My experience is that it is a nightmare to hire product managers who will "figure it out as they go". There are so many skills that a talented product manager needs to be successful. Leadership, communication, technical expertise, and so on are all mentioned in the announcement.

The cost of engineering makes product missteps extremely expensive over time in both the large and the small.

So hire a product manager with previous experience in another position, ideally the kind he'd be managing. Sure, if the program can impart all of those skills onto its graduates then it sounds great. But having gone through school to the point of quitting my PhD, working at various companies of various sizes and starting my own company, I put very little weight in degrees - especially anything with an emphasis on business.

Yes, I am biased. But I would be happy to be convinced otherwise if someone can provide the data.

> What are they going to teach you that you can't learn on the job?

How to solve common problems of the job without ending a complete wreck? Or sinking the project? Or having to overwork the whole team to compensate for your lack of preparation?

Real world experience is great, but it is always better for you and your environment if you at least try not to make the same mistakes as your predecessors.

In addition to what others said, there is no guarantee working at a startup is going to give you broad exposure to all the skills you will need later. A well designed and delivered program can do this.

Some grad programs similar to this one also lead up to a capstone course that brings previous students back and gets them exposed to new graduates. This greatly improves exposure and success.

There's no guarantee a "well-designed" program is going to do this either. FWIW, I quit my PhD at CMU. I worked on self-driving cars as a student and now I do it again as an employee (and did many other things inbetween). Startups are better.