Product Growth Podcast

There has been a lot of talk around how AI can disrupt product management in the near future. How true is it though?

Sam Kawsarani and I discuss the impact of AI in Product Management, both at the present and in the future

Sam has over 15 years of PM experience. He is currently the VP of Product at Paramount. Previously, he was the VP of product at Railz. He is also the author of The Product Trench Newsletter.

In today’s episode, we cover:

The Actual Impact of AI on Product Management | 02:53

Use of AI in day-to-day PM work | 08:58

The Pros and Cons of AI in Product Management | 18:21

Implementing AI in Products | 38:00

Feature PMs aren’t bad, POs shouldn’t exist & Other Hot Takes | 52:15

Tips and Advice for Aspiring Product Managers | 01:26:20

Brought to you by:

June.so: Customer analytics for product focused teams

Cello: Your all-in-one platform for partner & user referrals

Enterpret: Transform customer feedback into product growth with custom AI

Where to find Sam:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Website

To advertise in the podcast, email productgrowthppp at gmail dot com.

We have some great podcasts coming from Mirela Mus, Maja Voje, and Jaryd Hermann. I’m so excited to share them with all of you.

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Product strategy documents are amongst the hardest to write as PMs or Product Leaders. How do you them well?

In today's episode Ravi Mehta and I deep dive into how to build clear product strategies. We cover everything FROM components of a good product strategy TO all the frameworks that you will ever need.

Ravi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Outpace, a company that is reinventing the way people learn and grow. He has significant experience in product management and development, having previously held roles such as CPO at Tinder, Director of Product at Facebook, and VP of Product at TripAdvisor.

Brought to you by:

Attio: The next generation CRM

OneSchema: Automate CSV imports directly in your product

Cello: Your all-in-one platform for partner & user referrals

In today’s episode, we cover:

The Importance of Product Strategy | 02:50

Deep Dive into the Product Strategy Stack | 17:06

Wireframes as a Strategy Component: Ravi’s Hot Take | 32:18

Building Strategy: From Planning to Execution | 41:23

Strategy to Action: A New Approach to Goal-Setting with NCTs | 54:53

Selective Micromanagement: When to Step In vs. Step Back | 01:00:54

The Shape of PM Framework | 01:13:20

Here are the key lessons from our conversation:

1. Using Visuals in Your Product Strategy is Necessary

Ravi explains how having 15-20 wireframes in your product strategy can be beneficial. Wireframes provide a strong understanding of what's being proposed.

Without any visual, stakeholders might have different takeaways which may lead to a long-term misalignment among teams.

The use of wireframes helps align stakeholders, clarify trade-offs, and ensure everyone has a shared vision of the product's direction.

2. A new approach to Goal-Setting: NCTs over OKRs

Ravi presents Narratives, Commitments, and Tasks (NCTs) as an alternative to conventional OKRs. This framework solves a few common challenges with OKRs by providing context (the narrative), clear expectations (commitments), and actionable steps (tasks).

NCTs help teams to balance strategy and execution, ensuring goals are both meaningful and achievable.

3. The Shape of a PM Framework

The "Shape of a PM" framework identifies 12 key competencies across four areas: product execution, customer insight, product strategy, and influencing people.

Understanding that no PM excels in all areas helps in building a balanced team.

The framework relies on the fact that no PM specialises in all areas. It is based on the foundation that teams should be well-rounded, even if individuals are "weak" in certain areas.

4. Selective Micromanagement

Contrary to popular belief, selective micromanagement can be beneficial. Ravi mentions how good leaders should have a dynamic range: an ability to zoom in on details when necessary and zoom out for the big picture.

This approach helps ensure alignment between strategy and execution, particularly when teams are facing challenges or misalignment.

Check out the episode for all the details and the amazing frameworks shared by Ravi.

Where to find Ravi:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Website

We have some great podcasts coming from Sam Kawsarani, Mirela Mus, and Maja Voje. I’m so excited to share them with all of you.

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Building a high performing product team is one of the hardest, but most essential tasks, for product leaders. Today, we break down how with Stephanie Leue.

