Custom Made

This is episode #51 of Custom Made, and this week I’m excited to be sitting down with technologist, musician and public speaker - Christopher O’Donnell, Senior Vice President of Product at Hubspot. HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software - plus the methodology, resources, and support - to help businesses grow better.

Christopher has built dozens of web and mobile products ranging from language learning for the US military to the most popular free CRM product in the world, recorded dozens of albums across a variety of musical genres, and spoken to audiences of over 10,000 people.

His role as SVP of Product at Hubspot, a public tech company, makes him a staple in the product management community and frequent lecturer at MIT Sloan and major corporations.

Outside of his day job, Christopher spends his time as songwriter and guitarist for the band The Providers who release music on a regular music basis - be sure to check them out a www.theproviders.com.

During this weeks episode, Christopher and I are discussing the challenges that come with scaling a company from a startup to a large enterprise organization - from managing multiple product offerings, to integrating acquisitions, to cultural shifts that need to be planned for.

We go into detail on how Hubspot grew from $50MM in revenue to 10X that amount, and how it has continued to incubate new product offerings and successfully integrate them back into the core business services.

Another key aspect of Hubspot growth has been the following and loyalty it has built around its brand. A big catalyst for this is the annual Inbound conference that is hosted in Boston. We explore the importance of this, and the impact it has on product development, and product communication.

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This is episode #50 of Custom Made, and this week I’m excited to be sitting down with Jonah Staw, President of Ultimate Ears, a disruptive new business group at Logitech. Ultimate Ears is an organization that pushes the boundaries of what premium, custom-fit earphones can do.

Jonah has had an amazing career from consulting to start-up entrepreneur to board member to intraprenuer. A globally recognized executive, innovator and entrepreneur, here are just a few of his career highlights.

In addition to his role at Logitech, which we talk about in more detail in today’s episode, Jonah serves on the Board of Directors of Lands' End and is the Chairman of S.E.E., an advisory group focused on disruptive strategies, product innovation, brand development, marketing, business launch, and multi-channel retailing.

Prior to Logitech, Jonah was acting as a Business Unit President at Sears Holdings, where he led and started a variety of businesses inside the company. He launched brands with notable talent including Adam Levine and Nicki Minaj, as well as ran the footwear business for the corporation. In 2003, Jonah decided to convince the world that the unthinkable was possible and built a tween-focused apparel brand based on the notion that socks don’t have to match. Jonah co-founded LittleMissMatched and directed the company as Chairman and CEO for seven years of extraordinary growth.

And before all of this, Jonah was a Director & Strategist at frog design, developing disruptive strategies for Fortune 500 companies including Disney, Yahoo, Nextel, Target and Chrysler. Jonah has been profiled in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, USA Today, Fortune Small Business, CNN, and numerous other media outlets. In 2009 he was named to Crain’s New York Business’ 40 under Forty.

During this weeks episode, we dig deeper into Jonah’s entrepreneurial beginnings and how he became the ultimate insider, disrupting industries from the inside by bringing both an entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial mindset.

We discuss the challenges/opportunities that come with product innovation from within large organizations, how to build successful teams, and what leaders need to do within large organizations who are wanting to foster product innovation and to bring these products to market.

Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show.

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iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2

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This is episode #49 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Rachit Gupta, vice president at integrated power company Vistra Energy.

Based in Irving, Texas, Vistra Energy combines an innovative, customer-centric approach to retail with a focus on safe, reliable, and efficient power generation.

Through its retail and generation businesses which include TXU Energy, Homefield Energy, Dynegy, and Luminant, Vistra operates in 12 states and six of the seven competitive markets in the U.S. Vistra’s retail brands serve approximately 2.9 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers across five top retail states, and its generation fleet totals approximately 41,000 megawatts of highly efficient generation capacity, with a diverse portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, coal, and solar facilities.

At Vistra Energy, Rachit Gupta is a transformative people leader building high performance teams that leverage technology to increase employee productivity, and enterprise revenue and profitability with a focus on cost optimization. I

In prior roles, Rachit was a Senior Director of corporate & enterprise applications at Energy Future Holdings Corporation and before that he served as a Director of architecture strategy & transformation at EFH. During this weeks episode, Rachit is digging deep into the trends that are affecting the energy and utility space including the changing US power generation mix across fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables such as solar and wind. As well as storage technology, microgrids and the prosumer energy market.

