PRODUCTEA with Leah, Growth & Senior Leadership

Teresa Torres offers a rare sneak peek behind the curtain of how she runs her business. How can you maximize your chances when you’re reaching out to people like us who have limited attention to go around? What is our pricing strategy for what we do, and how did we come up with it? How does Teresa’s demand generation differ from Marty Cagan's or mine? takeaways Coaching should be a mutual inv...

Why is it so difficult for most companies to shift gears after reaching product market fit? Why can’t we just keep doing what made us successful? Francesca Cortesi shares with me insights on the difficult journey from finding product market fit to getting to an IPO. We particularly explore the details of Hemnet, a Swedish B2B2C SaaS marketplace and how they dealt with this challenge. takeaways Def...

 The pervasive issue of layoff anxiety in the tech industry, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, overvaluation and the rise of AI. Dr. Joan Palmiter explores with me the importance of networking and personal branding as essential tools for job security and career advancement. Are multiple income streams and optionality realistic to mitigate the fear of job loss? How does personal career developm...

The nuances of executive communication and the importance of building buy-in for ideas with Wes Kao. The role of credibility, understanding bandwidth in conversations, and strategies for framing discussions to enhance clarity and reduce cognitive load. De-risking strategies to avoid surprises and the significance of celebrating good decision-making processes rather than just successful outcomes. ...

Kristi Faltorusso, a CS executive and coach, joins me in this high-energy conversation about customer success-assisted onboarding, alignment, and the dreaded realities of cross-functional working with product & sales. We explore effective onboarding strategies, the importance of aligning customer success with product development, and the necessity of quantifying challenges faced by customer su...

Founder-led sales done well has a lot of power especially in product-led companies. Tadas Labudis shares his experiences with founder-led sales and how it helped him build confidence in the product and himself. How to embrace your vulnerabilities and the importance of leaving a positive impression in sales interactions while getting insights you would never get just by looking at data. How to bala...

Maranda Dziekonski on the evolving landscape of customer success, the importance of driving value for customers, and owning revenue outcomes for a function that traditionally never has. Like product. Why the traditional role is shifting to a more integrated approach and how this works when “the sale never ends” We discuss the complexities of customer success, the impact of budget constraints on cu...

What is driving a company's value in 2024? How do we identify and copy trends that work until they don’t anymore? Why is product-led growth no longer a differentiator but becoming a table stake fast? Why is everyone suddenly providing a pipeline from product, marketing, sales, and customer success while the only way that most companies measure pipeline is through Marketing and their MQLs (Mar...

 Vincent Pierri interviews me (Leah Tharin) about my journey into public speaking, particularly within the tech industry. How I found a platform, overcame stage fright, and built confidence. How does it feel to speak to different audience sizes? How do you train this muscle? And where do memes fit into our dry tech industry? Why is building a brand such a painful experience due to the needed consi...

 Learnings from the transition from B2C to B2B in the fintech space focus on what can be carried over and what not. Forming behavioral habits and the challenges of building a sustainable business model while addressing the social determinants of financial health were just a few topics in this fascinating episode I recorded with Erin Papworth. The complexities of navigating the B2B sales landscape...

The importance of vision, careful pivots, and the balance between innovation and optimization.  Her concept of a vision is, to me, one of the very few that I think is actually cutting through the noise and has an impact aside from the cookie-cutter frameworks we had so far. It’s beyond processes over mere goal-setting in achieving long-term success in startups. takeaways Pivots should be treated a...

We discuss the complexities of change management, the importance of direct communication, and the evolving dynamics of workplace relationships vs in the past. How to build trust within teams, the significance of clarity in roles, and the challenges of hiring in today's market, particularly for executive positions. What’s the difference between really good leaders and bad managers? Takeaways C...

The dynamics of leadership in product management, the importance of a low-hierarchy organization, the challenges of founder mode, and the balance between control and empowerment. Data in product management, the limitations of traditional tools, and the future of product management with AI.  Takeaways Founders often struggle with letting go of control. Micromanagement can be necessary but should be...

