Podcasts

Matt Mochary

Guest: Matt Mochary - Full-time executive coach. Matt has coached high-profile leaders such as the CEOs of OpenAI, Coinbase, Reddit, and partners at top VC firms like Sequoia and YC. Key Takeaways: Firing with Compassion: The most successful layoffs occur when employees hear the news one-on-one from their manager, allowing them to express emotions and feel heard. Managers should act as agents to help departing employees find new roles. Fear and Anger in Decision-Making: Fear often gives bad advice, leading to exaggerated predictions. Having someone not in fear to consult can help make better decisions. Anger is a cover for pain and should be managed by allowing oneself to feel the underlying pain. Energy Audit for Productivity: Identify tasks that drain energy versus those that energize. Eliminate or delegate draining tasks to focus on what you love, leading to increased productivity and satisfaction. Innovating in Large Companies: Create small, autonomous teams with a founder mentality to drive innovation. Consider forming separate entities (C Corps) for new projects to reduce brand risk and increase agility. Making People Feel Heard: Use reflective listening to ensure people feel understood, especially in feedback scenarios. This involves summarizing their points and emotions accurately. Topics Covered: Firing employees, fear and anger management, energy audit, innovation in large companies, making people feel heard.

John Cutler

Guest: John Cutler - Former Product Evangelist at Amplitude. John is a prolific writer and speaker on product management, known for his deep insights into product teams and their dynamics, having worked with hundreds of teams globally. Key Takeaways: High-performing teams often have coherence between their structure and strategy, allowing them to make better decisions faster. Successful teams and leaders hold strong opinions loosely, balancing conviction with openness to new information. A belief in the power of product and its long-term impact is crucial, as today's success is often the result of decisions made years ago. Leadership coherence, where actions and words align, is vital for team trust and performance. Skills and experience are important but must be contextual to the environment and challenges faced by the team. Topics Covered: Differences between high and low-performing teams, cultural differences in product management globally, the impact of individualism vs. collectivism in teams, the role of frameworks in large organizations, the importance of reps (iterations) in product development, and the challenges of translating Silicon Valley advice to other contexts.

Naomi Ionita

Guest: Naomi Ionita - Partner at Menlo Ventures. Naomi was an early leader in product-led growth and monetization at Evernote and has extensive experience advising startups on growth strategies. Key Takeaways: Iterative Pricing: Treat pricing like your product roadmap; revisit and adjust every 6-12 months to align with new features and market changes. Early Monetization: Avoid waiting too long to charge for your product. Early monetization helps validate product-market fit and prevents undervaluing your offering. Pricing Strategy: Use a hybrid model combining subscription and usage-based pricing to align with customer value and provide predictable costs. Experimentation and Tools: Leverage modern growth stack tools like Eppo for experimentation and Metronome for usage-based billing to optimize pricing strategies without heavy engineering investment. Product-Led Sales: Utilize product usage data to identify and convert high-potential accounts, enhancing revenue through informed sales efforts. Topics Covered: Pricing strategy, product-led growth, monetization, modern growth stack, experimentation tools, product-led sales, hybrid pricing models, startup growth strategies.

Yamashata

Guest: Yuhki Yamashita - Chief Product Officer at Figma. Yuhki has extensive experience in product management and design, having worked at Uber, Google, and Microsoft, and he even taught computer science at Harvard. Key Takeaways: Storytelling in Product Management: Yuhki emphasizes the importance of storytelling for PMs, focusing on synthesis and creating memorable narratives that drive action. Customer Proximity: Figma maintains a close relationship with its users, leveraging feedback from various channels, including social media, to inform product decisions. Product Quality: Figma ensures high-quality software by encouraging internal use of their products, fostering a culture where employees feel personally accountable for the product's success. OKR Experimentation: Figma has iterated on their OKR process, focusing on legibility, actionability, and authenticity to ensure goals are meaningful and drive real impact. Community-Led Growth: Figma's growth is driven by a passionate community of users who advocate for the product, supported by a sales team that empowers these internal champions. Topics Covered: Storytelling in product management, customer feedback integration, maintaining product quality, OKR challenges and strategies, community-led growth, working with sales teams, product-led growth strategies.

