DiscoverRocketship.fmChapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...
Chapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...

Chapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...

Update: 2018-07-10
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In season 5 of Rocketship.fm we will be following the lives of three entrepreneurs and product people, going behind the scenes to the team off-sites, product conversations, executive dinners and customer interviews.

We'll be focused on the stories of Lee Tengum, a solo-entrepreneur, with a passion for helping small businesses. Martin "Gonto" Gontovnikas, the VP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0, with 380 employees, who is a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service, and Krish Subramanian the CEO of Chargebee, the 150 employee startup who just raised an $18M Series C.


Each story highlights the ups and downs of entrepreneurship as we take you behind the scenes through audio journals and personal interviews about their business, but also their day to day struggles as they balance business with the pull of their personal life and family demands. 

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Chapter 7: Relationships
On today's episode, we explore the important topic of relationships. We follow Krish, Gonto, and Lee and look beyond business for just one week to see how they balance family, friends, girlfriends and work/life balance while pushing for greatness, and what some might call the impossible.  

Chapter 7: Relationships

2018-09-1400:19:34

Chapter 6: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
In this episode, we hear from Lee Tengum about his first customer interview for his new project and new project direction. It may or may not send him spiraling in a new direction. We also catch up with him about the other side projects that he is supporting on an ongoing basis. In the second half of the episode, we follow Gonto of Auth0 as his team gets closer to finalizing the plans for their A/B signup test and he takes off to Peru for a FinTech conference. 

Chapter 6: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

2018-09-0700:19:30

Interview: Latif Nanji of Roadmunk
Latif Nanji is the co-founder and CEO of Roadmunk, the road mapping software that helps companies create and share their products strategy and roadmaps.Roadmunk is a roadmapping enterprise SaaS platform serving over 75,000 product innovators including Amazon, NY Times, Nike, The Coca-Cola Company, Bloomberg, Adobe & Citibank. 

Interview: Latif Nanji of Roadmunk

2018-08-3000:22:021

Chapter 5: First Steps
In today's episode, we learn more about the projects that Krish CEO of Chargebee, Gonto VP of Growth at Auth0 and Lee of 7am.ca will pursue for the next 2 months. You'll hear about them directly from them and their team as they discuss and plan the initial phases of each project. What will they get right and what will they get wrong? Find out as we follow along step by step to see what it's like to bring a new product idea to life. 

Chapter 5: First Steps

2018-08-2400:29:41

Sprint Week: Day 4 "User Testing"
In our final episode of our Sprint Week Series we listen in as Michael Smart and the AJ&Smart team test their prototype with real users. Over the past week, they have ideated, lightening demoed, sketched and prototyped their way to this point in the project journey for Kevin Rose's Zero App. But, after all of this work, what will real users think? Find out on today's episode. 

Sprint Week: Day 4 "User Testing"

2018-08-1000:26:45

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 4 Retrospective with Michael Smart
In our final episode of this Sprint Week series, we follow along as the team tests their prototypes with real users. We caught up with Michael Smart after the full day of user testing to find out what they found and more about how they think about user testing, what they're looking for in terms of feedback, and what their next steps will be. 

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 4 Retrospective with Michael Smart

2018-08-1000:24:57

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 3 Retrospective with Michael Smart
Go behind the scenes as we catch up with Michael Smart of AJ&Smart after their day of Prototyping Kevin Rose's fasting app, Zero. Michael talks with us about how they approach prototyping, what to look for in a testable prototype and what could go wrong tomorrow when they put this prototype in front of real users. 

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 3 Retrospective with Michael Smart

2018-08-0900:16:45

Sprint Week: Day 3 "Prototyping"
Follow along as we bring you behind the scenes as AJ&Smart prototypes the next version of Zero, Keven Rose's fasting app, to test with real users in under 8 hours. There is no room for failure. The user tests are scheduled so a prototype must be completed. Michael Smart, Co-Founder of AJ&Smart walks us through how they approach prototyping and what makes an effective prototype for testing.  

