Product Leader's Journey

In this episode, Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode, which provides user testing solutions to leading tech companies. Luke shares his journey from hardware engineering to founding a company that revolutionizes product testing. He discusses the importance of continuous user testing, the shift from waterfall to agile methodologies, and how Centercode has established itself in a new market category. Luke emphasizes the significance of community building, demonstrating value through metrics, and the evolution of pricing strategies. He also explores the impact of generative AI on product testing and shares valuable leadership lessons learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey. Luke is a tech idealist who wants technology to just work, to be simple, and friendly. He mission is to connect product builders and their audiences to actualize this vision at scale. In this episode, Luke talks about creating a brand new category in the market, and all the fun challenges that go hand in hand with that. How do you get your first customers, how do you price your offering and value-based pricing, convincing customers about the ROI of your offering. He also shares lessons learnt about PLG or product led growth motion. This is an incredibly candid and transparent conversation and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope you do as well. Key takeaways: - The Importance of Continuous Testing in Agile Development - Establishing a Common Vocabulary for Early Customers - Demonstrating the Value Proposition with Key Metrics - Adapting Pricing Strategies in a New Category - The Importance of Value-Based Pricing - The Impact of AI on Product Testing - Treating the Company Like a Product - Building a Great Culture by Designing the Company Connect with Luke Freiler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freiler/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar, host of Product Leader's Journey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Jyotika Athavale is the 2024 President of the IEEE Computer Society. In this role she oversees the global roadmap for the organization and plays a leading role in international safety standardization. She was honored with the IEEE Women in Technology and Leadership Award for her contributions towards diversity in engineering and STEM. Jyotika is one of the leading experts in the area of automotive functional safety. In her day job, she is Director of Enterprise Architecture at Synopsys, and has had a successful career as Principal Engineer at Intel, and Lead Technologist at Nvidia. It is quite remarkable having these very strong parallel career tracks.  In this episode, Jyotika talks about how the standards bodies ensure standards are relevant in the future, especially considering the pace of innovation we are seeing in many areas such as AI, autonomous vehicles, and so on. Jyotika also shares her advice on becoming a thought leader, and not holding ourselves back from roles we are fully capable of performing. Connect with Jyotika Athavale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotika-athavale-460b383/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Purvi Shah is Vice President of Product Development for Enterprise Data Platforms at American Express. Prior to that she led a team of consultants at Deloitte in the public sector working with many state governments to build solutions for citizens to avail services for food stamps, child care and other interventions. Purvi was recently recognized on the 2024 Global Data Power Women List by CDO Magazine.  In this episode Purvi talks about: (1:05) Product development in the public sector (2:23) Looking at the end-to-end journey beyond the user's problem (4:36) Three important things about empathy in understanding users (6:21) Data challenges of a 170 year old company like American Express (7:43) Three success criteria for Customer-360 programs that strive to build a singular view of a customer (11:27) Applying Newton's first law of motion to data platforms (13:30) Applying Newton's second law of motion to data platforms (14:23) Example of customer delight that comes from having a good data ecosystem (16:43) Key lessons learnt from decommissioning legacy data platforms (22:05) Applying Newton's third law of motion to data platforms (25:26) Metrics to track for enterprise data platforms Connect with Purvi Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purvi-shah-8298451/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar Product Leader's Journey: https://www.productleadersjourney.com

