Product Team Kicks Off!

One of the Tech Club’s three goals is to build the key skills that will make our members successful in the Tech sector. Since many of our members are interested in Product Management and Start-Ups, we decided to start our own Product Team. The goal? Go through the entire product development process from identifying pain points to testing hypotheses to prototyping to launching a product. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? We think so. Fun? Absolutely!

So where are we now?

With a small group of 7 MBAs from backgrounds as diverse as travel, finance, sales, history, and engineering, we have a diversity of talent, opinions, and skills. We meet weekly and started at the very beginning. Our first task was to frame our thinking by talking about apps or websites that we like and why. Among the apps we liked were Opentable and Box and we noted that we liked them because of ease of use and because they allow us to control things like when we pay a bill that we could not control before. Empowering users though an easy and beautiful user experience emerged as the key to impressing us and a guidepost for us to strive toward.

Listing Pain Points

Our next step was to identify and prioritize pain points in our lives that we could consider addressing. We came up with 18 different areas and the each chose the five we were most interested in addressing. Finally we chose all the pain points that received multiple votes and began hypothesizing ways to address them. The ones we chose to address were Real Time Networking and Company Visibility, Forgetting Accessories, Grocery Price Info, Unsustainable Class Reading Amounts, MBA Shared Calendar, Car Valuations, Funding for Higher Ed, and Network Dead Zones.

Whiteboard of Pain Points

Hypothesizing

Our next step was to begin hypothesizing different ways we might be able to address these pain points and brainstorming how we could test them to see which are worth green-lighting to the prototype phase. To date we have only focused on the Forgetting Accessories pain point and came up with three approaches, each focused on a different dimension of the issues.

Reminder app to make sure you don’t leave the house without what you need. You would specify what you are doing and depending on the response the app would serve up a list of what you should bring. Future iterations could learn your preferences and adapt recommendations.
RFID chips clipped to important items that communicate with phone and let you know in real time if they are separated.
A pick-up service that will retrieve your lost items from bars or restaurants the next day and deliver back to you.

Testing the Concepts

As a group, we were most excited about the RFID chips and team members were quick to start browsing for chips. The keeper of our (very limited) finances, however, I had to lay down the law saying I won’t spend any money until I have evidence that there is a strong desire for the product. Understanding this, we felt that surveys were the best way to test the market for RFID and the pick-up service. For the reminder app, we felt that survey’s may not be the best choice but are going to run a FB add to see if people would add emails to a waitlist.

Next Steps

At present, we are still in the hypothesis testing face. We will address a few other pain points and then use the results of our tests to determine which ideas to pursue further. Check back in a couple of weeks to see where we stand!

-David LoVerme is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the President of the Grad Tech Club

Grad Tech Summer: David LoVerme

E-Mail: david.loverme@bc.edu
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidloverme
Twitter: @davidloverme

-Where did I work? What does the company do?
I spent the summer at Continuum Managed Services working on the development and launch of an IT Channel specific file sync and share product called Sync247. Continuum provides white label IT software and support that allows Managed Service Providers and IT Consultants to provide easily scalable and unparalleled value and support to small and medium businesses.

-What was my role?
As the Product Manager MBA Intern, I worked closely with the Product Manager to help facilitate our Alpha, Beta, and Limited Availability programs. My duties ran the gamut of Product Management and Marketing writing requirements documents, performing competitive research, drafting a pricing and packaging guide, and most importantly communicating with Beta partners to collect, analyze, and operationalize feedback to provide meaningful value.

-How did I find the internship?
I met the product manager at the Boston Product Management Association’s Product Camp conference. Between tweets and a wall posting we connected to talk about a Product Marketing internship at Continuum. While that wasn’t the right fit, we made a good connection and Continuum called a few days later asking if I would be willing to interview for a Product Management internship…yes please!

-What are the top 2-3 classes from BC that have been most helpful?
Brand Management with Jerry Smith was tremendously useful. It gave me a lot of tools and frameworks that I use regularly. Finance is also key to any product and a strong understanding helped prioritize the what and whens of Product Management. Data Analysis is key to Product Management and Marketing Research was crucial in developing the tools and skills needed to prove a concept in the market.

