The LaunchNotes Podcast | Product Management, Product Marketing, Product Ops

Blake Thorne (@blakethorne - https://twitter.com/blakethorne) of LaunchNotes talks with Chris Mann (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismannlinkedin/), founder of GrokAI and previously of Bizo and LinkedIn, about how to align teams around a product and company strategy.

🔗 Links

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Introductions

(09:42) - The "Learning" phase of product strategy

(11:55) - The "Think" phase of product strategy

(16:54) - The "Decide" phase of product strategy

(19:25) - The "Plan to act" phase of product strategy

(28:56) - Preparing for strategy meetings

Steve, Adam, and Blake chat about a recent AMA they did with Dave Schools from Hopin, a company known for building and acquiring multiple products. They also discuss other companies that have grown their business on the success of multiple products.

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Offsite recap

(02:28) - Thoughts on multi-product companies

(17:26) - Examples of companies with multiple products

(29:33) - Our next AMA guest

Steve Klein (https://twitter.com/stevenklein) of LaunchNotes talks with Dave Schools of Hopin (https://twitter.com/daveschoools) about Hopin’s journey acquiring and building new products to unlock their next phase of growth.

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Introductions

(06:28) - Acquisitions and building products

(18:56) - Deciding to build a new product

(29:58) - Collaborating across the company on a new product

(38:34) - Product-led growth or enterprise first?

(40:31) - ​​Not sharing code bases across product

(43:52) - How early is too early for a waitlist?

(45:28) - Deciding on a name for a new product

(48:18) - Sizing up the opportunity of a new product

Blake, Steve, and Jake talk about product roadmaps and some of the anxiety that comes with sharing a public roadmap with customers. They also share some examples of public roadmaps from well-known SaaS companies.

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Public roadmaps

(18:43) - Setting expectations around your roadmap

(22:11) - Examples of roadmaps hosted on LaunchNotes

Steve Klein (twitter.com/stevenklein) of LaunchNotes talks with James Hawkins (https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-hawkins/) of PostHog about how they found product market fit after pivoting several times and how they support 23,000 customers through a community without a dedicated support team. They also discuss tips for prioritizing roadmap items and the delicate balance of performance improvements and new functionality.

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Introductions

(01:02) - Advice for new CEOs

(03:50) - Deciding to pivot

(12:15) - Prioritizing roadmap items

(21:10) - Supporting 23,000 customers without a dedicated support team

(25:21) - Building an inbound sales engine

(30:04) - Defining company vision

(41:38) - Balancing performance improvements with new functionality

Blake Thorne (@blakethorne - https://twitter.com/blakethorne) and the LaunchNotes team chat with Josh Herzig-Marx about the similarities between cooking and building products and how frameworks can help you work smarter. They also talk about the career paths of individual contributors vs. managers and share tips for getting promoted.

🔗 Links

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Applying cooking lessons to marketing and product management

(10:20) - The value of frameworks

(18:53) - Transitioning from IC to manager

(39:11) - Tips for getting promoted

Steve Klein (twitter.com/stevenklein) talks with Josh Herzig-Marx (linkedin.com/in/joshuaherzigmarx) about the new things you’ll be expected to do when transitioning to a Product Leadership role, and how you can accel at them.

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Introductions

(05:00) - Why transitioning from IC to leadership is hard

(10:25) - Communicating the product vision

(18:12) - Building out a hiring process

(24:59) - Delivering feedback to direct reports

(30:05) - Career ladders

(35:43) - Prioritizing product work

(37:55) - Differences between an IC and a manager

(39:10) - How to get leadership on board for growing the product team

(41:20) - Growth and promotions as a product manager

(43:58) - The important skill of delegating

(45:39) - Dealing with unclear ownership

(48:08) - Developing junior PMs into seasoned PMs

Blake Thorne (@blakethorne - https://twitter.com/blakethorne) and the LaunchNotes team talk about a recent podcast recording with Des Traynor from Intercom. Tyler shares how they landed on their company strategy framework, and they discuss a product that Spotify quietly shut down.  

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - A recent podcast conversation with Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom

(11:06) - Company strategy frameworks

(32:47) - When Spotify quietly shut down a product

Steve Klein (twitter.com/stevenklein) talks with Justin Gallagher (twitter.com/justingallagher) about how synchronous work and communication in a remote company is a recipe for burnout. Teams should work more asynchronously by having better documentation around how to get work done, and by communicating with more intentional long-form written content.

🔗 Links

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Introductions

(04:22) - Pioneering the remote movement at Trello

(08:37) - Remote work and burnout

(11:17) - Defining "remote" and "async"

(11:42) - Providing feedback in a remote setting

(19:14) - Making big decisions as an async remote team

(29:42) - Shifting expectations on response times

(35:28) - Top 3 tools for async communication

(37:51) - How do you collaborate when teams are spread across multiple timezones?

(39:04) - When are meetings actually necessary?

Blake Thorne (@blakethorne - https://twitter.com/blakethorne) of LaunchNotes talks with Des Traynor of Intercom about their successful journey from one product to multiple products, knowing when to sunset a product and what they look for when hiring product leaders. Des also shares his thoughts on the fast-moving adoption of AI in products today.

📝 Show notes

(00:00) - Introductions

(02:48) - From a single product to a multi-product platform

(09:29) - The risk of rolling out new products as a mature company vs. a young startup

(14:31) - What Intercom looks for when hiring product leaders

(26:00) - Des’ thoughts on AI