Category: Blog

Working in Product, Product People are *always* on the search for resources they can use in their jobs, careers, and as they make products that people want to buy and use. However, what are the *good* resources? In this article, six Product People share their favorite resources.

We asked six people, who are either working in an organization in the product function, founders building products, or learning to build products.

We asked the following Product People three questions:

1. Who they are and what they do
2. What Product(s) they have worked on/ built
3. Five of their favorite resources and why

Product People share their favorite resources

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Zoe Chew

Hi Zoe, tell us who you are and what you do.

Hi, I’m Zoe Chew, a product builder in tech and design. Currently, I lead Product & Growth strategy at RemoteHQ.

A remote collaboration workspace based in Boston. I mainly run product strategy, hypothesis testing, analytics, and user acquisition.

I also consulted US/APAC tech startups in product communication & user base discovery. Learn more about me here.

What Products you have worked on/built?

• I Lazy to Read #1 on Product Hunt, Lifehacker & tech blogs in 7 countries.
• Food delivery marketplace prototype with Elementor and Airtable.
• Landing Page MVP.
• Habit Tracker Notion template.
• Personal finance tracker Notion template.

What are your favorite resources (and why):

1. First, First Round Review blog. Covers product strategy, go-to-market strategy for early-stage companies.
2. ProductPlan blog. Covers everything I need about product management, prioritization & road mapping.
3. Product Hunt. Discover new product that can inspire new product ideas.
4. Twitter. Not really a resource but a platform where I hang out a lot to learn about MVP, idea validation, product design, prototyping.
5. Medium. A lot of great articles about product monetization, product analytics, growth hacking & product marketing.

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Product Person #2 shares their favorite resources

Sergio Mattei

Hi Sergio, tell us who you are and what you do.

Hi, I’m Sergio Mattei, an entrepreneur and student. I have a passion for creating products people love.

What Products you have worked on/built?

I’m the founder of GetMakerlog.com, a community of 4,000+ indie hackers CoWork.to, a startup currently pivoting/WIP.

What are your favorite resources (and why):

1. First, Twitter and Facebook (marketing and community outreach) Twitter is your number one tool for organic growth and marketing. This can also serve as a placeholder for the community site where your niche hangs out. Build strong connections there, grow your influence, and you can build a community from your product.
2. Indie Hackers (like-minded people) If you’re an indie hacker, IH is a great resource where you can ask questions and see other journeys to profitability.
3. GetMakerlog.com (productivity and like-minded people Makerlog is, shameless plug, the best community out there for product creators. Ask questions, share your product, and interact with other like-minded creators. We’re very supportive and friendly!
4. The Lean Startup and customer discovery books Reading into the LS method and some books on value proposition building can be amazing tools. Many mistake value propositions as features when they are not. Discovering what value we can provide is a very important thing, and the first step to creating a successful product.
5. Books on health and self-discovery. Your entrepreneurial journey is also one of self-discovery and self-building. Many mistake it for an endless grind; it is, in some ways. But we can’t forget that we are human. Remember your health, learn a lot, and take breaks often. Don’t burn yourself out!

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Product Person #3 shares their favorite resources

Manosai Eerabathini

Hi Manosai, tell us who you are and what you do.

Hi, I’m a PM at Google — based out of the Cambridge office.

Before Google, I built music tech and enterprise email products at Vevo and Microsoft. I love new product development and working on 0 to 1 projects, whether enterprise or consumer-focused. In my spare time, I love to travel and play basketball

What Products you have worked on/built?

Exchange ActiveSync (mail sync protocol for Microsoft enterprise/consumer email), client apps for music video streaming/live streaming while at Vevo (iOS, Android, TV, web), enterprise marketing software at Google

What are your favorite resources (and why):

1. First, the 1:1. I am a firm believer that 1:1 in-person or video conference meetings are a great method of communication. There is so much room for misinterpretation and not assuming positive intent in written forms of communication. Moreover, there is nuance in tone, context, style, etc. that simply cannot be conveyed fully. Whenever you find yourself in a frustrating situation or struggling to understand how to “get through” to someone see if you can reach out and broker a private conversation. You’d be surprised how effective it can be to just hear directly from someone through spoken words.
2. Peer mentor. Learning from peers is an invaluable resource no matter where you are in your PM career journey. It’s great to have strong managers and leaders to support you. But it’s also critical to have a safe space with someone you look to more as a peer. Someone you can bounce your ideas and thoughts around with, in a way that you both are learning from each other. This peer “mentor” doesn’t have to be so formal. It can literally be other PMs on your team, or in different spaces. But the key is that it’s someone who can empathize with being in your shoes, and someone that you can be vulnerable around.
3. Worst fears empathy. This isn’t as much a resource as a best practice. Learn how to understand what people’s worst fears are. I’ve found building empathy in this way is extremely durable. Knowing what someone is working to avoid is as important as understanding what motivates them. You’ll find yourself unknowingly being more empathetic once you have identified this. How do you identify it? I’ve sometimes found the best way to do so is to just ask: “what’s the worst-case scenario you want to avoid on this launch? what’s your biggest concern? etc.

More resources

4. Back to basics (PM 101). Even when I’m not actively recruiting, I do like to brush up and stay on top of my “fundamentals.” Sometimes this may mean picking up Cracking the PM and going through some chapters on common frameworks, hacking on a side project, or writing some queries to dive deeper into my data. There’s no single answer. But the key is to tap into the basics of product management, what we could otherwise refer to as the theory. Why is this important? This change in perspective to go back to the books can bring new insight into whatever product/feature you are otherwise obsessing over.
5. Twitter. There are many, many smart product individuals active on Twitter. It’s invaluable to follow them and just have a pulse on the ground. Even better, these active communities are a space where you can exercise having strong opinions, loosely held. However, don’t be afraid to share your own thoughts, analysis, opinions and join the conversation. That’s the best way you will learn. I don’t have a particular list that I recommend so here are a few to get started:
• 11 Twitter Users Product Managers Should Follow
• Twitter list
• Learn PM with Me

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Product Person #4 shares their favorite resources

James Kenny

Hi James, tell us who you are and what you do.

I craft software and build products. With a love of coffee and some photography thrown in. I also blog at serversncode.com

What Products you have worked on/built?

Currently, I split my time between working on my own products and helping other people build their own.

