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After an incredible journey, I'll be moving on from Epic shortly. It's been a fantastic second run of nearly 8.5 years. From leading the effort to bring Fortnite to iOS and Android, boldly shipping it on Switch, swapping out the physics engine without a single issue in the live game, and shipping Fortnite to showcase UE5's capabilities… to leading Fortnite Creative and creating the initial prototype of UEFN, then launching Unreal Engine 5.0 as Head of Product Management and shipping many versions after that. In the last few years, as Technical Director, I focused on making Epic less of a black box: greater roadmap transparency, public-facing presentations, improved feedback processes, Technical Advisory Boards, and close collaboration with strategic partners like CDPR, Riot, Avalanche, EA, Halo, and many more. Too many things to mention. All great memories made with great people. I'm now exploring several exciting new opportunities, and I find myself more energized and inspired than ever during this time of personal and industry change. Don't hesitate to reach out if you're looking for technical advice, leadership coaching, team and company management, anything Unreal-related, thought leadership on AI transformation, or more.

✨New post: 9 axioms of Interpersonal Communication 1) People don’t listen very well 2) People love when you listen to them 3) People love feeling right 4) People love getting entertained 5) People pay more attention when surprised 6) People crave control & empowerment 7) People love getting praised 8) People want to be accepted & liked (even by folks whom they don’t like) 9) People avoid unpleasant conversations (and they admire those who can conduct unpleasant conversations gracefully) For more on ways to use these axioms (and traps to be aware of), the link to the full post is in the comments.

A couple of months ago we announced our first public webinar for those product and company leaders interested in learning more about what's involved in moving to the product model, and why the product model is essential for effectively leveraging AI. That session hit our webinar ceiling of 1000 people in just a few hours, so we promised that we'd schedule another session as soon as we could squeeze one in. This new webinar is now open for registration (link below), but there is one difference: the first session was free, and the unfortunate result of that was that while it filled up almost immediately, nearly half of the people that registered failed to show up. So this time, we have a nominal fee of USD $25 to attend. 100% of that amount goes to SVPG's favorite non-profit, the Innovate Africa Foundation. So if you find you can't attend, at least you will have helped out a aspiring product person in Africa. If you were unable to get a spot for the first session, hopefully you will have better luck this time, and you can join me and my SVPG Partner Christian Idiodi, to discuss "Transforming To The Product Operating Model". This session is April 17, from 9 am - 10 am PT. Register here: https://lnkd.in/g7iV4J6w

Ça fait maintenant 𝟑 𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐣𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐏𝐎 𝐞𝐭 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫. Trois années riches : des entreprises très différentes, des défis complexes et surtout des résultats obtenus ensemble. Entre missions de CPO, advisory produit et coaching, mon agenda est souvent rempli plusieurs mois à l’avance. Exceptionnellement, je vais avoir de la 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭é 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬. Alors j’ouvre un créneau pour une nouvelle mission. Ces dernières années, j’ai eu la chance de travailler sur des situations très différentes : 🚀 piloter les produits d’Aircall pendant sa phase d’hyper croissance (40M à 100M+ de CA) 🚀 mener deux fois des transformations produit dans des contextes de Private equity avec plusieurs M&A 🚀 structurer les produits d’une startup fintech AI qui a levé sa série B à la fin de la mission 🚀 pousser la croissance des produits en grand groupe, générant +40% de performance business Ce que je fais: 🟢 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐫 ce qui limite réellement l’impact du produit 🟢 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭é𝐠𝐢𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐭 et les priorités 🟢 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐭, 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐞𝐭 𝐠𝐨-𝐭𝐨-𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 🟢 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐫 𝐥’𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐭 pour passer un cap 🟢 activer les vrais 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 (IA, pricing, positionnement,…) 🟢 transformer le produit en 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. À partir de début avril, je suis disponible pour accompagner des entreprises sur: - des missions 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐏𝐎 (temps plein ou fractionné) - un 𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐭 / 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭é𝐠𝐢𝐞 - de l’𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐲 pour CEOs ou investisseurs Si ces sujets sont sur votre table en ce moment, je serai ravie d’en discuter. Mes MP sont ouverts. 😉 Et si quelqu’un dans votre réseau cherche un Fractional CPO, un partage peut aider la bonne entreprise à me trouver. Merci 🙏

Experienced operator seeking a culture-positive company for a monogamous (or happily fractional) long-term relationship. I just came off a four-month situationship with myself. Best thing I ever did. I used the time to dive deeper into two things I care about most: company culture and helping people work better with AI. I recharged my creative battery. I'm ready to meet my next match. 30+ years in tech. Former COO and CPO. I’ve scaled teams across 25 countries, built products from zero to one, and spent most of my career operating in the messy middle - the part most people want to skip. I don’t skip it. That’s where companies either stabilise or fall apart - and where I do my best work. I don’t slow founders down. I remove the friction that’s slowing them down already. 😊 What I bring to the relationship: 💛 Obsessed with culture: I want us both to look forward to Sundays/Mondays 📦 Product builder: I treat your IP like it’s my own 🤝 Built for distance: async is my love language 🤖 AI evangelist: I help people get excited about what’s possible, then help them actually do it ⚙️ Process person: I turn chaos into clarity ⛔ Dealbreakers 🚩 You move fast and break people 🚩 “Remote friendly” means working from home on Fridays 🚩 You want a COO but actually mean an executive assistant 🚩 Your last operator “just didn’t get it” 🚩 Your roadmap is just a very enthusiastic vibe 🤝 My ideal match A founder who wants a real partner, not just someone to “handle operations.” Maybe you’re still at the idea stage (or a vibe-coded prototype). Maybe you already have traction but the company needs to catch up with the product. Either way, I’m most interested in building something worth owning together. This could look like: Co-founder / COO / VP Product / General Manager / Organization Transformer / Chief Culture Officer / Chief of Staff / Professional Adult in the Room I’m genuinely excited about what comes next. If you think we might be a match, my DMs are open. And if someone comes to mind who might be a great match for me, feel free to play matchmaker.

Excited to officially launch Cogswell Advisors LLC. We work with operators and technology companies on product strategy and fractional CPO engagements across iGaming, AI-driven products, fintech, climate tech, and health tech. If you're building something interesting, let's talk.

Exciting news! After more than 15 years building health tech products at Apple, GoodRx, and Modern Fertility, I've been invited to be a Verified Expert on Intro. Meaningful 1:1 conversations have been some of the greatest growth levers in my career, so I'm genuinely looking forward to this. I've seen the challenges firsthand. The struggle to find the right product-market fit while maintaining team motivation. The pressure of scaling revenue while maintaining user trust. The question of whether to go regulated or consumer, and what that decision really means for the roadmap. Now I want to help you navigate them. How I can help: → Product and business strategy in health tech → Going from 0 to 1 and choosing the right wedge → Navigating regulated vs. consumer health → Product-led growth and AI in health tech → Fundraising narratives and team scaling Looking forward to connecting with founders and product leaders who are building things that actually matter in health. Honored to be on Intro alongside experts like Alexis Ohanian (Founder of Reddit), Alli Webb (Founder of DryBar), & Sarah Leary (Co-founder of Nextdoor). And thank you Sandy Huang for intro’ing me to Intro! The link to book is in the first comment.