Sprint Week: Day 3 "Prototyping"

2018-08-0900:25:07

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 2 Retrospective with Michael Smart
In this bonus episode, you'll hear more from Michael Smart of AJ&Smart about how he and the team think or organize storyboarding sessions. All week they're working with the Zero App team to determine what their next 6 to 24 month roadmap could be. 

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 2 Retrospective with Michael Smart

2018-08-0800:22:34

Sprint Week: Day 2 "Storyboarding"
Join us for day two of Zero apps design sprint with AJ&Smart. Today is all about storyboarding. Listen as the team from AJ&Smart take the ideas generated on day one and start to solidify them. The goal is to sketch an actual UI showing how a user would move through this part of the story — where they click, what info they enter, what they think, etc. This is the step before prototyping and one of the most exciting days of the sprint process. 

Sprint Week: Day 2 "Storyboarding"

2018-08-0800:22:24

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 1 Retrospective with Michael Smart
At the end of day 1, we caught up with Michael Smart, co-founder of AJ&Smart, to get his inside take on how the first day went.  We learn more about how he thinks about Design Sprints and their process for ensuring everything stays on track each day. 

Sprint Week Bonus: Day 1 Retrospective with Michael Smart

2018-08-0700:18:31

Sprint Week: Day 1 "Gathering Ideas"
In this episode, we drop a microphone into the first day of Zero, Kevin Rose's Intermittent fasting app, design sprint with agency AJ&Smart. The goal of the first day is to encourage everyone to share what they already know and develop a common understanding with the rest of the group. Everyone involved in a sprint has different perspectives and different information about the problem they're trying to solve. This is generally done through a series of ideation and sketching exercises, all of which you'll be able to listen in on in today's episode. 

Sprint Week: Day 1 "Gathering Ideas"

2018-08-0700:24:41

Sprint Week: Getting Ready to Sprint
Follow along as each day this week we take you behind the scenes of an entire design sprint for Kevin Rose's app Zero led by Design Agency AJ&Smart.AJ&Smart is a design agency focused exclusively on helping companies innovate through the design sprint process and they let us drop our microphones into the room as they conducted a week-long Design Sprint with Mike Masur, the CEO of Zero. If you haven't heard of a design sprint before, it's based on the book, Sprint, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky of Google Ventures which was released just under 3 years ago. The design sprint is a process of rapid idea testing wherein one week a team is able to ideate, sketch, prototype and test an idea with real users. 

Sprint Week: Getting Ready to Sprint

2018-08-0600:20:111

Next week is Sprint Week!
Every day next week we will be going behind the scenes of a design sprint for the intermittent fasting app, Zero, which was founded by Kevin Rose. The design sprint is lead by AJ&Smart, the design agency focused exclusively on helping companies innovate through the design sprint process. You'll be behind the scenes as the team plans, iterates, and prototypes until finally getting their ideas in front of real users.  

Next week is Sprint Week!

2018-08-0300:01:43

Chapter 4: Krish goes to Paris
In Chapter 4, we learn about the origins of Krish Subramanian, Co-founder and CEO of Chargebee's, love for travel and discovery.This curiosity has manifested itself in a philosophy he takes into his company and product, Chargebee. We learn how Krish's first trip outside of India opened up his world in ways he would never have expected. Support our sponsor, Owl Labs, the makers of the Meeting Owl. The Meeting Owl is the best way to host remote video conferences so that everyone on your team feels included. Go to http://owllabs.com/rocketship to watch a full interview we recorded with their leadership team on the meeting owl. 

Chapter 4: Krish goes to Paris

2018-07-3100:23:05

Chapter 3: 5am in Cranbrook, BC
It's 5 am in Cranbrook, BC and Lee Tengum is already making his way into the office. The catch is, he'll be done by 10 am, free to use the rest of his time anyway he'd like to. Lee runs a successful marketing agency, 7am.ca, which helps local Cranbrook small businesses achieve their marketing goals. But Lee doesn't stop there. In the next 30 days, he's building a who new app from start to finish. An app he's hoping will increase the revenues of the small businesses in Cranbrook, BC. We'll follow Lee on his morning commute and find out what he's brewing for Season 5. Support our sponsor, Owl Labs, the makers of the Meeting Owl. The Meeting Owl is the best way to host remote video conferences so that everyone on your team feels included. Go to http://owllabs.com/rocketship to watch a full interview we recorded with their leadership team on the meeting owl. 

