Curious about the job availabilities at startups? This presentation will provide aspiring startup employees with a high-level view of the essential skills and the dynamics that shape them. Presentation by Bita @bitashahian

1. STARTUP
BOOTCAMP:
EXPLORE CAREER
OPPORTUNITIES AT STARTUPS

2. PRESENTATION BY:
BITA SHAHIAN
FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY
GENERAL ASSEMBLY

3. HOW CAN I BE USEFUL TO A STARTUP?!
‣ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
‣ USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
‣ USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
‣ PROGRAMMING

4. PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
!

5. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Product Management is one of the most dynamic roles in business
today. Part business analyst, part designer and part engineer, the
product manager distills and translates market and commercial insights
into products which address unmet customer needs, while continuing to
better refine existing products through their lifecycle.

6. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHAT DO THEY DO?
Understand users and
analyze the market to
build a product that is
both desirable and
viable
Create a roadmap and Develop metrics to
effectively manage
measure success and
communication with all make tough decisions
stakeholders

7. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHAT DO THEY DO?
•
Product Life Cycle
•
Technology
•
Business Case
•
Roadmap
•
Stakeholders
•
MVP
•
Market Analysis
•
Feature Prioritization
•
Key metrics
•
Storyboarding
•
Describe your users
•
Describing Product

8. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHY DO STARTUPS NEED PRODUCT MANAGERS?
Every member of the product team is important. To succeed, a
company must design, build, test and market the product
effectively. That said, there is one role that is absolutely crucial to
producing a good product, yet it is often the most misunderstood
and underutilized of all the roles. This is the role of the product
manager.

9. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHAT SKILLS DO PRODUCT MANAGERS NEED?
! Passion for creating products that resonate on an emotional level
! Deep understanding of the perspectives and needs of the customers
! Excellent verbal and written communication skills
! Wireframing, webmocks, rapid prototyping and iterative design
! Anything that needs to be done to make the product successful

10. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHAT TOOLS DO THEY USE?
! Agile Project Management
! Lean Canvas
! MVP
! Cohort Testing
! Scrum
! Backlog Grooming
! Statistical Analysis

11. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
HOW DO I BREAK INTO THE FIELD?
! Start a side project and show off your skills
! Focus on a niche
! Analyze and learn about consumer / market patterns
! Learn how to build a strong team
! Learn agile development methodology
! Build an internal and external marketing lexicon
! Enroll in GA’s Product Management course

12. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHO SHOULD I FOLLOW?
Josh Elman @joshelman
Hunter Walk @hunterwalk
Sachin Rekhi @sachinrekhi
Ariel Seidman @aseidman
Gina Trapani @ginatrapani
Guy Kawasaki @guykawasaki

13. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT WISDOM
“Good product managers –
measure themselves in terms of
success of product.”
—Ben Horowitz
“A great product gets out of the way of the
user and helps them address their need
or want as quickly (or for as long as)
possible.”
—Josh Elman

14. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
WHAT SHOULD I READ?
Katharine’s picks:
Seth Godin’s blog
Clay Shirky’s blog
FastCompany
Good to Great by Jim Collins

15. QUESTIONS?
STARTUP BOOTCAMP I GENERAL ASSEMBLY

16. USER
EXPERIENCE
DESIGN

17. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The design of anything independent of medium or across [device] with
human experience as an explicit outcome and human engagement as an
explicit goal. User experience is how a person feels when interfacing
with a system or product, includes but is not limited to websites, apps
or soſtware.

18. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
“User experience is how a person feels when interfacing with a system
or product.” - Jacob Gube

19. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHAT DO THEY DO?
User Research:
Identifies user
behaviors, goals and
needs through
interviews, studies and
surveys.
Information Architect:
Defines the structure of
a system, how content
is described, organized
and discovered.
Interaction Design:
Defines interactions,
user flows, wireframes,
and affordances of a
system, and builds
it.

20. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHAT DO THEY DO?
User-Research
Information
Architecture (IA)
Interactive
Design
UI
Development

21. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHY DO STARTUPS NEED UX DESIGNERS?
•
User Research
•
Forms
•
Personas
•
Search and Results
•
User Testing
•
Navigation
•
UX analysis
•
First Impressions
•
Wireframing
•
Content
•
Prototyping
•
Commerce
•
Dashboards
•
Social
•

22. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHAT SKILLS DO UX DESIGNERS NEED?
!
!
!
!
!
!
Empathy
Good taste and intuition about what matters in design
Communicate clearly and visually
Bring ideas to life
Write well
Talk shop with programmers

23. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
HOW CAN I BECOME A UX
NINJA?
! Learn to code!

24. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHAT TOOLS DO THEY USE?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Illustrator
Photoshop
HTML
CSS
Javascript
jQuery
Wireframes
Prototypes

25. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
ADVANCED TOOLS
• ROR
• Pre-processors
• Front-end Frameworks Foundation by Zurb
• Bootstrap by Twitter

26. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
HOW DO I BREAK INTO THE FIELD?
Create a portfolio that illustrates UX principles, UX analysis and
specific design patterns through full UX documentation including:
!
!
!
!
A competitive assessment document
A persona
Wireframes
Implementation strategy

27. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
UX DESIGN WISDOM
"Design is not just what it looks
and feels like. Design is how it
works."
—Steve Jobs
“People react positively when
things are clear and
understandable." -Dieter Rams

28. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHAT SHOULD I READ?
Books:
Blogs:
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Rework by Jason Fried
Uxbooth.com
Csstricks.com
24ways.org
Tympanus.net/codrops

29. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
WHO SHOULD I FOLLOW?
Ryan Singer @rjs
Paul Stamatiou @stammy
Richard Henry @richardhenry
Dave Morin @davemorin

30. QUESTIONS?
STARTUP BOOTCAMP I GENERAL ASSEMBLY

31. USER
ACQUISITION
MARKETING

32. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
The science that complements the art of building an audience and a
brand. A quantitative approach to marketing with a specific goal of
gaining customers.

33. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
WHAT DO THEY DO?
Utilize innovative
platforms to launch
media campaigns in
order to grow brand
awareness, acquire
users and retain users.
Understand business
Develop metrics to
goals and how they
measure success and
relate to developing
make tough decisions.
brand story, values and
community.

34. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
HOW DO I BREAK INTO THE FIELD?
Jump in and get your
hands dirty.

35. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
HOW DO I BREAK INTO THE FIELD?
Create a portfolio that includes:
!
Clearly defined business and brand brief
!
Data-based strategy (KPIs)
!
Well designed experimentation proposals
!
Optimized site
!
Sample social media content
!
Paid Marketing Campaign and results
Marketers should be able to defend strategic choices and describe their
analytical process and approach.

36. GO DEEP, OR REMAIN A GENERALIST?

37. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
WHY DO STARTUPS NEED MARKETERS?
! Target and grow the right audience for your brand
! Optimize a multi-channel marketing campaign using web
analytics
! Create engaging and high-impact marketing content
! Utilize analytics and research to make decisions based on
variances and insight
! Utilize “growth hacks” to increase the amount of users and
customers
! Explore ways to develop and continue audience engagement

38. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
WHAT SKILLS DO MARKETERS NEED?
•
Marketing and Business Strategy
•
Developing Great Content
•
The Brand Experience
•
Activation and Retention
•
Marketing Analytics
•
Metrics, Sources and Statistics
•
Paid Search Marketing
•
Segmentation, Targeting and Tracking
•
Social Media Marketing
•
Testing and Experimentation
•
Community Management
•
Storytelling: Presenting and
Communicating Data and Information
•
Email Marketing
•
Improving User Experience
•
Misc. Marketing Channels and Optimization
•
Growth Hacking
•
Mobile and Media Planning

39. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
WHAT SKILLS DO MARKETERS NEED?
•
! Constant learner
! Aggressive at moving the needle
! Enjoys pushing the limits
! Lives and breathes product
! Creative problem solver
! Focused on growth
! Hunter-like instincts
Planning

40. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
WHAT TOOLS DO THEY USE?
! Google Analytics
! A/B Testing
! Basic Statistics
! SQL
! Excel
! Conversation Rate Optimization
! Photoshop
! Mailchimp
! Understand code
! Search PPC (Google)
! Facebook Ads
! SEO

41. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
MARKETING WISDOM
“Don’t tell me how good you
make it; tell me how good it
makes me when I use it.”
—Leo Burnett
“The aim of marketing is to know and
understand the customer so well the
product or service fits him and sells
itself.” —Peter Drucker

42. USER ACQUISITION MARKETING
WHO SHOULD I FOLLOW?
Andy Johns @ibringtraffic
Noah Kagan @noahkagan
Andrew Chen @andrewchen
Rand Fishkin @randfish
Avinash Kaushik @avinash
Dave McClure @davemcclure
Hiten Shah @hnshah

43. QUESTIONS?
STARTUP BOOTCAMP I GENERAL ASSEMBLY

44. PROGRAMMING

45. PROGRAMMING
A web developer takes mockups from the design team, product ideas
from the product manager and builds actual web applications.