Real talk: I’ve seen product management run backwards in more companies than I can count. Everyone gets pulled into it. - Leadership obsesses over hitting roadmap milestones. - PM debates priorities inside planning rooms for weeks. - Engineering argues about the “right” tech stack. - Stakeholders polish the vision until it sounds bulletproof in a board deck. - Management optimizes the platform for internal alignment and optics. All incredibly smart people. All deeply invested. And yet, far less energy goes into validating whether any of it actually moves the customer’s numbers. And then they’re confused when customers don’t care. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Customers don’t care about your company. They don’t care about your features. They don’t care how elegant your architecture is. They care about one thing: What do I get out of this? Does it grow my revenue? Does it save me time? Does it reduce risk? Does it make my job easier? Does it help me win? That’s it. Most companies market what the product does. Very few articulate what the customer becomes because of it. Features over outcomes. Capabilities over impact. Internal excitement over external results. And the biggest blocker to fixing this? It’s rarely the product. It’s leadership mindset. As long as decision-makers are driven by: “We’re building something cool.” Instead of: “We’re creating measurable progress for customers.” You get feature factories. Bloated roadmaps. Weak adoption. Churn that “nobody can explain.” Flip the mindset, though? You start building around real jobs. You prioritize based on customer value, not internal politics. You sell outcomes, not functionality. Adoption rises. Retention strengthens. Growth compounds. Stop selling drills. Sell perfect holes. If you’ve seen feature-factory mode drain momentum in a company, drop a 🔥 #ProductManagement #CustomerFirst #JobsToBeDone #ProductStrategy #Leadership

After years of leading in-house product teams and countless conversations with founders, execs, and product leaders about what’s really standing in the way of growth, I’ve finally put it all into one place. Today I’m excited to officially launch productleap, the new home for my work: 🚀 Strategic advisory for scaling product organizations ✨ Clear picture of who I partner with and why 📈 Practical frameworks rooted in real-world execution 🧠 Small but growing collection of ruminations on product topics (aka my blog) 📚 Thinking behind Product at a Distance book If you’ve ever felt: • Your product strategy is disconnected from your roadmap • Your team is a “feature factory” not a value engine • AI feels like another thing to do, not something that accelerates outcomes • You want to grow, but you’re not sure how to unlock momentum That’s exactly what my work is for. This is an invitation to think about product leadership differently. The site is not perfect (nor will it ever be.) But I think it's good enough to call it a v1 and share with the world. It has been a rewarding experience as part of my DIY Renaissance. I would love your feedback on what you want to see more of, or who you think might benefit from a fresh look at their product practice. Or if you know of a good logo designer :) Stop chasing and take the leap 🚀   Link below in first comment 👇 Thanks for the website feedback and business testimonials Sterling Lanier, Mahin Samadani, Ciaran T. O'Kelly, Kevin Crayton, Amanda Morgan, Marc Caltabiano, Nagaraju Bandaru, Jason Bach, Brian Taylor, Sharon Chan #ProductLeadership #FractionalCPO #ProductStrategy #Innovation

After nearly 5 years at ConsumerAffairs, I've closed that chapter. Grateful for the experiences, the products we built, and especially the people. That team will stay with me. What's next? I'm going independent. I'm launching a consulting practice offering fractional executive leadership across product, AI/ML, RevOps, MarTech, and more. I've spent 20+ years building things that actually work: lead management infrastructure at AWS processing 2M+ leads annually, ML pipelines handling 8 million reviews, CDP deployments, CRM systems, demand gen engines. I've done it at enterprise scale and at scrappy startups. I'm also known for building exceptional teams. Hiring well, developing people, and creating cultures where great work actually happens is something I care about deeply and have a track record doing at every level. If you or someone you know needs a senior operator who can come in, get oriented fast, and make a real impact, whether that's as a fractional CPO, VP of RevOps, AI product advisor, or something else entirely, I'd love to talk. DM me or reach out at dave.liloia@gmail.com (And yes, I've been doing this long enough that I remember when "the cloud" was just weather.)

Yesterday I was at #ProductCon, listening to lots of talks about the current and next big thing in the tech industry (yes, AI). Out of all the talks, my top 3 were led by women. They were brilliant, fun, full of personality and humanity. Maybe it’s because in a male dominated industry, to reach certain positions as a woman you often have to be exceptional, or learn how to become exceptional. At some point during the day I caught myself feeling a bit like “I don’t belong here”, and then these women brought back the spark. Nikita Miller spoke about building empowered teams, and about how AI should free us to focus on what brought many of us into product in the first place: building and creating. We’re in the business of imagining solutions to problems, and that’s what should continue to guide us. Maria Parpou brought the conversation into the commercial space. She challenged PMs to think more about the financial side of the business that we often underestimate. “If you don’t own the numbers, you don’t own the strategy.” Fewer than 3% of CPOs become CEOs (and she wants to change that), often because they’re not part of the key P&L conversations. Jessica Hall closed the day on a high. She shared how AI can free us from being the “human glue” compensating for broken processes, and allow us to reclaim our creativity as PMs. I love women in tech because they’re so good at talking to humans about human things, about purpose, about what makes building tech meaningful. And sometimes in these rooms, it’s easy to forget what brought us here in the first place: solving real problems for real people.

BREAKING: this might be the most important interview about your career I’ve released this year. I just released a new interview with Reid Hoffman - and everyone with a career should watch this. 200 lines of AI-generated code erased $300B in B2B market value. And according to him, we’re maybe 2-5% into what’s coming. What he’s basically saying is this: There won’t be “individual contributors” anymore. We’ll all be working with a set of AIs. We talked about: → What this means for people with a 9–5 → How to actually use AI in a serious way (not just “try ChatGPT”) → Why small businesses that don’t adapt will struggle → And why the winners won’t be the best coders - but the best conductors If you care about your job, your income, or your next move, don’t ignore this shift.

It’s now becoming clear Claude will do anything in enterprise software that … it can do on its own platform. Legal, HR, health, design, product, whatever. If it can do it on its own platform, it will. If Claude can do it, you will be disrupted If Claude can’t do it, you won’t be If Claude can do a lot of what you do — but not all — your customers won’t churn but that’s where everyone will decelerate unless you build a winning agentic layer on top of it.

ANNOUNCEMENT - The new updated and expanded Obviously Awesome is coming!!! 🎉 🎉 I've been sitting on this one for a while, so I'm SUPER EXCITED to get this out into the world!! Almost 7 years ago, I published Obviously Awesome, my attempt at describing the process I use to position B2B tech products and companies. I didn't expect many people to read it. I was wrong. Since then, more than 100,000 people have bought the book, and countless companies have used the process. A few hundred did that with me directly, and many, many more of you worked through the process on your own using the book. I've learned a LOT over the past 7 years, and I decided it was time to bring those learnings back to the book. The new edition is coming in FEBRUARY (don't ask me for a specific date - it's Amazon's world, we're just living in it). Here's what's new: 📙 5 STEPS (not 10) - In the first edition, I describe 5 components of positioning and a 10-step process for doing it. Some of you really hated that the number of steps in the process wasn’t equal to the number of components. The first few steps were pre-work, and the final steps are work that follows the exercise. I have repositioned those steps (see what I did there), and we now have 5 components and 5 steps. 📙 The PRE-WORK section has been expanded to include key decisions a team should make before beginning a positioning exercise. This is based on my work with clients, and I think it will greatly improve any team’s chances of success when following this process. 📙 I have included sections that are more relevant to MULTIPRODUCT companies grappling with how to position their products in a company with multiple offerings. 📙 Some steps in the process have been significantly expanded—particularly the Differentiated Value step. Most teams told me they got stuck there. I hope this new, improved section helps to clarify the concept. 📙 The final section, What Happens AFTER a Positioning Exercise, has been greatly expanded. This new section reflects my current thinking on how best to create a sales pitch to test positioning and then turn that positioning into messaging. 📙 For the first time, there will be a HARDCOVER edition. Most of you won't care, but I have seen some seriously well-loved (but also beat-up and scraggly) paperbacks at conferences, and I decided some of you need a copy that’s a little more durable! 🎙️ To go with the book, I'm reviving the Positioning PODCAST and will release a new series of episodes that dive into the book's new material. ✍ The same goes for the NEWSLETTER (always the best way to follow my stuff). A new podcast episode and newsletter article drop TOMORROW - links in the comments.

