We’re taking a short break from releasing new episodes for the month of August. We’ll be back with new interviews in September. But don’t despair! We’ve asked a few friends to pick some of their favorite episodes to re-broadcast in the meantime. This week’s pick comes from our co-host, Randy Silver.

Randy Silver’s Pick

Of course I love all of our episodes equally – but I wanted to grab a deep cut for my pick. While we’ve talked to lots of brilliant people, the original idea for the podcast wasn’t to focus on the big names of the product world (Ken Norton, Melissa Perri, Josh Seiden, Theresa Torres, Dan Olsen, and Rich Mironov to name a few…) but to spotlight people who gave a great talk at their local ProductTank.

We’ve been lucky to feature some great people who haven’t been on the bigger stages yet, but Chris was the first – and he provided a great introduction and overview of how to approach marketplaces.  (Shout out: thanks to Aussie product guru Adrienne Tan for the recommendation. We’d love it if you’d suggest someone!)

This is an area I’ve never worked in, and I learned a ton about the specifics – dealing with offline interactions, the difference between pipes and platforms, the three fundamental forces of marketplaces, and what the heck a fur baby is.

Quote of the Episode

Once you start thinking of users as “bad actors”, it makes you frame their intentions really negatively – and it makes you challenge the brand and design decisions you’re making to build for this [specific] case.

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching Productcamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham,