🚀 From Google Podcasts to Moon FM in No Time: Your Hassle-Free Migration Guide
👉

Product Thinking

Melissa Perri

Successful product management isn’t just about training the product managers who work side by side with developers everyday to build better products. It’s about taking a step back, approaching the systems within organizations as a whole, and leveling up product leadership to improve these systems. This is the Product Thinking Podcast, where Melissa Perri will connect with industry leading experts in the product management space, AND answer your most pressing questions about everything product. Join us each week to level up your skillset and invest in yourself as a product leader.

  • 44 minutes 56 seconds
    Episode 168: Cutting the Fat after a Crisis with Alex Wattrelos, Previous CPO of Sunday
    In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Alex Wettrelos Chief Product Officer at Sunday. Join them as they explore the challenges of rapid scaling and then descaling during the 2022 tech-crisis. They discuss how Sunday, a fin-tech company innovating payment methods across the hospitality industry, went from an idea on a slide deck to 450 employees with $124 million of seed funding. They also touch on the differences between  product management in Europe & the US.

    Alex worked with Sunday for four years. He primarily built and led the product and product design team whilst also navigating the 2022 tech-crisis. He is now taking the experience of rapid scaling and subsequent downsizing to his new job as Chief Product Officer at Furious, the online system that integrates a business’s CRM, quotes, billing, and project management. 

    He is also a member of FrenchCPO, a non-for-profit community of French Chief Product Officers, bringing together top product leaders from French tech companies. Alex has worked in product for almost 10 years. Before this he was an Officer Cadet for the French Army between 2013-2014.

    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 01:45 - Alex shares the key challenges he faced as the Chief Product Officer in the early stages of Sunday. It is important to have a clear product vision from the beginning, but this can be a struggle amongst all the other variables, such as partners, customers and employees, who are all competing for your time and attention. The key is to focus on the value proposition we want to bring, how can we then test that and how fast can we get it to market. Deciding what you want to bring makes all the millions of decisions easier, as you have something to base them on. 

    • 12:15 - Central to Sunday’s early success was their minimum viable product (MVP). In Europe, paying the bill is often a terrible experience. When you’ve decided to pay after a lovely meal in a busy restaurant, you could spend the next 15 minutes not talking to your friend but trying to gain the attention of the waiter to then pay your bill. It can be a real mood killer. After identifying this pain point, it was clear what Sunday wanted to achieve: speeding up this process. Prioritizing user feedback over the vision was key to getting this to work and focusing on improving the MVP, bit by bit.

    • 32:16 - Alex discusses the importance of focusing on market fit and profitability, especially in the post-tech crisis era. After a period of rapid growth, Sunday needed to descale the entire operation, reduce the number of potential product features and the number of countries to focus on. It was a major challenge, but it also made working for Sunday all the more interesting. In times like this, the company couldn’t afford not to refocus on where the product would have readily available users that could see the value and how it was going to make money and become profitable.

    Episode Resources:

    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    24 April 2024, 4:00 am
  • 45 minutes 29 seconds
    Episode 167: How to Use More Than 10% of Your Company's Brain with Aaron Smith, Chief Product Officer
    In this episode of Product Thinking, Aaron Smith joins Melissa Perri. Together, they discuss Aaron’s best practices he learned from his time at Amazon, key leadership principles, creating a culture of accountability, and the destiny creator mindset. 

    Aaron is the Chief Product Officer of Pattern in Salt Lake City. He joined Pattern back in 2020, bringing his impressive ecommerce and product credentials with him from some of the world’s most successful customer-centric companies such as Amazon, Grubhub, and Nordstrom. Pattern is a leading global ecommerce accelerator, reaching $1 billion revenue in 2022. They are an AI-driven tech platform that accelerates ecommerce growth end-to-end for hundreds of partner brands, such as Google, Skechers and Converse. 

    Prior to Pattern, Aaron led the Scheduled Delivery, Dropship, and Ops Integration teams at Amazon, creating hundreds of millions in new revenue opportunities and introducing innovative products that improve customer experiences. At Grubhub, Aaron built the consumer product team and a product experience that helped triple gross food sales to $5B and revenues to $1B in 3 years. Aaron holds an MBA from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.

