Presently a partner at expansion stage venture capital firm OpenView, Ashley Smith has a long career of helping early-stage startups scale into successful organisations. In this episode, Ashley talks to our hosts about product-led growth, and how everyone can and should do it.

Quote of the Episode

It really comes down to: listen to your customers and figure out what they want, and then build that thing – and build it really, really well.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about

Early-stage venture capital

What is product-led growth?

The five principles of being product led

The difference between growth hacking and being product-led

Links mentioned in this episode

* Follow Ashley on Twitter or LinkedIn, and check out her work at OpenView Partners

* OpenView Partners Product-Led Growth Index

* OpenView Partners on Twitter

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. Now the Product Director at Symec, Lily also runs ProductCamp in Bristol & Bath.

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. Now a trainer, Discovery and Leadership consultant, he’s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), the Business of Software, Turing Festival, a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music

Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page

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