One Knight in Product

How to Deploy Empathy to Truly Understand User Needs (with Michele Hansen, author ”Deploy Empathy”)

An interview with Michele Hansen. Michele is the founder of Geocodio, a startup she founded without taking external funding. She is also the author of "Deploy Empathy", a book that aims to help product teams & founders to get better at user research & get the insights they need.
We speak about a lot, including:
Why now was the time for a new book on customer interviewing skills, how it's different to other books on discovery
How the book has gone down, some of the feedback that she's gotten so far, and how she knew it had done the job she wanted it to
How to introduce customer research into companies which aren't currently up for it & sell the idea to leadership
Whether the techniques in the book constitute manipulation and whether she's worried they could be used for evil
Whether the book teaches you to be truly empathetic or is a guide to fake it till you make it, and whether this matters
How you don't need users to have empathy with you, and have to channel your inner rubber duck to make sure they open up to you
The importance of validating not just hypotheses but also validating your users by resisting the urge to correct their mistakes
Why you shouldn't use customer discovery interviews to try to sneak in sales or directly try to stop people churning
And much more!
Buy Deploy Empathy
"Deploy Empathy will help you learn the skill of talking to your customers—learning to truly listen to them—so that you can pull out their hidden needs, desires, and processes. Empathy is a skill that anyone can learn. Armed with the tactics you’ll learn in this book and the toolbox of scripts and phrases, you'll be able to sell more of your existing product, build the right features that will delight your customers, and stop churn in its tracks."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Michele
You can contact Michele on Twitter or check out deployempathy.com.

Chinese Startup Culture & Putting the Minimum into MVP (with Carlos Lastres, Creative & Marketing Director @ Kaiyan Medical)

An interview with Carlos Lastres. Carlos is the Creative & Marketing Director at Kaiyan Medical, a Chinese company creating light therapy products. Carlos is obviously an advocate for light therapy but also an engineer turned designer who is loving life in China.
We talk about a lot, including:
Light therapy - what the heck is it? Does it really work?
How he became a convert to light therapy by chance when working on a design brief for Kaiyan Medical and why he decided to stay
Some of the differences and similarities between creating digital products & hardware products
How 3D printing makes all the difference when trying to get an MVP out of a hardware product
How his frustration with badly designed software applications as a developer led him to pursue a career in product design
How he went from an MBA and software development background to developing the design hard skills he needed
How Chinese startups build products and how is it so different from how Western countries do it
Whether Chinese users appreciate the constant flow of limited MVPs or whether it limits the ability to truly learn
How he got involved with TEDx, how it went, and why you shouldn't follow your dreams
And much more!
Contact Carlos
You can reach out to Carlos on LinkedIn or LastresCarlos.com.
You can check out Kaiyan Medical on KaiyanMedical.com.

Finding a PM Superpower and Using your Product Sense (with Peter Knudson & Braxton Bragg, co-authors "Product Sense")

An interview with Peter Knudson & Braxton Bragg. Peter & Braxton are co-authors of new book "Product Sense", with which they hope to help the next generation of product managers discover their product superpower and land that next big product management role.
We speak about a lot, including:
Their shared history as product managers in the gaming industry, why Peter stayed in it and why Braxton spread his wings
How the book has been received, how they took an iterative approach to book writing, and why they decided to write a book together in the first place
How the book is different to some of the other classic "get a product job" books and whether it's a compliment or a replacement
The importance of bringing your authentic self to product manager interviews, and whether it's ever OK to fake it till you make it
How they define product sense, whether everyone already has it, and whether people who don't have it can be taught it
The concept of a product manager superpower, being T-shaped, and using your expertise and passion to stand out from the crowd
Why they created the Compass Framework, why it's needed and how it helps give a structured response to interview questions
Whether you need an MBA to be a product manager, whether it's totally unnecessary, and how in either case it can be very tricky to get into product
And much more!
Buy Product Sense
"Product Sense is a comprehensive and accessible, guidebook for what it means to solve problems as product manager, and ace complicated PM interviews."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Peter & Braxton
You can contact Peter or Braxton on LinkedIn.

