👀 Six PM Internships & Product@CMU: Building a Community of Product Enthusiasts – iykyk

Entrepreneurial Mindset in the World of Product Management

Hi there 👋 — Who are you and what’s your background?

I’m Tilly Zuo, and I just graduated from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) this past May with a Masters in Entertainment Technology and previously studied Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in my undergrad. Career-wise, I’ve had seven internships, with six PM internships in both large, established companies and startups/unicorns, and one UI/UX front-end engineer role. In the future, I’m probably going to ServiceNow to do my full-time. Last year, I got full-time offers from TikTok and Tesla, and I’m also a finalist of the Kleiner Perkins Fellows Program.

A Passion for AR and VR Technologies

For those who are unfamiliar, what is Entertainment Technology and why did you choose to study it?

I get questions like this often. It seems like it’s a pretty different domain and field. First of all, I treat my program of study more like my hobby. PM is never something you can study or learn in school.

The reason I chose to attend Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center was to continue my hobby and interests from my undergrad which was in the AR and VR fields. If you study HCI, there are very diverse directions you’ll learn in undergrad, including mobile apps, websites, hardware, wearable products, digital and art installations, and AR and VR games – a lot of directions. When I first tried on the Google Cardboard when I was a sophomore, I was totally shocked — it was so cool! That was also the link to my first internship at one of the largest game companies in China, which was Netease. I went there as a frontend engineer, doing some frontend coding and UX design. In the long-term, I believe AR/VR will be a big thing. To summarize, I chose to study Entertainment Technology to follow my interests rather than for my career.

Six Product Manager Internships — What I’ve Learned

What are the biggest lessons you’ve taken from the many PM internships you’ve done over the years?

I have had PM internships at Tesla, Robinhood, WeChat Pay, TikTok, Tencent, amongst others – five of them are pretty large companies and Robinhood is a very hyped unicorn.

Before you get into product management, you should ask yourself what do I want to get out of the internship – In the long-term, do I want to be a founder? Or do I want to be a product leader like a CPO? So ask yourself what is the goal.

For me, I want to be a founder so PM is definitely the role which is closest to the founder role. Since I have that goal, I want to go into the industry and different companies and learn the pipelines and methodologies different companies use to build and operate their product. Along the way, you will gradually realize that there are two layers of product management. The deeper layer is your mindset and your vision, understanding, and familiarity to the industry, society, and human nature. That is the foundation of PM. On top of that is what I call the execution layer. In this layer, I can do the coding, design, stakeholder and risk management, use Jira and different softwares and tools. I don’t think either layer is more important than the other. You have to foster your skills, PM mindset, and innovation, cultivating everything together. That’s the second takeaway.

Last one is – definitely have fun and network! This is something I gradually realized. Basically, you will work with your mentors, managers, and intern peers in the same industry for probably the next ten years so definitely use some time to think about how to build your network from day one as an intern. As a PM, you have to be likable and charismatic, otherwise your stakeholders might not trust you. At the end of the day, although we have a manager title, we don’t have the authority. A lot of times, if you want to yield a big impact, you have to rely on the team you’re working with so you have to learn how to get along well with different people.

To summarize my advice, the first is to think about your personal career and life goals before you try to get into PM roles. Second one, definitely work on your skills and mindset and lastly, network!

Finding a Community of Product Enthusiasts Is Invaluable in Breaking into Product

Why did you found Product@CMU with your co-founder, Anna?

The mission of Product@CMU is to build up a community open to all Carnegie Mellon students and alumni - that’s something, for me as a student and alumni, that I’m always looking for along the way. When I entered CMU, I was looking around the school asking myself where are all the product people? Before that, I already had a gap year and three internships back in China in large companies, so I pretty much knew I already had the skills so I just wanted to find all the product people at CMU so, you know, we can hangout and prepare for interviews together. However, there were no product people; it was so empty. There’s definitely some programs like MSPM, MBA, and MIIPS, and so many others, but all the programs are so isolated.

I was talking with some friends in some more general programs like MSCS or MISM, and found a lot of people also interested in product management who also had the skills set to break into product. At that time, I was actually talking to a friend about wanting to start something at CMU. I always had this thought in my mind and then I met Anna (Co-Founder) during the last recruiting season because we were basically in every APM interview together like Google, Uber, and Lyft. At that time, I asked Anna about maybe starting something like Berkeley’s Product Space.

All my friends at schools like UC Berkeley and Wharton had tight-knit PM clubs that they could rely on, so I asked Anna if she had any interest in starting something like that. She was very very responsive and was super excited. There was clearly a user need and I had found the right co-founder so we met up and decided to start Product@CMU.

Bringing Product@CMU to Life

What was the process for bringing Product@CMU to life — What worked well and what were the biggest challenges?

One time, we were asked a question during a founder talk which was: If we were given the opportunity to go back to last semester, what would we change? Both me and Anna said we wouldn’t change anything. It was totally a very fun experience, although sometimes it was a little bit overwhelming because at that time, I was interning at Tesla, and everyday after finishing work in the office, I would work on Product@CMU. Every Sunday, I spent literally the whole day running the weekly board meetings and meeting with several VPs to check in on their progress, in addition to putting my resources into this community. One of the main goals when I started Product@CMU was to invest my connections and resources back into CMU.

What worked well, I think everything worked well. The only challenge was the scope, the growth speed of this organization was actually much much faster than I ever thought. Our Slack channel reached 200 members within 14 days, which was something we didn’t anticipate. Given that we don’t have much of a foundation, we were literally starting from scratch. We wanted to do a lot of things – school events, content, mentorship, a robust marketing and design team. Although we were supported by tons of CMU alumni and the Director of CMU’s MSPM (MS in Product Management) program, Brad Eiben, I felt like everyone was so overwhelmed because we all took on so many jobs. There were several weeks where I met with the VP Development where she barely slept as we were ramping up the mentorship program, and this was the same story for everyone else on the board. The shortage of manpower was the most challenging thing, which we confronted and overcame.

Your Network Is Your Net Worth — Connect with Alumni

In the future, what are your goals for Product@CMU? What value do you hope it brings to the CMU community and beyond?

In the future, a few members of our board are moving to San Francisco so it’s time to spin up our alumni initiative which we already have a very solid foundation to support, including through the mentorship program and content teams I’m working with over the summer. We have to add value.

The main purpose behind the content team is to serve as a voice for CMU alumni in the industry so we can expand our network for alumni and students. We want to serve as a bridge between the alumni and students and to give the alumni a stage to add their voice into the community. In the future, there will be three things – start the alumni initiative, branding our content initiatives for our podcasts and newsletters, and organize more school events to support our community in this upcoming recruiting season.