Ashwin

I've been in product management for about ten years, and I'm one of the few people who started in product straight out of grad school. I began at a fitness tech company building digital experiences for exercisers around the world, then moved into property tech, where I spent seven years at my last company.

By the end of those seven years I felt stagnated. I was doing a lot of different projects, but it was unfulfilling — it felt like moving from one product to the next in quick succession, like leadership was throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. I wasn't seeing the kind of impact in my career that I was hoping for. I'd thought about leaving several times and felt the fatigue of applying for roles while still holding down my job. So I joined Intentional Product Manager while I was still employed, because I wanted to make a big investment in my career and see the growth I hadn't seen in years. Honestly, it was one of the best decisions I've taken in life.

A few things convinced me. Not every program interviews you before you sign up, and I was impressed that the fit had to work both ways — everything felt intentional, right through to the name. The structure was clear, and the testimonials I'd already seen were extremely positive. My wife was the driving force. Long before I considered investing in my career, she'd been telling me I was stagnating and that whatever early advantage I had from starting in product straight out of college would be negated by staying in my role too long. I gave myself a lot of excuses, and she pushed back hard. I'm so grateful for that.

I had a lot of aha moments very early. Seeing the structured roadmap showed me this was way beyond lip service — from the strategy call onward I wasn't just setting ambitious goals, I could see how I'd actually get there. My first group call was another lightbulb: senior product people from Meta, Google, and Walmart were going through the same journey, all works in progress, and I immediately felt I fit in. I'd assumed PMs at big brands were light-years ahead of me. The third was rebuilding my "tell me about yourself." Like many people, I used to give a dump of my entire history. Learning to open with a quick, punchy intro, pick the right experiences for the role, and close with three good reasons I'm the best fit worked so well in my early interviews that I knew I'd improve in every phase — not just interviewing, but understanding and selling my angle of mastery.

It took me about seven months to land my role, with real ups and downs. Within a month or two I had a couple of last-round interviews and thought I might land something quickly. Then came the lows: several companies where I reached the final round and didn't make it, some directly relevant to the work I'd been doing. I started questioning whether I'd ever get over the line. About two months before the offer, I had a call with Shobhit right after three last-round losses and said I was back to square one. He corrected me: you're not back to square one, you're at square 95. All the work I'd done wasn't going in vain. That's when I truly committed to the method without questioning everything.

I increased the frequency of my mock interviews, and it really helped. What I ended up with was two offers. A leader in the insurance tech space finished my interviews very quickly — case studies, multiple behavioral rounds, a conversation with the CPO — and that's when my confidence really lifted, because it was in the AI space I've been passionate about from day one. When their offer came in on a Friday, I wanted competing offers. Sidley Austin still had three rounds left, so I emailed them, and they finished every interview within two days because I had to respond by Wednesday. That included multiple behavioral interviews and an on-site case study. I got the offer the same evening, worked closely with Shobhit to negotiate between the two, and signed within a day. It felt like a whirlwind, but it was all the work I'd put in before that got me there. If I hadn't prepped the case study building blocks earlier, I would never have cleared it at that pace.

I describe Intentional Product Manager as the product-specific MBA many people didn't know they needed. Getting a new job was almost a byproduct of everything I learned. A lot of it I might never have picked up on the job, and being able to not just understand your angle of mastery but speak about it convincingly is going to be an essential skill. Getting all of that alongside your dream role is a home-run investment.

My advice: first, invest in your own career. It's easy to assume that being on the job compounds your career, and it doesn't work that way — seeing PMs with distinguished careers come to the program taught me you have to keep learning to become great at anything. Second, this is not a silver bullet. You have to put in the time and effort, but if you do, all the guidance, resources, and support will be there. Third, don't sleep on the peer group. People go to MBA programs for the network, and I've done so many mock interviews with other members that I'll carry those relationships well beyond the program.