Crypto’s emphasis on community could lead followers off a cliff

The idea of the “family” culture that so many businesses push for is seeping deeper into the crypto world as communities are formed on a sometimes toxic, cultish stance to unwaveringly back the projects they are invested in.

Don’t get me wrong, some parts of the crypto community are great — I’m a part of a few communities myself — but when it’s misused, it can lead to the blind leading the blind. Sometimes off a cliff.

Last month, Do Kwon, the founder of Terraform Labs (TFL) — the organization behind the now-dead algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and cryptocurrency Terra (LUNA) — pushed for patience and support from his community of “LUNAtics” as the team rushed to create Terra 2.0.

Even when the Terra/LUNA situation was unfolding and imploding, the “LUNAtic” community surrounding the comatose project supported the cause, ignoring the risks other investors highlighted. Some LUNAtics are still supporting the relaunched LUNA 2.0, even after everything that happened to the original project.

Of course, that wasn’t the only time a crypto project pushed for the hands that supported their endeavors to prop them up once again.

Confirmation bias galore

Whenever you’re involved in a disruptive space, it can feel lonely when the mainstream world doesn’t understand or care about it, so people will often band together to support one another, Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, told TechCrunch.

“There’s a tremendous amount of confirmation bias in this space,” Mike Alfred, a board member at Eaglebrook Advisors and Iris Energy, said. “That confirmation bias leads people to attack others who raise issues that would have saved them money, because they would rather continue to support the decisions they’ve already made rather than examine what people from outside [the community] say to be careful.”

While “community” is an open-ended concept that can be used to support a lot of things — from cryptocurrency to founders to a project — a significant amount of value is automatically placed on a project when it has a huge following.

Tiger’s stamp of approval is coming for the early stage

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox early, subscribe here.

On Tuesday, AngelList Venture closed its first tranche of institutional funding since spinning out on its own in 2020. The $100 million round was led by Tiger Global and Accomplice, valuing the business at $4.1 billion.

It wasn’t necessarily expected. The round comes just weeks after the organization’s CEO, Avlok Kohli, told me that the company didn’t need venture money, a stance that AngelList, which was founded in 2010 and split into AngelList Venture and AngelList Talent in 2020 — each with their own CEOs and boards — has long embraced. 

Despite its business of helping other startups raise money, AngelList itself has largely resisted the siren call of venture capital and operated on what others might consider to be a shoestring budget. Indeed, prior to raising this massive new round, the larger company, pre-spin out, had raised $124 million across multiple rounds over the years — some previously unannounced. 

Likely, its views on venture funding stem in part from an earlier experience involving founder Naval Ravikant, who once felt so cheated by the sale of an earlier company he co-founded, Epinions, that he sued its powerful venture backer, Benchmark.

But also, as Kohli explained during our recent chat, AngelList’s philosophy has long been that companies that raise too much money can hamper their growth as hiring takes center stage, slowing down other aspects of the business. “If your entire focus is on shipping velocity and shipping great products, growing headcount is actually counter to that,” he said. So what changed, and inspired AngelList to pursue the Tiger stamp of approval? The hedge fund has been planting seeds in the early-stage market, making the investment all the more interesting. 

For my full take on this topic, check out my TechCrunch+ column, “AngelList Venture has a new look.” In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about an inclusive and disruptive LatAm startup, community beyond capitalism and why SPACs are in the news again. As always, you can support me by sharing this newsletter, following me on Twitter or subscribing to my personal blog.

Deal of the week

I want to give a shout-out to Mara, a startup out to “reinvent” the grocery shopping experience for the underserved in Latin America that raised $6 million this week. The startup offers supermarket items at a wholesale price, and lets folks order a basket via websites — instead of hard to access phone apps. It also has delivery points where customers can pick up and pay for their groceries.

Here’s why it’s important: Grocery delivery is a tough business, let alone one that is hoping to make it cheaper and more convenient for low-income families. That’s why I was interested in the fact that the company is avoiding the growth at all costs mindset. Mary Ann reports that Mara is adopting an approach where it focuses on one area at a time, making sure it is “gross margin break even” there before moving on to another area.

Honorable mentions:

Server-grade alternatives for CentOS 8

Image Credits: Jordan Lye (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Community beyond capitalism

No buzzword should ever go unchecked, which is why I decided to dig into the true impact of community — and how capitalism both complicates and changes its connotation within startups. Bringing people together to rally behind a product and idea isn’t a new phenomenon, after all.

