You are a Product Manager responsible for Growth at a young and upcoming social network company? You have a very clear measurable goal — grow active users to 10M MAU. Think about this problem for 3–4 mins and let’s dive in when you are ready.
Candidate might ask you to provide more details on the type of social network? (Buying/Selling antiques) What is the value-prop? (Large and trusted communities with a network of experts who will verify antique goods authenticity?)
- What is the persona of users that are on the community?
- What is the MAU # today (500K MAU, 200K DAU )?
- What is the demo/geo breakdown (US, Canada, UK)?
- What are the engagement levels? (We don’t know, we don’t know the metrics?)
- Are we talking new users or resurrections as well? (You tell us, shall we focus on both)
If the candidate didn’t ask follow up questions listed above and started answering your question. You need to lead the candidate: Smart and curious candidates will ask LOTS OF QUESTIONS and will make ASSUMPTIONS in the absence of knowledge
- Ask candidate what assumptions did he/she make around the product, features, target segment, active users?
- What is the definition of active users?
Question: At a very high-level, what channel strategies would you explore to increase top-of-the-funnel activities?
Most common answers: Ad campaign (print and digital) to attract new users.
Follow up — Any ad campaign? Or Targeted? If targeted — how will you identify segments and the channels to target those segments of users?
Bonus Answer — Run a campaign asking existing users to import address book to find friends and send invite on existing user’s behalf
II Bonus Answer — Will ask for country or gender specific goals? Most importantly, will ask for historical data on existing users and will identify forces/drivers/trends to identify country specific goals. For example, the e-commerce and social network concept in countries like Brazil is pretty strong, let’s run some experiments on Brazil. Lets not focus on Russia due to high number of frauds and home-grown competition.
Question: What do you think some of the challenges existing users are facing and potential users might face before signing up?
- Fraud? (Counterfeit good and misidentification /mis-pricing of antiques)
- Take e-commerce of the platform)
- Product Friction
- Sign-up (Funnel Analysis)
- Login,
- Listing products,
- Displaying of the product in the user’s feed
- Contact challenges (Contact Seller related)
Question: What strategies would you consider for bringing churned users back?
- Notifications related to interest the users has expressed
- New features in the product
Question: What new features we should think about adding to our product to drive more users and increase engagement?
- greenfield — as long as the candidate is able to logically explain the motivation for each feature, the intended benefit and strategies to measure the impact.
Other product strategies the candidate might come with:
- Funnel Analysis
- Strategies around certified sellers;
- Profiles of antique experts who will verify and set pricing
- Content / Listing / Blogs on how to list/getting certified
- Internationalization?