Podcasts

Dan Hockenmaier

Guest: Dan Hockenmaier - Head of Strategy and Analytics at Faire. Dan has extensive experience with marketplace startups, having helped scale Thumbtack and consulted for numerous startups through his firm, Basis One. Key Takeaways: Marketplace Dynamics: Treat marketplaces like ecosystems; small changes can have significant delayed effects. Approach with a light touch and focus on core incentives. Growth Models: Essential for understanding business mechanics. Start with acquisition, retention, and monetization, then add complexity for transactional or marketplace businesses. Focus on Demand: While supply is crucial, especially early on, aggregating demand is key to marketplace success. Demand drives supplier engagement and marketplace growth. Expansion Strategy: Prioritize adjacent markets where you can leverage existing strengths and accentuate network effects. Product experience should lead go-to-market efforts. Future of Marketplaces: Marketplaces are evolving to manage more of the value chain, increasing commission rates. The future may see some marketplaces becoming fully integrated services. Topics Covered: Growth models, marketplace strategy, supply vs. demand focus, marketplace expansion, horizontal vs. vertical marketplaces, future of marketplaces.

Teresa Torres

Guest: Teresa Torres - Product Coach and Author. Teresa is a renowned speaker, teacher, and consultant in product management, known for her influential book "Continuous Discovery Habits" and her work with over 11,000 product managers. Key Takeaways: Opportunity Solution Tree Framework: A visual tool starting with an outcome, branching into opportunities, and then solutions. It helps teams move from an output to an outcome focus by structuring the problem space before jumping to solutions. Continuous Discovery: Involves building continuous feedback loops with customers to iteratively improve products. It can be sustained with as little as one customer interview per week. Interviewing Techniques: Focus on gathering stories rather than asking direct questions. This approach uncovers unmet needs and pain points more effectively. Automating Customer Interactions: Use tools and internal teams to automate the process of scheduling customer interviews, making it easier to maintain a continuous discovery process. Collaboration in Product Teams: Encourage a collaborative decision-making process within product trios (PM, designer, engineer) to leverage diverse perspectives and improve product outcomes. Topics Covered: Opportunity Solution Tree, Continuous Discovery, Customer Interviewing, Automating Customer Interactions, Collaboration in Product Teams.

Kristen Berman

Guest: Kristen Berman - CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs. Kristen is an expert in behavioral science, working with companies like Google, Airbnb, and TikTok to apply psychology insights to product design. Key Takeaways: Behavioral Design Framework: Use the "three Bs" framework: Behavior (define the specific action you want to change), Barriers (identify and reduce logistical and cognitive barriers), and Benefits (highlight immediate benefits to encourage action). Increase Friction to Reduce Actions: In some cases, like reducing misinformation spread on TikTok, adding friction (e.g., a confirmation popup) can decrease undesired actions. Behavioral Diagnosis: Conduct a detailed step-by-step analysis of user interactions to identify psychological barriers and design interventions. Right for Wrong: Motivate users to do the right thing for potentially unrelated immediate rewards (e.g., pizza at polling stations to increase voter turnout). Show Immediate Benefits: Make the benefits of using a product immediately clear and tangible to drive user engagement. Topics Covered: Behavioral economics, product design, user engagement, cognitive biases, misinformation, user onboarding, behavioral diagnosis, incentives in product design.

Gia Laudi

Guest: Georgiana Laudi - Co-founder of Forget The Funnel. Georgiana, also known as Gia, has over 20 years of experience in marketing, having led marketing at Unbounce and now helping SaaS companies unlock growth through her consultancy. Key Takeaways: Funnels are outdated; they focus on business-centric metrics rather than customer-centric value. Instead, focus on the customer's journey and their experience with your product. Identify your best customers by understanding their journey and the key milestones they experience with your product. This helps in aligning your product and marketing strategies to deliver maximum value. Use customer research to uncover the jobs-to-be-done framework, which helps you understand what your customers are trying to achieve with your product. Set clear KPIs for each stage of the customer journey to measure success and identify areas for improvement. Effective messaging should reflect the language and priorities of your customers, not just the features of your product. Topics Covered: Customer-led growth, problems with funnels, customer journey mapping, jobs-to-be-done framework, effective messaging, setting KPIs, SaaS growth strategies.

