An interview with Wes Bush. Wes is the founder of ProductLed, a company aiming to teach the world how to build products that sell themselves. He's also the author of the book "Product-Led Growth". We speak about a lot, including: How a career in B2B SaaS working in demand generation started to make him suspect that there was another way to generate demand How his passion for simplifying led him to start simplifying product onboarding to allows users to get to value sooner The problems of moving from sales-led to product-led when you haven't spent any time on your product's UX The problems of enterprise "whale hunting" leading to products that are overcomplicated and difficult to use How a desire to get to the heart of the problem, and teach his clients, led to writing a leading book on product-led growth Whether salespeople should feel threatened by product-led growth, or whether it's an opportunity for them How product-led growth affects the marketing team and whether it's the end of traditional marketing Whether some companies are just not ready to become product-led, and some of the reasons it doesn't make sense to be so How companies know when it's time to transition from sales-led to product-led, and the first steps to take Whether there are some types of companies that actually want to be sold to and would resist product-led approaches And much more! Buy Product-Led Growth "Discover the fundamentals of Product-Led Growth and how you can turn your product into a growth engine, widen your funnel, and dominate your market while cutting your customer acquisition costs."   Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Wes You can contact Wes on Twitter, LinkedIn or productled.com.

An interview with Stephanie Leue. Stephanie is a product leadership coach, and became CPO of MindEx since our interview. Previously she worked in a variety of roles after starting out at PayPal after being coached by Marty Cagan. We talk about a lot, including: Her leadership coaching, being an invisible companion and sparring partner How she tries to set people up to not need her services, rather than continuously coaching them forever Her passion for hypergrowth startups, and the difference between a startup and an unsuccessful small company How a workshop with Marty Cagan left her realising that she had been a product manager all along How PayPal was a launchpad for her career, and some surprising information about their waterfall practices when she joined The challenges in transforming companies from waterfall to an agile product organisation How product managers might not be able to change the entire organisation but that their mindset is still key to drive transformation Whether lack of product thinking is the preserve of big companies alone, or if small startups can show the same behaviours The importance of making conscious decisions about the type of company you are - marketing-led, sales-led or product-led How she's not always been a good boss, thought she used to be terrible, and how she's using that to teach others to be better The impact of holding back too long and not making timely decisions And much more! Contact Stephanie You can reach out to Stephanie on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Kim Scott, author of "Radical Candor" and "Just Work". Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. Earlier in her career Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. We speak about a lot, including: How she's already getting feedback on the book, not just complements, but people taking action based on it Whether she's got any negative feedback from the types of people who complain about political correctness How she knew she was onto something when her dad's friends had a lightbulb moment discussing the book How she felt revisiting painful experiences from her past, and whether this was a positive or negative experience for her Whether strategic swearing in books is a positive or negative when trying to land a message How she got feedback from a black female executive that being radically candid doesn't work for everyone, and how this spurred her to write her new book Whether she felt she was an imperfect messenger for the themes in this book given that she is herself privileged How we all used biased language, how words matter and why it's important that we all work on it How to point out people's biased, prejudiced and bullying behaviour without getting their defences up and shutting you down How to be an upstander not a bystander, and building this into the culture of your company What to do when the problems in your company are systemic, from the CEO downwards, and the importance of checks and balances Buy Kim's books "We―all of us―consistently exclude, underestimate, and underutilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate, and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business. Just Work is the solution." Just Work   "Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn't shy away from criticism ― to help you love your work *and* the people you work with." Radical Candor   Get in touch with Kim You can check out Kim's work on the Just Work website, or follow her on Twitter.

An interview with Polina Marchenko. Polina is a self-described geekette, product leader and multiple startup founder. Polina saw the dark side of startup life in Berlin, suffering burnout due to the intense hustle culture. She has since moved to the US, and is now focusing her efforts on her new startup whilst ensuring that she does it in a sustainable manner. We talk about a lot, including: How she developed a passion for entrepreneurship from an early age and through higher education What it was like being a junior PM at a startup and whether it helped her build her hard skills Her struggles with hustle culture, unrealistic expectations and inevitable burn out How she used the lessons from her first startup to make sure she didn't make the same mistakes again How she accidentally moved to Silicon Valley and ended up in a hacker house with 14 other hustling entrepreneurs The problems with hustle culture and why she's actively trying to get her friends to step out of it How a passion for community building and desire to connect led her to create 3 new startups in a pandemic How she used her past startup experience to decide it was time to park a couple of startup ideas and concentrate on one How she's helping people unleash their potential, fight imposter syndrome, and how important this is to her values Try SIDE PRJCT "Resumes are overrated, show me what you've built" Check out the SIDE PRJCT website. Contact Polina You can reach out to Polina on LinkedIn.

