What makes a great product manager? This list of attributes is extensive, but all are important to being a great PM.

Four lessons from my first week working as an Associate at Techstars Boston.

I decided to leave the startup I founded as part of Founder Institute Montreal. Here's why.

Learnings from Week 2 of Techstars Boston, which was the start of Mentor Madness.

Lessons learned from Week 3 at Techstars Boston. This week the focus was sales, on which all businesses are built.

Sales and efficiency were the key topics this week, with a workshop focused on sales, and some insights from the Founder Story.

Lessons from Week 5 of Techstars Boston, where we learned about the power of the Techstars network, and learned all about customer interviewing.

Lessons from Week 6 at Techstars Boston, with some great Founder Stories, learning about behavioural interviewing and exploring cofounder conflict.

Lessons from Week 7 of Techstars Boston, with a focus on fundraising and structuring cap tables.

For whatever reason, this week the workshops focused largely on enterprise-oriented companies, and the Founder Stories happened to come from two people involved with an enterprise-focused company. From a general standpoint, this week has been about growth. Companies are spending a lot of time working out their strategy for the next 6-12 months, and which direction they will head after Techstars.

After dipping briefly following Mentor Madness (at least in feel), the pace here has started to noticeably increase again. That mostly means founders and teams have less time for distractions, and are putting in even longer hours than usual. New product is being shipped, and more time is being dedicated to fundraising and sales, in preparation for Demo Day. As such, the focus this week was mostly on product development, and putting more pressure on growth.

This week was the last "normal" week in Techstars, before the pitch practice madness begins. The final week was full of workshops, with the last workshop on Friday, and the topics varied from selling techniques, to common VC (venture capital) pitch mistakes, to PR (public relations) strategy.

I've joined a new startup called Lean Systems (as of September)! I'm super excited about the project, in which I'm now a cofounder, and the last few months since joining have been awesome. I wanted to share a bit about the company, as well as my thought process in selecting a new challenge following my time as an Associate with Techstars Boston (Spring 2016).

This fall, my two brothers are both applying to college (used interchangeably with university throughout). Both are in different situations, and separated by three years; they’re likely going to have very different experiences. But the fact that both are going to be heading off to university for at least the next four years prompted me to reflect on my time at university, and what I’d do differently if I had to do it again.

My plan was/is to write a post every week during my time here in Techstars NYC – we’re currently starting Week 6, but I plan to catch up.

After determining that growth and product were going to be our two main points of focus in Week 1, we got prepared for Mentor Madness in Week 2.

Mentor Madness is an interesting time – you repeatedly get questioned, given opinions, and you usually end the week feeling as if you have no idea what you’re doing.

I spent most of Week 4 in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, attending the NBAA Schedulers & Dispatchers conference which happens once every year. In theory, these are exactly the people we want to be talking to, learning from, and eventually helping, so it was a great opportunity.

Week 7 kicked off the final stretch of the program, during which we would normally be preparing for Demo Day. There have been a few posts written recently (Ty Danco, Ross Baird) about why we should be changing Demo Days, and Techstars NYC has been experimenting with a different format.

The alternate format to Demo Day continued this week, and in preparation for Investor Preview in Week 9, we were preparing to record investor pitches. I was reminded how difficult and time-consuming it is to prepare a great company pitch, and how difficult it is to pitch in front of a camera.

Thinking about joining the Founder Institute in your city? This post goes into detail about my experience, and whether I would recommend it.

I just left my position as cofounder at Lean Systems, and started a new role with Unito, a startup based in Montreal doing syncing between collaboration tools. This post explains the rationale for the decision, and why I’m excited about this new opportunity.

A few thoughts from my first 3 months working at Unito, a tech startup based in Montreal.