Stephanie was CPO at Doodle and has over 15 years of Product Management experience at companies such as Paypal and Contentful. Currently, she is a Group Product Manager at Ringier. She’s also one of the most original product content producers on LinkedIn.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• What is a high performing team? | 2:50

• How many teams are high performing? | 11:31

• How to build high performing teams as a leader | 16:05

• How to be great at the core craft of PM | 46:30

• Stephanie’s ‘hot takes’ on PM | 1:13:40

Brought to you by:

* Zeda.io: Product discovery platform that turns VOC into product insights

* Enterpret: Transform customer feedback into product growth

* Cello: Your all-in-one platform for partner & user referrals

Here are the Key Takeaways:

1. High-performing Teams are Rare

Only 10-20% of teams consistently achieve high performance, defined by trust, healthy conflict management, commitment, accountability, and focus on results.

These teams can navigate changes and conflicts more quickly, but it's important to recognize that high performance is not a constant state. Even top teams have ups and downs — external factors like personnel changes or strategic shifts can impact performance.

2. Create a Framework to Evaluate Your Org

Stephanies uses the framework People, Processes, Purpose, and Performance to provide a structured approach for leaders to assess and improve their teams, especially when starting a new role.

The benefit of a framework is it allows leaders to quickly identify areas of strength and weakness, prioritize improvements, and communicate findings transparently across the organization.

3. ICP + JTBD > Personas

Build an ideal customer profile and analyzing various jobs to be done is much more effective than using personas.

The combination of these two frameworks help teams focus on solving real user problems and align various departments (product, marketing, sales) around common goals and understanding.

4. Traditional “Growth Team Stuff” is a Must for Core PMs

Core teams don’t need to move away from features. But they do need to adopt practices like proving their value to metrics — fast.

Of course, certain work does not have metrics (like quality) or takes a while (like innovation). But core teams need to be able to take the right balance of bets based on the company’s current strategy. And when metrics matter fast, they must be able to.

Check out the episode for all the nuance and details.

Where to find Stephanie:

* LinkedIn

* Newsletter

We have some great podcasts coming from Ravi Mehta, Sam Kawsarani, and Mirela Mus. I’m excited to share them with you.

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Meta has one of the most unique Product Growth cultures of any company out there. In today’s episode we break down the function with Andre Nader.

Andre spent 9+ years at Meta in Product Growth, and before that he was at Indeed, BuildASign, and Offers.com.

In today’s episode, we cover:

* How to Break Into Meta | 2:04

* Meta's Unique Product Growth Function | 12:20

* How Meta (and Facebook) Does Product Growth | 30:10

* How to Optimize Your FAANG Compensation | 48:30

* The Path to FIRE (in San Francisco) | 1:06:05

Brought to you by:

* June.so: Customer analytics for product focused teams

* Cello: Your all-in-one platform for partner & user referrals

* Attio: The next generation CRM

Here are the key takeaways

There were so many things I learned, but here is a summary of my favorites.

How to Break Into Meta

You want recruiters to reach out to you. To do so, find out where people who are now in the role you are wanting worked in the past.

Recruiters are constantly setting out feelers on LinkedIn, and they like go back to the same companies and teams over time — like Indeed’s growth marketing team, and Capital One’s analytics team.

Meta’s Unique Product Growth Function

Every product team at Meta has a Product Manager, but only certain teams have a Product Growth Analyst. The Product Growth person’s job is to amplify the growth and success of the product by focusing on a specific metric.

They play a hybrid data science/ product management role, and the core characteristic is they do “whatever it takes.”

How Meta (fka Facebook) Does Product Growth

Understand, Identify, Execute is their core framework. It’s a data-driven, fast-paced approach to growth.

But that doesn’t mean they use complex data science metrics. Their goal is to move a key, simple metric. And they’ll make a thousand small optimizations to get there.

How to Optimize Your FAANG Compensation

It’s less about optimize and more about understand. Most people lack that basic understanding of how much they are actually getting compensated. And the ‘TC’ they share is usually bogus.

But, once you do have a grip on how much you make, it does make sense to optimize your tax strategy with backdoor and mega backdoor Roth IRAs.