Here’s why it’s important: After much attention, we’re starting to see which community efforts amount to actual impact. This week, Lolita Taub launched her own venture capital firm, powered by and from the community that she has aggregated over her past decade in startups. Ganas Ventures, her pre-seed and seed-stage firm, is even raising the rest of its debut fund from Taub’s followers.

Followers are friends, not food:

Image Credits: Lolita Taub

SPAC is a four-letter word (again)

On Equity Live this week, we came to the conclusion that SPAC is a four-letter word again. The route to going public is no longer in vogue, with companies such as Better.com and Kin tossing aside their plans (and Acorns raising lots more capital after pausing its interest in them).

Here’s why it’s important: The IPO window is pretty much closed at this point. While I’d expect to see startups staying private longer as a result, the late-stage market is softening. Uh oh. Late-stage companies that need more capital may not be able to access some if they don’t have rock-solid business models. Expect pivots to continue.

2022 feels different than 2020:

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Across the week

We get to hang out in person! Soon! Techcrunch Early Stage 2022 is April 14, aka right around the corner, and it’s in San Francisco. Join us for a one-day founder summit featuring GV’s Terri Burns, Greylock’s Glen Evans and Felicis’ Aydin Senkut. The TC team has been fiending to get back in person, so don’t be surprised if panels are a little spicier than usual.

Here’s the full agenda, and grab your launch tickets here.

​​Also, follow our newest producer for Equity: Maggie Stamets!

Seen on TechCrunch

Uganda in the spotlight as country’s startups captivate YC, Google

Stripe gets friendly with crypto, again

Touch ID forever, Face ID never

Better.com employees learned of layoffs when severance checks appeared in payroll app

Fintechs clamor to give student loan borrowers relief options

Seen on TechCrunch+

6 technologists discuss how no-code tools are changing software development

How to calculate your startup’s TAM, SAM and SOM

A rough draft of the teetering startup landscape heading into Q2

As war escalates in Europe, it’s ‘shields up’ for the cybersecurity industry

Until next time,

N

You can’t buy a community, so make it worth it

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex connected a slew of  seemingly-unrelated news items to answer a big question:

How do we balance community and capitalism?

The original question we sought to explore was “can you buy a community?” The answer to that question, after further exploration, felt obvious enough: no, so no what? Combining Epic Games’ recent acquisition of Bandcamp, Commsor’s latest raise, and Lolita Taub’s new venture firm, community has a set of sharper standards around it. And nobody wants to let the buzzword go unchecked.

Evergreen reminder to take advantage of code “EQUITY” when subscribing to TechCrunch+ for a hefty discount, and gratitude from your favorite trio of tech nerds.

We’re really enjoying using our Wednesday show to chat through trends and major topics. Tweet us with things you want us to hit on, if you have a particular bee in your bonnet!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Community-first operator Lolita Taub is launching her own venture capital firm

Driven by and for the community that she’s spent years building up, entrepreneur Lolita Taub is launching Ganas Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. The debut fund has a target of $9.99 million, and Taub has so far raised $1.2 million from investors, including Backstage Capital’s Arlan Hamilton, Vitalize Ventures’ Gale Wilkinson and Hustle Fund’s Elizabeth Yin.

After building in stealth for months, Taub tells TechCrunch that she is launching Ganas Ventures today to line up with International Women’s Day, a nod to her interest in backing historically overlooked individuals. The goal with the first fund is to back 75 pre-seed and seed-stage companies based in the U.S. and Latin America, writing checks around $100,000.

The years-long strategy leading up to the formation of Taub’s fund offers a window into one route that an emerging fund manager can take in today’s distributed world.

Taub got her start investing as an intern for K Fund, a Madrid-based venture capital firm that backs Spanish startups. She then spent time as a principal and director of strategic initiatives at Backstage Capital, which she did while getting more experience making investments for Indie.vc and NextGen Venture Partners.

Ganas Ventures is Taub’s second swing at launching a fund, albeit her first time doing it solo. In 2020, Taub co-founded The Community Fund with Jesse Middleton and Flybridge. The $5 million venture fund was a part-time commitment, with Taub simultaneously working as a corporate development executive at Catalyte. She left after one year.

