
Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design Podcast
In this Show, Design Manager Alex Dapunt, and Product Coach Christian Strunk are bringing people from all product functions together to talk about the key to build successful products customers love. This involves everything from Product Management to Design as well as Development and Marketing, breaking down traditional silos around these functions and fostering an open dialogue between them. Tune in for weekly interviews, discussions, and best practices that help you understand the whole product process.
Latest episodes

Apr 22, 2021 • 44min
#46 Setting up a hiring strategy for scale - with Daniel & Robert @ready2order
Daniel & Robert working at ready2order as Director of Product and Talent Acquisition Lead. They both have the mission to build an amazing product with great people. Daniel is on board for more than 5 years and Robert joined 7 months ago to streamline hiring processes for all departments and especially Product Management & Design.
In this episode, they share how they defined and implemented a new hiring strategy to find the right people at the right time.
Table of content:
00:30 - Episode summary
01:40 - Intro Daniel Ibrahim & Robert O'Donoghue
03:35 - How hiring has changed @ready2order
08:05 - Product vision & strategy as a blueprint for hiring
10:55 - Setting up the hiring process
14:30 - Case studies to identify the core strengths of candidates
17:50 - How to measure case studies
21:00 - Filtering out candidates
25:50 - Pros and cons of case studies
30:10 - Hiring decisions made as a team
35:30 - Salaries & benefits
40:00 - How to hire and collaborate remotely
Daniel & Robert online:
Linkedin Daniel: @daniel-ibrahim
Linkedin Robert: @rodonoghue1
Jobs @ready2order: https://ready2order.com/en/career/
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 19, 2021 • 13min
#45 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part II
In the second part of the coaching vs. managing series, Alex interview Christian about coaching practices as an external and unbiased coach. Christian talks about how to identify and define goals together with his coachees as well as deep-diving into asking good and the right questions.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Alex
01:20 - Unbiased coaching
03:45 - Why product people call a coach
04:40 - Defining and working towards goals
07:15 - Asking the W's (who, what, by when)
08:55 - What are good questions?
11:40 - Therapy vs. coaching
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 15, 2021 • 46min
#44 The Power of Great Product Marketing - Martina Lauchengco, Partner @Silicon Valley Group
In this episode, Christian and Alex dive deep into the world of product market fit and the pivotal role that product marketing plays in its success. Joined by special guest Martina, an experienced product marketer, they explore the complexities of finding the right market for a product, the importance of trust and customer feedback, and the distinct roles of product management and product marketing. With insights from Silicon Valley Product Group and Martina's expertise, they discuss strategies for effective product marketing, the challenges of high-velocity product cycles, and the future of this crucial function in the tech industry. So grab your headphones and get ready to uncover the secrets behind the power of great product marketing in this enlightening episode.
What We've Covered:
(00:00:30) Episode summary
(00:02:05) Intro Martina Lauchengco
(00:05:00) How product marketing changed over the past 25 years
(00:10:10) Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager
(00:17:10) Finding product-market fit
(00:21:30) Everyone does product marketing differently
(00:24:45) The 4 elements of product marketing
(00:27:50) Communication as a Product Marketing Manager
(00:34:10) Hiring the first Product Marketing Manager
(00:40:00) Marketing = planting seeds
(00:44:50) Martina's upcoming book, LOVED!
Martina on the internet:
Linkedin: @martinalauchengco
Twitter: @mavinmartina
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 12, 2021 • 18min
#43 Podcast tooling & product review: Descript
Following up on the previous episode, Christian and Alex share what podcasting tools they use and how the process of creating an episode works.
Next to that they followed up on their product review format and took a deeper look into the tool Descript.com.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro podcast tooling
01:55 - Anchor.fm for podcast distribution
02:00 - Zencastr.com for recording
03:35 - Adobe Audition for the raw cut
04:45 - Descript to finalize the episode
06:20 - Squarespace for our website
08:00 - Deep-dive into Descript functionality
16:45 - Rating Descript from 1 to 5 Descript
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 8, 2021 • 16min
#42 Starting a podcast as a Product Team 🥐
A while ago the Product Bakers have promised to talk about how they started the Product Bakery. In this episode, Alex and Christian share how they started this project and the processes they set up to manage themselves.
