An interview with Paul Meinshausen. Paul is the co-founder of Aampe, a startup that uses automated, rapid learning to personalise notifications and drive customer engagement. Paul started out in academia before doing a tour in Afghanistan and using data where the stakes couldn't be higher. He then went on to found and invest in multiple startups. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Aampe, the problems they're trying to solve, and the importance of sticking to solving those problems and not getting bogged down building stuff that's already a commodity Whether the company is at product/market fit stage or whether product/market fit is even a thing as far as they're concerned How we need to step away from mobile notifications being a marketing channel, rather a proactive UI and entry point to apps The impact of Big Tech privacy controls on mobile technology, the impact on engagement, and whether it's a threat or an opportunity The journey from academia to multiple entrepreneur, and whether it's unfair to label data scientists as primarily academic with no business sense Some of the ways data scientists can build those business muscles and make sure they are solving real problems in a meaningful way How a tour in Afghanistan shook Paul out of his academic mindset and made him realise that this stuff needs to work in the real world Why it's critically important not to just have data, but to know where it comes from and truly understand how it's feeding your models and algorithms The impact of bad data on your business and how you need to be hypervigilant to make sure you're not caught napping Check out Aampe If you want to find out more about Paul's company, check out aampe.com. Contact Paul You can catch up with Paul on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Ramli John. Ramli is the Managing Director of ProductLed, the Robin to Wes Bush's Batman, and the author of "Product-Led Onboarding", a book that aims to shine a light on getting users to value sooner and ensuring you retain them long term. We speak about a lot, including: The mission behind ProductLed, and how the pandemic has really focused people's minds on ensuring their tools are seen as valuable What the Managing Director of ProductLed does, and whether he's really the Robin to Wes Bush's Batman How Ramli went from studying mathematics & being an analyst for a massive FMCG company into marketing & product-led growth, and why it excites him so much Why we needed a new book dedicated to Product-Led onboarding given that it was covered in Wes's book originally, and what publishers said when they pitched it Why he put his personal email address in the front and back of the book for queries, and how much spam he's received since he did that The importance of first impressions when it comes to product onboarding, and ensuring quick time to value to drive retention Who owns product-led onboarding, whether it matters, and the importance of true cross-functional teams Why product-led onboarding is more about free trials and guides, and more to do with an obsessive focus on user success, and why you need to define what that "success" really is The EUREKA framework the book proposes to help you establish your onboarding team, understand, refine and analyse (and whether he came up with it in the bath) How time to value can actually be too short and some of the things you can do about this Whether product-led growth is truly anything new, or just a buzzword to sell attractive yellow books And much more! Buy Product-Led Onboarding "Just like dating, your company's growth depends on first impressions. If their first date with your product is anything but silky-smooth, you risk losing out to the competition. Add to that a few, unfairly poor reviews and you’ll be more than just stuck. In this book, you’ll learn the simple 6-step strategy used by giants like Mixpanel, Ubisoft, and Outsystems that will get you more loyal clients in a fraction of the time."   Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Ramli You can contact Ramli on Twitter, LinkedIn or productled.com. More from ProductLed If you want to hear Wes Bush's interview on this very podcast, why not check out Wes Bush's interview on this very podcast?

An interview with Abisoye Falabi. Abisoye is a passionate technologist, community builder and educator who is currently Senior Product Manager at TradeDepot, a Nigerian commerce and fintech platform. We talk about a lot, including: His work with TradeDepot, the problems they solve and their plans to go pan-African Some of the challenges of moving across borders into new territories and how this affects scaling How he started out in tech and moved to product management after seeing how developers were disconnected from customers & stakeholders His various roles spanning tech & product, and whether he agrees that having a CPTO is good or not Why it's important for Africans to make software solutions for Africans, and how they have to be 100x better than established solutions Some of the challenges in building products for the African market, and how they might be addressed Some of the common mistakes VC firms make when investing in African tech, and some of the opportunities they are missing His passion for education, how he teaches to learn, and some of his work with community building and working on courses for Pluralsight And much more! Contact Abisoye You can reach out to Abisoye on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Teresa Torres, product discovery coach and author of 'Continuous Discovery Habits', discusses the benefits of continuous discovery, the importance of staying on top of shifting customer needs, and the challenges of conducting continuous discovery with different types of organizations.