About the Episode An interview with Nacho Bassino. Nacho is CPO for Best Day Travel Group and the author of new book "Product Direction", which is a practical playbook for product strategy. Nacho is a passionate supporter of the Latin American product community, and host of a Spanish-language product podcast. We speak about a lot, including: How writing a book is a great way to really learn about the topic you're writing about Transitioning from project-led to product-led, how to do it at scale and manage complicated dependencies without SAFe What it's like interviewing holidaymakers, and how you can always get a captive focus group when you need one Gathering insights to help define product strategy, reducing them and synthesising them into the iniatives that matter The importance for product teams of building for the future and not concentrating on short term thinking Important principles for building an effective roadmap to support the product vision Driving alignment with multiple stakeholders and avoiding an information gap How to avoid OKRs becoming just a big "to do" list via peer review and collaboration The importance of investing in and providing local language content for the Latin American product community Buy Nacho's Book Nacho's book, "Product Direction" is available in all the usual places. Check it out! Product Direction website. Conversaciones de Producto If you speak Spanish, why not try Nacho's podcast Conversaciones de Producto. Contact Nacho You can reach out to Nacho on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Nis Frome. Nis is the co-founder and VP of Product at Feedback Loop, an agile research platform. Nis took over as VP of Product after wearing many other hats. He's also a mentor and podcaster, with a keen interest in sharing with the community and helping to inspire other product managers with thought leadership. We talk about a lot, including: What made him go into entrepreneurship straight out of college Why he took over the product function and whether it was a classic case of executive swoop in How real world product management can differ so much from what's in the books How to avoid getting depressed if everything's not like the books on day one How to land the message about good product management practices with execs who haven't read said books Whether a product manager on the ground can fix a poorly performing organisation on their own The importance of connecting the dots and understanding how a product manager's decisions drive outcomes How different people and teams in a company can be on different parts of the product maturity curve and whether this matters Effectively segmenting your customers and working out how to prioritise when their needs are different And much more! Listen to Nis's podcast It's ok, we can have an open relationship. Check out Nis's podcast This is Product Management. Contact Nis You can reach out to Nis on LinkedIn or Twitter.

About the Episode An interview with Gibson Biddle. Gib is the former VP of Product Management at Netflix, and former CPO of Chegg. Nowadays, he's a coach and teacher who gave 140 talks over the last year. He's also recently started a mailing list, "Ask Gib" where he answers some of the top voted questions every week. We understandably speak about a lot, including: His new newsletter "Ask Gib", and why you should subscribe to it Whether he's gotten any difficult questions he couldn't answer How he manages to do 140 events and how he optimises the format How to make an impact in your first 90 days as a product leader The importance of moving quickly to make an impact, and striking whilst the iron is hot What to do if you aren't passionate about the company you work for, and when to leave How to handle M&A as part of your product strategy & why not to worry about the valuation The pros & cons of using different frameworks to teach product leadership practices Treating yourself as a product, and experimenting with your career choices to help build your intuition and business maturity The importance of taking risks, both for mature businesses as well as in your career Whether Gib could have saved Blockbuster, why he thinks they ultimately failed, and how the Innovator's Dilemma loomed large And much more! Sign up to Ask Gib Gib answers the most upvoted questions once a week on his newsletter, Ask Gib. Sign up here and never be bereft of content again. Please rate Gib's interview Gib loves NPS and uses it to optimise his content and make sure he can continue to improve it and excite his audience. Please take a second to rate his interview! Contact Gib You can contact Gib on Twitter, LinkedIn or gibsonbiddle.com.

An interview with Nichole DeMeré. Nichole is CMO at Reeview, a new eCommerce video review platform, as well as Taggg, a calendar scheduling solution. Nichole is a passionate growth marketer, consultant, community builder and mentor. We talk about a lot, including: The story behind Reeview, how they're looking to revolutionise eCommerce, and some of the early traction they're getting Why Nichole prefers working with early stage start ups and getting in on the ground floor, and thriving in chaos The difference between growth hacking techniques & general marketing, and which strategies & tactics to use How businesses seeking growth need to get ready to experiment and test their most important hypotheses The importance of having both qualitative and quantitative data, and their preference for having conversations with people Why it's important to focus your growth strategy and not try to hit too many channels at once Whether Nichole is up with all the new trends in tech or their own worst nightmare when it comes to marketing The importance of mentorship and paying it forward and their advice for the next generation of SaaS marketers How someone starts out in a one horse town and takes over the world of B2B Marketing More about Reeview You can find out about Reeview on Reeview's website or Reeview @ Product Hunt. Contact Nichole You can find Nichole everywhere. A few places included Product Hunt, LinkedIn, Twitter or their own website nicholeelizabethdemere.com

An interview with Paul Ortchanian. Paul worked for many years in Silicon Valley before moving back to Montreal. He got bored of working for a services firm there and decided to take his SV experience into his own startup, Bain Public, aiming to foster Product Hygiene in Canadian firms and beyond. We talk about a lot, including: How a lack of product thinking in Montreal and experience in Silicon Valley led him to create a consultancy to fix it How his great experience in Silicon Valley and imbibing the product culture there was an advantage The challenge of "Moses syndrome" from CEOs who think they're the second coming because they have secured funding The trouble with traditional startup mentors not coming from digital backgrounds How and why they invented the SOAP methodology to help Product Managers understand what they should be working on and when Some of the troubles that mixed mode product / service companies have How to arm yourself against short term thinking and sales-led feature development The importance of using data to justify your product decisions The importance of being able to handle rejection and people saying no How to take control of the discussion with sales & marketing and not just blame them And much more! Bain Public If you want to find out more about Paul's company, you can check out the Bain Public website and find out more about the SOAP methodology. Contact Paul You can connect with Paul on LinkedIn.

An interview with Emily Reid. Emily is a Product Manager for FCT, a Canadian insurance company, as well as consulting for AgeRate, a healthtech startup. Emily is passionate about demystifying data and is leading FCT's charge towards being a data-driven, API-enabled company. We talk about a lot, including: The most important question - is it "this data" or "these data"? The pros & cons of working for a big, established firm and the imperative to move to a more agile mindset Why she moved from banking into product management, and the misogynistic attitudes she was trying to get away from How she skilled up in product management hard skills, as well as data science fundamentals The importance of embracing not being the smartest person in the room How a background in biotech at uni helped her really explain complicated concepts The importance of picking good product metrics & why you need stats knowledge to be an effective PM How data science isn't the be all and end all, how to factor failure into the process, and why we might see a new breed of data science specialist product managers Why unsolicited internet advice is never welcome and people should just stop How she has been judged and patronised as a young, up and coming, blonde woman in technology And much more!