It was difficult, she recounts, given the legal and other paperwork involved. Taub credits the Flybridge team for the “opportunities that they create.” However, she says she is intent on building her own franchise, one that, like that community fund, is focused on early-stage startups.

The common denominator throughout all these endeavors has been Taub’s focus on community. For example, in May 2020, she and her partner Josh Taub began a free startup-founder matching tool, leading to over 2,000 introductions (and 50 known checks) to date. Taub has also created online guides priced between $10 to $165 that specifically address topics such as first-time fundraising and LatinX founder support, as well as a slew of free resources.

Now, she plans to raise the rest of her debut fund from the community, too.

“Instead of go-to market, to me, the future is go-to community,” Taub said in an interview with TechCrunch. Community, she says, can lower customer acquisition cost, help with recruitment, lead to higher retention and foster loyalty.

Because Taub doesn’t have a paycheck right now, she is making money by hosting Twitter Spaces, providing startup consulting services and selling sponsorships for her biweekly startups newsletter.

Oftentimes, general partners invest up to 2% of their own money in cash into a fund to show that they have skin in the game. But for emerging managers that don’t come from money, such as Taub, 1% of her fund is $100,000 — which is more cash than she has available. Taub is doing a cashless GP commit to show that she is committed to the fund, basically taking money that she would otherwise receive as part of the management fee (used to operate the fund) and putting it back into the fund. Put another way, Taub described, she is reducing her salary to manage the fund, and using the difference to fuel her commit over time.

It’s work that some investors think only strengthens Taub’s brand. “It’s a huge edge to already be known in the startup community and be great at building a community,” Hustle Fund’s Elizabeth Yin, an investor in Ganas, said. “It takes most fund managers years to do this well, and Lolita has already done that, so I’m excited to invest.”

At the same time, what Taub is building can be misunderstood, she suggests. Last month, she was questioned on Twitter about charging founders to review their pitch decks. While Taub ultimately clarified her services and explained that those who paid her would not be considered for eventual investment, some thought the conflict of interest could create a pay-to-play environment that disproportionately impacts historically overlooked folks.

A silver lining, perhaps, is that the controversy began a conversation about small fund economics and why investors like Taub, who says she grew up in a low-income family and became the patriarch of the family at an early age, are finding ways to both help founders while also making a living.

“I don’t know any other industry where I can lean on my skill set, my magic sauce of being community and sales, and literally create generational wealth within my lifetime,” she said. “It’s a whirlwind and it’s just the beginning, but like I’m holding tight on this VC mechanical bull and I’m not getting fucking off.”

Reddit app revamp adds a Discover Tab for finding communities, new navigation

Reddit today is launching the first major change to its mobile app in over two years with the addition of a new Discover Tab, offering personalized recommendations, as well as a revamped navigation system that includes new Community and Profile menus where users can quickly access and reorganize their subscriptions or access their profile settings.

The company said it heard from users that they wanted a better way to explore their interests, which prompted the decision to introduce the Discover Tab.

Reddit today has over 100,000 active communities, but many of them are still under-exposed, it notes.

“The big thing we’re really trying to solve for here is that it can be hard to find subreddits and communities that you want to develop a deep connection to,” explains Jason Costa, Reddit’s Director of Product for Content and Communities. “Maybe something pops up in Reddit Search or Google Search…but it can take work. It’s not always the easiest thing to do. We acknowledge that — so we wanted to craft a new surface area to make it easier to discover lesser-known communities,” he said.

The new Discover Tab will now sit to the immediate right of the home button on Reddit’s mobile app for iOS and Android. In this section, you’ll be presented with a visually engaging, vertical feed of subreddit (community) recommendations, either based on popularity, if you’re a brand-new Reddit user, or based on your engagement patterns, if you’re an existing user.

Specifically, Reddit will take into consideration things like which subscriptions you already have and where you spend the most time, to make its recommendations. For example, if you subscribe to a lot of baseball subreddits and spend time in several football subreddits, the app may recommend other sports communities. If you’re a new user, Reddit will make suggestions of popular communities until it gains a little more signal about your interests.

What Reddit won’t do, however, is leverage any sort of understanding of user demographics — like age, location, or gender — for its recommendations.

