Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI

By Christian StrunkBusiness

Product Bakery - How Founders Build and Sell with AI episodes

December 24, 2020#20 🎄Xmas special: Self organizing & planning 2021 as a Product Person
Could it be a better time to launch the 20th episode on Christmas?! 🎄
We want to thank all our listeners for the amazing support we've got, and wish everyone MERRY CHRISTMAS and happy holidays! In this episode, we're doing a little recap on what has happened this year as well as sharing the first outlook for 2021.
Since the year is coming to an end we also talk about how we prioritize & set goals for the next year. This includes a deep-dive into self-organization, tooling, and a couple of book recommendations. #planning
Tools we love to use for self-organization:
Pen & Paper

Google Calendar

Evernote

Workflowy

Our book recommendations:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Lean UX

The Bullet Journal Method

Hooked

The Future of Capitalism

High Output Management

Pitch Anything

The Prosperous Coach

Atomic Habits

Live hack:
Listen to podcasts & educational videos at 1.5x/2x speed

🤶🎄 Follow The Product Bakery Podcast 🎄🎅
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
26 min
December 17, 2020#19 Accelerating product development with an integrated Design Team - with Shruti Ramiah @N26
Shruti is a design researcher and interaction designer. She leads the talented team of The Studio at Zalando in Berlin. At the time of recording this episode, she led the product design & user research team at N26. She has also worked in strategic design consulting with IDEO, user experience at Nokia, and with a few other places.
Shruti’s goal has been to nurture effective collaboration between design, research, product management and engineering to deliver customer-focussed solutions – building the capabilities and processes that enable all disciplines to do their best work.
In this episode, she talks with Christian and Alex about the role of Design & Research Ops, amongst other things, that help build an effective integrated design team.

Table of content:
0:28 - Intro Shruti Ramiah

1:45 - How Product Design functions @N26

5:05 - Design collectives & Design Ops

7:05 - Collecting customer & stakeholder feedback

10:10 - The role & mission of Design Ops

21:40 - Solving symptoms or problems with Design Ops?

24:00 - How to hire the right people for a Research Team

28:00 - Collaboration between Product Managers, Designers, & Researchers

39:40 - Integrating Design in cross-functional teams

43:20 - Things Shruti would love to have known at the beginning of her career

47:31 - Debrief Alex & Christian

Find Shruti on the internet:
Website: https://shrutiramiah.com/

Linkedin: @shrutiramiah

Twitter: @itursh

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
55 min
December 10, 2020#18 Brand & product building don't compete with each other! - with Laura Busche @Author of Lean Branding
Branding plays a key role in every kind of business. Laura Busche's passion for marketing and brand strategy started in 2008. Since then she focused a lot on working and learning everything about brands until 2013 when she published her amazing book "Lean Branding" as part of the Lean Series from O'Reilly.
Laura consulted Alex and Christian for almost one hour about building up the Product Bakery brand and community. She shared how to use a storyboard to define the brand values and target audience.
Table of content:
0:28 - Episode summary

0:59 - Intro Laura Busche & her book launch

6:35 - How to brand a product podcast (live coaching by Laura)

8:55 - Lean branding strategies

10:30- The brand storyboard

17:15 - How to identify organic growth channels & strategies

23:25 - Driving branding & storytelling in organizations

28:25 - Value proposition vs. brand recognition (brand messaging)

35:25 - Laura’s brand strategy for her own book

39:25 - Thoughts on Google’s rebranding (icon redesign)

44:35 - 3 Tips from Laura if you launch a new brand/brand heavy product

48:50 - Debrief Christan & Alex

Follow & Connect with Laura:
Website: https://laurabusche.com/

Linkedin: @laurabusche

Twitter: @laurabusche

Her book: Lean Branding

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
54 min
December 03, 2020#17 Communities as a foundation to kick-starting your product & brand - with Monica Lent @Bloggingfordevs
Monica Lent is a passionate Software Engineer & Entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience. Next to her first startup affilimate.com, she regularly launches new products, services, and communities such as blogginfordevs.com.
Monica shares in this episode many practical tips and examples on how to build up your own community and the need for companies to move beyond acquiring customers and connecting closer to their audiences.