You don't want to start any positioning work before making a key set of decisions 1️⃣ Is now the right time? Do we have enough customer experience to understand how prospects make decisions? Have we worked with enough customers to know - at least at a high level - what makes a good-fit customer different from a bad-fit customer? If the answer is no, we might want to develop a positioning thesis and tighten our positioning after we have closed more business. 2️⃣ Are we clear who this positioning is for? Positioning for customers is not the same as positioning for investors or employees. If we start working on positioning and half the team thinks we are building a sales pitch, the other half thinks we are building an investor pitch, very bad things will happen. 3️⃣ What exactly are we positioning? Are we positioning the company, a product, or a group of products? The answer to this question might require deeper thinking about your go-to-market strategy. Getting a clear answer to this question will save you from having to debate this point mid-way through your positioning work. 4️⃣ Which persona are you positioning for? Teams outside the sales team may not understand what a deal champion is and may be overly focused on positioning for other personas. When we talk about "value," we need to be clear about who perceives it. If you don't make these decisions up front, I can guarantee you will regret it. I've seen many teams rush into positioning work, only to stop midway to debate these points and backtrack to redo work they have already started. (I'm covering this topic in more detail in the newsletter and the podcast this week - links in comments)

We just published an important article, discussing a significant change to what we've been advocating for many years, all enabled by generative AI. Hopefully people will understand why this is necessary, and also potentially a very substantial step forward for the product community: https://lnkd.in/gzeYHgzX

Announcing two new Reforge courses: AI Prototyping w/ Ravi Mehta and AI Evals w/ Justin Bauer and Sandhya Hegde 🙌 AI Prototyping Ravi is a former product leader from Tinder, Meta, and Tripadvisor. He has been deep in the weeds, getting his hands dirty, prototyping like a madman. This course blends Ravi's brilliant strategic mind, with deep tactical approaches on how to use prototypes as a superpower. We are running the initial version of this course for FREE but space is limited and you must apply. Course details here: https://lnkd.in/g-9V6PFN AI Evals Justin Bauer is the former CPO at Amplitude. Sandhya is the former EVP New Products at Amplitude. Together, they've been venturing deep into large SaaS companies, helping get new AI products stood up. They've seen what it takes to bring these products to life. Course details here: https://lnkd.in/gWqJMf-i

The Claude Code to Figma announcement is public acknowledgement that users are shifting their habit from starting in Figma to starting in code. The problem this is framed around is that "exploring variations in code is hard." But this problem won't last the year. Having AI explore many variations can be token-intensive right now. But that won't last. Ultimately, AI will do a better job of exploration because it will be able to explore many more variations, from different angles, and simulate feedback 24/7. But I see why Figma did this. Their users are starting their "upstream" work in new tools. When that happens, you have to participate in those environments or you risk getting cut off completely. The same thing is happening to many other products, but they have an ostrich head in the sand strategy.

🚨 It's promo season. Here's what nobody tells you from the employer's side. Hundreds of career questions have come through Nikhyl.AI, and right now promotions are dominating the inbox. Not "how do I get promoted?" but "is the system broken?" and "should I quit over this?" In our latest Skip episode, Carly Malatskey and I tackle the promotion mistakes that derail PM careers — from the employer's perspective. Here's what I've learned: → Orgs are constrained, not adversarial. ZIRP-era promotions were artificially easy — more roles at the next level, more headcount, more growth. That math changed. When your company says "not now," they're usually describing a budget constraint, not a judgment about you. → The moment you lose trust in your employer, you've already lost. Friends say "stick it to the man." But that pitchfork mentality is a one-way door. What would you do if the game isn't rigged, just constrained? That reframe changes everything. → Promotion as a game to win is a trap. Many PMs privately just want to beat the odds — fastest to VP, fastest to the next level. When it doesn't happen, they shut down. A lot of career misery comes from envy of something you don't yet have — not from actually falling behind. → Leadership requires genuinely different skills — and that takes years. Just because you're a good student doesn't make you a good teacher. Smart orgs make promotions lag, not lead, to avoid the Peter Principle. That slowdown isn't dysfunction. It's protection. This is just a fraction of what we cover. The full podcast and article go deep with real listener questions and specific guidance. This episode is also the inaugural cross-post on Lenny Rachitsky's Podcast Network — excited to partner with Lenny to reach even more product leaders. If you've been through a tough promotion cycle and come out the other side — what do you know now that you wish you'd known then?

The AI-Era Career Framework for PMs: From AI Labs to Founding (Part 3) If the holidays had you thinking about a job search in 2026, you're not alone. Nearly 1,000 career questions have come through Nikhyl.AI—most circling the same uncertainty: Am I at the right company? Is now the time to move? That's why I built this three-part series. Part 1 introduced the framework: understand your constraints (compensation, location, pace), know whether you're a builder or manager, and map your qualifications honestly. Part 2 covered the first four doors—Big Tech, Enterprise Tech, and the "Quality Middle" companies like Stripe and Databricks where most experienced PMs land. This final episode tackles the doors everyone is asking about just as much. Here's what I've learned: [AI Labs (OpenAI, Anthropic)] They're not hiring AI experts. They want builders who can productize research—people who take magic from the lab and turn it into something millions of users touch. Most start as IC, even former managers. For PMs, Bay Area is essentially required—that's where their PM teams are. The wide interview funnel doesn't mean you're qualified—getting through is the hard part. And not everyone succeeds even after joining. But if you can thrive in chaos, it's career rocket fuel. [Hot AI Startups (Sierra, Decagon, Harvey)] These companies are just now installing PM as a function—you'd be one of the first, surrounded by people who know the product and customer but need your expertise. The opportunity is real, but so is 9-9-6. Sunday interviews because they're working the other six days. Ten competitors are chasing the same market, and winning requires every last hour. If you can't make work your P0, this door isn't for you. [Ex-Growth Mid-Stage] If your company's growth has slowed for multiple quarters in a row, this is you. The hardest truth: your equity might be worthless. These ZIRP-era companies are funded enough to survive but not growing enough to exit. The upside? Often remote-friendly and easier to join. The downside? Weaker talent, weaker trajectory—and if you're counting on that equity, you may have been earning below market rate for years without realizing it. [Early Stage & Founding] Joining an early-stage company as a PM usually ends badly—founders and technical/sales staff navigate the search for product-market fit, and PMs struggle to find their footing. Founding is different, but if you're building spreadsheets to evaluate it, you shouldn't found. It's an emotional decision, not a rational one. The people who should start companies can't imagine doing anything else. This is just a fraction of what we cover—the full podcast and article go deep on each door with real questions and specific guidance. 🎬 Episode clip below 📖 Article + Recording: https://lnkd.in/gncGByZW 💬 Get personalized guidance: Nikhyl.AI

✨ Brand new Product Sense homepage. The team at Maven deserves all the credit for shipping an intuitive, intentional, metrics-informed page editor. It is easy to get disproportionately impressed by flashy new products these days, but getting such basics right remains quite vital in product work (and it is not easy): https://lnkd.in/gpQ4C9q7

30+ Lenny's Newsletter community meetups happening around the world in the next month. These are all self-organized by the community (we don't run them, though we help organizer with best practices, stickers, etc). The rise of these meetups is definitely the most meaningful and amazing thing that's emerged out of the newsletter and podcast. It makes me so happy. To find one near you, get in the Slack (find invite in your welcome email after becoming a paid subscriber), and join your local city channel. You can host a meetup if one isn't already happening in your city.

