I spent over a decade as a product manager at a number of different companies. One thing I realized was how little we talked about the job of product management. I rarely met product managers from other companies. But I always felt product management was one of the most important functions that when done well, helps make companies and products much better, and when done badly, can really hurt a company and team.

Over the past few years at Greylock, we’ve been trying to improve this, and help build a community of founders and product managers that can share best practices and trade stories about this job of product management. We’ve hosted a couple of #ProductSF events in 2013 and 2014 with Samsung, and recently hosted a #ProductRetreat with our friends at Product Hunt. If you want to join our community, please contact us here.

Two years ago, I started to write down some thoughts on how I viewed the job of a product manager. With the help of some friends, I have turned this into a presentation and talk that goes into more detail. I opened our recent product retreat with that talk and want to share it here:

And here it is on SlideShare: