Product School

There's no real school for Product Management, but I think all PMs know that working with industry experts is the best way to gain that key PM skill. Although the content of the PLC course was decent (it's a lot of information you can find elsewhere for much less cost). The benefit really comes from working with a great instructor. Navin Nair taught our class and I really enjoyed his teaching style. He ensured we had a good class discussion around different topics, didn't just "talk about the slides" but brought some really applicable real-life examples. The exercises we did he also ensured to create we all presented and discussed the different outcomes. 

Not sure how Product School has such raving reviews. The majority of the learning takes place virtually via videos and slides. The content is informative but the online learning platform is not super user friendly which is surprising for a school that supposedly is specialized in tech product mgmt. The 36.5 hours of instructor-led learning promised in the course brochure are not really instructor led (it's you working on a group project for 90+ minutes of each 120 minute class). The project canvases in Mural are poorly designed and not explained well. (Design and communication should be baseline for this space, so I'm confused again as to why the school does not practice what it sells). I also found it frustrating that one of my team members did not collaborate well. Because of the structure of the class, I was stuck with them throughout. The one plus was that I was able to use the language from the syllabus and course content to boost my resume, but in retrospect, I wish I had just signed up for Coursera or another option at the fraction of the cost. Really not worth the $5K price tag.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my live PMC sessions with my classmates, project team members and the instructor Ronke Majekodunmi. Before I enrolled in her class, I thoroughly researched all instructors on the syllabus. I wanted to find someone who looked like me so that I could see myself in that role. She was the only one on that list and it has been a fantastic experience being a learner in her class. Ronke breathed life into the lectures, PowerPoints, and videos by providing us with real life examples, chunks of wisdom and advice, encouragement, and perspective. I also enjoyed the additional recommended resources she provided throughout the course that added additional context to the lectures. My journey would not have been possible without the exceptional support, guidance, and communication from our instructor. I highly recommend enrolling in her class and listening to her podcast!

My Product Executive Certificate class with instructor Shilpa Vir was a fun, informative and realistic bootcamp for product professionals in both leadership and more tenured in their careers. Real life anecdotes, challenging product norms and reflection really helped bring my product game to the next level. I would recommend this course to those looking to stay at the top of their product game as they lead teams and direct product lines within their organizations.

My experience with The Product School was great! The course did a good job of ramping the student up from the basics of product development to the eventual final project. The course is supplemented with the product schools own book that is a great reference for when you don't understand a concept. My Instructor, Farhaz Karmali had a strong background in Product Management and could pull examples from his own experience when teaching us. He's great when explaining different concepts of PM and even gave us helpful feedback before and after our final projects. All in all a great experience. 

I am a co-founder of a Robo-Advisor startup called WealthAgile.  Dr Joel Palathinkal has been doing an amazing job of teaching me Product Management!  This course has assisted greatly in creating a new product.  Joel's background in Product Management and Fintech has proven invaluable!  
I would recommend this course and Joel to anyone.  Truly has been an amazingly educational process, that I am sure will continue into the future!

 February 8th, 2020 marked a very important journey in expanding my expertise in my career as a Product Manager. My experience at Product school has been a pretty amazing to say the least.  I would like to give a special thanks to my Instructor Dr. Joel Palathinkal, Dr. Joel is a very influential person. He always made me think out of the box and innovative.  What is awesome about him is that he does not give you a yes or no answer, he introduces the answer as storytelling and make you deduce the correct answer for your question. I once asked Dr. Joel how can get useful feedback from customers in order to come-up with a monetization plan, instead of throwing an answer at me, Dr. Joel asked the class a few questions and was able to filter out few people and then he introduced these people to a product and while Dr. Joel was presenting this product this select group was really engage and were actually willing to pay a certain subscription fee. Instead of Dr. Joel telling me filter out the correct audience for your product and then you are able to ask them how much they would pay, Dr. Joel actually showed me a live example for how this should be done.  I will definitely miss Dr. Joel classes, and I would highly recommend him as an instructor for my friends and anyone interested in joining Product School. 

It's been a very interesting journey. Because the program and the instructor "Vishal" were exactly what I needed to bring together my experience into focus and make a significant impact on my role and with my team in a very short time.
The structure of the course is designed very well, and the selection of the instructor worked very well for me. 
Vishal has deep experience that he was generous in sharing with us. In addition to he managed to create a good atmosphere where everyone got to share and learn from each other.
Overall this was a superb experience that I would recommend to everyone looking to become a product leader.