Table of content:
0:30 - Intro Monica Lent

3:50 - 12 Startups in 12 months

6:25 - How she got started with her first paid community

8:50 - Community vs. customer base

13:30 - Importance of communities for businesses

18:35 - Launching fast vs. researching too long

20:10 - Learnings on starting with SaaS product

33:30 - Mistakes to avoid when starting with a SaaS product

39:30 - Bootstrapping vs. funding

42:50 - Monica’s top 5 tips to successfully build a community

Wanna connect with Monica?
https://monicalent.com/

https://twitter.com/monicalent

https://bloggingfordevs.com/

Monica's reads & recommendations:
https://rosie.land/

https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/

https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/

https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-do-a-tiny-product-first/

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
1 hr 1 min
November 30, 2020#16 Creating a product strategy in times of uncertainty
Both Christian and Alex work on many strategic topics as consultants in their day to day business. What they've observed is that many companies need to rethink their current strategies and adapt to the current situation/crisis.
In this episode, Christian talks about how to get started with a product strategy definition based on Alex's business idea about selling Italian premium ties. He focuses on the basic skeleton of information & agenda points a product strategy should consist of as well as how to specify them.

Table of content:
0:30 - Product Vision vs. company vision

4:35 - Product vision statements (GoPro)

8:40 - Defining one “catchy” sentence

9:15 - Getting buy-in from Founders & Senior Management

12:00 - Revisiting the vision statement regularly

17:20 - Vision definition workshop example (how to define a vision)

23:15 - Iterating on the product vision statement

27:05 - Who should drive the creation of the product vision

Christian's free product strategy slide deck template:
Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mLNt7f6CPPa3FzNxnHZAS7pxgp-QDOLL2UtsBe7fcKI/edit?usp=sharing

Related article: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/product-strategy

Connect with Christian:
Website: www.christianstrunk.com

Linkedin: @christianstrunk

Twitter: @strunkchristian

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
24 min
November 26, 2020#15 The role of UX in the most played computer game League of Legends - with Alex Wheeler @Riot Games
Humans love to play games! So does Alex Wheeler, Senior UX Designer at Riot Game. Alex spent many years developing the UX for champions of the most played online game League of Legends.
Alex shares great insights about the whole process of developing e.g. a new champion or changes on the client-side for more than 120 Million active users. He touched all the parts from the discovery and wireframing to the development and rollout.
Next to that, he shared why friction in UX and games is so important.
Table of content:
0:30 - Intro Alex Wheeler

4:35 - The addicting nature of computer games

6:45 - Intentional friction the UX

9:45 - Developing champions in League of Legends as UX Designer

15:00 - Persona-based product development

18:00 - Product discovery in gaming & LoL

20:50 - Role & collaboration with Product Managers & Owners

25:15 - When employees are users of your product

30:00 - Using data to design experiences

36:15 - Rolling out updates & new features

39:30 - Designing for 26 countries with different languages & cultures

43:50 - It’s all about documentation

46:10 - Alex 3 key values of designing user experiences

49:00 - Debrief Alex & Christian

Want to learn more about Alex?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwhlr/

https://medium.com/riot-games-ux-design/ux-design-in-the-games-industry-50b0572631c3

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
55 min
November 19, 2020#14 Defining the right pricing for SaaS products - with Markus Hafellner @Bitmovin
SaaS products are Markus Hafellner passion. Next to his experience as a Product Manager, he worked many years in the tech industry as a developer & CTO. In his current challenge at Bitmovin, he focuses a lot on defining and developing a good pricing strategy.
Markus shares how the company introduced a big pricing change and the thoughts, planning, and approach behind it as well as great tips how to align with stakeholders and getting the buy-in from the C-Level/Top Management.

