Lessons In Product Management

On today's episode, I sat down with Vytenis Pakenas, CEO of Lucid Agreements. His 15-year journey from multi-time startup founder to CEO is pretty amazing. Today, Vytenis stopped by the podcast to share some key learnings from his JobRely startup experience. From business model fit to finding the right value metrics to track, there's so much to take away from this conversation, so let's get starte...

Here's what we discussed: How Mads was an entrepreneur since high school. At the young age of 16, Mads started his first business From Denmark and educated in London, Mads always knew he wanted to have his own company Living all over Europe, with a fascination in tech, Mads now lives in Bogota Columbia with his wife and is VP of Product at a FinTech company, OmniBnk After seeing the future in Cryp...

On today's episode, I had a great conversation with Piyush Madhukar, Senior Product Manager at ServiceNow. Piyush founded a startup back in 2012 called Shopnrelax. Through this failed startup experience, Piyush learned some very valuable lessons that he's carried into his product and senior product management roles. I'm so grateful Piyush came on to share what he learned, so let's get started.&nbs...

Welcome back to Prodcast as we continue our "Why Products Fail" series. On today's episode, I spoke with Aditya Kakrania, multi-time startup founder. We talked through Aditya's first startup, Foomore, how it grew through clever growth hacks and community building but how timing and environmental issues brought Foomore to its knees. This is a great lesson in why startups need to consider the fragil...

This is episode two of the Why Products Fail series and on this episode, I sat down with Max de Melo and Patrick Niederdrenk, Co-Owners of America One Luxury Real Estate, to talk about how to successfully break into crowded markets and why so many fail trying. Whether you're launching a startup or in a product team trying to introduce a new product into an existing and crowded market, you'll be gl...

On today's episode, I sat down with Kevin Garret, Founder and CEO of Food4All. What started out as volunteer work in urban farming turned into a passion-based business to help lower-income families develop a livelihood around the world. Kevin learned many lessons on his startup journey, and what he learned from key, early failures helped to shape his startup's success today.  Here's what we t...

This is the announcement of our new series kicking off on September 6th called "Why Products Fail"  Also announcing a new platform to democratize product management experience for aspiring product managers that will be launching at the end of September! Stay tuned for more details and updates and the platform progresses toward release! 

On today's episode, I sat down with Kristy Olinger, Portfolio Optimization Manager at Citizens Bank, and former SVP of Product at Bank of America. In Kristy's experience, with or without direct authority, it's vital for Product Managers and Product Leaders to gain buyin through influence, and Kristy has found storytelling to be the #1 tool for earning company-wide buyin. That's what we're going to...

On today's episode, I sat down with Nikki Anderson, User Research Lead at Zalando and Founder of User Research Academy. Nikki started her user research career about 7 years ago, with a foundation in quantitative research but has since shifted focus to specialize in qualitative user research where Nikki has worked in B2B, B2C, B2B2C and has both worked as a freelancer and worked in corporate settin...

On today's episode, I sat down with Dan Griffith, President of Griffith Growth Consulting, where Dan helps early stage B2B software and services companies by helping them find and engage their target market, and sell their product. In Dan's experience, there are key mistakes that early stage startups make that inhibit their ability to grow, and he was kind enough to jump on the podcast to share. A...

On today's episode, I sat down with Nick Sonnenberg, CEO of Leverage. getleverage.com Before Leverage, Nick was a high frequency trader on Wall Street, building algorithms to programmatically trade stock at micro-second speed. Back in May, Nick published an article on Inc. called "How to remove emotion from your decision making". I loved the article and thought of how relevant it was to product ma...

On today's episode, I sat down with Lolita Guarin, Author, Speaker, and Stress Management Coach. Originally from Lithuania, Lolita moved to the States to pursue her American dream. She landed in Texas and quickly began climbing up the corporate ladder. Afraid to say no, Lolita quickly saw her health decline and work/life balance come undone. After learning some natural ways to reduce and overcome...

