We all want real advice on how to grow a career, right? Meet this week’s guest, Laura Schaffer, Vice President of Growth at DigitalOcean. Laura got her start in sales, and now leads a cross-functional team that includes Growth R&D and Marketing. Prior to DigitalOcean, she built Growth and Product teams at companies like Twilio, Amplitude, and Bandwidth, bringing a depth of experience in product-led growth and experimentation. In conversation with host Shannon Peavey, Laura offers her perspective on making your mark as a product manager, and talks about the power of spending time on validation and fast-fail experimentation. 

00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message

01:48 How a sales job lead to a growth career

06:50 North Star metrics for the win

09:03 How PLG work WITH, not INSTEAD of sales

10:00 Bringing sales “snacks” to yield a “buffet”

18:34 Validation doesn’t have to mean A/B testing

24:00 Experiment fast - and often

27:00 Big wins can come from small changes

30:00 How is product management changing?

33:00 Make time for AI

📚Resources:

• Reforgehttps://www.reforge.com/

• DigitalOceanhttps://www.digitalocean.com/

• Amplitudehttps://amplitude.com/

• Bandwidthhttps://www.bandwidth.com/

• Twilio

https://www.twilio.com/en-us

🌟 Where to find Laura:

• On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraschaffer/

🙋🏻‍♀️Where to find Women in Product:

• On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-in-product/posts/ 

• Website https://womenpm.org/

• Join the Community https://womenpm.org/wip-community/