Chapter 3: 5am in Cranbrook, BC

2018-07-2500:22:52

Chapter 2: 380 people take over a small town in Panama
We take you behind the scenes to Auth0's 2018 offsite where there 380 employees converge on a small town in Panama and take over the Westin hotel for three days of presentations, team bonding activities and deep product discussions. Listen in on impromptu jobs to be done discussions, cross-team discussions about how they can better communicate and how teams should be testing the features they're building and releasing. These discussions lead to a product breakthrough that will dictate the next two months of development and result in an A/B test that no everyone on the team agrees on the outcome of. Visit Auth0 at https://auth0.com/Support our sponsor, Owl Labs, the makers of the Meeting Owl. The Meeting Owl is the best way to host remote video conferences so that everyone on your team feels included. Go to http://owllabs.com/rocketship to watch a full interview we recorded with their leadership team on the meeting owl. 

Chapter 2: 380 people take over a small town in Panama

2018-07-1700:31:28

Chapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...
In season 5 of Rocketship.fm we will be following the lives of three entrepreneurs and product people, going behind the scenes to the team off-sites, product conversations, executive dinners and customer interviews. We'll be focused on the stories of Lee Tengum, a solo-entrepreneur, with a passion for helping small businesses. Martin "Gonto" Gontovnikas, the VP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0, with 380 employees, who is a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service, and Krish Subramanian the CEO of Chargebee, the 150 employee startup who just raised an $18M Series C.Each story highlights the ups and downs of entrepreneurship as we take you behind the scenes through audio journals and personal interviews about their business, but also their day to day struggles as they balance business with the pull of their personal life and family demands. 

Chapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...

2018-07-1000:25:03

Interview: Teresa Torres of Product Talk
Teresa Torres helps digital product teams adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing. She emphasizes strong critical thinking a strong connection between what the teams are learning in their research activities with the product decisions that they are making.Mike Belsito interviews her today to discuss how teams can begin practicing continuous discovery, how to get buy-in from management and why the best product teams are talking to their customers every week (if not every day). 

Interview: Teresa Torres of Product Talk

2018-07-1000:25:231

Interview: Eric Boduch of Pendo
Eric Boduch is the Chief Evangelist and co-founder of Pendo.io. Boduch was formerly the Vice President of Marketing.Pendo delivers a complete platform for product teams that helps companies create products that customers love. With Pendo, product teams can understand product usage, collect feedback, measure NPS, onboard users, and announce new features in app - all without requiring engineering resources. Founded in 2013 and backed by Meritech Capital, Spark Capital, and Battery Ventures, Pendo has raised $56 million, and grown revenue by 400% in the past year. Used by hundreds of innovative software product leaders, Pendo tracks 20 billion user actions, and improves the product experience for 22 million users every month.Eric Boduch has been involved with both startup and publicly traded software companies in senior management positions since 1995. He has extensive technology marketing, product management, strategy development and business development experience. He has been a co-founder of 3 different startups that have raised over $75 million in aggregate and has been an executive at two different public companies.

Interview: Eric Boduch of Pendo

2018-06-2800:12:36

Season 5 Trailer
In Season 5 of Rocketship.fm, we'll to be profiling three product people at various stages in their business.Lee Tengum, a solo-entrepreneur, with a passion for helping small businesses. Martin "Gonto" Gontovnikas the VP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0, a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service, and Krish Subramanian the CEO of Chargebee, the 150 employee startup who just raised an $18M Series C and is looking to open offices in San Francisco and Europe. Each story highlights the ups and downs of entrepreneurship as we take you behind the scenes through audio journals and personal interviews about their business, but also their day to day struggles as they balance business with the pull of their personal life and family demands.  

Season 5 Trailer

2018-06-0100:01:47

Bonus: "The Full Moesta" Pt 3
We go behind the scenes as Bob Moesta, the co-creator of the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Framework completes a full interview with Matt Ragland of ConvertKit on why he attended INDUSTRY 2017.In part three we discuss what Mike Belsito learned from this interview and what they've changed because of it. Whether you’re interested in JTBD or you’re already conducting JTBD interviews, learning from one of the masters is one of the best ways to improve your technique. 

