One Knight in Product

Alexander Murauski's Hot Take: The Language Your Product Speaks Is A Part of Your Product's Design (with Alexander Murauski, CEO @ Alconost)

Alexandar Murauski is an expert in all things related to product localisation and the CEO of Alconost, a platform that aims to help product teams unlock global growth through AI-enhanced localisation.
Alexander's hot take? That the language your product "speaks" is a fundamental part of the product's user experience, and is often left lacking. It's important to consider localisation upfront, and ensure that you take cultural considerations into account, not just Google Translate the text as an afterthought.
Find Alexander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amurauski/ or check out his company, Alconost, at https://alconost.com/en.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

The TRUTH About Large Language Models and Agentic AI (with Andriy Burkov, Author "The Hundred-Page Language Models Book")

Andriy Burkov is a renowned machine learning expert and leader. He's also the author of (so far) three books on machine learning, including the recently-released "The Hundred-Page Language Models Book", which takes curious people from the very basics of language models all the way up to building their own LLM. Andriy is also a formidable online presence and is never afraid to call BS on over-the-top claims about AI capabilities via his punchy social media posts.
Episode highlights:
1. Large Language Models are neither magic nor conscious
LLMs boil down to relatively simple mathematics at an unfathomably large scale. Humans are terrible at visualising big numbers and cannot comprehend the size of the dataset or the number of GPUs that have been used to create the models. You can train the same LLM on a handful of records and get garbage results, or throw millions of dollars at it and get good results, but the fundamentals are identical, and there's no consciousness hiding in between the equations. We see good-looking output, and we think it's talking to us. It isn't.
2. As soon as we saw it was possible to do mathematics on words, LLMs were inevitable
There were language models before LLMs, but the invention of the transformer architecture truly accelerated everything. That said, the fundamentals trace further back to "simpler" algorithms, such as word2vec, which proved that it is possible to encode language information in a numeric format, which meant that the vast majority of linguistic information could be represented by embeddings, which enabled people to run equations on language. After that, it was just a matter of time before they got scaled out.
3. LLMs look intelligent because people generally ask about things they already know about
The best way to be disappointed by an LLM's results is to ask detailed questions about something you know deeply. It's quite likely that it'll give good results to start with, because most people's knowledge is so unoriginal that, somewhere in the LLM's training data, there are documents that talk about the thing you asked about. But, it will degrade over time and confidently keep writing even when it doesn't know the answer. These are not easily solvable problems and are, in fact, fundamental parts of the design of an LLM.
4. Agentic AI relies on unreliable actors with no true sense of agency
The concept of agents is not new, and people have been talking about them for years. The key aspect of AI agents is that they need self-motivation and goals of their own, rather than being told to have goals and then simulating the desire to achieve them. That's not to say that some agents are not useful in their own right, but the goal of fully autonomous, agentic systems is a long way off, and may not even be solvable.
5. LLMs represent the most incredible technical advance since the personal computer, but people should quit it with their most egregious claims
LLMs are an incredible tool and can open up whole new worlds for people who are able to get the best out of them. There are limits to their utility, and some of their shortcomings are likely unsolvable, but we should not minimise their impact. However, there are unethical people out there making completely unsubstantiated claims based on zero evidence and a fundamental misunderstanding of how these models work. These people are scaring people and encouraging terrible decision-making from the gullible. We need to see through the hype.
Buy "The Hundred-Page Language Model Book"
"Large language models (LLMs) have fundamentally transformed how machines process and generate information. They are reshaping white-collar jobs at a pace comparable only to the revolutionary impact of personal computers. Understanding the mathematical foundations and inner workings of language models has become crucial for maintaining relevance and competitiveness in an increasingly automated workforce. This book guides you through the evolution of language models, starting from machine learning fundamentals. Rather than presenting transformers right away, which can feel overwhelming, we build understanding of language models step by step—from simple count-based methods through recurrent neural networks to modern architectures. Each concept is grounded in clear mathematical foundations and illustrated with working Python code."
Check it out on the book's website: https://thelmbook.com/.
You can also check out Machine Learning Engineering: https://www.mlebook.com and The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book: https://www.themlbook.com/.
Follow Andriy
You can catch up with Andriy here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andriyburkov/
Twitter/"X": https://twitter.com/burkov
True Positive Newsletter: https://aiweekly.substack.com/