Some of my Products (so far).

These are some of the products I have taken from an idea into customer discovery, built and launched on the internet over the years.

1. Extractorapp.com – Now shut down. This was a product I built for converting datasets from one format to another. It would take a CSV of products and convert it into a Shopify import file. It was fully automated once you had created a mapping. You just uploaded or emailed the file into it and it would send you back the formatted file ready for upload.
2. Cloudstatus.eu – Gives you notifications of cloud outages on the infrastructure we use to build things on the internet and delivers an alert to your inbox or slack channel. It lets you subscribe to different providers and services all from the same place.
3. Contentr.app – This is my latest product. It’s a content marketing tool for your social media accounts. It allows you to automate posting, auto-generate postings based on your content. It creates an auto-schedule so you can share the same content at multiple times with different texts, all this can be triggered by just publishing a new blog post.

What Products you have worked on/built?

My Essential Tools

1. Pen and Paper – It’s the ultimate tool. I can really get some clarity around an idea just by writing it down into my notebook. I can try different takes, work out different user flows really easily. If it doesn’t feel right on paper I can just try something else.
2. Notion – I use notion for a lot of my notes and ideas. I like to take those ideas that I had worked out on paper and then putting them into notion lets me record them so I can find them later. There is a lot of power in working through something on paper or notion, you can see other ideas or opportunities that you never thought existed.
3. Trello – I have always loved the ease of a Kanban board, I’ve used it to help organize myself and my team so many times over the years. I use Trello for most of my projects now. It’s a great way to keep everything in line.
4. Sizzy – This one is the newest entry into my toolset but it is a truly awesome tool. It’s a browser for web development. It allows me to view a web site, web app through multiple devices at the same time. I can test across devices so much easier now. It saves me time but also shows me how a product works on any kind of device.

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Product Person #5 shares their favorite resources

Mohd Danish

Hi Mohd, tell us who you are and what you do.

Hi, 👋 I’m Mohd Danish, a 26-year-old Product Person from India. I graduated with a master’s degree in Computer Science from Aligarh Muslim University.

Right after I graduated, I was very blessed to land myself a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) position at a startup in the co-working space industry. I always wanted to build my own company of one and I was getting bored with repetitive work in Office.

Therefore, I decided to quit my role as CTO. My friends advised me to stay employed for at least one year for experience otherwise it will be hard to get a new job. I trusted my gut and followed my voice and after 10 months into the role, I quit my first job.

Finally, from there I started nomadic life inspired by some other indie makers from the internet and started to solve problems with web products.

What Products you have worked on/built?

I built 9 products in 2019 and you can find them here here. One of my recent products Public APIS got acquired by a large company and I was able to successfully exit.

On Jan 12, 2020 I launched my 10th & first SAAS project called NoCodeAPI for NoCode & Front-end developers. I plan make NoCodeAPI profitable. To learn more and follow along stay tuned here.

What are your favorite resources (and why):

1. Google – for every problem or solution try it first rather than asking someone. Because it will teach you how to struggle.
2. Get Makerlog – An online community to chat with other people also building products.
3. Product Hunt – for sharing your products with millions of users
4. Dev.to – I love the writing experience in markdown.
5. Netify – For hosting your MVP for free until you get millions of pageviews.
6. Twitter – for connecting with people and learn from their tweets.
7. API Coding – A website I built previously to learn about and share information on API’s.

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Product Person #6 shares their favorite resources

Fabio Rosado

Hi Fabio, tell us who you are and what you do.


Hello, My name is Fabio Rosado and I’m from Portugal, but I have been living in the UK for the last 7 years. I work as a flight attendant and would love to transition as a Product Person/ software engineer. I’ve been learning to build products in my free time for the last 3 years. I enjoy learning new things, reading books and contributing to open source.

What Products you have worked on/built?

The biggest product I have worked on is opsdroid, an open-source project created by Jacob Tomlinson. Opsdroid is a chatops bot and a python alternative for hubot. After contributing steadily to opsdroid, Jacob has invited me to become a maintainer for the project and I have been a maintainer for the last year and a bit.

Since I am learning the ins and outs of code, I tend to jump from project to project, a lot of times leaving them uncompleted. I got two projects that I am quite happy with. One is Find Communities Today, which is a listing of communities on slack, discord, telegram, etc. I have created this project so I could dig deeper into React and Gatsby. Working on Find Communities Today has been a great learning experience.

The other project I have created was meant to help folks that are starting the #100DaysOfCode and is called #100daysof.. When I took this challenge I found it hard to keep track of the different tasks, so I decided to use Jekyll and code a nice site that allows people to log their progress, see the streak on the calendar and even get achievements badges.

What are your favorite resources (and why):

1. I’ve been using Get Makerlog for almost a year now and that has really helped me get out there and try to create products just by being in contact with the community. The website is also great as it keeps me accountable and makes me want to do some work so I can log it to keep my streak up.
2. For designing, I’ve been using adobe XD since it was released. The UI is clean and makes it easy to export SVGs which I tend to do a lot when creating websites. Unfortunately, I had a few hiccups with adobe and I might give Figma a try in the future.
3. I use Github nearly every day and one of the first things I do when switching on the laptop is checking if there is anything that I need to do on Github. As an open-source maintainer, there are plenty of things that I need to do. We need to merge to keep our dependencies up to date, review open PRs, update or create issues and welcome new contributors.
4. One app that I been using for almost two years is called Gyroscope, this app allows you to keep track of everything in your life – how many hours you slept, how many steps you’ve done, how many hours you spent on the computer, track your mood, track your heart rate, places you have visited, etc. The app allows me to quickly see where I need to improve to get a better score.
5. Finally, Twitter is the social media where I am most active, I really enjoy talking and meeting new people on Twitter and it’s also a great way to keep update to whatever is happening in the tech world.

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Products that people want to use and buy are built by exceptional cross-functional teams. However, how do you build an exceptional cross-functional team? Firstly, in this article, we explore what it takes building a cross-functional team?

As Product People, we know we *need* to work in cross-functional teams. Some of the teams we work with include:

• Engineering team
• Design team
• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer service

Building cross-functional teams is a very complex process and cannot be explained in one article. Therefore, Building cross-functional teams will be a series.