I've teamed up with the team at Maven to put together a series of LIVE workshops centered around the theme of "The AI-Native PM," featuring a stacked lineup of product leaders: Tomer Cohen, Wes Kao, Hamel Husain, Peter Yang, Marily Nika, Ph.D, Tal Raviv, Aman Khan, Hila Qu 曲卉, Ben Erez, Ethan Evans, Caitlin Sullivan, and many more. The workshops are across 3 themes and all totally free: 1. AI workflows 2. Becoming more technical 3. Product sense & influence A few years from now, these skills will be table stakes for PMs. If you want to learn where things are heading in a hands-on way, this is the perfect way https://lnkd.in/giPCZYMs

In the age of AI, I think it's more important than ever to get out on the road. The last few weeks I've been traveling more than I'd like, and definitely more than my family would like (big shoutout to Camilla Behnke, LMFT ... you're the best and I couldn't do this crazy life without you 🙏). Here's the whirlwind: 📍 Dallas — Our sales kickoff. 400+ Superhumans in one room, getting them fired up about the launch of Superhuman Go for business and education and pumped about what's coming on our roadmap. 📍 Austin / SXSW — 30+ CIOs / heads of digital transformation / senior leaders at an exec event. Deep conversations about how they're actually using AI, how they're using Superhuman's products, and how they're evolving in 2026. 📍 Berlin — Onsite with our incredible engineering and product teams. Nothing like being in the room with the people building the thing. 📍 San Diego / Gartner Digital Workplace Conference — Talked to countless folks at our booth and presented to a packed house on how AI can move past the pilot-and-hype stage to true transformation — and how Superhuman Go helps companies get more out of their existing AI investments by making them available everywhere employees actually work. Oh — and somewhere in there I also participated in a hackathon and vibe-coded (with a fantastic crew of product and engineering folks) a release notes automation system and a new product feedback system to get real-time signal on Superhuman Go and turn it into action fast. Phew. My biggest takeaway: a lot has been said on X and elsewhere about the future of AI. Inside our Silicon Valley bubble, we're pretty excited about the pace of change AI is bringing. But there's still a long way to go to bring every employee, in every industry, into the AI world and make them truly AI-native. There's real resistance out there. Some of it comes from people feeling like they don't have time to learn new tools. Some comes from fear that this technology is going to replace their jobs. But what's also crystal clear: anyone who does jump in, takes risks, and tries to get the most out of these tools is going to be highly in demand. So here's to getting off the porch and out into the wild. 🌎

We’ve been taught to manage time. But what if time was never the problem? I wrote this to challenge how we think about productivity and execution. Would love your perspective #Productivity, #TimeManagement, #Execution, #Leadership, #Focus, #DecisionMaking, #CareerGrowth

Prioritization sounds simple until you actually have to decide what NOT to build. For an assignment in my Building and Leading Innovative Organizations course, I created a Discovery Roadmap for an AI product operations agent designed for EdTech product managers. The hardest decision was cutting predictive insights and experiment automation from the Now column. Those features sound exciting, but they depend on something more basic: reliable data aggregation and insight generation. If the foundation isn’t strong, the intelligence on top won’t matter. This assignment reinforced a key lesson in product management: a roadmap isn’t just a list of features but a series of trade-offs. #ENES680 #ProductRoadmap

Well, this wasn't on my roadmap for Q1. My journey with Qlik has come to a sudden and unexpected end, one I'm navigating alongside the entire Product leadership team. I'm proud of what we built together: the teams we grew, the hard problems we tackled, and the products we shipped. Grateful for every person who made that work meaningful, starting with Thomas Steinborn, who first took a chance on me at Talend, and to Krishna Tammana, Jason Penkethman, Charles (Mike) Potter, and Sam Pierson for the ride. Since then, I've made the most of the pause. I've been getting hands-on with the latest AI tools for #ProductManagers through 🥞 Carl Vellotti's courses on #Claude, #Cursor, and #Antigravity - sharpening the skills that matter for what's next. And I've had some rare space to think. Very long safety stops after deep rebreather dives have a way of forcing the big questions : What kind of company do I want to build at next? What problems actually matter to me? What kind of leader do I want to become? I have some answers. Now I'm looking for the right place to put them to work. If you know of Product leadership roles - VP, CPO, Head of Product - or if you're building something ambitious and need a product leader who's been in the trenches (scaling teams, navigating hard trade-offs, shipping things that matter) - drop a comment, connect, or tag someone who's hiring. I'm ready for my next adventure as a Product Builder. 🚀 📩 DMs open. Referrals welcome. #ProductManagement #ProductLeadership #NewChapter

The more your platform can do, the harder it gets to stay focused. As DevOps products expand, the ICP question doesn't get easier. It gets blurrier. Who is this actually for? Which problems are yours to solve? Where does the product stop? These aren't just product questions. They shape positioning, roadmap, and how the whole company moves. It's something that comes up in almost every conversation we have with platform and engineering leaders right now. We're hosting a small leadership roundtable on 16th April 2026. This is a closed, peer-led discussion for the leaders navigating this exact moment. Register here to secure a spot: https://lnkd.in/gfGurAGD #DevOps #PlatformEngineering #B2BStrategy #ProductLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #LaunchGlobal

After a few incredible years scaling Product Marketing at Xero, I'm excited to be starting a new chapter with Xero's Customer Growth & Experience team to lead our Small Business experience globally. I'll be building a new team to orchestrate the end-to-end small business journey - helping our customers unlock more value from Xero faster by accelerating how we onboard, activate, and grow them at scale. Grateful for the continued growth opportunities here at Xero, and looking forward to the exciting path ahead 🚀

After we announced yesterday that Reforge is being acquired by Miro, I got flooded with messages from folks sharing how much impact Reforge has had on their career. These notes mean more to me than I can express. Thank you for sharing them. There is a whole crew of people who helped create that impact. I wasn't able to include them in the announcement yesterday due to LinkedIn mention limits, so I want to give them public recognition here. I think about Reforge in chapters. We've had many different phases. Chapter 1 — From solo to real company The original crew. Daniel Wolchonok, Susan Su, Christopher Ming, Buford Taylor, Carlo Parsons. They helped me go from a one-man show to a real operation, creating many of the early cohorts that people still rave about. Chapter 2 — The COVID tailwind Matt Greenberg, Brendan McCook, Akshita Ganesh, Erin Mongan, Michael Smith, Akiva Gottlieb. They helped us go from just a couple of courses to a scaled creation system — all while navigating the ups and downs of COVID. Chapter 3 — Post-COVID headwinds and building B2B Like most in tech, the post-COVID downturn of 2022 created new challenges. But in this challenge, we built a successful B2B business thanks to Tom Willerer Kevin Weiss, Adam Green, Ali Riehle, Steven Harlow, and many others. Chapter 4 — Going AI-native Chun Jiang, Ben Kramer, Jeff Dwyer, Cole Hoffer, Jacob Hubbard and others. This crew took our shipping velocity to heights I hadn't seen before. 5 products in 9 months, navigating through the AI craziness. Chapter 5 — To be written with Miro The book hasn't ended. I'm excited to see what gets written in the next chapter with Andrey Khusid and the Miro team. Thank you to all current and former Reforgers. Apologies if I didn't have the chance to mention you specifically, I'm deeply grateful for everyone. If Reforge has impacted your career in any way, I'd love to hear about it and all these folks above to know what their work has helped create.

My wife has heard "this time it's different" before. When I told her I wanted to start another company, the pitch wasn't "trust me." It was specific: building today is fundamentally different from building five years ago. The tools changed. The economics changed. What used to take 18 months and a 15-person team now moves in quarters with a fraction of the headcount. Team size used to be a badge of honor, now it's a fixed cost anchor weighing you down. She said okay. My family said okay. That's not a small thing. We started fundraising around this time last year. Six months of investor meetings, decks, follow-ups, and a lot of silence in between. Some founders close in weeks. Some never close. We landed somewhere in the middle with partners who understand what we're building and why it matters. A year later, the pitch is holding up. We delivered our full H1 2026 product roadmap in Q1. We're now pushing to ship H2 by end of Q2. GTM is spinning up on both awareness and outbound faster than I planned for. The team is jelling in a way you can't manufacture — people stepping up across every front without being asked. Writing this from spring break. The people who bet on Deviceflow — investors, teammates, my family — I don't take that lightly. Let's go, 2026.