Escaping VC Culture & Building Products that Focus on True Lifetime Value (with Rand Fishkin, author "Lost & Founder" & co-founder @ SparkToro)

An interview with Rand Fishkin. Rand was the founder and CEO of SEO firm Moz. He documented the highs & lows of VC-backed entrepreneurship in his 2018 book "Lost and Founder", in which he detailed lessons learned, fought back against tech clichés, and pondered how he'd do it differently next time. Now it's next time and he's back with new firm SparkToro, looking to build truly sustainable businesses and a more caring, responsible capitalism.
We speak about a lot, including:
His new startup SparkToro, what it does, how it's different to his previous firm and how it's going these days
Whether calling out thought leaders in his book led to any trouble, and why it's ok to make philosophical enemies
How he pushes back against the inevitable retort that, rather than hustle culture being a problem, maybe he's just not that good at it
The fallacy of meritocracy and how it's impossible for privileged founders (and the people that back them) to understand that opportunity is not distributed equally
How the VC industry is furthering inequality, blinded by survivorship bias, and why it's so important to give underserved groups a hand up
How the "growth at all costs" VC culture is forcing founders to make bad product decisions to make the numbers look good, and ignoring the real lifetime value of a user
The surprising way that SparkToro handles cancellations proactively, and why churning a few extra % is better than having unhappy, locked in customers
The problems with MVP culture, how people have taken the Lean Startup too far, and why great products are rarely minimally viable
How founders and product leaders should truly put the customer first, not be blinded by their own egos and defending a possibly meaningless strategic roadmap at all costs
And much more!
Buy Lost and Founder
"Everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go: a young, brilliant entrepreneur has an cool idea, drops out of college, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes billions and becomes the envy of the technology world. This is not that story."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Rand
You can contact Rand on Twitter or check out sparktoro.com.

Taking Data Science from Academia to the Heart of your Product (with Paul Meinshausen, co-founder @ Aampe)

An interview with Paul Meinshausen. Paul is the co-founder of Aampe, a startup that uses automated, rapid learning to personalise notifications and drive customer engagement. Paul started out in academia before doing a tour in Afghanistan and using data where the stakes couldn't be higher. He then went on to found and invest in multiple startups.
We talk about a lot, including:
The mission behind Aampe, the problems they're trying to solve, and the importance of sticking to solving those problems and not getting bogged down building stuff that's already a commodity
Whether the company is at product/market fit stage or whether product/market fit is even a thing as far as they're concerned
How we need to step away from mobile notifications being a marketing channel, rather a proactive UI and entry point to apps
The impact of Big Tech privacy controls on mobile technology, the impact on engagement, and whether it's a threat or an opportunity
The journey from academia to multiple entrepreneur, and whether it's unfair to label data scientists as primarily academic with no business sense
Some of the ways data scientists can build those business muscles and make sure they are solving real problems in a meaningful way
How a tour in Afghanistan shook Paul out of his academic mindset and made him realise that this stuff needs to work in the real world
Why it's critically important not to just have data, but to know where it comes from and truly understand how it's feeding your models and algorithms
The impact of bad data on your business and how you need to be hypervigilant to make sure you're not caught napping
Check out Aampe
If you want to find out more about Paul's company, check out aampe.com.
Contact Paul
You can catch up with Paul on LinkedIn or Twitter.

All Aboard! Why You Need To Get Product Onboarding Right (with Ramli John, MD @ ProductLed)

