Meet Yury Fedorchuk, Chief Product Officer of Monetization at FunCorp, with over a decade of experience in product management and digital advertising. Yury has made significant contributions to major tech companies in Russia and Cyprus, including VK and Mail.Ru Group. His expertise spans across social networks, e-commerce, and advertising platforms, making him a key voice in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
Can you tell us about your journey into product management? What attracted you to this field, and how did you transition from your early roles in online marketing to becoming a product manager?
I graduated from the Mechanics and Mathematics department of Moscow State University, and at the dawn of my career, I was interested in both tech-related jobs and construction. I had to choose between going into building bridges or becoming a business analyst at a marketing agency, and I chose the latter.
I quickly realized that in addition to running analytics and attracting paid users, I also enjoyed managing digital product development. And then an opportunity presented itself. I got a job as a project manager at the myTarget advertising platform at Mail.Ru Group. This platform was relatively unknown, but the corporation had big plans and resources for its development. Back then, the role of a product manager as such did not exist yet. I was doing everything – from coming up with the idea to its full release into production. Later, as I grew into a department head, the need for a product manager had formed, which I took on.
You’ve worked with major tech companies in Russia and Cyprus. How do the challenges and approaches to product management differ across these markets?
Here, I would compare the approaches to developing a huge product versus a small one.
In Russia, I worked on a huge product with more than 100 million users, where there is more responsibility for small changes. Because of this, there are more steps to the review and coordination process: we had to triple check that we have researched everything properly and considered all the potential pitfalls.
In Cyprus, we are developing social networks in the US market, where the DAU is a few million. Here you have more room for error. Fewer people are involved, and fast decision-making and hypothesis testing is possible. We could roll out new features to a fraction of users to test if something worked or didn’t, and if it didn’t, we could simply move on.
In your experience, what are some of the most critical skills for a product manager, especially when working on large-scale projects like myTarget or VK?
There are many, but I’ll highlight the most important ones for a large corporation:
- Strategic thinking: The ability to set long-term goals, understand market trends, and align the product roadmap with the company’s vision.
- Data-driven decision making: Mastering data analytics to make decisions and test hypotheses. When you have a large audience, everything can be calculated. It’s important to be able to dig into and understand the data yourself and write SQL queries to quickly get to the bottom of a problem, and not wait for days for analysts.
- Communication skills: In large teams, your emotional intelligence is key. Clear and effective communication with various parties: developers, designers, marketers, managers, including other departments. The ability to communicate, negotiate, and convince is especially important, given that some improvements need to be ordered from outside teams that do not report to you.
Can you share an example of a particularly challenging product launch or feature implementation you’ve overseen? What made it challenging, and how did you navigate those difficulties?
Sure, it was the merger of two advertising platforms within the same company. Mail.Ru Group was developing the myTarget platform. At the time of its merger with the VK social network, it needed to be merged with the VK Ads platform as well. For several years, they were developing concurrently, but over time, the question arose to combine them not only technologically but also from the user’s perspective. Why even keep two huge development teams that are working on the same features on payroll? Then there was also the issue of picking a common advertising engine, building an API on the new platform and properly migrating users. This was an extremely challenging task, from internal competition to the fact that the task was very long and took about 2 years to complete.
The solution looked something like this:
- Delve as deeply as possible into the technological advantages of both platforms and choose the right one on which the unified platform will be based.
- Work out objections with all stakeholders. For me, this task was the most difficult. How to unite competing people. There were also layoffs.
- And then, step by step, painstakingly create a new product. And do it on time.
How do you approach the balance between user experience and monetization goals, particularly in your current role focusing on app monetization?
It all depends on the company’s strategy and planning horizon. In VK’s case, when there were no more new users on the market, the key objective was to increase revenue without damaging product metrics. Here at FunCorp it’s quite simple: you come up with a hypothesis, roll it out to a fraction of users, and then make the decision. When you still have potential in your target audience, the question of growth rate arises. How soon do you want to recoup your investments? The cumAPRU of your product will answer this question.
If you are ready to recoup the investments within a year, then you can focus on the product and add fewer advertising placements. If your task is to return the earned money as quickly as possible back into UA, then you need to strike a balance between the ad burden on the user and their retention. This is an all too frequent dilemma: we are willing to show even more ads, earn an additional 30% of revenue, but lose 4% in retention.
I will provide a graph with different approaches to this.
Product management can be quite stressful. What strategies have you developed over the years to maintain work-life balance and stay inspired in your role?
Initially, you wear many hats, doing all the tasks, participating in all areas. Then you reap the benefits, but eventually burn out and reflect on what exactly you want. You choose a specific role and field where you are most effective, and get pleasure from the process. This cycle takes about 1.5 years to complete in my experience. If you are stuck somewhere, it means there is a reason to think before it’s too late (before you burn out or stop being a qualified specialist altogether).
Communication is crucial in product management. How do you facilitate effective communication between product teams and other departments, especially development teams?
First, emphasize respect to ensure team members feel valued as professionals. Second, prioritize punctuality and clarity; it’s crucial to follow through on promises. Third, manage expectations effectively, particularly regarding deadlines. Finally, personalize praise and rewards. If someone has achieved something noteworthy, acknowledge it with a personal touch, such as saying, ‘You’re a champ.’
When it comes to product scalability, what are some key considerations you keep in mind, based on your experience with large platforms like myTarget and VK?
It all depends on the initial conditions, such as the overall situation of your product:
- Using VK as an example: If your business has already covered all users, then your task is to satisfy the full range of services within your application. One of the ways to achieve that is to create a super app where there are many services inside. You satisfy more and more needs and keep the user inside the product, so that they don’t need to go anywhere else. WeChat and Telegram are great examples.
- Using the myTarget advertising platform as an example: If you have met the needs of all major businesses, then your task is to start meeting the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
- Create a simple entry point (adaptation) for newcomers to run ad campaigns,
- Increase the effectiveness of these campaigns by making your ad matching algorithms more efficient.
In the rapidly evolving tech industry, how do you stay ahead of market trends and incorporate new technologies into your product strategies?
A vacuum of ideas must form. That is, you have already caught up with competitors or surpassed them on all functionality. At this stage, you start communicating more with users, identifying pains that are not yet closed, and then test hypotheses on how to do it all better. This is the main pleasure of product development.
With the rise of AI, how do you see it impacting product management and monetization strategies in the near future? Are there any specific AI applications you’re particularly excited about?
- Product
- First and foremost, for a product manager, ChatGPT is an essential tool. It accelerates immersion into a new subject area and increases decision-making speed. It helps you quickly pull up the necessary competitor benchmarks and find proven user research.
- Secondly, there are current tools that have already integrated AI: Figma, Miro. This also saves time.
- Monetization
- In terms of monetization, it’s certainly a trend towards personalization:
- Selection of individual prices for the product.
- Selecting the moment where and when it’s better to show a paywall for subscription, or an ad placement.
- In terms of monetization, it’s certainly a trend towards personalization:
Looking back at your career, what advice would you give to someone aspiring to become a product manager in today’s tech landscape?
Today, users expect high-quality products. The era of rapid internet expansion, when any app could become an instant hit on the App Store, is over. To attract users for the long term, it’s crucial to make a strong impression immediately. Investing extra time in details, considering multiple outcomes, and preparing for each is essential. Remember, failure in experiments is not a personal failure; it’s a part of the process. Learn from mistakes, draw conclusions, and move forward. Celebrate your successes, even if they become routine.
The key is to enjoy the process. Structure your life so that you find joy in it 80% of the time. If you’re uncertain about your direction, consider starting a personal project. With AI, it’s easier than ever. You’ll learn about marketing, coding, content creation, and user support. The areas you enjoy most might become your next focus.
Can you share some insights into how you approach data-driven decision making in your role? How do you balance data with intuition and experience?
You can measure anything! Each product has a core value that attracts users. In social networks, this is primarily content (80%), followed by community (10%), and other factors (10%). Therefore, it’s crucial to strengthen these core areas first. Even small improvements in ranking or content completeness can significantly boost retention rates.
Additionally, push notifications serve as a free remarketing tool for users. In online stores, a combination of low prices, a wide assortment, and timely delivery is essential. Some decisions may not immediately improve metrics but are necessary to keep up with product trends. This concept is known as ‘product debt.’