The Path to FIRE (in San Francisco)

With a 50/50 bond-stock portfolio, based on history, a 3% withdrawal rate will never run out of money. Living in San Francisco with one kid, for Andre and his lifestyle the number he needed was $5.6M.

Your number may be different based on your expenses, but it might not be as high as you think. It’s worth doing the math.

Check out the whole episode for many more details!

We have some great podcasts coming from Stephanie Leue, Ravi Mehta, and Sam Kawsarani. I can’t wait to share them with you.

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Jason Knight has over 25 years of experience in tech and product and currently works as the founder of One Knight Consulting, where he has a portfolio career as an interim and fractional CPO, Maven Course creator, PM coach, and also content creator.

Jason is the man behind the One Knight in Product podcast, which I was on a few months back. He’s been one of my inspirations to start this podcast in the first place.

In today's episode, we break down:

* The Messy Reality of B2B PM | 0:00

* Challenging B2B PM Orthodoxies | 17:35

* Building a Product Culture in B2B | 37:30

* Product Discovery in B2B | 52:20

* The Art of Influence in B2B Product Leadership | 1:01:15

* Product Strategy in B2B | 1:06:38

* How to Prioritize Features | 1:12:30

* Future of B2B PM | 1:18:27

Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

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Brought to you by:

* Zeda.io: Product discovery platform that turns VOC into product insights

* Cello: Your all-in-one platform for partner & user referrals

* OneSchema: Automate CSV imports directly in your product

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If you don’t have time for the full episode, here’s what you need to know:

1. The messy reality is that B2B product management is not always going to be like the books:

A. You’ll have to build features for revenue, because “any revenue is good revenue,” or it can feel that way to pressured B2B execs trying to make the quarter at least.

B. There will be less agile development that you always hoped for, because sometimes you do have to bring a long planning and collaboration process to building a feature — that looks perfectly waterfall.

C. The "accountable for delivery" trap is real and dangerous for PMs: Many B2B PMs find themselves acting as quasi-scrum masters, constantly chasing status updates. This disempowers both PMs and engineers, wasting valuable time on tasks that should be owned by the development team.

2. Effective B2B product discovery is not just about customers. You have to balance direct user research with insights from sales, customer success, and account management teams.

3. B2B product strategy must extend beyond the product team. PMs need to actively influence go-to-market strategy, pricing, and market segmentation. Without input on these areas, your ability to drive meaningful product success is severely limited.

4. Prioritization in B2B requires looking beyond numerical frameworks. It’s usually best to focus on use cases and user journeys rather than disconnected feature lists. And always make sure to consider the needs of both users and buyers; ignoring either can lead to products that fail.

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Update on the Podcast

This little podcast is already taking off. I never even considered being top 3 in the Technology category in India and Pakistan, but there we are.

Next up: #3 in the US.

How are we getting there?

* Sound - From today itself, you should be seeing a great upgrade in sound quality. We’ve upping the bar on guest mics (buying them for guests!) plus have hired on an ace sound engineer to the team.

* Video - We’re also constantly upping our game on video and this is the first video in 4K.

* Conversations - I’m going to stay super close to the ground on feedback. And, to the point, please reply to this e-mail with your feedback about the episode.

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Where to Find Jason

* LinkedIn

* Maven Course

* One Knight Consulting

* One Knight in Product podcast (which I was on a few months back)

Website to not get Podcast emails but the get the rest is here.

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Up Next

I’m super excited about upcoming episodes with Andre Nader, Stephanie Leue, and Mirela Mus. Look forward to them soon!

On the newsletter front, I have several paid deep dives at 80% completion but the consistent thing I’m hearing for you guys is to take the extra time to up the quality. So I’m doing that.

The pieces?

* Ultimate Guide to Growth Design

* How to Answer Why this Company

* The Ultimate Guide to Retention

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Satyajeet Salgar is a Director of Product Management at Google.

He’s had a 16+ year career there, where he has been the product leader for many teams at YouTube and Google Search. Now, he leads teams in Applied AI.

