The Product Experience Mind the Product

If you’re starting a new role in product at whatever level, it can sometimes be difficult to get started, especially if you’re chucked in the deep end. In this week’s podcast episode, we speak with Leah Tharin, currently the Chief Product and Growth Officer at gotphotocom. She provides some insights on your first 90 days in a new product role, challenges the conventional wisdom of the 30, 60, 90-day plan,  and goes into the best ways to gain trust from your new team.
Featured Links: Follow Leah on LinkedIn and Twitter | Leah’s website | Leah’s ‘Productea with Leah’ podcast | ‘The Shit Sandwich and Other Terrible Ways to Give Feedback’ piece at I Done This Blog 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Listen to our conversation with Ipsita Basu, Product Management Leader at BILL all about rediscovering our passion in product. In this episode, Ipsita shares practical advice for product managers looking to get out of a rut and build innovative products that customers love.

Featured Links: Follow Ipsita on LinkedIn | Bill | Read Ipsita's 'Product managers, stop being jaded' article at Mind The Product 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

When you have questions about roadmaps, it pays to talk to someone who has spent way too much of her life thinking about them. Janna Bastow – co-founder of both Mind the Product and ProdPad joins us to give advice to anyone ready to break up with their roadmap.
Featured Links: Follow Janna on Twitter and LinkedIn ｜  ProdPad on Twitter, and read more of her posts ｜ Troubleshooting Agile – Jeffery Fredrick & Douglas Squirrel’s episode of The Product Experience ｜Killing Zombies – Lisa Long’s episode of  The Product Experience
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Tune into our latest conversation with  Dominique Jost, Head of Product at Doist. In this episode, we peel back the layers on why product managers are especially vulnerable to this modern malaise, with Dominic offering an enlightening breakdown of stressors and personal amplifiers that escalate work pressures into health hazards. 

Featured Links: Follow Dominique on LinkedIn | Calmr Works self-care management tool | Work with Dominique at Doist | Buy 'Deep Work: Rules for Focussed Success in a Distracted World' book by  Cal Newport
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

How much should you be charging? Are you leaving money on the table, or are you scaring away potential customers? Pricing strategy can be one of the biggest challenges for product people, so we asked Founders Factory coach Fanni Fejes to share some of the lessons she teaches founders.
(Since we originally ran this episode, Fanni has moved on to take the Head of Product role at Bequest.)

In this episode, listen to learn about:
Having a good pricing strategyApplying anchor pricingUsing metrics wellQuote of the Episode


If the pilot is free, make sure that it’s for a certain amount of time – and then you have the chance to renegotiate from there… In my personal experience, it’s easier to ask for more money than to ask for money at all.

Featured Links: Follow Fanni on LinkedIn | Bequest | Founders Factory | Fanni's 'How to Price Your Product in a Startup' article
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

This week on the podcast, we sit down with Yana Welinder, CEO of Kraftful. Yana shares insights into how today's product managers are transforming their roles by leveraging AI to create compelling user stories, fine-tuning financial models, and even hiring.

As AI interfaces grow more intuitive, we navigate the importance of a product manager's openness to these advancements, the significant role AI plays in amplifying diverse customer feedback, and the ongoing responsibility of product professionals to shape AI to reflect the values that drive their visions forward.

Featured Links: Follow Yana on LinkedIn | Yana's website | Kraftful | Yana's 'Product management in the age of ChatGPT' talk at ProductTank San Francisco 2023
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.