Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI

By Christian StrunkBusiness

Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI episodes

April 01, 2021#40 Case study: Optimizing churn for a product at scale - with Mathias Kluge
This is the first case study where the Product Bakers made a deep-dive into a real-world project with Product Lead Mathias Kluge. Mathias shared how he and his team identified churn reasons and the process of finding solutions.
Besides reducing churn by over 40%, Mathias faced also many challenges and made a lot of learnings which are shares in this episode.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Mathias Kluge (Matze)

03:05 - From Product Design to Product Management

03:55 - When to start looking at churn

06:35 - Defining, gathering, and analyzing data

11:25 - Creating hypothesis with your team

15:15 - Best practices to analyze churn

17:50 - Defining success metrics & KPIs

23:30 - Preparing the backlog & the solution

24:45 - Prioritizing & negotiating

30:05 - Collaborating with Designers

37:35 - Explaining problems not solutions

38:55 - Mathias’ key learnings

41:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian

Mathias online:
Linkedin: @matkluge

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
44 min
March 29, 2021#39 Starting a new leadership position
Christian was curious and asked Alex what the key things are he takes care of in his first days as a fresh leader joining a new company. They touched upon the topic of strategy, tooling, and getting to know the leadership team and staff.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Christian

01:40 - What to look at when you apply for a new leadership role

04:30 - Getting to know the leadership team & your staff

07:00 - Reviewing the strategy & understanding decisions

10:05 - Alining on tools

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
15 min
March 25, 2021#38 Climbing the confidence ladder with Lean UX - with Josh Seiden, Consultant & Author
Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, and author. He started his career in the early 90s. Since then a lot of things have changed. That's why Josh decided to write and share his experience, and latest observations in amazing books such as "Lean UX" or "Outcomes over Output."
In this episode, Josh discusses with the Product Bakers everything about Lean UX and how to work with hypotheses and problem statements. They've also touched upon the topic of lean experimentation to validate ideas as quickly as possible.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Josh Seiden

03:30 - The change of Lean UX

04:30 - Making product & design teams work

06:25 - The notion of design thinking

08:25 - Defining good problem statements

11:40 - Defining good hypotheses

16:05 - Finding problems & defining success criteria

19:10 - Josh's definition of an MVP

25:20 - Perfectionism kills success

28:35 - Experimenting instead of solutionizing

30:35 - Josh's biggest learning with Lean UX

33:30 - Debrief Christian & Alex

Follow Josh:
Josh's Masterclass: Online masterclass outcomes for product teams

Josh's books: Lean UX, Outcomes over Output

Medium: @jseiden

Linkedin: @jseiden

Twitter: @jseiden

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
38 min
March 22, 2021#37 Don’t prioritize… say NO!
This week Alex picked up the topic of prioritizing and saying no to stakeholders and customers. Christian explains in this episode where to start before you make a decision (saying no) and how to say no in the right way.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro by Alex

03:10 - Self-awareness and doing your homework first

05:20 - Prioritizing against OKRs & company goals

07:15 - Balancing operational and research work

12:00 - Explain why you say no to people

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
14 min
March 18, 2021#36 Working with data & metrics - with Ben Yoskovitz, Founding partner @Highline BETA
With many years of experience in product management, data, and analytics Ben Yoskovitz joined the Product Bakery to have a conversation about these topics. As a founding partner of Highline BETA a venture studio and venture capital firm, he looks a lot into data and analytics of companies to support business ideas and startups.
In this episode, the product bakers discussed the basics of defining good metrics & KPIs as well as the history and future trends of data-driven work and mindsets.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Ben

03:50 - The rise of data awareness

05:20 - Working with & defining data

06:55 - Leading vs. lagging KPIs

11:25 - Defining one metric that matters (North Star)

16:30 - Measuring wrong data

19:45 - Complexity of quantitative data & vanity metrics

27:10 - Establishing a data mindset in startups & teams

30:20 - Understand the big picture as a Leadership Team

32:30 - Defining assumptions & hypothesis

37:30 - Dealing with legacy data infrastructure

38:30 - Ben's outlook for the future of working with data

41:20 - Debrief Alex & Christian

Follow Ben's work:
Twitter: @byosko

Linkedin: @byosko

Book: Lean Analytics

Website: https://highlinebeta.com/

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
45 min
March 14, 2021#35 Customer journey mapping to get the big picture
The topic of user story mapping has been discussed many times recently. In this episode, the product bakers focused on the counterpart: customer journey mapping. Alex shares his experience and discussed with Christian when and how you should start working with a customer journey map. As always, Christian also tried to better understand how you can combine customer journey and user story mapping.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro by Christian

01:10 - What is customer journey mapping about?

