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