Better Product

I’ve got 99 problems, which one do I solve (first)?   While this isn’t exactly the question Sara Mauskopf had when she first became a parent, she did have an influx of questions with no good answers. As many product people do, she decided to find a solution. Thus the creation of  Winnie, a platform to make parents’ lives easier through childcare resources and community.    When she launched the company, Sara and her co-founder lacked focus because there are so many problems to solve with parenting. As they developed and launched the platform, they found the area parents needed the most help is childcare.    How did they know to make the change and shift the focus? You’ll find out what factors they considered and how listening made all the difference. 

• Connect with Sara
• Learn more about Winnie
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap

Past Episodes Mentioned: 

• Navigating a Complex Product Roadmap to Launch | Jeremy Leventhal
• How Sales and Product Work Together to Achieve Product-Market Fit | Rod Feuer

Products mentioned: 

• Sketch 
• Instagram

Key Points:

In a marketplace app, you have to focus on three key things:

• Make the workflow as trimmed down as possible. Be inspired by e-Commerce’s focus on conversion
• Make the app as easy to get started using as possible. Don’t think about it as an app, think about it as solving a problem and making your solution as broadly available as possible.
• Understand impact points, and conversion points. 

Should what a founder wants to build take priority over what the customers want?    Well, for Pieter Omvlee, CEO of Sketch, it was really one and the same. Sketch was created to solve a real problem he and his co-founder were experiencing. While the company has grown in response to its users' high demand, they have been able to stick to their original goal - solve their own problem by creating a better product.    In this episode, you’ll learn how the best products are built and how to have a growth reluctant mindset, which may sound counterintuitive. Yet, this mentality could be the reason Sketch has found itself growing rapidly with a community of evangelists (Innovatemap being one of them). 

• Connect with Pieter
• Learn more about Sketch
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap

Products mentioned: 

• Invision 
• Slack

How do you know when your company is no longer in‘startup’mode? When does your team need project management more than product management?    Craig Sturgis, VP of Product at SmarterHQ, was a part of the company’s founding team, before he left, did his own thing, and came back to take the company from startup to scale up. It was at this inflection point where Craig realized one impactful thing - in order to grow the company and improve the product, the focus needed to shift.    In this episode, Christian and Anna discuss how each team in the organization from customer success to development can work together to best solve customers’ pain points. Craig also shares tactics on how to apply learnings cross-departmentally. Plus, you’ll learn what modern product management is and how to implement it into your organization.

• Connect with Craig
• Learn more about SmarterHQ
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap

Past Episodes Referenced: 

• The Real Definition of a Product Manager | Marty Cagan
• Navigating a Complex Product Roadmap to Launch | Jeremy Leventhal
• Connecting the Product Dots by Looking Backwards | Dan Hanrahan

Resources Mentioned: 

• Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love
• Pendo
• Do Things That Don’t Scale: Paul Graham
• The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World by Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman
• Erika Hall 

Key Points:

• Digital experiences are not like traditional customer interactions, it is immediate, there is a lot of competition, and expectations are really high — needs to start with user research.
• You don’t know them as well as you think you do.
• Your research is product-focused, not user-focused.
• Your users/market may have changed — not a one-and-done.

Founders Ask Questions: The only show that answers real questions from real founders trying to navigate the startup world and build a company from the ground up.

Christian Beck has worked with dozens of startups, answering questions around product management, user experience, user research, design, branding... you name it, he’s heard it. If you’re a founder (or an aspiring entrepreneur) you’ve probably had some of these questions yourself. Tune in to founders ask questions to hear Christian’s answers in the time it takes you to commute to work (or less).

How are great products built? What is a good product culture? How can you get started in product management when there’s no blueprint for the role? 

So many questions for this week’s guest, Marty Cagan, Partner at the Silicon Valley Product Group and author of INSPIRED (a book that ‘inspired’ the creation of Innovatemap). In this conversation, Christian and Anna dig into the details of what it takes to be a successful product manager and how it impacts the company’s product culture. Yep, product culture is a real thing and affects how a company delivers value. 

In this episode, you’ll hear how product culture can harbor and produce great (or not so great) product managers regardless of where you’re located. This is an episode you may want to listen to more than once as Marty also breaks down the difference between a great idea and a scalable product company. 

• Connect with Marty 
• Learn more about Silicon Valley Product Group
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap

Past Episodes Referenced: 

•  Identifying Product Market Success in the Public Sector | Dan Moyers

Resources mentioned: 

• Pendo
• Inspired: how to Create Products Customers Love

What is product hierarchy and why does it matter?

In this week’s episode, Christian and Anna are talking with Nick Tippmann, VP of Marketing at Greenlight Guru. Through thought leadership marketing tactics, Nick positioned the company as a leader in the medical device industry—and subsequently spurred impressive growth.

This growth created new opportunities to offer additional value to its customer base. Instead of reinventing the wheel, Nick uses smart messaging to sell the exact same product to the same person, but at different phases of the relationship. In doing this, Greenlight Guru is able to grow its offering without having to code a new product. 

Listen to this week’s episode to gain a deeper understanding of product hierarchy and how product marketers can use this framework for positioning. 

• Connect with Nick
• Learn more about Greenlight Guru
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap

Past Episodes Referenced:

• What's in a (Digital) Product Name? | Cara Wagner
• What to Do When the Product Doesn’t Sell Itself | Jon Gilman
• The Growing Pains of Going from Startup to Scaleup | Eric Prugh

Are you making product assumptions that are misguided?    When you launch a product startup, making assumptions is par for the course. These assumptions often come in the form of who your end user is, what they want and that they want it bad enough to pay for it to be fixed.    Today, Christian and Anna are talking with Eric Prugh, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of PactSafe, about the assumptions he made that paid off - and the ones that didn’t.   You’ll hear how Eric was able to determine the best way to describe the product and position the company for growth and how, at the end of the day, assumptions can quickly be validated(ornegated) through one simple task. What is it? Take a listen. 

• Connect with Eric
• Learn more about PactSafe
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap

  Past Episodes Referenced: 

• What to Do When the Product Doesn’t Sell Itself | Jon Gilman 
• What's in a (Digital)Product Name? | Cara Wagner  

 

How do you determine if your brand messageis resonating with your audience?    This was the question Christian and Anna asked Jill Casey, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Renaissance Electronic Services, a.k.a. Dental Hero. When Jill joined the company in 2015, she knew that in order to take the company to the next level, she needed to make changes to their marketing.    In this episode, Jill describes the brand’s broken identity and how this realization gave her the ability to not only create new messaging but onboard a new marketing team to help rebuild.  Having a great product meansnothing if your audience doesn’t understand how it adds value to their lives. Tune in to uncover how you can determine whether your messaging resonates,and what to do if it’s not. 

• Connect with Jill Casey
• Learn more about Dental Hero
• Connect with Christian
• Connect with Anna
• Learn more about Innovatemap