LaunchPod | Product Management Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Today, we’re talking with Deepti Mendiratta, VP of Product at HungerRush, an all-in-one POS system for restaurants.

In this episode, Deepti talks about:

• Why you have to just “make the pizza” - meaning experience the day-to-day of your users, not just your buyers, to build software that solves key issues for the business
• getting her biggest UX wins from fixing the paper cuts that users run into all the time, not just the sporadic gaping wounds
• And, how to say “not yet” to the allure of going upmarket to Enterprise too soon...because, as she says, once you catch that elephant, you have to feed it

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deeptim13/

Build product like Linear | Nan Yu, Head of Product (Linear, Everlane, BOA) | LaunchPod: https://youtu.be/7ISWLoQtNOc
How to A/B test your product to millions in ARR | Eric Metelka, Head of Product (Eppo) | LaunchPod: https://youtu.be/3u5vovkAtXc
Grow $50 million in revenue in one year | Vaarrun Bimbhat, Head of Product (Jiffy.com) | LaunchPod: https://youtu.be/SNZWHt0Zu-I

00:00 Intro
02:07 Understanding the Customer Experience
05:35 Challenges and Insights from the Product Field
14:31 Balancing Enterprise and SMB Markets
26:07 Innovations in Hospitality
32:37 The Future of AI in Service Industries
36:40 Outro
25:48 Building a Pricing Experimentation Platform
27:20 Challenges and Successes in India
36:30 Insights on Prioritization and Growth
38:40 Outro

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Today, we’re talking with Vaarrun Bimbhat, Head of Product at Jiffy.com, an online retailer of customizable clothing.

In this episode, Vaarrun talks about:

• Humanizing the sale of high-commit items, like furniture, at Wayfair - which led to $50m in additional sales
• How he built a repeatable process to expand into new countries at Shopify - adding almost 100k new merchants and $50m in additional revenue in India in the first year alone
• And why developing a billing experimentation platform drove over $26m in gross profit annually at Shopify

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vbimbhat/

(Ethically) cheat your way to $250M+ | Mikal Lewis, Product Exec. (Whole Foods, Nordstrom): https://youtu.be/5txeT2U_YQo

00:00 Intro
01:25 Challenges of Selling Furniture Online
02:07 Implementing Product Solutions at Wayfair
06:58 Leveraging AI and User Research
15:45 Exploring Wayfair's B2B Segment
20:10 Managing Product at Shopify
21:02 Scaling Shopify's FinTech Arm
23:12 Expanding Shopify Globally
25:48 Building a Pricing Experimentation Platform
27:20 Challenges and Successes in India
36:30 Insights on Prioritization and Growth
38:40 Outro

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Vaarrun Bimbhat.

Today, we’re talking with Adam Schoenfeld, CEO at Keyplay, a SaaS solution to help B2B marketers make GTM more efficient.

In this episode, Adam talks about:

• How he built 3 startups to over $1m ARR
• His process that’s allowed him to reliably reach Product Market Fit again and again
• And the critical mistakes founders always make...and how you can avoid them

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamschoenfeld/

00:00 Intro
01:19 Adam Schoenfeld's Journey to Keyplay
01:59 How to Build A Startup
02:33 Building a Product Audience and Discovering Problems
02:50 From PeerSignal to Keyplay
03:17 Monetizing the Discovery Process
04:05 Finding Product Market Fit
07:11 The Role of Design Partners
13:36 Early Product Traction and Validation
17:49 Challenges in Scaling
19:12 Challenges of Founding a SaaS Company
21:34 Adapting Sales Processes and Proving Value
23:29 Understanding Market Changes and Effective Marketing
28:59 Lessons from Past Ventures and Scaling Challenges
34:19 Insights on Product Market Fit and Distribution
36:57 Navigating Acquisitions and Future Outlook

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Adam Schoenfeld.

Today, we’re talking with Andy Boyd, CPO of Appfire, which provides a portfolio of over 100 collaboration solutions.