-How will my experiences this summer inform my final year?
Having the ability to have such an influential and hands on product management role solidified my decision to pursue the field and helped me laser focus on exactly what sub-sections of Tech would make the right fit. The culture at Continuum is great and reinforced how big a difference that makes.

-What energizes you about the Tech field?
Tech is full of really smart and ambitious people who push each other to be best they can be. The idea that nothing is impossible is more than just a saying in Tech, people really believe it and the impossible truly does become possible every day. The opportunity to be on the cutting edge of innovation is exciting to me and attracts me to the industry.

-What advice would you give to MBA looking to break into Tech and/or your particular space?
Network and talk with as many people as you possibly can. Ask them to share their story, then shut up and listen! Not everything people say is revolutionary but the more people you hear from, the better a picture of the industry you can get. Go to conferences and career fairs, use social media, and apply widely…you never know what is going to be the difference maker.

-David LoVerme is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the President of the Grad Tech Club

IBM’s Ginni Rometty: How Big Data, the Cloud, and Engagement are Transforming Every Industry

Yesterday, several of our members had the incredible opportunity to join the Chief Executive’s Club of Boston to listen to IBM’s CEO and Chair Ginni Rometty share her thoughts on the current state of Industry transformation. These events are normally limited to the top executives in the Boston area so naturally we jumped at the chance when given the invite. What we didn’t know was that IBM would announce it’s tenth straight quarter of revenue decline and the divestment of its semiconductor manufacturing division just a couple days earlier, adding some serious energy to the event. While Mrs. Rometty would touch on these in the Q&A, she chose to keep the talk itself focused on overall trends relevant to the executives in the audience, the majority of whom worked in finance.

The theme of Mrs. Rometty’s speech was simple, there is nothing new about disruption but what makes today different is that there is not one trend transforming business but three concurrently. Furthermore, while they sound like they are Tech Industry trends, they are infiltrating every industry with the potential to reorder them from top to bottom. It will be the companies that understand and embrace these that will be the winners. So what are the three trends? No surprise to Tech Club members here: Big Data, Cloud, and Engagement.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty addressing the crowd.

Big Data: Mrs. Rometty pointed out that neither data nor analytics are new to business but rather it is the type of data and analytics that is changing. Traditionally businesses have used descriptive or perhaps even predictive analytics. Mrs. Rometty compared these to navigation. Descriptive analytics can tell you what route is best to take based on past data. Predictive can give the best of several options based on data available at the time of the decision and what is expected to happen, but prescriptive is like a GPS that constantly adapts the route in real time according to a variety of constantly changing factors. Applying prescriptive analytics to business is not easy but Mrs. Rometty asserted that companies who succeed have 8% better retention, 10% higher share of wallet, and are 2.5 times faster to market than their competition. Mrs. Rometty urged the audience to use data as a weapon and suggested naming a Chief Data Officer as a good first step.

Cloud: Mrs. Rometty began by informing the audience that while “Cloud” can be an ambiguous term the exact technology behind it is unimportant but what is crucial is understanding that the idea of “Anything as a Service” is transforming all industries. Business models are changing and the keys to winning are going to be speed and agility. Finding the right balance of on and off premise computing, software, and services will be the key to unlocking the competitive advantages innate in the next generation of business models. Mrs. Rometty reminded the crowd that its $7B of acquisitions make IBM the largest digital agency in the world and reaffirmed her commitment to helping IBM customers “reimagine the world”.

Engagement: The final trend that Mrs. Rometty spoke about was Engagement. Generally when people think engagement they think social and they think consumer. However, she was adamant in reminding the crowd that IBM is a B2B company. Social engagement, especially via mobile devices are the production engines of how work gets done. It is crucial to embrace this while underscoring it all with security. In answering a question, she added to her thoughts on security, saying “Whatever you do, you don’t do enough!” She prescribed 5 key actions to take:

Raise the security IQ of the internal team. 60% of all errors are internal, and 99% of those are accidental. It is crucial to train, test, and trick employees to accomplish this.
Establish a permanent fast response team. Cyber attacks are a question of when, not if.
BYOD is here. You need technology and policies to manage it. (IBM and Apple’s partnership provides this)
Protect your crown jewels. Know what the true sources of value to your organization are and protect them from all angles.
Make security a corporate priority governed by value not budget. “It’s not in the budget,” can never be a justification for leaving key assets vulnerable. Businesses should make the necessary trade-offs to ensure they are protected.

