Product Innovation Series with Aram Melkoumov

Highlights:- How to approach experimentation and develop a mindset of experimentation- Assessing and testing product ideas- Transitioning into product management and how it influences your perspectiveAbout Pansy: Pansy is a product leader at Clearco (formerly Clearbanc), where she is responsible for building new products and services to help founders succeed.Before Clearco, Pansy was the Director of Product and Design at MLSE Digital Labs, as well as holding product leadership roles at companies like Intuit and RL Solutions.

Highlights: - How did Navya and her team survived when the world shut down during COVID- How to be adaptable product leader- Horizontal vs vertical SaaS: how does it work- How to show ROI as a product leaderAbout Navya Navya is the Chief Product Officer at Peek.com, responsible for scaling the platform known as the “Shopify for the $1 trillion experiences market". Peek.com helps consumers book fun activities (such as boat rentals and cooking classes).Prior to Peek, she built new business lines at StyleSeat, the world’s largest marketplace for beauty services that has fueled billions of dollars in beauty services. She has also managed large-scale products at Uber, Disney and Goldman Sachs.

Key talking points:What is product-led growthHow product led growth differs from other growth models in terms of product developmentWhy and how Charlie.ai team switched to product led growthMistakes to avoid with product-led growth About the speakersSandy MangatSandy is currently VP Growth & Marketing at Charli AI. She is a senior product marketing and growth leader with experience in B2B technology startups and scaleups. She’s spent the last 6+ years focused on Product Marketing, Go-To-Market strategy, and Growth at software startups and more established organizations like GE Digital. At Charli AI, her role sits at the intersection of strategy, creativity, data, and product to drive the Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategy forward. When not doing her day job, you can find her brainstorming business ideas, devouring pop culture and tech news, or listening to a comedy podcast.Joel EmeryJoel is the Chief Product Officer at Charli AI. He has over 27 years of experience in the software industry, and brings broad expertise in product development, product management, business development, and sales. Joel brings a global perspective to building technology businesses having spent a significant portion of his career holding senior management roles covering Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. At Charli AI, his main focus is to leverage Product Led Growth (PLG) best practices to ensure the gap between the company’s vision and the user’s perceived value of the product is as small as possible. 

Hackathons are not just for engineers. In fact it’s better if they are not. Shopify did a hackathon soon after the lockdown to encourage everyone to find ideas and improve working digitally with each other. That’s how you get lots of innovative ideas that come from anyone, not just engineers. That’s an innovative culture. Highlights:- What does the innovation culture look like at Shopify- Where does Anusha look for new innovative ideas- How Shopfiy prioritizes the best decisions regardless of where they come from- How Anusha evaluates and sets KPI’s for her teamAbout AnushaAnusha Shanmugarajah is a Director of Product at Shopify. She leads the internationally distributed Growth R&D team focusing on building products which engage and nurture entrepreneurs. Prior to Shopify, she led Product Excellence at Global Payments, one of the top payment processors in the world, and held previous roles in Innovation and Strategic Alliances at BlackBerry. Anusha lives in Toronto with her family, and is usually found enjoying a cup of green tea.

Key talking points: - What every new PM has to do first thing after they join Gong- Advice on hiring rockstar PMs- What is Gong’s product team is doing better than their competition- How Eilon prioritizes what to focus on as a CPO of a #1 sales tool in B2B- How to empower product managers to lead and build great productsAbout Eilon:Eilon Reshef is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Gong.io, a SaaS solution that "understands" sales conversations and provides organizations with visibility into what works and what doesn't in sales and customer success. Before Gong, Eilon was one of the founders of Webcollage, a venture-backed SaaS in the e-commerce infrastructure. Eilon is a seasoned entrepreneur, executive, investor, and product leader and we are all excited to chat with him today. 

About Aziz Kara:Aziz is a mobile product development expert, with over 15 years of combined product management experience working with Loblaws Digital, Pivotal Labs, Xtreme Labs and TELUS.Jiffy is a marketplace for home improvements and maintenance, with customers on one side and service providers on the other. The Jiffy app connects homeowners in need to their specified trade professional, creates a platform for users to discuss job requirements, and finally oversees payment of services.

About Bobbie Shrivastav:Bobbie has been in the technology field since 2004 and specializes in digital transformation, process optimization and re-engineering. In the past, her focus has been on coaching teams and managing large enterprise-level initiatives to deliver innovative products and solutions in the marketplace.

Highlights:- Difference between delivery & discovery- How to generate buy-in from stakeholders from an individual contributor and product leadership perspective.- Questions to ask during product retros - Tactics for recruiting candidates for product discovery experiments   About Teresa:Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed product discovery coach, blogger, and author. She has taught over 7,000 product people discovery skills through the Product Talk Academy and is the author of the book Continuous Discovery Habits and blogs at ProductTalk.org.She has helped digital product teams from around the world adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing. Some of her recent clients include Allstate, CarMax, CapitalOne, Snagajob, and Spotify.

Conversation highlights:- What aspects matter in product experimentation - How do you measure results- How experiments data dictates your product roadmap- How do you demonstrate ROI in your roleAbout Saket: Saket Toshniwal is a Vice President of Revenue & Monetisation @Actio, the free live coaching app in fitness, yoga, meditation, self-care. Previously he was the Head of Growth and Product Marketing at LOVOO GmbH, a social entertainment app with millions of users where he focuses on Product Monetization, CRM, Retention, Product Marketing and Growth. Saket also founded two companies, Advisor.Work and Meralight.When not at his desk, Saket likes playing squash, listening to Podcasts, and working on his new book.