46. PROGRAMMING
There are two types of web developers: back-end and front-end. Some
developers can do both, we refer to them as full stack.

47. PROGRAMMING
WHAT DO THEY DO?
Front-end (client-side) renders in
the browser
Back-end (server-side) runs on
the server
HTML = content
CSS = style
JavaScript = interaction
Ruby
PHP
Python
PERL
C++
Node
= control logic!

48. Programming
WHERE DOES DEVELOPMENT FIT INTO THE PROCESS OF SITE
CREATION?
User-Experience
Information
(UX)
Architecture (IA)
Design
Development

49. PROGRAMMING
WHY DO STARTUPS NEED PROGRAMMERS?
Programming allows you to create applications and control computers and
devices. Developers use programming languages to write soſtware, the
soſtware you interact with every day. From your alarm clock to your
computer; from the web to the satellites orbiting our planet, soſtware
powers all of it.

50. PROGRAMMING
WHAT SKILLS DO PROGRAMMERS NEED?
Front-end:
! HTML5
! CSS3
! JavaScript
! jQuery
! JSON
! AJAX
Back-end:
! UNIX commands
! Git and Github
! Ruby/Rails
! Heroku
! Internet (behind the scenes)
! Databases

51. PROGRAMMING
WHAT TOOLS DO THEY USE?
! Text editor (ex. Sublime Text)
! Version Control System (Git)
! Project Management Tool (ex. Pivotal Tracker)
! Web Hosting (ex. AWS)
! Storage (ex. Dropbox)
! StackOverflow
! SQL
! Google

52. PROGRAMMING
HOW DO I BREAK INTO THE FIELD?
DESIGN AND BUILD A SITE
1. Download a text editor. We’re huge fans of Sublime Text at GA.
2. Check out GA’s Dash: https://dash.generalassemb.ly
3. Jump right in. Play around with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in CodePen, and see what it looks like right in your
browser.
4. Learn relevant material. Check out Codeschool, Codeacademy, Hackernews, Khan Academy, Coursera or Udacity.
5. Embrace the community. Get help from other developers on Stack Overflow, or offline at a Meetup group near
you.
6. Visit GA for an upcoming class or event.

53. PROGRAMMING
HOW DO I BREAK INTO THE FIELD?
! Don’t be afraid to fail. That can stop you from trying a lot of things, and that’s
what it’s all about – trial and error. The best way to become a developer is to
continuously be doing something.
! Try different approaches to learning. Try books, videos, classes. Everyone’s
style is different. As a student, finding the right mix for you is important.
! Have side projects. Especially ones that cover ground outside of work. It’s
one of the best ways to really challenge yourself, and keep growing.

54. PROGRAMMING
WHAT SHOULD I READ?
! A Book Apart series, especially the books on HTML5 (Jeremy
Keith) and CSS3 (Dan Cederholm). Great primers and
reference material.
! A List Apart is a bi-weekly web journal that I’d consider
required reading for any web developer, newbie or
experienced.
! Smashing Magazine is a pretty classic web resource.
! Hacker News is a consistent source of news articles and
discussion.

55. PROGRAMMING
PROGRAMMING WISDOM
“Learning to write programs stretches your
mind, and helps you think better, creates a way
of thinking about things that I think is helpful
in all domains.”
—Bill Gates
“Software will eat the
world”
—Marc Andreessen

56. PROGRAMMING
WHO SHOULD I FOLLOW?
Paul Graham @paulg (Y-Combinator)
Jack Dorsey @jack
Evan Williams @ev
Tim O’Reilly @timoreilly
Kevin Rose @kevinrose
David H. @dhh

57. QUESTIONS?
LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH:
@BITASHAHIAN