We talked with Arlan Hamilton, theFounder & Managing Partner of Backstage Capital. Backstage Capital has invested more than $2M in 50+ companies led by underrepresented founders. Arlan is a venture capital fund manager, but she got her start publishing the internationally distributed indie magazine INTERLUDE, and toured extensively as a live music production professional, she enters the venture investing world from an unconventional path. Arlan is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are of color, women, and/or LGBT. We discuss diversity in tech, her story to becoming an unlikely VC and her advice for founders on how to stay focused and prioritize. ***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Love isn’t rational. It doesn’t always make sense. But when love is in the air, nothing can come between you and a public tweet. Today we talk to people who’ve professed their love, publicly, for products they love. We discuss why they love the products they love, and what about these companies and brands gets them so excited.We dove into tech brands like Slack and Intercom as well as roll on deodorant brand Phresh and personal fashion brand Stitch Fix.Huge thanks to our guests today:Lindsey Smith: https://twitter.com/LindseySmithHHCJordi Romero: https://twitter.com/jordiromeroNatalie Gerke: https://twitter.com/NgerkeAlys Gagnon: https://twitter.com/AlysJ***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Blade Kotelly is a senior lecturer at MIT and the leader of the advanced concepts lab at Sonos. We talk with Blade about how he defines the problem he solves at Sonos, and how to articulate that at an emotion level using design thinking. At Sonos he is driving the process to determine what experiences Sonos can and should build next. Researching trends in the technology landscape, customer behavior, music creators, and Sonos partners, and creating and testing advanced concepts.At MIT he teaches students principals of design-thinking, how to articulate designs, critique designs, create emotionally and intellectually compelling presentations, create a point-brand, conduct usability testing and learn to apply design-thinking to all aspects of their lives.Blade also tells us about the audio software he designed that was used by United on 9/11. A fascinating, and heartbreaking look at how design thinking and product management has real life effects and consequences.***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Mistakes. We all make them. We all learn from them.From a food delivery startup who's users couldn't find their menu, to Amazon's redesign of Audible and even an emergency support system on 9/11, today we bring you mistakes Product Mangers made, and how, in some cases, they fixed them. Stories from Melissa Perry, Alison Go Product Manger at Facebook and Blade Kotelly Leader of Experience Strategy at Sonos. ***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

We talk with Seth Godin about his view of the 10,000 hour rule, his own concept behind achieving greatness, The Dip, and his personal journey to success. After leaving Spinnaker in 1986, he used $20,000 in savings to found Seth Godin Productions, primarily a book packaging business, out of a studio apartment in New York City. He then met Mark Hurst and founded Yoyodyne. After a few years, Godin sold the book packaging business to his employees and focused his efforts on Yoyodyne, where he promoted the concept of permission marketing.Yoyodyne, launched in 1995, used contests, online games, and scavenger hunts to market companies to participating users. In August 1996, Flatiron Partners invested $4 million in Yoyodyne in return for a 20% stake. At Yoyodyne, Godin published Permission Marketing: Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers. In 1998, he sold Yoyodyne to Yahoo! for about $30 million and became Yahoo's vice president of direct marketing.In March 2006, Godin launched Squidoo. In July 2008, Squidoo was one of the 500 most visited sites in the world.Godin is the author of over 18 books. Free Prize Inside was a Forbes Business Book of the Year in 2004, while Purple Cow sold over 150,000 copies in more than 23 print runs in its first two years. The Dip was a Business Week and New York Times bestseller; Business Week also named Linchpin among its "20 of the best books by the most influential thinkers in business" on November 13, 2015. In the early 1990s, he curated a 10-book series for children titled Worlds of Power. Each of the book's plots is based on a video game.***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Ty Ahmad-Taylor is the VP of Product Marketing at Facebook. Ty has worked in product for over 20 years and has two acquisitions under his belt. At THX, he led the media and consumer-electronics company into new sectors. Prior to that, he held roles including vp of Smart TV services at Samsung, founder and CEO of FanFeedr and Senior VP of product development and strategy at Viacom.Ty talks with us about leading large product teams, helping individuals growth under his leadership and how his entrepreneurial journey has shaped his view of product.***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Jobs to be done will change the way you think about product. It will change the way you approach user personas and influence your product decision process. It is one of the most important developments in product thinking in our time, so today we're going to dive right in.In this episode we talk with Jeetu Patel of Box, Bob Moesta co-creator of the Jobs to be done framework, Benedikt Lehnert of Wunderlist (now Microsoft) and Eric White.The theory of jobs to be done was developed in part as a complement to the theory of disruptive innovation. But disruption theory doesn’t tell you how to create products and services that customers want to buy. Jobs to be done theory does. It transforms our understanding of customer choice in a way that no amount of data ever could, because it gets at the causal driver behind a purchase.***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Ellen Chisa, a former Product Manager at Microsoft and current CEO of a stealth product focused startup, talks to us about the history of product management, how she learned about the role at Microsoft and what lessons product managers should take away today. Ellen is one of the few individuals who has worked in product her entire career. It's a unique perspective as most product managers have generally held other positions within an organization. This led Ellen to research the history of Product Management, and how it evolved from the 1930's "Brand Men" into the important role it is today. ***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Marketing executive and serial entrepreneur, Everette Taylor, talks to us about being homeless in high school to becoming one of the most sought after marketing minds in todays tech world.When it comes to marketing, Everette Taylor knows his stuff. The Los Angeles-based entrepreneur is the founder and CEO of PopSocial, co-founder of marketing community GrowthHackers, and the Chief Marketing Officer for the transportation startup Skurt.His journey wasn’t always easy. At 17, Taylor, he was forced to live out of his car – which didn’t even run. Determined to rise above, he did some odd jobs for cash before enrolling at the only college he applied to: Virginia Tech. At 19, he started a small entertainment company that would arrange parties and social events.Just a few years later, he befriended entrepreneur and investor Sean Ellis, who helped him break into the tech industry and partnered with him to launch GrowthHackers.***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

Today we explore the history of the Product Manager from it's early ideation by Neil McElroy to it's growth at Hewlett-Packard thru it's maturation at Microsoft and into today. We talk with former Microsoft Project Manager, Ellen Chisa, Former Microsoft Engineer (and 55th hire), Mark Zbikowski and Matt LeMay, the Author of Product Management in Practice, about this evolution over the past 80 years. For Neil McElroy the Brand Men were essentially his manifesto on what would become a product manager today. Their responsibilities ranged from tracking sales to managing the product, advertising and promotions. They were to “take full responsibility” for the brands implementation of advertising and sales and take a ‘huge weight’ off of the sales managers who were both ideating and implementing growth strategies.Bill Hewlett and David Packard interpreted the Brand Man ethos as putting decision making as close as possible to the customer, and making the product manager the voice of the customer internally. In the book The Hewlett-Packard Way this is credited with sustaining Hewlett-Packard’s 50 year record of unbroken 20% year-on-year growth between 1943 and 1993.***This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.