An interview with John Zilch. John is Director of Product Management at Upland, adjunct professor at Providence College and founder of Launch Day, a new startup that's aiming to take the pain out of launching new products to market. We talk about a lot, including: The pros & cons of working as a platform product manager and integrating various product lines & features into a new platform When it's appropriate to replatform and when not, and whether a platform product manager gets a lot of customer contact John's journey into product management from a computer science background and how, like everyone, he kind of fell into it, and how analysts get more love than PMs How his dissatisfaction with the way software gets launched led him and a former colleague to build their own platform to make it better Why he's started teaching at Providence College, how teaching is the best way to learn, and how academia is a fertile ground for hiring the best talent What he thought of Marty Cagan's recent takedown of MBAs, why he's tired of everyone being against them, and what they're good for Why there's a problem with experimentation culture and why it shouldn't be a replacement for good customer discovery How's it's OK to do things that don't scale as long as you have a plan to make sure that it can scale in the future The problem with people concentrating on "Agile" as a method of delivery rather than a way to get close to customers And much more! Contact John You can check out the Launch Day website or connect with John on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Hubert Palan. Hubert is the founder and CEO of Productboard, a company that aims to put the customer at the heart of the product development process and help companies across the globe build truly excellent products. We talk about a lot, including: What Productboard does, how it differs from other platforms & how it tries to bring customers to the heart of product development How his studies & early product career made him realise how difficult it was to have evidence-based discussions with stakeholders, and how this led him to create Productboard How he still maintains strong ties to the Czech Republic, and how Productboard took advantage of being a big fish in a small pond there What it was like studying under Steve Blank, the inspiration for the Lean Startup, and some of the lessons Hubert learned there Whether his MBA helped him become an effective product manager or whether he had a lot to learn after graduating Some of his problems with Marty Cagan's recent article about MBAs, and why he thinks Marty got it wrong Some of the mistakes that product teams are making when making product development decisions, and how companies need to build up their product muscles How some founders stumble into product/market fit and why the Lean Startup is partly to blame Why founders are overrated, and how to step away from thinking you know it all & letting the company run without your input How to try to build a diverse & inclusive company, and some of the challenges that Productboard have faced And much more! Contact Hubert You can check out the Productboard website or connect with Hubert on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Chris Hull. Chris is a former 7th grade social studies teacher who grew dissatisfied with the tools he had to do his job and decided to create some of his own. He's now the CPO and founder of Otus, an all-in-one learning management, assessment and data system. We talk about a lot, including: The vision behind Otus and how a global pandemic has made everyone interested in online learning in a pandemic How someone goes from teaching into building a company, some of the ways he's learned to do it and some of the mistakes he's made The different types of stakeholders he has to deal with across education, and how he balances the needs of all of them The pros & cons of interviewing kids for UX interviews, and how they're both the best and worst people to ask for feedback Whether there are any challenges selling into schools, and whether they're as stuck in the past as they appear Bringing agile principles to learning and importance of empiricism and constant learning How he's set up the teams to deliver value across his product lines and how the film Ratatouille inspired his ideation process The importance of setting a vision then stepping back & ensuring the teams have autonomy How teaching kids has primed him for the stresses & strains of foundership & leadership, and whether kids are harder work than adults Whether he's instinctive or data driven, how to step away from your biases, and when it makes sense to go with your gut The importance of focus, picking your bets and how "priority" has been, and should remain, singular And much more! Contact Chris If you want to catch up with Chris, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter or check out his company Otus