Bonus: "The Full Moesta" Pt 3

2018-05-2500:26:09

Bonus: "The Full Moesta" Pt 2
Part two of our JTBD Bonus content. We go behind the scenes as Bob Moesta, the co-creator of the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Framework completes a full interview with Matt Ragland of ConvertKit on why he attended INDUSTRY 2017.Whether you’re interested in JTBD or you’re already conducting JTBD interviews, learning from one of the masters is one of the best ways to improve your technique. 

Bonus: "The Full Moesta" Pt 2

2018-05-2400:41:08

Bonus: "The Full Moesta"
We go behind the scenes as Bob Moesta, the co-creator of the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Framework completes a full interview with Matt Ragland of ConvertKit on why he attended INDUSTRY 2017.Whether you’re interested in JTBD or you’re already conducting JTBD interviews, learning from one of the masters is one of the best ways to improve your technique. Listen to part one of two of the completely uncut JTBD interview.

Bonus: "The Full Moesta"

2018-05-2300:37:35

Two Steps Forward, One Look Back: Season 4 Finale
In our Season 4 finale, we revisit some of our favorite stories from Audibles product redesign debacle to interviewing people who confessed their love for a product on Twitter. Season 4 was not short on stories, inspiration or insight.We hear from Alison Go of Facebook, Blade Kotelly of Sonos, writer Michael Jamin, Josh Anon and more.

Two Steps Forward, One Look Back: Season 4 Finale

2018-04-1100:30:10

Building a killer product team: How great managers lead their team to success
One of the most import roles as a product owner is building the right product team. In part two of this two-part mini-series, we take a look at what high performing product managers and product leaders are doing inside of their organizations to manage and lead a high-performing product team.In this episode, we dive into the strategies that managers use to lead their teams successfully. It's not easy and we're not all Steve Jobs (although most of us think we are from time to time) so what do high performing managers from Facebook and Box do?  That's the question we answer in this episode. Featuring Alison Go, PM at Facebook, Austin Bales, Director of Product Design at Facebook, Sam Goertler PM at Kickstarter, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, VP of Product Marketing at Facebook, Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer & Chief Strategy Officer at Box, & Sebastian Speier, Director of Design at Nike.http://rocketship.fm/interviews/jeetu_patel_of_box_on_leadership_and_strategy_in_the_new_age_of_enterprise_product/http://rocketship.fm/interviews/alison_go_of_facebook_on_product_mistakes_and_the_disciplines_that_make_up_strong_product_teams/http://rocketship.fm/interviews/sam_goertler_of_kickstarter_on_leading_product_teams_navigating_redesigns_and_building_teams_from_scratch/http://rocketship.fm/interviews/ty_ahmad_taylor_of_facebook_on_lessons_from_the_vp_of_product_marketing_at_facebook/

Building a killer product team: How great managers lead their team to success

2018-03-1400:27:441

Interview: Jeetu Patel of Box on leadership and strategy in the new age of enterprise product
We welcome Jeetu Patel, the Chief Product Officer, and Chief Strategy officer at Box to the show today.  He leads the company's overall product and platform strategy, driving Box's long-term roadmap and vision for cloud content management in the enterprise.Have you ever wondered how companies like Box approach emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence? Well, today is the day you find out.He also gives amazing advice on building effective product teams, the magical number for the size of a product team, when and how you should decide to build a new feature and how Box guards against disruptors.

Interview: Jeetu Patel of Box on leadership and strategy in the new age of enterprise product

2018-03-0900:28:273

Building a killer product team: pipeline tips from high-performing managers
Have you ever wondered how VP's at Facebook, Directors at Nike or Product Managers at Asana approach hiring? We did too. So we hit the streets to find out.One of the most import roles as a product owner is building the right product team. In this two-part mini-series, we take a look at what high performing product managers and product leaders are doing inside of their organizations to hiring and lead a high-performing product team.In this episode, we dive into pipeline strategies and how networking can help you find candidates before they even hit the job market. This can be a huge competitive advantage in finding the best people to work for you.Featuring Alison Go, PM at Facebook, Austin Bales, Director of Product Design at Facebook, Sam Goertler, PM at Kickstarter, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, VP of Product Marketing at Facebook, Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer & Chief Strategy Officer at Box, & Sebastian Speier, Director of Design at Nike.