Summary The branding experts Shannon Deep and Kevin Lee dig into exploring the multifaceted nature of brand measurement and strategy. Misconceptions surrounding brands and risks associated with brand decisions, the importance of aligning brand strategy with business goals, and the challenges faced by founder-led brands in maintaining their identity. What does marketing look like in the future? Whe...

Ami Vora, CPO at Faire, brilliantly lays out a lot of concepts about how she views senior leadership: How to build a strong bench of performers, balancing authenticity and urgency. How do you make yourself care about boring topics and find joy in work? Why feedback loops and building team connections become more important as an organization scales. How do we deal with weak performers, skip-level m...

Cringe Marketing, Dogfooding, and the limitations of Hubspot and Salesforce with Austin Hay, the Co-Founder of Clarify (CRM). I talked with Austin on the rise of superficial marketing tactics and what they do to the importance of building a strong brand. We discuss why Product Managers cannot ignore Marketing anymore and the value of good dogfooding in product development when everyone tells you t...

If you spend money on paid ads, chances are that you’re being taken advantage of. The biggest providers do it to you because they can and they optimize their systems more and more towards it. Rand Fishkin and me discuss the challenges and limitations of paid advertising, the role of AI in marketing, the importance of organic initiatives and why you can’t skip good quality audience research. Takeaw...

John Cutler on the challenges of scaling and operating a collaborative product organization.  We discuss different mental models for how different functions work together as teams and why it’s important to clarify and document the operating model, especially during times of growth, turnover, or changing strategies. John talks about the concept of scaffolding is introduced as a way to navigate the...

Summary Pedro Góes, the founder and CEO of InEvent, discusses with me the challenges and strategies of selling to enterprise clients in the event tech industry. Why in-person interactions and relationship-building can’t be beat by pure self-serve. The value of certifications and how they contribute to higher retention rates. He shares insights on the event tech market, the role of AI in their prod...

What is the role of product managers in the age of AI and the potential impact of AI on roadmapping and expectation management? Janna Bastow, CEO & Co-Founder ProdPad / Co-Founder of Mind the Product, shares her perspective on how AI is just another tool that can help product managers synthesize feedback and speed up certain aspects of their job. Why AI should not replace the human element of...

When is PLG just a fad? Vijay Iyengar, Senior Director of Product at Mixpanel discusses with me about the misconceptions around PLG and the role of analytics in driving business growth and why first principles is in our field the only thing we have. Do PM’s really need to have a basic understanding of data and how it is stored and analyzed with LLMs being the norm? Why business intelligence (BI) t...

Laura Schaffer, VP Product Growth @ Amplitude shares her experience of launching a self-serve paid plan and a free plan at Amplitude, a sales-led organization. We discuss the changing landscape of selling, the power of self-serve product experiences, and the expectations of users. The conversation also delves into the tensions between sales and self-serve motions, the importance of buy-in and clea...

Summary Activation and aha moments in product growth with Henrique Cruz, Head of Growth at Rows.com. How to find the right activation metric that predicts retention and how to iterate on the onboarding flow to improve activation. Examples of activation metrics and the challenges of tracking and improving activation. The importance of branding, the land and expand strategy, and positioning a brand...

Summary Guillaume Cabane and I discuss the future of marketing and the role of humans in a landscape dominated by AI and automation.  We’re talking about what does drive marketing and sales teams, and how their future will look like. The conversation touches on topics such as product-led growth, market penetration, and the role of content marketing in engaging target audiences. The conversation to...

Summary Kristen Berman, the Co-Founder of Irrational Labs discusses with me the psychology behind decision-making, the importance of understanding human behavior in product design, and the limitations of traditional research methods. We are exploring the challenges of balancing friction and value in user experiences, the role of context in shaping behavior, and the need to focus on the first day o...