Product People, *need* to work in cross-functional teams. Share on X

What is a cross-functional team

A cross-functional team in it’s simplest form is a team that consists of people from different functions and skillsets. If you really think about it every corporation is a cross-functional team.

However, before we get ahead of ourselves if you are a single founder corporation and do not have any employees you may still be working in a cross-functional team if you hire freelancers or outside help.

In other words, strong cross-functional teams are built with individuals with different skill sets to complement each other to work towards a common outcome.

In the below example we have purposely taken a sales approach for a reason. The reason is shared as you continue reading in the section titled in closing.

For example, in the enterprise SaaS marketplace. Companies such as Zendesk, Drift, & Freshdesk create a “two in a box” cross-functional team. The team includes:

• An Account Executive (AE). An AE, which is effectively a salesperson, the title might be different and that doesn’t matter. The role of the salesperson is to manage the relationship, solve the customer’s problems, and hopefully win the business.
• A Sales Engineer (SE). A SE, which is effectively the tech lead for that particular opportunity who supports the Account Executive.

However, behind the scenes and what the customer generally doesn’t see is that the Account Executive and Sales Engineers are part of a bigger cross-functional team. A customer may only see the Account Executive and Sales Engineer as the familiar face or first point of contact. This is also a design choice for a reason; to build trust, continuity, and a relationship, but that’s for another day.

It is important to remember while cross-functional teams come together for a particular purpose. Team members can potentially be in multiple cross-functional teams for multiple projects or opportunities.

Let’s walk through a typical sales process

Companies will generally have inbound and outbound marketing and outreach activities. Hence, functions like SDR/ BDR’s and marketing are likely the first interaction potential customers have.

This information will be shared with the Account Executive. Who will reach out and continue the conversation and bring in the Sales Engineer.

Want to learn how sales work in Enterprise companies? Share on X

During this phase of identifying the need and presenting the Product, the following activities generally occur:

1. If the customer requests additional materials to review or share internally. The AE works with other internal stakeholders to produce or repurpose existing content. This could be with the sales, marketing, or proposals team members.
2. If the customer request discounts. Which are above and beyond the standard discount structure the AE is authorized to provide. The AE generally works with the deals desk (or finance) team. They evaluate the opportunity and business case and work with internal leadership to obtain the nonstandard discount approvals. Generally speaking the higher the discount level the higher up the leadership chain approval is needed.
3. If the customer requests specific integrations. The SE may not be versed in all the potential integrations and therefore will bring in other specialists depending on the integration. It could be another SE (peer) or someone from the implementation, or services team, or it could be a Product Manager.

Selling isn’t easy. Delivering what you’ve just sold isn’t easy.

4. If the customer requests to understand the product roadmap. The AE will generally lean to the Product team.
5. If the customer requests non-standard contractual terms the AE will bring in the legal team who will advise and review the legal terms. Some companies ask for a mutual NDA to be signed before sharing non-public information such as Roadmap. Even then any Roadmap items may not be in writing but in person or a video call. If a contract is signed the legal team will review and hold signatory authority.
6. Once the opportunity has been signed the implementation team, professional services, or customer success team will assist the customer to get set up and successfully solve the problem that was identified earlier in this cycle.

In addition, please note that there will be differences between companies and how they operate. However, what is outlined above can be viewed as a starting point.

Why do we need cross-functional teams

From the above example, the AE reached out to multiple other internal team members and stakeholders to close the opportunity in question. Bringing different team members into a cross-functional team allows the company to scale and in this case close this opportunity faster. The AE has access to a skillset that maybe the AE doesn’t have.

Building cross-functional teams

Being a Product founder is a very tough and rewarding job. In the beginning, the founder is doing what we described above by themselves. Which takes a lot of skill, determination, and talent. As the founder, product, and company grow it becomes unsustainable to do everything. Not only for the founder’s health but because it’s easy to lose focus.

Create an aligned mindset

Working in cross-functional teams means you have access to additional skills that maybe the team doesn’t have. But this also means the team members may have different priorities. In the above sales example, the AE has no authority over any of the other team members/ stakeholders.

Granted you can say that each function has allocated a resource to assist the AE. Which is all well and true, however, what happens when there are 300 AE’s in the company and each one needs attention?

Communicating very well comes in very handy. Clear communications can lead to building trust. Creating an aligned mindset is very important and ensuring that everyone understands what role they play and in what timeframe they play it.

Without a clear discussion on who does what, it can easily come down to a, *not me* situation. For example, well I thought [other team member’s name] was working on it. Or I didn’t know it was needed this week.

Team Discovery. Step 1: Create an aligned mindset. Share on X

Influence without authority

As Product People, we work in this situation day in and day out. We must work to bring cross-functional teams together for a shared objective, project, or meeting. Again, we stress the importance of sharing clear, concise communication with the team.

Team members are more likely to work with you if they trust you. Building trust can take years, however, ruining trust can take seconds. Unfortunately, people tend to only think about building trust when they need something from someone. Since there is zero pre-existing trust that has been already established it becomes harder for a team member to work with you. This is especially if you become known for only reaching out when you need something.

Take action

There is a difference between say reaching out to the legal team once a year. When needing a contract reviewed for a signature because it’s *legal’s job* to do so.

Versus emailing legal 3 months in advance when you realize that your potential enterprise customers will insist on using their legal paper.

Or simply congratulating the deals desk team for something you read in the company announcements.

One of my favorites, when you start a new job or someone new starts in your company. Reach out and just have an intro chat. No agenda, no asks, just get to know the person and show some *real* interest in them. Maybe even answer questions, help them settle in or just chat about the lay of the land.

If you work remotely it’s usually a voice or video call. If you work physically in a team, it could mean grabbing a coffee or lunch.

There is no hard and fast rule. However, think about it, if you were on a first date you would never ask the person to marry you on the first date. Similarly, the ability to ask someone for assistance and get help takes time. Yes, even if that’s their job. What I mean by this is that usually legal is the only team in the company that has the authority to sign certain documents. Leadership may also be permitted to bind the company into a contract.

Team Discovery. Step 2: Influence without authority. Share on X

Identify and reduce friction

We have established that in a cross-functional team you generally do not authority over the other team members. This means you need to connect with them, communicate the purpose, objectives, goals, and desired outcomes. Hoping to influence them to take action to meet the desired outcomes.

