Education Bootcamps is Product Management

Dan Blue is Vice President of Product Marketing and Strategy at 2U Bootcamps.

Dan Blue thinks the world needs bootcamps and that they are an integral part of the education system — especially now, when so many people are looking to upskill in the face of the pandemic. “It's been really fun to see that and see, again, just how critical the promise bootcamps make are; society just needs more of this,” Dan says. “Become something you're not in a really short period of time, remains a promise more people need.”

Dan touts a product that is “student first and outcome driven.” In order to achieve this, he relies heavily on direct student input, using various forms of research, including Feedback Loop, to make iterative decisions. “We spend tremendous amounts of time just interviewing students, themselves, and seeing how they think about the world. All different types of students try and answer all different types of questions. And, I think that has ended up being really core to how we make some of the biggest decisions that face the business today.”

Learn more about how 2U is transforming the education sector with the growth of bootcamps, as well as Dan’s product management journey and how he sees the future of education, on this episode of This Is Product Management.

Download the transcript of this episode here:

Here are the highlights: 

• Focusing on Outcomes and Experiences: 3:51
• Why his playbook is more like a CPG playbook: 10:45
• His favorite cases for using Feedback Loop: 12:23
• Transitioning from on-campus to online when COVID hit: 17:36

Recommended Episodes:

• Learning Lessons is Product Management
• Career Growth is Product Management
• Listening to Users at Scale is Product Management