    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 1:23 - Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, second only to Apple. Aaron shares his experience working at Amazon and what he’s taken with him to other leadership roles. They are customer obsession, use data to drive decision making and are expert planners. Amazon eliminates bureaucracy at the high level. They prioritize flexibility and provide autonomy to its planners. Aaron noticed that being overly committed to one plan can be destructive for companies. Amazon combated this with a result focused approach that’s backed with data: “if you’ve found a more advantageous way, and the data shows it too, then do it. Don’t ask, just do and get the results.”

    • 14:50 - Coming from such a high-performing company such as Amazon comes with an adaptation period. There’s an element of culture shock shared by ex-Amazonians who have switched companies. Although their data-driven and direct leadership approach is effective, Aaron reveals it doesn't always seamlessly fit with other companies' cultures. Coming into another culture and simply trying to make it another version of Amazon quickly descends into plain arrogance. Aaron teaches humility in leadership to his team and instead takes the best of his current and previous work cultures to find the best of both worlds.

    • 19:37 - Aaron’s leadership principle of “pain-point alchemy” prioritizes taking a step back after extracting the pain points and exposing the out-of-the-box opportunities present. It's important to truly understand the customer's pain points and what will make their lives better. This requires listening and understanding what the customer really needs, even when the customer doesn’t know themselves.

    • 38:53 - Curating a truly innovative culture is about consistency. To foster innovation, leaders need to be open to new ideas from their people and not critiquing them for their lack of focus on the current projects. Aaron shares an example of how Amazon successfully embeds innovation into their working cycle, and gives employees a chance to pitch their ideas to the higher ups, called operational planning. If you’re not giving people the opportunity to bring their best ideas to the table, then you’re using 10% of your company's brain. 

    Episode Resources:

    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    17 April 2024, 4:00 am
  • 41 minutes 12 seconds
    Episode 166: Building Products and Riding the Wave of Cutting Edge AI with Darren Wilson, CPO of Soul Machines
    In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Darren Wilson, Chief Product Officer of Soul Machines. Join them as they explore Darren’s journey to CPO of Soul Machines, a company that produces digital humanoids. They discuss the challenges of building digital avatars, keeping up with AI technology, and leveraging user feedback to shape product strategies. 

    Darren Wilson has worked at Soul Machines for almost five years. He joined the company to build and scale an entirely new product team, introducing a design-first approach while realigning a Product Engineering team to deliver the company's core product, DDNA Studio, at scale. Darren secured $140m through 3 rounds of funding and quarter-on-quarter customer user growth, evolving the platform to meet the demands of a rapidly changing Generative AI Landscape.

    Before his CPO role at Soul Machines, Darren was a Partner at Golden Arm in New York. He has a proven track record of building organizations that deliver innovative and impactful products and services, working with global brands such as Mercedes, Samsung, Intel, and the BBC. 

    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 07:53 - Darren shares insights into the journey of Soul Machines. Started by Mark Sagar, a special effects expert who developed motion capture technologies for blockbuster movies, the company focuses on creating digital avatars that can connect with users in more empathic ways. Initially, Soul Machines pitched avatars as digital assistants for sales and customer service. However, avatars work best when empathic and personal connections are needed, such as helping people make difficult choices or practicing challenging conversations.

    • 12:29 - AI is rapidly advancing. Darren shares that Soul Machines is fortunately riding the wave of development and are able to pivot away from relying on external platforms such as Google, IBM, and Microsoft. They've also introduced ChatGPT into their platform, reducing time to market for customers. The challenge is continually adapting to LLMs coming on board and increasing the multimodality in the Soul Machines platform. Darren says that the challenge is consistent for the product team, with focus and prioritization being crucial inidentifying what the biggest opportunity is for the platform's growth. Understanding what truly adds value to customers are critical.

    • 33:55 - Darren's unusual journey to CPO has shaped his approach. Coming from a design background, he emphasizes the importance of user research and involving real people in the product development process. He also encourages making engineers into advocates and bringing cross-functional teams together. Darren shares that being more open to discussion and less focused on delivery is an advantage he’s gained from his non-traditional background. Plus, always listening to good ideas from technical people and those more knowledgeable than yourself helps in the transition from design to CPO. 

