One Knight in Product

An interview with John Zilch. John is Director of Product Management at Upland, adjunct professor at Providence College and founder of Launch Day, a new startup that's aiming to take the pain out of launching new products to market. We talk about a lot, including: The pros & cons of working as a platform product manager and integrating various product lines & features into a new platform When it's appropriate to replatform and when not, and whether a platform product manager gets a lot of customer contact John's journey into product management from a computer science background and how, like everyone, he kind of fell into it, and how analysts get more love than PMs How his dissatisfaction with the way software gets launched led him and a former colleague to build their own platform to make it better Why he's started teaching at Providence College, how teaching is the best way to learn, and how academia is a fertile ground for hiring the best talent What he thought of Marty Cagan's recent takedown of MBAs, why he's tired of everyone being against them, and what they're good for Why there's a problem with experimentation culture and why it shouldn't be a replacement for good customer discovery How's it's OK to do things that don't scale as long as you have a plan to make sure that it can scale in the future The problem with people concentrating on "Agile" as a method of delivery rather than a way to get close to customers And much more! Contact John You can check out the Launch Day website or connect with John on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Hubert Palan. Hubert is the founder and CEO of Productboard, a company that aims to put the customer at the heart of the product development process and help companies across the globe build truly excellent products. We talk about a lot, including: What Productboard does, how it differs from other platforms & how it tries to bring customers to the heart of product development How his studies & early product career made him realise how difficult it was to have evidence-based discussions with stakeholders, and how this led him to create Productboard How he still maintains strong ties to the Czech Republic, and how Productboard took advantage of being a big fish in a small pond there What it was like studying under Steve Blank, the inspiration for the Lean Startup, and some of the lessons Hubert learned there Whether his MBA helped him become an effective product manager or whether he had a lot to learn after graduating Some of his problems with Marty Cagan's recent article about MBAs, and why he thinks Marty got it wrong Some of the mistakes that product teams are making when making product development decisions, and how companies need to build up their product muscles How some founders stumble into product/market fit and why the Lean Startup is partly to blame Why founders are overrated, and how to step away from thinking you know it all & letting the company run without your input How to try to build a diverse & inclusive company, and some of the challenges that Productboard have faced And much more! Contact Hubert You can check out the Productboard website or connect with Hubert on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Chris Hull. Chris is a former 7th grade social studies teacher who grew dissatisfied with the tools he had to do his job and decided to create some of his own. He's now the CPO and founder of Otus, an all-in-one learning management, assessment and data system. We talk about a lot, including: The vision behind Otus and how a global pandemic has made everyone interested in online learning in a pandemic How someone goes from teaching into building a company, some of the ways he's learned to do it and some of the mistakes he's made The different types of stakeholders he has to deal with across education, and how he balances the needs of all of them The pros & cons of interviewing kids for UX interviews, and how they're both the best and worst people to ask for feedback Whether there are any challenges selling into schools, and whether they're as stuck in the past as they appear Bringing agile principles to learning and importance of empiricism and constant learning How he's set up the teams to deliver value across his product lines and how the film Ratatouille inspired his ideation process The importance of setting a vision then stepping back & ensuring the teams have autonomy How teaching kids has primed him for the stresses & strains of foundership & leadership, and whether kids are harder work than adults Whether he's instinctive or data driven, how to step away from your biases, and when it makes sense to go with your gut The importance of focus, picking your bets and how "priority" has been, and should remain, singular And much more! Contact Chris If you want to catch up with Chris, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter or check out his company Otus

An interview with Korbinian Spann. Korbinian started out doing a PhD in Semitic Languages before working in retail and realising he had no way to collate customer feedback. This led him to start building his own solution not once but three times, eventually leading to his own startup and taking data-driven product development to the world. We talk about a lot, including: How he started out as an intrapreneur with a problem, how he solved it, and how it sparked an idea for his own startup How had to rebuild the same product 3 times, and the importance of forgetting everything and starting from scratch where needed How he's always had a problem solving mind and product management perspective even though he's not a product manager His passion for data-driven product development and how he's attempting to shift the paradigm Some of the challenges in landing data-science backed products with traditional companies that seek certainty Why customer centricity has to be data driven, and why we shouldn't just rely on gut feel to make decisions Whether AI / ML is just good for pitch decks and whether riding the hype is a good thing or not The importance of using the right tech, not just the latest greatest thing, and steering clear of buzzwords How data annotation is the dirty secret of AI backed startups, and how much human effort there really is The importance of ethics and data privacy in AI and how his company are trying to stay on the right side of history And much more! Contact Korbinian If you want to catch up with Korbinian, you can reach him on LinkedIn or check out his company Insaas.ai

An interview with Henry Latham. Henry started out studying Spanish & Portuguese before having an epiphany and moving into foundership and product management. Disappointed with the applicability of some of the education materials out there, and reeling from being fired by a dysfunctional product company, he decided to double down and build an education programme to really help people move the needle and build products effectively. We talk about a lot, including: How dissatisfaction with all the standard product content out there drove him to start Prod MBA, and how it differs from other more established product schools Details of the Prod MBA approach and how they get you from defining a vision and building a releasable product in 8 weeks How to land product thinking with people that aren't necessarily from a product background and have a more traditional view of business How to sell the concept of business risk to traditional stakeholders and get comfortable with risk yourself How getting fired from a product job opened his eyes and led him to inspire better product managers in the future The importance of getting out of negative thought patterns & not accepting your fate but actually working to make it better How to help people to move the needle in dysfunctional companies and making your own moves to demonstrate the value of product thinking Why he wrote his two books "Why Your Startup is Failing" and "Product Leadership Starts With You", some of the key themes, and how they'll help you be a better founder & build better products Some of the problems he has with agile frameworks, specifically Scrum, what his alternative is and whether it's Scrum Inc's job to fix it And much more! Check out Prod MBA If you like the sound of Henry's product training programme, check out the Prod MBA website for more details. Buy Henry's books Henry has two books: "You want your product to succeed. Yet considering nearly 90% of products fail, how can you ensure that you are part of the 10% that actually succeed?" Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. "Despite what many aspiring product leaders may think, being an effective product leader is not about using the right frameworks, the right methodologies or delivering features quickly. Instead, it's about something entirely different: Building a strong foundation for product success that starts with you." Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Henry If you want to catch up with Henry, you can reach him on LinkedIn.

