Case context
This summer we hired an AI Product Owner in 36 days for Flomni.com — a SaaS for smart chatbots. Their clients are enterprise and mid-market: CDEK, Boxberry, Playrix and others.
That means the future PO has no time to learn on the job — they need to already know Generative AI inside-out. We have skin in this game ourselves: we know GenAI and went through the Sber500 accelerator.
Product Owner is not one of the oldest professions. If a candidate has been a PM their entire life, they were probably born in 2005.
Let's start with the portrait
A Product Manager, in the ideal world, owns development and business metrics. The job: drive revenue, ship features with the left foot, spot bugs with the right eye.
Ideally they have a real commercial track record — not just a pet project — and experience building a team.
Where do you find such a unicorn? First, we took off the rose-tinted glasses.
On the Russian-speaking market, senior PMs come up either from engineering or from management, marketing or analytics. They have chewed glass, lived through Covid and traffic blocks. So your PO has either grown from the business side, or crawled out of a dark corner with a laptop.
Picking the settings
Question 1. Business PM or technical PM?
A business PM does not necessarily understand the full stack or dev timelines. But they know which features grow revenue and who owns the market. They do not just have lattes with competitors — they weave a web of partnerships. CAC and LTV are tattooed on their elbows.
A technical PM used to be a developer or even a CTO. They can quote a delivery date for every button. Their team never sits idle, and the service flies. This profile fits highly technical products and startups disrupting old markets with new tech.
Example: if your service is a wrapper on ChatGPT — go business PM. If you are building an ML startup — get a technical PM who is at home in ML.
Question 2. Launch PM or growth PM?
A launch PM is a domesticated startup founder. Lives in Founder Mode. OK with the product being raw, first sales going to friends, the UI praised only by mum. They have done it before, stress does not break them. Hire at the early stage.
A growth (BizDev) PM is a methodical operator. Ready for a marathon. Builds long-LTV products, drives them to breakeven with a stone face. Pays attention to payback and team load. Can burn out on a brand-new launch.
Question 3. Monetisation or feature push?
Leadership knows best what matters: a competitor outpacing on features, or revenue and churn? Business PMs are strong on monetisation. Technical PMs — on feature throughput.
Question 4. From which industry?
A yoghurt PO is not a SaaS PO. Captain-obvious advice: hire from your own niche. B2B or B2C, edtech or fintech — locale and vertical matter.
Question 5. Old school or new school?
Old-school PMs are entrepreneurs at heart. Likely have a commercially successful track record, are not afraid of crises, and ready to repeat the success.
New-school PMs use the product approach for unknown territory. They do not know the word "impossible". They will test hypotheses until they wear out the laptop keys. Their vocabulary: discovery, delivery, customer development, RAF, roadmap, retention.
How much does a Product Owner cost (Oct 2024)
While you tweak your future character, here are the market benchmarks.
Product Owner (C-level)
~₽500 000 in Russia AI niche: +₽100 000
Senior Product Manager
₽350 000 – 400 000
Middle Product Manager
~₽250 000
Junior Product Manager
~₽150 000
If your PM sits abroad, add another ~₽100 000 to the salary.
How it played out at Flomni
For Flomni.com we landed the unicorn: a Senior Product from a successful GenAI startup who is fluent in both LLMs and business metrics (hi Murad). He was ready to scale and took the lead on the product.
What our team did:
- Helped define the candidate portrait
- Built the funnel — ran outreach and collected applications
- Ran initial interviews
- Introduced only the strongest candidates
- We usually help negotiate and draft the offer — Flomni handled that themselves
Need a similar PM?
Tell us about the role — we will define the portrait and find the right candidate for your stage.