Hou Chia was such a patient teacher! No question was too big or too small. He structured class well and tailored it to the level of the class at hand. This was a very safe space and Hou goes above and beyond.

He is an excellent communicator and would not stop on a concept until we all had it down, explaining things in different ways until we had a shared understanding. Patience is a virtue he has down

Product School is certainly a unique concept. Course is designed near to perfect and addresses all areas of product management in a nutshell and is presented thoroughly within the short duration. Classes are more of a workshop model which is great and there is so much to learn, not just by doing your own project but also listening to what others in the class present and share.

Nim (Nimrod Fox), our instructor is an excellent mentor. Listening to his professional experience, including how he handles day to day challenges as a PM and his career path to product management was such a motivation. He makes you think about "The problem". There were multiple instants when I was constantly focusing on the solution (typical engineering mindset) but Nim pushed me each time, to wear the product hat and strengthen my opportunity hypothesis instead.

I would definitely recommend PS to anyone new to product management or someone who is looking to excel as an effective PM

I spent the last 8+ weeks focusing on my software and product management skills at Product School.  Logan Hutchingson was my instructor that was excellent.  He taught the details on how to become a great PM.  But, he also took you on daily issues he faces and how he addressed them.  The role playing was very beneficial.  I also gained great feedback on my interview skills and how to better prepare for my interivews.  Logan was very informative on the product process, how to deal with the many aspects of launches and the class is focused on being a great PM.  After the class was finished I am well prepared to launch software products and have some interivews with Fortune 100 firms.  Great job Logan and Product School.

I took Product School Silicon Valley April-June 2018, our instructor Teesh is a very knowledgeable Product Manager with over a decade or experience.  For anyone who is thinking about switching fields to product, I highly recommend Product School.  For someone with little to no experience with product management specifically, I am now clear about what the role entails, who I will be working with, what I will be working on, on how to be successful in the role.  There are many hands-on activities that put you in the shoes of a real-life PM and forces you to work with your peers and articulate your ideas, such as writing a PRD, user stories, Go-to-market Strategies...  Teesh was also very experienced and helped guide us through these activities by helping us think the way a PM should.  All in all, it was a great experience for me with a high-quality instructor and very good material for educating those interested in exploring Product Management.

Course: 8 week long Software Product Management on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, from March to May 2018.
 
Location: Santa Monica, CA 
Parking note: For those driving there, several public lots are available free for the first 1.5 hours. Classes run 2.5 hours though so expect to pay between $3 – $5 per class depending on how early you arrive and how late you stick around after class.

Instructor: Rich Headley, currently a PM at Cornerstone OnDemand.
Rich is very knowledgable, engaging, and covered all the relevant course topics on the syllabus. He also took time to address additional questions and concepts during class. I especially liked the way he applied PM concepts to real-world anecdotes and connected them to what we were learning.

Product School learnings: To get the most out of PS, you’ll need to put in more effort beyond doing the assignments.

• Participate in class.
• Get to know your classmates. 
• Take advantage of the multitude of meet-up opportunities.
• Dive into the Slack community.

​By the end of this course you will learn what you need to know to develop a new feature or product from idea to prototype and present it, using any number of the PM tools discussed along the way.

They are always looking for feedback to make this program better and encourage interaction, which I appreciate. As far my evaluation of the school itself, there’s always room for improvement in a relatively new tech business learning program geared toward professionals. However I firmly believe that with instructors like Rich there it will continue to get better and better with each class.

I look forward to using what I’ve learned from this course in my career.

I attended the 8 week Software Product Management Certification Course which was held at Denver. 

This is one of the best courses that I have ever taken in my professional life. The course content was very apt and to the point. The best part of the course was it was not all instructor lectures and slides alone. Every class had a hands on practice material to be done in class as a group or as an individual. Also the homework assignments were very insightful and helped me develop on the concepts that I learned in class. The Slack channel is really helpful. Also I liked the fact that the class was really small. Just around 10 students which helped each one of us get personal attention from the instructor.