Sam Greenwood's Hot Take - We Need to Rethink Product Management in the Age of Societal Collapse (with Sam Greenwood, Emotional Resilience Coach for PMs)

Sam Greenwood is an emotional resilience coach who works with product managers to help them survive at the intersection of emotional stress and product leadership. His goal is to help product managers build EQ, communication and leadership and AI-proof their careers.
Sam's hot take? That we are on the cusp of societal collapse and product managers, as well as people in tech in general, have taken their eye off the ball. Product people need to adopt new mindsets and build different kinds of products to help us weather the storm... although, maybe the storm can't be weathered at all.
Find Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-greenwood/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot
 

Olha Yohansen-Veselova's Hot Take - Product Managers Need To Become Growth Managers (with Olha Yohansen-Veselova, Product Growth and Optimization Advisor)

Olha Yohansen-Veselova is a product growth and product optimisation expert who has now gone solo and is helping companies with their onboarding. Olha is also a startup mentor and advisor, and is passionate about product managers living up to their full potential.
Olha's hot take? That product managers need to beyond being facilitators and unblockers, and move towards being true growth partners to the business. Too many people are working in a bubble and not taking account of the commercial impact of their roles, and the ones that do will outpace the ones that don't.
Find Olha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oyohansen/.
Or check out Olha's newsletter: https://oyogrowth.substack.com/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

Solopreneurship, Memes & Getting Started with Product-Led Sales (with Elena Verna, B2B Growth Guru & Meme Queen)

About the Episode
Elena Verna is a renowned growth consultant who has worked at and with a glittering array of well-known tech companies. She's a strong advocate of career optionality and solopreneurship, as well as the author of a popular growth newsletter, Reforge instructor and popular LinkedIn content creator with her insightful posts and searing memes. Just don't call her an influencer.
Episode highlights:
 
1. Solopreneurship is about having optionality; it doesn't mean you never take a full-time job again.
You can build a portfolio career with a variety of different offerings, and get involved in the types of problems that excite you. This feels risky, but people get laid off from "real" jobs all the time. The most important thing is to optimise for what you're passionate about, and it may well be that you move between full-time employment and advisory or fractional roles. It's not a one-way street, and you're in control.
2. Humour disarms people, so memes are a great way to talk about difficult topics and build empathy
Content creators should not be scared of poking fun at meaningful topics. Using humour is a great way to help build connections with people around potentially sensitive areas. That doesn't mean you should make everything a joke, but you can certainly mix it up. You might think it's risky for a solopreneur, needing to build credibility, to be seen as an unserious clown. But, do you really want to work with people who can't take a joke?
3. Product-Led Sales is all about using self-service as a lever to fill up your sales pipeline with healthy, qualified leads
Speaking of knowledge (nice segue!), Elena has written a lot about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Product-Led Sales (PLS). PLG is the strategy of using your product as its own acquisition channel through enabling a great self-service experience, quick time-to-value and all the other things that B2C apps have had to worry about for years. PLS, on the other hand, is about filling your sales team's pipeline with high-quality leads that have already experienced your product through PLG, and demonstrated enough usage to make it worth having a data-backed conversation with the buyers at that organisation.
4. There are signals that it's time to try out Product-Led Sales
Don't adopt PLS for the sake of it; instead, look for signals that it's appropriate for you. Traditional sales-led motions focus on the buyer but, if you solve a problem that matters more to end users than buyers, you should consider Product-Led Sales as a method for building internal champions and advocacy for your product. You should also be conscious of competitive threats; your traditional, top-down buyer-led sales motion may work today, but keep your eyes open for new PLG players attacking your underbelly.
5. You probably need new capabilities (and talent) within your organisation if you want to get started with Product-Led Sales.
Let's face it, most sales-led organisations are terrified of giving sales prospects access to their product without supervision. The user experience is almost certainly terrible and there's no "Aha!" moment to speak of, just a pile of features that got added to satisfy procurement teams. You need to get a good product manager in to overhaul the experience, good product marketers to work on optimising acquisition, and great data analytics so you can make sure you aren't just sending garbage to the sales team. If you don't send them high-quality leads, they'll stop trying to sell to them.
6. Product-Led Sales is not an on/off switch but a dial.
Traditional sales-led organisations that are crushing their quotas don't need to go down the product-led growth or product-led sales route if it doesn't work for them. Similarly, product-led companies shouldn't have to go upmarket to succeed. The most important thing to consider is how to build on your existing strengths and complement them, and getting the mix right. You can run both at the same time, and this is better than throwing all-in on a go-to-market motion where you have no credibility, experience or right to win.
Contact Elena
Check out Elena's newsletter and other work: ElenaVerna.com
Follow Elena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna/