On today's episode, I sat down with Nicholas Hinrichsen & Chris Coleman, former Directors of Product at Carvana and Co-Founders of WithClutch. If you need to refinance your car or want to check out what thy're working on, head over to withclutch.com Here's what we discussed: Who the product manager is in a startup versus a mature company What differs in product priority at these different stag...

On today's episode, I sat down with John Garratt, Product Manager at Perspectum Diagnostics. Here's what we talked about: How John first discovered the need for combining empthic design into the product discovery and delivery process Why it's so important to take an empathetic approach to product and ux design How in many industries, the experience of the user is still an afterthought How empathy...

For today's episode, i sat down with Dinesh Rajasekharan, Director of Product at Salesforce. Dinesh shared how he develops personas, performs validation with customers, and prioritizes around his primary personas. Here's what we've discussed: The first law of product management How to expand your view of who your customer is and the range of personas you serve Why personas are even more critical i...

On today's episode, I sat down with Zia Mohammad, Senior Product Manager at IBM,  Zia has had amazing career growth while at IBM and after speaking with him, you can  tell why. Zia is incredibly passionate about product management and has a wealth of insight to share.  Here are some of the things we discussed: What Zia does at IBM and the products he focuses on. What a day in the li...

On today's episode, I sat down with Raoul Friedrich Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Building Radar Here's what we discussed: How Raoul pivoted from engineering to product and founded Building Radar Why feature requests should never be taken at face value How you can train other departments such as sales and customer support to deliver more valuable feedback Why you should throw out your...

On today's episode, I sat down with Zach Daley, UX Product Design Lead at Overstock.com to chat about what a day in the life of a UX Design Lead looks like and how PMs can work more effective with their UX Leads.  Here's some of the things we discussed: What a day in the life of a UX Design Lead looks like, from leadership to individual contributions The biggest challenges UX Design Leads fac...

On today's episode, I sat down with Jeff Pease, Sr. Product Designer @ SwipeClock. Jeff has been in design his whole career, but he's had to evolve as industry trends led him into new territories. But even with the digital disruption of the 21st Century, one thing has remained constant for Jeff, the need to include developers early on in the design process.  Here's what we discussed: Jeff sha...

On today's episode, I sat down with Chris Bee, Senior Director of Product Development at Zillow. Before going to Zillow, Chris spent time as a PM and Product Leader at Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber. Now, Chris leads the core product team and product strategy for Zillow's core consumer experience on Zillow.com On today's episode, Chris and I had a great chat around product strategy, and cascading pro...

Don't forget to sign up for the Product-Led Festival! https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n&ac=M1F29xXu Use promo code Prodcast20 for 20% off of individual and team passes! On today's episode, I sat down with George Dita, CEO of WiseUp, a product innovation company focused on helping established companies build and launch cutting edge products Here's what we discussed: George's...

Don't forget to register for the Product-Led Festival! Click the link below and use the promo code: Prodcast20 https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n&ac=M1F29xXu Today's episode is inspired by the frequently asked question of "what frameworks should I use in product management; what's the best practice?" First off, I hate the term best practice.  Secondly, this episode explores two h...

Sign up for the Product-Led Festival here: https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n&ac=M1F29xXu Don't forget to use the promo code Prodcast20 for 20% off individual and team passes! On today's episode, I sat down with the CEO and Founder of Product School, Carlos Gonzales de Villaumbrosia Carlos founded Product School with the passion to help train the next generation of Product Ma...

Register for the Product-Led Festival here: https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n&ac=M1F29xXu Use my promo code Prodcast20 for 20% off individual and team passes! On this episode, I sat down with Bill Masur, Group Product Manager at SwipeClock.  Bill has experience working for large brands and startups, working in multiple types of business models, and now finds himself lea...

On today's episode, I sat down with Frank Spillers, Chief Experience Officer and Founder of Experience Dynamics, a consulting firm in Portland Oregon, focused on User Experience and User Research. Frank is a subject matter expert in the field of UX, and he joined the podcast to share with us what we wish we knew about usability testing. This is an absolute treat, and I guarantee that listening to...