38: Mike Pilawski - Overcoming your doubts through first principle thinking

Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership.

Mike used to be my manager and quickly became one of my most important mentors through the years. In this very personal episode with a lot of inside stories, we talk about it all. From experiences at Smallpdf where rapid scaling pains set in and how we experienced them from the perspective of the CPO - him, and me - the core product.

Also: the concept of first principles thinking: Nokia’s prescient but uncapitalized predictions of smartphones.
How to localize products and explore personal growth strategies, the importance of connecting wisdom, managing self-expectations, and how to move on from having chips on your shoulder.

Timestamps:
06:30 Reinventing yourself and companies when you hit a specific size
10:30 Our journey at Smallpdf, everything burns and scales at the same time
15:55 First principles thinking is hard to learn but necessary so you can create your own frameworks.
22:14 Nokia predicted the iPhone and Android before they happened. And it didn’t help them.
26:50 Why Product-led Growth is not the same problem in B2B as it is in B2C
29:40 Aligning Value capture with the value you create. Pricing at Typeform
32:15 Lokalise and getting shaken up by the current AI technology disruption when localizing your product in different markets
42:20 How to learn and grow personally while thinking “I don’t belong here
49:43 Having the ability to connect wisdom instead of learning everything yourself
57:53 We get angry at things because we don’t match our own expectations
62:25 Having a chip on your shoulder… and moving on from it.
67:45 Waiting too long to reward yourself for specific achievements.

Connect!

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilawski/
Leah’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahtharin/

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