Jules Walter

Guest: Jules Walter - Product Leader at YouTube. Jules has a rich background in product management, having been the first growth PM at Slack and leading teams in monetization and mobile. He co-founded the Black Product Managers Network and CodePath, nonprofits focused on increasing diversity in tech. Key Takeaways: Mentorship Approach: Start with small, specific questions to potential mentors and gradually build the relationship by showing the impact of their advice. Skill Development: Focus on both IQ (hard skills) and EQ (soft skills). Begin with execution and product sense early in your career, then shift to communication and leadership as you advance. Interview Skills: Practice is crucial. Conduct mock interviews and seek feedback to improve. Interviewing well can open doors to top companies. Feedback Culture: Actively seek feedback and express gratitude to encourage more. Use feedback to identify personal patterns and areas for improvement. Strengths vs. Weaknesses: Focus on amplifying strengths rather than solely fixing weaknesses. Recognize the shadow side of strengths to manage them effectively. Topics Covered: Mentorship, skill development, interview preparation, feedback culture, strengths and weaknesses, communication, leadership, product management career growth.

Various (Year-End Review)

Guest: Various - This episode features a countdown of the top 10 episodes of the year from Lenny's Podcast, highlighting insights from world-class product leaders and growth experts. Key Takeaways: April Dunford's Positioning Framework: Understand competitive alternatives, differentiate your product's capabilities, translate features into value, identify best-fit customers, and choose the right market category. Crystal Widjaja on Analytics: Focus on actionable insights rather than just data collection. Use instrumentation to track behaviors that lead to insights, not just metrics. Shreyas Doshi's LNO Framework: Classify tasks into Leverage (L), Neutral (N), and Overhead (O) to prioritize high-impact work and manage time effectively. Matt Mochary on Small Teams: Smaller teams often outperform larger ones due to reduced coordination overhead, leading to better efficiency and output. Marty Cagan on Product Management: To be effective, product managers need to deeply understand users, data, business, and competition, and focus on high-leverage tasks. Topics Covered: Positioning strategy, analytics and insights, task prioritization, team efficiency, product management skills, handling difficult conversations, and growth strategies.

Chris Hutchins

Guest: Chris Hutchins - Host of the podcast "All the Hacks." Chris is a former product manager, founder, and investor who recently transitioned to full-time podcasting. He has been involved with companies like Wealthfront and Google and has a reputation for optimizing life, money, and travel. Key Takeaways: Consistency is Key: With over four million podcasts, only about 150,000 have more than 10 episodes and have published recently. Consistently releasing episodes can quickly place you in the top 4% of all podcasts. Launch Strategy: Start with a few episodes ready to go, and consider launching with multiple episodes to gain momentum. This can help you climb the charts and gain early visibility. Content Quality: Focus on creating content that is someone's favorite. Authenticity and passion for your topic are crucial for long-term success. Growth Tactics: Use platforms like Overcast for targeted ads to test your podcast's appeal. Engage with communities and leverage your network to spread the word. Podcasting Stack: Use tools like Descript for editing, Simple Cast for hosting, and Podpage for website management to streamline your podcasting process. Topics Covered: Podcast launching and growth strategies, product management insights, big bets and innovation within companies, podcasting tools and technology, monetization and audience building strategies.

Pete Kazanjy

Guest: Pete Kazanjy - CEO and Founder of Atrium. Pete is the author of "Founding Sales," a highly recommended book for B2B founders, and he runs Modern Sales Pros, a large community of sales professionals. Key Takeaways: Founders should engage in sales themselves to understand the market, refine their product, and develop effective sales strategies before hiring a salesperson. A reliable sales process is indicated by closing 15-25% of opportunities after 50-100 attempts. Hiring should begin with early-stage, gritty sellers rather than a VP of Sales, focusing on those who can adapt to an evolving sales process. Effective sales management relies on monitoring leading indicators such as meeting frequency and progression through sales stages. Sales skills, including building rapport and asking insightful questions, are crucial and can be developed through practice. Topics Covered: Founder-led sales, sales mindset, hiring salespeople, sales process optimization, product-market fit, sales metrics, remote work challenges in sales.