An interview with Emily Tate. Emily is the Managing Director of Mind the Product, the world's leading product management community. Emily started out in marketing, before moving into product management at an aviation company and then onto Mind the Product via a serendipitous sequence of events. She's passionate about product and claims to be able to talk about it all day long! We talk about a lot, including: What the Managing Director of Mind the Product is up to these days and some of the exciting plans as we get out of the pandemic How she got started in marketing, then product, then marketing, then product, and what made her settle into product management in the end The challenges of being product manager for a technical product, and whether you need to be technical to be a product manager Whether it's fair for employers to expect product managers to have deep subject matter expertise or whether being a good product manager is enough Whether there's a right way to "do product", the different types of product manager, and the importance of not judging yourself on your weakest skills The futility of trying to hire unicorn product managers, and making sure you hire the right product managers for the right products Whether the wealth of aspirational content out there is setting too high a bar for product managers What to do when you're working for a company that doesn't do product management well, and how to sell yourself into the next company when you know you weren't doing everything by the book Some of the warning signs & red flags you should watch out for when applying for a product management job The pros and cons of with fortune cookie influencer advice, and making peace with the intentions behind it And much more! Get more from Mind the Product If you want to hear more about the Mind the Product origin story, check out this episode with Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and CEO of ProdPad. Contact Emily If you want to catch up with Emily, you can reach her on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Layo Ogunbanwo. Layo is the VP of Product Strategy for Piggyvest, a Nigerian fintech and also the founder of the Practical Product community, where she's aiming to demystify product management principles and adapt them to Africa's unique environment. Layo launched Practical Product with a groundbreaking report "The State of Product Management in Africa". We talk about a lot, including: Her work with Piggyvest in Nigeria, trying to bring financial services to Africans and the company's plans to develop across Africa What a VP of Product Strategy does and how / if it differs from other product management roles How her experience across sales & marketing led to a product management career, and how it helped her work cross-functionally Why she thought it was important to put together the State of PM in Africa report and ambitions for the future Whether there is any kind of pan-African solidarity amongst product managers or whether all countries are competing against each other How the report went down with its audience, what the take up and initial feedback has been like Some of the surprising findings from the report, and why they were surprising Some of the unique challenges of working in product management in Africa, and their root causes The gender balance in Africa, and Layo's work to champion equality for women across the continent Her hopes for African product managers for the upcoming year, and the desire for an African Silicon Valley And much more! Get The State of Product Management in Africa Report "The report is a collection of data that sets a benchmark and brings to life the trends driving product management in Africa. More than 200 product management professionals shared their insights and experiences with us." Get the report here: State of Product Management in Africa Report. Contact Layo If you want to catch up with Layo, you can reach her on LinkedIn, Twitter. You can also visit Practical Product on their website practicalproduct.co

An interview with Rajesh Nerlikar. Rajesh has had a long career in a variety of product companies, and put all of his learnings to practice when he took over Prodify, a product consultancy that helps startups, scale ups and growth companies to embed product thinking and team building. He's also the co-author of the 2020 book "Build What Matters" which aims to help people come together a long term product strategy to 10x customer outcomes. We talk about a lot, including: The problems with getting companies to understand product management and the different ways companies try to get there How not all startup founders know how to operate in a classic product-led way, but how not all of them need to How he went from an intern at a CPG company to VP of Product at a ride sharing startup, and what his experience in CPG taught him about user interviews How he got into entrepreneurship and startups, where that passion came from, and some of the mistakes he's made along the way The importance of not thinking you're the customer even if you used to be, and making sure you speak to a wide variety Some of the differences in mindset needed to hire product managers, and how he supports teams that don't know what to look for What led him to join up with his former boss to write "Build What Matters" and some of the challenges of writing in tandem How you can't just build products for the customers you have now but need to concentrate on the customers you'll have next The importance of driving for a multi-year vision and balancing innovation, iteration & operation across your product portfolio The Vision-Led Product Management Framework from the book, what it helps you do and some of the successes it's driven And much more! Buy Build What Matters "Rapid iteration, A/B testing, and growth hacking—these buzzwords have everyone’s attention in product management today. But while they dominate the current discussion, something even more significant has been lost in their limelight: long-term value creation for the customer." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Rajesh If you want to catch up with Rajesh, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter. You can also visit his website prodify.group

An interview with Rhiana Matthew. Rhiana is a Senior Product Manager at Publicis Sapient, a product consultancy that aims to help other companies build products better and set their teams up for success. She works in omnichannel retail product management, and saw her product strategy crumble to dust in the "new normal" of COVID-19. We talk about a lot, including: Her work with Publicis Sapient, what they do and how she looks to enable companies to get better at product management Some of the things she's working on at the moment, what omnichannel retail solutions are, and what she's selling How she got into product management and what gave her the spark, and how making an impact on real customers ticked all her boxes The pros and cons of working for a consultancy and being "In and out" vs working directly for a product company How the news of lockdown impacted her team and whether they took it in their stride or panicked The approaches the product team took to work out where to play and get 120+ ideas down to 11 The spectre of timeline-based, hard deadline deliverables and whether it's possible to get away from this in retail How operating under wartime conditions opened her eyes to the art of the possible, and how she thinks this will impact her approach in the future Her passion for supporting mental health and some of the ways she learned to cope through the chaos Her passion for using tech for good, and some of the ways she tries to contribute to making the world a better place And much more! The podcast is on Product Hunt! This episode release coincides with the podcast hitting Product Hunt, the leading community where people rate new products and ideas. Would appreciate your support and feedback! If you want more from Publicis Sapient I spoke to Rhiana's colleague Jack Stevens a few months back. Jack spoke frankly of some of the mental health challenges of working under lockdown. Contact Rhiana If you want to catch up with Rhiana, you can reach her on LinkedIn or Rhiana's Medium page

