buildpurdue vs Product Management Club @ Purdue: Build Your Own Venture vs Learn the PM Career Path

buildpurdue and Product Management Club @ Purdue both help Purdue students build real skills around products — but they're preparing you for different things. buildpurdue is a community for building your own venture, with open Nightshift coworking and a selective founder Cohort. Product Management Club @ Purdue (PM Club) is a career-prep community for the product-manager career track — general membership uses a form, and no selection requirement was found — offering speaker sessions with working PMs, hands-on workshops, and mentorship aimed at landing a PM role at an existing company, not at founding one.

Key takeaways

• The core decision is whose product you're working on. PM Club prepares you to become the product manager inside someone else's company — defining what a product should do and why, based on user needs and business goals. buildpurdue is for building and owning your own product or venture from scratch.
• General membership uses a form; no selection requirement was found. It's a form to fill out — Microsoft Forms link, per the club's own LinkedIn page — with no interview, GPA bar, or application essay found in any source. That's an absence of evidence, not a confirmed guarantee that no barrier exists. A separate application exists only for the smaller organizing/core team.
• It's real, current, and led at the officer level by both graduate and undergraduate students. Founded Summer 2023 by Master of Engineering Management (MEM) graduate students, PM Club's current Vice President, Ruchira Panchagnula, is a BS Integrated Business and Engineering undergraduate (2024-2028) — confirmed current undergraduate leadership, not just MEM-only participation.
• Its current President described running the club as a live, ongoing project in his own words. Sidharth Sundaram, President since September 2025 per his own LinkedIn profile (snapshot dated late August 2026), wrote: "I run PM Club as a growth problem rather than an attendance problem... This semester I'm testing activation programs (speaker series, mentorship matching, resource hub) against one question: which ones bring a member back a second time." That's first-hand evidence directly from the person running the club, though the quote's own write-date isn't confirmed beyond his role's September 2025-onward window.
• buildpurdue has an open entry point before any selective program. Nightshift is free for Purdue students and requires no application, pitch, or polished plan. The Cohort is the selective deeper layer when a team wants more structure.

buildpurdue vs Product Management Club @ Purdue at a glance

What you are deciding	buildpurdue	Product Management Club @ Purdue
What you're preparing for	Building and owning your own venture or product.	Landing a product manager role at an existing company.
Fastest way in	Nightshift and public events are open; Nightshift requires no application, pitch, or polished plan.	Fill out the club's general membership form — no interview, GPA requirement, or application essay found in any source.
Format	Coworking, founder accountability, and a selective Cohort track.	Speaker sessions with working product managers, hands-on workshops (Figma, mock interviews), and a named Fall 2025 session series ("Product Lab").
Who runs the room	An active Purdue-founder community.	A student officer team led by President Sidharth Sundaram (MS Engineering Management, current), with undergraduate Vice President Ruchira Panchagnula.
Eligibility	Any Purdue student.	Purdue students across multiple majors — founded by MEM graduate students in 2023, but current leadership and past attendance span both graduate and undergraduate students across majors including Engineering Management, Industrial Engineering, Marketing, and Business Analytics. No source states a formal eligibility rule opening membership to every Purdue student; general membership uses a form, and no selection requirement was found.
Most recent documented programming	Entrepreneurship Kickoff and open Nightshift sessions.	Product Lab, a named Fall 2025 session series — its first session (October-November 2025) featured a Google product professional, Sabareesh Chinta, on building and scaling AI products.
Outcome focus	Your own venture: shipping, customers, fundraising, investor visibility.	Career readiness for the PM role: interview prep, portfolio/skills, and direct exposure to working product managers.
Origin / track record	Active, ongoing Purdue-founder community.	Founded Summer 2023 by MEM graduate students; 13 events and 16 speaker collaborations documented in its first season alone, per a Purdue Engineering Management program retrospective.
Current scale signal	50+ Nightshift attendees, 20 Cohort founders, 14 active ventures on buildpurdue's partner page.	1,079 LinkedIn followers and 3 named officers (President, Vice President, Head of Marketing and Content), per the club's own LinkedIn page — which separately shows a platform-estimated team size of 4.
Evidence of outcomes	The Cohort page reports member-launched apps used by 200+ people, accelerator placements including YC, paid pilots, and revenue growth.	Named speaker exposure (Google, Salesforce product leaders) and a documented, multi-session Fall 2025 programming cycle rather than a one-off event.
Best first step	Attend Nightshift with something unfinished.	Fill out the general membership form and watch its LinkedIn or Instagram for the next session.

