Jason Calacanis advises a Johns Hopkins student worried about AI taking jobs to become a product manager. Learn wireframing tools like Balsamiq, design features using Calm.com as a model, and build social proof before pitching investors.
Chapters
Trevor, I'm a college student and—
Where do you go to school, Trevor?
I go to Johns Hopkins.
Whoa, you gonna be a doctor? Your mom wants you to be a doctor? I sound like your mom now, huh? Are you gonna be a doctor? Make the family proud.
With all due respect, I've heard that question so many times. So one question that I had—
But is that a yes or a no?
No, I'm not a—
But your mom wants you to be, or dad. How did you know?
So one big question that I have that a lot of college students my age is asking is, with the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, where do you see the need for human input? Because, you know, college students like me are trying to get a job, and it's tough because, you know, engineering students and comp sci students are getting the most number of love calls, but it seems that other majors are having a hard time.
Sure. The world needs intelligent people who can learn new skills, right? And of course, computer science and some of these skills are the most in demand. But when I look at startups, a great hack is being a product manager. Product managers are diligent, hardworking, and are able to keep the chessboard in their brain, let's say, right? If you can learn to be a product manager, and if you go to Johns Hopkins, I think it will take you about 2 weeks to learn how to be a product manager. It's literally gonna be one of the easiest things you've done. If you learn how to do wireframes, and then you find a CEO who's got a lot of crazy ideas, right? Maybe Ben from Butterfly in the back, and you say, I wanna be your product manager. And you start writing up the wireframes. He tells you ideas, you mock them up, you bring them to you, and then you learn growth. These are 2 critical functions in every startup: the person who can design the product and the person who comes up with techniques to grow the product. And then the most dangerous of all, cross-disciplinary people, people who can design product and do growth. This is your future. You promise you'll do it? Say okay. Trust me, go learn to be a product manager. Download Balsamiq or other wireframes. Wireframe a website or an app that you already love. So let's say you love Calm.com. You love to meditate. I'm an investor in that company. They've done very well. Take Calm.com, redesign it. Redesign three features. Go look at other companies that have great features. Think to yourself, what features could I add to Calm.com that'd be interesting? And you say, group meditation. Right now it's all solo, but group meditation would be powerful. Wireframe out group meditation, and then add to it a growth hack. Okay, a growth hack would be loading your address book, or loading your Twitter list and the friends who you've interacted with most, or who your closest friends are on Facebook. Then have the wireframe be clickable. So you can use, what's the clickable wireframe software that's really good?
InVision.
InVision, thank you. Use InVision to make a clickable mockup of calm.com for group meditation. Invite 5 friends, make it look great. They all, 5 of them sit in a row and they all click when they, They all, when they breathe out, the microphone listens for their breath and it shows their breathing on their name in their avatar going shh, shh. And I have 5 people and their names are going up and down with the breathing, and then they all try to sync their breathing as they're doing their meditation. And then you submit it to alex@calm.com and you say, Alex, I heard Jason speak and I used Calm. It was really compelling. I thought you should have a feature in which groups could meditate for the paid version. And if you have 2 people, it's free. But if you want to have over 2 people and you want to meditate with 4 or 5 people, when you come into the app, we'll match you like in a video game. And I play video games and I copied this matching service and here's my mockup. I would love to get coffee with you. I'm looking for a job as a product manager. I would work for free for the first month to show you how much I want the job. Now you've put yourself into every CEO's dream— somebody who's doing work for them before you've hired them. I've had people do this with me. I hire them. People who show that they care about the product. I was talking to a family member and they were like, can you introduce me to Gary Vee? I said, I can introduce you to Gary Vee, but the first thing he's gonna do is look at your Snapchat, look at your Instagram, look at your Twitter. And I just looked at them, and they're not updated, and they don't have anything to do with what you do, what you want to do for Gary. So why don't you spend 30 days, and every day put out some content that is related to things that Gary likes— the Jets, you know, Planet of the Apps, whatever. Make little video remixes. And we're in the process of doing this, and when he gets to 30 days, Then I will email Gary and say, hey, my nephew loves what you do. Here is an example of his work. You can see on his social media that he remixed the finals. He remixed the best of the Jets for the last 4 decades, and he did the '70s, '80s, '90s, and he put a little message to you at the end. Now Gary Vee is like, oh, this is my plan, hopefully, and I get my nephew a job working for Gary Vee. I mean, I could ask Gary Vee to do me a favor, but I would rather have it be that I'm doing Gary Vee a favor by introducing him. So you want to put yourself in the bucket of doers. Are you a doer or are you a talker?
I'm a doer.
So do the work.
Thank you so much.
Was this okay?
This is amazing, like really good.
Okay.
Yeah, thank you.
My pleasure. Thank you for If you, just a final request. A final request. If you read the book and you like it, please write a review, a detailed review on Amazon and Audible, and tweet it. If you don't like the book, what's your email?
Asra.
Asra at what?
Asra@draperuniversity.
Email Asra@draperuniversity about what you don't like about the book. She'll put all those together and she'll give me a specific report on the mistakes I made in the book. But if you like it, please, I want my publisher to make money so that I can write the next book. And the next book is even better. I have a really good idea, but I want to write it next year when I get my energy back because it's exhausting. But please, please, if you do like the book, preorder a copy. Audible, preorder it. It only costs $10, and it really helps if there's a bunch of preorders, and the reviews help most of all. So, and I hope you read it. And you can always email me, jason@calicanis.com, or on Twitter, Jason, or on Instagram, Jason. Follow me, I follow back.
He always replies to his emails.
I try.
I've always gotten replies, so I don't know.
You write very succinct emails.
Probably, 2 sentences, like a sentence probably.
If an email is more than a paragraph, it's probably a meeting. Right? That's pretty good actually. Keep it short. Short and to the point.