An interview with Julia Shalet. Julia is a product consultant who hates the idea of wasted effort and wants to make sure that we all spend our time building things that matter. To support this goal, she wrote "The Really Good Idea Test", an already award-winning practical playbook to help put your ideas to the test. We talk about a lot, including: Why she decided to write the Really Good Idea Test and some surprising early feedback from a young reviewer How the book came together from her years of teaching and refining her message and approach The importance of practical learning, and not just reading stuff out of a book How the book's 7 steps help you validate your hypothesis and whether these steps are linear How to sell the concept of product discovery and evidence-based decision making to possibly sceptical leadership The importance of assessing your company's risk appetite, and how much evidence you need to proceed with confidence How to avoid survivorship bias and step away from the cliche of the inspired founder who does it all from their gut How to remove bias in hypothesis creation and to avoid reinforcing those biases with leading questions The importance of getting buy in up front to ensure that your Really Good Idea is in line with strategy How to handle side quests and rabbit holes when you find something unexpected that might be a better idea than your original idea And much more! Buy The Really Good Idea Test "Got an idea? Want an easy way to test, refine and validate your idea? Wondering whether it's worth investing your time, energy and money? Trying to work out your next step? Put it to The Really Good Idea Test!" Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Julia If you want to catch up with Julia, you can reach her on LinkedIn or her website productdoctor.co.uk

An interview with Christina Wodtke. Christina is the award-winning author of a variety of seminal books, including "The Team That Managed Itself" and "Radical Focus". Christina is passionate about creating empowered, high-performing organisations and helping them to focus on their most important strategic goals using OKRs (Objectives & Key Results). We talk about a lot, including: How "Radical Focus" came about in the first place, and why now is the time for the Second Edition How her book differs from "Measure What Matters", whether John Doerr is riding on her coat tails and whether they talk at parties How she set out to write a practical OKR playbook rather than a theoretical document, and why she felt the need to put tons and tons of examples in the second edition The circumstances that led her to realise that OKRs were the way forward and why she became so passionate about teaching them Why you shouldn't use OKRs to manage everything but use them as a strategic tool to focus on what's most important, and deciding what not to do Why companies shouldn't just jump straight to OKRs without having some of the prerequisites and a culture to support them The importance of empowered teams, letting go of micromanagement and thinking that your job is to tell people what to do Why setting a good OKR review cadence is often more important than agonising over setting perfect OKRs How the concept of a fixed mindset applies not to just people but companies too, and how companies have to be comfortable with failure Where you shouldn't use OKRs, the types of team or companies where it just doesn't make sense, and why OKRs aren't just rebadged task lists And much more! Buy Radical Focus (2nd Edition) "The award-winning author of The Team That Managed Itself and Pencil Me In returns with a new and expanded edition of her landmark book on OKRs. Struggling to adopt Objectives and Key Results? Radical Focus teaches you everything you need." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Christina If you want to catch up with Christina, you can reach her on Twitter or her website wodtke.com.

An interview with Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan. Udhaya is Global Strategic Design Director at Designit, a global design firm working in all areas of design. Udhaya is a passionate advocate for good design principles, demystifying design practices and applying form to the formless. We talk about a lot, including: His work with Designit, and how the design community is flourishing in Bangalore (the Silicon Valley of India) How he started out as a computer scientist & mathematician but somehow ended up in design and not data science The difference between product management, product design and UX design and where it all sits in a good product company Whether you need specific domain experience to be a product designer or whether any designer can get into product design The importance of up front collaboration with UX & product design and ensuring you're not just throwing stuff over the wall How easy it is to rescue bad design that you've inherited, when you need to start again, and what to do if you can't The importance of stepping back and hearing people out and not just preaching at people, and how design is about being in the relationship business The importance of "giving form to the formless" and applying good design principles outside of traditional user interfaces Contact Udhaya If you want to catch up with Udhaya, you can reach him on LinkedIn.

An interview with Rekha Venkatakrishnan. Rekha is a Senior Manager in Group Product Management for Walmart Global Tech, supporting Walmart offices around the world in building great product experiences. She's also a passionate advocate for advancing women in data, tech & product and a chapter lead for Women in Product in San Francisco. We speak about a lot, including: What it's like working in product for a giant like Walmart, in a global, distributed product team Whether an organisation like Walmart can be truly agile or whether it's stuck in the past How a move from Walmart to Oracle went wrong and why she ended up back at Walmart How she started as an engineer in India before starting to query the "What" and the "Why" naturally moved her towards product management Some of the challenges of going from an engineering mindset to product mindset, and getting away from trying to specify the "How" How she prioritised practical, hands on experience and hadn't even heard of places like Product School How her passion for communication & education led her to ironically become a trainer for Product School Her work with Women in Product and the initiatives she's working on to help support women in the product community Why it's important to be able to make mistakes as long as you learn from them And much more! Contact Rekha You can contact Rekha on LinkedIn.

An interview with Stephanie Tanzar, Director of Product Management at Pendo. Stephanie talks about her passion for product management and product analytics, the new Product Engagement Score metric and some great advice for becoming more data-driven. We talk about a lot, including: The differences between stages of companies, how she's lived them all and what she prefers now Whether being in a hypergrowth company with a massive user base makes it easier to say no What it's like being a product manager at a company that serves a user base of product managers How a passion for human / computer interaction nearly led to a PhD but instead sparked a passion for product management Why data is important and the role of gut feel in product management decisions What the Product Engagement Score is, what it tells you, and whether it's actually useful or just something to get people to use Pendo Whether Pendo are putting their money where their mouth is and using the score to drive their own decisions Examples of good decisions that have been made so far using Product Engagement Score as a basis Whether NPS's time is up or whether it's valuable alongside data such as the Product Engagement Score Why you don't have to be perfect to be data-driven, and that just taking it one step at a time is still valuable The different lagging and leading indicators that can be used to drive product decisions About the Product Engagement Score Stephanie wants you to start using the PES to measure your product engagement. Find out more about that on the Product Engagement Score website. Contact Stephanie If you want to catch up with Stephanie, you can reach her on LinkedIn or go and sign up for Pendo. PS - If you want check whether Stephanie's answers match up with our previous Pendo guest, check out Christine Itwaru.