Our instructor was Ken Furie, who is the Head of Product and Technical Strategy at Gloo at Boulder, Colorado. Ken made the class really interesting and enjoyable. His informal approach to the class made all of us very comfortable from Day 1. Every class was less lecture and more of a group discussion. Ken was extremely patient in answering all our questions, however silly they may be. Also he kept up the subtle humor, which all the students appreciated and enjoyed very much. Ken is a very positive person who is really passionate about products and that reflects in his instructor mode as well. Also his knowledge and experience in the Product space speaks for itself. He also helped us prepping up our resumes and personal stories. Discussed the Do's and Dont's in interviews and really prepared us with confidence to attend any interviews. I would any day attend another session with Ken anytime.

After completing the 8-week Product Management course, I confidently recommend Rich Headley to be your next instructor at the Product School, Santa Monica. Prior to the course, I was under the impression that to be a Product Manager, hiring companies required candidates to have a high technical knowledge/background. As a Psych grad with a sales background, I had a lot of reservation in enrolling for this course as I thought I would struggle to understand concepts/hold my class back and not find many uses for the course.

From the first day of class and to the very end, Rich fostered a safe & interactive learning environment that simplified concepts while connecting them to real-life applications through in-class exercises. A typical class looks like this: after teaching us that class' content, Rich would break up my class into smaller groups so we can practice what we learned using a case study and present our findings to the class. After we presented, Rich would give the group constructive feedback that I felt instilled confidence in us that we understood the concept and encouraged us to practice on our own for the final project.  

I greatly appreciated Rich's availability throughout the 8 weeks. I ended up missing Week 3 due to illness and had to catch-up. Instead of being upset that I was behind, Rich made himself available on Slack and by coming in early/leaving class late so I could ask questions & for feedback. Without that, I probably would've been discouraged to continue and probably wouldn't be writing this review today.

In retrospect, I was surprised at how many translatable skills I got to develop and sharpen through the 8-week course. Although I don't have plans as of right now to pursue a career in PM, I'm confident that when the time comes, I'll be able to draw upon what I've learned but also leverage the Product School's network to accelerate my journey. 

Thanks Rich for pouring in so much of your own free time to share a real-world perspective/honest view of what PM life is like and practical insights/best practices to be a successful PM!

Professor Joel Palath easily made my experience unforgettable and invaluable at Product School. His knowledge of the field, along with his ability as educator, pushed our class to learn much more than we could have on our own. I came to the class with experience as a product manger and was not too sure what to think of the course but left with immediate results. The material we covered helped me revamp the way I am approaching products at work and helped kickstart my own startup. Professor Palath presented solutions to real problems that PMs face on a day to day basis by not just reviewing material from a textbook/slides but by weaving the course material with his own real world experiences as PM. This made the course much more enjoyable  and made the concepts much easier to grasp. The class was a very tight knit group and our support has survived outside of the class. I am meeting with a classmate this week to work on our personal products and have done this with various other peers. The Product School is worth the cost for any aspiring product managers and I would absolutely recommend taking Professor Palath! A+++

I definitely recommend Product School if anybody is looking to start a career in product management. Speaking of course material, it is very well organized. The beginners will understand it easily as it covers all points in details. It does includes two in class activties in each class. It s a great platform where you interact alot. Each activity will explain the purpose of the elements discussed in the slides of the course material. My instructor was Roman Dzadzic, He is an amazing professor. He not only taught us in an effective manner but also helped us in the homework. I remeber i had number of questions and he never failed to answer even a single time. I had diffculties in public speaking. Specially this stuff was completely new for me to talk about. I would say I ould take out my fear of public speaking with this class. 

 

 

As a person relatively fresh out of college, I have not had much exposure to the PM world. I have a peculiar background that allowed me to work in design and software engineering, but had no real exposure to put those skills to test. While taking the course, I worked as a visual designer, bringing a more design centric perspective into the PM class, and was able to practice my knowledge and collaborate with fellow students in the class. I knew that being a PM is something I wanted to do, but needed more experience to get the foot in the door. From this experience, I was able to meet my instructors, and fellow students who I have joined to partner with in product design and development.

Taking this course is like any other prep-course; you get what you put into it. Not only that, you are able to grow a network of people in various industries. I learned a lot from the class, and from people’s experiences and stories that led them to where they’re at.

