data-driven product management simulator
Learning Data-Driven Product Management
Learn how to use data to build and grow products in this immersive simulator.
Go beyond theory and learn by doing in a safe environment with instant personalized feedback. You will work with real data in leading analytics tools and make product decisions. Along the way you will learn to diagnose and solve product problems by using data, experimentation, and qualitative research.
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What problem
does the simulator solve?
Reading about product management and going through theory-based courses can be interesting. But it won’t help you acquire the key skills you need to be effective in a product role. The only way to learn product and growth skills is through practice.
However, there are limited opportunities to do that. Top companies with strong product and data culture usually expect candidates to already have the required skills set. Most other companies do not have experience or time to invest into your development.
That’s why we built this immersive simulator where you can learn by doing. GoPractice puts you in a high-pressure role of growing a VC-backed startup in a safe environment. You will go from an idea to a valuable product that can be scaled.
Along the way you learn to diagnose and solve typical product and growth problems by using data, experimentation and qualitative research. You will work with real data in leading analytics tools like Amplitude and Sensor Tower and make decisions. While going through this, you will crystallize new skills and go deeper with help from Sean and Oleg.
Who will benefit
from the simulator and how?
The program covers all stages and typical challenges of creating a product from scratch. You will build and master actual skills by working with real data in leading analytics tools like Amplitude, making product and growth decisions, and learning from your mistakes. Simulation is the most effective way to learn the skills you need for a product role.
To succeed in any growth role today, you must develop cross-discipline skills in data analytics, product management, and marketing. This helps you to speak the same language as the product team, advocate for meaningful product changes, and have a bigger impact on your business. GoPractice is the best way to develop the skills, experience and confidence to take your career to the next level.
The key value in working with data is not in the ability to collect, process, and visualize it, but in knowing what data you need and making more effective decisions based on this data. This is what you will learn in the simulator.
Help your team learn the skills needed to implement a culture of data-driven decision making and to execute a systematic approach to think, act on, and solve product and growth problems. A shared understanding of how growth works leads to the cross-functional alignment needed to truly unlock your growth potential.
The study plan
The study plan covers all stages of work on products, starting with the idea, and continuing through the launch, the stages before and after finding value, scaling, marketing and product growth.
You will learn about the basic metrics, the difference between correlation and causation, percentages and percentage points, arithmetic mean and median.
A brief overview of the history of the browser wars. A good analogy to what your new company wants to achieve.
The first task from a Chief Product Officer. You will deal with the analytics system Amplitude, calculate the basic metrics of the app, and make the first conclusions about the product and its potential.
While everyone prepares for the launch, you have time to study the market using publicly available data. You will evaluate the audience and download figures of competitor apps and make your conclusions about the target market for the company.
Big day for the company — the public launch of the product!
Time to evaluate the results of the launch and the impact on key metrics. Is it good or bad?
You will understand the nuances of retention metrics and how it is calculated in Amplitude. You will get the idea of how retention, new users, and active audience are connected. You will create a model for predicting the audience to assess how changes to key metrics impact growth.
You will find out more about different kinds of metrics, and what they’re used for. You will also get information on retention rates for different product categories.
You will use the cohort analysis and the funnel tool in Amplitude to understand how the changes made in the latest version of the product have affected the key metrics.
To compare the metrics of the two versions of the product, it is not enough to calculate them. You must verify whether the change is statistically significant or not. You will learn to apply mathematical formulas to draw relevant conclusions while comparing metrics.
Your manager tells you about a new feature, which will be developed soon. You decide to take the initiative and evaluate its potential effect and usage, and to do so you create a product model to evaluate conversions of the key steps in the funnel.
What you get
Oleg and Sean have condensed their decades’ worth of experience into this unique simulator. Within the course of 10 weeks you will go from an initial idea to a product that is ready to scale. Along this journey, you will learn to identify common product issues and choose the best ways to solve them using data, qualitative research, experiments, and other frameworks from the practitioners.
The simulator touches upon all of the main stages of building a product or a feature. You will structure your knowledge and learn to identify your current position and the steps needed to move the business forward.
