Day in the Life: Francis Ndicu, Product Manager

Meet Francis Ndicu, Product Manager at HubSpot! Francis' love for technology and business encouraged him to start his career at HubSpot after graduating college. Since then, he has grown from working in customer support and account management, and the way into Product Management. Learn more about what Francis is up to now and what a day in his life looks like...

Can you tell us a little about your background and journey to HubSpot?

I joined HubSpot six years ago, fresh out of college. HubSpot first got on my radar during a marketing class. I found the company and culture fascinating so I decided to apply. I spent my first 3 years at HubSpot working on the Services team, in roles ranging from Customer Support, to Account Management. My time in those roles helped prepare me to make the transition to product management. And now I'm in my current role, working on the Calling team as a Product Manager (PM).

Growing up I loved technology, and business. So working as a PM at HubSpot has been a life-long dream come true.

Describe a typical day in your role.

The day-to-day in product management changes a lot. My primary responsibility is to ensure that we are solving the right problems and building a product that our customers love. On any given day, I could be:

• Conducting interviews with customers
• Collecting and analyzing product data
• Refining our team's roadmap and vision
• Collaborating with stakeholders and partners across the company. (PMing is a team sport!)

Every day is different, but they all start with the same question: How can we solve for the customer?

What technical challenges are you currently working on?

Once our team has identified, validated, and understood a problem, we work together to implement a solution.

For example, our team recently launched a feature that allows customers to purchase phone numbers directly from HubSpot. Today we offer US, UK, and Canadian numbers. As we look to expand the offering to other countries, we have to navigate each new country's regulatory requirements without adding friction to the user experience. 

In many cases making a product that's simple and easy to use can be quite complicated!

Are there any industry trends or topics that are exciting to you right now?

Businesses have lots of options to keep in touch with their customers. But when it comes down to it 56% of people prefer to communicate by phone. That means we've got a lot of opportunity to build in the calling space.

How are you solving for the customer?

We are solving for the customer but delivering a delightful calling experience backed by the power of the HubSpot CRM. Calling is an integral part of a business's sales, and services process. We make it easier to centralize all of their call data in one place.

In your own words, what makes working in tech at HubSpot unique?

Culture is HubSpot's superpower. HubSpot has brought together incredibly smart and capable people, given them a compelling mission, and empowered them with the tools to achieve it.

Outside of work, what do you like to do in your free time?

I enjoy spending time with friends, running, cooking, and hitting the beach. I'm also a huge fan of science fiction (I’m currently reading the Red Rising series). 

Using HubSpot's education reimbursement perk, I've started to dabble with coding and I'm working on building an app that lets me save and share snippets from my favorite podcasts.

Interested in learning more about our culture at HubSpot? Check out our careers page and follow us on Instagram.