Since there is a functional leadership difference, meaning each team member reports to their own functional/ departmental leaders. The priorities, budgets, targets, goals, etc. will be different. At a higher level yes, all employees should have shared priorities, budgets, targets, goals, etc.

Let’s go back to our above sales example. What happens when SE’s are leaving the company. The reason for leaving is irrelevant in this context. The effect is that there will be more AE’s than SE’s. What happens when AE’s need more of the SE’s time and each SE originally handled 3-5 accounts and now is expected to handle 6-9 accounts?

This could be a prioritization exercise, maybe SE leadership mandates that they will only work on deals over $1M. What happens if your opportunity is less than $1M do you get no support or do you wait in the back of the line.

If you don’t sell as a salesperson, you don’t meet your targets. Salespeople live and die by their targets. Is your job on the line?

Or it could be that the SE assigned does not have knowledge of that new integration or product and expects the Product team to assist.

Regardless, identifying and reducing any friction from the team member to do their job will go a long way to them supporting the overall outcome. It may even build trust.

Team Discovery. Step 3: Identify and reduce friction. Share on X

Communicate with leadership

As you go higher up the chain with leadership, they are less interested in the details and more interested in the strategic nature and how that ties in with their objectives.

You may only have five minutes to explain what is happening on that $100M project. You may have been asked by the EA to share one slide or two slides max.

How do you combine, for example, eight months of work and a $100M project into one or two slides?

How do you know it will be meaningful to the leader?

Find out what is meaningful to them. If asked to communicate with a sales leader they are numbers people. In good years when there are more deals then capacity they can pick and choose which companies to work with. In bad years they might be willing to accept a deal at a lower profit margin.

Connect what you are doing with the overall business goals, objectives, and/or outcomes. Understand what success looks like to leadership.

Team Discovery. Step 4: Communicate with leadership. Share on X

In Closing

We believe working in a cross-functional team yields maximum results. However, we also acknowledge that working in cross-functional teams can be challenging with competing priorities.

Either way working in a cross-functional team is becoming a normal occurrence. As Product People, we need to embrace this and connect and communicate with the teams to extract the maximum value as a team.

Team Discovery

In this example, we have focused heavily on the cross-functional aspects from a sales perspective.

However, from reading this article if you take away one piece of information this is what we would like you to take away.

Product People have a huge responsibility with no authority. Therefore, Product People must use influence, persuasion, and alignment to work in cross-functional teams.

Just like universally, we have accepted that to build products for people we need to get out there and talk to our customers, and potential users. Which is also known as Customer Discovery.

We are proposing to build exceptional cross-functional teams. Product teams *need* to talk to other team members.‬ ‪Be curious about how they think, what drives them, what problems they face, and what success looks like to them.‬ We are proposing similar thinking while working in cross-functional teams. Working to create alignment resulting in creating Products:

• Faster,
• Together with a sense of purpose, and ownership,
• Based on shared information,
• Less time and wasted resources

This is a practical mindset and not theoretical. We propose calling this Team Discovery.

Do you want to know what it takes to organize a conference like Product Impact 2020? We take a Behind The Scenes look at Product Impact 2020. In this article we explore:

• The idea behind Product Impact 2020
• What are our goals?
• Resources needed for Product Impact 2020?
• Known risks
• Why Product Impact 2020 is different (*Must Read*) – includes never before released stats.

If you don’t know what Product Impact 2020 is read this.

TLDR: Product Impact 2020 is a 1-day conference for Product People designed to level up your Product game.

Want to know what happens behind the scenes organizing Product Impact 2020? Share on X

The Idea behind Product Impact 2020

A little background

Helping organize and host events was something we did in a previous life and really enjoyed it. In 2018 we hosted a couple of (free) small meetups and it brought back the memories. Yes, it is a lot of work. However, when your audience shares feedback especially from someone who you’ve never previously met and they tell you that they really enjoyed the conference and want more, that really motivates us.

In the back of our minds, We have wanted to create a conference for a number of years. Hosting those events only reignited our passion and made us want to take the next step and host a one-day conference.

The purpose

Product Impact 2020 is a 1-day conference for Product People designed to level up your Product game. Share on X

However, this for us at least was a big topic to think about. When we started conceiving the idea of Product Impact 2020. The first item that came to my mind is what value can we provide that attracts Product People to attend.

The theme

Product Impact 2020 - Learn by Doing. Share on X

During the last two years or so We have spoken to a number of Product People and tried to understand what problems they face. One of the common themes we found was that when they started working in Product, in a number of organizations they do receive the mentoring or guidance they needed to excel in their careers and feel confident in their Product skills.

Speaking with Product leaders who are at a director level and above also echoed similar sentiments where they have hired Product People and unfortunately due to internal business constraints they are unable to provide the training and mentorship needed.

This was only made worse by the fact that being in Product can mean different things. Depending on the size of the company, the industry, and your leadership bias. The role can be different.

Another common theme that we uncovered was the desire to develop:

• A Product Mindset
• Product skills, and
• Have a set of Product tools at your disposal

Which got us thinking. Understanding theory is a good foundation to have, however, the *best* learning comes from Learn(ing) by doing, hence this became the theme. At Product Impact 2020, you’ll learn new skills but also be given the opportunity to practice those new skills and discuss how they can be applied to improve your Product careers.

Research

Marie Prokopets and Hiten Shah have written a piece called Why you shouldn’t ignore your competitors, which if you have not yet read this article we highly recommend you do.

After understanding who the four types of competitors around the space Product Impact 2020 is in we knew we needed to create something really special. There are several different options already out there and we wrote about it in an article called 10 Product Conferences & Workshops for 2020 (this is not a complete list). If you are interested in a more comprehensive list Tim Herbig wrote The Full Guide to Product Management Conferences in 2020.

As you can see those lists are impressive. Next, we started to think about what we liked when we attended conferences in the past. This is a brief list of what we came up with:

1. Practical hands-on activities
2. Ability to relate the theory into practice and in particular how I can apply what I learned in my professional life immediately
3. Listening to professionals talk about their experiences

When and where

Midtown, NYC and online on April 01, 2020.

We know you likely have a question; why April 01? Is this an April fool’s joke. No, when talking about potential dates with the speakers it was a good date logistically and also gives us the opportunity to make some April fool’s jokes at Product Impact 2020. 😉

The initial name for Product Impact 2020 was something else and you can read about the name change here.

What are our goals?

This was a simple question to answer.

Create a conference where participants can learn by doing. Share on X

Well actually it was not that simple, I spoke to a lot of Product People and asked them what various questions about conference they have or would consider attending.

The lessons learned and insights were very valuable. Two key takeaways that have stuck with me are:

1. There usually is a huge buzz leading up to and day of, however, the energy seems to disappear the next day
2. You learn so much, however, during the day there generally isn’t enough time to absorb all the information and how to use what we just learned in our daily professional work lives.

We hope to address the above takeaways with what we are trying to accomplish with The Product Angle and Product Impact 2020.

Resources needed for Product Impact 2020?

Ok wow, it seems like a loaded question, but seriously it is a lot of work and resources to make Product Impact 2020 a success. After we made the decision to green-light the conference the following things come to mind:

Budget and financials

The number one thing we could say right now is to open a spreadsheet (Excel, Google sheets, or your choice) and start writing down all the different elements, and associated costs (because they can quickly get out of hand).

Speakers

After all, the speakers are one of the main reasons (if not the reason) to attend. We thought about what are some of the hot topics Product People face in their Product lives and started searching through our network for amazing and talented speakers. We are very proud to say that Product Impact 2020 has an all-star speaker line up.

Reaching out to the speakers was an interesting period for us. Partly because we are new in the Product conference space. Can you imagine getting a cold email from us that read something like;

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[Subject] Potential interest in a Paid speaker opportunity. [Or reply to their newsletter and keep the subject line as is]

Hi [Name],

Love what you are doing – big fan. Reaching out to you as I have a few speaker opportunities in NYC next year around April/ May /June (dates yet to be finalized) [Date is now finalized and is April 01, 2020].

It’s a one-day conference where attendees “learn by doing” not just sitting there and listening to a speaker.

I love what you are doing on the [topic] side and would love to chat more with you about potentially running a [X] min session.

If this is something you are interested in, let’s chat. If not keep up the great work, love reading your content.

Have an awesome weekend.

Regards,
Pradip Khakhar
Cell [Redacted]

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A very big Thank You to all the speakers who said yes

I received a response from everyone I reached out to and am very thankful and grateful they did. Learn more about the speaker line up. Seriously from the bottom of my heart, I’d like to thank Katelyn Bourgoin, Mubashar Iqbal (Mubs), Marcie Walker, Michelle Chu, Tremis Skeete, Erin Essex, Henry Bruce, Bianka McGovern.

A special Thank you

If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know that I have reached out to Hiten Shah several times and I am truly grateful to Hiten for sharing his wisdom and expertise with me.

Also a special shout out to James Kenny for regularly reading, reviewing and providing constructive feedback to improve the written content found on The Product Angle.

Venue

Living in NYC we do not see this as a big hurdle, there are *so many* spaces available. It becomes a case of finding the right venue at the right price.

Food and Snacks

This is something we feel is very important. When attending Product Impact 2020 we don’t want you to be looking for food during the breaks in potentially a neighborhood that you do not know that well. We would rather you chat with the other Product People attending. Therefore, if you attend Product Impact 2020 in person we will have food and snacks for you so you can focus on learning and chatting with your fellow Product People.

Video only

Also another important topic for me. We have expressed we enjoy meeting IRL, however, we understand that it may not be feasible to be in NYC on April 01, 2020, for everyone. Location or lack of availability should not be a barrier to being a participant at Product Impact 2020 and therefore we have created a video-only ticket.

Can't make it to Product Impact 2020 in person. A video-only ticket gives you access to video recordings of all the sessions and an electronic copy of handouts. Share on X

In addition, we do not want Product Impact 2020 to be a big one time buzz leading up to April 01, 2020. We are looking to turn The Product Angle into a community that supports Product People to become a better Product Person and Negotiator all throughout the year.

become a better Product Person and Negotiator. Share on X

Marketing and Sales

You may have seen that we have upped our inbound marketing game. As well as outreach and other outbound activities.

As a software engineer who worked in companies of various sizes, I learned many valuable lessons in how different teams communicate with engineering teams effectively and each other. Especially when it comes to product owners and managers that need to engage with engineering teams to implement new features and enhancements effectively.

Who am I?

Hi, I’m Sunny Singh, a software engineer with a wide array of experience in building products. I started out working on my own side projects like IronMic, but I also worked at a few startups with small teams of about 6 people. Recently, I spent 2.5 years in the corporate world at Bank of America.

Taking lead

Building products on your own teaches you about all the different aspects needed to ship software. Working in a large multi-team environment teaches you how to work efficiently with others and focus more on soft skills like communication.

This was my biggest takeaway from my career so far. At Bank of America, I took various initiatives to work with different teams across the organization to help make our processes more efficient. This means that while I could have stayed purely within my development role and have minimum communication across teams, I decided to instead gather people across teams together to help solve any internal pain points or product issues. Some of these improvements were to our deployment flows, software testing automation, and dependency management.

Team perspectives

When you speak with an engineer or engineering team, you will quickly start to realize that the focus may not align directly with the product. You will hear terms like technical debt, building to scale, dependencies, frameworks, and other jargon that might sound confusing.

There are ways of improving these types of conversations, but the first step is to realize where the other perspective is coming from. When you’re close to the underlying code of the software, you worry about its maintainability in the future. When you’re far away, you worry more about how people use your product.

Communicate with engineering teams effectively

Here is the list of things that I do when speaking with other teams.

1. Avoid jargon

It’s tempting. We believe that we sound smart using acronyms and terminology that a subset of people know. However, it does not end up helping you or providing others value when they don’t know what you are saying.

2. Ask questions

When you notice that someone is using jargon or is not explaining a concept in simple terms, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Engineers are used to saying technical terms so often that it’s hard to break the habit. There is also a chance that when speaking amongst a group, there is at least one person wanting to speak up about being confused, but is too afraid to do so. It takes just one person to ask a question for many others to gain confidence in asking theirs.

3. Show empathy

Or at least, seem like you care about the problems that engineering may have. It’s not required to have a full understanding of what an engineering team is doing at all times, but a common frustration among product and engineering teams is on how time is spent.

From a product perspective, time should be spent on shipping products and features out the door as quickly as possible. That makes sense because this is what makes money. However, from an engineering perspective, there are many problems waiting to happen. Features become slower to ship, user issues start piling in, and the worst is when a security exploit is found.