You will learn to recognize and solve typical product problems using data. You will learn to ask the right questions, get data and design experiments to validate your point, and base your decisions on the received knowledge.
You will learn how to collect data, manipulate it, and use it to make decisions. You will also learn about the different types of metrics and the main ideas of mathematical statistics. All of this will help you draw the right conclusions and turn your data into the product and business decisions.
You will learn the product management techniques and frameworks used in the best tech companies in the world. You will also practice applying these techniques and frameworks to your work.
You will learn to distinguish between hypotheses and facts, and use experiments and other techniques to test hypotheses and address key product risks.
You will see a linked system behind metrics, reviews and interface.
real cases
hours of practice
happy students
Go deeper
with our live and recorded sessions
Limited time offer
Only for students who start their journey before 18th of May 2022
We use a mix of live and recorded sessions to offer flexibility and convenience for our internationally distributed base of students. It’s a great opportunity to connect with other students, to review and discuss the key ideas of the chapters with Sean and Oleg, and to get help on applying your new skills and learnings to the things you currently work on.
We use a mix of live and recorded sessions to offer flexibility and convenience for our internationally distributed base of students. It’s a great opportunity to connect with other students, to review and discuss the key ideas of the chapters with Sean, and to get help on applying your new skills and learnings to the things you currently work on.
About
the authors
Given their complementary skill sets, Sean and Oleg are the perfect duo to create and lead this course. Oleg brings deep data science and product management skills, and Sean has a long and successful career in data-driven marketing and growth. Both Sean and Oleg have honed their skills at some of the most successful companies in the industry. They have designed the course so you can master the right skills in weeks rather than through decades of startup challenges.
- Oleg was in charge of analytics at MSQRD, a selfie filter app. The company was acquired by Facebook in 2016.
- After the MSQRD acquisition, Oleg joined Facebook, where he worked on Workplace, one of the fastest growing SaaS products in history. Workplace reached 2 million paid users in less than 2.5 years.
- Oleg helped develop the services of API.AI (now Dialogflow) as a product director. The company was acquired by Google.
- He also launched the game King of Thieves with game-dev company Zeptolab, which became a hit with over 75 million players worldwide.
- Oleg participated in the early development of the game C.A.T.S., rated the best game of 2017 by Google Play, with over 100 million players.
- Sean led marketing and growth efforts in the early days at five companies that went on to reach above billion-dollar valuations: Dropbox, LogMeIn, Uproar, Eventbrite, and Lookout.
- Sean’s work at Dropbox helped the company reach a $1 billion revenue run rate faster than any other SaaS company in prior history.
- At LogMeIn and Uproar, Sean continued to run marketing from customer zero until NASDAQ IPO filings.
- Following these growth and marketing roles, Sean became the CEO and founder of two VC-backed companies, Qualaroo and GrowthHackers, both of which were acquired.
- Sean is also the coauthor of Hacking Growth, which has been published in 16 languages and is host of the Breakout Growth Podcast. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Fast Company, Inc as well as on MSNBC.
Loved by students at top companies
How
the simulator works
This is not an ordinary course. It’s a simulator for the workflow in a product company.
We consistently receive feedback from even the most seasoned professionals that they wish this course had been available earlier in their careers. Decades of learning are condensed into weeks with GoPractice. And unlike the traditional experience that rarely gives you feedback on your decisions, this simulation gives you direct guidance from Sean and Oleg as you make important product and growth decisions.
In order to make informed decisions, you will be trained to ask the right questions and find answers via real data queries in Amplitude (a leading analytics solution). You’ll learn to complement these quantitative insights with the type of qualitative analysis that can give you a true understanding of how and why your product is resonating with target customers.
The simulator is based on real-life situations and follows the principle: practice comes first. You will solve problems, and then receive personalized guidance from Oleg and Sean based on your answers, which will help you structure your experience and knowledge in growth and product management. You will gain experience as you build the product, validate whether it is valuable for a meaningful market, and ultimately drive sustainable growth.
During the course, you will go through case studies of well-known companies, which will help you grasp the idea of how the concepts you learn worked for other products.