Jeff Lash is SVP of Global Product Management at Forrester. Jeff has been a long time thought leader on all things product. He led the product management practice at SiriusDecisions (acquired by Forrester) where he worked with many companies on assessing and benchmarking their product function competency and maturity. Jeff started his career as an information architect and usability at Elsevier and Mastercard, and then pivoted into product management, so he has some good insights to share from both sides.At Forrester, Jeff leads the core portfolio that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, with responsibility for product discovery, new product innovation, portfolio management, and pricing/packaging.In this episode we talk about:* How UX and PM work best with each other* Good PMs create opportunities for other team members* PM tools cannot address fundamental problems* Assessing PM function and competency in a company* Organizing and orienting what PMs are responsible for* Measuring success in the PM role* Applying PM principles to pickleball!Connect with Jeff Lash at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefflash/Connect with Rahul Abhyankar at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Lara Shackelford is a veteran Chief Marketing Officer many times over, and has led marketing teams to create impact at companies such as Oracle, Intel, Datastax, Looker (both before and after the acquisition by Google), and has also led global demand generation at Microsoft. She is currently senior vice president of marketing at iCapital.In this episode, Lara talks about how the B2B buying experience has changed, what is a good blueprint for sales training, coming up with a good ROI analysis, how to assess the ROI of AI, and what does a good partnership between product marketing, product and sales teams looks like, and much more.David Packard, the cofounder of HP, is believed to have said, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department,” so I wanted to see what Lara had to say about that. Enjoy listening!

Nathan Gold is highly sought after as a coach for presentations at the TED conference, keynote speeches, entrepreneurs pitching on Shark Tank and startups raising funding from investors. He has delivered thousands of hours of professional coaching while working with companies such as Netflix, SanDisk, Kaiser Permanente and IBM. In this episode Nathan shares some very useful tips on how to do a persuasive and memorable product demo, combined with stories. He shares a simple template for communicating your product’s value proposition. He also talks about the secrets of designing, scripting and delivering high stakes presentations, including how to harness your speaking anxiety. Nathan has graciously offered his book "Harnessing Your Speaking Anxiety" as a free download at: https://www.democoach.com/freebook. You don't need to enter your name or email. He only asks that if you like it, that you share it with two more people.

Sudhakar Ramakrishna became CEO of SolarWinds at a very pivotal moment in the company's history, just as it became the target of a cyberattack that affected not just SolarWinds but its large base of enterprise and government customers. Since then, Sudhakar and the people at SolarWinds have led a remarkable turnaround. We are going to learn about how they did that. Before coming to SolarWinds, Sudhakar's journey has taken him from engineering and product leadership as well as GM, President and CEO roles at companies such as 3Com, Motorola, Polycom, Citrix, Pulse Secure. We cover many important topics in this episode: * Leading in a crisis * Gaining back the trust and confidence of customers * Balancing paradoxes in product management * Aligning purpose, portfolio, priorities, value * Transitioning from perpetual to subscription business model * Value model and business model * Evolving from best of breed point products to Suites to Platform * PLG in IT infrastructure * Designing Time to Value Connect with Sudhakar Ramakrishna at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudhakar-ramakrishna-a58223/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar/

Himanshu Palsule is CEO of Cornerstone, which provides a workforce agility platform to identify skill gaps and development opportunities within organizations. Himanshu joined as CEO in Jan 2022, bringing more than 35 years of diverse experience leading global organizations. Prior to joining Cornerstone, he was President of Epicor where he was responsible for managing vertical businesses and overseeing product operations. Palsule was previously CTO and Head of Strategy at Sage Software. Key highlights: Learning to live within your own skin and recalibrating yourself Concentric circles of evaluating ideas - Control, Influence, Interest Key trait when you have a seat at the table: Humility What is important when you have to say “I don’t know” Going beyond the cliche and making customer obsession real What does it really mean to have a flat organization What does a future-ready Product Manager look like Connect with Himanshu Palsule, CEO of Cornerstone: https://www.linkedin.com/in/himanshu-palsule/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar, Host of Product Leader's Journey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar/