    Episode Resources:

    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    10 April 2024, 4:00 am
  • 38 minutes 54 seconds
    Episode 165: The Story of SpotHero & Breaking into Product Management with Matt DiBari, Chief Product Officer
    In this episode of Product Thinking, Matt DiBari joins Melissa Perri to discover the secrets of product management in high growth companies. Together, they discuss effective user research, the different mindsets in B2B & B2C, essential skills in high growth companies, and breaking into product management.

    Matt DiBari is Chief Product Officer at SpotHero, over in Chicago. He joined SpotHero in 2019 as VP of Product, bringing more than 15 years of experience as a Product specialist in the world of automotives. At SpotHero, Matt is responsible for product vision and strategy, combining his love of product innovation and extensive automotive experience.

    Before SpotHero, Matt was the Senior Director of Product Management at Cars.com, where he led product management teams working across Cars.com’s marketplace and technologies. Matt also honed his automotive expertise at CDK Global, where he was responsible for a global team developing automotive retail and accounting systems with product revenues of up to $100 million annually. Matt has a BA in Computer Science, Math, and Philosophy from Augustana College and an MS-MIS and MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 5:25 - Matt explains whether there is a clear distinction between product managers and user researchers. The process of user research at SpotHero is handled by the product designers. Product managers collaborate closely with the designers and take notes during research sessions. The insights are then shared with the engineering team to ensure everyone understands the customers' needs.

    • 13:02 - SpotHero has 125 people in the product and design teams. Managing both B2B and B2C marketplaces has challenges as the needs and time horizons differ. Matt explains B2B and B2C teams share goals that benefit both sides, such as increasing ratings and reviews. SpotHero ensures both teams understand the importance of collaboration and how their work impacts each other. 

    • 19:29 - High growth companies have a unique perspective, decisions and rules are up for debate. Matt reveals this differs from big established companies in that rules are unchallenged. The key difference is an attitude shift, in a high growth company people are looking to make things faster and more efficient without too much reflection. To find people who thrive in high growth environments, Matt looks for candidates who are curious, self-starters, and have a track record of influencing others. He asks questions about their messiest projects, their ability to learn and teach themselves new things, and their experience in influencing higher-ups.

    • 36:54 - Matt encourages individuals trying to break into product management to start showing an early interest and start spending time with product managers. Candidates that shadow and proactively seek mentorship tend to perform better during recruitment processes. Demonstrating initiative is key, successful candidates have previously asked for recommendations of podcasts or books that’ll aid with their deep dive into product management.

    Episode Resources:

    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    3 April 2024, 4:00 am
  • 46 minutes 45 seconds
    Episode 164: Positioning Yourself for a Chief Product Officer Role with the CEO & Co-Founder at Artico Search
    In this episode of Product Thinking, Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Artico Search, joins Melissa Perri. Together, they discuss navigating the hiring landscape for Chief Product Officers, the importance of technical expertise and commercial acumen in today's market, and what the difference is between a Head of Product and a Chief Product Officer.

    Mercedes is a serial investment professional as well as Co-Founder and CEO of Artico Search. She’s a Limited Partner at four investment firms, including B Capital and Next Coast, and is a go-to woman for building teams for the most successful global investors and portfolio companies in the world. 

    Mercedes is passionate about diversity and inclusion across investor and operating roles. She also sits on the Board of the The Posse Foundation. This organization identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may traditionally be overlooked through the college selection process. 

    If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts; instructions on how to do this are here.


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • [02:44] - The effects of COVID have impacted the macro environment for Chief Product Officers (CPOs). Silicon Valley has the tendency to be reactive, but Mercedes says if you want to stay in business, you don't fire your CPO, who’s doing a great job. Like many industries, there is less funding to go around after COVID. In this environment, there is a real focus on doing more with less. Combining roles is more common, for example, if you're coming from an engineering background and now tackling a product, there’s no shortage of opportunities.

    • 10:17] - Hiring a CPTO isn’t as simple as giving a CTO a go at product or vice versa. The role of CPTO marries the technical with the commercial acumen and understanding of the customer. Firstly, to be a great CPTO, you often come from a great product company. Secondly, you’re going to need to know the product landscape. Technical individuals typically struggle with the landscape or macro environments. 

    • [19:42] - A Head of Product and Chief Product Officer have key differences. Mercedes clarifies that a CPO has an executive perspective, they think about the macro and the product's role in an ecosystem. Whereas the Head of Product starts with the product line within the company and therefore has a narrower perspective than a CPO. The CPO also requires a breadth of experience and understanding of marketing, sales revenue, and finance while working closely with CFOs. The Head of Product has a micro view compared to the CPO’s macro view.

