Today, one year ago, I co-founded PM Hive, Vancouver’s PM community.

🍎The Beginnings

The endless screeching of Vancouver’s Expo line pierced my ears on the only day I forgot my headphones. Hoards of chatter soon masked the noise, reminding me how bustling a Saturday morning was supposed to be.

I looked down at my phone with another hand gripping a vertical handlebar, sharing with several others. The MeetUp app featured a constant notification of my first ever in-person “PM event” — a simple coffee networking event downtown that invited all those in the field or adjacent to it to come and chit-chat.

I smirked. This is so dumb. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

If I told my friends that I co-founded a community to network about product management, they’d tilt their heads in confusion as much as I almost did on the train ride to my own event.

What’s the point?

I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to sleep while struggling to even balance myself on the shaky ride.

To be fair, I didn’t know the answer to that either back then. I wasn’t nervous, however.

I co-founded this entire thing with several others: Anthony, Neda, and Tausif (and soon, Sarim joined as a leader), people who were either in PM or close to it. Perhaps we each held different perspectives on the community goal as well as the vision, but one thing in our minds overlapped: We were all eager to get people together to network at a coffee shop on a weekend morning.

It was only a few weeks ago that Neda — a charming and expressive person whom I just met — asked Anthony, Tausif, and I to co-found a PM community for the city with her. At that point, I didn’t even think about the benefits for the community; I only thought about the benefits for myself.

How will this help me? I guess I can make new friends at least.

Those thoughts rang in my mind throughout the train ride. Yet by the time I reached the shop and finished co-hosting the event with my fellow co-founders, I started realizing a few things:

1. It’s not every day that a reclusive city boasts events that appear inclusive and accessible. Could I be the change the city not wants — but needs?
2. I really could expand my network in the city and make new friends, after having returned from Seattle for a new job.
3. Most importantly, doing this on a Saturday morning brought a smile to my face for reasons I could dive into later down the road.

That ‘later’ is now, one year since our first event.

Since that day my skeptical face lit up when a crowd of PMs and PM adjacents showed up eager to chat and socialize at Caffe Super Veloce in downtown Vancouver.

PM Hive now has close to 1k followers on LinkedIn, has hosted over 30 in-person events, and has expanded its newsletter list to 600+ emails on Luma.

📍The Journey

We started small — focusing primarily on in-person coffee chat events that repeated what we did on day one.

Our co-founders got along relatively well, and we continued hosting more in-person coffee chats.

We later partnered with Toki, the founder of Vancouver.Dev, to host a collaborative social. Our community started growing more.

Soon, Kasey took the lead to help co-host PM Buzz 1.0: our first-ever mini-conference.

Over the summer, more events brewed, pouring like bottomless coffee. We hosted a panelist discussion on the importance of industry/domain knowledge in June:

PM Hive also sprung up a podcast series dedicated to how PMs landed their jobs thanks to one of our fellow members — Stephen Flach — who kindly helped to produce and host the conversations I had with fellow PMs and techies in the city.

Just check out the one I had with Divya on YouTube or Spotify!

https://youtu.be/MfeYP6xXjgE?si=3taa_J3Zt_XynHdx

In the midst of this, our co-founder team experienced a shake-up due to outside priorities and other factors, and Sarim and Kasey took the lead for PM Hive by the end of the summer.

Between PM Buzz 2.0 and 3.0, I started confiding to Sarim about how much the community mattered to me. How I began these thoughts and feelings since last December was beyond me.

Throughout the fall, we expanded our presence in other Vancouver tech communities by partnering with the Vancouver Design Community and Vancouver Tech Week to host more workshops and panelist talks. Crazy that we’ve come this far.

✨Our Impact

I sat down with Samuel Morin, a fellow Sr. Product Consultant at Lululemon, on the role that PM Hive played in landing his role.

I then chatted with Stephen Flach, Sr. PM at Mozilla, on the support PM Hive provided as he transitioned between jobs.

The conversations among community members fluttered across the room. I started realizing the value that a community of PMs had; the smiles on people’s faces motivated me to achieve greater heights. Not everyone has received equal value from the community we built and the knowledge we’ve shared, but we’ll always be a constant positive variable.

So, what’s the point?

Well, we’re not perfect, but we’ve created a strong group of PMs in the city who support our mission of coalescing value across the board, and we’ve delivered an impact that brought energy to a city of folks who otherwise would’ve drank coffee alone while gazing aimlessly at a grey, cloudy sky. Or perhaps that’s just me.

Ruminating about PM Hive’s past activities isn’t a thing I do often, but perhaps today I’ll make an exception.

We’ll keep moving forward with more events for those in the tech and PM community in the city, with dreams of one day turning our community into a valuable platform where PMs can connect, learn, and grow.

Happy one year, PM Hive 💙💛

Follow Us!

• ​​LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pmhivevan/
• ​​​​X/Twitter: https://x.com/PMHiveYVR
• ​​YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PMHive
• ​​Main site: http://pmhive.io

​​​Discover more of our content in our new PM Hive repository of books and PM interview prep! As layoffs can happen unpredictably, I understand the need for more support than ever.

​​If you’d like to help volunteer for our future gatherings, please feel free to email pmhivecommunity@gmail.com! Your help is greatly appreciated 😊