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👋 Hey friends!
If you're interviewing for PM roles, you'll probably get asked some version of this:
"What would you do in your first 90 days?"
A lot of people answer it like an onboarding checklist. Learn the tools, meet the team, ship something. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it doesn't tell the hiring manager much about how you'd actually work.
No designer on your team? Lovable is what I suggested to the new PM in this story for turning ideas into prototypes without waiting on design.
Nobody's coming to approve your idea
People assume that real businesses get built by other people with more resources. It's how great ideas get stuck in notes apps and conversations.
But you don't need six months and a developer's salary to validate your concept. You just need a weekend. Describe what you want to exist and Lovable builds it: a real site, a real product, ready to accept real payments from real customers. Not a mockup to show people. An actual thing they can use.
You don't need anyone's sign-off to get started. Take $5 off your first month.
Discount of $5 applies to first month of any paid plan. You need to sign up via this webpage in order to claim the discount. The discount applies to new and returning users without an active paid plan. Terms apply.
On Monday night I got on a call with a senior CSM who's about to become the first and only PM at her company. Nobody posted the role. She'd been filling the product gap for a while, and now her company is building a role around her. Her job description is still being worked out, she'll likely have one engineer, and she'll share designers with other teams. She's reading Inspired to get ready.
I started in customer success at Crowd Content before I moved into product, so I saw a lot of myself in her.
When we got to her first 90 days, she already knew where to start: listen, and get to know the product. So we spent the rest of the call building a plan around that.
(I know she's going to do great.)
Here's the plan. It works whether you're starting the job or just interviewing for it.
💡 The point of your first 90 days is to figure out what matters before you start deciding what to build.
1. Listen first (days 1 to 30)
Book a 1:1 with everyone you'll work with: your manager, engineering, design, sales and CS. I'd ask everyone the same four questions so you can compare answers:
What do you think our top priority should be?
What do customers complain about most?
What's been stuck the longest, and why?
What would make working with a PM great for you?
Then sit in on customer calls and engineering meetings, and mostly just listen.
(This is harder than it sounds. You'll want to jump in with ideas. Write them down instead, which is step two.)
If two people tell you different top priorities, write both down. You'll want to understand why before you pick a side.
Ask everyone the same four questions. Where their answers don't match is where your PM work starts.
2. Write down everything you notice (start on day one)
In your first few weeks, you'll notice things that people who've been there for years stopped seeing. Give it a few months and you'll stop seeing them too, so write them down now.
I'd keep it to four columns:
What I noticed
Where it happens
Who it affects
Small fix or big problem?
Use the product like a customer would, start to finish, and add every spot where you get stuck.
If something bugs you and nobody can explain why it works that way, ask. Sometimes there's no good reason, and it's an easy fix.
3. Find one quick win (days 30 to 60)
Ask your manager: "What number are we held to?" or “What’s the biggest metric we want to move right now”
If you're interviewing, ask this one in the interview. It's a great question to have in your back pocket.
For her, it's revenue. Then go back through your list and look for ideas that connect to that number, can ship in a week or two, and can be measured.
These are usually small:
moving a button customers can't find
rewording a confusing label
cutting an extra step from a key flow.
A win like this helps you build trust with engineering, and it gives leadership something easy to point to. If an idea doesn't connect to the number, save it for later.
4. Keep a list of small, ready work (ongoing)
With one engineer, one big project can hold everything up. So keep a short list of small things that are ready to build, each with the metric it moves and a rough size.
When the big project is stuck waiting on a decision, your engineer can pick something off the list, and you get more time for discovery.
5. Start on the bigger picture (days 60 to 90)
The quick wins should be heading somewhere. By day 90, I'd write one page:
Where the product should be in a year
The biggest customer problems in the way
Two or three bets you'd make to get there
Share it as a draft and ask people to poke holes in it. If you don't have your own designer, get close with one designer you can run ideas by, and build rough prototypes so people have something to react to.
What this sounds like in an interview
"My first month would be mostly listening. I'd meet everyone I'll work with, ask each of them the same four questions, and sit in on customer and engineering calls. I'd keep a list of everything that confuses me as a new user. Around day 30, I'd ask what number the team is held to and pick one small change tied to it that we can ship and measure quickly. I'd keep a list of small, ready work so engineering always has something to pick up. By day 90, I'd share a one-page draft of where I think the product should go, based on what I heard. I've spent years talking to customers in CS, so the listening part is where I can help right away."
🎯 Try this: pick a company you'd love to work for and write your own version of that answer, one line per step. Then record yourself saying it and aim for under two minutes.
It's much easier to practise this now than in the middle of an interview.
When a hiring manager asks this question, they're trying to picture you in the job. If your answer starts with listening and ties your first win to a number they care about, that picture gets a lot easier.
Hit reply and tell me: what's the first question you'd ask your new team?
See you next week.
P.S. Haven't made it to an interview yet? I can help you get there. Book a mentorship session with me on ADPList and we'll figure out what's standing between you and your first PM interview: https://adplist.org/mentors/stefanie-brown?session=63185-mentorship-session
If you're keeping a list like the one in step two, Wispr Flow lets you say your notes out loud instead of typing them. Handy when you're between calls.
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