One Knight in Product

Platform Product Management & Getting Ready for Launch Day (with John Zilch, Director of PM @ Upland & founder @ Launch Day)

Listen Later

An interview with John Zilch. John is Director of Product Management at Upland, adjunct professor at Providence College and founder of Launch Day, a new startup that's aiming to take the pain out of launching new products to market.

We talk about a lot, including:

  • The pros & cons of working as a platform product manager and integrating various product lines & features into a new platform
  • When it's appropriate to replatform and when not, and whether a platform product manager gets a lot of customer contact
  • John's journey into product management from a computer science background and how, like everyone, he kind of fell into it, and how analysts get more love than PMs
  • How his dissatisfaction with the way software gets launched led him and a former colleague to build their own platform to make it better
  • Why he's started teaching at Providence College, how teaching is the best way to learn, and how academia is a fertile ground for hiring the best talent
  • What he thought of Marty Cagan's recent takedown of MBAs, why he's tired of everyone being against them, and what they're good for
  • Why there's a problem with experimentation culture and why it shouldn't be a replacement for good customer discovery
  • How's it's OK to do things that don't scale as long as you have a plan to make sure that it can scale in the future
  • The problem with people concentrating on "Agile" as a method of delivery rather than a way to get close to customers

    • And much more!

    Contact John

    You can check out the Launch Day website or connect with John on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    One Knight in ProductBy One Knight in Product
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7

    4.7

    14 ratings

    More shows like One Knight in Product

    View all
    Acquired by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

    Acquired

    4,654 Listeners

    Pivot by New York Magazine

    Pivot

    9,526 Listeners

    The a16z Show by Andreessen Horowitz

    The a16z Show

    1,090 Listeners

    HBR IdeaCast by Harvard Business Review

    HBR IdeaCast

    164 Listeners

    How I Built This with Guy Raz by Guy Raz | Wondery

    How I Built This with Guy Raz

    30,192 Listeners

    Masters of Scale by WaitWhat

    Masters of Scale

    3,990 Listeners

    The Intelligence from The Economist by The Economist

    The Intelligence from The Economist

    2,554 Listeners

    All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

    All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

    9,938 Listeners

    Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

    Dwarkesh Podcast

    517 Listeners

    Hard Fork by The New York Times

    Hard Fork

    5,509 Listeners

    Product Thinking by Melissa Perri

    Product Thinking

    148 Listeners

    The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis by Nathaniel Whittemore

    The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

    611 Listeners

    The Economics of Everyday Things by Freakonomics Network & Zachary Crockett

    The Economics of Everyday Things

    1,663 Listeners

    Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson by Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson

    Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

    96 Listeners

    Prof G Markets by Vox Media Podcast Network

    Prof G Markets

    1,423 Listeners