Podcasts

Ian McAllister

Guest: Ian McAllister - Senior Director of Product and Tech for Vehicles at Uber. Ian has extensive experience in product management, having managed over 100 PMs and led significant projects at Amazon, Airbnb, and now Uber. Key Takeaways: Focus on Impact: Prioritize having the biggest impact over politics or promotions. This mindset is crucial for both new and senior PMs. Communication and Prioritization: For new PMs, mastering communication, prioritization, and execution is essential. These skills form the foundation of effective product management. Think Big and Earn Trust: Senior PMs should focus on thinking big, building trust, and driving impact. Trust is the currency of a product leader, and thinking beyond your immediate role can lead to greater success. Working Backwards: The core of Amazon's working backwards process is starting with the customer problem, not the solution. Many teams fail by retrofitting problems to solutions they want to build. Continuous Improvement: Embrace a mindset of continuous improvement and learning from feedback to grow as a product manager. Topics Covered: Attributes of top PMs, communication skills, prioritization, execution, thinking big, earning trust, Amazon's working backwards process, continuous improvement, leadership lessons from Jeff Bezos and Jeff Wilke.

Gergely

Guest: Gergely Orosz - Creator of The Pragmatic Engineer. Gergely is a former software engineer and manager at Uber, who left to build the #1 technology newsletter on Substack. Key Takeaways: Transition to Writing: Gergely left a lucrative tech job at Uber to pursue writing full-time, driven by a desire for autonomy and the realization that he could potentially earn more through his newsletter. Building a Newsletter: He emphasizes the importance of having deep expertise in a field before starting a newsletter and suggests starting by sharing knowledge through blogs or meetups. Success Factors: Consistency and depth are crucial. Gergely attributes his success to years of blogging and building credibility in the tech community. Managing Time: He uses structured schedules and tools like Centered to maintain focus and productivity, highlighting the importance of setting deadlines. Challenges and Rewards: While the newsletter life offers freedom and potential financial rewards, it also comes with challenges like loneliness and the pressure to constantly produce high-quality content. Topics Covered: Leaving a tech job, building a newsletter, productivity tips, challenges of writing, long-term planning in the creator economy.

Alex Hardimen

Guest: Alex Hardiman - Chief Product Officer at the New York Times. Alex has an extensive background in journalism and tech, having previously been Chief Product Officer at The Atlantic and leading the news product at Facebook post-2016 election. Key Takeaways: The New York Times focuses on building a subscription bundle that includes news, cooking, games, audio, sports, and shopping to become an essential daily resource for users. Product teams at the Times work closely with journalists, blending editorial judgment with product development to create impactful storytelling formats. The Times' acquisition of Wordle was a strategic move to enhance their games category, and the integration focused on maintaining the game's core experience while adding user features like stat tracking. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Times pivoted quickly to provide essential information, making critical coverage free and developing tools to help users understand local infection and vaccination rates. The Times aims to reach 15 million subscribers by 2027, focusing on a connected family of products that serve various user needs beyond news. Topics Covered: Product strategy at the New York Times, integrating journalism with product development, acquisition and integration of Wordle, impact of COVID-19 on product priorities, future vision for the New York Times, differences in product management between tech and news organizations.

Merci Grace

Guest: Merci Grace - Founder and former Head of Growth at Slack. Merci has a diverse background as a founder, game designer, product manager, and venture capitalist, and she played a pivotal role in developing Slack's product-led growth strategy. Key Takeaways: Onboarding Strategy: Effective onboarding should be integrated into the product experience, not just an add-on. Avoid generic carousels and focus on creating a seamless introduction to the product's core value. Product-Led Growth: Ideal for tools that provide immediate value and can be adopted by any individual within a company. Consider whether your product requires a sales-led approach if it involves complex integrations or high-level buy-in. Hiring for Growth: Look for candidates who demonstrate curiosity, strong communication skills, and a deep understanding of your customer. Use real-world tasks during the interview process to assess these traits. Diversity in Hiring: Early investment in diverse hiring practices can create a self-reinforcing cycle of diversity and inclusion, leading to a more respectful and innovative workplace. Storytelling in Product Management: At Slack, storytelling was a crucial skill, often outweighing pure data in decision-making. Crafting a compelling narrative can be a powerful tool in product development and growth. Topics Covered: Product-led growth, onboarding strategies, hiring practices, diversity in tech, storytelling in product management, Slack's growth journey.

