Adopting Financial Thinking for Product Decisions

Why do great product ideas fail to gain traction? According to Elena Luna, it’s rarely about the strategy and more often about the storytelling. In this episode of The Product Experience, Elena Luneva, a seasoned CPO, GM, and Maven instructor, joins Randy Silver live from INDUSTRY 2025 to explore how product leaders can better communicate the why behind their product decisions.

What we learned from Elena
— Speaking 'User' isn’t enough – Executives care about business impact, not just engagement metrics.
— Translate features to financials – Frame product initiatives in terms of ARPU, opex savings, or revenue impact.
— Use storytelling with data – Combine real user insights with projections to make your case.
— Seasonality matters – Product testing should account for time-of-year and market behaviour.
— Align go-to-market early – Synchronising product and sales is key to driving measurable outcomes.
— Ask better questions – Start with: What is it? Why does it matter? How much will it cost? When will we get it?

Chapters
2:45 – The Ceiling for Great PMs
4:09 – Speaking Executive
5:22 – Case Study: Nextdoor Maps
9:52 – Translating Engagement to Revenue
10:49 – Embedding Finance into Product Thinking
12:43 – Pivoting During COVID
14:36 – Business Fluency at All Levels
16:00 – Building Context Across Teams
18:26 – The Four Questions
20:06 – Thinking in Horizons
22:43 – Shifting Accountability
26:23 – CPMO vs. CPTO
27:43 – Common Mistakes
29:42 – Seasonality & Cannibalisation
32:29 – Practical First Steps
34:21 – Credits & Outro

Featured Links: Follow Elena on LinkedIn | Elena's Substack | Industry Conference Cleveland 2025 recap at Mind The Product | Sign up to Elena's coaching course 

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.