Join host Rahul Abhyankar and Aleks Bass, Chief Product Officer of Typeform on this episode. At Typeform, Aleks leads product strategy, development and execution. Typeform helps brands with thoughtfully-designed tools that turn digital interactions into lasting personal connections, with no-code forms, quizzes, surveys, and asynchronous videos. Aleks is a product leader with a 18+ year career that includes product management, product marketing, and consumer insights for both B2B SaaS and D2C self-serve products. Prior to Typeform, she led products at Surveymonkey, Qualtrics (acquired by SAP), Workfront (acquired by Adobe). Aleks' passion lies at the intersection of technology, insights, and strategy, and applying these disciplines to improve products, customer experiences, and marketing outcomes. As a leader her goal is to foster a culture of collaboration and accountability, instill a growth mindset, advocate for experimentation, and fully invest and respect the craft of creation. In this episode, Aleks talks about: the evolution of market research what product managers should learn about how their products serve customers how successful product managers overlap across product, engineering, design for maximum impact the skepticism some executives have about conducting market surveys her framework for the first 30-60-90 days in a new company in a new role building stakeholder relationships by being clear about how to address conflict how to give effective feedback and a lot more...

Chris Johnson is Co-founder & Managing Partner of Artisanal Talent Group, a highly specialized boutique executive search firm known for building some of tech’s most talented executive teams. Chris leads the Product and Engineering Leaders Practice, and is one of the most highly sought-after search consultants in the field for these critical roles at tier-1, high profile, VC backed and public companies. Over the past few years, Chris has completed Product and Engineering searches for Rippling, Notion, Rubrik, Airtable, ServiceNow, Databricks, Figma, UiPath, Confluent, Mulesoft, Starburst, GitLab, Splunk, Harness, New Relic, Elastic, dbt Labs, MessageBird, Postman, Coalition, Loom, Pendo, Procore, etc. In this episode, Chris shares deep insights on how executive recruiters work and how to work with them. He also shares advice on how to be deliberate and thoughtful about mapping your career journey. Highlights: * Case Study of a CPO Search* How do accomplished executive candidates stand out* Hiring trends - FAANG candidates, Domain relevance* Are you a wartime or peacetime leader* Does a company really need a CPO* How recruiters assess candidates for "fit"* How can candidates craft a strong narrative about themselves* How to balance the use of "I" vs "We" in interviews* How to talk about weak spots on the resume* How to build relationships with exec recruiters* Are you playing Career Chess or Checkers* Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in exec searches* How recruiters think about exceptions to the job spec

Al Zollar has had a distinguished 34-year career at IBM where he held several important roles across the entire software stack, including General Manager of IBM Tivoli Software, General Manager IBM iSeries server product line, and President of IBM Lotus Software. He spent the first 9 years in customer facing roles in pre-sales and post-sales engineering, before becoming a product manager for DB2, and later, OS2.  Al is currently an Executive Advisor with Siris Capital Group and serves on the Boards of IBM, NASDAQ, BNY Mellon.   In this down to earth, candid and wide ranging conversation, Al shares the following key takeaways: * Mindset of every job being the last job you'll ever have * Building credibility amongst engineers with PhDs * What it truly means to be CEO of the Product * Four dimensions of product to be successful as a product manager * Approach to having tough conversations * Key responsibilities of Board members * How will IBM differentiate itself in AI * #newwhitemen - A challenge and a call for Allyship * Impressive women leaders Al has had the fortune of working for and with