An interview with David Pereira. David is Head of Product Management at Virtual Identity, a product development agency. He's also a prolific author and educator, and contributing editor to Serious Scrum. We talk about a lot, including: The fun and games when working for a company transitioning from a project to product-led mindset The importance of meeting in the middle and making iterative progress, not aiming for perfection on day one How he got his first job as a product owner completely by mistake whilst studying on an English immersion course How he developed his product skills on the job through making multiple mistakes and iterating The debate between Product Owner and Product Manager as job titles, and the trend for Product Owners to be hired as order takers in feature factories How he got into writing over 100 articles and becoming a contributing editor to Serious Scrum on Medium What he means by "The Game Being Over" for Scrum and some of the problems with the framework Some of the issues he sees with SAFe as a successor for Scrum, and how it's really waterfall in disguise The importance of a solid growth mindset and not going stale, and some of the ways he tries to keep ahead of the crowd Contact David If you want to catch up with David, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter or read his work on Medium.

An interview with Samuel Ogunkoya. Samuel is a product management intern at ProducteevTech, a product development agency. Samuel started his career as a physiotherapist before deciding to focus on a different type of user pain, and shares some of his learnings from his journey so far. We talk about a lot, including: How he serendipitously landed his first product management job What made him decide to switch from physiotherapy into product management in the first place How his passion for people and his broad interest in technology has affected both parts of his career Whether his interest in product management was useful in his physiotherapy career, and how he treated his services as a product How his experience with patients and patients' families helped him develop empathy that he now takes forward to his users & stakeholders How he developed a strong dislike for micromanagement from past experience, and how he pushes against this in his product management career The resources he used to skill up in product management, and how he prefers hands on sessions to book training How he explained product management to his friends and family and how they reacted when he told them about the change Advice for others following him into product management Contact Samuel You can find Samuel on Twitter, LinkedIn or Samuel's website.

An interview with Wes Bush. Wes is the founder of ProductLed, a company aiming to teach the world how to build products that sell themselves. He's also the author of the book "Product-Led Growth". We speak about a lot, including: How a career in B2B SaaS working in demand generation started to make him suspect that there was another way to generate demand How his passion for simplifying led him to start simplifying product onboarding to allows users to get to value sooner The problems of moving from sales-led to product-led when you haven't spent any time on your product's UX The problems of enterprise "whale hunting" leading to products that are overcomplicated and difficult to use How a desire to get to the heart of the problem, and teach his clients, led to writing a leading book on product-led growth Whether salespeople should feel threatened by product-led growth, or whether it's an opportunity for them How product-led growth affects the marketing team and whether it's the end of traditional marketing Whether some companies are just not ready to become product-led, and some of the reasons it doesn't make sense to be so How companies know when it's time to transition from sales-led to product-led, and the first steps to take Whether there are some types of companies that actually want to be sold to and would resist product-led approaches And much more! Buy Product-Led Growth "Discover the fundamentals of Product-Led Growth and how you can turn your product into a growth engine, widen your funnel, and dominate your market while cutting your customer acquisition costs." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Wes You can contact Wes on Twitter, LinkedIn or productled.com.

An interview with Stephanie Leue. Stephanie is a product leadership coach, and became CPO of MindEx since our interview. Previously she worked in a variety of roles after starting out at PayPal after being coached by Marty Cagan. We talk about a lot, including: Her leadership coaching, being an invisible companion and sparring partner How she tries to set people up to not need her services, rather than continuously coaching them forever Her passion for hypergrowth startups, and the difference between a startup and an unsuccessful small company How a workshop with Marty Cagan left her realising that she had been a product manager all along How PayPal was a launchpad for her career, and some surprising information about their waterfall practices when she joined The challenges in transforming companies from waterfall to an agile product organisation How product managers might not be able to change the entire organisation but that their mindset is still key to drive transformation Whether lack of product thinking is the preserve of big companies alone, or if small startups can show the same behaviours The importance of making conscious decisions about the type of company you are - marketing-led, sales-led or product-led How she's not always been a good boss, thought she used to be terrible, and how she's using that to teach others to be better The impact of holding back too long and not making timely decisions And much more! Contact Stephanie You can reach out to Stephanie on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Kim Scott, author of "Radical Candor" and "Just Work". Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. Earlier in her career Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. We speak about a lot, including: How she's already getting feedback on the book, not just complements, but people taking action based on it Whether she's got any negative feedback from the types of people who complain about political correctness How she knew she was onto something when her dad's friends had a lightbulb moment discussing the book How she felt revisiting painful experiences from her past, and whether this was a positive or negative experience for her Whether strategic swearing in books is a positive or negative when trying to land a message How she got feedback from a black female executive that being radically candid doesn't work for everyone, and how this spurred her to write her new book Whether she felt she was an imperfect messenger for the themes in this book given that she is herself privileged How we all used biased language, how words matter and why it's important that we all work on it How to point out people's biased, prejudiced and bullying behaviour without getting their defences up and shutting you down How to be an upstander not a bystander, and building this into the culture of your company What to do when the problems in your company are systemic, from the CEO downwards, and the importance of checks and balances Buy Kim's books "We―all of us―consistently exclude, underestimate, and underutilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate, and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business. Just Work is the solution." Just Work "Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn't shy away from criticism ― to help you love your work *and* the people you work with." Radical Candor Get in touch with Kim You can check out Kim's work on the Just Work website, or follow her on Twitter.

An interview with Polina Marchenko. Polina is a self-described geekette, product leader and multiple startup founder. Polina saw the dark side of startup life in Berlin, suffering burnout due to the intense hustle culture. She has since moved to the US, and is now focusing her efforts on her new startup whilst ensuring that she does it in a sustainable manner. We talk about a lot, including: How she developed a passion for entrepreneurship from an early age and through higher education What it was like being a junior PM at a startup and whether it helped her build her hard skills Her struggles with hustle culture, unrealistic expectations and inevitable burn out How she used the lessons from her first startup to make sure she didn't make the same mistakes again How she accidentally moved to Silicon Valley and ended up in a hacker house with 14 other hustling entrepreneurs The problems with hustle culture and why she's actively trying to get her friends to step out of it How a passion for community building and desire to connect led her to create 3 new startups in a pandemic How she used her past startup experience to decide it was time to park a couple of startup ideas and concentrate on one How she's helping people unleash their potential, fight imposter syndrome, and how important this is to her values Try SIDE PRJCT "Resumes are overrated, show me what you've built" Check out the SIDE PRJCT website. Contact Polina You can reach out to Polina on LinkedIn.