The story of the simulator is fictional, but all the situations correspond to real situations. You will learn to recognize and solve typical product problems, while avoiding the costs of real-life mistakes.
You will start as an analyst and climb up the career ladder to become a Chief Product Officer of a software startup, hitting all the bumps on the road. This format of training will keep you engaged and provide context throughout the course.
We use a mix of live and recorded sessions to offer flexibility and convenience for our internationally distributed base of students. It’s a great opportunity to connect with other students, to review and discuss the key ideas of the chapters with Sean and Oleg, and to get help applying your new skills and learnings to the things you currently work on.
process
example
While following the script of the training, you will be completing tasks, making decisions, working with data, communicating with the characters, and studying the theory of analyzing product data.
Test your skills
with Growth Skills Assessment Test
GoPractice came up with a free and simple solution, a Growth Skills Assessment Test that will help you measure how your skills stack up against the top growth professionals. This test will demonstrate where you already have sufficient skills and discover the blind spots of your product management skills.
Based on your results, we will recommend a clear study plan consisting of select chapters from the simulator and other sources, which will help you.
Analytics and
product management essays
Take a look at some great essays about product management and analytics on the team's blog to get a better grip of the field.
F.A.Q.
All of the exercises in the simulator are based on real-life situations. Thus you will immediately be able to apply your newly gained knowledge to your job. During the course, you will also develop a data-driven mindset, which comes in handy in tasks beyond product management.
We are confident in the quality of our product. We guarantee your money back within the first week after starting the course if you don’t like it. To see what the simulator is like and what topics it covers, you can go through our free Growth Skills Assessment test.
You can start right after you make your purchase. This is an online course so you can learn at your own pace. Throughout the year the GoPractice team runs cohorts, where the creators of the course will enrich the training with additional case studies and examples, as well as answer questions regarding your business.
It’s up to you. The simulator is designed as a game — so choose a speed that suits you. If you decide to join one of several cohorts we have throughout the year, we will send you all the information about live and recorded sessions that will add up to your 10-week training. The next cohort starts in January 2022 and will last until March 2022.
While following the script of the training, you will be completing tasks, making decisions, working with data, communicating with the characters, and studying the theory of analyzing product data. You’ll find more details on the learning process above. During the cohorts that we run throughout the year, we enrich this experience with extra examples, business cases and Q&A sessions during our live sessions with Oleg and Sean.
Most of the exercises are multiple-choice tests graded automatically. There are some questions where you answer in open prose. We will provide you with the correct answer after the exercise and you will grade your answer yourself. Based on your answers, you get relevant feedback and instructions.
For as long as you want. You can always come back to the chapters to revise the material if you find the need to do so in the future.
Of course you can. If you decide to purchase the course under the basic plan, feel free to ask questions in our closed Facebook group and get help from other students and simulator support members. If you purchase the premium option, you can ask questions directly from the creators of the simulator.
The time commitment varies depending on how you perform on the Skills Assessment Test at the beginning of the program. Typically if you spend one hour a day, it will take you about 1-1.5 months to complete the course. However, you can set your own pace to fit your schedule.
Simulator is not a piece of cake. However, it is both exciting and effective. If you can think logically (most people can) and know how to use an Excel spreadsheet, then you have what it takes to get started. If you are more experienced in data analysis and product management, going through the course will be easier but no less fun.
This is the most visual and simple way to work with data. It’s the easiest way to show how data can be helpful in product development. Later you can master SQL, Python or other tools and skills to work with data—once you get the hang of it, choosing the right tool and data will become much easier. Amplitude also offers a generous free plan so you will likely be able to implement it at your company to apply your new analytics skills.
Simulator is not about tips and hacks. It is about frameworks and strategies you can apply in your current or future work. Most other online data-related courses are based on lectures and homework that is never done. They can be interesting, but they are not helpful in obtaining real skills, with real data and hands-on experience.
The course alumni come from different backgrounds, companies and experience: there are people from the industry who want to switch to product management, product leads who want to develop a data-driven mindset or people who are in another field and want to transition to product management.
Still have questions?
Email the GoPractice team at contacts@gopractice.io or via the messenger plug-in located at the bottom right, and we will respond as soon as possible.