כבר שנתיים וחצי שהמציאות שלנו היא מלחמה. ההסלמה שאנחנו חווים עכשיו היא תזכורת כואבת למחיר שאנחנו, כבעלי ובעלות עסקים, משלמים. זה לא רק הניהול השוטף - זה הנטל הרגשי, קבלת החלטות תחת אש, והתחושה ש"הבדידות בצמרת" הפכה למעמסה כבדה מדי. היא גם תזכורת לדבר אחר: קהילה היא לא מילה גסה. היא מקור הכוח הכי משמעותי שיש לנו. אני שמחה לשתף שבחרתי לקחת צעד קדימה ולהפוך לשותפה עסקית ב - The Alternative Board (TAB) Israel למי שלא מכיר, The Alternative Board (Worldwide) הוא ארגון גלובלי שפועל מאז 1990 מתוך הבנה פשוטה: בעלי עסקים שעוזרים זה לזה -  צומחים טוב יותר. בישראל אנחנו פועלים כבר 5 שנים, ובתקופה האחרונה אנחנו רואים ביקוש הולך וגובר לליווי מהסוג הזה. כחלק מהתרחבות TAB Israel, אני מקימה בימים אלו מועצת עמיתים עסקית חדשה. מה זה בעצם אומר? זוהי קבוצה סגורה של בעלי ובעלות עסקים המשמשים זה לזה כמועצה עסקית. מקום שבו מקבלים פידבק אמיתי, לומדים מניסיון של אחרים, ובעיקר -  שומרים זה את זה מחויבים לחזון, לתכניות ולמחויבות שלקחנו על עצמנו. ומה עם הכובע של ה-Fractional CPO? הוא נשאר בדיוק איפה שהוא. מבחינתי, הערך משלים לחלוטין. בין אם אני עוזרת לחברה לבנות מוצר וחדשנות ובין אם אני עוזרת לבעלי העסק לבנות חברה חזקה ועמידה -  המטרה היא אחת: צמיחה אסטרטגית מבוססת תוצאות. אני פונה אליכם, הרשת שלי: אם אתם מכירים בעל או בעלת עסק שמרגישים שהם צריכים את הגב הזה עכשיו, שרוצים לטפס גבוה ביחד -  אני אשמח מאוד לחיבור. בואו נבנה קהילה חזקה יותר מהנסיבות. #tabboards #tabisrael

Hvernig geta lítil og meðalstór fyrirtæki fengið aðgang að stjórnendum í fremstu röð án þess að ráða í fullt starf? Undanfarna mánuði hef ég verið að þróa lausnir og á sama tíma velta fyrir mér hvernig ég get aðstoðað lítil og meðalstór fyrirtæki við að nýta sömu tól og tæki og stórfyrirtæki nota til að taka upplýstar, gagnadrifnar ákvarðanir. Það sem skapar raunverulegt virði í þessu samstarfi er hagnýt reynsla og þekking. Reynsla og þekking af því að smíða gagnaarkitektúr, samþætta rekstrar- og fjármálakerfi og búa til mælaborð sem raunverulega stýra ákvörðunum. Þetta er nákvæmlega sú þekking sem fyrirtæki í hröðum vexti þurfa, en eiga oft erfitt með að réttlæta í fullu starfi. Með því að fá frammistöðustjóra að láni (Fractional CPO) færðu aðgang að aðila sem hefur þegar byggt upp það sem þú ert að reyna að byggja. Einhvern sem hefur 360-gráðu yfirsýn og getur þýtt flókinn rekstrarraunveruleika yfir í skýrar ákvarðanir. Ég kem inn í reksturinn, vinn beint með stjórnendum og tengi daglegar rekstraraðgerðir við fjárhagslegan árangur. Hvort sem þið eruð að stækka hratt, innleiða ný kerfi eða undirbúa fjármögnun, þá sníðum við samstarf sem passar þínum þörfum. Tilbúinn að innleiða lausnir sem skila mælanlegum árangri? AVISION Frammistöðustjórnun gæti verið lausnin fyrir þig. Bókaðu fund og tökum samtalið https://avision.is/is

(English version in a separate post) J’ai récemment participé au jury du MBA Intelligence Artificielle & Data Innovation. Merci à De Vinci Executive Education et Joachim Massias, Créateur et Directeur du MBA, pour leur confiance. Je n’évalue pas la technologie en soi. Ce qu’un Comex devrait exiger, c’est une équation claire entre opportunités / valeur / risques : - Quelle valeur est attendue et comment la démontrer ? - Quels risques sont générés (données, sécurité, conformité, réputation...) et comment les gouverner ? - Quel chemin mène à un premier résultat exploitable et avec quels critères de Go/No-Go ? Les étudiants ont été solides sur ces dimensions. Avec leur accord, je partage quelques sujets : - Concevoir et déployer une mémoire à long terme pour un assistant conversationnel dans un cabinet de conseil - Yahya Alfayad - Réduire l’errance diagnostique de la BPCO (maladie respiratoire chronique) grâce au machine learning appliqué aux données de santé en France - Julien MEICHLER - L’IA et le Jumeau Numérique au service de l’exploitation et de la maintenance d’assets immobiliers et industriels - Patrice JOUANJUS - Comment l'IA impacte les processus de production d'une entreprise du secteur de la construction ne disposant pas de culture numérique - Ludovic García, - Comment l’Intelligence Artificielle peut transformer en profondeur le métier de concessionnaire automobile - François Boscary - La conduite du changement augmentée par l'intelligence artificielle : opportunités et limites des chatbots de coaching dans les programmes de transformation - Erwan NICOLAS Indépendant senior (20+ ans) à l’interface Produit–Tech–Business, j’interviens là où les décisions engagent la trajectoire : arbitrages produit/tech, gouvernance data/IA, exécution sous contrainte. 👉 Fractional CPO/CPTO/CTO pour startups/scale-ups #tech & #deeptech : j’aide à transformer une ambition technologique en produit, tout en maîtrisant les risques et en sécurisant une exécution compatible avec un passage à l'échelle et les exigences investisseurs. Si vous préparez un pivot IA, une industrialisation ou une levée avec un sujet tech critique : échangeons. --- #AI #Data #GenAI #DeepTech #IoT #Robotics #ProductManagement #Startup #CTO #CPTO

Building with AI today isn’t about tools it’s about how you think, decide, and execute. As part of our podcast series 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐯 𝐀𝐈 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬, Malthi SS Fractional CPO & Founder, SparkProd joins us along with our Group Product Manager - Technical, Shamsher Ansari, for a deep dive into how AI is evolving from a tool to a true builder partner. From practical workflows to how product teams can move faster without compromising clarity, this discussion brings a grounded perspective on building in today’s AI-driven landscape. 🎙️ 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dtu_4HPk If you’re building, scaling, or rethinking product strategy this one is worth your time. #AIPodcast #ProductLeadership #AIForBuilders #TechConversations #NeevCloud #NeevAIBuilders

