Product School 2021: Year in Review

December 27, 2021 - 3 min read
by Ellen Merryweather
Ellen Merryweather is the resident Brit and self-appointed Blog Queen at Product School. Co-host of the Product Podcast, she’s passionate about helping more women into tech and spends her free time trying (and failing) to learn how to code.
December 27, 2021
3 min read

As 2021 draws to a close, and with our minds fixed firmly on 2022, we’re taking a moment to look back at the last year at Product School. With all of its highs, wins, and milestones, here’s what the last 365 days of driving the Product Management world forward looked like…

We Secured $25 Million in Our First Funding Round

In 2021, we announced a $25 million investment by Leeds Illuminate, one of the best growth equity firms in education and the future of work.

This was a huge win for our community, as we’ll be able to provide more resources to help you grow your Product Management career. We’ll also help more Fortune 500 companies accelerate their digital transformation and upskill their product teams.

2,500 Product People Signed the Product Manifesto

It’s been over 20 years since The Agile Manifesto was launched. We, along with an incredible working group of Product People, decided that it was time for an update.

  • On October 7, The Product Manifesto was released into the world and into the hands of Product Managers everywhere.
  • To date, 2,500 people have pledged to uphold its 10 Principles for Building Better Products and joined us as signees. Will you join them?

15 Product-Led Companies Took Home Proddy Awards

This year’s Proddy Awards saw 75 nominees battle it out to win in 15 different categories, from Analytics to Prototyping, with 15,000 votes. A huge thank you to all of our amazing nominees and everyone who took part in the voting. And congratulations to our 15 winners!

Product Career Fair - Product School - Product School

Check out the official Proddy Award Winners of 2021!

We Welcomed 500,000 Product People Into Our Global Community

The Product School community went from strength to strength, celebrating the highs and riding the roller coaster of 2021.

  • Our global community now has 1.5 million members.
  • Our Slack community, where people ask questions, share advice, and make connections, rose to 108,000 members this year.
  • We also hit 140,000 followers on LinkedIn! Can we hit 150,000 by the end of the year? (We’re getting close!)

4,100 Product Managers Got Certified in 2021

Congratulations to everyone who made a commitment to themselves and their Product Management career in 2021! Your dedication to education inspires us, and we’re very happy to have you along on the journey with us.

  • To date, 11,000 Product Managers, Product Leaders, and Product Executives have taken the plunge and earned a Product School certification.
  • With 880 student reviews from  Yelp, Google, CourseReport, and SwitchUp, our average rating is an amazing 4.9 stars! Closer to perfection every year…
  • A dozen Fortune 100 companies loved our customer team training.
I loved being able to apply each learning objective by creating the artifacts ourselves using our product as an example, it really helped drive the concepts home
My favorite experience in the course was the marrying of real life experiences to make the learning more alive and practical. Exercises that help to think about real world application.
I can’t remember attending a training in the past which had more topics and tips which could be applied immediately to our team’s day to day than the product management bootcamp.

1,385 Free Events Hosted

  • In 2021, we wowed the Product Management community with 1,385 events. That’s 116 Fireside Chats, 1,127 talks by expert speakers at top companies, 136 AskMeAnything sessions, and 2 Product Career Fairs.
  • We also ran event marathons, such as Product Analytics Day, Leadership Day, Products: For PMs by PMs, and The Best of Product Talks of 2021.
  • 650,000 people joined us to learn, network, get hired, and get inspired.
  • Bonus: we ran two editions of The Product Career Fair, where 16,000 applicants met recruiters from 100 companies!

78,000 People Joined Us at #ProductCon

Everyone’s favorite (and the world’s largest) Product Management conference came back in 2021 for 4 more amazing installments.

  • In total, 78,000 people joined us to learn from Product Management champions at the top of their game.
  • We filled their calendars with all sorts of fun, including DJ sets, sponsor booths, and networking sessions.
  • 3,330 people took part in The #ProductCon Challenge, with 15 winners taking home $8K worth of prizes!
ProductCon Online September 2021: Catch the Videos - Product School

125,000 People Downloaded Our Books

  • 125,000 people grabbed their copies of our books this year. The Product Book was the most in-demand of 2021.
  • We also launched The Product Analytics Economy in partnership with Heap.
  • Let’s not forget The Product Management Blog, which published 304 blog posts this year, read by 1.6 million of you!

1,700,000 People Listened to The Product Podcast

The Product Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
  • We hit an amazing total of 5 million downloads from listeners in 63 countries, across Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else good podcasts can be found. 
  • Product experts from across the tech world starred on The Product Podcast this year, joining us for a total of 237 episodes and 4 special seasons.
  • Our guests came from top companies including Apple, Google, Airbnb, Nike, and countless others!

We Welcomed 40 New Prodstars To The Team

Our team also grew this year! Together we celebrated holidays, birthdays, new babies (the human kind and the fluffy kind). We got together for team hangouts, coworking days, virtual coffee catch ups, and countless Slack Huddles.

And we just keep on growing too! If you want to join the rocketship and find your place on this ever-growing adventure, check out our open positions across Product, Sales, Marketing, and Business Ops.

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