Building a killer product team: pipeline tips from high-performing managers

2018-03-0700:23:301

Interview: Austin Bales of Facebook on Building and Managing Product Teams
Today we welcome Austin Bales, Director of Product Design at Facebook, to talk about leading product teams, building trust with your teammates andgives us poignant tips on how to interpret data through real product stories from Facebook.In his career to-date, Austin has worked has worked for Do.com, Odopod, and Carnegie Mellon.

Interview: Austin Bales of Facebook on Building and Managing Product Teams

2018-03-0200:43:50

Interview: Laird Hamilton on Big Risks and Big Rewards
Today on the show we welcome the infamous big wave surfer, Laird Hamilton. We talk to Laird about his journey to greatness, the struggles along the way and what it’s like to take huge risks, for huge rewards.Laird Hamilton is best known as an American big-wave surfer and pioneer in the world of action water sports. In addition to his affinity for the water, Laird is labeled as an inventor, author, stuntman, model, producer, TV host, fitness and nutrition expert, husband, father and adrenaline junkie.Laird is a world-renowned “waterman.” He is known as the guiding genius of crossover board sports and is largely considered the primary influence behind many surfing innovations, including tow-in surfing, stand-up paddle boarding, and hydrofoil boarding. Surfer Magazine has labeled Laird as, “the sport’s most complete surfer, displaying almost unnerving expertise in a multitude of disciplines, and flat out surfing’s biggest, boldest, bravest, and the best big wave surfer in the world today, bar none.”

Interview: Laird Hamilton on Big Risks and Big Rewards

2018-02-2800:43:00

Interview: Blair Reeves of SAS on Enterprise Product Management
We welcome Blair Reeves to the show to discuss Enterprise Product Management tips and techniques from over 15 years working in product.  Blair Reeves is a Principal Product Manager at SAS Software, and has previously held senior product and leadership roles at Demandware (now a Salesforce company) and IBM. He speaks, writes, and consults on product management in enterprise software, remote workforces, and other topics. Follow him on Twitter at @BlairReeves.

Interview: Blair Reeves of SAS on Enterprise Product Management

2018-02-1600:26:09

Mastering Jobs To Be Done Interviews: The Results
In part three of our mini-series on Jobs To Be Done we dive into the results of the interviews. What did Mike ands Paul end up changing as a result and did they learn about their product?We turn the mic on them to learn what impact Jobs To Be Done had on their planning of Industry 2018 and the most surprising things they learned from the interviews.Adding Jobs to be Done to your bag of tricks gives you a leg up in the product world. We breakdown Bob Moesta’s exclusive interviews with actual customers of Industry conference. The best way to learn is by unpacking real decisions that consumers have actually made and this is a rare opportunity to learn from the Bob Moesta himself.

Mastering Jobs To Be Done Interviews: The Results

2018-02-1400:23:351

Interview: Alison Go of Facebook on product mistakes and the disciplines that make up strong product teams
Alison Go is a season Product Manger currently working at Facebook and formerly of Amazon where she worked on Audible.Alison shares with us the recipe for a perfect product team. What disciples do you need to bring together as the product leader to create a powerhouse product team? Alison shares with us how teams are structured at Facebook, one of the most product driven organizations today.She also shares with us some mistakes she’s made (as we all do) as a product manager and how she quickly turned them around.

Interview: Alison Go of Facebook on product mistakes and the disciplines that make up strong product teams

2018-02-0900:34:492

Mastering Jobs To Be Done Interviews: The Interview
Part two of our mini-series on Jobs To Be Done today. We welcome back Bob Moesta who spent hours with us recording real interviews with Industry attendees and unpacking the conversations to answer the question - what Job does Industry serve for it’s attendees.Today, we get to hear one of those interviews as Bob shows us some of the essential techniques of Jobs To Be Done interviews. Adding Jobs to be Done to your bag of tricks gives you a leg up in the product world. We breakdown Bob Moesta’s exclusive interviews with actual customers of Industry conference. The best way to learn is by unpacking real decisions that consumers have actually made and this is a rare opportunity to learn from the master himself.