(French version in a separate post) I recently served on the MBA Artificial Intelligence & Data Innovation jury. Thank you to De Vinci Executive Education and Joachim Massias for their trust. I don't evaluate the technology itself. What an executive committee should demand is a clear balance of opportunities / value / risks: - What value is expected and how can it be proven? - What risks does it create (data, security, compliance, reputation, etc.) and what governance keeps them under control? - What is the short path to a first actionable result and what are the Go/No-Go criteria? Students were particularly strong on these dimensions. With their permission, I’m sharing a few topics: - Designing and deploying long-term memory for a conversational assistant in a consulting company - Yahya Alfayad - Reducing diagnostic uncertainty for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) through machine learning applied to health data in France - Julien MEICHLER - AI and the Digital Twin for operating and maintaining real estate and industrial assets - Patrice JOUANJUS - How AI impacts the production processes of a construction company lacking a digital culture - Ludovic García, - How Artificial Intelligence can profoundly transform the car dealership business - François Boscary - AI-augmented change management: opportunities and limits of coaching chatbots in transformation programs - Erwan NICOLAS As a senior independent (20+ years) at the intersection of Product–Tech–Business, I operate where executive decisions shape the trajectory: product/tech trade-offs, data/AI governance, execution under constraints. 👉 Fractional CPO/CPTO/CTO for #tech & #deeptech startups/scale-ups: turning technology ambition into products while managing risks and ensuring that the execution is compatible with scaling up and investor expectations. If you’re planning an AI pivot, scaling up or a funding round with a critical tech component: let’s connect. --- #AI #Data #GenAI #DeepTech #IoT #Robotics #ProductManagement #Startup #CTO #CPTO

We’re bringing together growth-stage founders for an in-person Startup Your Morning with Brandon Leibowitz, Fractional CPO and Advisor, this Friday at 9 AM in the DMV (Alexandria). 📌 Friday, March 27 | 9:00 AM Join us before the workday starts and secure your seat while space is still available. If your product engine got you here but you are not sure it will get you to the next stage, this is the room to be in. We’ll focus on: 🔩 Diagnosing where your product engine is breaking down 🔩 Identifying the root cause across signal, strategy, system, and structure 🔩 Walking away with one concrete fix you can implement immediately This is a curated room of growth-stage founders. Sign up now before seats close: https://luma.com/fmum65en #DCSTW #StartupYourMorning #ProductStrategy #GrowthStage #ScaleWithDiscipline Leibowitz Consulting & Advisory

I'm so happy to see the incredible reaction to the announcement of Minecraft Dungeons 2. https://lnkd.in/dMFQZAsq It is the ultimate validation of what true Product Leadership looks like in practice. When I took the role as EP for Minecraft Dungeons back in 2018, it showed so much potential, and I am very proud that I was given the opportunity to lead and grow the team for the original product to a (very) successful launch. Building further on that significant success, we set the bar even higher for the sequel. The biggest challenge was never the code or the production: It was the product. We successfully translated a billion-dollar IP into an entirely new genre, keeping it a Minecraft game even though it had neither mining nor crafting. Working closely with top-tier talent like Måns Olson, Klas Hammarström, Aisling C. and so many more in the awesome team (hi all!), we did something near impossible with the original Dungeons, and now the sequel has the potential to reach even further When you get that product vision right from day one, you don't just ship a successful game - you build a robust foundation for a lasting franchise, laying the blocks for a strong portfolio. A massive congratulations to my former colleagues at Mojang and Xbox for taking this vision to the next level! Today, as a Product Expert, Fractional CPO, and Advisor, this is exactly what I help tech and gaming companies do: sharpen their product vision, expand their IPs safely, and secure true product-market fit to maximize commercial success. Are you defining your next big product, thinking of expanding your portfolio or need fresh eyes on your core loop? Let’s talk.

A friend asked me yesterday: "Mick, did you leave product to go do AI?" No. I just got better at product. I'm still a fractional CPO. I still help companies move their product from a cost center into a money-printing machine. That comes from my rich experience of doing this work. Team in a Box? I used my product skills to build an AI product. That's what product people do: we see a problem, and we build the solution.  I built Team In A Box because I kept seeing the same thing — leaders pushing AI adoption on their teams while barely using it themselves. Not because they don't want to. Because they don’t know how. Because they are afraid of the risk associated with hallucinations being displayed with confidence as truth. Because no one built them the right system to actually make it work. Team in a Box is that tool now. AI is the tool. Product thinking is the skill. My clients get both. If your product isn't making you money, let's talk.

Scaling faster is not about doing more. It is about fixing what is already there😏 Most people try to grow too early: ➧More posts. ➧More ads. ➧More noise. But if the base is weak, more traffic just shows the cracks faster. So we start here. 🧑‍🔬Check the offer first Before anything else, ask: ➭Do at least 40% stick after 30 days? ➭Do 25% of buyers come back again? ➭Are 20% of new people coming from referrals? ➭Are we growing at least 10% each month? If not, scaling is not the move yet. Fix the offer first. 👷‍♀️Build a customer flywheel Real growth is not chasing new people. It is keeping the right ones. Here is the loop: ➭Attract ➭Convert ➭Deliver ➭Wow ➭Get referrals ➭Repeat Happy buyers become the engine. 👨‍🔧Make work run without you If we do it twice, we document it. ➭Do it two times ourselves ➭Write each step clearly ➭Assign it or automate it ➭Review it every few months If it repeats, it should run without us. 🦸‍♀️Pull the right levers We do not need 10 strategies. We need 4 done well: ➭Price Test higher or smarter pricing ➭Volume Get more people to the offer ➭Upsell Add simple upgrades or bundles ➭Retention Keep people coming back That is how revenue grows. ⚡Quick scale check (10 minutes): ➭Rate your offer honestly ➭Pick one weak spot to fix ➭Choose one lever to improve ➭Simplify one process this week ➭Track what actually changes That is the work. Not more, better. And if you want to build something that runs: ➭Go to 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘆𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺 ➭Pick one simple product ➭Use the built-in AI tools ➭Share your link Then let it work while you sleep, build, or sell. 📚 Join our free workshop to build digital products that sell over and over. ➡️ Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/gmE_PAmy ______________________ 🎁 Want PDFs of our infographics + growth tools? 👉 Go Here: https://lnkd.in/gytiznfT Please repost to help others out there! ♻️

What if your product-market fit is wrong—and you don't know it yet? Steve Linowes has seen it happen. He's also seen what happens when you get it right. In this episode, Reade sits down with the former Microsoft marketing leader to talk about: 📌 The real definition of a viable MVP 📌 How to know you've found a real market 📌 Why incentives beat tactics every time 📌 What Burning Man taught him about organizational structure Spoiler: The answers aren't what most founders expect. 👇 Watch: https://lnkd.in/epVr-ydS #ProductMarketFit #StartupAdvice #Innovation #GrowRogue

I’m excited to announce that Reforge is joining Miro. 10 years ago Andrew Chen and I ran the first Reforge Growth Series. What started as a single course has grown into a community of over 100,000 alumni and SaaS products used by product teams everywhere. A couple of years ago, we recognized how big of a shift AI would be. Not just a technology shift, but a knowledge shift. Every product team would need new tools AND new knowledge to navigate the biggest transition our industry has ever seen. Joining Miro lets us accelerate everything we've been building. Their user base of 100M+ individuals and 275K organizations will give Reforge community, partners, and products incredible reach. I’m excited for the next chapter. Reforge Learning will remain a separate brand and community, dedicated to bringing expert-created and expert-led courses on the most important topics in tech. We'll continue expanding our AI, product, and growth courses while adding new topic areas. Reforge Insights, Research, and Build will be integrated into the Miro platform as part of the Product Acceleration solution, giving current Reforge customers access to even more tools to accelerate their product efforts. While the journey continues, I want to take this moment for some personal thank yous, because Reforge has never been a one-person effort. To all current and former Reforge employees, I feel grateful to have worked with and learned from so many of you along this journey. Thank you for all of your contributions. To Andrew Chen, who was my original partner, co-creator, and first Reforge investor. He took a bet on me and an idea before there was anything to bet on. Reforge wouldn't exist without him. To Casey Winters, Shaun Clowes, Kevin Kwok, and Elena Verna, who took the early leap as our first course creation partners. They shaped how Reforge thought, taught, and built. 90% of what I know about product and growth comes from them. To Adam Fishman, Darius Contractor, Fareed Mosavat, and Lee J., who have been the endless optimists and cheerleaders in the background, even in the worst moments. Every founder needs people like them. To the HubSpot Alumni Network — Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, JD Sherman, Christopher O'Donnell, Michael Pici, Katie Burke, Kipp Bodnar, Kieran Flanagan, and so many others. The depth of support from this group has been an extraordinary force behind Reforge from the very beginning, and unlike anything I've experienced. And to all Reforge investors who supported me along the way. Jeff Horing, Dave Balter, Rob Go, Gautam Gupta, and so many others. More info: https://lnkd.in/gr5JMQtM