About the Episode An interview with Nacho Bassino. Nacho is CPO for Best Day Travel Group and the author of new book "Product Direction", which is a practical playbook for product strategy. Nacho is a passionate supporter of the Latin American product community, and host of a Spanish-language product podcast. We speak about a lot, including: How writing a book is a great way to really learn about the topic you're writing about Transitioning from project-led to product-led, how to do it at scale and manage complicated dependencies without SAFe What it's like interviewing holidaymakers, and how you can always get a captive focus group when you need one Gathering insights to help define product strategy, reducing them and synthesising them into the iniatives that matter The importance for product teams of building for the future and not concentrating on short term thinking Important principles for building an effective roadmap to support the product vision Driving alignment with multiple stakeholders and avoiding an information gap How to avoid OKRs becoming just a big "to do" list via peer review and collaboration The importance of investing in and providing local language content for the Latin American product community Buy Nacho's Book Nacho's book, "Product Direction" is available in all the usual places. Check it out! Product Direction website. Conversaciones de Producto If you speak Spanish, why not try Nacho's podcast Conversaciones de Producto. Contact Nacho You can reach out to Nacho on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Nis Frome. Nis is the co-founder and VP of Product at Feedback Loop, an agile research platform. Nis took over as VP of Product after wearing many other hats. He's also a mentor and podcaster, with a keen interest in sharing with the community and helping to inspire other product managers with thought leadership. We talk about a lot, including: What made him go into entrepreneurship straight out of college Why he took over the product function and whether it was a classic case of executive swoop in How real world product management can differ so much from what's in the books How to avoid getting depressed if everything's not like the books on day one How to land the message about good product management practices with execs who haven't read said books Whether a product manager on the ground can fix a poorly performing organisation on their own The importance of connecting the dots and understanding how a product manager's decisions drive outcomes How different people and teams in a company can be on different parts of the product maturity curve and whether this matters Effectively segmenting your customers and working out how to prioritise when their needs are different And much more! Listen to Nis's podcast It's ok, we can have an open relationship. Check out Nis's podcast This is Product Management. Contact Nis You can reach out to Nis on LinkedIn or Twitter.

About the Episode An interview with Gibson Biddle. Gib is the former VP of Product Management at Netflix, and former CPO of Chegg. Nowadays, he's a coach and teacher who gave 140 talks over the last year. He's also recently started a mailing list, "Ask Gib" where he answers some of the top voted questions every week. We understandably speak about a lot, including: His new newsletter "Ask Gib", and why you should subscribe to it Whether he's gotten any difficult questions he couldn't answer How he manages to do 140 events and how he optimises the format How to make an impact in your first 90 days as a product leader The importance of moving quickly to make an impact, and striking whilst the iron is hot What to do if you aren't passionate about the company you work for, and when to leave How to handle M&A as part of your product strategy & why not to worry about the valuation The pros & cons of using different frameworks to teach product leadership practices Treating yourself as a product, and experimenting with your career choices to help build your intuition and business maturity The importance of taking risks, both for mature businesses as well as in your career Whether Gib could have saved Blockbuster, why he thinks they ultimately failed, and how the Innovator's Dilemma loomed large And much more! Sign up to Ask Gib Gib answers the most upvoted questions once a week on his newsletter, Ask Gib. Sign up here and never be bereft of content again. Please rate Gib's interview Gib loves NPS and uses it to optimise his content and make sure he can continue to improve it and excite his audience. Please take a second to rate his interview! Contact Gib You can contact Gib on Twitter, LinkedIn or gibsonbiddle.com.

An interview with Nichole DeMeré. Nichole is CMO at Reeview, a new eCommerce video review platform, as well as Taggg, a calendar scheduling solution. Nichole is a passionate growth marketer, consultant, community builder and mentor. We talk about a lot, including: The story behind Reeview, how they're looking to revolutionise eCommerce, and some of the early traction they're getting Why Nichole prefers working with early stage start ups and getting in on the ground floor, and thriving in chaos The difference between growth hacking techniques & general marketing, and which strategies & tactics to use How businesses seeking growth need to get ready to experiment and test their most important hypotheses The importance of having both qualitative and quantitative data, and their preference for having conversations with people Why it's important to focus your growth strategy and not try to hit too many channels at once Whether Nichole is up with all the new trends in tech or their own worst nightmare when it comes to marketing The importance of mentorship and paying it forward and their advice for the next generation of SaaS marketers How someone starts out in a one horse town and takes over the world of B2B Marketing More about Reeview You can find out about Reeview on Reeview's website or Reeview @ Product Hunt. Contact Nichole You can find Nichole everywhere. A few places included Product Hunt, LinkedIn, Twitter or their own website nicholeelizabethdemere.com

An interview with Paul Ortchanian. Paul worked for many years in Silicon Valley before moving back to Montreal. He got bored of working for a services firm there and decided to take his SV experience into his own startup, Bain Public, aiming to foster Product Hygiene in Canadian firms and beyond. We talk about a lot, including: How a lack of product thinking in Montreal and experience in Silicon Valley led him to create a consultancy to fix it How his great experience in Silicon Valley and imbibing the product culture there was an advantage The challenge of "Moses syndrome" from CEOs who think they're the second coming because they have secured funding The trouble with traditional startup mentors not coming from digital backgrounds How and why they invented the SOAP methodology to help Product Managers understand what they should be working on and when Some of the troubles that mixed mode product / service companies have How to arm yourself against short term thinking and sales-led feature development The importance of using data to justify your product decisions The importance of being able to handle rejection and people saying no How to take control of the discussion with sales & marketing and not just blame them And much more! Bain Public If you want to find out more about Paul's company, you can check out the Bain Public website and find out more about the SOAP methodology. Contact Paul You can connect with Paul on LinkedIn.