Officers, session schedules, and membership details can change each semester. Confirm current details on PM Club's LinkedIn page before joining.

The real question: are you preparing to join a product team, or build your own?

Product Management Club @ Purdue and buildpurdue can sound similar from a distance — both put students around real product work. The difference that actually matters is who owns the product decisions, and for whom.

PM Club exists to help students break into product management as a career: understanding what a PM actually does day to day, practicing the interview process, and hearing directly from people doing the job at companies like Google and Salesforce. Its current mission statement, from its LinkedIn page, is direct about this: "Our mission is to create a dynamic community of emerging product managers at Purdue University," delivered through masterclasses, mock interviews, alumni mentorship, and product teardowns. Nothing in PM Club's own materials frames its activity as building or launching a company — it's preparation to join one.

At buildpurdue, there's no company to join — the product is yours from the start, and the goal is an ongoing venture you personally own, test, and improve. That's a genuinely different kind of ambition than preparing for a PM interview, even though both communities care about the same underlying skill: understanding what a product should do and why.

A club founded by grad students, now led by both grads and undergrads

PM Club was founded in Summer 2023 by a cabinet of four Master of Engineering Management (MEM) graduate students — Tanvi Kadari, Nandini Agarwal, Uttam Reddy, and Divya Chauhan — who built the club's first season largely while scattered across different co-op and internship locations, running it virtually. Per a retrospective Kadari wrote for Purdue's own Engineering Management program blog, the founding team's April 2023 vision was "to empower product management enthusiasts at Purdue with industry-relevant skills by facilitating knowledge exchange through community events and mentorship" — and that first season alone produced 13 events and 16 speaker collaborations, including sessions with Diego Granados ("PM Diego," Google) and Ross Belmont (Director, Salesforce) — and attendance that, even in that MEM-organized first year, spanned "Engineering Management, Industrial Engineering, Marketing, Business Analytics, and more."

That cross-major reach has continued into current leadership. The club's LinkedIn page lists its current officer team as President Sidharth Sundaram (an MS Engineering Management student), Vice President Ruchira Panchagnula, and Head of Marketing and Content Dhanvi Sheth. Panchagnula's own LinkedIn profile shows she's pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Integrated Business and Engineering (2024-2028) — confirming the club's officer team, not just its general attendance, now includes undergraduates, despite its graduate-student founding.

What Fall 2025 programming actually looked like: Product Lab

The clearest evidence of what PM Club does is its most recently documented session series, Product Lab, which ran in Fall 2025 — a dated, named cycle rather than a single promotional post. Per the club's own LinkedIn post history:

• Late October 2025: the club announced Product Lab Session 1, "Building and Scaling Real AI Products," featuring Sabareesh Chinta, described as bringing insights from his work at Google.
• November 1, 2025: a recap confirmed the session ran — "We kicked off our very first Product Lab session at Purdue University with an incredible conversation led by Sabareesh Chinta."
• Early November 2025: a second Product Lab session followed, on prompting and "vibe-coding" for product managers — framed around how clear prompting parallels how PMs write product requirement documents (PRDs) — co-run by President Sidharth Sundaram and fellow organizer Sanketh Raj Patil.

That's a real, named, multi-session cycle with an outside speaker whose background is independently checkable, not just an internal club claim.

President Sundaram's own LinkedIn profile adds separate, if less specific, evidence: as of his profile's own late-August-2026 snapshot, his role is listed as still active, and his own description of it says he is testing new programming "this semester" — speaker series, mentorship matching, a resource hub — against a single metric he tracks himself: whether a member comes back a second time. That's a first-hand account from the person actually running the club, distinct from a promotional post — but unlike the dated Product Lab posts below, the quote itself isn't independently dated to a specific term; it could have been written any time during his presidency (September 2025 onward). Treat it as evidence the club is still led and active, not as a confirmed Fall 2026 event.

How buildpurdue turns "community" into founder progress

buildpurdue starts with a low-friction mechanism: give people a room where unfinished work is normal.