Zoe Laycock's Hot Take - Product People Need To Take AI Ethics Seriously (with Zoe Laycock, Product Marketing Lead @ Diffblue)

Zoe Laycock is the Product Marketing Lead for Diffblue, an AI-powered testing platform, and is passionate about promoting and elevating the role of product marketing, as well as advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the tech sector.
Zoe's hot take? That product people need to get serious about ethical AI, and put people, processes and protections in place to ensure that AI products create the impact that we all want to see in the world.
Find Zoe:
...on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoelaycock/.
...on "X": https://x.com/firestartr.
...on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firestartr.
Or check out Diffblue: https://www.diffblue.com/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

Myles Sutholt's Hot Take - Leaders Need to Get Better at Using Data for PM Performance Reviews (with Myles Sutholt, Head of Product @ Field Intelligence Inc)

Myles Sutholt is a Germany-based product leader working for an Africa-based startup where he's helping to digitise the health supply chain across the continent, with a "laser focus" on creating user value alongside business value and fostering motivated, dynamic teams.
His hot take? That leaders too often rely on gut feel and recency bias when performing performance reviews, relying on point-in-time assessments and trying to be nice rather than supporting the career growth of their teams.
Find Myles on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myles-sutholt/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot!

Most PMs Aren't Good At Strategy - Enter The Decision Stack! (with Martin Eriksson, Co-founder of Mind the Product & Creator of The Decision Stack)

Martin Eriksson is the co-founder of Mind the Product, and co-author of the "Product Leadership" book. Martin has worked with a multitude of companies and has been heavily involved in the VC side of product management. These days, he's advising and coaching companies as well as trying to help us all make good decisions by writing a new book, "The Decision Stack", alongside its supporting website.
Episode highlights:
1. The vast majority of company employees don't know what their company strategy is...
It's important for everyone in the company to be aligned on what's important, where the company's going and how they're going to get there. It's crucial for product and business leaders to do the work; both to create a vision and strategy and to share it with everyone who is needed to execute it.
2. ... but, worse still, the vast majority of companies don't even have a strategy to speak of
Strategy is about making a coherent set of choices about how we're going to achieve our goals or make our company vision real. But, too many companies have fluffy, vague vision statements that could mean anything, and leaders who want to do everything all at once and don't want to make choices. This limits their ability to actually achieve anything.
3. It's hard to create a product strategy if you don't have a company strategy, but you should do it anyway
A product strategy should support the company strategy and vision but, if there's no company strategy or vision, it's hard to create or defend such a strategy. On the other hand, you should still do the work to create one; either you'll get to go and execute the strategy or you'll have a straw man proposal to provoke further discussion around what the strategy should be.
4. A lot of product people are pretty bad at strategy, and we need to get better
Back in the day, a lot of product managers were expected to write specifications and get stuff done. They weren't even expected to be strategic, and many still aren't to this day. These skills are learnable; product people need to do their best to up their game, and company leaders need to get more comfortable both delegating responsibility and coaching their employees to have these skills.
5. The answer is not "Founder mode"
"Founder mode" can be used to justify just about any behaviour, invites "hero syndrome" and can lead to micromanagement and single points of failure. Good leaders absolutely need to be deeply involved in their business, but this should not be at the expense of creating strong, aligned teams that can take many day-to-day decisions without them.
Contact Martin
You can catch up with Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineriksson
You can also check his website: https://martineriksson.com
Keep up-to-date with The Decision Stack: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/