One Knight in Product

Platform Product Management & Getting Ready for Launch Day (with John Zilch, Director of PM @ Upland & founder @ Launch Day)

An interview with John Zilch. John is Director of Product Management at Upland, adjunct professor at Providence College and founder of Launch Day, a new startup that's aiming to take the pain out of launching new products to market.
We talk about a lot, including:
The pros & cons of working as a platform product manager and integrating various product lines & features into a new platform
When it's appropriate to replatform and when not, and whether a platform product manager gets a lot of customer contact
John's journey into product management from a computer science background and how, like everyone, he kind of fell into it, and how analysts get more love than PMs
How his dissatisfaction with the way software gets launched led him and a former colleague to build their own platform to make it better
Why he's started teaching at Providence College, how teaching is the best way to learn, and how academia is a fertile ground for hiring the best talent
What he thought of Marty Cagan's recent takedown of MBAs, why he's tired of everyone being against them, and what they're good for
Why there's a problem with experimentation culture and why it shouldn't be a replacement for good customer discovery
How's it's OK to do things that don't scale as long as you have a plan to make sure that it can scale in the future
The problem with people concentrating on "Agile" as a method of delivery rather than a way to get close to customers
And much more!
Contact John
You can check out the Launch Day website or connect with John on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Putting Customers at the Heart of your Product Decisions (with Hubert Palan, founder & CEO @ Productboard)

An interview with Hubert Palan. Hubert is the founder and CEO of Productboard, a company that aims to put the customer at the heart of the product development process and help companies across the globe build truly excellent products.
We talk about a lot, including:
What Productboard does, how it differs from other platforms & how it tries to bring customers to the heart of product development
How his studies & early product career made him realise how difficult it was to have evidence-based discussions with stakeholders, and how this led him to create Productboard
How he still maintains strong ties to the Czech Republic, and how Productboard took advantage of being a big fish in a small pond there
What it was like studying under Steve Blank, the inspiration for the Lean Startup, and some of the lessons Hubert learned there
Whether his MBA helped him become an effective product manager or whether he had a lot to learn after graduating
Some of his problems with Marty Cagan's recent article about MBAs, and why he thinks Marty got it wrong
Some of the mistakes that product teams are making when making product development decisions, and how companies need to build up their product muscles
How some founders stumble into product/market fit and why the Lean Startup is partly to blame
Why founders are overrated, and how to step away from thinking you know it all & letting the company run without your input
How to try to build a diverse & inclusive company, and some of the challenges that Productboard have faced
And much more!
Contact Hubert
You can check out the Productboard website or connect with Hubert on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Applying Agile Principles to Education & Measuring Learning (with Chris Hull, founder & CPO @ Otus)

An interview with Chris Hull. Chris is a former 7th grade social studies teacher who grew dissatisfied with the tools he had to do his job and decided to create some of his own. He's now the CPO and founder of Otus, an all-in-one learning management, assessment and data system.
We talk about a lot, including:
The vision behind Otus and how a global pandemic has made everyone interested in online learning in a pandemic
How someone goes from teaching into building a company, some of the ways he's learned to do it and some of the mistakes he's made
The different types of stakeholders he has to deal with across education, and how he balances the needs of all of them
The pros & cons of interviewing kids for UX interviews, and how they're both the best and worst people to ask for feedback
Whether there are any challenges selling into schools, and whether they're as stuck in the past as they appear
Bringing agile principles to learning and importance of empiricism and constant learning
How he's set up the teams to deliver value across his product lines and how the film Ratatouille inspired his ideation process
The importance of setting a vision then stepping back & ensuring the teams have autonomy
How teaching kids has primed him for the stresses & strains of foundership & leadership, and whether kids are harder work than adults
Whether he's instinctive or data driven, how to step away from your biases, and when it makes sense to go with your gut
The importance of focus, picking your bets and how "priority" has been, and should remain, singular
And much more!
Contact Chris
If you want to catch up with Chris, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter or check out his company Otus