This class is meant for everyone, those who have experience in Product Management, or those who are looking to transition into it. There are many stories that congregate into each cohort, and it enables us to broaden our vision of what an effective PM can be by learning from each other, and from different industries.

This course is great! Indeed this is the best PM class I've ever taken so far. Never feel so productive on a Saturday. I enjoyed the course material as well as the interaction with instructor and classmates.

The Class Notes are well-written and very practical. I am sure I will refer back to the material again and again as I grow in my PM career. I also developed a deeper understanding of core PM concepts: user persona/opportunity validation/etc.

My instructor is Arjun. He is very helpful not only in class(answer a lot of questions we raised in class) but also helped us connect with his network and reviewed our career plan outside of class. He is also very humorous :)

As a PM, sometimes I feel lonely (you face a lot of engineers daily but few PMs). So here really gives me a sense of community. My classmates helped me get out of my comfort zone and speak about my wants and thoughts. I am also glad that I am updated with the latest trend in PM framework/tools/thoughts so I don't feel left behind.

I attended the Product Management class taught by Dr. Joel Palathinkal at the NYC Product School in October-November 2017. Overall, the 8-week course was very good.

Joel is an excellent instructor. He is very knowledgeable, professional and courteous. I found his style of teaching very effective. The class format was very interactive and dynamic, especially when we did case studies. I really enjoyed the classroom discussions. In addition, he consistently made himself available outside of class hours to provide input and feedback on the class assignments, as well as career-related items (e.g. resume feedback). 

I feel that the course has provided me with the tools and knowledge to transition into a Product role in the near future. Product School also seems to have a strong network which I plan to tap into. I definitely recommend this course for people interested in pursuing a career in  Product Management.

I definitely recommend Product School if you're looking for a place to start your career in product management. I've worked a lot with product managers in my previous experiences and I felt like I had a grasp of what they do, which is why I was very interested in taking this course. Even though I have an idea of what they do, I still felt like I wanted something formal to prepare me for a career in product management. 

I completed the course in the first week of August. There were definitely concepts in the curriculum that felt like review, which is mostly because I have worked closely with product managers in the past. But I was also introduced to a lot of new tools and concepts. The reading assignments I did for homework were excellent in terms of preparing me for the upcoming lectures. Each chapter introduces a new concept and at the end of each chapter, you see how those concepts are applied to a mock company's idea to help them meet their business goal. 

My instructor, Shendi Wang did a fantastic job in presenting the materials and answering the many questions I had. Her real life examples from her current role as a Director of Product Development and Innovation at Mastercard and her previous roles were invaluable to the class. She is a great network to have, very knowledgable in this space, and is able to give honest and constructive feedback on your work. I highly recommend Shendi if you have the opportunity to take a class that is taught by her.

Looking to hone my unofficial product management skills, I enrolled in the Product Manager course at Product School. The course was well structured and delivered a concise plan to get students to the next step in becoming a PM. Through a combination of lectures and class exercises we learned and actually used techniques applicable to a job in product.

Shendi Wang was a great instructor. She was knowledgeable and passionate about product management and delivered the material in an easily digestible manner. Shendi leveraged her vast experience as a PM to give the class examples of what we can expect to encounter and how to approach challenges. Her classroom environment was encouraging and made you feel ok to venture out of your comfort zone.

I’m excited to now have the tools to take the next step in my career!

If you are interested in understanding how products and services are successfully implemented on Mobile and web platforms , Product Mgmt @ Product School(PS) is the place to start.

Before PS, I had no clear understanding on how to Ideate, validate, build and publish a great product.

Ashok Bania (PM at Spotify), our instructor for April 2017 cohort, is a brilliant and pragmatic instructor, who along with PS tools and course material, efficiently translated concepts and best industry practices of Product Management.

He cited multiple real world challenges and solutions, which has been great add-on to my learning. And, it was excellent class cohort, with almost all of them having distinct professional background. So their inputs enriched our learning process.

So, while there are no shortcuts to be a Product Manager, this course has definitely set me on the right path to transition to a Product Manager. Also, PS has good post course support system: weekly events and training program perks for students. 

Product School have bought so many ideas and potential opportunities which I didn't know exist.   Joel, my instructor have bought introduce me to so many platforms/tools to help me to become a product manager.  I feel that the course is very valuable/informational for people who want to become a product manager and am not sure how to. I also love the smaller class and the group work we do in class.                

