routine and I liked that as well. Finally, it was strategic thinking three years out — looking at the competitive landscape, growth opportunities and recognizing trade-offs of new investments versus P&L constraints. But I reached a point where I didn’t care about what I was talking about anymore from a subject matter perspective and I said to myself, you know, I don’t mind working hard and a lot, but I want to care about it and feel more gratification in it. Soul searching ensued, after which I ultimately decided to go to business school as a way to make a career pivot.
I knew I wanted to be in Austin in a more entrepreneurial environment — and a change from New York and London, where I had worked and lived. I also knew I did not want to be in a big corporation or do consulting or finance. That is where the knowns stopped, and once I was in business school my version of recruiting sessions was to go to startup events all around Austin. I did know I wanted to be in a more decision-making role — moving beyond being a facilitator of decisions. Plus I wanted to understand more behind the scenes, how software gets built, not to be a coder, but to be more proficient technically.
Amongst these factors, it was a natural evolution towards product. I did an internship at Civitas over the summer and then worked in product marketing my second year at Spreadfast (now Khoros). I wanted to have that experience in product marketing and see if I liked it; decided product was the path.
I love it now and definitely see myself spending the next chapter of my career doing and thriving in it.
What advice do you give to aspiring product leaders?
One of the scary things about product is a lot of people say you have to have a tech background. That is valid at specific organizations, but generally speaking, I don’t think that is true. One of the areas of product I gravitated towards — and I think is actually really of value, is user experience. Are things easy to find? Do you get a positive feedback experience when you complete a task? Is it aesthetically pleasing? Those types of questions are part of the true nature of a product manager and also where you work in close alignment with product design. My advice to aspiring product professionals would be, spend more time on taking a UX or a customer journey related class. Be cognizant about what makes you like certain products.
You also have to think more holistically about the experience because the product is not just the actual product. For example, it is the notifications that you get, do you get bombarded and ultimately you cancel or unsubscribe?
It is important to understand how to work with engineers and become familiar with technical concepts and the agile process. Also know that engineers are not expecting a product person to code.
What have you read/watched/listened to that has inspired you lately?
I recently took a course with Section4. It was a two-week product training sprint that is taught both synchronously and asynchronously by business school professors. There were several modules — one about three elements of a product. First is the actual product — such as your iPhone and its features like texting, browsing and apps. Second is the augmented product which are the related experiences around it such as the subscriptions and services it offers. The third is the core product which is much more emotional and intrinsic in nature. Why do people keep coming back to your product? For the iPhone the reason customers keep buying the phone despite the high cost is the status associated with it. For Amazon, their core product is convenience and fast shipping.
What is exciting and challenging about the product you are working on now?
The main product I work on is our social media software and services. One of the benefits of a third party software provider like GoDaddy is that a small business owner can go to one page, create a post and publish to all social networks in one go and then see the results all in one place like page metrics. It reduces all the extra time spent having to go and view results channel by channel.
I spent my first year dedicated to building that unifying view — then worked on elevating it by helping customers think of what to post. We want to help take the guesswork out of it and reduce the level of effort. It’s exciting because you have to iterate on how to do this effectively as well as gratifying because I know we are helping business owners and hopefully their businesses. The challenge is once you start making recommendations, it sets an expectation they will keep coming.
The other challenge is social networks are in such demand and use by other software providers. I do not want to be dismissive, but some networks are extremely unstable. It is hard to make tradeoffs of ensuring you are delivering value for customers while also needing to spend time to ensure your products are working and online.
How might we build a stronger product community in Austin?
One of the things I really missed during the pandemic has been the networking. I think this experience has shown us that we can accomplish a lot through video and remote work. But the networking aspect, the in-person interactions are hard to replicate. I talked about the Section4 product training that was all virtual and well done, but there is something more human about meeting people in-person and building those connections. Once we are past covid, I know we will have a thriving community with a lot of meetups and other opportunities to connect. I just look forward to getting back to those things. I think what you are doing with Austin Voice of Product to highlight different product managers around Austin is a great complement.
During my MBA I went to a number of product meetups and it was great to hear panel discussions about a specific topic. Hearing others’ perspectives, especially as someone new to product and startups was so helpful. This provided a window into a world that I did not know and gave me comfort that oh this person is nice, normal. It helped things not seem so intimidating. You could start learning the lingo and feel like you were part of this world.
Last question, what is your favorite product?
Spotify, and the reason why is that I am a music lover. But in addition, I have seen how the product has adapted and grown so much over the years. Simple things like their autoplay feature: spur of the moment I’m in the mood for a song — I put the song on and then when it’s done, it starts automatically playing a selection that is similar to that song becoming a mood-accompanying playlist.
I also like their Spotify Wrap feature: at the end of the year it will tell you what you have listened to most by artist, by genre and they make it so easy to share. That is brilliant marketing. It also creates community by being able to share with your friends via text or Instagram story.
One of the other things that is more subtle but that I appreciate as a product person, is they don’t send me any emails or they are very infrequent. Their product notifications are visually nice and also easy to dismiss. It does not feel like they are interrupting my day like other apps that have a huge product growth team and are aggressive about trying to get to use the app or upgrade. Spotify has found a sweet spot.
Thank you, Jaqueline!
Austin VOP is an interview series with current and future product leaders to inspire the next generation of product leaders.
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