The Accidental Product Manager
I had no idea what a Product Manager was until someone pointed out that I was one. In the dawn of the PC age, I discovered a program called AutoCAD. Hardly any other architects (I'm a licensed architect) seemed to realize that PCs were about to change the profession, so I wrote a book called "The Architect's Guide to Computer-aided Design" - the first book about using PCs in architectural practice. Computers were still fairly primitive, and much of the book was about how architecture could be changed by using PCs. Likewise, the columns and articles that I began writing for trade magazines explained how PC applications should support the profession. I had inadvertently taken a role as "the voice of the customer," and I began getting calls from Autodesk, their competitors, and entrepreneurs who saw opportunities in some of the topics I wrote about. One of these was a venture capitalist who wanted to develop software tools that would revolutionize building ...