In addition to the changes to the energy industry we also discuss the technology trends (such as IoT, ML/AI, 5G and Blockchain technology) that are transforming and disrupting this space, and how this technology integration is creating the “Utility of the Future”.

Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show.

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iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX

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Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made

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This is episode #48 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Dr Lyndsey Harper, Founder and CEO of Rosy, the latest company to come out of Dialexa Labs.

Dialexa Labs is the internal innovation and development engine here at Dialexa. Whilst the vast majority of our day-to-day work is focused on providing technology and product development services for our clients, Dialexa Labs provides a channel for creativity and ideas from within our organization.

For those ideas that we see have high potential, we use our own resources, team, and The Dialexa Method we apply to our clients' business challenges, to create unique product offerings and spin out new companies. Other the past few years Dialexa Labs has produced a number of successful companies.

This includes connected car platform and the first Dialexa Labs company - Vinli - who just recently closed a $13.5 million Series B round of funding. You can hear all about Vinli and their amazing journey to date in one of my earlier episodes of Custom Made with founder and CEO Mark Haidar.

Also, for those that are interested in another of our Dialexa Labs company, Robin Autopilot, you can listen to founder and CEO Justin Crandall discuss the opportunities robots bring to disrupting the lawn care industry.

I’ve included links to both of these in the show notes at Dialexa.com.

And now to our latest company - Rosy.

Rosy is empowering women across the US with resources for their sexual wellness. Currently 38% of women in the US are suffering from low sexual desire. Today Rosy provides these 31 million women with hope, community, and real solutions.

Rosy has created the first of its kind mobile application with physicians and psychologists that connects women who have low sexual desire with evidence-based resources for improvement.

You can find more information about Rosy at meetrosy.com.

During this weeks episode, Rosy founder and CEO, Dr Lyndsey Harper, shares her journey to becoming the founder of a technology company and launching a new product that addresses the massive deficit of resources and solutions for woman who were suffering with low libido and sexual dysfunction.

Dr Harper talks about how she continues to dedicated her career to bringing awareness, education, and resources to both physicians and patients about these very common but rarely discussed issues that can often leave women feeling isolated and ashamed.

Welcome to our second year of Custom Made. If this is your first time listening, make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcasting app to get our latest episodes as they are released every Sunday. And be sure to check out our episodes from last year once you are finished with this one.

This is episode #47 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Charlene Schwindt, Global Product Owner Manager at Hilti.

Charlene is a product management professional with strong marketing emphasis. Her career has allowed her to have direct experience across industries such as healthcare, financial services, higher education, and technology.

And Hilti is a global leader in providing technology-leading products, systems and services to the worldwide construction industry.

In her role at Hilti, Charlene has built up a team of software product owners to manage global digital, SaaS, desktop, and mobile applications - twenty-three at last count. Charlene has worked across these teams to implement product owner best practices and scrum team reporting standards. This also includes leading agile transformation, coaching global product managers on software product management best practices, and getting scrum teams to predictable velocity.

During this weeks episode, Charlene is discussing the challenges that come with building successful product teams within enterprise organizations, and bringing in new methods such Agile and Design Thinking to an IT organization and product business.

To achieve this, Charlene breaks down the Product Management and Product Ownership roles, and how these roles and responsibilities are typically handled in both smaller and larger organizations.

We also discuss the different types of tasks that are handled by Product Manager vs. Product Owner, the advantages and disadvantages of splitting these roles, and the challenges in hiring the right candidates for these different roles.

Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show.

Follow Dialexa on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX

Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made

Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa

Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin

Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Hi, this is Doug Platts, I'm an international marketer and digital entrepreneur who is currently leading marketing at Dialexa - The Technology Research, Design, & Creation firm.

Each week on Custom Made I will be digging into the impact that custom development has in fueling digital transformation and exploring what we can learn from industry disruptors who have custom made their path, products, and companies.

We’ve got some amazing guests coming up and in future episodes, I will be speaking to experts from Dialexa, technology innovators and business leaders.

Join the community of Custom Made listeners at dialexa.com and on Twitter (twitter.com/dialexa).

Follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/dougplatts) and share any feedback questions and topic recommendations.