Data-Driven Product Development & Ethics in AI (with Korbinian Spann, founder & MD @ Insaas)

An interview with Korbinian Spann. Korbinian started out doing a PhD in Semitic Languages before working in retail and realising he had no way to collate customer feedback. This led him to start building his own solution not once but three times, eventually leading to his own startup and taking data-driven product development to the world.
We talk about a lot, including:
How he started out as an intrapreneur with a problem, how he solved it, and how it sparked an idea for his own startup
How had to rebuild the same product 3 times, and the importance of forgetting everything and starting from scratch where needed
How he's always had a problem solving mind and product management perspective even though he's not a product manager
His passion for data-driven product development and how he's attempting to shift the paradigm
Some of the challenges in landing data-science backed products with traditional companies that seek certainty
Why customer centricity has to be data driven, and why we shouldn't just rely on gut feel to make decisions
Whether AI / ML is just good for pitch decks and whether riding the hype is a good thing or not
The importance of using the right tech, not just the latest greatest thing, and steering clear of buzzwords
How data annotation is the dirty secret of AI backed startups, and how much human effort there really is
The importance of ethics and data privacy in AI and how his company are trying to stay on the right side of history
And much more!
Contact Korbinian
If you want to catch up with Korbinian, you can reach him on LinkedIn or check out his company Insaas.ai

Avoiding Bulls**t Product Advice & Focusing on the Essential (with Henry Latham, founder @ Prod MBA)

An interview with Henry Latham. Henry started out studying Spanish & Portuguese before having an epiphany and moving into foundership and product management. Disappointed with the applicability of some of the education materials out there, and reeling from being fired by a dysfunctional product company, he decided to double down and build an education programme to really help people move the needle and build products effectively.
We talk about a lot, including:
How dissatisfaction with all the standard product content out there drove him to start Prod MBA, and how it differs from other more established product schools
Details of the Prod MBA approach and how they get you from defining a vision and building a releasable product in 8 weeks
How to land product thinking with people that aren't necessarily from a product background and have a more traditional view of business
How to sell the concept of business risk to traditional stakeholders and get comfortable with risk yourself
How getting fired from a product job opened his eyes and led him to inspire better product managers in the future
The importance of getting out of negative thought patterns & not accepting your fate but actually working to make it better
How to help people to move the needle in dysfunctional companies and making your own moves to demonstrate the value of product thinking
Why he wrote his two books "Why Your Startup is Failing" and "Product Leadership Starts With You", some of the key themes, and how they'll help you be a better founder & build better products
Some of the problems he has with agile frameworks, specifically Scrum, what his alternative is and whether it's Scrum Inc's job to fix it
And much more!
Check out Prod MBA
If you like the sound of Henry's product training programme, check out the Prod MBA website for more details.
Buy Henry's books
Henry has two books:
"You want your product to succeed. Yet considering nearly 90% of products fail, how can you ensure that you are part of the 10% that actually succeed?"
 
Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
"Despite what many aspiring product leaders may think, being an effective product leader is not about using the right frameworks, the right methodologies or delivering features quickly. Instead, it's about something entirely different: Building a strong foundation for product success that starts with you."
 
Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Henry
If you want to catch up with Henry, you can reach him on LinkedIn.

Going Beyond Idealistic Book Principles & The Myth of Unicorn Product Managers (with Emily Tate, Managing Director @ Mind the Product)