    • [26:38] - Mercedes shares her insights for applying to these chief product roles, but in some cases experience with well known and high performing product companies is key. Pattern matching could be the key to a successful job switch. Mercedes advises pattern matching what it is you want to do with what you've done, so to get the attention of the hiring manager is to tailor your resume specifically to your experience in a product that matches the role.

    Episode Resources:

    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    27 March 2024, 4:00 am
  • 46 minutes 41 seconds
    Episode 163: A Mold-Breaking IPO and the Power to Redefine CPO & CTO's Role with Tim Armandpour at PagerDuty
    In this episode of Product Thinking, Tim Armandpour, Chief Technology Officer at PagerDuty, joins Melissa Perri to explore leadership qualities, product & technology roles, their challenges, and the importance of an overarching company vision. They discuss user-centricity, product-market fit, and aligning teams. 

    Tim is almost in his ninth year at PagerDuty and has been the CTO since 2022. He’s been working across Product Development his entire career, with particular skills in business operations as well as building and growing stellar teams. 

    Tim’s career in Product Development spans over 25 years, from being a Senior Director at Paypal to founding Yogurt Bar, he has established himself as an outstanding tech exec and entrepreneur.

    If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts; instructions on how to do this are here.


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • [02:04] - Chris Sacca tweeted that he wished he’d invested in PagerDuty after they’d come on the scene with an IPO that made people sit up and pay attention. Tim says the founders' brilliance in attaching to a problem space with broad applicability had a lot to do with its success. He mentions PagerDuty’s significant product-market fit, as it plugs into anything that speaks over HTTPS. It grew through a natural network when teams started seeing other teams successfully using it. Further, the company was taking aim at user centricity and the notion that it should ‘just work.’

    • [08:34] - Ensuring clear communication with your team optimizes the product's success. Communication is a balance, and you don’t want to tilt into micromanagement. So, Tim suggests building guardrails and aligning the team with a company’s overarching vision to answer all the important questions. If you have a vision, you’re able to work backwards from your goal and implement what everyone needs to do to make it happen. 

    • [27:05] - Tim’s decision to combine the roles of Chief Product and Chief Technology Officer provides him with the ability to lean into almost all parts of the business. Combining these roles isn't for everyone, but it does have its advantages: one less negotiation cycle and finding new synergies. PagerDuty combines and splits the role numerously; combining the role is about how the business is operating at the time and which role serves the present needs. Ultimately, putting the two critical functions together aids in compressing the decision, delivery, and development cycle time. Even when the role is split, at PagerDuty, they always share a common goal and vision. 

    • [43:28] Preparing to scale the team to support a transition from CPO & CTO to CPTO requires consideration of strategy and support. According to Tim, one thing to follow is the strategy; along with leaders' ability to adapt and while maintaining a clear structure. Additionally, Tim believes in embracing opportunities even when they’re outside of your comfort zones. It broadens perspectives, empathy, and understanding within teams, improving organizational success.

    Episode Resources:

    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    20 March 2024, 4:00 am
  • 41 minutes 17 seconds
    Episode 162: Product Roadmap: Building a Platform for the Next Decade with Craig Saldanha, Chief Product Officer at Yelp
    In this episode of Product Thinking, Craig Saldanha, Chief Product Officer at Yelp, joins Melissa Perri to explore user research, two-sided marketplaces, and the concept of the flywheel. They discuss future-proofing the business, building customer trust, and Yelp’s importance as a platform for reviews and recommendations. 

    Craig has over twelve years experience in product management, with a focus on technology and digital content. He is skilled in product development, strategic planning, market segment analysis, change management and go-to-market strategies.

    Craig has been Chief Product Officer for Yelp since 2022. The new product launches he has helmed include a new numerical rating system, “Yelp Guaranteed”, search experiences that use AI, and immersive video. Before Yelp, he worked at Amazon for over nine years as a product manager, and director of Prime Video International. 

    If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts; instructions on how to do this are here.


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • [02:44] - Customer obsession is one of the key differentiating factors between Yelp and its competitors. Craig says that what separates Yelp from their peers is the quality of the reviews. It is the depth and breadth of these reviews that build customer trust, and mean Yelp is the go-to when someone is looking for a local business, restaurant, or nightlife spot. Craig emphasizes that every review is equal, and that this ethos drives the “road map” for Yelp’s evolution. 

