Stories From The Everyday Life of a Product Manager - Idoh Gersten, Circle CI

Embracing product bias. Navigating conflicts with design teams. Directing clients that don’t have clear goals. Everything is on the table as behind-the-scenes anecdotes of client meetings and discussions are revealed.

Idoh’s main frustration with B2B SaaS companies is that they don’t talk to end-users enough. In fact, he tells the story of his time consulting for a company that has never before spoken to its end users. Tune in to find out what he discovers when he becomes the first person there to speak to an end-user - and lots of other tales from his product management escapades with many different clients.

About Idoh
Idoh Gersten is a Product Manager at Circle CI. Previously, he was Senior Product Manager at Dynamic Signal and Director of Product Management at ROBLOX among other roles. He is a law school graduate from the University of Iowa. Idoh believes that there is a universal consciousness that we collectively tap into. Also, if it were up to him all websites would be designed like Craigslist.

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 | Who is Idoh Gersten?
03:17 | Why having product bias is POSITIVE. OR Why you should have product bias.
08:54 | Should you release products that aren’t fully polished?
11:46 | Having conflicting design philosophies
15:37 | Most difficult features to work on as a product manager
21:52 | How to convince clients to prioritize workflows.
23:32 | Important product data that B2B SaaS companies skip over.
34:12 | The golden rule of shipping better products.
34:29 | The right question to ask customers (instead of asking them what they want).
35:22 | Only throw money at your product problems after achieving this.
36:46 | Is there a universal consciousness?
37:34 | Idoh’s personal goals and note to self.

QUOTES:
“One way of thinking about bias is what tradeoffs you’re making. Where on the tradeoff spectrum do you just kind of land?”  [07:25]
“I think there’s a huge amount of uncertainty around plans and I think having a very high-level vision makes a lot of sense but having an extremely detailed plan that stretches out for 6 months…once things go out into the real world and hit customers, plans always change.” [08:13]

Follow Idoh:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idohgersten/