At Nightshift, you can code, design, write, research, or plan on your own project. There is no application, pitch, or polished-plan requirement. The working principles are to bring unfinished work, get unstuck together, and leave with a next move. buildpurdue reports 50+ Nightshift attendees on its partner page.

The selective layer is the Cohort. buildpurdue currently reports 20 Cohort founders across 14 active ventures, plus member-launched apps used by 200+ people, founders earning accelerator placements including Y Combinator, teams moving from zero customers to paid pilots, and members reporting revenue growth. Those are examples of member outcomes on their own ventures, not guarantees.

Joining each: open form vs open door

PM Club's general membership is genuinely low-friction: fill out its Microsoft Forms membership form. No interview, GPA requirement, or application essay was found in any source for general membership — this is an absence of evidence in this research, not a confirmed guarantee that no barrier exists, so confirm directly with the club if a specific requirement matters to you. A separate, smaller application (a Google Form) exists only for students who want to join the organizing team that plans events and hosts speakers.

buildpurdue's open layer works similarly for a first step, but through a different mechanism: Nightshift has no application at all — you just show up. The Cohort is the selective step for founders who want deeper accountability and resources once their work is further along.

Choose Product Management Club @ Purdue if...

• You want to become a product manager at an existing company — not build your own — and want direct exposure to people doing that job now.
• You want low-friction entry: general membership uses a form, and no selection requirement was found.
• You want structured career prep — mock interviews, portfolio-building workshops, and named sessions like Product Lab — aimed specifically at the PM career track.
• You're comfortable following a session-by-session cycle and want to check the club's LinkedIn or Instagram for what's next.

Choose buildpurdue if...

• You want to spend your time building your own thing — even if it's still unfinished, unclear, or not yet a company.
• You specifically want the outcome to be your own venture, something you own and can keep growing, rather than a role inside someone else's product org.
• You want to try the community immediately. Nightshift is free and has no application, pitch, or polished-plan requirement.
• You want to graduate from an open room into a tighter founder environment if the work becomes serious. The Cohort adds recurring accountability, industry expertise, driven peers, and investor visibility.

You can do both

These experiences can genuinely reinforce each other.

• Try PM Club: fill out the membership form and attend a session to sharpen how you think about product decisions — what to build, for whom, and why.
• Try buildpurdue: bring your own unfinished work to Nightshift or another open event. Apply the same product instincts PM Club teaches, but to something you own.

A founder with real product-management instincts — understanding users, prioritizing ruthlessly, writing a clear PRD — builds better than a founder without them. PM Club can sharpen that thinking even if your actual goal is buildpurdue's venture-building track, not a PM job.

FAQ

What is Product Management Club @ Purdue?

A Purdue student organization focused on the product-manager career path. It runs speaker sessions with working product managers from companies like Google and Salesforce and hands-on workshops (Figma, mock interviews); its most recently documented programming cycle is a named Fall 2025 session series called Product Lab. It was founded in Summer 2023 by Master of Engineering Management graduate students.

Is Product Management Club @ Purdue only for graduate students?

No. It was founded by MEM graduate students, but its current officer team includes an undergraduate Vice President (BS Integrated Business and Engineering, 2024-2028), and its first-season attendance already spanned majors including Engineering Management, Industrial Engineering, Marketing, and Business Analytics.

How do I join PM Club?

Fill out its general membership form. No interview, GPA requirement, or application essay was found in any source. A separate, smaller application exists only for the organizing/core team.

Is PM Club a startup-focused club?

No. Its own mission statement is about preparing members for product-manager careers at existing companies, through speaker sessions and skills workshops — not about founding or launching companies. If you want to build and own your own venture, buildpurdue is the better fit.

Do I need a startup idea to attend buildpurdue?

No. Nightshift requires no application, pitch, or polished plan and says students can bring whatever they're working on. The selective Cohort becomes relevant later for teams working on a real problem consistently.

Can I do both?

Yes. PM Club sharpens product thinking — what to build and why — that transfers directly to founding your own venture. buildpurdue gives you an open place to build that venture and a selective founder path if it becomes serious. See the guide to Purdue entrepreneurship clubs, programs, and startup communities for more ways the ecosystem fits together.

Meet more of Purdue's startup ecosystem

Want to see where buildpurdue fits alongside Product Management Club @ Purdue and the rest of the Purdue entrepreneurship ecosystem? Browse buildpurdue's current events or come to the next Nightshift session to start building on your own project today.