    • [08:26] - Craig decided to codify the product ethos and product culture of Yelp into five tenets. Tenet one is delighting a two-sided marketplace. Tenet two is regarding decision making, and how to differentiate between ‘one-way doors’ (like a price change) and ‘two-way doors’ (like UI/UX changes). Tenet three is being consistent and scalable. Tenet four is being diverse and inclusive in product thinking. Tenet five is “think big and learn fast”. 

    • [13:40] - While driving revenue is, naturally, very important, Craig says that simply developing products that “delight the customers” is vital. Whether or not something moves a metric is almost by the by in the ideas stage, since the driving force behind product development should be the bigger picture, aka the customer experience. Craig says that if you build things people love, “you're definitely going to be OK in the long term”. 

    • [20:13] - Working across teams, especially in product management, can be very difficult. Craig says that although each team does their best to work out their own dependencies, they will most likely only get 60% of them. One solution is to have a small product operations team that “owns the overall level road map”, can reconcile differences between other teams, and “see where some of the gaps are”. 

    Episode Resources:


    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    13 March 2024, 4:00 am
  • 1 hour 2 minutes
    Episode 161: Nurturing a Successful Startup Accelerator with Paolo Lombardi, Founder of Techpeaks
    In this episode of Product Thinking, Paolo Lombardi joins Melissa Perri to explore founding the TechPeaks startup accelerator—they discuss the unique aspects of the program, including its focus on attracting international entrepreneurs and promoting collaboration, and the importance of planning and preparation. 

    Paolo has over 24 years experience in digital innovation. He is the Director of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at Taylor & Francis, has co-founded two AI startups, and created the startup accelerator Techpeaks. At Techpeaks, he directly deployed over 4 million euros to early stage startups. 

    Paolo has authored 30 scientific papers on artificial intelligence, computer vision, and context-adaptive systems, organized and managed several dozen hackathons, idea challenges, competitions, and coached over 200 startups in digital, AI, foodtech, energy, and robotics. He is the co-author of Startup Program Design: A Practical Guide for Creating Accelerators and Incubators at Any Organization.

    If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts; instructions on how to do this are here.


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 12:17 - Melissa, who participated in the accelerator in 2013, describes it as a transformative experience and highlights the program's unique approach as a "People accelerator." By attracting international entrepreneurs, Techpeaks fostered collaboration among individuals with diverse skills and backgrounds. This approach aimed to import an international perspective while connecting with the local university and research community. Paolo said that Techpeaks were happy to accept people that didn’t have a business idea, but could work well collaboratively. 

    • 25:41 - Paolo emphasizes the cultural diversity within the Techpeaks program and the learning experiences that arose from working with people from different backgrounds. She shares an example of a cultural clash between an Italian woman and a Russian participant, highlighting the importance of understanding different communication styles.

    • 48:54 - Paolo says that the issue with corporate accelerators is that they are often not comfortable with taking risks, or quick decisions that imply risk. Although they might contain talented managers or workers, often they can’t gauge risk quickly enough to be able to control it. He says that in corporate environments, this awareness of risk is not common, but for startups “in the wild” this is an intuition. 

    • 58:49 - Techpeaks encouraged the use of lean startup techniques, which allowed participants to iterate and pivot their ideas quickly. This approach fostered a culture of experimentation and learning. Paolo recommends starting with a small programme that lasts for a weekend, or two or three weeks, with a very narrow niche value proposition—this will test your ability to deliver on that.

    Episode Resources:


    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    6 March 2024, 5:00 am
  • 44 minutes 42 seconds
    Episode 160: The Value of Flexibility in Hybrid Work & Product Management: Jon Sadow Shares Scoop's Approach
    In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Jon Sadow, Co-Founder & Chief Product & Technology Officer of Scoop Technologies. Join them as they discuss Scoop’s journey from a carpooling application to a software company supporting hybrid work and workplace management. They explore the dramatic impact of COVID, pivoting the business, and the benefits of embracing flexibility. They also touch on the importance of building relationships and forging connections in remote and flexible work environments, as well as the future of work and the possibilities for innovation and improvement in remote and hybrid work environments.