04:00 - Structuring a journey map

05:45 - When to map out a customers journey

07:20 - Customer journey map vs. user story map

09:45 - Speeding up the product discovery

13:40 - Death through perfectionism

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
16 min
March 11, 2021#34 In-house product management vs. external consulting
This time Alex came up with "the top of mind topic" of in-house vs. consulting and agency product management. Together with Christian, they've discussed the different focus areas different parties have and what product people need to become for example a good consultant or coach.

Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Alex

02:25 - Differences between in-house, coaching, and agencies

05:30 - When should I choose and do what?

07:55 - Training and educating people (coaching)

09:10 - Deep-dive into working as agency/project team

12:05 - Interims VP jobs

13:45 - Freelancing with no experience

16:30 - Why Alex moved from consulting back to in-house

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
20 min
March 08, 2021#33 Process & design thinking with double diamond
In this episode, Christian and Alex are discussing on top of their minds the topic of "double diamond." They quickly fall into topics of design thinking and process definition and shared some insights and refreshers on how to validate and deliver product ideas.

Table of content:
00:30 - Podcast intro

01:35 - Double diamond and design thinking

04:20 - Setting up a double diamond process

06:05 - Research & delivery aren't linear processes

08:10 - Adjusting the process

09:25 - Iterating, iterating, iterating

10:40 - Don't be too religious about it

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
13 min
March 04, 2021#32 Developing an agile leadership mindset - with Andrea Tomasini, CSO @agile42
Empirical process control and understanding people were and are Andrea Tomasini's biggest passions. After starting his career as Engineer and leveling up to VP Engineering, Product, and CTO, he reached the point where he wanted to build his own agile organization.
These days Andrea's agile consultancy agile42 operates in more than 13 countries across the globe, helping companies of all sizes to establish an agile mindset. Even the Product Bakers have been trained and coached by Andrea already.
In this episode, Andrea shares his wide and deep experience and best practices on where to start with an Agile transition and what pitfalls to avoid.

Table of content:
0:30 - Intro Andrea

08:40 - People over processes & tools

14:45 - Organic agility & understanding people/culture

24:25 - Becoming more agile as a Leader

28:31 - Experimenting in safe to fail environments

33:25 - Trust as the basis for change & transformation

42:15 - The 3 focus areas to introduce agility

45:05 - 3 biggest mistakes leaders do

48:25 - Debrief Alex & Christian

Get in touch with Andrea:
Linkedin: @andreat

Twitter: @tumma72

Website: https://www.agile42.com

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
53 min
February 25, 2021#31 Researching customer problems - with Cindy Alvarez, Director Customer Research @Github
After studying psychology in the late '90s, Cindy started her product, research, and design career. She has lead many Product, Design, and Research Teams over the last decades. Next to that she wrote and published the book Lean Customer Development.
Cindy speaks in this episode, about how to best do customer research. She shares very practical examples of how to understand customer problems without interviews, and best practices to understand what customers really want and need. One of her key messages is that asking questions is not only important for customers, it also helps inside companies to better understand each other.

Table of content:
0:30 - Intro Cindy Alvarez

3:20 - Day to day business as Customer Researcher

5:05 - Doing research on Twitter, Reddit, and co.

10:25 - Building stakeholder relationships to push research

13:25 - How to get started with research in your company

16:15 - Reducing and avoiding bias

19:15 - Talking and negotiating with customers

21:50 - Understanding customer problems

24:20 - Customer research vs. user research

27:40 - Handling design critiques with founders and managers

31:15 - Stock questions to understand the “why”

36:15 - Documenting research outcomes (TL;DR)

39:25 - The biggest mistakes leaders do about research

42:25 - Debrief Christan & Alex

Cindy on the internet:
Linkedin: @cindyalvarez

Website: https://www.cindyalvarez.com

Cindy's book: Lean Customer Development

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
48 min

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Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI

Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI episodes

About Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI

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