100 Product Strategies

The role of strategy in pre-market-fit startups can sometimes be unclear. How would we focus or double down on a path when we have so much uncertainty and risk? We would likely pivot many times before finding what we need to double down on, and doing a deep strategic exercise is a waste of time.  But when we neglect strategy, the consequences can be worse. Not having clarity on what we are trying...

Playing to Win is a strong framework, but it can create some confusion during its implementation, like making your winning aspiration “be the #1 of X”. I spoke with Stuart Congdon, a strategy veteran, who has used it many times and walked us through a complete example with my typical annoying questions to get to the root of their strategic decisions! In this episode, we talked about: A real implem...

Many strategies come from a need to grow, or start by reviewing many opportunities to find the ideal ones. But what if we have a unique asset that we can leverage to create a strategic advantage? A recent example could be how Disney used their unique IP to create a winning streaming platform in an already competitive market.  In this episode, Joe Jenvey from Sedex shared a more “down to earth” exa...

Strategy in B2B has serious power dynamics. There often seems to be a fight between PMs and Sales, when in the end, hopefully, they are trying to do what's best for the company. Adam Thomas has used multiple hats in the past and brings some advice on working with the different sides of the organization to create a trusted and focused strategy, and how to keep validating your strategic investme...

One of the key elements of a solid product strategy that generates growth based on your product success, is building and sustaining strong differentiators. But finding, validating and aligning on that differentiation is hard work. In this episode we explored strategy creation with Leah Tharin, Head of Product at Jua.ai and Product Led Growth expert. We covered many aspects of strategy creation, st...

To create a good strategy, you need a vision. If the vision is inspiring and drives a significant purpose, chances are you have stronger bases to build a motivating strategy. Simone started her product career in gambling! In Canada the government provided the service, which already had some nuances for strategy. At some point she felt the calling to do something more purposeful, that eventually le...

The key drivers of your strategy can be radically different in nature: are we optimizing on a well known topic? Are we doing a new big bet into uncharted territory? Unfortunately, many times we are not conscious of the type of decision we are making, and how this affects the strategy “health”, risk, time horizons, and execution process. Luckily, Alessandro doesn’t fall into that trap. He has a wel...

Depending on your product, a team’s mission can be very clear (a checkout page for e-commerces) or a bit fuzzier. Going back to the old “painkiller” versus “vitamin” problem, many companies will have across their portfolio teams that are an integral part of their core proposition, and others that add value “around” it. Our guest Diogo was in such a situation, in a very successful product: Adidas R...

The “shape” of the opportunity space can greatly influence how we approach strategy creation. Some opportunity spaces are straightforward, and the work revolves around optimization and improvements. Others are completely unknown and require a much more exploratory approach. Interestingly enough, complex spaces are not only reserved for “new fields” like the Metaverse. Alasco has the mission of “Di...

There are many challenges for the collaboration of Product and UX on the strategic level. As a product and design trainer and consultant, Sol Mesz works with both teams to make this collaboration more successful. She shared with us many tips and tools that can help any leader get the most out of both “sides of the table”. In this episode, we talked about: How product and design can come closer for...

Description: many of us work on consumer products, or B2B SaaS, or other products where the business model and the value proposition is strong and clear. But there are products and industries that need to connect a variety of different players, creating not only complex problems but also complex structures where the needs of different groups need to be constantly prioritized and considered to be s...

It can be hard to create a strategy for innovation. But if we are talking about B2B enterprise innovation, especially when hardware products are involved (like climate and energy tech), it truly is challenging. Furthermore, if you are looking for advice, few have actually “been there and done that”. Daniel Elizalde is one of those. Furthermore, he has codified his approach in the B2B Innovator’s M...

We all know different products and contexts require different strategic thinking. B2B SaaS and subscriptions is an important product category, and John Pearce has been working on it for a long time. In this episode, he shared: The framework he has been using at Chargebee to build their strategy The differences with strategies for consumer products. How to integrate, balance and align sales inputs...

One challenging topic about product strategy as organizations grow, is “how many product strategies” should we have, based on how many products we have on our portfolio (or “sections of a large product, or business units, or any other organization slice we may have). It is also related to the question “who should we involve” to define the strategy, and how PMs, Heads of Product, VPs, and the diffe...

Startups and Enterprise operate very differently. Product management is done quite differently. What about product strategy? What are the differences (and similarities)? What do we need to pay attention to? What is important to consider if we are moving from one to the other? In this episode I spoke with Jonathan Rodriguez, Product Lead at Flieber, a growing startup in the logistics industry. Befo...

What is like to set a strategy when your company is growing in headcount by 2x (or more!) per year? How do you identify the areas where the new joiners will be working? How do you balance new opportunity spaces versus focusing on the existing ones? How do you onboard new members on the strategy topics? Nicholas Goubert is working in one of the fastest growing companies in Europe, and has first han...

Over the last decade(s), many companies have started the different types of transformations, most of them going in the same direction: how to become more agile and make software-product development a first-class discipline they had to master. To achieve such a transformation, many things are required, starting at the top with monetary resources, leadership commitment, and patience. How is this rel...

Megan joined Hotjar two years ago, and had the challenge to create the strategy from scratch. But moreover, she has the opportunity to review with fresh eyes how the execution went and what she learned along the way. In this very interesting conversation we covered the journey, starting with very insightful tips on the initial strategy creation, how they communicated and aligned the strategy acros...

Sherpany is a B2B SaaS for meeting management. The space is so wide, that there can tackle endless opportunities, which it might in turn reduce focus and end up in a mediocre product. So, how do they define a strong and focused strategy in such a wide space? Nina is Chief Product Officer at Sherpany and she told me how they deal with this challenge and went deep into the very solid strategy formul...

In this episode, we spoke with Johannes Mayer, Director of Product at Kununu, the largest employer and salary review site in the DACH region. We explored how to create a strategy in a context where you have a user-centered product that relies on monetizing companies' premium services, and discussed how to balance and navigate the conflict of interests that may arise, and even how Kununu creates sy...

In this episode, we spoke with Petra Wille, an internationally renowned Product Leadership Coach and author of Strong Product People. We explored how product people can become more strategic and how leaders can coach their teams to develop their strategic thinking. We talked about: How important is strategic thinking? Having coached companies in different situations, Petra explores the difference...

In this episode we spoke with Marc Abraham, Product Leader at Intercom and author of Managing Product = Managing Tension and My Product Management Toolkit . We explored where are the biggest tensions when creating a product strategy, and discussed how to deal with them and the role of the product leader in navigating the different tradeoffs. We talked about: How Marc approaches the strategy proble...

Darrell Stephenson is Product Director at Zalando (and previously at SoundCloud). Being a really large corporation, Zalando has strategies at multiple levels that interact and intersect with each other. In this episode, Darrell has been extremely open and generous, explaining how product strategy creation works at Zalando, and how leaders face the challenge of the different interconnected areas an...

Hi! I'm Nacho Bassino.  Welcome to 100 Product Strategies! Let me briefly tell you what this show is about.  The goal of this podcast is to invite product leaders to share their real-life experiences creating and executing Product Strategies. Episode references: 100productstrategies.com Product Direction book - https://amzn.to/3J6AoMo