An interview with Korbinian Spann. Korbinian started out doing a PhD in Semitic Languages before working in retail and realising he had no way to collate customer feedback. This led him to start building his own solution not once but three times, eventually leading to his own startup and taking data-driven product development to the world. We talk about a lot, including: How he started out as an intrapreneur with a problem, how he solved it, and how it sparked an idea for his own startup How had to rebuild the same product 3 times, and the importance of forgetting everything and starting from scratch where needed How he's always had a problem solving mind and product management perspective even though he's not a product manager His passion for data-driven product development and how he's attempting to shift the paradigm Some of the challenges in landing data-science backed products with traditional companies that seek certainty Why customer centricity has to be data driven, and why we shouldn't just rely on gut feel to make decisions Whether AI / ML is just good for pitch decks and whether riding the hype is a good thing or not The importance of using the right tech, not just the latest greatest thing, and steering clear of buzzwords How data annotation is the dirty secret of AI backed startups, and how much human effort there really is The importance of ethics and data privacy in AI and how his company are trying to stay on the right side of history And much more! Contact Korbinian If you want to catch up with Korbinian, you can reach him on LinkedIn or check out his company Insaas.ai

An interview with Henry Latham. Henry started out studying Spanish & Portuguese before having an epiphany and moving into foundership and product management. Disappointed with the applicability of some of the education materials out there, and reeling from being fired by a dysfunctional product company, he decided to double down and build an education programme to really help people move the needle and build products effectively. We talk about a lot, including: How dissatisfaction with all the standard product content out there drove him to start Prod MBA, and how it differs from other more established product schools Details of the Prod MBA approach and how they get you from defining a vision and building a releasable product in 8 weeks How to land product thinking with people that aren't necessarily from a product background and have a more traditional view of business How to sell the concept of business risk to traditional stakeholders and get comfortable with risk yourself How getting fired from a product job opened his eyes and led him to inspire better product managers in the future The importance of getting out of negative thought patterns & not accepting your fate but actually working to make it better How to help people to move the needle in dysfunctional companies and making your own moves to demonstrate the value of product thinking Why he wrote his two books "Why Your Startup is Failing" and "Product Leadership Starts With You", some of the key themes, and how they'll help you be a better founder & build better products Some of the problems he has with agile frameworks, specifically Scrum, what his alternative is and whether it's Scrum Inc's job to fix it And much more! Check out Prod MBA If you like the sound of Henry's product training programme, check out the Prod MBA website for more details. Buy Henry's books Henry has two books: "You want your product to succeed. Yet considering nearly 90% of products fail, how can you ensure that you are part of the 10% that actually succeed?"   Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. "Despite what many aspiring product leaders may think, being an effective product leader is not about using the right frameworks, the right methodologies or delivering features quickly. Instead, it's about something entirely different: Building a strong foundation for product success that starts with you."   Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Henry If you want to catch up with Henry, you can reach him on LinkedIn.

An interview with Emily Tate. Emily is the Managing Director of Mind the Product, the world's leading product management community. Emily started out in marketing, before moving into product management at an aviation company and then onto Mind the Product via a serendipitous sequence of events. She's passionate about product and claims to be able to talk about it all day long! We talk about a lot, including: What the Managing Director of Mind the Product is up to these days and some of the exciting plans as we get out of the pandemic How she got started in marketing, then product, then marketing, then product, and what made her settle into product management in the end The challenges of being product manager for a technical product, and whether you need to be technical to be a product manager Whether it's fair for employers to expect product managers to have deep subject matter expertise or whether being a good product manager is enough Whether there's a right way to "do product", the different types of product manager, and the importance of not judging yourself on your weakest skills The futility of trying to hire unicorn product managers, and making sure you hire the right product managers for the right products Whether the wealth of aspirational content out there is setting too high a bar for product managers What to do when you're working for a company that doesn't do product management well, and how to sell yourself into the next company when you know you weren't doing everything by the book Some of the warning signs & red flags you should watch out for when applying for a product management job The pros and cons of with fortune cookie influencer advice, and making peace with the intentions behind it And much more! Get more from Mind the Product If you want to hear more about the Mind the Product origin story, check out this episode with Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and CEO of ProdPad. Contact Emily If you want to catch up with Emily, you can reach her on LinkedIn or Twitter.