Audrey Pedro is currently the Chief Product Officer at Scaleway, a complete cloud solution trusted by more than 25k businesses. Audrey’s experience spans over 10 years in product management, overseeing the company’s product roadmap, from strategy and design to general distribution, as well as quality of execution.

Prior to Scaleway, Audrey held product management positions at DocuSign, as well as serving as lead product manager for P&C fraud detection at Shift Technology.

Today we are going to talk about:

Episode highlights

[6.33] Evolution of product management in French product startup ecosystem

[13.20] Series B raise as a pivoting time in a product journey and the skill of letting go of product team as a Founder

[22.00] Scaling up journey and managing expectations from product leader

[29.46] Building product culture - identifying the impact points and centring the view on the value to user

[40.00] Building high functioning product teams that are diverse and equitable

Importance of trust between the incoming CPO and Founder

Audrey outlines the need for the alignment between the expectations of founder from the incoming CPO and the CPO him/herself already at the role definition process and interview stages. Audrey advises to have the tough discussions early on, preferably in the interview process to gauge the understanding of expectations. When growing, creating space and doing gap analysis will help identify the widening gaps in the company and product offer or product service, which will allow to focus on the user and centralise the efforts of all teams. As you grow and doubling in numbers, Audrey brings the example of how product management can be the saviour in helping one to focus on right features, therefore not wasting the time and effort of engineering team, aligning everyone to the same goal - this journey, Audrey says, starts with observation and communication.

M&M’s dilemma - coating vs peanut; Big picture, then details

Audrey shares that focusing on the end user and challenges you are solving for the user, rather than processes first is the approach she takes with her teams. This allows to focus on user experience and core value creation, ensuring the loyal user base and supporting all facets of the organization from product teams to engineering to customer success. This is a key for businesses relying on community and retention, and in situations where you need to have a strong value based differentiator to grow in the market.

Connect with Audrey in Linkedin and Twitter

View Scaleway's offering 

Anushree is a running CPO at NUW, the world's first clothes sharing and swapping app. She is a passionate product leader with experience across a range of product roles at various early stage start-ups. Her experience is spanning across e-commerce, healthcare, travel and fashion in America, India and now in the UK.

Today we are going to talk about:

- user centric design

- learnings point from building products across a variety of countries

- and sustainable future

Episode outline and highlights

[2.00] Anushree’s start in product management

[3.50] NUW’s mission and creating the sustainable world

[10.50] Insights on Gen Z consumers and their shopping behaviours

[19.20] User centric design

[28.20] International experience and core learnings of building products in the US, UK, and India

Building products for Gen Z

How do we achieve the sustainable future when the main consumer base has less purchasing power? How do we follow the data driven approach to catch the rising needs of the Gen Z consumer?

NUW is expanding into b2b segment, allowing the secondary market of large clothing brands to create the loyal crowd of consumers and focus on sustainability element, pushing for the quality of the produce up.

Gen Z consumer base differ in the way they find information, how aware they are of the composition, materials and consequences of their purchasing choices. Transactions in NUW are happening faster, spurred by the “first upload, then swap" logic on the platform. That way the coin is spent faster, allowing the users to change their wardrobes faster.

Key learnings from Anushree’s experience

Anushree worked across multiple geographies, yet outlined India as the most fast paced, demanding and price sensitive market, that makes the challenge of building products for that market extremely interesting. That experience, she found, was very rewarding and dynamic. That pushes the product leader to prioritise rigorously and keep the eye sharp on the consumer. As a comparison, in the US the process of bussing early stage startups was structured and mature.

Anushree on Linkedin 

NUW on Apple Store 

As a product leader in a highly regulated market, how do you continue with testing and refining the solution before the product goes live? How do you balance up the role of the CPO in an early stage startup and a 4 month old? Christiane's experience shows multiple times that its possible to land your successful role in product no matter what field you are coming from.

Christiane is Franco-German, 31 years old and is a graduate from Sciences Po in Paris. After first experiences working for a UNESCO-sponsored NGO she joined Swiss largest bank, UBS, where she spent 5 years building innovative digital banking products in multiple roles – often as the only woman in the room.

From playing rugby in university to putting out literal fires as a volunteer firefighter and also being the only female in the room with 30 men in the IT department: she doesn't take no for an answer, and opens the door to females in other ways such as mentoring, developing and running webinars and leading a workshop for the University of St. Gallen.

In 2019, she joined Awina as CPO with the goal to use her newly acquired knowledge and tech skills to effect positive social change. She brought the company from a vague idea all the way to its first concrete product in the heavily regulated Swiss financial market. Awina launched in the fall of 2021 and aims to guide families through the Rush Hour of Life by providing a variety of products and services.

