Your Product Toolbelt
Your Product Toolbelt is for the Founder, the Product Manager, the curious, and anyone who wants to contribute to the discussion.
I want the best tools for the startup community to be in your capable hands.
Let’s take a step back and get to know each other. During undergrad, I studied bioengineering. I also spent four years in a chemical engineering lab researching hematopoietic stem cells — the cells in our bone marrow — to better understand Leukemia. With both of my parents in healthcare, I was primed to pursue a similar career. Instead, a family friend sold me on a ‘consulting’ internship at a startup in Chicago. Senior year, over my month-long winter break, I passed the time doing data entry — let’s just say this 50-person tech company was no McKinsey.
Data entry didn’t excite me, but startup culture did. I was hooked, and product management was a natural fit for a nerdy guy who liked to test his assumptions. Jump ahead a few years, and I’ve experienced three B2B SaaS startups and learned countless lessons, mostly through my own mistakes.
I spent almost six years in product management for startups before transitioning into venture capital this February. Like most PMs, I read Geoffrey Moore & Eric Ries, acquired a certification or two from Pragmatic Marketing, binged on webinars and attended Meetups sponsored by hot, new businesses. What I couldn’t learn from reading and certificates was how to pick the right (product) tool for the right job at the right time. It took talking to other PMs and learning how entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to identify the underlying problem: a lack of applicable tools from day one. Books, classes, and webinars, while valuable, don’t often offer immediately actionable frameworks. It is the goal of Your Product Toolbelt to solve this problem.
My aim is two-fold: first, to write a series of posts that break product processes down into tools that can be immediately applied to your business; second, to provide a sleek, hand-drawn representation of each post, so we don’t have to worry about copyright infringement from my latest Google search.
Be on the lookout for my next post on The Problem Statement. Hope you’ll join the conversation!
Luke
Luke Skertich is an Associate at M25, the most active VC firm in the Midwest. Before coming to M25, Luke found a passion for exciting entrepreneurial ventures. He worked as a Product Manager at three B2B tech start-ups in Chicago, spanning the benefits administration, fintech and human capital management spaces. Luke is actively involved in fundraising and volunteering for Easterseals DuPage & Fox Valley. He is currently an MBA candidate at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management. In his free time, he enjoys travelling, science fiction novels, hiking, woodworking, & staying active.
Twitter: @skerti820