These are important issues that need to be evaluated and spent time appropriately. If you trust your engineering team, then let them know and ask how the product may help coordinate.

Engineering is dynamic

Another important realization is that engineering is dynamic. The scope of two features or defects in software may look the same, but one may take longer to fix than the other. The same goes for any aspect of building products: you can never accurately estimate the level of complexity and effort.

Knowing that you can use agile product management to your advantage:

• Bugs don’t have to be pointed.
• Bugs or spike (research) stories can be “time-boxed” to limit how much time should be spent.
• Create spike stories to perform research, architecture planning, and code refactors.

By allowing flexibility in how projects are managed and time is spent, you set both product and engineering teams up for success.

But, we’re not that different

At the end of the day, we’re all just people building products. As an engineer, I believe that I write code to provide value to others, and that value is the end product that people use.

I hope that you can take away at least one lesson from this article to use in your day to day team communication. If you do, you might enjoy some of the content that I publish on my Website and my podcast. Of course, also feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Thank you for sharing your expertise with The Product Angle community. 🙏

Hello, Product People, 👋 we have a few announcements to make today. Firstly, as you can see from the title of this post we are changing the name to Product Impact 2020 for our 1-day Workshop for Product People designed to step up your Product game.

What we are doing

We have decided to change the workshop name from Pitchside 2020 to Product Impact 2020. We think Product Impact 2020 better represents what we are trying to achieve.

After the workshop We want you to walk away with actionable skills you can practice during the day and immediately apply in your life. As well as hear from amazing speakers on topics relevant to Product People.

If you cannot make it out to NYC on April 01, 2020 we are also offering an online-only ticket where you will get access to all the recorded sessions, handouts, and slides used throughout the day (as well as other perks)

Why we are changing the name to Product Impact 2020

Pitchside 2020 has an amazing story behind the reason we picked the name. However, upon talking with our target audience we realize we are not pitching anything nor teaching how you how to pitch. We really love the name Pitchside and we will be back with something appropriate for Pitchside in the future.

Therefore, we are excited to be introducing Product Impact 2020 – Learn by doing. The speakers we have announced previously are still the same, We will be updating the assets where we can. We won’t delete old graphics as they are still valuable.

The existing URL link we have previously shared will still work, however, we are introducing a new URL moving forward Product Impact 2020, and introducing a new hashtag #tpaprodimpact

All other things stay the same

After an amazing day of learning, at Product Impact 2020 we also have an after workshop dinner (ticket sold separately). Come hang out, chat with your peers, and enjoy a nice meal.

We are big on experiences and giving the gift of learning, as we approach the holiday season and your inboxes are full from black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts consider giving the gift of learning and gift an early bird ticket or online ticket (if they cannot make it out to NYC) to the product person in your life

Here is how you can be a part of Product Impact 2020:

1. Online only tickets
2. Early Bird tickets (available until Dec 31, 2019)
3. Regular tickets
4. After workshop Dinner

For tickets and additional information check out: this page.

Thank you

We would like to thank everyone who has provided their time, feedback, advice, guidance, and support in getting Product Impact 2020 off the ground. You know who you are and we really appreciate it. 🙏

The next Product debate

Today we are also excited to announce speakers for our 6th and final session:

The final session is “The next Product Debate” feature; Tremis Skeete, Erin Essex, Henry Bruce, and Bianka McGovern.

It’s that time of year again when you might be researching awesome Product conferences and workshops. Below are 10 Product conferences & workshops for 2020 that you should consider as you plan what conferences & workshops to attend in 2020.

There seems to be a lot of love for the big-box brand conferences, and deservedly so. However, in this list, I have also listed workshops (in other words for full disclosure: I’m biased).

Above all, I do like a big conference, it draws a big crowd, the energy, and excitement. However, there is so much going on it’s sometimes difficult to meet people and really interact with them.

Therefore, as with the 10 Product People to follow article:

• Some of the conferences and workshops may not directly be Product-related.
• This is not meant to be comprehensive (you probably already knew that 😀), there are so many amazing conferences and workshops in the product space. However, this list has the conferences and workshops I’d consider attending (although not all, however its a good list to start from).
• Conferences and workshops below are NOT ordered in any specific way.

10 Product conferences & workshops for 2020

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1. SaaStr Annual 2020

Where the cloud meets.

According to SaaStr’s website: SaaStr Annual is the largest non-vendor confab in the world, uniting the global B2B SaaS community both online and off. SaaStr wants to help everyone scale faster and with less stress and more success!

In 2020, over 15,000 Founders, Senior Executives, and Cloud VCs will come together over three action-packed days of high-quality networking, learning from those who’ve done it, and of course, great food, generously-poured drinks, and plenty of fun.

Date: March 10 – 11, 2020
Venue: SF Bay Area, USA.

Check out SaaStr Annual.

If you are interested in attending Product events here are 10 conferences and workshops to consider in 2020. Share on X

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2. Leading The Product

A Product Management Conference.

This conference is out of Australia. Although I’ve never been to a Leading The Product conference (nor Australia for that matter). We are seeing some amazing products out of the Australian ecosystem. For example, the graphics you see on The Product Angle are created using Canva a company based in Australia.

Also according to its website – tickets and announcements for the 2020 event will go live in February. Leading the Product conference is Australia’s first Product Management conference. Carefully curated by Product Managers, for Product Managers, the speakers are hand-picked as the best in the business, sharing insights, case studies and behind-the-scenes stories that keep the audience riveted.

In conclusion: I’ll be coming back to Leading the Product in Feb to see what their 2020 plans are.

Date: 1st of September in Melbourne and the 4th of September in Sydney.
Venue: Melborne and Sydney

Check out Leading The Product.

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3. Business of Software

According to the business of software website: the business of Software Conference is a 3-day single-track conference for Founders, CXOs, and Emerging Leaders in Software and SaaS companies.

Date: September 21 – 23, 2020
Venue: Boston, MA. USA.

Check out the Business of Software.

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4. Mind The Product

Mind the Product has both Conferences and Workshops multiple times during 2020. Furthermore, according to its website; Mind The Product is the world’s largest community of passionate product people. Mind The Product is run by product people, for product people, and united by a mission to push our craft forward together.

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out Mind The Product’s Conferences and Workshops.

