Product Leader's Journey

Rahul Abhyankar
  • 5.0 (3)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Product Leader's Journey

Conversations with senior product executives about building successful products, scaling business growth and leading inspired teams!

  1. Luke Freiler, CEO Centercode - Creating a market category, value-based pricing, ROI analysis

    2 DAYS AGO

    Luke Freiler, CEO Centercode - Creating a market category, value-based pricing, ROI analysis

    In this episode, Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode, which provides user testing solutions to leading tech companies. Luke shares his journey from hardware engineering to founding a company that revolutionizes product testing. He discusses the importance of continuous user testing, the shift from waterfall to agile methodologies, and how Centercode has established itself in a new market category. Luke emphasizes the significance of community building, demonstrating value through metrics, and the evolution of pricing strategies. He also explores the impact of generative AI on product testing and shares valuable leadership lessons learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey. Luke is a tech idealist who wants technology to just work, to be simple, and friendly. He mission is to connect product builders and their audiences to actualize this vision at scale. In this episode, Luke talks about creating a brand new category in the market, and all the fun challenges that go hand in hand with that. How do you get your first customers, how do you price your offering and value-based pricing, convincing customers about the ROI of your offering. He also shares lessons learnt about PLG or product led growth motion. This is an incredibly candid and transparent conversation and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope you do as well. Key takeaways: - The Importance of Continuous Testing in Agile Development - Establishing a Common Vocabulary for Early Customers - Demonstrating the Value Proposition with Key Metrics - Adapting Pricing Strategies in a New Category - The Importance of Value-Based Pricing - The Impact of AI on Product Testing - Treating the Company Like a Product - Building a Great Culture by Designing the Company Connect with Luke Freiler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freiler/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar, host of Product Leader's Journey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

    38 min
  2. Jyotika Athavale, President IEEE Computer Society - Solving future problems, Women in engineering

    OCT 25

    Jyotika Athavale, President IEEE Computer Society - Solving future problems, Women in engineering

    Jyotika Athavale is the 2024 President of the IEEE Computer Society. In this role she oversees the global roadmap for the organization and plays a leading role in international safety standardization. She was honored with the IEEE Women in Technology and Leadership Award for her contributions towards diversity in engineering and STEM. Jyotika is one of the leading experts in the area of automotive functional safety. In her day job, she is Director of Enterprise Architecture at Synopsys, and has had a successful career as Principal Engineer at Intel, and Lead Technologist at Nvidia. It is quite remarkable having these very strong parallel career tracks.  In this episode, Jyotika talks about how the standards bodies ensure standards are relevant in the future, especially considering the pace of innovation we are seeing in many areas such as AI, autonomous vehicles, and so on. Jyotika also shares her advice on becoming a thought leader, and not holding ourselves back from roles we are fully capable of performing. Connect with Jyotika Athavale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotika-athavale-460b383/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

    31 min
  3. Purvi Shah, VP Enterprise Data Platforms, American Express - Newton's laws and data platforms

    SEP 26

    Purvi Shah, VP Enterprise Data Platforms, American Express - Newton's laws and data platforms

    Purvi Shah is Vice President of Product Development for Enterprise Data Platforms at American Express. Prior to that she led a team of consultants at Deloitte in the public sector working with many state governments to build solutions for citizens to avail services for food stamps, child care and other interventions. Purvi was recently recognized on the 2024 Global Data Power Women List by CDO Magazine.  In this episode Purvi talks about: (1:05) Product development in the public sector (2:23) Looking at the end-to-end journey beyond the user's problem (4:36) Three important things about empathy in understanding users (6:21) Data challenges of a 170 year old company like American Express (7:43) Three success criteria for Customer-360 programs that strive to build a singular view of a customer (11:27) Applying Newton's first law of motion to data platforms (13:30) Applying Newton's second law of motion to data platforms (14:23) Example of customer delight that comes from having a good data ecosystem (16:43) Key lessons learnt from decommissioning legacy data platforms (22:05) Applying Newton's third law of motion to data platforms (25:26) Metrics to track for enterprise data platforms Connect with Purvi Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purvi-shah-8298451/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar Product Leader's Journey: https://www.productleadersjourney.com

    29 min
  4. Jeff Lash, SVP Global Product Management, Forrester - Benchmarking Product Management

    SEP 12

    Jeff Lash, SVP Global Product Management, Forrester - Benchmarking Product Management

