The Product Podcast

Ira provides aspiring Product Managers with the early insights into the emotional ups and downs of Product Management and how to keep pushing forward. Main takeaways include, how to be emotionally aware of self and others while managing product, how to handle emotions around product & market failures and wins and how to be an emotional leader. Social Links: Find out more about Product School h...

By this point you've probably heard of Bitcoin and may know someone who owns some, but even though you nod your head when it comes internally you were wondering ... what exactly is a Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the world's first finite digital resource. It's a currency that no single person or organization can control - kind of like a digital gold. Unless you have a background in cryptograp...

Dan Olsen shares the key ideas from his bestselling book The Lean Product Playbook. Most of us are familiar with Lean Startup and its valuable concepts, such as product-market fit and the build-measure-learn loop. However, many product teams run into challenges when they try to adopt Lean Startup principles because they lack specific guidance on what to do and how to do it. The Lean Product Playbo...

One major responsibility of product managers is to define and oversee the strategy of a new or existing product. However, ask a product manager to describe the product’s strategy, and the response may be anything from a vague collection of buzzwords to a detailed list of technical functionality. An effective product strategy needs to be well-thought out and comprehensive enough to cover all of the...

A majority of product managers find prioritization their biggest challenge at work. Knowing that it can set your product up for success or failure; how do you build, rank and prioritize a product roadmap with multiple stakeholders, limited resources and missing data to back decisions. Flipkart product manager talks about how you can learn how to build, rank and prioritize a product roadmap with mu...

In only a few short years, Slack has become one of the fastest-growing and most beloved enterprise SaaS products of all time. But the secrets behind its growth aren’t what you might expect: it wasn’t all about analytics and A/B testing. Slack's first product manager, Kenneth Berger, tells stories from his time there and shares two surprising principles that helped drive Slack’s success. Combi...

Are you trying to get into product management but can't code? No tech background? No problem! Former Product Manager at CBS Interactive, Rekha Gavini, gives tips to set yourself up for success and ways to strengthen yourself in the "tech" area. She discusses how you can dip your feet in the technical stuff, pair your non-tech strengths with Product Manager qualities, and practice th...

Technology products today collect billions of signals from users, and Product Managers are increasingly responsible for shaping features based on a dynamic flow of data — as opposed to traditional static UI design. How can we most effectively build for the content and data that flow into our products? What is the right way to design machine learning features to jump the expectation gap users exper...

Are you trying to break into Product Management, or looking to stay on-top of your Product Management game? Come hear insights on how to be a successful PM in Silicon Valley. We'll also cover how to grow your career once you're a product manager. Takeaways: -What makes a successful Product Manager -Understand the role and importance of product managers in today's tech industry. -Get...

In this talk, Karl Sluis will recap the different approaches to creating the right context for a team, what's worked for him, what hasn't, and provide a few things Product Leaders can try right away to provide better context for their teams. One of the most important jobs a Product Leader has is making sure everyone working on a product, at any time, clearly knows why they're spendi...

In this talk, Shyam Vijayakrishnan discusses and explores the big world of mobile apps. Specifically he talks about the key concepts when creating and implementing a new app, challenges around scaling a product, and all critical functions that need to perform to sustain and allow the app to thrive! He also sheds light into what to focus on when you put a mobile app out, how to scale a mobile app a...

Many companies require Product Managers to have a technical background - whether it be a formal Computer Science degree or experience with writing code. "Over the years I've been self-conscious about my lack of technical background, yet I’ve learned that technical skills aren’t everything when it comes to Product Management." Jori Bell from Spotify breaks down the myth of needing te...

Product managers have to be user centric to build great products, but many Product Managers stop short and focus only on generic use cases. A great product that reaches the masses needs to be inclusive of the many different types of users that might use it. Laura Holmes, Senior Product Manager at Google, talks about how to build inclusive products and discusses how biases can impact product design...

In this talk, Product Manager at Facebook provides a clear scope of a product manager role, the mechanics of the product development process, and the communication needed to ensure transparency across stakeholders. Additionally, she talks about how to use user feedback to inform decisions. Aigerim Shorman is a Product Manager at Facebook. Before Product Management, she founded her own company Wist...

Influencing without power is a key aspect of being a Product Manager. Being data-driven and data-comfortable is critical for today's product managers to influence without power. You may know how what A/B tests are, but how can you tactically set yourself and your teams up for success? What strategies can you adopt? In this talk, Ketan Nayak, Product Manager at Dropbox, covers how you as a Pro...

"Transitioning to a product management role from scratch or another position is a process that I have been through many times - and fundamentally what has helped me is following product management processes to get the job (and life!) of my dreams!" This talk covers some of the key practices to help you get your desired Product Manager job and more out of what you want in life. Jocelyn Mi...

Product managers are sometimes reviled and other times revered. In this talk, Sammy Shreibati, Product Manager at LinkedIn, goes over the differences between the roles and what to expect. He discusses how to shift your thinking from "what" to "why", how to start working like a product manager and why you should always have a story. Social Links: Find out more about Product Scho...

In this talk, Gayle McDowell, the author of the book "Cracking the PM Interview", teaches how to prepare for Product Manager interviews, what top companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft really look for, and how to tackle the toughest problems. Gayle discusses how the ambiguously-named "PM" (product manager / program manager) role varies across companies, what experience yo...

Growth Leader from Zendesk, Brianne Kimmel, and Director of Partnerships at Trello, Anthony Marnell, talk about the best practices on how to turn customer feedback into actionable insights. They also discuss why customer feedback matters, what the best practices for sharing customer feedback with internal teams are and how to evaluate signal vs. noise. Social Links: Find out more about Product Sch...

What exactly is a Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the world's first finite digital resource, a currency that no single person or organization can control - kind of like a digital gold. Unless you have a background in cryptography or economics or both, phrases like cold storage, hard fork, and segregated witness can all seem pretty cryptic. Tyler Odean from Google gives an introduction to Bitcoin that cov...

Product managers are hired to build the future of products. However, when working on products and companies that are already at large scale, many Product Managers get stuck in ‘incrementalism’. This is the classic ‘local maxima’, and the proverbial ‘death by a thousand cuts’. Product Manager at YouTube, Seung Nam, talks about the challenges of building products at scale, and shares some challenges...

Are you trying to break into Product Management, or looking to stay on-top of your Product Management game? Carlos González de Villaumbrosia, Product School Founder and CEO, covers int his talk how to grow your career once you're a product manager, what makes a successful Product Manager and how to understand the role and importance of product managers in today's tech industry. Carlos al...

Pricing is one of the most important skills a Product Manager needs to have. Whether it be pricing a new product, service launch, pricing an upgrade or just thinking about price cuts to stay competitive. In this talk, Aditya Vikram Bhuwania discusses how to understand how top firms think about pricing, various pricing strategies, architecture and implementation. He talks about the importance of pr...

In this talk, Matt Wolf, Product Manager at StubHub, talks about the stages of companies, small and large company teams, key differences in company size, and how to understand the Product Manager role based on company size. He gives insight on what the company needs are at different stages, how to think about your career arc and where you want to be over the long term. From this talk, you can lear...

Product management is about creating change. Metrics are the guideposts that help us ensure that the changes we make are leading to the results we want. They let us forecast, provide early warning signals, and create incentives for action. In this talk, Meghan Cochran, former Product Manager at Sephora, discusses designing good metrics, gaining alignment among a broad range of stakeholders, and co...