An interview with Ramli John. Ramli is the Managing Director of ProductLed, the Robin to Wes Bush's Batman, and the author of "Product-Led Onboarding", a book that aims to shine a light on getting users to value sooner and ensuring you retain them long term.
We speak about a lot, including:
The mission behind ProductLed, and how the pandemic has really focused people's minds on ensuring their tools are seen as valuable
What the Managing Director of ProductLed does, and whether he's really the Robin to Wes Bush's Batman
How Ramli went from studying mathematics & being an analyst for a massive FMCG company into marketing & product-led growth, and why it excites him so much
Why we needed a new book dedicated to Product-Led onboarding given that it was covered in Wes's book originally, and what publishers said when they pitched it
Why he put his personal email address in the front and back of the book for queries, and how much spam he's received since he did that
The importance of first impressions when it comes to product onboarding, and ensuring quick time to value to drive retention
Who owns product-led onboarding, whether it matters, and the importance of true cross-functional teams
Why product-led onboarding is more about free trials and guides, and more to do with an obsessive focus on user success, and why you need to define what that "success" really is
The EUREKA framework the book proposes to help you establish your onboarding team, understand, refine and analyse (and whether he came up with it in the bath)
How time to value can actually be too short and some of the things you can do about this
Whether product-led growth is truly anything new, or just a buzzword to sell attractive yellow books
And much more!
Buy Product-Led Onboarding
"Just like dating, your company's growth depends on first impressions. If their first date with your product is anything but silky-smooth, you risk losing out to the competition. Add to that a few, unfairly poor reviews and you’ll be more than just stuck. In this book, you’ll learn the simple 6-step strategy used by giants like Mixpanel, Ubisoft, and Outsystems that will get you more loyal clients in a fraction of the time."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Ramli
You can contact Ramli on Twitter, LinkedIn or productled.com.
More from ProductLed
If you want to hear Wes Bush's interview on this very podcast, why not check out Wes Bush's interview on this very podcast?

Challenges & Opportunities for Africans Making Products for Africans (with Abisoye Falabi, Senior PM @ TradeDepot)

An interview with Abisoye Falabi. Abisoye is a passionate technologist, community builder and educator who is currently Senior Product Manager at TradeDepot, a Nigerian commerce and fintech platform.
We talk about a lot, including:
His work with TradeDepot, the problems they solve and their plans to go pan-African
Some of the challenges of moving across borders into new territories and how this affects scaling
How he started out in tech and moved to product management after seeing how developers were disconnected from customers & stakeholders
His various roles spanning tech & product, and whether he agrees that having a CPTO is good or not
Why it's important for Africans to make software solutions for Africans, and how they have to be 100x better than established solutions
Some of the challenges in building products for the African market, and how they might be addressed
Some of the common mistakes VC firms make when investing in African tech, and some of the opportunities they are missing
His passion for education, how he teaches to learn, and some of his work with community building and working on courses for Pluralsight
And much more!
Contact Abisoye
You can reach out to Abisoye on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Getting into the Habit of Continuous Discovery (with Teresa Torres, author "Continuous Discovery Habits")

An interview with Teresa Torres. Teresa is a product discovery coach who works with a variety of organisations to help bed in good product discovery practices. Her coaching experience led her to write a book on the same topic, which she hopes will inspire product teams around the world to build fast feedback loops and defeat stakeholder bias.
We talk about a lot, including:
Why she decided to write Continuous Discovery Habits, and the feedback she's received so far
What the concept of continuous discovery means in practical terms, and why it's important to stay on top of shifting customer needs
The target audience for the book, and whether it's for product leaders or the sceptical exec team
How ideological battles are not going to win the war for product discovery, and the importance of showing and not telling
How her history in human-centred design, and disappointment at working practices in the real world, ignited her passion for discovery
How cognitive biases can lead to bad product decisions, but how this isn't just down to stakeholders but also affects product teams themselves
The importance of stakeholder management, addressing their own gaps, and using story mapping to uncover those gaps and assumptions
Why you should follow through with an impact analysis when you're inevitably overruled, and uncover their (or your) gaps in understanding
How continuous discovery can work with any type of addressable market, and how few people is too few
The ideal frequency of customer contact, and why the longer you leave it, the more risky your decisions
The critical importance of getting engineers into discovery early and using their knowledge & experience to get to the right solution
And much more!
Buy Continuous Discovery Habits
"In this book, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right. "
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Teresa
You can find out more about Teresa's coaching & education efforts on producttalk.org.
If you want to catch up with Teresa, you can Twitter or on LinkedIn.