In this episode, Andy details:

• His no-fail growth formula from driving product-led growth (PLG) at IBM Watson
  • Learn from Andy's product-lead growth examples from his book, Enterprise Growth Playbook
• The ways he uses data to drive experimentation velocity and avoid decision paralysis
• How he’s slingshotted his career by focusing on working with great people, rather than chasing titles or compensation - and why you should too!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyfboyd/
Website: https://andyfboyd.com/
Appfire: https://appfire.com/
Enterprise Growth Playbook: https://andyfboyd.com/enterprise-growth-playbook/

00:00 The Data Dilemma: Product Decision-Making
00:15 Intro
01:16 The Introduction of Product-Led Growth at IBM Watson
02:19 Driving Monthly Active Users: Strategies and Successes
03:16 Understanding Growth: Product vs. Marketing
04:01 The Early Days of PLG at IBM
05:20 From Developer to Product Manager
08:13 Launching Growth Teams Across IBM
11:39 Key Learnings from Developer-Focused Projects
14:51 The Power of Simplicity in Growth Strategies
16:46 Writing the Enterprise Growth Playbook
20:21 The Silver Bullet Myth in Growth Strategies
21:22 The Magic of Compounding Growth
22:31 Data-Driven Decision Making
26:29 Transitioning to Appfire
28:23 Scaling and Hypergrowth at Appfire
31:42 Effective Customer Feedback Mechanisms
35:31 Career Advice: From IBM to Appfire
40:23 Outro

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Andy Boyd.

On today’s episode of LaunchPod, Jeff Wharton talks to Sean Lorenz, Senior Director of Product at Altoida, using augmented reality and AI to radically improve neurologic diagnostics

In this episode, we talked about:

• How to adapt product to find viable markets
• The importance of matching product capabilities with market timing and realistic go-to-market strategies
• How to deal with a product that is ahead of market readiness

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenanyu/
Twitter: https://x.com/thenanyu?lang=en

00:00 Intro
02:09 Essential Tools for Product Managers
03:19 Career Highlights and Organizational Design
03:49 The Heirloom Tomato Analogy
04:18 Conway's Law and Communication Structures
06:11 Focus and Prioritization in Startups
06:53 Lessons from Everlane
13:23 Challenges in Organizational Design
24:02 The Dangers of Learned Helplessness in Engineering Teams
25:19 High Output Management: Key Principles
27:32 Team Structure and Soft Boundaries
31:07 The Aladdin Principle: Breaking Social Boundaries
31:49 Balancing Core Business and Checkbox Requirements
34:45 Linear's Unique Approach to Project Management
43:42 The Concept of Work Trials at Linear
47:00 Outro

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Today, LogRocket’s VP of Marketing, Jeff Wharton, talks to Elizabeth Van Bergen, who leads product experience at Phillips, a global high-end auction house.

In this episode we talked about:

• Creating a product experience for both tech novices and early adopters

  • “One of our big things is always creating parity between experiences. We always want to create the journey for the client, we want to show people what they can do, not force them. We've really been able to also bring that online and offer them the digital space from a product standpoint.
  • Some people just always prefer that personal high touch. But the idea for us is to be able to create an experience where for 80% of the clients it’s not necessary. So the 20% of the market that we're looking towards, the ultra-high net worth individuals, we will always be able to service them.
  • But by being able to solve for the 80%, it gives our team the bandwidth and ability to focus on the ultra-high net worth individuals, whereas our tools help those early adopters."
  • How the traditional auction industry went digital overnight
    • “[The pandemic] was a reckoning for the whole world, but I think for an industry that is so rooted in tradition, like the auction world, it was the catalyst that drove everyone to really be interested in the change. It wasn't that people didn't know that it needed to happen, that we didn't need to change our digital offerings; it just wasn't the core of what we were doing.
    • Changing something within the auction world can sometimes be like trying to move a mountain. You're trying to explain something that is maybe very foreign to what our specialists are used to doing; this is how we've done it for 20, 30 years. So the pandemic was great because it changed everybody's minds and it rerouted how people were thinking about things like 'What can I do for this client or what can I offer them digitally?'”
  • And why the digital experience is as important as the functionality itself
    • “Relationships within our industry are key. So you want people to keep coming back because, whether someone is a consigner or a buyer, both are clients. Either way, the company is making money and it's important to service both of those clients.
    • So you always want people to be coming back. If you have a happy buyer, they come back, let's say maybe five, 10 years later and they sell, you have a happy consigner. So you also develop a brand loyalty and that trust is really key.
    • So even though some of what we do is still, and will always be, in person, that digital aspect of it, if someone's trying to WhatsApp someone after a meeting and now all of a sudden that share option isn't providing the correct metadata that's supposed to be there, that can be really frustrating, and can also not always look as nice, and sometimes it just needs to look nice too."