Next to that, they talk about how they interate on the podcast format based on the feedback they get from their community.
Table of content:
00:30 - Small talk
02:25 - Podcast Alex & Christian are listening to
05:50 - Product Bakery's problem statement
06:50 - From the idea to execution
09:20 - 2 team members with different skills
10:30 - Bias to action
11:55 - New formats & validating ideas
14:00 - Community feedback to improve the show
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 5, 2021 • 14min
#41 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part I
The product bakers decided to talk about coaching product managers & designers as a leader over two episodes. In this episode, Christian interviews Alex to talk about his experience of being a manager and coach at the same time.
Alex shares his point of view of the thin line between managing people and working toward business goals vs. coaching, leading, and empowering people.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Christian
01:15 - Coaching & managing people
04:00 - Different types of employees (designers)
05:35 - Coaching vs. managing
08:30 - Radical candor to help people improving
11:45 - Asking the right (non-leading) questions
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 1, 2021 • 43min
#40 Case study: Optimizing churn for a product at scale - with Mathias Kluge
This is the first case study where the Product Bakers made a deep-dive into a real-world project with Product Lead Mathias Kluge. Mathias shared how he and his team identified churn reasons and the process of finding solutions.
Besides reducing churn by over 40%, Mathias faced also many challenges and made a lot of learnings which are shares in this episode.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Mathias Kluge (Matze)
03:05 - From Product Design to Product Management
03:55 - When to start looking at churn
06:35 - Defining, gathering, and analyzing data
11:25 - Creating hypothesis with your team
15:15 - Best practices to analyze churn
17:50 - Defining success metrics & KPIs
23:30 - Preparing the backlog & the solution
24:45 - Prioritizing & negotiating
30:05 - Collaborating with Designers
37:35 - Explaining problems not solutions
38:55 - Mathias’ key learnings
41:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Mathias online:
Linkedin: @matkluge
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Mar 29, 2021 • 15min
#39 Starting a new leadership position
Christian was curious and asked Alex what the key things are he takes care of in his first days as a fresh leader joining a new company. They touched upon the topic of strategy, tooling, and getting to know the leadership team and staff.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Christian
01:40 - What to look at when you apply for a new leadership role
04:30 - Getting to know the leadership team & your staff
07:00 - Reviewing the strategy & understanding decisions
10:05 - Alining on tools
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Mar 25, 2021 • 38min
#38 Climbing the confidence ladder with Lean UX - with Josh Seiden, Consultant & Author
Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, and author. He started his career in the early 90s. Since then a lot of things have changed. That's why Josh decided to write and share his experience, and latest observations in amazing books such as "Lean UX" or "Outcomes over Output."
In this episode, Josh discusses with the Product Bakers everything about Lean UX and how to work with hypotheses and problem statements. They've also touched upon the topic of lean experimentation to validate ideas as quickly as possible.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro Josh Seiden
03:30 - The change of Lean UX
04:30 - Making product & design teams work
06:25 - The notion of design thinking
08:25 - Defining good problem statements
11:40 - Defining good hypotheses
16:05 - Finding problems & defining success criteria
19:10 - Josh's definition of an MVP
25:20 - Perfectionism kills success
28:35 - Experimenting instead of solutionizing
30:35 - Josh's biggest learning with Lean UX
33:30 - Debrief Christian & Alex
Follow Josh:
Josh's Masterclass: Online masterclass outcomes for product teams
Josh's books: Lean UX, Outcomes over Output
Medium: @jseiden
Linkedin: @jseiden
Twitter: @jseiden
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Mar 22, 2021 • 13min
#37 Don’t prioritize… say NO!
This week Alex picked up the topic of prioritizing and saying no to stakeholders and customers. Christian explains in this episode where to start before you make a decision (saying no) and how to say no in the right way.
Table of content:
00:30 - Intro by Alex
03:10 - Self-awareness and doing your homework first
05:20 - Prioritizing against OKRs & company goals
07:15 - Balancing operational and research work
12:00 - Explain why you say no to people
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/