Instructor - Dr. Joel P

f you're trying to transition to product management from a different career, I highly recommend product school. 

The only reason I'm removing one star is I'm reviewing this course mid-way. I have a feeling that my review would change to a full 5-star if I had reviewed at the end of the course because some of my expectations of the course are likely to be fulfilled towards the end of the course. 

Pros: 

-  Dr. Joel P. is very responsive and helpful both during class to clarify concepts and outside of class in case of questions on job leads/resume review etc. (full 5 stars to him)
- Product School certification
- Diversity of experience in class 
- Help with resume review
- Job leads on Slack
- Great talks with existing PMs and provide opportunities of networking (You don't need to be product school student for this)
- Slack (Where you gain access to network of current and aspiring PMs and recruiters - you don't need to be a product school student for this!)
- Curriculum is well designed for a generalist software product management role

Cons:

- Help with mock interviews and preparing for various types of questions asked during interviews 
- Strategies for targeting different companies - large sized, mid-sized and early startups
- Additional help on more technical product management roles where knowledge of SQL and programming languages/algorithms is needed

I enrolled in Product School's 8 week long Software Product Management (PM) course to facilitate my transition from legal practice to the legal tech space. The curriculum is robust and provides an excellent overview of prevailing Product Management philosophies, methodologies, workflows, toolkits and challenges.  

Dr Joel Palathinkal, the instructor, is an excellent educator - he is very adept at translating concepts and populates lessons with various case studies gleaned from his extensive experience in product management across various industries. I am very impressed with how responsive Joel is to queries not only during class but also out of class via Slack. He routinely supplements the course curriculum with articles, video clips and PM tools that he uses at his workplace.

I had a great experience learning at the Product School. They have a hands on approach where I was able to apply the concepts in real time. The Product School created a great balance between theory, group work to individual projects that proved to be a excellent learning experience for me and allowed me to really get value out of the class.

My instructor, Ryan Black, was excellent. He experience starting his own tech company, working at Facebook and now a startup as a product manager gave me confidence that I can learn from him. He was able to provide the class with excellent real life stories to drive home all the concepts we were learning. He was able to give us a peak into the various ways PMs apply what we were learning. Ryan has a very flexible teach style, which allowed him to go in the direction that served the class best. He also gave great feedback on the work I did. He was very detailed yet concise in his feedback, which allowed me to create quality work when writing my PRD or thinking through my prototype and go-to-market strategy.

My classmates were amazing. Outside of the instructor I was able to learn a ton from my classmates. Some of my classmates were PMs, engineers, designers, marketers and consultants, so I was able to learn from their perspective when thinking about improving a product and how to empathize with the customer when thinking about solving a problem.

Overall, as a career switcher I have gained much confidence in my ability to take on a product manager role. The confidence came from putting in time on the individual project. The project allowed me to put everything I learned into practice. I did everything from hypothesizing, writing user stories, validating my solutions, prototyping the product/feature to understanding the correct success metrics to use and much more.

The only thing I would change about the class is the allocation of topics. There is a lot of time spent at the end on resume building, interview prep and job search. I think that part can be cut shorter and more time spent learning more about product management.

I had an amazing experience of attending Product Management course at Brainstation. The course was structured in a way that made it easier to understand and grasp the concepts even for a naive like me in products space. The slides were very informational along with videos which made it more interesting. A big shout out to our trainer Ms Andrea who really explained the concepts well and helped us throught this journey. 

I graduated Shilpa Vir’s PMC cohort recently. It is very rare to find a charismatic and  motivational instructor with exceptional product expertise. I was very fortunate to attend a class full of joy and meet new friends. Product school’s programming and Shilpa’s unparalleled big tech product expertise will help you get up and running with confidence. Thank you Shilpa and product school for having me.

I attended Product Leadership Certificate program in 2021 and enjoyed it very much, especially thanks to our fantastic instructor Shilpa Vir.
Shilpa brought a lot of practical knowledge to the classes, and live discussions with the diverse group of professionals from various domains were inspiring and informative.
The curriculum covers many aspects of the PM role - from business strategy to deeply technical areas, which makes it feel rushed a bit to fit into 8 6-hour long classes.
Nevertheless, a highly recommended course with lots of applied knowledge and a great diverse cohort, enjoyed it a lot.