BC MBAs David LoVerme, Sean Backe, Caroline Kurz, Natalie Sheehan, and Becky Webber

While the overall tone was positive, one audience member did challenge Mrs. Rometty about the poor financial performance, particularly in the area of declining revenues. While she did not seem particularly happy about the question, she certainly was not unprepared. Mrs. Rometty emphasized her focus on rebuilding what’s underneath and offloading declining divisions. She pointed out that she had just offloaded not just $7B of revenue but also a half billion dollar loss. “We don’t need more revenue with empty calories,” she told the crowd, “what I do to add margin is much more important than revenue growth.” Instead, Mrs. Rometty highlighted IBM’s focus on shuffling IBM’s business mix to be much more focused on high growth areas.

Jettisoning the disastrous Roadmap 2015 is certainly a step in the right direction but with the huge lead Amazon and Google have in the Cloud, and the speed and agility of start-ups in the Big Data space the road ahead for Big Blue will be difficult. Commercializing Watson and offloading the hardware divisions are good moves but it may be too little too late. Whatever happens, however, the opportunity to hear such an incredibly experienced and influential executive as Ginni Rometty is one for which we are truly grateful. Her observations on the changing business landscape are insightful and promising for our members who continue to strengthen skills in Big Data, the Cloud, and Social Engagement via our in class experiences and the hands-on opportunities the Grad Tech Club provides. A huge thank you to the Chief Executive Club of Boston and our old friend (and former assistant Dean) Warren Zola!

-David LoVerme is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the President of the Grad Tech Club

Michael Puopolo-HIRED

Key Stats

Grad Year: 2016
Concentration: Corporate Finance
Undergrad: Lehigh University, ’08 – International Relations
Target Role: Strategy or Finance internship, Summer 2015
Key Skills: Excel, HTML, SQL, JavaScript, CRM and ATS experience
Fun Fact: In high school, I was co-captain of a nationally-ranked Academic Bowl team.

Michael is a first-year MBA student with experience recruiting for the strategy consulting, SaaS, and pharmaceutical industries. Before attending Boston College, Michael graduated from Lehigh University in 2008 with a BA in International Relations and a minor in Economics. Michael worked for three years on the recruiting team at The Boston Consulting Group, partnering with BCG project leaders to develop and execute successful recruiting strategies at Boston-area business school campuses. Most recently, Michael worked in Talent Acquisition for Bullhorn, a global, equity-backed SaaS-model company. With this exposure to a tech company, Michael enjoyed the intellectual challenges and fast-paced environment that come with a growing company. In his internship search, Michael is looking for a growing company that will continue to develop his analytical mindset and challenge him to learn new systems and technologies.

Email: Michael.Puopolo@bc.edu

Twitter: @mpuopolo

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/MPuopolo

Let The Marketing Begin!

October Marketing Move: Facebook Ads

Now that the semester is in full swing, and our official Tech Club website is up and running, it’s time to start a little marketing to draw some eyes to the content that we’ll be developing throughout the school year. As the VP of Marketing for the club, I’ve been working with David LoVerme on some ideas for how to raise the online profile of our website and there’s a great many options to choose from so…

As you know, our club mission is to develop and solidify concrete skills through hands on experience, and digital marketing is a huge part of that! Every month we will try out a new digital marketing approach to increase interest in the BC Grad Tech Club through our various online channels: our website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter account. We’re kicking it off this month with a goal of driving traffic to the Hire An Eagle page of the website using Facebook ads. I don’t know if any of you have ever given Facebook ads but it’s surprisingly easy for a first timer like myself. The interface is simple and gives step by step guidance for setting your targets, writing the copy and laying out the ad. We’ve decided to make use of the native A/B testing function built into the interface because, why not? For those unfamiliar, A/B testing involves having two or more versions of an ad, and keeping all elements of the ad constant save for the one element that you’re testing. Often it will be a headline, and image, or a call to action. This allows you to zero in on how each of the small pieces of your advertisement affects audience engagement. We are testing three version of the ad with different pictures, as below. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be using FB Ad Manager to look at the impressions and click rates we’re getting on the three versions. Which of the three do you think will be the most successful?