    Jon Sadow leads the Product and Engineering teams at Scoop, the company he co-founded in early 2015. A self-proclaimed builder at heart, Jon is passionate about building exceptional teams and products to help solve some of the world's important problems.  

    Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Jon and Scoop focused on solving the employee commuting problem. They raised over $100m, partnering with Fortune 50 companies to create the largest and most successful carpooling network in the country. 

    Following the shift in focus to hybrid work and workplace management, Jon has continued to be driven by optimizing product development processes, user research, refining product design, and crafting positioning language.

    Jon’s recent focus is sharing his insights gained from the ups and downs of Scoop with other early stage founders, with the ultimate aim to accelerate their own development curve, provide shortcuts, and increase their chances of success.


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 05:15- 09:11 - COVID drastically changed the way we think about the office. For a company based on commuting to and from the office, the impact is huge. The volume of traffic dropped overnight. People stopped going to the office. You then had to navigate through layoffs. For Scoop, then came the challenges of building a new version of the product to adapt to the changing work landscape, noticing a gap in the market and finding a new opportunity. 

    • 14.58 - 24.21 - The shift to hybrid working means being flexible. You need to understand employee goals and ensure that they can be productive and fulfilled in both remote and office environments. Companies' positive attitude towards flexible work, such as having work location flexibility, can increase revenue growth. With FlexIndex, policy decisions are backed with data, helping companies make positive data driven changes, not to mention the benefits of embracing hybrid work policies and how companies that recognize employees' needs for flexibility are likely to attract better talent and foster innovation.

    • 26:30 - 29:28 - Forging relationships is different in remote and hybrid workplaces than when you’re in the office, five days a week, and able to have regular chats by the watercooler. Different doesn't mean better or worse. Remote onboarding is successful with a more structured process. This can include specific goals, scheduled meetings, and clear expectations. It all comes down to reevaluating what’s important and questioning the utility of legacy activities, such as long unimportant meetings, and replacing them with purposeful and targeted alternatives.

    Episode Resources:


    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    28 February 2024, 5:00 am
  • 57 minutes 11 seconds
    Episode 159: Fueling Product-Led Growth with Leah Tharin, Interim Chief Product and Growth Officer, GotPhoto
    In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Leah Tharin, Interim Chief Product and Growth Officer, GotPhoto. Join them as they explore the different types of growth strategies and when to use them, as well as the importance of aligning sales and product teams. Leah also talks about the power of data-driven strategies in bridging sales and product teams and how aligning with customer success fuels product-led growth.

    Leah is a well-known figure in the B2B and product-led growth sectors, guiding organizations to align their growth, product, marketing, and sales efforts, whether scaling up or down. She focuses on practical, operational strategies rather than theoretical concepts with her clients. Also, Leah serves as an advisor to Notion Capital, NorthOne, and Paddle and hosts the "PRODUCTEA with Leah" podcast.


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • [03:47] - Deciding between product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth (SLG) is essential for companies at any stage. For startups, leveraging PLG by offering a freemium version can be key to gaining traction in a crowded market. However, the ease of launching new products today means more competition, making it harder to stand out. Mature companies must assess their market position — opting for PLG in commoditized markets to attract a broad customer base without the need for direct sales interaction. Contrarily, in a market where personalized value and differentiation are vital, a sales-led strategy might still be necessary. While adapting to PLG can be challenging for traditionally sales-driven organizations, it's often crucial to remain competitive.

    • [22:54] - To foster a product-led growth strategy while motivating sales teams effectively, focus on aligning sales incentives with customer expansion and success. Rather than rewarding salespeople solely on initial deals, offer bonuses for growing accounts and contributing to customer success activities. This will benefit the sales team by focusing their efforts on warm leads and reducing time spent on cold outreach. Moreover, it will ensure that sales strategies are aligned with delivering real value to customers. By combining insights from both sales demographics and customer behavior analytics, organizations can identify and engage with genuinely interested prospects, leading to more meaningful conversations and, ultimately, more successful expansions.

    • [32:28] - Embracing a PLG strategy involves more than just offering free trials or premium versions; it's about leveraging detailed product usage data to drive sales and improve product development. A successful approach involves bridging the gap between sales and product teams, ensuring they work collaboratively to use insights from customer engagement to refine product offerings and enhance the sales process. Sales teams can use this data to better qualify leads and personalize their strategies while product teams can use feedback to build better solutions. This symbiosis requires executive leadership, especially from Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) and Chief Product Officers (CPOs), to foster a culture of data-driven decision-making and collaboration.

