From Customer Success Leader to VP of Product

María de Antón, VP of Product at startup Valued and I worked together at Travis CI. When we met, María headed up Customer Success but moved into a Product Manager role. This may not seem like an obvious choice so I wanted to hear more about how she made this decision and what the change was like. 

We talked about: 

• Her transition from Head of Customer Success to Product Manager

• How she overcame imposter syndrome

• How listening to her instincts paid off

• Her advice to other leaders considering switching functions

If you can introduce yourself, that would be amazing.

Yeah, I can do a very tiny introduction. So yeah, I'm an industrial engineer in electronics. I started my career in manufacturing and proactive maintenance of machines. I got into software by developing an Android app and realized that software was my thing. From there I went into support and customer success and finally product. Right now I'm heading product in a new startup that I've co-founded and it's been exciting until this point.

A startup that you co-founded with a number of our former coworkers.

Indeed. All of the founding team are people from Travis CI. 

We'll talk more about that today because I want to trace your journey from success leader to VP of product. Can you share how you got into customer success?

I started with support, which is very reactive. As you can imagine, especially at Travis, where I was head of support, the company was growing very, very fast and it was obvious that we needed some sort of proactive maintenance, like the one that we do in factories, but with our customers.

We wanted our customers to know that we cared about them through the success process. And at the time, yeah, success was doing both growth and what is now considered traditional success. It was very easy for me to correlate how success should work at a scaling-up startup and it was fun. 

How did your leadership role heading customer success come about?

It made a ton of sense because I was the second person to join the customer-facing team which was support. The company continued growing with over a million users and companies using the product. As it continued growing, they trusted me to head up support and then to head  success which ended up with 14 people distributed across two managers. So it went from two people to 16, so it was quite big.

Was leading an area something that you wanted early in your career, or something that came about as an opportunity that you decided to take?

It came about as an opportunity that I decided to take. I wasn't keen on leading per se. I wanted to be effective in helping people develop their careers, to empower people and the people working with me. I think that's what made me ideal for those leadership roles. 

I wanted the impact on how I could better help our customers at scale. I wanted to help customers but also the people within my team to grow and thrive.Once you want to help in both the business and the team, you’re thinking about leadership. 

What was most rewarding about heading up customer success? 

The fact that I could see from customer quotes and customer emails and conversations, the direct impact that our team had. It was also very easy to see it in the business.

It was good to see the impact that it had both on the customers and the business. It was helpful to understand the customers’ questions and what they were trying to do with the product. It was rewarding when we could help them. 

I get that. There’s something about seeing the tangible results of what you’re doing. 

Yeah, seeing the impact of the team was the best part of success. 

For me, the hardest part wasn’t figuring out if I wanted to take on a product role but letting go of the responsibility I felt for the team I was leading. I had to come to terms with that. But I knew it was right. 

You were head of customer success when you switched roles to product manager, which might seem counterintuitive to some. What made you make the leap? What were the signs that you wanted to shift?

As Head of Customer Success, I started seeing patterns. They weren’t just things like bugs or UX things that needed improvement. It was more about our product. It was the way customers had problems. 

My aunt has an old fridge. If you ask her what you like to be fixed or improved, she will tell you the light inside. It’s finicky but it works. The bigger problem was the fact that the door handle wasn’t working properly. So every time she closed the door, she had to hit it twice but she was so used to it that she wouldn’t talk to you about it. It’s the things we assume that are natural. I started seeing those patterns when we were talking with our customers. I saw things they considered normal but for us, that meant we needed to create it better. It was their version of handles and better doors for their fridges. 

That’s a great metaphor.

I started working more closely with product engineering and design to shape what we should be building from a success point of view. I still didn't feel I had all the tools that I wanted to propose solutions. I could very easily see the problems and the solutions, but I didn't feel empowered and I didn't trust myself to propose solutions. Then I took a UX training course which was fantastic. 