Camille Ricketts

Guest: Camille Ricketts - Former Head of Marketing at Notion. Camille was the first marketing hire at Notion and previously led content and marketing at First Round Capital, where she launched the influential First Round Review. She also has experience in content marketing at Kiva and communications at Tesla, where she worked closely with Elon Musk. Key Takeaways: Community-Led Growth: Community can drive significant brand awareness and help move upmarket into enterprise by creating ubiquity and legitimacy. It's particularly effective for freemium and product-led growth companies. Ambassador Programs: Identify and support passionate users who organically promote your product. Notion's ambassador program started with 20 vocal users and grew by providing early access to features and fostering a sense of community. Content Market Fit: Approach content like a product by understanding your audience's needs and creating content that acts as a "painkiller" rather than a "vitamin." This involves addressing real anxieties and needs of your target audience. Comms and PR: Despite the rise of direct communication channels like newsletters and social media, traditional PR and media coverage still provide valuable credibility and reach. Notion's big break came from a Wall Street Journal article. Quality Over Quantity: High-quality content requires significant time investment. The First Round Review posts often took eight hours to write, emphasizing the importance of depth and detail. Topics Covered: Community-led growth, ambassador programs, content marketing, content market fit, PR and media strategy, influencer marketing, Notion's growth strategy, First Round Review, building brand awareness.

Madhavan Ramanujam

Guest: Madhavan Ramanujam - Managing Partner at Simon-Kucher and author of "Monetizing Innovation" and "Scaling Innovation." Madhavan is a leading expert in pricing and monetization strategy, having worked with over 250 companies, including 30 unicorns. Key Takeaways: Master Both Market and Wallet Share: Successful founders need to focus on both acquiring customers and maximizing revenue from them. This involves balancing acquisition, monetization, and retention strategies. Pricing Strategy for AI Companies: AI companies should focus on monetization from day one due to the high value they provide and the cost dynamics involved. The goal is to avoid anchoring customers on low price points. Effective Negotiation Tactics: Use a combination of gives and gets, value selling, and strategic negotiation to extract full value from deals. Presenting multiple pricing options can shift focus from price to value. Outcome-Based Pricing Models: Aim for high attribution and autonomy in your product to achieve outcome-based pricing, which allows capturing a larger share of the value created. Avoid Common Traps: Be aware of traps like giving too much away initially or failing to expand after landing customers. Design your pricing and product strategy to avoid these pitfalls. Topics Covered: Pricing strategies, AI monetization, negotiation tactics, outcome-based pricing, market share vs. wallet share, common startup traps, scaling innovation strategies.

Sahil Mansuri

Guest: Sahil Mansuri - CEO and Founder of Bravado. Sahil has extensive experience in sales, having started his career during the 2008 financial crisis and later leading sales at Glassdoor, where he closed major deals with companies like Facebook and Google. He now runs Bravado, the largest online sales community with over 300,000 members. Key Takeaways: Forecasting and Quotas: Plan conservatively with short-term milestones to adjust forecasts based on market conditions. Regularly reforecast to adapt to changing environments. Comp Plans: Rethink sales compensation to align with long-term business goals, focusing on customer retention and satisfaction rather than just new sales. Customer Retention: Prioritize retaining existing customers by reallocating top sales talent to customer success roles and providing unique value and insights to current clients. Closing Deals: Leverage warm introductions and personal connections over cold outreach. Use creative approaches, like personalized reports, to engage potential clients. Innovation in Tough Times: Adapt business models to current market needs, such as offering flexible, commission-based sales roles to match supply and demand dynamics. Topics Covered: Forecasting and quotas, sales compensation plans, customer retention strategies, closing sales deals, innovation during market downturns.

Petra Wille

Guest: Petra Wille - Independent Product Leadership Coach and Author of "Strong Product People". Petra has over a decade of experience helping product teams enhance their skills and performance, and she organizes product events in Hamburg, Germany. Key Takeaways: Five Ingredients for Coaching PMs: Define what makes a competent PM in your context, understand where each PM currently stands and their potential, align on a shared vision for growth, create a development plan, and consistently follow up. Storytelling for PMs: Effective storytelling requires significant preparation and practice. Use language that resonates emotionally and avoid business jargon to engage your audience. Public Speaking Tips: Start with small, friendly audiences to build confidence. Techniques like the "Superman pose" can help reduce anxiety before speaking. Community as a Growth Tool: Engaging in a community of practice can significantly aid in personal development, offering networking, learning opportunities, and shared experiences. Practical Resources: Utilize existing frameworks and assessments to define PM competencies and leverage community insights for continuous improvement. Topics Covered: Coaching product managers, storytelling skills, public speaking, community engagement, PM competency frameworks.