Donald Hasson, Chief Product Officer of Dashlane, a leading provider of password management to consumers and businesses, joins host Rahul Abhyankar in this episode. With a long and successful career in cybersecurity, Donald is an expert in identity and credential management.  How to build user delight for heightened emotions that are associated with creating, forgetting and protecting passwords. How to think of user education as a feature of the product. How to think of competition, direct, indirect, substitutes and alternatives. How to avoid "the feature request black hole" of product development. What to learn from customer's roadmaps and how to know customers better than their mother's do! How to balance the "beautiful constraints" of product development - time, scope, resources and quality. How to know when a product organization needs Product Ops. Find the transcript at: https://www.productleadersjourney.com/s2e3-donald-hasson/ Where to find Donald Hasson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldhasson/ Where to find Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Amanda Richardson is CEO of CoderPad, an online talent assessment platform used by companies such as Spotify, LinkedIn, Shopify, Lyft and many others. In just four years as CEO, she has led the company's growth in 160+ countries, over 4000 customers doing over 3 million assessments per year. Amanda started her career as an equities analyst on Wall Street, but she wanted to "be in the room where it happens". This brought her to Silicon Valley starting her journey as a product leader to CEO. Key Highlights: Importance of humor in the workplace Hiring people with skills and "not BS" Job search advice: Go for the job you really want "Show and tell" approach to job interviews and hiring Complaining about Product & Engineering is one way to get the PM job :-) Advice for PMs: "The engineers are fine. They don't need you." Formulating Product & GTM strategy to go up against Microsoft Defining the role you want for higher impact  Skills to develop after becoming CEO Say YES and figure it out. Be in the space of possibilities Connect with Amanda Richardson:⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandahartrichardson/⁠ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Rich Mironov, author of The Art of Product Management, and a veteran product leader with over three decades of experience tells it like it is in this engaging episode of Product Leader's Journey. We discuss the emotional aspects of product leadership, why prioritization is a political problem, why a product role in the B2B enterprise domain is more challenging, what product leaders owe their teams, and a lot more. In this episode Rich covers: What Go-to-Market teams actually don't care about Prioritization is a political problem Why the product role in enterprise B2B is challenging Merchandising Product work Diagnosing what's not working in Product land Organizational dysfunctions that prevent Product success Assessing product competency What product leaders owe their teams Moving up to VP Product Identifying & preventing product waste Connect with Rich Mironov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov/https://www.mironov.com (Rich's blog) Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar Referenced in this Episode: The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator (book)Prioritization is a Political Problem (blog post)Merchandising Product Management (blog post)What we need in a VP of Product Management (blog post)Shoulder to Shoulder (blog post)Four Laws of Software Economics (blog post)How to Prevent Product Waste (interview)

Rich Fernandez is the CEO of SIY Global. SIY Global comes from the renowned Search Inside Yourself program, mindfulness and emotional intelligence training originally developed at Google, where Rich was director of executive education and people development. He was also one of the first SIY teachers. Rich has also served in senior roles at eBay, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America. In this episode Rich shares insights about the importance of mindfulness and meditation for product leaders, as well as the critical ingredients for leadership.

Stuart McClure is one of the foremost cybersecurity experts in the world and a serial entrepreneur with successful exits. He has built successful products leveraging ML & AI for cybersecurity. Stu is also a student of psychology and his new company, Wethos AI, leverages AI to codify traits of high performing teams.

We hear often that careers are nonlinear. So how can we be thoughtful about the zig and deliberate about the zag? My next guest on Product Leader’s Journey, Nadim Hossain, VP Product Management at Databricks, has done exactly that. In this episode, Nadim shares insights about his experience at Uber and Databricks in building open and closed-loop ML products, product-led vs engineering-led product teams, and a lot more.

Natalia Baryshnikova is GM of Enterprise Agility at Atlassian. Prior to that she was Head of Products at SmartRecruiters. In this episode, Natalia shares her highly useful insights from her career journey. We dive into topics such as resume tips, cover letters, career growth, and driving alignment.

Don Weinstein is ADP’s Global Chief Product and Technology Officer, responsible for all aspects of ADP’s global technology strategy and delivery. Don's career journey started at GE and then at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and ADP. In this episode, Don shares his playbook on how to lead technology transformations inside large organizations, the career graph from product manager to product leader to general manager, the key attributes of leaders that make them role models, and enabling customer intimacy for global product teams.

Inbal Shani is Chief Product Officer of GitHub. Having led engineering and product teams at Amazon and Microsoft and serving as a General Manager for most of her career, she specializes in crafting solutions that maximize customers’ most business-critical outcomes. Inbal’s development experience has spanned the entire tech stack. She was among the pioneering technologists who applied AI in the lab during her Master's in mechanical engineering. Immersed in the rapid evolution of LLMs and AI models, she is deeply passionate about optimizing the developer experience in her role as GitHub's Chief Product Officer. In this episode, Inbal shares her thoughts on the impact of AI on software development, the mindset of building 0 to 1 products, how to become comfortable moving from an individual contributor to management role, and much more.