If you’re looking for jobs/internships…

Our ad is targeting Boston College alums who work in the technology, business and IT industries. We’re looking to reach potential employers who may still feel connected to BC, and the more Eagles we have available for hire the better! If you’re still looking for internships or full time positions please email us and we’ll add you to the roster!

Do you have any ideas or suggestions for new online marketing methods we could try in the coming months? Our budget may be small, but our ambition is huge!

– Alaina Tucker is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the VP of Marketing for the Grad Tech Club

ALAINA TUCKER-HIRED

Key Stats

Grad Year: 2015
Concentration: Product & Brand Mgmt /Marketing Analytics
Undergrad: University of Virginia ‘05
Summer Internship: Ad Sales at DIRECTV
Target Role: Business Development/Addressable Ad Sales Analytics
Key Skills: MS Office, Adobe CS, SPSS
Fun Fact: I am a huge fan of Stephen King and have read all 50+ of his books.

Alaina is a marketing professional with 7 years of experience under her belt. She graduated from UVA in 2005 with a BA in Anthropology, an unlikely subject which kindled her early passion for marketing. Alaina has held a variety of marketing roles and gained a broad skillset including account management, event management, CRM, copy writing and advertising. Most recently, Alaina worked in Business Development for a local web design and development agency and became skilled with lead generation and nurturing in the e-commerce space. This experience in a technology focused company sparked a fascination with the role of analytics in marketing, which motivated her to return to school to gain the quantitative skills to necessary to grow her career in the direction of analytics-driven marketing strategy in the technology industry.

In her first year at Boston College, Alaina attended the Tech Trek West field study and is terribly proud of the above photo taken at Facebook’s HQ in Menlo Park, California.

Email: Alaina.tucker@bc.edu

Twitter: @atucker820

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/AlainaTucker

Ello: @Cedarberry

Googlers, Analytics, and Google Correlate

Last night Googlers from the Consumer Insights team visited our Analytics and BI Class. The presentation was fascinating and really made our coursework come alive. One of the tools we looked as was Google Correlate and as brief assignment for class, I wrote a quick blog post about my experiences playing around with it and thought I would share it here as well:

Our guests from Google’s consumer insights group definitely peaked my interest so I thought I would have some fun looking at different searches I have done today and what correlates based on recent google searches. While we know and are constantly reminded that correlation does not equal causation, I thought it would be fun to hypothesize some explanations. Some are legitimate and some just for laughs. Enjoy and feel free to add your own.

Job Interview

Top Correlations: Analyst, Product Manager

Most interesting: Pass Drug Test

My Take: I had an interview this morning and was trying to make sure I got the most common questions covered. Looks like I am not alone as “common questions”, “offer letters” and other such queries related to the job search are commonplace. It also looks like people are very interested in my old job “analyst” and my new job “Product Manager”. We also see that a number of people having job interviews may also be recreational drug users and concerned about their ability to pass a drug test. While there are no hard numbers attached, this suggests that a large number of professionals in the US may be users.

Wedding Photographer

Top Correlations: Wedding Flowers, Wedding Planners

Most Interesting: Free Baby

My Take: I was searching because a friend of mine is a highly rated wedding photographer and I was interested to see what his reviews said. It looks like, not surprisingly, that most people are actually searching for wedding photographers when planning a wedding and therefore also looking for other vendors. What is less obvious is what exactly a “Free Baby” is and why those seeking Wedding Photographers are curious about them. I know I promised hypotheses so I will venture one that is completely absurd: Couples who are both planning a wedding and have no candidates for ring-bearers or flower girls are looking to lock them down now but have just seen the cost of wedding photography and other vendors and therefore needed to get the young ones for very free.