Jason Shah

Guest: Jason Shah - Product Leader at Alchemy. Jason has a rich background in product management, having worked at Airbnb, Amazon, Microsoft, and Yammer, and is currently focused on Web3 at Alchemy. Key Takeaways: Reframe Pushback: Instead of viewing disagreements as pushback, align on shared goals and shift the direction positively. Understand the underlying issues and align them with business success. Working Backwards Process: Adopt Amazon's method of defining an ideal end state through a PRFAQ (Press Release and FAQ) to ensure clarity and customer focus in product development. Leadership Insights: Effective leaders are not above any task, are detail-oriented, and adapt to new information and situations. They maintain humility and a focus on craft. Career Navigation: Consider a map vs. ladder approach to career growth, focusing on interesting experiences and personal growth rather than just climbing the corporate ladder. Hiring Approach: Treat hiring like marketing, sales, and product development. Build a strong brand, understand candidates' motivations, and iterate on roles to fit both the company and the candidate. Topics Covered: Web3 product management, leadership in tech, Amazon's working backwards process, career development strategies, effective hiring practices.

Adam Grenier

Guest: Adam Grenier - Former VP of Marketing at Masterclass and Head of Growth Marketing and Innovation at Uber. Adam has built growth marketing infrastructures at top companies and now advises on growth and marketing strategies. Key Takeaways: Reevaluate Product-Market Fit: In changing economic conditions, assume you no longer have product-market fit and reassess your market and customer needs. Emerging Channels Framework: Evaluate new acquisition channels by aligning customer needs, company goals, and channel strengths. Consider the channel's maturity and how it monetizes. Testing New Channels: Limit initial investment to a small team or part-time effort. Look for qualitative signals of success within a quarter. Growth CMO Role: A Growth CMO should be data-driven, iterative, and closely aligned with product development. They should embrace agile methodologies and be comfortable with rapid change. Burnout vs. Depression: Recognize the difference between exhaustion and depression. Seek therapy, meditation, and open communication with friends and family to manage mental health. Topics Covered: Emerging acquisition channels, growth CMO role, product-market fit, burnout and depression, mental health in tech.

Emily Kramer

Guest: Emily Kramer - Co-founder of MKT1. Emily has led marketing teams at Asana, Carta, Ticketfly, and Astro, and is known for her strategic approach to building marketing functions from the ground up. Key Takeaways: Fuel and Engine Framework: Marketing should be viewed as needing both "fuel" (content, copy, design) and an "engine" (distribution channels, tracking, ops). Identify which is your current bottleneck to decide your marketing focus. Hiring First Marketer: Consider hiring a "pie-shaped" marketer—someone with expertise in one area (e.g., product marketing) and proficiency in another (e.g., growth marketing). Avoid hiring overly specialized or senior people from large companies. Product vs. Marketing Collaboration: Establish clear ownership and responsibilities using tools like Asana’s Areas of Responsibility (AOR) list. Ensure seamless handoffs between marketing and product to maintain a consistent user experience. Impact-Focused Marketing: Effective marketing teams focus on impact rather than activity. They should have clear goals, understand conversion rates across the funnel, and be able to articulate their big bets and foundational projects. Leveraging Expertise in Investing: Use your functional expertise to add value as an angel investor. Be clear about how you can help startups, which can also help you gain access to deals. Topics Covered: Fuel and engine framework, hiring marketing roles, product-marketing collaboration, impact-focused marketing, angel investing with functional expertise.

Ryan J. Salva

Guest: Ryan J. Salva - VP of Product at GitHub. Ryan incubated and launched GitHub Copilot, a transformative AI tool for developers, leveraging OpenAI's machine learning to autocomplete code in real-time. Key Takeaways: GitHub Copilot emerged from an experimental collaboration with OpenAI, initially sparked by a massive data request that nearly overwhelmed GitHub's systems. Copilot functions as an AI pair programmer, enhancing developer productivity by providing multi-line code suggestions, allowing developers to focus on higher-level design and creative tasks. The development of Copilot involved significant ethical and operational challenges, including addressing potential biases in AI-generated code and ensuring the tool complements rather than replaces human developers. GitHub's approach to innovation includes a dedicated R&D team, GitHub Next, which focuses on long-term, high-risk projects, transitioning successful ideas to operational teams for scaling. The future of AI in development is seen as an augmentation tool, enabling developers to tackle more complex problems by automating routine coding tasks. Topics Covered: AI in software development, GitHub Copilot, product incubation, ethical AI challenges, R&D in large companies, future of AI in coding.