An interview with Emily Reid. Emily is a Product Manager for FCT, a Canadian insurance company, as well as consulting for AgeRate, a healthtech startup. Emily is passionate about demystifying data and is leading FCT's charge towards being a data-driven, API-enabled company. We talk about a lot, including: The most important question - is it "this data" or "these data"? The pros & cons of working for a big, established firm and the imperative to move to a more agile mindset Why she moved from banking into product management, and the misogynistic attitudes she was trying to get away from How she skilled up in product management hard skills, as well as data science fundamentals The importance of embracing not being the smartest person in the room How a background in biotech at uni helped her really explain complicated concepts The importance of picking good product metrics & why you need stats knowledge to be an effective PM How data science isn't the be all and end all, how to factor failure into the process, and why we might see a new breed of data science specialist product managers Why unsolicited internet advice is never welcome and people should just stop How she has been judged and patronised as a young, up and coming, blonde woman in technology And much more!

An interview with Moshe Mikanovsky. Moshe is a Senior Product Manager for Procom, a Canadian-based recruitment company, as well as a blogger and budding podcaster. We speak about a lot, including: His journey from developing software for the Israel Defence Force to Product Management, how agile the army was, and what it taught him The difference in working cultures between Israel, the USA and Canada, and how he has navigated them His side hustle as a product consultant for a "social media for content creators" His passion for transforming companies, and bringing in agile processes & practices What do do when Agile transformation doesn't work and how to keep it relevant The importance of building his personal brand, and his plans for a new podcast focused on "Products for Product Managers" His plans to pay it forward by writing blogs, appearing on webinars, and sharing his expertise with others And much more!

An interview with April Dunford. April is a Positioning Consultant and author of 2019's "Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It". We speak about a lot, including: The origin of "Obviously Awesome", why she self published and how publishers don't like "doing" books How taking over a failing product and repositioning made it a success, and showed her the power of good positioning for the exact same product How conferences and publishers reacted in horror at the concept of positioning content, and how it's swung back into fashion these days The shocking story of what happened when she asked a real author for advice and what they said about her book The problem with "fill in the blanks" positioning statements and why they won't help, and might harm The importance of positioning against your actual competition and not just your direct competitors Why Product Market Fit doesn't exist, isn't operationally useful, and is a VC pipe dream The importance of creating a market point of view story to help land your positioning and drive alignment across the organisation How you can use the POV story to help people buy your offering over that of your competitors And much more!

An interview with Yoav Farbey. Yoav is a Senior Product Manager at PARK NOW, an international company aiming to find you parking spaces and ensure you don't have to fumble around for spare change when you get one. Yoav has travelled from Computer Science to foundership, Product Analyst, Product Consultant and now leading teams and pushing design thinking. We talk about a lot, including: The age old battle about whether "Product Owner" should be a job title of its own, and how it differs from being Product Management Starting his own startup because engineering wasn't for him, how it went and why he called it quits Getting into Product Analytics as a first step, how it helped him be better Product Manager What it was like working for a consultancy, and how he managed to keep engaged when the client relationship is so transitory Using design sprints in the wild, getting engagement and how to get buy in and demonstrate their value What to do when you can't get a design sprint going, and how to use the best aspects in shorter sessions How to help large corporations make products effectively and communicate efficiently How SAFe isn't all that bad really (the humanity!) And much more!

An interview with Petra Wille. Petra is a Product Leadership Coach and author of the new book "Strong Product People - A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers". We speak about a lot, including: How a desire to affect change at scale moved her away from individual coaching to coaching Product Leaders How she happened upon Product Management by being the best communicator on the development team How a desire for a practical Product Leadership playbook led her to write her own The importance of setting expectations and making incremental progress and not always aiming for perfect The challenges of selling good Product thinking to senior management and some approaches to do it The challenge of getting good management experience and becoming a good people manager without focused coaching Some of the challenges facing women Product Leaders and if it's getting better or worse Whether it's necessary to have a background in development to be an effective PM, or if it's even desirable When to stick at a Product job and try to make it better, and when it's time to leave The importance of making time for people development amongst all of the urgent day-to-day work And much more!

An interview with Büşra Coşkuner. Büşra is a Product Consultant & Coach who works with organisations and individuals to embed Product Management principles. We speak about a lot, including: Practical Product Management - you can't learn all of the frameworks How her experience in Berlin helped but also hindered her move to a different working culture in Switzerland The challenge of the acronym "MVP" and how no two people think it means the same thing Companies where leaders don't have product thinking or worse still think they have product thinking The importance of demonstrating product thinking not just talking about it and being idealistic How important No Code solutions are for the Product community and what they unlock for busy Product teams The challenges of being a woman in tech and seeing things in retrospect, and her trepidation of being a working mum And much more!

An interview with Candice Poon. Candice is a Program Manager at Microsoft (which is really a Product Manager at any other company) working on Microsoft Edge. Candice recently caused a stir on Twitter when she tweeted about her experience being prevented from signing up to Clubhouse because of her name. We speak about a lot, including: What it's like working for Microsoft and ensuring Internet Explorer stays in its coffin Whether being called a Program Manager is confusing and whether she still gets invited to Product Manager parties How she felt being blocked from signing up to Clubhouse and whether it's happened before How Clubhouse responded and whether the response was satisfactory Some of the reasons why people have blind spots when developing products and what we should do to fix them How Microsoft are promoting diversity & what's left to do The importance of mixing tech and non-tech skills to further diversify your experience And much more!

Kate is a consultant who advises organisations how to build Product teams and practices. She is also the author of "Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to go beyond culture and skills", a book that aims to help hire effective Product leaders in the first place, or develop Product leaders that are struggling to make an impact. We talk about a lot, including: How her experience hiring Product leaders helped her write a book about it, and how hard it was to keep it succinct How hot shot VPs / Heads of Product can fail if they rely too much on technical skills, and how as an industry we focus too much on hiring for them How long to stick with Product leaders before having that difficult conversation about their next move How new leaders often aren't set up for success through lack of coaching, and just left to get on with it The importance of a shared understanding of what the job role entails, and not just copying and pasting job descriptions from Google The problem with "Cultural Fit" and how you need different puzzle pieces and not a stack of the same How neurodiversity fits into a high EQ world and how to adapt hiring processes to cater for different ways of thinking What progress we've made with advancing women in Product Management, and what hasn't changed at all And much more!

An interview with Deepti Tadala. Deepti is a Technical Product Manager with Synacor, a technology firm based in upstate New York, and a former management consultant with Deloitte. She's also a Founding 200 Member at Product School, former Content Lead for Products by Women, and a member of Toastmasters International. We talk about a lot, including: The difference between Technical Product Managers and non-Technical Product Managers The importance, even as a TPM, of having close contact with customers and considering the market How working as a Management Consultant for Deloitte prepared her for Product Management, and how it didn't The troubles of getting that first Product Management job when racing against the immigration clock Learning to be a Product Manager and the importance of walking the walk Her passion for education and using her story to inspire others and pay it forward The importance of learning public speaking skills even if you don't want to speak publicly The importance of having a platform for women to share experiences and support each other Her power morning schedule and what it helps her to achieve

An interview with Cindy Alvarez. Cindy is Director of Customer Research at GitHub, the world's leading software development platform. Cindy has long experience in customer research with GitHub, Yammer, Microsoft and Kissmetrics. She also wrote the leading book on customer research, 2014's Lean Customer Development which aims to guide teams to build products their customers need. We speak about a lot, including: What it's like doing customer research with the world's largest community of software engineers The importance of testing your customer interview questions and working out what does and doesn't work The importance of empathy, keeping down-to-earth and being someone customers feel comfortable talking to Whether a Bachelor's in Psychology helps her to play mind games with her subjects (mwahahaha) Why she wrote the book, how she did it, and whether she's going to write another one How to answer some of the common objections to customer interviews, and how ensure you can build a culture of speaking with customers directly How to optimise for Continuous Discovery and ensure you get a flow of customer feedback and learning And much more!

An interview with Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia. Carlos is the Founder and CEO of Product School, the global leader in product management training with a community of over one million product professionals. Product School instructors are real-world Product Leaders working at top companies including Google, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, PayPal, Uber, and Amazon. We talk about a lot, including: How a lack of Product training resources when he started led him to start a Product Management training start up How he fills his days at CEO of the largest Product Management learning community How he ensures that, as the leading Product Management learning community, he isn't seen as all size, no quality His passion for lifelong learning and giving away as much free content as possible What led him to write The Product Book with Josh Anon and what he expected to achieve from it How MBAs are great but they don't really prepare people to execute as Product Managers His and Product School's commitment to inclusion & diversity on their team, their instructors and their attendees And much more!

An interview with Melanie McKay. Melanie is the Head of Consumer Product at Rightmove, the UK's #1 property marketplace. She has worked in a number of Product Management roles, and took an interesting move into secondary school teaching in the middle. Since coming back to Product she's gone from strength to strength, including an appearance at Product School's ProductCon. We talk about a lot, including: How Product works at the biggest property marketplace in the UK and whether you get loads of weird requests you get when your TAM is pretty much the entire UK population How she got into Product by mistake, and what she did to get good at it with no good information to lead her Whether it is in fact harder for new PMs now because there is too much competing information for them How her passion for education got her into teaching, how it was teaching computing to kids, and why she came back What her experience of teaching taught her that she can use in her Product Management career Getting involved with ProductCon and the importance of going outside of your comfort zone Her well-received take on the classic PM Venn diagram, and how it's gone down with the PM community And much more!

James is a Delivery Manager for Discovery Inc., a VOD entertainment platform. James is a passionate advocate for using story points for just about everything, and using data to inform delivery decisions. We speak about a few topics, including: How to bring delivery together across multiple technical streams for a big media company The interplay between Delivery and Product and the importance of a good Product Manager How to get Product, Delivery & Engineering to work harmoniously How story points can save the world and how to use them properly Whether Scrum is any good and some of the ways to make it work for your business The tricky balance between Product Delivery and fixing tech debt How to use the data you already have to help inform future delivery decisions How to use data to sell your message to the leadership team How running a band and running Product Delivery are pretty similar And much more!

An interview with Marty Cagan. Marty is a renowned Product Management thought leader. He has had an illustrious career at Netscape, eBay, his own original startup (acquired by IBM) and then founding the Silicon Valley Product Group consultancy. He has worked with hundreds of companies to help them build products right. He's also a widely read blogger, and author of a best-selling book on how to build products; "Inspired - How to Create Tech Products Customers Love". Now he's back with co-author and SVPG partner Chris Jones, with "Empowered - Oridinary People, Extraordinary Products" which aims to do for organisations what Inspired did for teams. I could have spoken to Marty for hours, but here are the highlights: How come Marty started SVPG after working for some of the best tech companies How he got good at Product, and the role of luck in that journey Why he started blogging and how that helped him get his thoughts in order for his books How he's such a Product Guy that he evens writes his books iteratively How come the 2nd edition of Inspired was basically a total rewrite, and whether the 1st edition has anything useful in it Some of the challenges that companies face when trying to be truly Product-led What to do when your company really doesn't get Product How to persuade the leadership team that maybe this stuff actually does work Why he is so passionate about inclusion & diversity in tech, and how he's trying to help And much more!

An interview with Christine Itwaru. Christine is Senior Director of Product Operations at Pendo. Christine is a problem-solving, Product-obsessed New Yorker who has swapped the Big Apple for the City of Oaks as Senior Director of Product Operations for Pendo. We talk about the fundamentals of Product Ops, how it works at Pendo, the types of people you need, what they can do for you, and when you need them. We talk about a lot: How she traded the Big Apple for the City of Oaks, moving to Raleigh, North Carolina to work with Pendo The exciting challenges and opportunities of working for a hypergrowth SaaS company What Product Operations is and how it can help a company as it scales, and how Christine made it happen The core skills and mindset needed to work in Product Operations The difference between being data-driven & data-informed, or whether there's any difference at all The importance of cross-functional communication for Product Ops, and Product teams in general Some of the challenges being a woman in tech and how she's trying to help solve them And much more!

An interview with Jackie Bavaro. Jackie started her Product Management career as a Program Manager at Microsoft, before joining Google's Associate Product Manager programme and then getting hired as the first Product Manager at Asana. Back in 2013, she collaborated with Gayle McDowell to write the best-selling book "Cracking the PM Interview", which inspired a generation of Product Managers to get their first jobs. Jackie and Gayle are back with "Cracking the PM Career" which explains how to get good at it once you're in. Understandably, we cover a lot, including: How Jackie got into Product in the first place, and why Microsoft calls Product Managers Program Managers The pros and cons of working for Google versus a new startup How she met and decided to collaborate with Gayle McDowell and how they write together How the FAANG companies reacted to her giving away all their secrets Excellent advice on how to make an impact in your new PM job How to avoid the dreaded Feature Factory, build a strategy and sell it Why it's important to look outside your Product bubble for inspiration And much more!

