Rather than evangelizing the product in the community to gain funding with investors, it's about acquiring the resources and good will within the company. You still need all the skills to not necessarily create the product but rather know what it takes.
That being said, it's very safe. It's entrepreneurial just short of being an entrepreneur. I'd like to think it's the best position to gain experience for starting your own venture without actually developing/designing the product.
I've been working as a PM for the last 4 months and taken Pragmatic Marketing training as well.
I think the 'mini-CEO' analogy is an extremely flawed one that discounts a large portion of a CEO's job and marginalizes the real and very significant differences between even those parts that are similar. This is particularly the case CEO's of medium to large companies.
This isn't as true for CEO's of start-ups, but that is because the CEO will possibly be fulfilling the PM role as well, not so much that the PM role is like the CEO role.
However, I do agree with looking at it as an entrepreneurial role.
I've been at single-digit startups and *500 companies and entrepreneurial role fits the bill. I'd say in some cases they are the CEO of their own business unit with capacity for setting the product direction, selecting the team and establishing/punishing timetables. Usually in that case, they'll have X project managers under them carrying out instructions, but in the case of a small company they do usually sit somewhere between ops/tech/mktg and somehow guide with diplomacy.
Rather than evangelizing the product in the community to gain funding with investors, it's about acquiring the resources and good will within the company. You still need all the skills to not necessarily create the product but rather know what it takes.
That being said, it's very safe. It's entrepreneurial just short of being an entrepreneur. I'd like to think it's the best position to gain experience for starting your own venture without actually developing/designing the product.