As you scroll down the Discover Tab, you’ll see photos, GIFs and videos in small rectangular or square boxes overlaid with the name of the community they represent. This choice to use rich multimedia is meant to bring more “sight, sound, and motion” to the often text-heavy Reddit app, Costa says. The new feature will also allow you to refine your suggestions as you go by long-pressing on a tile then selecting options like show me more of this content, show me less of that content, and hide that content.

Across the top of the new section are high-level categories — like Technology, Animals, Sports, History, Hobbies, and many more — so you can explore areas beyond your current interests directly.

Not all communities will be showcased on the Discover page, we understand.

Costa tells TechCrunch the company won’t recommend any community that’s NSFW, based on its community content tags rating system. It also won’t suggest any community that’s been banned or quarantined at any point, as that’s a signal it may not be appropriate for such broad recommendation.

This decision would prevent Reddit’s more controversial communities from gaining further traction, even if they don’t reach the point of requiring a ban — like the bans enacted on the Trump-supporting communities The Donald and r/donaldtrump in previous years.

Image Credits: Reddit

Ultimately, Reddit hopes the new Discover Tab will help users find more communities to subscribe to, which would lead them to launch the Reddit app more often and engage with more content. This, in turn, could help boost Reddit’s bottom line. During tests over the previous month with a small subset of users, Reddit found that one in five people joined at least one new community after using the Discover Tab.

The new tab isn’t available on the web at this point, as Reddit will instead focus on the 70% of its user base who engage with its service via the mobile app (55% iOS/45% Android) or mobile web, versus the 30% who use Reddit on the desktop.

The addition also necessitated Reddit to rethink its navigation, as the tab is replacing the subscription tab that had previously been found on the bottom navigation bar. Now, subscriptions are tucked into the new Community menu on the left, where they can be sorted and customized. This Community Drawer will now include four sections: Moderating entry points; “Your Communities,” for your subscriptions; “Following” for the users you follow; and the “r/all” entry point.

On the right side, a new Profile Drawer will allow users to access and customize their profile.

The new features are rolling out now to Reddit’s global user base of 54 million daily active users across iOS and Android.

Well, TikTok has a Discord now

Many brands are using the messaging app Discord to forge a sense of community among their fans. If the fast-food chain Wendy’s can have a Discord with over 60,000 members, why not a viral platform like TikTok?

TikTok teased on Twitter that it was making a Discord server, but then confirmed the news on its own app today. Now, on TikTok’s brand new Discord, you can chat with strangers about… whatever you’d want to talk to a bunch of TikTokers about. Maybe the best way to make Emily Mariko’s viral salmon recipe?

@tiktok

@discord will you be my home away from home 🙏

♬ Zodiac – Will Gittens

“This server’s just like your for you feed: it’s made for you, some of its comments are spicy, and your parents have no idea what it is,” TikTok wrote in the Discord’s welcome channel. Some of the rules on the Discord include no NSFW content and no buying crypto. Before chatting, you have to indicate by selecting a check-mark reaction that you read the rules — this is common in popular Discords to discourage spam. There’s even an option to indicate your gender pronouns on your server profile.

As of publication, there are only 400 people in the Discord, which TikTok told TechCrunch is a “soft launch.” There are 5 moderators from TikTok, which could pose a problem if the server continues to grow. As one user said, “let’s take the advantage [to talk to each other] when there are not 300,000 people trying to chat at the same time.”

To prevent spam (which is also against the rules), TikTok is using “slowmode,” a Discord feature that only lets people send a message every 30 seconds. But users quickly got around the slowmode by making threads, where the time limit between messages doesn’t apply. Soon after, moderators removed the ability to make threads.

Right now, the conversation channels on the TikTok Discord are relatively ordinary, expect for some light trolling. There are chats for introducing yourself, sharing your TikToks, TikTok support, server feedback, TikTok sounds, and more. There’s even a “game room,” indicating TikTok’s growing interest in gaming — right now, the platform is testing a desktop streaming software called TikTok Live Studio.

Community is the new AI

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week with Grace on the dials, which meant that we had a flat lovely time recording Equity for you. Of course, Equity is TechCrunch’s venture capital focused podcast where we dig into the most critical funding rounds, and natter about the key news items impacting startups.

Before we hop into this week’s topics, you can follow the show on Twitter, where we rather often host impromptu Twitter spaces that sometimes become episodes. Come hang!