It helped me learn about human-centered design and research. Now I could talk about the solutions and explain why I thought they were good solutions so that was very helpful. Since I had the customer focus, it was the leg of the table I felt was missing. After that, I had the business focus, the customer focus, and then UX. I felt like a product person for real. Some considered (going from VP of Customer Success) to Product Manager as a step back. 

I remember. Some did feel that way.

For me, the hardest part wasn’t figuring out if I wanted to take on a product role but letting go of the responsibility I felt for the team I was leading. I had to come to terms with that. But I knew it was right. 

(The transition) was even easier than I expected. I had built good relationships with the team and they understood. 

Both (product and customer success) care about customers and influencing the same metrics. At a business level, both success and product care about activation, time to value, retention, and expansion, but the way they impact those metrics is different. Success does that by talking with customers and helping them understand something. Product does that by creating joyful experiences within the product. They feel close to each other. 

I think as leaders we feel a deep sense of responsibility to folks, it can be hard to prioritize ourselves. What I’ve found is that when we do something to take care of ourselves, even if it’s a big shift they’re often really supportive.

Yeah, that’s how it was for me indeed. 

I think people might be surprised that losing “prestige” by leading a department wasn’t part of the decision for you. Titles can feel important but I love that it wasn’t for you. You followed your instincts about what was right for you.

Yeah, my goal was about moving the business forward, making sure the company was growing and that the team was thriving. Once I let go of the responsibility for the team, I could see the impact I could have in the company within a product role and fulfilled me in a way the leading success had. 

What was the transition like when you finally moved over?

I had fun with it. I got to decide what the product should focus on next, all the tiny little details, not just the overview like when I was in customer success. I had the voice of the customer in my head so it was easy for me to think about how an idea would be perceived and how it would work. I saw it as a good thing. It helped me keep in touch with some of the biggest customers. I’d discuss ideas with them to see what made sense to continue building. 

What did you find similar between customer success and product?

The focus on providing a great customer experience. Both (product and customer success) care about customers and influencing the same metrics. At a business level, both success and product care about activation, time to value, retention, and expansion, but the way they impact those metrics is different. Success does that by talking with customers and helping them understand something. Product does that by creating joyful experiences within the product. They feel close to each other. 

That makes so much sense. You’ve told me that you faced some imposter syndrome. What were the things you worried about and what helped you overcome them?

When I left Travis, I started looking for other product roles. Suddenly it felt like an imposter. I had never interviewed to be a product person before. I talked with many companies. I doubted myself all the time. Do I have enough business experience? Do I have enough UX and product experience? Am I ready for this role? Those are all the skills that you need as a product person. I had to learn to trust myself that I knew what I was doing.

When I went to Platform.sh I worked on an initiative that gave me the space to ideate on the product. I got support from the VP of product and the CPO. That helped me trust the things that I knew. So learning to trust myself and the support I got helped me get over imposter syndrome. 

Did it last very long or were you able to conquer imposter syndrome fairly quickly? 

I think a few months, I'm not sure if that's long or not. 

When I left Travis, I started looking for other product roles. Suddenly it felt like an imposter. I had never interviewed to be a product person before. I talked with many companies. I doubted myself all the time. Do I have enough business experience? Do I have enough UX and product experience? Am I ready for this role? Those are all the skills that you need as a product person. I had to learn to trust myself that I knew what I was doing.

I think a lot of people feel imposter syndrome when they take on a new role, especially if they've been with another company for a while. 

Yeah, for sure. Even when you're talking about facing imposter syndrome with other people, you question yourself so that's when it hits stronger for sure. It fades away as you build trust and confidence in what you’re doing for sure. At least it did for me. 

When we propose something others like, it can build confidence.

Yeah. I completely turned this project around when it came in and it was fine. And customers loved it. That's how you keep reassuring yourself that yeah, you're effective.

I think I know the answer to this, but I'm still curious. Was there ever a moment when you wondered if you made a mistake switching to product?

No, I was looking forward. It’s not that I could never do customer success ever again. It was more that this felt like the path that I wanted to take and the impact I could have. It would maximize my strengths and things I knew like my engineering background, UX training, and customer focus. 

That's what I thought.

You’d already made changes in your career before this. It sounds like you've been following your instincts for a while.

I have for sure.

It’s great because following your instincts is important as a leader.

Yeah. I followed my instincts two other times in my life. The first was majoring in economics. I had one year of economics and figured out that I wanted to do industrial engineering. That was a big one. Then going from manufacturing, total productive maintenance in a factory to deciding software was the thing that I wanted to focus on and use my skills in. What I’ve learned is the cross-functional skills that I’ve acquired through all of these roles allow me to thrive wherever I am. 

I relate to this, I never had a career plan. I always followed my instincts. I remember my guidance counselor pulling out a huge book of careers and plopping it on the desk. I looked at that book and thought, “My job’s not going to be in that book.”

Well, you knew it!

Yeah, I instinctively knew I was going to have to chart my path. I was comfortable with that because it’s what my dad did. He was a mechanical engineer for GM for many years. He built prototypes. Even though he was a very scientific guy, he encouraged us to listen to our instincts. Where do you think listening to your instincts comes from?

No idea. I have been trusting my instinct since early childhood, I guess, in different ways. And then you continue doing that.

So it's instinctive. It was instinctive to trust your instincts. (laughs)

I guess so. (laughs) My mom did help my sister and me be empathetic, to listen to ourselves and what we wanted, and to find our own voices. That might have been part of it – finding our voice and what we wanted. 

To me, that's a building block of instincts: Who am I? What do I want? Rather than what the world wants. I call it going inside out versus outside in. Starting inside rather than trying to fit what the world wants. It was that book at my guidance officer's desk, your mom teaching you to listen to yourself. What do you want? What does your voice say? What do you want? What do you want? What do you need in this world?

Yeah, yeah. Right. 

We hadn’t planned to talk about that but I love that detour. We haven’t talked about instincts enough in this series. I think there’s a big role for instincts in leadership and your career. 

Yeah, I think especially as you get thrown in one direction or another. It’s up to you to follow that or not. 

The risk that you face from an established company vs a startup that you're co-founding is different. The leap of faith that you need to have is bigger. There’s more potential, there’s also more risk. It was harder because it felt like putting myself out there more than I had before. 

What's been the most rewarding part of being a product leader for you?

Seeing how people love using what we're shipping and what we're building. Providing those joyful experiences through a product has been very rewarding.

What led you to take on this idea of being a co-founder and VP of product at Valued?

It was the product that we wanted to build. It was the idea of creating a platform for customer success people to leverage product and revenue data. It was like my career being summarized into the product we wanted to build. 

Right, right. It's like coming full circle. Was it a hard decision to make? Or was it something you knew instinctively was the next step for you?

No, this time it was harder. 

The risk that you face from an established company vs a startup that you're co-founding is different. The leap of faith that you need to have is bigger. There’s more potential, there’s also more risk. It was harder because it felt like putting myself out there more than I had before. 

So it was the product you wanted to build that made you take the chance. Also, maybe the people you were building it with as well?

Yeah, that is the other thing that I was going to mention. The people that I'm building it with and my co-founders are fantastic. But the tipping point was the product that we were building.

It sounds like you're very happy with that decision and you didn't second guess it once you've made it. You knew.

Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I became a mom recently and all of that played into it. Do I want to be a co-founder?

What advice might you give other leaders who are contemplating taking on a different functional role?

Trust yourself and your cross-functional skills. You might need some training like I did in UX or some experience but trust yourself. 

It's like you bring these other skills with you. Don't forget that you bring these other skills with you, right? Don’t overlook that. 

Right, they're with you. I think I needed some help to realize that. I’m glad for the support I got after I moved into a product role.