Mastering Jobs To Be Done Interviews: The Interview

2018-02-0700:23:261

Interview: Melissa Perri of Product Institute on Managing Up and other Essentials Strategies for PMs
Melissa Perri is the CEO of Produx Labs and the creator of the online product management school ProductInstitute.com. Her mission is to help make Product Managers and their organizations awesome.She talked to us today about how she manages both the CEO relationship and her relationships with the rest of the team to create clear communication across all disciplines, an essential skill for product managers.She also shares lessons she’s learned as a PM consultant from working with companies large and small.  There are common mistakes and pitfalls that we would all like to avoid and Melissa shares a few of them with us today.

Interview: Melissa Perri of Product Institute on Managing Up and other Essentials Strategies for PMs

2018-02-0600:26:57

Interview: Brent Tworetzky of The Knot on The Product Manager Superpower User Science
Brent Tworetzky is the Executive Vice President at the XO Group (The Know, The Bump) where he leads XO Group's 50 person product group (product mgmt, design, user research).Today we talk with Brent about User Science. User Science includes the vast fields of User Research and Analytics. Product User Research encompasses a range of tools to directly learn from users: hands off observation, direct inquiry, putting products in users hands, and the many forms in between. Product Analytics ranges from A/B testing to exploratory analysis (searching for patterns) to predictive analysis.Most product manager skills can be found in many fields–Strategic Thinking, Sufficient Technicals, Collaboration, Communication, and Detail Orientation. User science is a special domain-specific skill that great product managers needs to learn. According to Brent, “user science has been the difference between product failure and a massive user hit.”

Interview: Brent Tworetzky of The Knot on The Product Manager Superpower User Science

2018-02-0200:24:391

Mastering Jobs To Be Done Interviews: The Preparation
There is no substitute to the real thing. Today on the show we welcome back Bob Moesta who spent hours with us recording real interviews with Industry attendees and unpacking the conversations to answer the question - what Job does Product Collective's Industry do for it’s attendees.Adding Jobs To Be Done to your bag of tricks gives you a leg up in the product world. We breakdown Bob Moesta’s exclusive interviews with actual customers of Industry conference. The best way to learn is by unpacking real decisions that consumers have actually made and this is a rare opportunity to learn from the master himself.

Mastering Jobs To Be Done Interviews: The Preparation

2018-01-3100:18:041

Interview: Dan Olsen on The Lean Product Playbook
Dan Olsen is an entrepreneur, consultant, author, speaker, and expert in product management and Lean Startup. At Olsen Solutions, he works with CEOs and product leaders to help them build great products and strong product teams, often as interim VP of Product.Dan has worked with a range of businesses, from small, early-stage startups to large public companies, on a wide variety of web and mobile products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Microsoft, YouSendIt (now HighTail), Epocrates, Medallia, XING, Financial Engines, and One Medical Group.Prior to consulting, Dan worked at Intuit, where he led the Quicken product team to record sales and profit. He also led product management at social networking pioneer Friendster, and was the cofounder and CEO of YourVersion, a TechCrunch award-winning personalized news startup. Dan began his career designing nuclear-powered submarines.Dan wrote the bestseller The Lean Product Playbook, published by Wiley. He lives in Silicon Valley, where he hosts the monthly Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup. A frequent speaker at business and tech events, Dan enjoys sharing ideas and comparing notes with as many people as he can. He also gives public and private workshops.

Interview: Dan Olsen on The Lean Product Playbook

2018-01-3000:25:32

Interview: Noah Kagan of Sumo on product mistakes and playing the long game
Today we talk with Noah Kagan, the founder and CEO of Sumo. Noah has a long a long career working in startups and he shares some of his mistakes, and how he quickly turned things around. In late 2005, Kagan joined Facebook as employee #30 where he served as product manager for eight months. After being fired from Facebook, he then joined Mint as the director of marketing. At Mint, Kagan developed the initial marketing strategy for the launch of the website. Noah was with Mint.com for 10 months and left the company prior to the product's launch in September 2007 at TechCrunch.After Mint, in June 2007, Kagan founded KickFlip, a payment company for social games. In March 2010 Kagan founded AppSumo, a daily deals website and later launched Sumo, which makes tools for growing an online business.

