Product Sense: An Interview with Emma Sesmero (Product VP at Factorial)

Decoding "Product Sense"

As someone who is constantly trying to get better at building products, I kept hearing the term "product sense" everywhere. It seemed like this elusive quality that separated good product people from great ones. Was it intuition? Experience? Some kind of innate talent?

I decided to do what I do best: research. I set out to talk to product experts and leaders to understand what product sense really means and whether it's something you can actually learn, or if you're simply born with it.

This is the first conversation in that series, with Emma Sesmero, a Product Leader and VP of Product at Factorial, one of Barcelona's fastest-growing tech companies.

Can you tell a bit about yourself?

When I introduce myself, I always start with my origins. I'm the type of product person that comes from a technical background. I studied engineering and spent my first three years as a developer, but I quickly realized I wanted to understand where things were coming from. I wanted to know the "why" behind. That's why I moved into product. Before I started working, I didn't even know what product management was. I learned about it at my first company, in Willhaben, an Austrian marketplace, and eventually had the opportunity to transition from engineering to product manager within the same group of companies in Schibsted/Adevinta, where I grew into leading a tribe. For me, it was really important to understand the "why," to have more communication with people, and to understand the value of what we were building. After eight years within the same family of companies, I had grown a lot but wanted to experience something different. That's how I ended up at Factorial.

Let's dive straight into product sense. I know it's a vague topic and probably a vague term. What do you think: is it really a thing? Does it even exist?

I believe that some people are better at product than others. This also depends on how each company defines product management, but in our case at Factorial, good product managers are the hungry ones. They should have ambition and a really strong sense of curiosity. If you're genuinely curious - curious to understand the "why" behind requests, to understand users' problems, to understand the impact of what you're building - then it's really easy to be successful as a product manager. No matter what your background is.

Becoming a successful product manager could have quite a conventional definition, right? It could just be a list of hard skills you need to obtain. But what about that gut feeling when making decisions, prioritizing things and choosing the right direction? How would you define that?

For me, that's really related to intuition. Every decision has a part that's rational and a part that's intuition. Usually you have a certain intuition and then you put numbers to it or you find data that gives you hints.

I do believe in the product manager's intuition, but I don't think it's just because they have a "good intuition." It's based on experience. It's based on the learnings they've gathered, how many users or stakeholders they've talked to and how they're able to put all of that together to create an opinion that makes sense.

That's why curiosity plays such an important role for me. If you're curious and you ask a lot of questions, then you can build an opinion.

It's also true that there are some PMs that are so stuck with different requests that they don't think further ahead. An important aspect for prioritising in the right direction is to be able to dream in the future. You can use that curiosity to understand really well the problems and the pains that your users have and then, once you have understood the deeper pains, you can dream of the magical solution, then you can ensure that you prioritize in a way that gets you in that direction.

You have to use all the learnings to ensure that you are actually prioritizing initiatives that you want to bring value to your users today while going in the direction of that magical product.

Could you elaborate a bit more on thinking further and about dreaming? What do you mean by that? Once you understand the deeper problem, how do you move further with that?

There are a lot of different frameworks that we can use, but at the end, it's about one question: How do I want my users to feel with the final product? What in the product is going to make them feel like that? Usually it has a lot of magic, a lot of automation, a lot of processes happen on its own.

I smirk: "Of course"

And have you ever met anyone with a strong product sense? What were the signs of that?

Yes, usually these are things that I was mentioning before. Curiosity is important. I believe a business mindset is really important. The ambition, if they are really ambitious, they are humble to learn. And if they are business oriented, they have a lot of energy.

I trust a PM to have good senses when they know where they are going. They are able to say: "Hey, this is the final goal that we want to achieve!" Those who are able to explain to you and you get convinced that it's actually going to solve the problem.

Then you see how they are able to execute the day to day. When they present their road map, they not only present the feature they are prioritising, they have to say: "Look, this is where we want to go and this is how we're gonna get there." People who make me feel like they know what they are doing and why, have that sense.

Can you share any moment or experience when you witnessed someone with an exceptional product sense?

Last quarter, we were in a really strategic project, where we put a lot of resources to ensure that we were able to accelerate it. We put the best people there, but it became messy. Then this PM came in, and as soon as she came, she was able to understand the situation. She clarified, where was the problem, where we want to go, what should be the next steps for the pricing and how to create the road map to go in a direction that we want. She did this in 2 weeks. It was amazing and everything that she said made sense. She was able to communicate it. She got there by asking a lot of questions and understanding the problems and the solutions that we were building. At the end, it's about making sure that we're able to cut things into pieces, into chunks of work, that are actually gonna be able to provide value and to monetize them.

And if it's not a secret, why did the project get messy before she came?

There was a high level of uncertainty. We were trying to go really fast without a clear direction. For me, clear direction is key. If you don't know where you are going, you can go really fast, but you're never gonna reach the right direction. Sometimes is the price to pay for innovation.