Today we are going to talk about:

- working as a female in traditionally male fields

- moving from a non-tech background into tech / product

- building product in young vs mature companies

Episode outline and highlights

[2.08] Finding a balance as a new mom

[5.56] Moving from IT in banking to product in a social impact field 

[16.50] Following a journey of your customer and how that translates into product and relevant product features

[27.00] Christiane's path to product management and her experience in Israel

[39.18] Christiane's 3 core advice points

The learnings from building a product 0-1 in a heavily regulated FinTech 

Think customer centric all the time. It's a natural thing to want to shy away from your customers - because they bring uncomfortable truths. The core is not to delay talking to your customers, even if you are in the regulated market and cannot launch within a short period of time. 

You are not your customer. Especially if you build something that you may be using, you may fall into the trap of "thinking for the customer". As a PM you need to focus on the actual use case, continue with a discovery, and remove the layer of thinking of that pushes you to make shortcuts in developing the product. The worst thing that can happen is that you are building a product for several years that noone wants or needs. Christiane outlines the essential (and difficult) skills to keep your mind sharp on the needs of your consumer base and test all hypothesis before entering the "build" mode.

3 key take-aways from Christiane's experience

1. Trust yourself, it will all work out. You can set a certain path by your early life choices but you can always move and tint it to what you want to be

2. Stay open to possible opportunities- its good to know where you want to go, and also keep in mind that the world changes at a tremendous pace so we may now have new technologies in the 5-10 years period

3. Make space to make fun and for things that are not just work

Christiane on Linkedin 

Follow Awina on Instagram

As a product leader, how do you build a diverse and high-performing team that is excellent in executing and also has fun? My special guest, Amber Foucault, shares her insight on building great teams and capitalizing on momentum. We also discussed her journey on transferring product management skillset to different industries as well as balancing the science and art in product management itself.

Amber is the CPO of Drop. Drop is the first flexible, consumer-led intelligent mobile rewards platform focusing on personalized member experiences. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Drop is comprised of top-tier, passionate, and diverse talent from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including fellow startups like Ritual and Shopify, to Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Airbnb.

Episode Outline and Highlights

[3:50] Discussion on scaling – how to build a high-functioning team that can deliver and executes.

[9:10] Amber’s approach to addressing female representation in the product development and management business.

[14:26] Launching over 70 products across multiple industries - Amber shares her three core learnings

[22:43] Having an engaged and “fun” workplace - how having a people-centric approach can result in better team performance.

[26:05] An innovative approach to product management – Amber shared an added a gamified feature in their product to engage users.

Scaling and Building a Great Team

Amber and I discussed building high-performing product a team that executes quickly. With background in marketing, she has a strong focus on execution. Amber shared her thought process when creating bigger teams as well as insights on her approach to address female representation in the product management as a profession. 

Transferring Product Management Skillset to Different Industries

With the launch of over 70 products across multiple industries under her belt, what are Amber’s three core learnings? Here are main takeaways:

Amber elaborated on each item. We had a very interesting discussion on what is meant by having fun in the workplace. This was also applied with how they are managing and enhancing the product at Drop. You will hear about a gamified approach on their product to engage users and even introduce them to the world of cryptocurrency. Here is a clue: digital collectibles.

About Amber Foucault 

Amber is the Chief Product Officer at Drop. With the launch of over 70 products under her belt, her specialty is turning divergent thinking into convergent action. She is using her product mindset to approach strategic solutions at Drop, with a focus on building democratized access to web3 concepts for everyday users. Amber has built products spanning countless industries, drawing expertise from each build and solving strategic problems and processes to ensure execution is always possible as a company scales. She is also a big believer that technology isn’t about tech, its about people. So she has spent her career understanding people and behaviours. “Think of technology as a verb, not a noun. It’s a subtle but important difference.” (Red Burns, 1925 - 2013)

Amber on Linkedin

Resources mentioned

The Trevor Project

Drop

How do you build an amazing product from scratch? How do you invite diversity and inclusion when building your team? 

Kelly McDonald is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Cipio. The world's first community influencer marketing platform. Prior to joining Cipio Kelly was the founder and CEO of Kyndoo. A data platform for social commerce that was acquired by Cipio in September of 2021. Prior to founding Kyndoo, Kelly was the Senior Vice President of Revenue, Operations, and People at RealtyShares. An entrepreneur at heart, Kelly loves working on big problems at the earliest stages of a company. She is driven by her passion for the people she leads, and the journey toward the greater vision they share.

Today we are going to talk about:

Episode highlights

[1.30] Building Kyndoo from scratch and building the strong client relationship with Cipio

[12.35] Her start in product management

[17.23] Being a solo not tech female founder and getting the funding from VCs

[22.00] asking for help from your investors

[23.20] Equalising the gender split in the teams and diversity of teams

[32.30] 3 pieces of advice from Kelly

Strengthening your product proposition to your customers though acquisition of the company

Kelly shares how the internal data science team in Cipio enabled Kyndoo as a product to go the extra mile and strengthen the presence in the market. Since the merger they saw an NPS jump 20%. New tools built in Cipio  since the merger are focused on AI an ML utilisation for enhancing the real reach of the audience with image to image search. Since the introduction they saw the usability shot up and user reaction in 90% of cases was purely “wow”.