Ben Williams

Guest: Ben Williams - VP of Product at Snyk. Ben has a background in computer science and has held various roles in developer tooling and product management, including positions at IBM and CloudBees, before joining Snyk to lead their growth organization and developer experience initiatives. Key Takeaways: Focus on Community and Product-Led Growth: Snyk initially targeted Node.js developers using open-source components, engaging deeply with the community through conferences and meetups, which helped them gain their first users. Growth Loops and Strategy: Identifying and optimizing growth loops, such as the GitHub integration that automatically fixes vulnerabilities, has been crucial for Snyk’s growth. Regularly revisiting and refining these loops helps maintain focus and drive growth. Cross-Functional Growth Teams: Embedding growth marketers within cross-functional teams has allowed Snyk to execute ideas rapidly and test them effectively, leading to faster learning and iteration. Activation and Retention Metrics: Snyk defines activation as a team fixing vulnerabilities within 30 days, which correlates strongly with long-term retention. This focus on team-based metrics reflects the collaborative nature of security. Iterative Approach to Freemium and Trials: Regularly reassessing what features to include in free vs. paid plans and how trials are structured ensures alignment with user needs and business goals. Topics Covered: Product-led growth, community engagement, growth loops, cross-functional teams, activation metrics, freemium strategy, developer tools, security, product strategy, organizational structure.

Lauren Ipsen

Guest: Lauren Ipsen - Talent Partner at General Catalyst. Lauren is a seasoned executive recruiter with a track record of placing over 80 senior product leaders across top tech companies, making her a go-to expert in the field of product hiring. Key Takeaways: Always keep a pulse on the market, even if you're not currently hiring. This applies to both candidates and hiring managers to understand what "good" looks like. Avoid being dazzled by big names and logos when hiring senior product leaders. Focus on candidates who are closer to the work and can grow with the company. Clearly define the role and what success looks like before starting the hiring process. This includes understanding the specific needs and future growth of the role. Build long-term relationships with potential candidates and industry leaders. This network can be invaluable when it comes time to hire. For candidates, diversify your experience across different product areas to maximize future opportunities and always be aware of market trends. Topics Covered: Hiring senior product leaders, defining product roles, maintaining market awareness, building long-term candidate relationships, diversifying product management experience, recruiter best practices.

Sachin Monga

Guest: Sachin Monga - Head of Product at Substack. Sachin previously founded a startup called Cocoon, which was acquired by Substack, and spent over seven years at Facebook working on video, camera products, and ads growth. Key Takeaways: Principled Product Development: Substack prioritizes putting writers and readers in control, avoiding algorithm-driven recommendations in favor of writer-curated suggestions. Recommendations Feature: This feature allows writers to recommend other newsletters, driving significant growth. It exemplifies Substack's principle of empowering writers and has resulted in millions of new subscriptions. Building with Users: Substack involves writers in the product development process through initiatives like the Product Lab, ensuring features align with user needs and preferences. Transition to a Network: Substack is evolving from a tool for writers to a network that facilitates discovery and community building, aiming to create a reader experience that offers more control and quality content. Starting a Substack: The advice is to simply start and explore the platform's potential. Substack supports a wide range of content, from writing to podcasts and video, and offers a path to build a sustainable income with a dedicated audience. Topics Covered: Substack's product development, writer and reader empowerment, the recommendations feature, transitioning from a tool to a network, starting and growing a Substack, challenges of product leadership in a startup.

Barbra Gago

Guest: Barbra Gago - Founder of Pando. Barbra has extensive experience in B2B SaaS marketing, having served as CMO at Miro, where she led the creation of a new software category, and as VP of Marketing at Greenhouse, where she developed their go-to-market strategy. Key Takeaways: Category Creation: To create a new category, ensure there's analyst validation, thought leadership, and content to educate buyers. This helps in building a budget allocation for the new category. Rebranding: Consider rebranding if your current brand limits your growth potential. Engage the entire company and customers in the process to ensure alignment and acceptance. Brand Building: Integrate company values into your brand to create authenticity and emotional connection. This helps in building a brand that resonates deeply with customers and employees. Opinionated Software: Build software that enforces best practices or principles, which can lead to better user outcomes. This approach can differentiate your product and provide clear value to users. Timing for Category Creation: It's more effective during market inflection points or when existing categories don't adequately describe your product's unique value. Topics Covered: Category creation, rebranding, brand building, opinionated software, go-to-market strategy, company values, employee progression.

Fareed Mosavat

Guest: Fareed Mosavat - Chief Development Officer at Reforge. Fareed has extensive experience in product leadership roles at companies like Slack, Instacart, and Pixar, making him a well-rounded expert in product management and growth. Key Takeaways: Execution is Key: Real growth in product management comes from working on real products with real customers. Training and mentorship are supplementary to actual experience. Communication and Generalization: Beyond executing, great PMs generalize their learnings into frameworks and communicate effectively to scale their opportunities. Trust and Delegation: Transitioning from IC to manager involves trusting your team and shifting from doing to editing, allowing others to handle significant projects. Resource Advocacy: As a leader, it's crucial to advocate for the right resources to achieve business outcomes, not just work within existing constraints. Diverse Product Work: Understanding and leading across different types of product work (feature, growth, product-market fit expansion, and scaling) is essential for product leadership. Topics Covered: Product management career development, transitioning from IC to manager, building trust, scaling oneself, diverse product work types, alternative career paths in product management.

Adriel Frederick

Guest: Adriel Frederick - VP of Product at Reddit. Adriel has a rich background in product management, having previously led teams at Lyft and Facebook, where he was instrumental in growth and user acquisition. Key Takeaways: Humanizing Algorithms: Product managers should determine the balance between algorithmic decisions and human judgment, ensuring algorithms align with long-term product intent and user behavior. R&D Team Integration: To avoid organizational rejection, R&D teams should align with the company's core mission, ensuring their success is seen as a collective win. Diversity as a Business Asset: Diverse teams can provide invaluable insights, especially for global products, by reducing the need for external user research and enhancing product design. Growth Insights: Successful growth relies on understanding and optimizing for the marginal user, focusing on core actions, and balancing small iterative experiments with larger strategic bets. Empathy and Organization Design: As product leaders advance, skills in empathy and designing effective organizations become crucial for fostering team success and innovation. Topics Covered: Humanizing product development, R&D team dynamics, diversity in tech, growth strategies, balancing algorithms and human input, empathy in leadership.

Janna Bastow

Guest: Janna Bastow - Co-founder of Mind the Product and ProdPad. Janna is a seasoned product manager known for creating the "Now, Next, Later" roadmapping framework and building the largest community of product managers globally. Key Takeaways: Roadmaps as Prototypes: Janna emphasizes viewing roadmaps as prototypes for strategy rather than fixed plans. The value lies in the roadmapping process, which involves testing assumptions and iterating based on feedback. Now, Next, Later Framework: This approach helps teams focus on current priorities without the pressure of fixed timelines, allowing for flexibility and better alignment with actual progress. Psychological Safety and Discovery: High-performing teams prioritize psychological safety and continuous discovery, enabling open communication and iterative learning. Separation of Launches: Distinguish between soft and hard launches to align development and marketing efforts without the stress of synchronized timelines. Community Building: Consistency and grassroots engagement are key to building a thriving community, as demonstrated by the growth of Mind the Product. Topics Covered: Roadmapping, Community Building, Public Speaking, Product Management, Vision and Strategy, Transitioning from PM to Founder.

Adam Fishman

Guest: Adam Fishman - Growth and Product Advisor, former CPO at Imperfect Foods, VP of Growth and Product at Patreon, and first growth and marketing hire at Lyft. Adam has extensive experience leading growth efforts at high-profile companies and now advises on product and growth strategy. Key Takeaways: Onboarding as a Growth Lever: Onboarding is the only part of your product experience that 100% of users will experience. It's a critical opportunity to deliver on your brand's promise and significantly impacts retention. Growth Competency Model: Focus on four key areas when hiring growth talent: growth execution, customer knowledge, growth strategy, and communication/influence. Tailor your hiring to fill gaps in your team's skill set. Hiring Internal vs. External Growth Leaders: Consider promoting internally for growth roles to leverage existing customer knowledge and execution skills, but ensure they have access to external education and mentorship. Company Selection Framework (PMF): Evaluate potential employers based on People, Mission, and Financials. Ensure alignment with your personal values and career goals to avoid mismatches. Impact of Onboarding Optimization: At Patreon, optimizing onboarding increased early revenue by 25%, demonstrating the power of connecting users with the right resources and guidance early on. Topics Covered: Growth competency model, onboarding optimization, hiring growth talent, company selection framework, impact of onboarding on retention.