Table of content:
0:30 - Intro Markus Haffelner & Bitmovin

4:50 - The challenges of defining prices in B2B

8:55 - Measuring & analyzing data + customer funnels

16:10 - A product-led approach as the foundation for a pricing change

19:05 - Interpreting data & defining

25:20 - Influencing Senior Management & Founders (how to negotiate)

27:35 - Rolling out & communicating price changes

33:35 - Driving pricing topics as a Product Manager and stakeholders

37:00 - Impact of the pricing change at Bitmovin

40:20 - Markus tips to evaluate pricing in a structured way

43:20 - Comparing pricing with competition/market

49:43 - Debrief Christian & Alex

Connect with Markus:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhafellner/

https://stratelight.substack.com/

Link from John Cutler:
Beat the Feature Factory: Run Pre-cap Design Studios

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
56 min
November 16, 2020#13 Designing experiences not screens
After a week-long road trip in Portugal Alex is looking back at all the small invisible experiences he encountered while sitting in the car. It’s things like anticipating and designing for the user's intentions that make an experience really great.

Table of content:
0:30 - Alex road trip in Portugal

2:30 - Air conditioning experience with Volkswagen

4:45 - User experience in cars

6:35 - Understanding & learning from user intentions

10:55 - Jobs to be done

15:55 - UX on purpose or luck?

17:55 - Autonomous driving

22:25 - Ethnographical studies to better understand users

Connect with Alex:
Website: www.alexdapunt.com

Linkedin: @alexdapunt

Twitter: @alexdapunt

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
26 min
November 12, 2020#12 Building the first product teams in early-stage startups - with Sebastian Sabouné @Founders Factory
Sebastian's role as head of product at the Founders Factory is quite different from most of the jobs. He and the product coaching team help founders and teams build the right product in the right way using their expertise and product coaching framework.
His and the team's thesis is that by both executing on the product as well as coaching founders on what good best practices look like, Founders Factory won't only build great products but also great teams and businesses.
In this episode, he shares great stories and best practices on what to consider as a fresh startup and how to hire the right people.
Table of content:
0:30 - Intro Sebastian Abdy Sabouné & The Founder’s Factory

5:35 - Coaching founders & product people

7:10 - Product development processes in startups

14:25 - 0 to 1, hiring the right people

18:30 - Which roles to hire first in an early-stage startup

21:00 - Recognizing red flags during the hiring process

24:20 - Setting up early product management processes

29:25 - Data-based decision making with no/few clients

32:50 - Experimenting & defining hypothesis

35:00 - First roles & skills needed when you kick-off a project

37:00 - Tips from Sebastian for aspiring CEOs and Product Managers

44:05 - Debrief Alex & Christian

Sebastian's book recommendations:
Escaping the build trap

Thinking fast and slow

Never split the difference
Sebastian's articles:
Product thinking

Product coaching framework

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
52 min
November 05, 2020#11 Establishing a product & engineering mindset in a hypergrowth startup - with Urbi @Trade Republic
Urbi realized pretty "fast" that studying business administration isn't the right thing for him. After he moved to computer science he started his career as a QA Engineer and worked his way up. Currently, he works as an Engineering Manager at Trade Republic.
Urbi's mission is to establish a Product and Engineering mindset in the fast-growing Berlin fintech. He shares insights on onboarding processes, the collaboration between product & engineering as well as establishing a culture of open communication.

Table of content
0:30 - Intro Andreas Urban aka Urbi

6:15 - Urbi’s mission at Trade Republic

8:00 - What Engineering needs from Product Managers

10:00 - Transitioning to a scaling Product & Engineering organization

15:25 - Writing documentation to speed up onboarding of new Engineers

17:40 - Early Engineering involvement for better product planning

27:35 - Helping teams to stay focused

30:15 - Company culture vs. processes

33:45 - Collaborating with Product Leads as Engineering Manager

39:22 - Engineering a Product & Engineering organization

44:45 - What Urbi motivated to pick up the hyper-growth challenge

48:40 - Debrief Alex & Christian

✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
   📸 Instagram: @productbakery
   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
   🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
54 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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