Interview: Noah Kagan of Sumo on product mistakes and playing the long game

2018-01-2600:25:54

Disruption vs Innovation
It seems like all we hear about today is disruption, disruption, disruption. Everybody is disrupting something -- from Transportation to Hospitality -- all anyone wants to do is blow everything up.So what is the difference between Disruption and Innovation?  Well, Disruptors are innovators, but not all innovators are disruptors.Disruption and Innovation are often different sides of the same coin. Today we explore how companies are approaching innovation and disruption in the Healthcare industry. We talk with Joshua Landry of Figure1 and Sasha Bhatia, the Director of Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care in Toronto.

Disruption vs Innovation

2018-01-2400:29:471

Persona Alchemy: What we learned bringing user personas to life
A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. Today, we take two of those fictional representations and bring them to life.  Mike Belsito has ventured out to find several real life personas, interview them and bring you what we've found. How accurate are our personas? What are we often missing from them that would help us build better products? A persona typically has a name, a picture, relevant characteristics such as age or income group, behavioural traits, common tasks, and a goal that describes the problem the persona wants to see solved or the benefit the character wants to achieve. This information is traditionally based on direct observation, interviews, and other qualitative market research.Personas should help you develop empathy for your users and customers. They encourage you to embrace a user-centred approach: Putting the users first, and building a product that that truly benefits them. This avoids the fallacy of a solution-centric approach: worrying more about the product and its features and technologies than the reason people would want to buy and use it in the first place.Alan Cooper pioneered  personas in product development in the 1990ies. Today every product manager and product owner should be able to create and work with personas.

Persona Alchemy: What we learned bringing user personas to life

2018-01-1700:22:38

Interview: Oli Gardner of Unbounce on Product Awareness Month
Oli Gardner has dedicated this Janurary to writing 30 articles in 30 days, all about Product, Product Marketing and Unbounce. We caught with him to see how this all got started, what he was hoping to get out of it and what's next. Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner has seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet. He’s obsessed with identifying and reversing bad marketing practices, and his disdain for marketers who send campaign traffic to their homepage is legendary, resulting in landing page rants that can peel paint off an unpainted wall. A prolific international speaker, Oli is on a mission to rid the world of marketing mediocrity by using data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike.Oli was the top rated speaker at 75% of the conferences he spoke at in 2016.He became a marketer the day Unbounce was founded. As an early pioneer in the realm of content marketing, his goal was to position Unbounce as the global leader in everything related to landing pages and how to deliver high-converting and delightful marketing experiences. 

Interview: Oli Gardner of Unbounce on Product Awareness Month

2018-01-1200:26:46

How to tell compelling product stories
You may be tired of writing product stories and pitching product ideas that fall flat.  Here we break down how to tell compelling product stories by understanding the basic of story telling itself. Jack and and beanstalk may not be part of your everyday standups, but its the perfect way to breakdown the essential elements of a story. From screenwriter Michael Jamin to Product Manager and former Technical Director at Pixar, Josh Anon, we show you how you can use basic story writing techniques to better convey product ideas, innitiatives and marketing.  

How to tell compelling product stories

2018-01-1000:18:32

Interview: Dennis Crowley of Foursquare on Startups, Achieving Greatness and the Early Days of Foursquare
We sat down with Dennis Crowley of Foursquare to talk about the early days of Foursquare, what really happened after their historic SXSW launch and the sacrifices it takes to achieve greatness. In 2003, Crowley co-founded Dodgeball with fellow student Alex Rainert while attending New York University. Dodgeball was acquired by Google in 2005. After Google abandoned the Dodgeball project in 2007, Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai co-founded Foursquare in 2009. Foursquare, known for its location intelligence offerings for both enterprises and consumers, is used by more than 50 million people every month.

