Career Path of a Director of Product at Stiddle
Joshua's career journey began with a summer internship at Heidrick & Struggles, where "creating profiles for potential candidates for a CEO position" exposed Joshua to diverse leadership paths, inspiring a shift from a planned career in consulting to founding a startup. This entrepreneurial experience, fueled by a Kickstarter campaign and venture capital, directly transitioned into a product management role at a large tech company, showcasing a career built on adaptability and diverse experiences.
Career Exploration, Executive/Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Overcoming Challenges
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Joshua Han
Director of Product
Stiddle
UC Berkeley
N/A
Political Science, American Studies
Technology
Product / Service / Software Development and Management
Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, Immigrant, Worked 20+ Hours in School, Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. He started his career with an internship at an executive search firm, Heidrick & Struggles, where he worked on the CEO and Board of Directors practice. This provided him with insights into the career paths of top leaders and inspired him to pursue entrepreneurial ventures.
2. After his internship, instead of pursuing a full-time offer, he chose to start his own venture-backed startup. This experience gave him exposure to various aspects of business and allowed him to develop a diverse skillset.
3. His entrepreneurial journey and experience in the startup world eventually led to a career in product management at a large tech company, highlighting the transferable skills gained from starting a business and the value of diverse career experiences
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in college and any internships or jobs you had before your current role?
Great question. I think my career actually started during my junior summer in college at UC Berkeley. At the time, I was a political science major, but I was very curious about what to do next for my career. I considered consulting and banking, but they didn't really sound like a good fit for me in terms of what I valued and wanted to learn.
An opportunity came my way to work at an executive search firm called Heidrick & Struggles. For those unfamiliar with executive search, think of recruiting, but for Fortune 500 executives. I was on the CEO and Board of Directors practice.
The partners I worked with were team leaders in charge of the business. They each had a specialization; for example, one might focus on CEOs for tech companies, another on chief technology officers for startups, or someone for supply chain operations in consumer goods. I was assigned to a partner who handled CEOs and board of directors for any industry.
This was super interesting because my role was to create profiles for potential candidates for CEO positions. Let's use Tesla as an example. My partner once asked me, "Elon Musk sounds like he might get fired next week," referring to the "420 funding secured" tweet. He asked me to get a list of 10 potential CEOs for the Tesla CEO position.
I would go into our database, find information about Fortune 500 COOs, CEOs, or anyone who could be a potential CEO, and pitch them to my partner. He would add them to his Rolodex and pitch them to his client, which would have been Tesla if Musk had been fired.
This was fascinating because I got to see how these industry leaders progressed from where you are now as college students all the way up to their late careers. I noticed that many of these leaders didn't stay at one company for 20 to 30 years. Some of the strongest candidates had diverse experiences in their early careers and were entrepreneurial.
Many people ran family businesses, tried a few startups, or worked within fast-growing organizations, wearing many hats. This inspired me to start my own company. At the time, I was torn between continuing my internship and going for a full-time offer, or taking a startup opportunity a friend had pitched to me.
Instead of pursuing that full-time offer, I pursued my startup idea. We raised money through a Kickstarter campaign, which provided product validation. This led to us getting into accelerators at UC Berkeley and then raising venture capital from VC firms associated with the UC system.
As a founder, I wore many hats, which was a perfect segue into product management. In product management, you're essentially a mini-CEO of whatever product or feature you're working on. This was at a global, 50-year-old legacy tech company, not my own startup. That's how I went from being an intern in recruiting to founding my own venture-backed startup and then into product management.