How I went from Operations Manager to Head of Product (and how you can too)

I'll be honest about how this started: with a failure. During my bachelor's degree I started a company. It didn't work. I learned the hard way that being excited about building something isn't the same as knowing how to build it properly.

So I did the sensible thing. I took my consulting background and joined a fintech startup as an Operations Manager. Safe. Logical. Adjacent to the action but not in it.

And the whole time, I wanted to be building the product.

The slow, deliberate part nobody posts about

Here's what I didn't do: wait for permission. I got obsessed with design thinking. I took AJ&Smart's Design Sprint facilitator course, then a few more. And — this is the part that mattered — I started inserting myself into the day-to-day product work of the startup, a little more every week.

Not with a title. Not with a mandate. Just doing the work, building the skill on the side, making myself useful to the thing I actually wanted to do.

Because here's what was happening in parallel: the startup had a burning need for a product role. Up to then, one of the founders had been running product on the side, stretched thin. There was a gap. And when the founders looked around for someone to fill it, they saw a person who was already interested, already up-skilling, already in the work.

They asked me to take it. I said yes. I haven't looked back since.

Since then I've been Product Manager and Head of Product for several early-stage startups. Today I do it as a fractional Head of Product, advisor, and trainer — which is its own story, but it all traces back to that one move: building the skill before I had the title.

The four real paths into product

My route is one of several. Lenny Rachitsky has mapped the four most common ways people break in, and it's worth knowing all of them so you can pick the one that fits your situation:

1. Internal transition at a large company

The quickest, easiest route — when it's available. You're already inside, you understand the business, and you move sideways into product. It needs three things to line up: some kind of internal transfer process, a chance to demonstrate the skill, and a manager willing to back you. If you're already at a big company, start here.

2. The startup gap (my route)

Join an early-stage company in an adjacent role — ops, design, consulting, support — and make yourself the person who fills the product vacuum that early-stage companies always have. Smaller companies can't afford rigid boundaries, which is exactly what makes them permeable. Your job is to be visibly useful and visibly interested before the need becomes urgent.

3. Adjacent-discipline pivot

Designers, engineers, data analysts, and consultants all carry half a PM's toolkit already. The move is to deliberately close the other half — the strategy, the discovery, the stakeholder work — and reframe your existing experience in product language. You're not starting over. You're repositioning.

4. Product-adjacent into product

Roles like project management, business analysis, or customer success sit right next to product. The transition is about shedding the "execution only" framing and taking ownership of the why — outcomes, not just delivery.

What actually moves the needle, whichever path you take

• Learn the craft before you need it. Discovery, design thinking, working with engineers — get hands-on with these while you're still in your current role. Skill compounds quietly until someone notices.
• Solve a real product problem in public. Don't talk about wanting to do product. Do a slice of it, visibly, for the team you're already on.
• Position your past as an asset, not a detour. My consulting and ops background wasn't something to apologize for — it's how I learned to work with stakeholders and untangle messy problems. Yours is the same. Reframe it.
• Go where the boundaries are soft. The more rigid the org, the harder the leap. Early-stage chaos is opportunity in disguise.

If you're sitting in an adjacent seat right now, frustrated that you're close to product but not in it — good. That frustration is useful. It means you've already spotted the gap. Now go make yourself the person who fills it. That's the whole move.