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Overview: Advanced Product Management Course on Udemy

Apr 13, 2020 · 4 min read

The Advanced Product Management course on Udemy is useful but surface-level — like a quick bus tour that shows you all the buildings in a city without letting you learn its history. I've supplemented it with insights from Y Combinator videos, which go deeper on the same themes.

1. Vision & Strategy

Company vision provides directional guidance. Involving stakeholders in vision creation ensures team alignment and focus.

Facebook's vision is a useful model: connect all people to the internet by 2026, with strategies including internet.org for developing nations and the $2 billion Oculus acquisition for AR/VR. Every major decision traces back to this north star.

OKRs offer more measurable short-term alternatives: an objective (clearly defined goal) plus key results (specific measurable outcomes). Google's potential OKRs might include increasing ARPU by 20%, boosting retention by 10%, expanding user acquisition, and launching self-driving initiatives.

2. Product Metrics

Metrics reveal current business standing and growth trajectory. Key Amazon e-commerce metrics:

  • Conversion Rate: Purchase rate among visitors
  • Daily Active Users (DAU): Daily website visitors
  • Average Order Value (AOV): Average spending per transaction
  • Bounce Rate: Users departing without engagement

Suhail Doshi, CEO of Mixpanel, recommends tracking one north star metric plus 3-5 supporting metrics. More than that and you lose focus.

Three-step metric selection process:

  1. Understandability: Track page bounce rates; A/B test signup pages
  2. Ease of initiation: Measure funnel drop-off at each conversion step
  3. User retention: Monitor DAU, B2B revenue churn, and 1-week to 30-day return rates

Successful founders maintain close customer relationships early on. Continuous iteration and feedback are what drive growth — not perfect frameworks.