Yuriy Timen

Guest: Yuriy Timen - Full-time advisor for growth strategy at companies like Canva, Airtable, and Grammarly. Yuriy has transformed growth strategies for numerous startups and spent nine years leading growth and marketing at Grammarly. Key Takeaways: Focus on One Growth Channel: Initially, concentrate on one growth channel that shows promise before diversifying. Avoid spreading resources too thin across multiple channels. SEO Strategy: Evaluate if your company has a unique angle for SEO, such as programmatic or data-driven opportunities. Consider a three-month trial period to assess potential. Paid Advertising: With current market shifts, paid advertising is less attractive unless you have strong unit economics. However, it's an opportunity for companies with good attribution systems to capitalize on reduced competition. Onboarding Optimization: Investing in onboarding can significantly improve activation rates, especially for complex products. Early-stage companies can see 2-4x improvements. Emerging Channels: Consider underutilized channels like TikTok, podcasts, and out-of-home advertising, which are becoming more viable as digital attribution weakens. Topics Covered: Growth strategies, virality, SEO, paid advertising, onboarding, TikTok, attribution, market shifts, consumer subscription businesses.

Wes Kao

Guest: Wes Kao - Co-Founder of Maven and co-creator of the Alt-MBA program with Seth Godin. Wes is renowned for her expertise in communication and influence, having taught numerous leaders and operators to enhance their communication skills. Key Takeaways: Sales Before Logistics: Always start by selling the idea or project before diving into logistics. This ensures buy-in and prevents confusion or apathy. MOO Framework: Anticipate the Most Obvious Objections before presenting an idea. This preparation helps address potential concerns proactively. Be Concise, Not Brief: Focus on the economy of words rather than just reducing word count. Clarity and density of information are key. Signposting: Use specific words like "for example," "because," and "as a next step" to guide readers and listeners through your communication. Manage Up Effectively: Share your point of view and recommendations with your manager to reduce their cognitive load and demonstrate strategic thinking. Topics Covered: Persuasive communication, managing up, frameworks for effective communication, anticipating objections, concise writing, executive communication, feedback strategies, delegation, and AI in communication.

Shreyas Doshi

Guest: Shreyas Doshi - Former Product Leader at Stripe, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo. Shreyas is renowned for sharing insightful and often contrarian perspectives on product management, drawing from his extensive experience at leading tech companies. Key Takeaways: Pre-mortems: Conduct pre-mortem meetings to identify potential project failures before they occur, using categories like tigers (real threats), paper tigers (seeming threats), and elephants (unspoken issues). LNO Framework: Prioritize tasks by categorizing them as leverage (L), neutral (N), or overhead (O) tasks, focusing on high-leverage tasks that provide significant impact. Three Levels of Product Work: Align team efforts by understanding the focus on impact, execution, or optics, and ensure alignment with leadership priorities to avoid conflicts. Execution Problems: Most execution issues are rooted in strategy or cultural problems rather than pure execution failures. Opportunity Cost vs. ROI: Shift from prioritizing tasks based on ROI to minimizing opportunity cost, focusing on the most impactful opportunities rather than quick wins. Topics Covered: Pre-mortems, LNO framework, product work levels, execution vs. strategy problems, opportunity cost in prioritization, high agency in PMs.

Arielle Jackson

Guest: Arielle Jackson - Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital. Arielle has a rich background in marketing, having spent nine years at Google helping grow Gmail and later working at Square to launch and scale the Square Reader. She has also assisted over 100 early-stage companies with their branding and marketing strategies. Key Takeaways: Naming Strategy: A good name can help a company but a bad name won't necessarily harm a great company. Focus on names that are suggestive or evocative, as they can do some marketing work for you. Brand Development Framework: Consists of three key elements—purpose (why you exist), positioning (how you want to be perceived), and personality (how you express yourself). This framework helps align internal and external perceptions of your brand. Purpose: Should be a clear, concise sentence that explains the change you want to see in the world, independent of financial gain. It should be memorable and align your team. Positioning: Involves defining your target audience, their problems, and how your product uniquely solves these issues. Use a structured framework to articulate this clearly. Personality: Your brand should have a personality that resonates with your audience. Use frameworks to determine your brand's personality traits to ensure consistency in communication. Topics Covered: Naming strategies, brand development framework, purpose, positioning, personality, PR strategies, hiring marketers.