    • [45:13] - Facing the wild tech landscape of 2024, with challenges like massive layoffs and tighter financial conditions, companies seek ways to navigate these rough waters. Leah highlights a crucial survival strategy: adopting a vertical organization. This approach could be the life jacket businesses need during the storm. By focusing on specific customer segments, companies can improve their value proposition and charge more per customer, counteracting the pressures of commoditization and increased competition. Embracing verticalization allows for more efficient use of resources and opens up new roads for growth by targeting underserved or unique market niches.

    Episode Resources:If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    21 February 2024, 5:00 am
  • 59 minutes 33 seconds
    Episode 158: Turning the Tide with Mauricio Monico's Lessons from eBay, Facebook, and Google
    In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Mauricio Monico, Chief Product Officer at Wish. Join them as they discuss marketplace dynamics and turnaround strategies. They deep-dive into Mauricio’s extensive product management expertise and wisdom gained from his previous roles with Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, Google, and various startups. They also touch on Mauricio’s time with Indigo Ag, a company focused on agricultural sustainability, during a big turnaround. 

    Mauricio is the Chief Product officer at Wish and has over 20 years of experience in the tech industry. He has built and led successful products at some of the world’s most influential companies, including Google and Meta. He has used his extensive experience in turnaround strategies and understanding of marketplace dynamics to build world-class products.

    Mauricio began his career as an engineer at a start-up, and only developed a passion for product management after taking a job at Microsoft and realizing the scope and impact of the role. Mauricio's career has spanned product management roles with tech giants Google, Meta, and eBay. He utilized his impressive experience in his role at Indigo Ag to successfully pivot the marketplace with his concept driven approach. 

    Mauricio is a seasoned professional whose expertise helps businesses achieve their goals and gain desired results through effective product strategy and execution with unrivaled understanding of marketplaces. He is also an active advisor, mentor, and angel investor in the tech community. 


    You’ll hear them talk about:

    • 11.37 - 13.28 - A turnaround can happen when there is a shift in the marketplace. In eBay’s case, they were thriving. They were the talk of Wall Street, until Amazon caused a significant shift and couldn’t be ignored anymore. The first instinct is to copy; you’ve seen a strategy come along and dominate the space, so you want to copy it. Instead, eBay had to find its unique value proposition through effective communication and steering the company into a clear direction and focus on the correct verticals. Clarity of communication is key in turnarounds. 

    • 15:32 - 23.09 - Anticipating difficulties and marketplace dynamics are key challenges during a turnaround. Shifting the business model, like at Indigo Ag, requires immersion, testing and quick decision making. The marketplace can throw an endless range of challenges, such as taxi unions opposing Uber. Indigo Ag needed a business model shift, to move from a first party grain buyer to a market place. They did this by applying e-commerce market dynamics for the benefit of the farmers and the grain buyers.

    • 42.34 - 48.11 - A turnaround is not simply copying the other company’s strategy, which caused the market shift. Too many companies get sucked into copying what worked for others, rather than focusing on how they can differentiate and accentuate their unique strengths. What’s interesting is that a mixture of both is necessary. Learning from each other is a core practice, but you don’t want to always be two steps behind.  

    • 48.11 - 53.01 - The core question is “When is the right time to commit to a turnaround?” It often begins with the realization: we’re in trouble. That's a no-brainer. But actually admitting that is the hard part. Everyone wants to be winning. Even after admitting you’re in trouble it can be hard to tell people. The next step is prioritization, which problems need to be done? From his time with eBay, Mauricio learned there can be hundreds of problems that need solving. The trick is focusing on the problems that would ruin the company if they aren’t solved and learning to live with the other problems that can be sorted later. In a turnaround you need to make the clear decision of “not doing it now” and focusing on life and death decisions.   

    Episode Resources:


    If you enjoyed this episode, please visit:


    Product Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

    Previous guests include: 

    Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services,  Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq

    Check out our Top 3 episodes:

    14 February 2024, 5:00 am
  • More Episodes? Get the App
About Product Thinking
Links
Listeners Also Subscribed To
© MoonFM 2024. All rights reserved.