Here’s the rundown for this week:

  • Chalo raises $40M to improve bus transit in India: This startup wins name (and startup) of the week. Chalo wants to tackle inefficiencies in India’s bus system, so we noodle over why that makes sense and what challenges could be ahead.
  • Masterworks raises $110M for fractional art ownership: Call it a Series A if you must, but the megaround that Masterworks just raised helps underscore the global shift towards alternative investing, and fractional ownership. How long until we get Masterworks on the blockchain? That would be the real IRL-NFT crossover we are kinda waiting for.
  • CostCertified wants to save your next home reno projectCostCertified, which just participated in Y Combinator’s summer cohort, raised $8.45M in seed funding. The Canadian company’s end goal is to build the “Amazon for construction.” CostCertified allows contractors to send a shoppable interactive estimate to homeowners so that they can choose their selections during a project, and see the effect on price instantly.
  • All about communityCommunity has been watered down, there’s no doubt about it. But, there is still arguments for why it works – and we make them (often).
  • Google invests in AfricaAmerican tech giant Google is putting capital to work in Africa, but in the form of infra investment and early-stage investing. Frankly both make good sense given the advertising giant’s business model.
  • Edtech goes B2B: Udemy is going public! We have dug through the numbers already, but thankfully with Natasha on the show we got to go a level deeper on where edtech revenues may come from next.

And that’s our show! We are back bright and early on Monday!

Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotify and all the casts.

What a community means in the modern world of startups

“We believe that a thriving community is a company’s most valuable asset,” Community-led writes in its Declaration. “Community scales your business, resources and presence in ways that traditional marketing or advertising channels can’t. When done right, community enables and improves customer acquisition, streamlines support and success, bolsters retention, and provides crucial product insights. Community is the beating heart of the business that keeps the rest of the team running.”

It’s a matter-of-fact document, aiming to emphasize the importance of community in building a forward-looking startup, while highlighting the concept’s elasticity. But it leaves a lingering question: What, precisely, do we mean when we use the word “community” in the world of startups?

You’d think that’d be a question answered easily by a panel titled, “How to Cultivate a Community for your Company that Actually Lasts” during TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 last week. But if I’ve learned anything from moderating said Disrupt panels, it’s that there’s no easy answer to the question, due in part to the aforementioned elasticity. So, is this just one of those “we know it when see it” things, to paraphrase a famous Supreme Court ruling?

“It depends on the person, the context and the company,” says Commsor’s chief community officer, Alex Angel. “But ultimately, to me, community, at its most basic, is a group of people who’ve come together with a shared purpose. That shared purpose could be your product, it could be a company, it could be a topic, it could be whatever, but they’re all there intentionally around that thing to gather and talk and learn.”

“Community” has grown into one of those buzzy Silicon Valley terms over the past few years, but long-time advocates explain that the concept is fundamental in entrepreneurship and venture capital investments.

“Last October, when we launched Community Fund, people were asking investors and founders in the industry, ‘What is this community thing?’ It’s very fluffy,” says Lolita Taub, corporate Development VP at Catalyte, and co-founder and general partner at The Community Fund. “All of a sudden, we started seeing companies like Reddit, Peloton and Glossier become unicorns. You’re seeing the real generational wealth that exists in community-driven companies.”

13 Most Hilarious Product Manager Jokes

Product management can get very boring at times, especially if your product isn’t something that you’re personally invested in. At times, even a product manager’s job needs to be toned down using product manager jokes.

You might go for them in your professional setting or need them for your opening speech at an event. Regardless of the occasion, you have to make sure that you have some good material to go on with.

However, product management jokes can very easily be a hit or a miss. You need to know what kind of jokes your audience is interested in.

In this article, we’ll go over some hilarious product management jokes and memes that you can use in various settings.

Let’s check them out

8 Awesome Product Manager Jokes

If you’re looking to lighten up the mood during your weekly scrum meeting, you can always crack a joke or two. However, you need some solid material to get on with.

Remembering a joke word by word can be relatively hard for most product managers. Not everyone has a perfect memory for remembering jokes word for word.

That’s why you’re better off understand the humor behind product manager jokes. That way, you can create your own PM jokes on the fly. Alternatively, you can create custom versions of common jokes and adjust them according to your setting; your setting being your organization, industry, and team.

In any case, we’ve gathered some of the best product manager jokes from all around the internet. There’s a small analysis of each joke to help you get a better idea about it so you can remember it more easily.

You can also use the descriptions to create your own personal product manager jokes.

Whatever the case, here are some awesome product manager jokes that you can use in the project management world:

Joke #1

“A product manager walks into a bar

It isn’t what he expected so they immediately blames the product development team for no reason.”

Bar jokes never seem to miss the spot, regardless of the context. However, the reason why this one hits the spot is because of the age-old stereotype, that product managers always blame a lack of a proper final product on the product development team.

However, it doesn’t just have to be the product development team. You can also include a product owner, project manager, programmer, product marketing manager, content marketing manager, social media manager, or any other person who’s associated with the product.

After that, you can adjust the rest of the joke according to whomever you choose. Therefore, you don’t have to limit yourself to the exact joke. Utilize your imagination and creativity to mix and match your jokes.

Joke #2

“What’s the hardest part of being a product manager?

Explaining what you do to your parents and friends.”

This is another example of a typical joke being used in a product management setting. The idea is that a lot of people know that there’s someone called a product manager, but no one knows what they actually do.

Since most people wonder what is a product manager, there’s a good chance that your friends and family do too, even if you’re a product manager yourself.

What does a product manager do?

That’s not relevant, but the real question is: Can you explain what you do as a product manager? Probably not. At least not without being boring or confusing.

Joke #3

“What do you call an engineer who’s not meeting expectations?

A product manager, of course.”

The old ‘blame it on the product manager’ always works because the PM has to manage everything related to the product.

All roads lead to the product manager because they have to ensure that the product development team, engineering team, programming team, product marketing team, project management team, and every other stakeholder is on the same page.

If at any point, any team messes up, misses their deadline, doesn’t reach milestones, it’s considered to be the product manager’s fault.

Another take on the joke is that a product manager tries to do everything themselves to truly bring their vision to life. That, at times, includes micromanaging all the product people.

Joke #4

“What’s the best way to pay a product manager?

American Express.

They love taking credit for everything.”

Since product managers are overseeing all product-related matters, they’re involved with all the teams, processes, and goals. That means they have a stake in every deadline, milestone, goal, and KPI.

Therefore, when a product is successful, a product manager is directly or indirectly responsible for it and can take credit for the success of the product.

That’s how ‘product managers take credit for everything’ became a thing. Since American Express allows credit payments for practically everything, it ties in with the joke.

Joke #5

“What happened to the product manager who could only write 3 lines of code?

He got promoted.”

It’s said that in the product industry, programmers and engineers usually stay at the production level and don’t really move into the management side of things. Therefore, anyone who becomes a product manager isn’t good at coding, developing, or engineering.

While that’s a stereotype, a lot of startups and Silicon Valley giants follow this to an extent. Even large organizations like Amazon and LinkedIn do it. Companies always look for managers who can understand basic coding and development rather than developers and coders who can manage.

In real life, management skills always trump other skills when it comes to the idea of a promotion.

Joke #6

“A product manager tries to walk into a bar but can't because the door isn't scheduled until next release.”

Product managers are excellent project managers. That means they need excellent scheduling skills. Everything about a product works on a prioritization basis, and that’s used to schedule different activities.

That may include product maintenance, product updates, new feature introduction, user stories implementation, or anything for better product management.

Whatever it is, a product manager creates a schedule and makes sure that everyone follows it.

This particular joke banks on replacing the product elements with a bar’s elements. You can do the same by just changing the setting from a bar to another place.

Joke #7

“A product manager asks an SEO expert to make a joke.

An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, pub, tavern, public house, Irish pub, drinks, beer, alcohol place.

The product manager doesn’t understand the joke.”

Using two different elements in a joke always works if you understand both perspectives. There are two sides to this joke: one is about how SEO works and the other is about how product managers don’t know everything.

Combining those two things together makes it a pretty decent two-part joke. You can do this with practically any two elements such as product managers and marketers, product managers and upper management, or any other group.

However, keep in mind that you need to understand both elements. For example, the SEO part of the joke is only understandable if you have a basic understanding of how SEO works (using similar keywords to cover search intent).

Joke #8

“A product manager is very much like a marriage counselor.

They both just get people in the room and force them to talk to each other and listen to each other until the problem disappears.”

Making unique comparisons with product manager jobs always leads to an interesting analysis. For example, in this case, the comparison implies that both sides have to talk everything out.

Furthermore, it’s about addressing an issue hands-on to make it disappear with the relevant stakeholders present. Since product managers play the role of overseeing everything, they have to ensure that any problem is resolved as quickly as possible. And to do that, they have to get the relevant parties in one place.

5 Hilarious Product Management Memes

Similar to typical product manager jokes, you can also share product manager memes.

You’re not always going to be in a room with tons of product people and managers. And you won’t always be attending or hosting a conference or podcast.

Sometimes, you might want to share a joke on your Slack group or any other communication channel. It’s the age of memes, and most of the time, you’re better off sharing a meme than a written joke online.

While you may not find a lot of product manager memes on the internet, you can occasionally come across some good ones. Here are a few to help you get going.

Meme #1

Product Manager Jokes Meme 1

Product managers are typically associated with being cranky and demanding. Meanwhile, their demands are often seen as unachievable or nonsensible goals. For example, in this meme, the PM is tired of waiting around for customers to place orders.

The character doesn’t understand that in order to get more orders, they need to work more on the product, work with the sales department, employ marketers, and do much more. Customers won’t just come to you to place a big order.

Meme #2

Product Manager Meme 2 Almost

A good product manager tries to meet deadlines, but a great product manager understands that reaching deadlines is much more complicated. You can’t just rush a person or a team to get something done.

However, bad project management can lead to delays, and that usually falls on the product manager. In any case, it’s the PM’s job to ensure that all the teams are aware of deadlines and meeting them.

The ‘almost’ factor always leads to more delays, and it’s often heard of in the product management world.

Meme #3

Product Manager Meme 3 Ruthless

Cyanide and Happiness have managed to practically develop memes and joke about everything, including product managers. This particular meme banks on the ruthlessness and straightforwardness of product managers.

It’s an accurate representation of what product managers have to do daily. They listen to multiple ideas from various people and provide their views on whether an idea would work or not.

PMs are also known to be blunt. Therefore, if it’s a bad idea, they will tell you it’s a bad idea even before explaining why it’s bad.

Meme #4

Product Manager Meme 4 Dilbert

Dilbert cartoons have been around for a while and have transitioned into memes. It’s usually a quick cartoon with a few panels and some text.

This particular meme focuses on a lack of accountability and the fact that companies focus on the wrong things for the wrong reasons. For example, when an organization doesn’t listen to the product manager and the product ends up failing, other stakeholders would rarely take the blame.

In case of failed product, stakeholders will try to mention things like ‘Teamwork’ to account for the massive blunder they’ve made, and try to focus on relatively unnecessary things and considering them wins in the face of failure.

Meme #5

Product Manager Meme 5 Backlog

Product managers often joke about how other people believe they know more about the product than the PM. That’s because internal and external stakeholders along with customers often give their suggestions for improvements, and most of them are not feasible.

That’s where the idea of a product backlog was born as a way of escaping such conversations. If anyone provides a suggestion for an improvement or feature, just tell them you’ll put it in the backlog.

All product managers know that the idea isn’t going to go in the backlog. Product managers have to follow a strict product roadmap and product strategy, and random improvement suggestions don’t help.

Even if it’s a good suggestion that improves user experience, PMs still have to follow the process.

Wrapping It Up

You don’t have to be a standup comedian to make product manager jokes. All you need is a ‘lol’ from others to know that you’ve landed it.

You don’t always need unique jokes or memes; you can use existing ones and use them at the right time or derive your own versions of them.

Whatever the case, use product manager jokes and memes mentioned above to get some inspiration and lighten the mood at your next meeting.

The post 13 Most Hilarious Product Manager Jokes appeared first on Product Manager HQ.

Owning the paycheck is the key to fintech success

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week, Natasha and Danny, otherwise known as your two new favorite Book influencers (inside joke, you’ll get if you listen to the show), hopped on the mics to take everyone threw the news, with Grace and Chris in the background.

Here’s what we got into:

Well, as you can tell, it’s been a busy writing and speaking week for your humble hosts. We’re grateful for the opportunity, and will be back in your ears on Monday.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotify and all the casts.

P.S. We can’t wait to see you all at our live show next week. If you haven’t grabbed free tickets, GET THEM!