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5. Industry Conference

According to its website; INDUSTRY features well-known product leaders from across the world present on the Main Stage. And you can catch a broad range of presentations on one of the breakout stages that open during day 2 of the conference. (I guess I won’t be invited to speak anytime soon 😉 (I’m not “well-known”)).

There are two events for the year, the first in Europe (Dublin Ireland), and the second in the USA (Cleveland, Ohio).

[Update the Industry Conference is now virtual. The virtual conference for software fro software product manager is happening on September, 22 and 23, 2020]

Check out Industry Conference (now virtual).

If you are interested in attending Product events here are 10 conferences and workshops to consider in 2020. Share on X

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6. Women In Product

I am not seeing any events currently listed for 2020. However, based on the number of events in 2019 I would take an educated guess that Women In Product will have events in 2020.

According to its website; Women In Product unites women in product management careers via online platforms and in-person events. Their members learn, mentor, and grow through their connections made within the Women In Product network.

Check out Women In Product.

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7. Brainmates

This is another organization based out of Australia. You might sense that I am very curious about the Product ecosystem in Australia, you’d be right. 🤓

According to its website; Every day, Brainmates works with clients to equip and enable them to build products that their customers love through Product Management public courses, workplace training, Product consulting, Product Management contracting, Product community events and Product career development.

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out Brainmates.

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8. Roman Pichler

Roman Pichler is a product management expert specialized in digital products. He has more than 15 years of experience in teaching product managers and product owners, and in helping, companies build a successful product management organization.​

When I first started in Product Management and I googled something Roman’s content consistently showed up.

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out Roman Pichler’s website.

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9. SVPG

Silicon Valley Product Group founded by Marty Cagan, author of the very popular Product Management book called Inspired.

According to the website; The best companies go about building great products differently. Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) was created to share lessons learned and best practices about how to build innovative products customers love. SVPG are industry veterans who have each held executive-level positions at major Silicon Valley firms where we have been instrumental in the development of leading products.

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out SVPG’s website.

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10. Sequent

Steven Haines is Sequent’s founder and author of three books; The Product Manager’s survival guide, The Product Managers desk reference, and Managing Product Management.

Furthermore, according to Sequent’s website; Sequent Learning Networks is a global product management training and advisory services firm. Sequent provides product management assessments, a targeted training curriculum, and advisory services for product management leaders and product teams.

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out Sequent’s website.

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Bonus

Hypergrowth by Drift

This is aimed at Marketers, according to Drift’s website – starting conversations should be your most important goal as a marketer. Conversational Marketing is transforming how businesses buy from other businesses and it’s imperative that you stay ahead of the curve. With this new category of conversational marketing, I think it’s something Product people should be aware of.

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out Drift’s website.

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Bonus

Product Impact 2020

A 1-day conference to level up your Product Skills.

What you will learn (by doing)

Level up your Product skills – develop the skills, mindset, & tools, to facilitate effective collaboration and communication in cross-functional teams. Creating alignment and breaking down silos.

The conference combines training, practical exercises, and conference-style talks to create a learning environment where you can practice your new skills on the day.

Date: Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Venue: Midtown Manhattan, NYC, and Online

If you cannot make it out to NYC on April 01, 2020, we are also offering an online-only ticket where you will get access to all the recorded sessions, handouts, and slides used throughout the day (as well as other perks).

For tickets and additional information check out Product Impact 2020.

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Bonus

According to Pendo. The ProductCraft Conference series brings to life the thought-provoking perspectives shared on ProductCraft, an editorial site for product people, over the last two years. ProductCraft has built a global community of thousands of product managers through its daily articles, weekly newsletters, podcast episodes and series of debates, polls and infographics

Date: Multiple
Venue: Multiple

Check out Pendo’s website.

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In conclusion, there you have it, that’s my 10 Product conferences & workshops for 2020. What conferences are you considering attending in 2020? let me know and join the conversation on Twitter.

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Article written by:

If you are interested in attending Product events here are 10 conferences and workshops to consider in 2020. Share on X

Lists can be tricky. Does adding individuals to these 10 Product People to follow list mean others are not deserving? absolutely not. This is why in my opinion lists that name people to follow can have a positive and negative impact.

Before we get started a couple of things:

1. Some of the individuals may not work directly in Product, however, in my opinion, their content is relevant to Product teams.
2. This is not meant to be comprehensive (you probably already knew that 😀), there are so many amazing people in the product space. However, this list is Product people that I follow and think their content (and what they are doing) needs to be shared.
3. Individuals below are NOT ordered in any specific way.

10 Product People to follow

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Hiten Shah

If your talking Product, there is no way you cannot mention Hiten Shah. Hiten and Product go in the same sentence all the time. Hiten has founded three SaaS companies; Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Quick Sprout as well as a very popular newsletter called SaaS weekly.

I’ve reached out to Hiten a few times with questions and for guidance and Hiten is super quick to respond and provides a ton of very valuable feedback. Thank you, Hiten. 🙏

Follow Hiten on Twitter.

If you are interested in the Product space here are 10 Product People to follow. Share on X

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Marie Prokopets

Marie is the co-founder of Use FYI and Product Habits.

If you are looking to read some awesome content Marie has been creating and sharing some fantastic reads through Use FYI and Product Habits.

Two of my fav reads are The remote work report, and Remote work statistics.

Marie is very active in the Product Hunt community often sharing some great reads (and responding to comments).

Follow Marie on Twitter.

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Ryan Hoover

Ryan is the founder of Product Hunt. We really need no introduction to Ryan or Product Hunt.

I first started following Ryan on Twitter and noticed how he interacts with his team and the product hunt community as a whole.

Ryan is also the founder of Weekend Fund and if you are looking to turn your side project into a company read this, as Ryan introduces Weekend Build.

Follow Ryan on Twitter.

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Melissa Perri

Melissa Perri is the CEO of Produx Labs, a Product Management consultancy, and the author of Escaping the Build Trap. Melissa’s book is next on my reading list. 😉

Since I started following Melissa on Twitter I really enjoy seeing slides from various product conferences that Melissa shares. When you cannot attend a product conference, Melissa’s commentary and photos of slides are the next best thing.

Follow Melissa on Twitter.

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James Mayes

James is a co-founder and CEO of Mind The Product.