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethvanbergen/

00:00 Intro
00:54 Elizabeth Van Bergen's Background and Career Journey
02:15 The Art of Productizing Taste
03:22 Digital Transformation in the Auction Industry
05:17 Creating Seamless Digital Experiences
12:10 Navigating the Pandemic and Embracing Change
16:29 Leveraging Social Media and Data
21:36 Balancing Functionality and Experience
28:27 Collaborative Efforts and Future Directions
32:09 Outro

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Elizabeth Van Bergen.

Today, our guest is Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear, a purpose-built tool for planning and building products. Prior to working at Linear, Nan worked at Mode, Abstract, Everlane, and Bank of America.

On today’s episode, Nan talks to LogRocket’s VP of Marketing, Jeff Wharton, about:

• Why the only thing that matters is the next category launch — even if it’s held together with duct tape

  • "You can have everything held together with duct tape and it's okay. And I think that's an uncomfortable sort of mindset for people to adopt really.
  • At Everlane, the only thing that was important was the next category launch launch. You can sacrifice everything else. If the next category launch goes well, numbers go up, we raise more money, we get more customers. That's the only thing that matters."

• Why it’s important to have conviction in making decisions — even if the market slaps you in the face

  • "But at the end of the day, you know, as a leader, you own the decisions that they're making. As a leader saying, 'Here's where we're going to be great and really differentiate and rise above the market.' And I could be wrong, right? I could be aggressively, tragically wrong, and that's fine.
  • That's actually probably better, right? You want to know for sure that you're wrong and that you can switch directions; failing fast is a thing that we want to do. It's not like, 'Oh, well, we're gonna wait and see.' No, have some conviction around something, focus on it, and let the market slap you in the face if it's not correct."

• Why engineering teams can sometimes suffer from learned helplessness, and why it’s detrimental to product innovation

  • "You see teams where there's a product manager per five or six engineers. And engineers will tend to check out a little bit from understanding how the product actually works, understanding the customer, because, well, we got this PM senior right here. It's not out of laziness necessarily, it's more like, well, this is someone's job description, so it wouldn't feel right for me to do that. And then you start having this learned helplessness.
  • So I think that dynamic is probably way more dangerous than a product manager being overworked. If you end up in a state where your engineering team is like disengaged and they have learned helplessness, good luck trying to unwind that. That is a cultural change that you're not going to observe until it's too late, and it's very difficult to to reverse and it takes a long time."

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenanyu/
Twitter: https://x.com/thenanyu?lang=en

00:00 Intro
02:09 Essential Tools for Product Managers
03:19 Career Highlights and Organizational Design
03:49 The Heirloom Tomato Analogy
04:18 Conway's Law and Communication Structures
06:11 Focus and Prioritization in Startups
06:53 Lessons from Everlane
13:23 Challenges in Organizational Design
24:02 The Dangers of Learned Helplessness in Engineering Teams
25:19 High Output Management: Key Principles
27:32 Team Structure and Soft Boundaries
31:07 The Aladdin Principle: Breaking Social Boundaries
31:49 Balancing Core Business and Checkbox Requirements
34:45 Linear's Unique Approach to Project Management
43:42 The Concept of Work Trials at Linear
47:00 Outro

We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Nan Yu.

Today, our guest is Oji Udezue, AI product expert, author, and an innovation-focused, multi-disciplined business leader.

Oji has had an extensive and successful career, spanning his time as CPO of Typeform, Head of Product for Creation and Conversation at Twitter, CPO of Calendly, and Head of Product at Atlassian.

