Growth Product Manager

Program overview: Why should I take this program?

• Why should I enroll?

  Product Manager is a top 5 job on LinkedIn's Most Promising Jobs for 2019, and one of the most coveted roles in large tech enterprises, as well as entrepreneurial startups. While Product Management roles have been growing rapidly for a while, a recent analysis of Google Trends revealed an increase of 425% in average monthly interest about Growth Product Management over the last 5 years.

  This program is designed for students who want to assume key leadership roles in product growth in their company. You will learn to build acquisition funnels, identify core customers, and optimize growth loop models. Then, you will learn how to analyze your results and make improvements to your strategies. Next, you will learn activation theories on how to decrease time-to-value and friction for both B2C and B2B product users, as well as retention theories, for creating audiences and increasing engagement. Finally, you will learn the ins and outs of monetization, from designing pricing plans to determining optimal price points using pricing metrics.

• How do I know if this program is right for me?

  This Nanodegree program is perfect for existing Product Managers, Marketing professionals, and Engineers who are already in growth-focused roles and want to further their skillset, as well as those who wish to break into the growth domain and help propel their company and product forward.

  Growth Product Managers are essential for growing the user base of an established product, increasing customer engagement, and improving the profitability of the business. With a average base salary of $109,000, it's an in-demand role in companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more.

• What jobs will this program prepare me for?

  This program will equip you with the skills to assume growth product manager roles. You’ll learn directly from experienced Product Managers and Growth Product Managers at companies like FunnelGuard and Sendoso, who have constructed this Nanodegree program to equip you with the most in-demand and relevant industry skills.

• What is the difference between a Growth Product Manager and a Product Manager?

  Growth Product Managers are a further specialization of Product Managers, but while Product Managers tend to focus on the success of the customer, Growth Product Managers focus on the success of the business. While Product Management roles have been growing rapidly for a while, a recent analysis of Google Trends revealed an increase of 425% in average monthly interest about Growth Product Management over the last 5 years.

  Even if a company has a great product, they won’t be successful if they don’t have users. While many companies have been hiring Product Managers over the last decade to focus on delighting customers, nobody has been hired to focus solely on the success and growth of the business. This gap created a vacuum that has been filled by Growth Product Managers.

  Like Product Managers, Growth Product Managers love analyzing data in order to develop and improve their strategies. Unlike regular Product Managers, Growth Product Managers are solely focused on growing the company by achieving short-term business goals and driving revenue.

  According to the Harvard Business Review, the three main responsibilities for a Growth Product Manager include:

  • Define the company’s growth plan
  • Coordinate and execute growth programs
  • Optimize the revenue funnel.

  Most companies will often have both Product Managers and Growth Product Managers. Even though Growth Product Managers are mainly focused on the business, and core Product Managers are focused on the customer, the two often work together to drive more value. Core Product Managers think in the long-term about delivering sustained value to the customers. Growth Product Managers think in the short-term by trying to achieve clearly-defined and quantifiable business goals. While these two mindsets can sometimes be at odds, the two often can work together to build long-term success for the company.

• What is the difference between the Product Manager, the Growth Product Manager, the Data Product Manager, and the AI Product Manager Nanodegree programs?

  The Product Manager Nanodegree program will equip you with the foundational skills to assume entry-level product manager roles. You’ll learn directly from experienced Product Managers at Uber and Google, who have constructed this Nanodegree program to equip you with the most in-demand and relevant industry skills. This Nanodegree program teaches the core skill set required in all Product Manager roles, which is the foundation for more specialized roles like Growth Product Manager, Data Product Manager, AI Product Manager, and more.

  The AI Product Manager Nanodegree program is meant for product managers that are responsible for building and deploying AI products. The AI PM Nanodegree program is focused on the hands-on tasks of scoping a data set, training a model, and evaluating the performance of the model.

  The Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program is meant for experienced Product Managers who are looking to specialize their skills in product management and be equipped to fill growth-focused roles. You’ll learn how to grow the user base of your product, get customers engaged and activated as quickly as possible, and monetize your product to have it generate revenue.

  The Data Product Manager Nanodegree program is meant for experienced Product Managers who are looking to specialize their skills in product management and be equipped to fill data-focused roles in the development and strategy behind data products. You'll learn how to build an MVP launch strategy for a new service product that utilizes market insights extracted from extensive data analyses and visualizations, develop a data model with corresponding data pipelines and transformations to evaluate user activity of a product, and identify key behavioral and descriptive attributes of users to construct hypotheses for new product features and experiments to validate these hypotheses.

Enrollment and admission

• Do I need to apply? What are the admission criteria?

  No. This Nanodegree program accepts all applicants regardless of experience and specific background.

• What are the prerequisites for enrollment?

  In order to be successful in this program, we recommend students have some basic experience with the following:

  • Scoping business requirements and defining basic KPIs to track progress/measure success.
  • Performing data analytics using Excel or any other tool of choice (i.e. creating pivot tables, performing statistical analysis such as identifying average values, standard deviation, etc...).
  • Familiarity with arithmetic functions in Excel or any other spreadsheet tool.

• If I do not meet the requirements to enroll, what should I do?

  For aspiring Growth Product Managers who currently have a limited background in product management, the Product Manager Nanodegree program will prepare you to excel in the Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program.

Tuition and term of program

• How is this Nanodegree program structured?

  The Growth Product Manager Nanodegree program is comprised of content and curriculum to support three projects. Once you subscribe to a Nanodegree program, you will have access to the content and services for the length of time specified by your subscription. We estimate that students can complete the program in three months, working 10 hours per week.

  Each project will be reviewed by the Udacity reviewer network. Feedback will be provided and if you do not pass the project, you will be asked to resubmit the project until it passes.

• How long is this Nanodegree program?

  You will have access to this Nanodegree program for as long as your subscription remains active. The estimated time to complete this program can be found on the webpage and in the syllabus, and is based on the average amount of time we project that it takes a student to complete the projects and coursework. See the Terms of Use and FAQs for other policies regarding the terms of access to our Nanodegree programs.

• Can I switch my start date? Can I get a refund?

  Please see the Udacity Program FAQs for policies on enrollment in our programs.

Software and hardware: What do I need for this program?

• What software and versions will I need in this program?

  You will need a document tool such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word , a spreadsheet tool such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and a presentation tool such as Google Slides or Microsoft Powerpoint, as well as access to the internet and a 64-bit computer. You will also need access to a computer for which the requirements are:

  Minimum browser requirements are:

  • Chrome 49+
  • Firefox 57+
  • Safari 10.1+ (Apple - macOS)
  • Edge 14+ (Windows)

  Minimum operating system (OS) requirements are:

  • Windows 8.1 or later
  • Apple MacOS 10.10 (Yosemite) and later
  • Any Linux OS that supports the browsers mentioned above
  • Any Chrome OS that supports the browsers mentioned above