I’ve been to a Product Tank event here in NYC, and attending a Mind the Product Conference is on my list of conferences to attend.

I followed James on Twitter for a while and finally messaged him if he’d be open to a meeting while I was in London. He replied and we ended up having brunch in Brighton one sunny morning.

James is a leader in the product space. His thinking and how much emphasis he puts on delivering value to the user is amazing.

Next time we are in the same part of the world would love to connect and chat more.

Follow James on Twitter.

If you are interested in the Product space here are 10 Product People to follow. Share on X

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Brianne Kimmel

Brianne has made it her life’s work to invest in founders who are reimagining work through better tools, benefits and services, and the creation of new classes of work.

For thought-provoking tweets with data insights and a touch of the SF vibe, follow Brianne on Twitter.

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Andrew Chen

I discovered Andrew a few years ago through his writing around the time Andrew worked with Uber (I think). Andrew writes some fantastic long form essays that are very informative and educational such as How to (actually) calculate CAC, and How to build a growth team.

Follow Andrew on Twitter.

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April Dunford

April is a positioning consultant, entrepreneur, board member, angel investor and advisor. Her expertise is built on 25 years as an executive in a series of 7 successful technology startups and 3 global tech giants and launching 16 products as an executive.

If you have not yet read Obviously Awesome I highly recommend it and it is becoming my fav book of the year.

I recently had a video call with April and some of the insights she shared were priceless, thank you April. 🙏

Follow April on Twitter.

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John Cutler

John is a Product development nut at Amplitude who loves wrangling complex problems/answering the why with qual/quant data.

Often I’d be browsing Twitter and when John posts something on Twitter I feel like he is talking directly to me. Some of the issues, challenges, thought leadership content really resonates with what Product Managers go through.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the dynamics within Product teams and the cross-functional nature of the team’s Product works with. I was having a hard time putting my thoughts to paper and next thing I see on Twitter is:

Folks asked for a pdf of this image. And a non-twitter URL.

*Meant to encourage conversations…not as a "maturity model" or linear progression. https://t.co/PyNKRYgAWX pic.twitter.com/TBxHXiWvUS

— John Cutler (@johncutlefish) November 5, 2019

Follow John on Twitter.

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Katelyn Bourgoin

Katelyn is a 3X founder turned growth strategist and trainer. Named as an influencer by Forbes, Katelyn’s past clients include tech startups, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies like Target and Holiday Inn.

Today Katelyn helps frustrated marketers and product teams figure out what triggers their right-fit customers to buy. When companies know who their best customers are and what those customers really want, it becomes much easier to create awesome products and sell more of them. The result? More happy customers and more money in the bank.

I first was introduced to Katelyn though a webinar and then I took her Trigger Technique: An interactive online workshop. Katelyn strongly believes in learn by doing (and so do I).

I believe as Product Managers, we need to have a strong understanding of the user (nothing new). However, I also strongly believe working alongside the sales team and understanding the sales process of your target customers as well as what triggers them to buy (or not) is just as important.

Follow Katelyn on Twitter.

For full disclosure, Katelyn is also a speaker at Product Impact 2020.

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There you have it, that’s my 10 Product people to follow. Who do you follow that’s awesome? let me know so I can follow them and join the conversation on Twitter.

In this article, I share 10 individuals who you should follow if you are in/ or want to be in the product space. Who are your fav product people that I should be following? https://t.co/L8WS0W2hP4

— Pradip Khakhar (@pradipcloud) November 11, 2019

If you are interested in the Product space here are 10 Product People to follow. Share on X

Product Impact 2020 is now live. Learn more about the speakers and the name of their sessions. Product Impact 2020 – Product Impact 2020. A 1-day conference to level up your Product Skills.

Update: Read the conference that never happened here.

What you will learn (by doing)

Level up your Product skills – develop the skills, mindset, & tools, to facilitate effective collaboration and communication in cross-functional teams. Creating alignment and breaking down silos.

The conference combines training, practical exercises, and conference-style talks to create a learning environment where you can practice your new skills on the day.

Product Impact 2020 Speakers

Product Impact Sponsors

Two months ago back in May 2018, I decided I want to start a podcast. I had zero experience in recording, editing, and publishing audio. Then I had the bright idea of adding a video component for YouTube.

To re-iterate I had zero experience in recording, editing and publishing audio and video. I mean I always loved shooting video and capturing photos on the automatic setting on a simple point and shoot, however, all I did with that content was merely store it on an external hard drive and now in the cloud.

I was determined, and I knew to achieve this goal of starting a podcast, I would have to:

– Choose the topic of discussion
– Decide the name and who the target audience is.
– Get listed on Apple, Google, and other major podcast sites. Add the graphics, show notes, etc.
– Attract listeners.
– Choose the hardware needed: (depending on the how at a minimum):
– For audio, I thought I would need mics, cables, recording device (or laptop) and editing software and a platform that can host the audio files.
– For video, I thought I would need a video recording device (like a DSLR), mic (backup) and a platform that can host the audio files.
– Finding guests who are willing to be on the podcast.

The to-do list kept getting longer and longer. I needed to break it down so that the podcast does not spiral out of control and never launch.

To start the podcast I ended up breaking the to do’s into three components:

1. The podcast idea and concept
2. Recording and editing
3. Distribution

1. The podcast idea and concept

The idea and concept are one of the most important decisions you can make, some of the questions you should be asking yourself is:

– What is the subject or topic discussion?
– Will you talk alone, with someone each time, or with a new guest
– What is the style of the podcast?
– How long will the podcast last (20, 30, 40, 60 mins), and how often will you publish a new episode (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)?

2. Recording and Editing

At the essence of every podcast, you will need a way to record the audio. With Anchor.fm you can start a podcast on your phone, yes on your phone! How simple is that?

If you want something more traditional, you will need a microphone, a recording device (which can be your laptop), and software to edit the audio files.

3. Hosting and Distribution

Once you have recorded and edited the audio and are ready for the world to see, I mean listen to your podcast you need a way to get it onto your audience’s devices prepared to listen.

I would strongly recommend starting to build an audience as early as possible, that is one of the things that I did not do.

First, you will need a podcast host who will store the audio files on their servers and then make them available to your listeners.

Then the audio files are picked up by major platforms such as Apple and Google.

Finally, after much procrasination, I launched The Product Angle podcast, listen here.