Do you think that product sense is something that only PMs can have? Could engineers or designers have one?

Everyone, of course. All product people. We have teams that don't have product managers and they are working better than others. At the end, it's the right person to think ahead, to set a direction and to be able to cut it into executable chunks. Some people dream big, they know where they want to go and they execute fast. Some people think on the little iterations, but they stay in incrementalisms.

The interesting part is to work incrementally towards the right vision.

For example, this PM I was mentioning has an amazing sense to detect what is gonna bring money, what is gonna be the right key, the right value prop, in order to provide that value to the users, that the users are gonna be willing to pay for.

Do you think that product sense is something you're born with or that it can be something that you can develop?

It's like everything - a little bit of both. Some people have skills that help them. It doesn't matter where you were born, it's how you were raised, all the things that you have been exposed to. But all of us have certain skills that help us on the path that we take. Logic is really important to be able to go deep into the problems, to find patterns, to cut things into pieces. There are people who get lost when they have so many inputs for prioritization, people who have three things to do in parallel and they sink. And then there are others who are able to prioritize naturally. I think everybody can learn. However, we are predisposed to certain skills, including product.

Talking about acquiring those skills. Have you seen an example of a person who has significantly improved their product sense with time?

I am an example of this, becoming a Product Manager. When I was junior, for 2 months I was getting all the inputs from all the different stakeholders. I was creating an enormous list of all the requirements they wanted, all the feature requests and then I wrote the requirements of an amazing module that my engineers needed to implement. They started to work on it, taking forever due to the long list of requirements. Finally we threw everything in the garbage. By trying to build the perfect module, we didn't provide any value. I didn't know how to prioritise. A senior PM joined and I learned so much from her really quickly. In a couple of months she dropped all her knowledge on me and I was able to acquire a lot.

Do only senior PMs in this case, have product sense or do you think that as a junior, you can also have it?

What is a senior?

Years of experience?

I became a senior in 4 months.

Officially. I went from associate to senior in four months. I became an associate PM in January and in May. My senior got promoted and I was leading a team of 30 people.

So I don't think it's a matter of time. It was not my first job. I was a developer for three years before that. But I don't think it's about time. So, I ask this question again, what is senior?

Okay, what is it then about, if it's not about time?

Seniority is about autonomy, about impact, about leadership, about how you bring others into your ideas and about the ability to lead.

You mentioned that there was another senior who helped you grow. Were there any other mentors or other people, who helped you grow? Were there any books or any videos/courses that had a great impact on the development of your product sense?

I have learned so much from a lot of different people. But I think I learned the most from that senior and from my following managers.

However, also during that time, I was really lucky to have several peers who I was discussing a lot together with. We were talking about product, how to build product, theory and practice, what works and what doesn't. Each of us have our own style, but for me, those were amazing opportunities where every Wednesday we'd go for lunch and discuss how we do things and why, and the problems that we had.

It was the best school I have ever had. Better than the books.

I still read books and listen to podcasts. However it was great to have talented people around early in my career. And I keep learning from the talented people that I have around.

Could you tell me what mistakes do you see people make when they are trying to develop their product sense to become a better product person?

I think some people focus too much on frameworks. Frameworks help you structure your thoughts, but if your thoughts are wrong, they might not be as helpful. Some people get too separated from business. PMs can get too far away from the rest of the company. In a lot of cases PMs tend to focus too much on tasks. When, at the end, the question is about doing the right thing.

Sometimes, PMs are focused on giving work to developers, because developers need to have tasks, instead of actually understanding what is the right thing to build.

If you would come to yourself, a couple of years back, when you were that person who had this long list of features that were requested by stakeholders, what would you tell yourself? How would you help yourself to get through this flood?

I would tell myself to understand why you are building what you are building. If you don't have a clear "Why" you prioritize this on top of that, then the developers should do nothing. Have really clear why you are making these decisions and so clear that you are able to convince everybody. You should be able to sell a vision. It might come from your intuition, that you are able to support with data. It doesn't matter where it came from, where was the spark, but it should be really clear why you have chosen this opportunity or pain exactly.

And then the second point: don't do what users want, but what they need. People don't necessarily tell you certain things, you need to ask the right questions.

Thirdly, once you have those 2, you have to understand clearly what is the value you are providing with each iteration. We tend to think that if I need to build this initiative, I need to start with the basics, because of less dependencies, and then I will build the next and then I will solve the problem. However, sometimes you can pick something in the middle that is not solving the full end-to-end problem, but this is the key value proposition that is gonna help solve a big pain fast, and that makes it differential. Then you can build the rest, those basics. It is often hard to identify, since it's less obvious, but it's gonna make your team and product a lot more impactful than trying to build the perfect solution.

In product, a lot of times, especially in Factorial, we build the plane while we are flying.

So we need to ensure that we have the engine, that we have the vital parts, that we bring that key value proposition, even though the product as a whole might not be ready yet.

I'm so sad that we have to finish the interview. Do you have 2 more hours?