In this episode, our co-host João speaks with Julien Lescure, an investor and product coach, and one of the speakers of the second Product Weekend event, held in November.
Julien Lescure founded two companies and led both of them to successful exits. Nowadays, Julien’s focus is on coaching product teams. In this conversation, Julien talks about his path as a founder, why he chose to pursue a product career, and gives some tips he learned during his journey.
Besides being a product lover, he is also a car enthusiast. Julien’s childhood dream was to become a car designer. If you want to find out how he ended up in product, listen to the episode below ⬇️
## Time notes:
[0:16] Guest introduction
[1:00] Desired career path as a child vs. the actual path
[5:55] First job and the switch to project management
[7:40] First leadership role
[9:36] Founding his first company
[16:01] Role in his first company
[18:39] Founding his second company
[22:40] The strategy to sell his second company
[24:22] Role in the company after the sale
[26:42] Choosing product over marketing.
[27:32] Using sales skills in product
[31:10] Julien's favourite thing about working in product.
[33:45] Investing in companies and advising them
[36:20] Favourite type of companies
[40:00] Product discovery
[46:55] From coaching product teams to coaching managers
> Product is not something you do in isolation at a PM level. "Product is enabled by an organization."
[50:40] Role of sales and customer success in product: "The main barrier of training other departments on interviewing is fear. Many companies are scared of talking too much to their clients."
[57:25] The role Julien enjoyed the most
[1:02:05] Moving to Portugal
[1:03:30] Portuguese tech industry
[1:04:50] What will the world look like in 50 years?
[1:08:05] One lesson from product management everyone should know
[1:10:00] Book recommendations
[1:13:25] Favourite cities
[1:15:10] Favourite podcasts