An interview with Emily Tate. Emily is the Managing Director of Mind the Product, the world's leading product management community. Emily started out in marketing, before moving into product management at an aviation company and then onto Mind the Product via a serendipitous sequence of events. She's passionate about product and claims to be able to talk about it all day long!
We talk about a lot, including:
What the Managing Director of Mind the Product is up to these days and some of the exciting plans as we get out of the pandemic
How she got started in marketing, then product, then marketing, then product, and what made her settle into product management in the end
The challenges of being product manager for a technical product, and whether you need to be technical to be a product manager
Whether it's fair for employers to expect product managers to have deep subject matter expertise or whether being a good product manager is enough
Whether there's a right way to "do product", the different types of product manager, and the importance of not judging yourself on your weakest skills
The futility of trying to hire unicorn product managers, and making sure you hire the right product managers for the right products
Whether the wealth of aspirational content out there is setting too high a bar for product managers
What to do when you're working for a company that doesn't do product management well, and how to sell yourself into the next company when you know you weren't doing everything by the book
Some of the warning signs & red flags you should watch out for when applying for a product management job
The pros and cons of with fortune cookie influencer advice, and making peace with the intentions behind it
And much more!
Get more from Mind the Product
If you want to hear more about the Mind the Product origin story, check out this episode with Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and CEO of ProdPad.
Contact Emily
If you want to catch up with Emily, you can reach her on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Product Management in Africa & Dreams of an African Silicon Valley (with Layo Ogunbanwo, Founder @ Practical Product)

An interview with Layo Ogunbanwo. Layo is the VP of Product Strategy for Piggyvest, a Nigerian fintech and also the founder of the Practical Product community, where she's aiming to demystify product management principles and adapt them to Africa's unique environment. Layo launched Practical Product with a groundbreaking report "The State of Product Management in Africa".
We talk about a lot, including:
Her work with Piggyvest in Nigeria, trying to bring financial services to Africans and the company's plans to develop across Africa
What a VP of Product Strategy does and how / if it differs from other product management roles
How her experience across sales & marketing led to a product management career, and how it helped her work cross-functionally
Why she thought it was important to put together the State of PM in Africa report and ambitions for the future
Whether there is any kind of pan-African solidarity amongst product managers or whether all countries are competing against each other
How the report went down with its audience, what the take up and initial feedback has been like
Some of the surprising findings from the report, and why they were surprising
Some of the unique challenges of working in product management in Africa, and their root causes
The gender balance in Africa, and Layo's work to champion equality for women across the continent
Her hopes for African product managers for the upcoming year, and the desire for an African Silicon Valley
And much more!
Get The State of Product Management in Africa Report
"The report is a collection of data that sets a benchmark and brings to life the trends driving product management in Africa. More than 200 product management professionals shared their insights and experiences with us."
 
Get the report here: State of Product Management in Africa Report.
Contact Layo
If you want to catch up with Layo, you can reach her on LinkedIn, Twitter. You can also visit Practical Product on their website practicalproduct.co

Build What Matters with Vision-Led Product Management (with Rajesh Nerlikar, CEO @ Prodify & author "Build What Matters")

An interview with Rajesh Nerlikar. Rajesh has had a long career in a variety of product companies, and put all of his learnings to practice when he took over Prodify, a product consultancy that helps startups, scale ups and growth companies to embed product thinking and team building. He's also the co-author of the 2020 book "Build What Matters" which aims to help people come together a long term product strategy to 10x customer outcomes.
We talk about a lot, including:
The problems with getting companies to understand product management and the different ways companies try to get there
How not all startup founders know how to operate in a classic product-led way, but how not all of them need to
How he went from an intern at a CPG company to VP of Product at a ride sharing startup, and what his experience in CPG taught him about user interviews
How he got into entrepreneurship and startups, where that passion came from, and some of the mistakes he's made along the way
The importance of not thinking you're the customer even if you used to be, and making sure you speak to a wide variety
Some of the differences in mindset needed to hire product managers, and how he supports teams that don't know what to look for
What led him to join up with his former boss to write "Build What Matters" and some of the challenges of writing in tandem
How you can't just build products for the customers you have now but need to concentrate on the customers you'll have next
The importance of driving for a multi-year vision and balancing innovation, iteration & operation across your product portfolio
The Vision-Led Product Management Framework from the book, what it helps you do and some of the successes it's driven
And much more!
Buy Build What Matters
"Rapid iteration, A/B testing, and growth hacking—these buzzwords have everyone’s attention in product management today. But while they dominate the current discussion, something even more significant has been lost in their limelight: long-term value creation for the customer."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Rajesh
If you want to catch up with Rajesh, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter. You can also visit his website prodify.group