Nick Carroll has had an interesting career path. He started out as a founder, then became the product manager (PM) of the Mobile team at Bubble. Now, he’s spearheading some of our most exciting new projects.
In anticipation of this year’s BubbleCon, we asked Nick a few questions about the first app he ever made on Bubble, what his day-to-day looks like, and of course, what he’s most excited about for BubbleCon 2024 (Spoiler: He’s got some pretty exciting mobile updates to share).
How did you end up at Bubble?
I’ve had a bit of an unconventional route to Bubble. I studied mechanical engineering and architecture and then pivoted into the live music industry. After two years, I had an idea for a software platform that would simplify the process of coordinating tours. During that time, I lived the traditional founder story.
When COVID-19 shut down the live music industry, I started looking for product manager roles, as building the actual product was my favorite part of being a founder. When I discovered Bubble, it was a major lightbulb moment. I realized that had I started with Bubble, rather than using traditional development techniques, I would have been light years ahead. Now I get to help other entrepreneurs do just that — build products that deliver value to their customers in a fraction of the time.
What was the first app you made on Bubble?
As a part of my new-hire onboarding, I built an app for my parents’ lab to help them manage different mice used for experiments. I now shudder at how poorly built it was compared to what I’m building now.
What’s a typical day like as a PM at Bubble?
A product manager's typical day tends to swing between super tactical, in-the-weeds work and very high-level, strategic focus. Regardless, the typical day will always involve tons of video calls with folks across the entire organization!
In your opinion, what makes a product manager and a product team successful?
I believe there are two parts to being a successful product manager: hard skills and soft skills. On the hard skills side, learning things like prioritization frameworks, user research, and testing techniques, is essential.
The most important soft skill outside of communication is developing a strong product sense, like synthesizing a large amount of information across a wide variety of topics (the user and their needs, market dynamics, competition, business needs, etc.) and using it to make decisions.
A successful product team is one that has both a strong sense of individual and shared ownership over the product roadmap.
What do you find most rewarding about working at Bubble?
I wholeheartedly believe that entrepreneurship is the key to solving many of the world's problems, and Bubble makes that possible for far more people.
The most rewarding projects are zero to one projects (like the mobile apps editor) or small product quality updates (like adding icons to the button element). These projects allow me to apply both my previous founder experience and my Bubble development expertise.
What new skills have you developed since joining Bubble?
The most notable skills I have developed are communicating effectively with an increasingly large number of stakeholders and collaborating effectively with other functions.
When I joined, we were about 30 people, so it was still fairly easy to manage. Now that we are more than 140 people, with full departments across the board, learning how to work with different teams and keep different folks up to date is a large part of a project’s success.
Describe in three words what BubbleCon means for Bubble and the community.
Mission in action.
What are you most excited about BubbleCon this year, and why should people attend?
I’m most excited about getting to meet more of our users in person. I’m fortunate to interact with our users a fair amount on Zoom calls, but very rarely in person. Lots of team members, like me, are very excited to meet Bubblers and share some major mobile updates, which BubbleCon attendees usually love to hear about first-hand, in-person.
But, in general, though Bubblers come from all different backgrounds, they all share a passion and entrepreneurial spirit that inspires — the energy and impact that is created when these folks all get into the same room just can’t be replicated online. That’s why people should attend BubbleCon.
Most important: What’s your favorite restaurant in NYC?
Prince St. Pizza, hands down. You can’t find pizza like it anywhere else.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length