An interview with Heather James. Heather is the Founder of The Product-Led Alliance, providing a community, events and materials fora community of passionate product professionals, obsessed with Product-Led Growth. We talk about... What the Product-Led Alliance is and what it offers Why Heather is so passionate about Product-Led Growth and some of the challenges in getting there How she defines Product-Led Growth and how it differs from the dictionary definition What made her start the Product-Led Alliance when she did How a community with so much free content pays the bills How they had to pivot because of COVID-19 What makes her most proud of the Product-Led Alliance so far Future ambitions to take over the world Shock horror ... a rival podcast! mumble grumble And much more!

An interview with Jack Stevens. Jack is Senior Product Manager for Publicis Sapient, a product consultancy that helps large companies with their digital transformation. Aside from his day job working on a secret project that he can't tell us about, Jack was also featured in a BBC article last summer "Stress, burnout and redundancy: Tough times in IT". I spoke to Jack about a few things: His work with Publicis Sapient and how they work really hard to be a flat, open company at scale How SAFe and other scaled agile approaches (probably) can't work How he got onto the BBC article in the first place, and how the reaction has been How hustle culture is toxic, mainly a lie, and we just see the survivors who probably succeeded partially through luck How it's OK for some people to just be OK and not everyone has to change the world to be successful How his employer reacted after seeing the article, and the support they gave him How personal hardship has driven his ambitions to work in financial services to ensure people have the right tools to make good financial decisions And much more!

An interview with Abby Hehemann. Abby is Senior Product Marketing Manager for GetResponse, a full stack marketing platform. She's passionate about Product Management and Product-Led Growth, and using data to monitor and inform Product Marketing decisions. Abby is also a features speaker with Product-Led Growth Hub. The role of Product Marketing and importance of getting close to the Product team Pirate metrics (AARRR!) and how you can use them to monitor the health of your funnel The concept of Product-Led Growth and how companies can take their first steps to being Product-Led The importance of communication and collaboration between functions How she got involved with Product-Led Growth hub and their future collaboration plans Whether Product Marketing should report to the VP of Marketing or the VP of Product Most importantly, whether you can get get good nachos in Poland And much more!

An interview with Ana Kresina. Ana is a self-described vagabond, a Canadian living in Australia, passionate Product Manager at Redbubble, a leading online art marketplace. We speak about the following and more: Ana's journey into Product Management from Marketing via UX The importance of guidance and mentorship at the early stages of a PM career The importance of getting shots on goal early Some of the systemic problems with returning to work after maternity leave How we're pretty far from having acceptable diversity in tech & product, but at least the conversations have started

An interview with Harpal Singh. Harpal is an award-winning product consultant and interim CPO with long experience working with a variety of startups and helping them set up effective product teams and achieving Product/Market Fit. We talk about his journey and specifically: The benefits of being a consultant and how it's helped him to be a better leader His passion for Product/Market Fit and why he wrote a playbook on it His ambitions for the book and how it's helped him challenge his assumptions What Product/Market Fit really means, why it's not just about MVPs, and the concept of a "Hair On Fire" problem The importance of Marketing when finding Product/Market Fit and not being led solely by technology The variability of the Product Manager role between companies & the importance of a career plan The perils of poor LinkedIn content

An interview with Dave Martin. Dave is a product leader with a strong history of transforming companies into effective product-focused organisations. Most recently, he's co-founder of consultancy Right to Left, where he takes some of his past learnings and pays them forward to the next generation of product-hungry companies. We speak about a lot, including: How he works with early to mid stage companies to transform them The Product Management Health Check How Product Managers must not be seen as mere requirements gatherers The difference between different types of Product Manager, even within successful organisations The challenges of moving from product management into product leadership The importance of evidence in decision making

An interview with Janna Bastow. Janna is co-founder of ProdPad and Mind the Product, and inventor of the Now/Next/Later roadmap. We talk about a few things: How ProdPad started as an idea to solve a problem for Janna in her Product Management job and became a company serving thousands of Product Managers How date-based roadmaps are the devil and how to tackle management wanting false security The perils of building features for clients, falling into the trap of being an agency instead of a product company, and never getting the chance to solve big problems How Mind the Product started out and how they've pivoted to run successful events even in the middle of a pandemic (and how she misses a good flat white) Janna's recent ADHD diagnosis, what that meant to her, how she's managing it, and some of the advantages and disadvantages the condition brings to Product Management

An interview with Andrea Saez. Andrea works in Product Growth & Education for ProdPad. She's a lifelong learner, educator and advocate, looking to help Product Managers make good decisions. We talk about her journey into Product Management, why certifications aren't all that they cracked up to be and how Human Psychology helps make good product decisions. We talk about: How Andrea got into Product Management after being the first person to ask her boss "why?" Why Customer Support staff are ideally placed to become Product Managers How Andrea stays motivated during all of her social media product management advocacy, and how she loves Mondays Why date-based roadmaps are the devil and why management want them because of Previous Product Trauma How Product need to take more responsibility when Sales make a commitment Why certifications aren't really worth much without follow on experience And much more!

An interview with Marc Abraham. Marc is the Head of Product - Engagement for ASOS.com, author of two books on Product Management and co-curator with Mind the Product. I originally picked up Marc's first book, My Product Management Toolkit as I was looking for a good primer for people transferring into my Product team from elsewhere in the business. I found the book a great primer and guide to product management. I was excited to see his new book come out, which covers a lot more around the psychology of Product. I spoke to Marc about his journey into Product Management, his new book 'Managing Product = Managing Tension', and some great advice about navigating a career in Product. Marc also gives some excellent advice for Product Leaders (or aspiring Product Leaders) and ways that they can create psychological safety for their teams. As a keen boxer, Marc is also a massive advocate for using exercise to help work out some of the tensions of product management. Further show notes here: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/s1e21