Currently the team is looking at enabling brands to build the communities with web3, something they are testing right now.

Lessons from raising from VCs

Kelly shares that having the experience and the past “portfolio to show” instilled more trust in her ability to lead and start the product from scratch when speakign with investors. In her experience investors are looking at strong execution and she was able to showcase that.

Kelly outlined that it took her longer to raise and found the right investment partner, and she admits that it might be a longer journey for the underrepresented founders but those investors who stick through the journey are undeniably the right partners that will bring a great value to the startup, the “capital with capability”.

She also notes that founders need to learn to ask for help and support from investors proactively in order to receive support.

Building diverse teams and reducing bias

Diversity starts at the top - if diversity and inclusiveness is not taken seriously at sourcing level, we wont get anywhere. Reflecting on the AI tool out there - AI does what it was told to do - its still built by humans who have bias.  Diverse experiences allows you to see uniques insights and knowledge which brings a ton of value. If in doubt and when able to do a side by side comparison, Kelly follows the thinking of - if all things are equal, choose diversity.

Connect with Kelly McDonald on Linkedin

People and Resources Mentioned:

https://cipio.ai/

https://www.instagram.com/cipiocommunity/

Alexandra on Linkedin

Connect with Alexandra for

Building products 0-1 is tough, building and scaling a new product organization within a mature business might be tougher. On the one hand, one has the advantage of tremendous volumes of data and potential insight to be generated from that data, on the other, changing the culture to being customer-focused and product-driven is a complex process that can take years to implement.

Episode Outline and Highlights

[1:31] Natalie shares how she has worked in a number of sectors really specializing in product delivery, and in leading large digital transformations focusing on what has always been working at that intersection of commercial and tech.

[11:07] Finding the right fit of people: attracting internal talent to product management career path.

[15:53] Challenges of the ever-evolving mix of professional career and life: Natalie shares her personal struggles of balancing work and family and still attaining success.

[21:07] The importance of forward-thinking and immediate feedback in learning and developing in your career and how this helped her in her journey.

Injecting the latest product management trends and ideas into an established business

A recent achievement that Natalie shared was being able to incorporate fresh ideas and be forward-thinking with her success at OAG - she calls it "The 90-year-old Startup”. Here her diverse experience across multiple industries and continuous focus on delivery were key to ensuring the success of transforming the organization to a product-centric one and continuously driving value to the end-user.

Attracting internal talent into the team and rigorous prioritization

One of her core achievements in OAG is building the product team by hiring individuals within the company into her team who had been keeping close to the end customer and therefore understand in depth the needs of the user and the target market. By moving away from the traditional expert-focused recruitment to selecting individuals focused on the end-user she embedded customer-driven development as a practice. This resulted in prioritization of features that the customers wanted to see, improving user satisfaction and product usage, as well as smarter investments into the product, as the team builds POCs, collects customer feedback, and validates the features before any big investments in the product development is made.

Connect with Natalie Seatter

Natalie Seatter on Linkedin  https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalieseatter/

People and Resources Mentioned

OAG

https://www.linkedin.com/company/oag/

Connect with Alexandra Di Nella

Alexandra on Linkedin

Connect with Alexandra over a discovery call:

https://calendly.com/productwise1/30min?back=1&month=2022-06

Want to reach PMF faster and cheaper by adopting the 0-1 entrepreneurial mindset?

Then, you’ll love my interview with Shinyoung Park - Shinyoung Park is a tech investor, advisor, and executive. She is currently a Chief Product Officer at Spoon Radio, the audio streaming app with over 30M downloads around the world. She has invested in various startups such as MagicBus (YCW16), Farmstead (YCS16), and Stonks.

Prior to that, Shinyoung founded a mobile gaming studio, which saw 3 million downloads in 2 months reaching top-grossing no. 45 on iOS. She also devised a GTM strategy for the $3B MMORPG franchise, Lineage, and managed a new mobile game called AION at NCSOFT. She has led teams to release and manage over 6 titles at Playfirst and Kixeye, 3 of them stayed above top-grossing no. 100 in the US most of their lifetime.

Previously, Shinyoung founded a company that raised an angel round from the founder of Krafton, the maker of PUBG, which won Fbfund 2009 to build a virtual community on mobile, and was selected as one of the most influential women in tech by Fast Company in 2010. In her early days, Shinyoung raised $1.5M from Samsung and sold a childcare community to Edutopia, Inc in 2000.

Episode Outline and Highlights

Today we are going to talk about :

Connect with Shinyoung

Shinyoung on Linkedin  https://www.linkedin.com/in/shinyoungp/

Shinyoung on Medium  https://shinyoung-p.medium.com/

People and Resources Mentioned

https://pmf.ck.page/

Spoonradio.co

Rooftop.club

https://500.co/

Competing against luck: the story of innovation and customer choice by Clayton M. Christensen

Connect with Alexandra Di Nella

Get your FREE 30-minute discovery call https://calendly.com/productwise1/30min?back=1&month=2022-06

Alexandra on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandradinella/