In our conversation we have raised some crucial issues about the project discovery phase. What is the discovery phase and what is it for? What values does it bring, what types of discovery exist, does every project need discovery? What concerns people may have regarding the discovery phase? We will help us to figure out all the tiny details of the discovery phase. She has more than 10 years of experience in business analysis and auditing of software projects.

If you have ever dealt with software development companies, you came across such a concept as the discovery phase. It is the first development phase in the development process of digital products. The main aim of this phase is to translate the project vision and concept into its technical realization. The team collects information, analyzes, and explores the market, competitors, and target audience. And then, based on these outcomes, design the solution and build a detailed implementation plan.

Today we will try to get the most exciting moments of professional life of Avi Ashkenazi, a product designer, who has worked for Deutsche Telekom on variety of media products, who has created digital products for Samsung, led the design team for fintech platform Iwoca, and is currently working as a UX designer at the No.1 e-commerce platform for businesses – Shopify. He will talk about product scalability. We hope everyone will enjoy knowing about our guest and his experience.

Avi Ashkenazi started his career as a musician. Then, he dealt with festivals, music, technology projects and installations. Next, Avi worked for Deutsche Telekom on variety of media products. After that, Avi has created digital products for Samsung, led the design team for FinTech platform Iwoca and is currently working as the UX designer at the No.1 e-commerce platform for the business, Shopify.

Steve Krug is a UX consultant with 25 years of experience, who has worked with such tech giants as Apple, Bloomberg, Lexus, and NPR. You may also know Steve as the author of “Don’t Make Me Think”, one of the best books on usability and UX design for digital products. You will hear about his vision and valuable insights on developing a digital product.

Steve stumbled through a couple of careers, before ending up in UI / UX design and usability.

Steve's book “Don’t Make Me Think”, first published in 2000, is consistently in the top five books recommended for UI/UX designers. Now Steve returns with a fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made his book a classic, with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability.

Save time. Save money. Reduce food waste,” – a motto of Wholesum, an online tool that helps streamline group menu planning. It has been a total game-changer in the sphere. Whether you are an outfitter looking to streamline menu planning for trips, a summer camp aiming to simplify your kitchen, a caterer that wants to lean on the power of software, or an event coordinator aiming to reduce food waste, Wholesum can help. Meet John K Amman, the co-founder of Wholesum, and LinkUp’s client, in our new podcast.

- John’s background and how he started Wholesum

- ‘you are not talented in all things’, the benefit of delegating some jobs to experts

- trying to reach new horizons: constant development and improvement process

- why to use Wholesum as a mobile app

- how to juggle two jobs at the same time

- how Wholesum engaged their first users

- the importance of getting real feedback from users, and a real enjoyment - from the development process

- two John’s takeaway advice for starting digital products

- “this or that” blitz: John’s life likes

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/john-kamman-building-a-digital-product/

You are listening to the podcast that helps innovators and entrepreneurs to create successful digital solutions - from idea to market!

Let us introduce David Siegel, CEO at Meetup, a global community platform that connects people in real life by finding and building local communities; the author of NOT boring business book “Decide and Conquer”, which, he hopes, his great grandchildren will read as his life story. Go to our new podcast, and you will know not only David’s business ideas, but his personal life portrait.

- how it all started for David

- what is Meetup and its value for users

- how has the pandemic affected David’s business and has he been able to use it to his advantage

- was there any magic stick that helped Meetup to gather more users than the population of the whole country? David’s tips on driving success

- how to build a successful strategy for a digital product

- 3 lessons from the tech CEO valuable to hear

- David's work and approach of doing business in his book “Decide and Conquer: 44 Decisions that will Make or Break All Leaders”

👉🏻 Choose the most comfortable way for you to learn about the building digital products:

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/how-good-decision-making-drives-success-to-digital-product-david-siegel/

Product growth is the key element of your success, but how to keep it increasing? How do get more people up the funnel? No magic, but the right accents help to robust.

Navot Volk - tech entrepreneur with 14 years of experience in consulting startups. Navot led the development of a large project at WIX with a multi-million-dollar budget and a team of more than 80 experts. At the moment, the project has gained millions of users. Navot gives his expertise about product scaling and its significance for product development.

Navot Volk has a tech background. He spent most of his time as a leader in software development projects, and most of his life deals with startups and building business digital products.

- Key factor for product scaling

- Main fears of entrepreneurs about product scaling

- The difference between scalings a digital product for a startup and for the existing business

- Navot’s secret of product growth from 0 to 200K users

- Getting user's feedback

- Main criteria for hiring a team for product scaling

- Navot’s current project

👉🏻 Choose the most comfortable way for you to learn about the building digital products:

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/from-launch-to-sustained-business-scaling-talk-with-navot-volk/

The pains are the most important because based on this pain you will build your solution because firstly there should be a pain and the solution goes afterward, not vice versa.

An outstanding marketing expert with many years of experience, in addition to being an author, speaker, and the one helping startups and entrepreneurs improve their ways of doing business, the СЕО at Fixel - Etgar Shpivak helps us to understand the customer audience so clearly and precisely, that it will increase your profits and make marketing much more efficient.

Etgar Shpivak came to the marketing world accidentally. His journey started as a programmer, he even experienced it in the Israeli army. Then, his father asked him to work for his IT website. He did a number of roles in some advertising agencies, from sales to business development, marketing, and lots of hands-on experience.

- What personal pain brought Etgar to marketing

- Why he started active educational activities for business owners

- Etgar’s recommendations for entrepreneurs building the new digital product

- Why is customer discovery important, its steps

- What to consider when you build an effective strategy

- Can we win with just a simple promise?

- Key challenges entrepreneurs face in the digital era

- Number one pitfall when starting a startup

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/use-customer-s-pain-to-build-an-effective-product-strategy-the-talk-with-etgar-shpivak/

If you're not into audio right now, you're missing out. So, if you're not, you should start doing this.

The digital innovator, Gal Klein, today’s co-CEO at AI-based Voice Search platform Audioburst, and his recommendations to everybody who wants to find their digital product or who doesn’t even suspect of various opportunities such tools can give.

Gal Klein started his career with mechanics serving for six years in the army as a mechanical engineer. In addition, he had some tech background. Then, he worked for a company computerizing it, creating technical manuals and catalogues for aircraft in the IAF. In 2000 Gal established his own company, which started providing solutions in the media world, e.g. personalized CDs, and there was also worked as CTO in mBox for international companies on creating technology to cut songs, video clips into short pieces of audio.

After that Gal founded another company PLYmedia. It allowed users to create layers on top of videos, like a speech or thought bubble, live captioning for such companies as Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, and big events like Oprah Winfrey.

- Blitz story of Gal’s journey

- How Audioburst came to birth

- Challenges of the product development process

- Product market fit: how to outline your audience, your segment of the market

- Bevelop their own digital product

- How the audio content can help other business

- Getting investments for your digital product

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/how-good-decision-making-drives-success-to-digital-product-david-siegel/

It is high time to stop being afraid of Artificial Intelligence, as it helps to enhance your business and opens new horizons for its development.

Amit Bendor, the Head of AI and data science in Artlist (a company offering high-quality royalty-free music, sound effects, and video footage), shares his experience in building art startups, digital product, and business innovation.

Amit will help you to understand where and how to find the ‘long hanging fruit’.

👉🏻 Which challenges wait for your startup

👉🏻 What is a better solution: to focus on a little thing or to deal with all aspects at once

👉🏻 How to attract investors

👉🏻 What is AI

👉🏻 The benefits of artificial intelligence for business

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/how-to-use-artificial-intelligence-to-boost-your-business/

On February 24 Russia started a full-scale war against Ukraine. Ukraine has been brave, defending itself against the aggressor, which is 28 times bigger than us. So, in today’s record we want to talk about our company journey during these dark times.

Despite the bombs, the missiles, we continue doing business, accepting contracts, keeping our promises. We are still shocked, but very motivated to do our job to win.

We want to tell you how we have organized our life in the new reality, how we feel, what we do, how our employees feel, and what the reaction of our clients to the situation was.

We will help you to get a clear idea of current processes and cope with business circumstances in times of war.

- Which challenges we have dealt with since the beginning of the war;

- How to handle these challenges in your business during war time;

- Working under air alarms is stressful, but possible;

- How to survive in business during the war;

- What is the best way to help us as a business.

💻 Read the text version on the blog 

https://linkupst.com/blog/war-in-ukraine-and-its-impact-on-the-tech-industry-work-process-at-linkup-studio/