Leveraged Buyout

Top Correlation: LBO

Most Interesting: APA Style Guide, Babelfish Translator

My Take: I searched this because of my corporate finance class and LBO makes sense as it is the acronym. More interesting, however, is APA Style Guide and Babelfish Translator. Granted they are in the .6 range below Google’s .8 benchmark but correlated nonetheless. APA Style Guide suggests that the majority of people interested in LBOs are academics studying corporate finance (like myself) and that those actually taking part in them are both few and generally knowledgeable enough to not need to Google it. I did not know what BabelFish translator was until now but apparently it is the oldest english translation site on the web. While Yahoo! replaced it with Bing it still exists to redirect and apparently is still used enough to show up in search results frequently. Not surprising based on the assumption that most people searching LBOs are students is the fact that non-native english speakers studying corporate finance might need frequent translation.

I’ve had some fun with these but even in a generally unguided exploration of Google Correlate we begin to see how it good be used to create hypotheses. They would need to be tested of course but the the business and academic use cases certainly make sense.

-David LoVerme is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the President of the Grad Tech Club

Kori Kenerson — HIRED

Concentration: Business Analytics

Grad Year: 2015
Undergrad: Williams College ‘09
Summer Internship: FP&A Intern at Ocean Spray Cranberries
Target Role: Quantitative / Data Analyst
Key Skills: MS Office, SPSS, R, SQL
Fun Fact: One of my favorite summer activities is clamming, which is of course followed by shucking, frying and eating.

Kori is a second year MBA candidate with a passion for business analytics and a background in investment management. In her previous role as a Senior Investment Analyst at Permal Capital Management, a private equity fund-of-funds and secondary investment firm based in Boston, she was largely responsible for utilizing a strong analytical skill-set in constructing financial models and ad-hoc quantitative analyses to assist in the investment decision-making process. She learned that what she enjoyed most about her experience at Permal was being able to transform data into insight, i.e., putting a story to the numbers. Her passion for analytics stems from this realization, and returning to school has allowed her to further explore this area of interest. Kori’s academic project work with Zipcar, for instance, provided hands-on, practical experience working on an analytics initiative. Along with a team of four others, she designed a scoring mechanism that served as a tool for evaluating expansion opportunities into new locations as well as a step-by-step process implementation guide that directed Zipcar toward a universal model and data-driven strategy. Additionally, as the VP of Analytics for BC’s Graduate Technology Club, she’s hoping to create opportunities for graduate students to develop their data science “hard” skills through practical learning experiences and to gain exposure to Boston’s local analytics scene through networking and educational events. Outside of class, Kori is working on developing her programming skills with the goal of one day becoming fluent in a coding language. You can also find her playing basketball, soccer or flag football with the BC MBA folk.

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/kori-kenerson/17/351/bb2

Talking Shop with Facebook PMs

Earlier this week, members of the BC Grad Tech Club had the fantastic opportunity to visit Facebook’s Cambridge office to breakfast with Facebookers involved with the Rotational Product Manager Program. We learned about the opportunities at Facebook and generally talked shop about what Product Management means at Facebook and how a company with 1.3 billion monthly active users can create a product that can be pushed out globally and still feels incredibly personal and tailored to the individual. The RPM program is a fantastic opportunity and we are incredibly grateful to Facebookers Ashley Chinn, Greg Marra, and Layla Amjadi for sharing their morning, their insights, and their breakfast with us!