Key takeaways:

• The “Zone of Benefit,” which helps assess market disruptiveness and emphasizes the need for a high value to price ratio to drive change in customers
• The concept of “forest time,” a practice of stepping back to gain strategic perspective
• Insights on product-led growth (PLG), emphasizing the importance of solving customer problems and adaptive business strategies.

“Building Rocket Ships”: https://shop.damngravity.com/products/building-rocketships-udezue
Writing: https://ojiudezue.substack.com/
Consulting: https://productmind.co
Twitter: https://x.com/ojiudezue
LinkedIn: https://linkedin/in/ojiudezue
Leader Spotlight: Taking advantage of how humans behave, with Oji Udezue: https://tinyurl.com/bdhwkj5t

00:00 Intro
02:19 The Multifaceted Role of Product Management
04:48 Importance of Frameworks in Product Management
06:36 Adapting Frameworks to Different Companies
11:15 Understanding the Zone of Benefit
17:12 The Unicorn Framework for B2B SaaS
21:30 Building Rocket Ships: A Book for Senior Product Managers
25:32 Calendly's Success Story
30:00 Discovery: Finding Big Problems in Workflow
31:12 Simplifying Solutions with Slack
33:27 The Creators Initiative at Twitter
40:26 Forest Time: Gaining Perspective
46:14 The Importance of Listening to Your Team
48:06 Product-Led Growth (PLG) in Today's Economy
55:14 A/B Testing: When and How to Use It
59:31 Outro

Did you know we have a new channel dedicated to LaunchPod? Check it out and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LaunchPod.byLogRocket

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Oji Udezue.

Today, our guest is Julie Acosta, Director of eComm and Marketing Analytics at NOBULL, a fast-growing Boston-based footwear and apparel brand.

For Julie, curiosity has a funny way of making you change course. As she originally set out to avoid numbers by going to university for marketing, but as she began developing her career, she found that understanding and working with data made her more effective at understanding her customer base.

It was at AutoZone, where her path really changed, as Julie went from merchandising to building AutoZone’s first eCommerce Analytics team from the ground up.

By bridging the digital and in-store experiences, her team altered the company’s understanding of how the two were linked, including how new product lines can grow existing lines and how online customer behavior influences in-store purchases.

Other key takeaways:

• How to balance data with usability and how analytics can’t always tell you everything
• How B&M and e-commerce are inextricably linked and by synchronizing the two you can create a cohesive customer journey strategy
• How to solve perceived customer cannibalization

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-acosta-89846b11/
Spotlight interview: https://shorturl.at/Md6SR

00:00 Intro
03:31 From AVL Boeing to AutoZone
04:09 Merchandising and Marketing at AutoZone
05:33 Building AutoZone's E-commerce and Analytics Team
07:05 The Importance of Curiosity and Team Building
16:23 Balancing Data and Customer Insights
20:43 Understanding the Human Element in Data
21:02 Hands-On Experience at AutoZone
22:07 Challenges and Innovations in E-Commerce
25:14 Performance Parts and Customer Insights
30:19 Balancing Online and Offline Metrics
35:38 Transition to NOBULL and New Challenges
40:30 Outro

Love LaunchPod and the rest of LogRocket's great content? Follow us on TikTok for interview clips, UX tutorials, and more!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Julie Acosta.

On today’s episode of LaunchPod, Jeff Wharton talks to Lauren Creedon, VP of Product at Goldcast, who formerly led product at Drift and Hudl.

In this episode, we talked about:

• How to be a PM who thinks like a GM
• Her 1-5-50 product launch process, going from friendly alpha to open beta
• And the real-life lesson of what happens when you launch a product no one’s ready to sell—or buy

00:00 Intro: Meet Lauren Creedham
01:29 Lauren's Career Journey and Insights
02:50 The Importance of AI in Product Management
04:20 Revenue-Driven Product Management
14:06 The 1-5-50 Product Launch Process
17:26 PM Lessons from the Field
21:28 Building the Right Operating Culture
24:20 Measuring Success and Future-Proofing Your Career
32:25 Outro

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurencreedon/

Love LaunchPod and the rest of LogRocket's great content? Follow us on TikTok for interview clips, UX tutorials, and more!

LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today.

Special Guest: Lauren Creedon.