Interview: Dennis Crowley of Foursquare on Startups, Achieving Greatness and the Early Days of Foursquare

2018-01-0900:26:32

Interview: Sam Goertler of Kickstarter on Leading Product Teams, Navigating Redesigns and Building Teams from Scratch
Sam Goertler has led product teams at Yammer, Asana and now Kickstarter. She talks with us about what she's learned leading teams through product redesigns and new platforms. She also talks to us about building product teams from scratch and what she looks for in new hires. 

Interview: Sam Goertler of Kickstarter on Leading Product Teams, Navigating Redesigns and Building Teams from Scratch

2018-01-0500:32:14

Product Poetry: The secret to perfect product descriptions
Product Poetry. The subtle art of describing your product in a way that excites everyone around you. This isn’t just for entrepreneurs pitching investors, this is for product managers and product leaders to inspire their teams to push themselves to build the best possible solution.Walk through examples from Figure One, Facebook and Sono’s with us as we attempt to break down what makes a powerful product description and what are the elements you need to improve yours.

Product Poetry: The secret to perfect product descriptions

2018-01-0300:17:032

Interview: Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital on Diversity, Hustle and Playing to Win
We talked with Arlan Hamilton, theFounder & Managing Partner of Backstage Capital. Backstage Capital has invested more than $2M in 50+ companies led by underrepresented founders. Arlan is a venture capital fund manager, but she got her start publishing the internationally distributed indie magazine INTERLUDE, and toured extensively as a live music production professional, she enters the venture investing world from an unconventional path. Arlan is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are of color, women, and/or LGBT. We discuss diversity in tech, her story to becoming an unlikely VC and her advice for founders on how to stay focused and prioritize. 

Interview: Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital on Diversity, Hustle and Playing to Win

2018-01-0200:32:19

Twitter Product Confessions: Why do you love the products you love?
Love isn’t rational. It doesn’t always make sense. But when love is in the air, nothing can come between you and a public tweet. Today we talk to people who’ve professed their love, publicly, for products they love. We discuss why they love the products they love, and what about these companies and brands gets them so excited.We dove into tech brands like Slack and Intercom as well as roll on deodorant brand Phresh and personal fashion brand Stitch Fix.Huge thanks to our guests today: Lindsey Smith: https://twitter.com/LindseySmithHHCJordi Romero: https://twitter.com/jordiromeroNatalie Gerke: https://twitter.com/NgerkeAlys Gagnon: https://twitter.com/AlysJ

Twitter Product Confessions: Why do you love the products you love?

2017-12-2000:26:10

Interview: Blade Kotelly of Sonos on Design Thinking and Product Poetry
Blade Kotelly is a senior lecturer at MIT and the leader of the advanced concepts lab at Sonos. We talk with Blade about how he defines the problem he solves at Sonos, and how to articulate that at an emotion level using design thinking. At Sonos he is driving the process to determine what experiences Sonos can and should build next. Researching trends in the technology landscape, customer behavior, music creators, and Sonos partners, and creating and testing advanced concepts.At MIT he teaches students principals of design-thinking, how to articulate designs, critique designs, create emotionally and intellectually compelling presentations, create a point-brand, conduct usability testing and learn to apply design-thinking to all aspects of their lives.Blade also tells us about the audio software he designed that was used by United on 9/11. A fascinating, and heartbreaking look at how design thinking and product management has real life effects and consequences.For more information visit http://rocketship.fm

Interview: Blade Kotelly of Sonos on Design Thinking and Product Poetry

2017-12-1800:26:411

We F*cked Up: Stories about Product Mistakes
Mistakes. We all make them. We all learn from them.From a food delivery startup who's users couldn't find their menu, to Amazon's redesign of Audible and even an emergency support system on 9/11, today we bring you mistakes Product Mangers made, and how, in some cases, they fixed them. Stories from Melissa Perry, Alison Go Product Manger at Facebook and Blade Kotelly Leader of Experience Strategy at Sonos. 

We F*cked Up: Stories about Product Mistakes

2017-12-1300:19:45

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Chapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...

Chapter 1: An engineer, a CEO and a VP of Growth walk into a bar...

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