Grad Techers David LoVerme, Nicole Gonzalez, and Marin Rowe in Facebook’s Cambridge office

Even as an experienced product manager myself, I learned a great deal in just a few minutes talking with our friends from Facebook and they were kind enough to allow me to share what I learned here on BCGradTechClub.net. Over the last year I have talked to hundreds of product managers and gotten a myriad of different answers when I asked what a PM does. One of the best and most accessible descriptions I have heard came during the breakfast from Facebooker Greg Marra. “A Product Manager is like a conductor of an orchestra,” he said, even though the conductor doesn’t actually play any of the individual instruments, he or she brings everyone together and coordinates each individual part so that the end result is better than it would be otherwise. Likewise, a product manager’s job is to synthesize the team so that each individual member can focus on putting their best foot forward. While some companies have their PM team sit together, at Facebook, each PM is assigned to a Product Team consisting of about 10 engineers, a product designer, an analyst, and a product manager. Within the team, the PM’s role varies throughout the life cycle of the product but is always related to defining the course and keeping the team on track. At Facebook, product teams follow an iterative cycle of Understand–>Explore–>Execute. While the team operates as a whole, responsibility for identifying the problem to solve, identifying possible approaches and narrowing in on one, and working with engineering to build it lives with the Product Manager. Along the way, the PM must plan, set milestones, define goals, and define success.

Interestingly, however, while it really seems like the PM is the leader of the team (after all manager is in the job title!) he or she has no direct reports. I’ve often heard said, a PM has a lot of influence but no real authority. Direct reports or not, a PM must deliver and therefore, setting the right vision and rallying everyone to the cause is crucial. PM’s must be able to adapt their language and mannerisms to their audience, speaking the language of business with executives, technology with engineers, and data with analysts. Regardless of background, Layla joked, business people are going to think you are tech geeks and engineers are going to think you are business only but if you recognize and accept this and can prove yourself as just a little more savvy than the average bear you will win the respect of everyone and gain the influence you need. Flexibility, intellectual curiosity, and “strong opinions loosely held” are key to the success in the role.

Grad Tech President David LoVerme at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters on Grad TechTrek West 2014

One of the most eye opening things about our visit was getting a glimpse into the culture of Facebook the company. With 1.3 Billion users, Facebook is ubiquitous. Everyone knows the social network and everyone has an opinion. Lost sometimes, however, is the fact that it is a real company led by incredibly talented and passionate people. The company’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. They have a poster on the wall asking the question “Are we a tech company?” without a definite answer but rather as a means to stimulate real self-examination. Everything the company does is to fulfill the goal of helping people connect to each other and it is the Product Manager’s role to ensure that every product or feature serves this purpose. The company seeks people with a curiosity about the world who love to learn, are highly proactive, have a high energy level, and who are positive and yet maintain a healthy dissatisfaction about the status quo.

After spending the morning with Greg, Layla, and Ashley, it is no surprise that Facebook is such a highly sought after and successful company. Having met them and knowing the other BC Eagles and friends of the Grad Tech Club we have in Cambridge, Austin, and of course Menlo Park the company is ripe with highly talented and passionate people and I am very excited to see what the future holds!

-David LoVerme is a 2nd Year MBA at Boston College and the President of the Grad Tech Club

Alexa Villalobos — HIRED

Concentration: Business Analytics; Dual Degree candidate in the Graduate School of Social Work concentrating in health/mental health planning, administration, and policy
Grad Year: 2016
Undergrad: University of Virginia ’13, Religious Studies and Spanish
Target Role: Strategy/Operations/Business Analysis/Product Management Internship, Summer 2015
Key Skills: MS Office, STATA, Atlas.ti7, ArcGIS, SPSS, draw.io
Fun Fact: In high school, Alexa cooked a turducken (a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey) one Thanksgiving. Because the Amish recipe she used called for 14 hours of roasting and basting every 2 hours, on Thanksgiving Eve she slept in the kitchen on a mattress and set various alarms throughout the night so that she could attend to her giant bird(s).

As a dual degree student in the Carroll School and the Graduate School of Social Work, Alexa is constantly applying the skills she is gaining at Boston College in ongoing professional endeavors that she balances with her schoolwork. Before starting business school, she worked at a local non-profit organization for a year supporting senior leadership with the planning for and introduction of new outcomes measurement software, the improvement of performance metrics, program development, and resource development. She has also worked in non-profit management consulting and is currently co-leading a feasibility study for a local organization culminating in the launch of a new social enterprise in January of 2015. Using technology to improve organizational effectiveness has inspired Alexa to pursue more technical skills with greater fervor and to explore opportunities in the tech industry.

Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alexa-villalobos/48/848/28