    Jeff Lash is SVP of Global Product Management at Forrester. Jeff has been a long time thought leader on all things product. He led the product management practice at SiriusDecisions (acquired by Forrester) where he worked with many companies on assessing and benchmarking their product function competency and maturity. Jeff started his career as an information architect and usability at Elsevier and Mastercard, and then pivoted into product management, so he has some good insights to share from both sides. At Forrester, Jeff leads the core portfolio that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, with responsibility for product discovery, new product innovation, portfolio management, and pricing/packaging. In this episode we talk about: * How UX and PM work best with each other * Good PMs create opportunities for other team members * PM tools cannot address fundamental problems * Assessing PM function and competency in a company * Organizing and orienting what PMs are responsible for * Measuring success in the PM role* Applying PM principles to pickleball! Connect with Jeff Lash at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefflash/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

    41 min
  5. Lara Shackelford, xCMO Datastax, Looker - B2B Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, AI

    AUG 26

    Lara Shackelford, xCMO Datastax, Looker - B2B Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, AI

    Lara Shackelford is a veteran Chief Marketing Officer many times over, and has led marketing teams to create impact at companies such as Oracle, Intel, Datastax, Looker (both before and after the acquisition by Google), and has also led global demand generation at Microsoft. She is currently senior vice president of marketing at iCapital. In this episode, Lara talks about how the B2B buying experience has changed, what is a good blueprint for sales training, coming up with a good ROI analysis, how to assess the ROI of AI, and what does a good partnership between product marketing, product and sales teams looks like, and much more. David Packard, the cofounder of HP, is believed to have said, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department,” so I wanted to see what Lara had to say about that. Enjoy listening!

    37 min
  6. Nathan Gold, Demo Coach - Memorable Product Demos & High-stakes Presentations

    AUG 7

    Nathan Gold, Demo Coach - Memorable Product Demos & High-stakes Presentations

    Nathan Gold is highly sought after as a coach for presentations at the TED conference, keynote speeches, entrepreneurs pitching on Shark Tank and startups raising funding from investors. He has delivered thousands of hours of professional coaching while working with companies such as Netflix, SanDisk, Kaiser Permanente and IBM. In this episode Nathan shares some very useful tips on how to do a persuasive and memorable product demo, combined with stories. He shares a simple template for communicating your product’s value proposition. He also talks about the secrets of designing, scripting and delivering high stakes presentations, including how to harness your speaking anxiety. Nathan has graciously offered his book "Harnessing Your Speaking Anxiety" as a free download at: https://www.democoach.com/freebook. You don't need to enter your name or email. He only asks that if you like it, that you share it with two more people.

    40 min
  7. Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO SolarWinds - Aligning purpose, portfolio, priorities, value

    JUL 16

    Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO SolarWinds - Aligning purpose, portfolio, priorities, value

    Sudhakar Ramakrishna became CEO of SolarWinds at a very pivotal moment in the company's history, just as it became the target of a cyberattack that affected not just SolarWinds but its large base of enterprise and government customers. Since then, Sudhakar and the people at SolarWinds have led a remarkable turnaround. We are going to learn about how they did that. Before coming to SolarWinds, Sudhakar's journey has taken him from engineering and product leadership as well as GM, President and CEO roles at companies such as 3Com, Motorola, Polycom, Citrix, Pulse Secure. We cover many important topics in this episode: * Leading in a crisis * Gaining back the trust and confidence of customers * Balancing paradoxes in product management * Aligning purpose, portfolio, priorities, value * Transitioning from perpetual to subscription business model * Value model and business model * Evolving from best of breed point products to Suites to Platform * PLG in IT infrastructure * Designing Time to Value Connect with Sudhakar Ramakrishna at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudhakar-ramakrishna-a58223/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar/

    42 min
  8. Himanshu Palsule, CEO Cornerstone - Being self-aware, vulnerable, future-ready

    JUN 19

    Himanshu Palsule, CEO Cornerstone - Being self-aware, vulnerable, future-ready

    Himanshu Palsule is CEO of Cornerstone, which provides a workforce agility platform to identify skill gaps and development opportunities within organizations. Himanshu joined as CEO in Jan 2022, bringing more than 35 years of diverse experience leading global organizations. Prior to joining Cornerstone, he was President of Epicor where he was responsible for managing vertical businesses and overseeing product operations. Palsule was previously CTO and Head of Strategy at Sage Software. Key highlights: Learning to live within your own skin and recalibrating yourself Concentric circles of evaluating ideas - Control, Influence, Interest Key trait when you have a seat at the table: Humility What is important when you have to say “I don’t know” Going beyond the cliche and making customer obsession real What does it really mean to have a flat organization What does a future-ready Product Manager look like Connect with Himanshu Palsule, CEO of Cornerstone: https://www.linkedin.com/in/himanshu-palsule/ Connect with Rahul Abhyankar, Host of Product Leader's Journey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar/

    42 min
See All (22)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Conversations with senior product executives about building successful products, scaling business growth and leading inspired teams!

Information

  • Creator
    Rahul Abhyankar
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2024
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Rahul Abhyankar
  • Show Website
    Product Leader's Journey

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