Product Perspectives

Welcome back to Product Perspectives for this episode about growth, one of the hot topics in products. I’ve talked to Ken Rudin who is the SVP of user growth at ThoughtSpot, a modern BI solution which I use as part of my current role.

Ken is the SVP of User Growth at ThoughtSpot, leading Product Led Growth initiatives across the company, increasing user acquisition and engagement. Previously, he led the global User Growth and Analysis team at Google, where he focused on driving user acquisition, engagement and monetization across all Google products and services. His team provided analysis, best practices, tools, and services to optimize Google’s products as well as marketing campaigns, resulting in accelerated growth in users and revenue. Prior to Google, Ken built the Analytics organization at Facebook, which included both the data science teams and the data engineering teams. He led the organization to deliver high impact analyses across all Facebook products. and before that, Ken was the VP of Analytics and Platform Technologies at Zynga, helping Zynga to become known for excellence in analytics, and helping to build the foundation for one of the world’s largest social gaming platforms.

In this episode, Ken explains how he’s helped companies transition the company from a traditional sales-led model to product-led growth, with some real-world examples. I’ve enjoyed learning about his journey into product and the data world as well as his clear explanation of how core PMs, growth PMs and product marketing can work together to make great successful products. This episode is a bit longer than usual but it’s worth it, so I hope you enjoy the listen!

Dear listeners, it’s been 4 weeks without an episode of Product Perspectives and this is because I was first on holidays and then off sick – I’m sorry that you can still hear this is my voice. I do have episodes in the pipeline though and I’ve got some great announcements to make.

The first one is Product Perspectives is growing, with more listeners at each episodes, and that’s thanks to you. If you enjoy the podcast, please share it with your friends and colleagues. There’s a Product Perspectives page on Linkedin to stay up-to-date with episode releases and product-management related topics. Our Linkedin page is getting more and more clicks so make sure you follow it.

On another note, I’ve been looking for a co-producer and co-host for a few months, since I initially launched Product Perspectives on my own. Following a few rounds of interviews, I think I’ve found the right person and we’ll start working together on the strategy, marketing and of course the episodes. I’ll introduce you when it’s the right time.

About the future, as a good product manager, we’ll be running experiments with new podcast formats. So far, the format is short with a maximum of 40 minutes, and there are two types of episodes: interview-style with one guest, and roundtable with 3 guests. In order to ensure the format brings you the most value and best content as a listener, we’ll be doing tests with new formats. So if you’ve got some feedback, please share it with me via my social media or on the website.

There are exciting times ahead for Product Perspectives and I’m looking forward to sharing those with you. Thank you for your patience and see you next week for a new episode.

My guest today is Sophie Heller. Sophie leads the CX Services team at Outschool, a marketplace of live-online classes for kids. She joined the company as employee #2 as its first customer support agent and has since seen the company grow to 200; the support inbox now contains 100+ people, spread over several internal teams and an outsourcer. Sophie's team works to equip the inbox, including 50+ outsourced agents, for any changes to Outschool's website or policies, providing services including documentation, training, and quality assurance.

You can contact Sophie on Linkedin.

My guest today is Romain Fleury who is Release Readiness Consultant at Cornerstone, a Learning and Employee Growth platform provider. He works on communicating releases to HR and IT administrators, making sure they adopt the latest functionality and get the most of their platform through releases. Romain’s role isn’t common and would more often than not be covered by product marketing teams. We talk about the best ways to create useful documentation for customers and partners, as well as everything that happens behind the scenes from webinar preparation to translation. People in Romain’s role are often outnumbered by product managers, so you can get some tips on how to make their life easier by collaborating better.

You can contact Romain on Linkedin: Romain Fleury | LinkedIn

Thank you to Apeksha and Simone for their questions.

I welcome today Jesse DeRose who is a technologist and a storyteller. He helps engineering teams make cost-conscious decisions and believes the biggest challenges facing companies aren’t technical, but human. His mission in life is to transform technology organizations by creating company cultures in which diverse, collaborative teams can thrive. What I loved about this episode is all the practical tips given by Jesse to be better at storytelling and collaborating with stakeholders, from how to align your goals to how to keep your audience engaged.

You can contact Jesse on Linkedin: Jesse DeRose | LinkedIn and on Twitter Jesse DeRose 🏳️‍🌈 #BlackLivesMatter (@jesse_derose) / Twitter.

My guest today is Ines Beatrix. Ines is a professional certified career and leadership coach. She coaches people who want to make a positive impact on the world and want to play a bigger game in their careers. With over 8 years of experience in design thinking, communications, mindfulness and coaching, she encourages people to dream big and cultivate a sense of inner calm and deep confidence. Before becoming a coach, she worked as the Design Thinking Lead at a US bank, led projects as an innovation consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and taught design thinking courses in Paris.

Ines is the first coach I receive in the podcast, she works with product managers but also with companies who want to introduce design thinking into their organisation. We talked about creative problem solving and human-centered approach, topics that are close to the heart of product people. If you want to understand the link between design thinking and farmers in China using washing machines to wash potatoes, as well as hear examples of applying design thinking in the corporate world, but also to your mental health, listen out to this episode and get tips about how to convince your leadership team to change the way your company identifies problems and goes about solving them.

My guest today is Orian Roturier, Head of Growth & Demand Generation at GitGuardian. As an engineer turned marketer, he’s passionate about building the right data pipelines and processes that will make products grow. He used to work in consulting to advise all kinds of companies on their acquisition strategy. Then he chose to focus his efforts on GitGuardian, a cybersecurity SaaS company, as he reckoned that cybersecurity is both a complex and important topic given most of our lives are now online. Growing GitGuardian from Series A to Series B, he focused on inbound tactics targeting cybersecurity teams, and a product-led-growth funnel for developers.

In this episode, we start by understanding the cybersecurity topics that a product manager should know about and prioritise to reduce the risk of reputational damage and potential fines for their product and company. Orian explain his role compared to traditional product marketing and product management functions, and how his company is implementing product-led growth by focusing on some specific personas, as well as how the Pirate framework helps him to measure success. This is a great listen for practical tips on security, GitHub optimisation, starting a product-led strategy and working with growth teams to deliver it.

You can contact Orian on Twitter or Linkedin. Thank you to Enzo, Product Manager at Teale, for his question.

My guest today is Katie Keate Johnson. Katie has spent the last decade working in B2B sales, that includes 7 years with Linkedin talent solutions where she was a sales rep but also a sales leader. After Linkedin, she was the first sales hire at an early stage company called ROOM, where she built the sales team up to 15 members. Then, she was the Head of Sales at Betterment, selling their product to small businesses. At the start of 2022, Katie decided she wanted to take the leap to be a founder and is currently working on a new venture that is focused on a community solution for B2B onboarding.

With Katie, in person from New York City where she's based, we talked about the difference between the buyer and the product personas, and how to align sales strategy with the product strategy so that the Sales Teams attract the right types of customers. She gives her opinion about the famous dilemma of sharing the roadmap with sales people, but also tells us she does want to have an input on the roadmap. If you want to learn some sales skills that are also useful for PMs as well as get some efficient tips, stay tuned and enjoy this episode.

Welcome to this roundtable between product management and UX Design. On the UX Design team, I’m please to welcome two of my previous guests – Pamela Sanchez and Hayden Chambers. In team product management, I’m please to welcome for the first time Iryna Struk, a Product Manager at HandsHQ.

In this third and final round, we talk about KPIs. Should companies have success metrics for their UX Design function? How do you measure improvement in UX and why? As product managers are asked to be more and more data-driven, what's the impact on their prioritisation of UX improvements which are harder to measure.

Who's going to win this round, but more importantly the entire roundtable: UX Design or Product Management?

Welcome to this roundtable between product management and UX Design. On the UX Design team, I’m please to welcome two of my previous guests – Pamela Sanchez and Hayden Chambers. In team product management, I’m please to welcome for the first time Iryna Struk, a Product Manager at HandsHQ.

In this second round, we talk about A/B Testing. Does your company do A/B testing or have you ever done it at all? We debunk some myths about this well-known and trendy user testing methodology. The key take-away? Don't worry if you don't do it, you're not the only one and it may be that your company isn't ready yet or that there are better methods that work best for you.

Who's going to win: UX Design or Product Management?

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