In this conversation, Satyajeet and I cover everything you need to know to write a good product strategy:

* The elements of a good vs a bad strategy doc

* The type of work and experimentation you need to confirm a strategy

* How to connect strategy to quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs) and how often to update your strategy

Brought to you by:

* BuildBetter: AI for product teams

* Enterpret: Transform customer feedback into product growth

* Attio: The next generation CRM

Here were some of my favorite takeaways:

* The ‘second wave’ of technology trends is often where the money-making apps are made. We’re just finishing the first wave of AI, and the money will come in this second wave.

* Adjust your strategy over time and spread your bets around. Keep taking the small and safe ones but don’t forget to take a long shot every now and then.

* Principles in strategy documents should reflect long-standing company values and behaviors. They should not be defined on the spot to justify a particular decision.

* Great PMs create a "culture of product" on their team. They ensure the best decisions get made rather than trying to make all decisions themselves.

Where to Find Satyajeet

* X

* LinkedIn

* Substack

Up Next

We have great podcasts coming from Jason Knight, Mirela Mus, Stephanie Leue and more. I can’t wait to share them with you.

P.S. If you liked this, you may like the newsletter post, How to Write a Product Strategy in 1 Day / 1 Week / 1 Month

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Anthony is, perhaps, the web's favorite writer on Product Marketing. So in today’s podcast, we cover a key Product Marketing and Growth topic: The Ultimate Guide to Positioning.

We go deep on 4 main topics:

* Masterclass in Positioning (0:00)

* Building a Great Homepage (41:00)

* Anthony’s Growth Hot Takes (52:25)

* The Role of PMs and PMMs (1:06:00)

Along the way, we get to hear insider tales from Anthony's experience at FletchPMM.

A big shout-out to our launch sponsors that made this possible:

• Attio: A prior newsletter deep dive subject, Attio is the next generation CRM

• BuildBetter: By our very own newsletter collaborator, Spencer Shulem, BuildBetter is your 24/7 AI-powered analyst

Here are some of my favorite takeaways from the episode:

1. Positioning is about giving frames of reference to help people understand the value of a new product or category. 

* Most companies struggle with positioning as they grow. Increased complexity often leads them to reflect their organization chart in their offerings. 

* The solution is to have really clear positioning that that stands on its own, rather than supporting each VP in the company. You do this by providing a frame of reference that highlights the value to the people.

2. Clear messaging on homepages is paramount to entice your potential customers:

* Over time, messaging clarity on homepages tends to degrade due to the complexity of growing companies and the influence of high-level executives. 

* Avoid the temptation to include too much information on homepages and focus on providing representative samples of what the product can do. 

* It should focus on the differentiated product capabilities rather than high-level outcomes. 

3. The future of product marketing is to lead with features and product capabilities, rather than just focusing on benefits.

4. VC-backed companies should adopt a bootstrapped mindset and focus on getting customers and generating revenue.

Of course, you’ll have to check out the whole episode to get all the details.

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

In today’s episode, we turn to a core topic for most PMs, founders, and growth practitioners: SaaS Pricing. And we chat with one of the leaders in the field, Kyle Poyar.

We cover all the key levers you need to optimize to get it right:

* How to Set Your Pricing (1:24)

* Pricing Page (38:09)

* Feature Paywalls (49:30)

* Free to Paid Conversion (58:45)

* Cancelation (1:17:50)

* Pricing Quick Wins (1:11:05)

If you’re a PM, founder, or someone influencing pricing, this episode is bound to have a bunch of great takeaways for you.

Huge shout-out to the launch sponsors who are making this podcast possible:

* Attio: Attio is the next generation CRM

* Cello: Cello is your all-in-one platform for partner & user referrals

* BuildBetter: BuildBetter is your 24/7 AI-powered analyst

Here are three of my favorite takeaways from the conversation:

* Common pricing mistakes include overly generous free plans, overcorrecting by gating too much, and not considering monetization early enough in product development.

* Pricing should evolve as a company grows, often increasing substantially (60%+) in early stages.

* The distinction between B2B and B2C pricing is mostly overblown, and each side should learn from the other.

You’ll have to check out the whole episode to get all the details!

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe