I fucked up my first Product Interview

So, today I appeared for my first-ever interview for a Product Strategy role as a 2025 grad at a well-known B2B SaaS company, with a CXO.

I had cold-emailed the CXO regarding the opportunity, exchanged a few emails about my experience and the arrangement, and finalized a 3-month remote internship with further processes based on performance. Seemed fair enough, as I can't join them in the office due to curriculum constraints.

Had this chat last week but didn’t hear back until today at 5 PM. Then, I received a call from his team for an interview at 6 PM—over voice, no JD specified.

Since the JD wasn’t provided, I prepared based on my resume, revising everything I had done previously and researching the company.

The call started at 6 PM with an "introduce yourself"—went well. Then came questions on GTM, RCA, and scenario simulation.

I was asked some questions about how I implemented GTM and metrics in my prior experiences.

GTM to launch a podcast: Presented my views on guest-led vs. personal brand-led approaches but made a terrible mistake—went from solution to problem rather than the opposite. Messed up. RCA: Took too many assumptions, didn’t break down the metric into units. Simulation: Went well—had to improve metrics for a feature. Midway, I realized things were going terribly, so I asked for a review at the end. He explained how I should have approached the GTM questions and shared his perspective.

The interview ended without much discussion about the role or internship arrangements, so it’s most probably over.

Still, a good experience—I didn’t even expect a response from a cold email, and it turned out to be a learning experience.

Regret the stupidity though. I always advise my friends to go from problem to solution, but I didn’t apply it myself.

Anyway, onto the next one.

PS, Some Background

Worked with OTT on product marketing, driving CTRs, asset discoverability, and key KPIs while leading aspects of personalization efforts through user adaptation experiments.

Previously, I was a founding hire at an early-stage startup, working across phases from research to an EBITDA-positive launch, collaborating with founders on user experience and product iterations.