I’ve spent the last two days at the #Hotfix2x Product Conference by SKELAR & Asta Academy Ukraine (Ray Astafichev) — and, as previous year, it still stays one of the most practical product event. A few ideas that stayed with me: 1. Product growth starts with team competence. The capability of the team is often the real growth bottleneck. Strong products are built by strong product thinkers. 2. Customer activation is the foundation of growth. Before optimizing retention or monetization, you need to clearly define the activation moment — when the user truly experiences the product’s value. Everything in the product flow should push users toward that moment. 3. Culture is the invisible infrastructure of a company. A strong culture is built through aligned narratives: - a personal narrative (why I’m here), - a team narrative (where we’re going together), - a company narrative (the bigger story we believe in). If these narratives diverge, trust inside the organization slowly breaks. 4. Leadership is not about control. The goal of a leader is to build a system that works without him. Not pushing the team, but creating an environment that pulls people forward. Thanks to all the speakers who shared honest insights and real product pain instead of polished success stories. P.S Ray Astafichev Irene Astaficheva SKELAR Team, You did incredible job organizing it. Thank you 🔥

Post #3 :: The Zombie Offer   --- Most failed offers don't die because they are "bad." They die because they are ghosts. Inside your company, the offer is a masterpiece of logic… You’ve refined the pricing, polished the messaging, and mapped out every feature to solve a specific problem. On paper, it is a winner – But in the market, it meets a wall of indifference. The instinct is to "fix" the marketing: change the hook, shorten the funnel, or add another case study. Sometimes that helps… but more often, you are just putting makeup on a Zombie Offer. (A Zombie Offer is a product designed for a version of the market that no longer exists). While your team was perfecting the "official" strategy, the terrain moved. Your customers’ priorities shifted… Their alternatives multiplied… Their definition of "value" quietly changed weight... The offer remains logically strong, but it is misaligned with the current reality of demand. From the inside, it looks like a marketing challenge – While from the outside, it’s a navigation error. You are trying to sell a solution to a problem the market has already evolved past. Stop optimizing the execution – Start updating the map. ✨

A controversial take: after 2–3 years in consulting, the value of an MBA is quite limited. Go to a start-up. The classic path has been the same for decades: Consulting → MBA → back to consulting. But if you’ve already done 2–3 years in consulting, I increasingly struggle to see the value of an MBA. In fact, I’ll say something more controversial: If I were running an MBB firm, I would stop obsessing about MBAs and instead send people to work in startups for two years. Here’s why. After a few years in consulting you’ve already learned a lot of what business school tries to teach: – structured thinking – problem decomposition – market analysis – strategy frameworks – executive communication You’ve also seen real companies make real decisions. Going back to the classroom to study cases of companies… when you’ve already been advising companies… has limited returns. I saw it with my MBA colleagues coming from MBB. They were on a 2-year paid vacation. However, what most consultants haven’t experienced is something else: Launching an imperfect product. Hiring 100 people. Fighting for distribution. Marketing with limited resources. That’s where startups are unbeatable. Two years inside a startup teaches things no MBA can replicate: – speed – ownership – resource constraints – real customer pressure And the beauty of this model is that everyone wins: - Startups get very talented people who can structure problems and bring analytical horsepower. - Consulting firms build relationships with companies that may become future clients. - And the consultants themselves learn something they rarely see from the advisory side: what it actually takes to execute. There’s also a more practical point. An MBA costs a fortune. A startup secondment costs nothing and probably teaches more. MBAs will continue to have value, especially for networks or career resets. But if the goal is to build better consultants and future operators… Two years in a startup might be a much better classroom.

Day 2 of HOTFIX 2x Product Conference is a wrap! 🚀 And it was every bit as good as the first. My head is full of new ideas, but here are the highlights from today: 🔹 Scaling Culture with Misha Nestor. Misha shared some powerful truths about growth. His main message? Your goal as a manager is to build a system where you are no longer needed. • The Hiring Trap: Not every great specialist is meant to be a manager. Some become bottlenecks because they’re afraid to hire people smarter than themselves. • Why people burn out: It’s usually: 1) lack of culture and human connection; 2) lack of clear, achievable goals. 🔹 Startups vs. Corporates: The Great Debate A very honest panel discussion on choosing your path. • Startups: If you believe in the vision, the long-term equity play is the big win — but the risks are just as high. • Big Enterprise: You get financial stability and scale, but you risk losing "product sense." • The takeaway: There’s no right or wrong — it’s about what fits your life stage and goals right now. 📸 Ending the day with the wonderful Olha Voinova (last photo)! Huge thanks to SKELAR , Asta Academy Ukraine , and Ray Astafichev for these two days of pure product fuel. Time to go process it all!

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐞 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡, 𝐒𝐚𝐚𝐒, 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 5+ 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: The problem is rarely what it appears to be on the surface. 🔍 A company comes to us saying they need a new website. What they actually have is a fragmented system that marketing can't update, sales can't track, and the dev team has stopped touching for fear of breaking something. A company asks for automation. What they actually need is for three disconnected platforms to finally speak to each other — so the 6 hours their ops team spends on manual data entry every day can disappear. A company wants AI integrated into its product. What they actually need first is clean data architecture, a clear product roadmap, and someone who won't just build the feature, but ask whether it should be built at all. This is the work we do at Avidus Interactive. ⚙️ Not just the build. The thinking before the build. From web transformation and process automation to digital product engineering and BI — we've delivered 25+ projects not by moving fast and breaking things, but by understanding the actual problem first, then moving fast to solve it. 70% faster go-to-market compared to traditional models. Across industries. Across time zones. Because the goal was never to deliver a product. It was to deliver an outcome. 🎯 If your digital infrastructure has outgrown your current setup — or never quite fit to begin with — we should talk. 👉 www.avidusinteractive.com #DigitalTransformation #WebTransformation #ProcessAutomation #ProductEngineering #AI #EnterpriseWeb #B2B #AvidusInteractive #buildwithavidus

In 2013, Nintendo's CEO was failing and losing money. But not a single employee was laid off. Instead, the CEO cut his salary in half. Why? His name was Satoru Iwata. He told his board that employees who fear losing their jobs can't build products that impress the world. So he kept everyone. The full team stayed. They built the Nintendo Switch together. It sold 139 million units and became one of the most successful consoles ever made. Iwata didn't live to see it. He passed away in 2015. But his team delivered. Now look at 2026. Jack Dorsey is worth $4 billion. He just fired 4,000 people and called it an AI strategy. Block's stock surged 24% that week Iwata bet on his people. Dorsey bet against theirs. One built a product that defined a generation. The other built a severance bill worth half a billion dollars. TAKEAWAY The market rewards CEOs who cut headcount. But that's not leadership. That's arithmetic. Leadership is cutting your paycheck before you touch someone else's.

LinkedIn is a great place for "Thought Leadership." I prefer "Thought Partnership." If you’re struggling with a scaling bottleneck, an ugly roadmap, or a cross-functional team that’s lost its 'Drive,' my DMs are always open. Let’s build a better Product Operating System together.

We're bringing together some of the sharpest operators, founders, and executives in the game for Sidebar Spark: our one-day summit for senior leaders navigating AI, rapid change, and rising expectations. 📆 Friday, April 17th | 9AM–6:30PM This year's theme: Curiosity as a Leadership Advantage. The best leaders we know aren't just reacting to change, they're staying curious enough to get ahead of it. At Spark, we'll dig into what that actually looks like: stronger decision-making, real influence, the ability to align people when the path isn't clear, and yes, navigating AI without losing sight of the fundamentals that make great leaders great! Workshops. Candid peer exchange. Real conversations with people operating at the highest level. 🎟️ Sidebar members get a complimentary entry. 🔗 Non-members: 15% off with code EVENT15 (For a limited time) Seats are limited - RSVP here → https://luma.com/h3jqeno7 Meet the speakers: → Ravi Mehta — Product Advisor, ex-CPO @Tinder, EIR @Reforge → Amanda Richardson — CEO, CoderPad → Yasi Baiani — CEO & Founder, Raya Advisory → Robin P. Zander — Founder, Zander Media → Shelley Perry — Managing Director, ScaleLogix Ventures → Elena Luneva — Fractional CPO, Advisor & Corporate Trainer → Qasim Salam — Co-Founder, Ember AI → Randhir Vieira, President, Healthify → Dan Olsen — Vibe Coding & PM Trainer, Author of The Lean Product Playbook → Vikash Rungta — GenAI Instructor @Stanford Continuing Studies, ex-Meta Superintelligence Labs → Subha Shetty — Fractional Chief AI Officer, Former VP of Product @Fanatics → Jason C. — CPO, AI Startup Founder, Former AWS & Apple See you at our biggest event of the year!

It’s been a minute… I’ve been busy building up my new Fractional CPO portfolio, as well as getting out to loads of great events and conferences. So I haven't had much time for writing, but here’s my latest edition of "Work, Reworked"... inspired by a conversation I had at an event last week. 📝 The topic? Our good friend, the 9-box grid. Cue: eye rolls and sighs. 🙄 BUT ... so many organisations are still using it?? I'm working on a Strategic Workforce Planning project at the moment so I'd love to know ... ❓ Are you still using the 9-box grid? ❓ If so, does it actually help talent decisions? ❓ ... and if not, what have you replaced it with?

Appreciate the mention from Digital Reference highlighting fractional Chief Product Officers in the Dallas–Fort Worth ecosystem, alongside Zachary Fleming and Beth Wilson. The fractional CPO model is gaining real traction for a reason. Many companies don’t lack ideas — they lack alignment between product vision, engineering execution, and business outcomes. Experienced product leadership can help close that gap quickly without the timeline or cost of a full-time executive hire. I’ve seen firsthand how the right product strategy and operating model can unlock growth, particularly in PE-backed and scaling SaaS organizations. Grateful for the recognition and excited to see the DFW product ecosystem continuing to grow.

This company is on their way to a "Unicorn" path ($1B+), it's an AI finance powerhouse and raised $46M (Series B) from Khosla Ventures, Bain Capital, Y Combinator using fractional product leadership. Now it automates the entire Office of the CFO... And yes, it means what you think. Here's the full story: > Founded in 2020 to fix the "spreadsheet-to-data-source" nightmare. > Instead of a $250k full-time CPO at Seed, they used fractional strategic guidance. > Focused 100% on Product-Market Fit (PMF) before scaling the team. > Secured a $5.2M Seed round led by Khosla Ventures. > Built a "spreadsheet-native" UX that users actually loved. > Scaled to 150+ no-code integrations with a lean, elite dev team. > Achieved an 80% win rate against legacy enterprise giants. > Landed Tier 1 customers: Zapier, Turo, and Chess.com. > Raised an $11.5M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures. > Hit 10x revenue growth in just 24 months. > Used fractional systems to bridge the gap to a permanent C-suite. > Just closed a $29M Series B (Sept 2025) to lead the AI FP&A race. > Proved that "Fractional" is a feature, not a bug, for high-growth startups. This company is Aleph. They didn't waste $500k on executive search fees and equity in year one. They invested in the product first. If you’re building a product and lack the strategic resources to hit your next milestone - DM me.

We’re hiring our first-ever Product Manager at Suppli — and this isn’t your typical PM role. You won’t inherit a roadmap. You’ll define what success looks like, prototype with AI before writing a single spec, and ship product yourself when it matters. We’re building the platform that powers trade credit for B2B distributors — automating everything from credit applications to collections to cash application. And we need someone who thinks in outcomes, moves fast, and treats AI as a daily multiplier, not a slide deck talking point. What makes this different: → You’re the first product hire. You’ll shape everything. → You’ll prototype before you spec — showing engineers a working demo, not a Jira ticket. → You’ll own design, metrics, and strategy end-to-end. If you’re an AI-native PM who’s been waiting for the right founding role — this is it.

My role at Supabase is shifting and expanding to head up our new Platform organization within Engineering. This includes all of our infrastructure teams, control plane services, core APIs, billing, etc. I'll still be working closely with our core product engineering teams, but I'm very excited to focus on scaling up the platform underpinning them all. Our growth is and continues to be humbling! I'm going to be hiring a ton across a variety of functions, including leadership. Please reach out if we've worked together in the past and you'd like to do so again!

I quit my executive job to live the AI-native startup life. And I've spent years studying what it takes to shift an existing team to a new way of working. In my experience, it takes 3 things: - a new operating model - technical readiness (prepare the repos!) - cultural change I'm SO psyched to be kicking of this very limited Maven weekend course (April 18-19) for EPD executives and super senior ICs with my friend Zach Davis at LaunchDarkly, a Principal Engineer that went from AI-skeptic to the AI-champion in our team. This is NOT for - ICs looking to learn things like claude code - people wanting high level consulting fluff - small teams who are already yoloing the tokens This IS for - VP+ executives in product, engineering, and design - staff + engineers - 100+ person teams who need to move AI mountains Gagan Biyani has been asking me to put something together for several years, and I said I would only do it if it was something I really thought I could uniquely speak to, was technical, and focused at my peers. This is that. I'm also excited we'll have Chintan Turakhia and Nan Yu as guest speakers to talk about what they're seeing and doing as EPD leaders. We just opened enrollment, and recommend you register as an exec-sr. IC pair to get the most out of the content: https://lnkd.in/dFNeSUrH

New ep ↓ How Figma killed the design <> eng handoff ✌️ Gui Seiz (Designer) and Alexander Kern (Engineer) from demo their full workflow live: from claude code to figma to codex and back again. Everyone should be working this way: https://lnkd.in/gpFkPwQK

This is pretty bad 😂 grab a fry & discover how McDonald's CEO describes & “sells” new ‘Big Arch’ AND how he uses AI! We all use AI differently than one another, but… WOW 🤯. Let’s get into it 🍟🍟🍟. Firstly, like myself, you may have thought to yourself “this is the CEO of McDonald’s!?”, but the answer evidently is ‘yes’. Somehow his advisors thought this video of him taking an incredibly small bite of their new sandwich he clearly didn’t know anything about was a good idea, which makes more sense when you hear how bad his AI’s ideas are. 🤣🤣💀 After assuring us that he will actually eat this burger for lunch, & that “the product” has already “been tested” (🇵🇹 🇩🇪🇨🇦), he reveals the unique attributes that make this new ‘whopper of a sandwich’ (my words), in what genuinely seems like his first time seeing or hearing what “the big arch” is. In his words: “Holy Cow, that a big burger”… “we’ve got a very unique kind of sesame poppy sort of bun on it” & then his entire “spiel” (drumroll please… 🥁) “2 quarter pound patties, a delicious Big Arch sauce, & of course, some lettuce”. Then as he rotates the burger in his hands he says “oh, there’s also some crispy onions on here as well”, quite suprised. He fails to notice or mention that there is cheese, pickles, & raw onions too, & neglects to describe the “special sauce”. He then takes an incredibly tiny bite & says “Mmm that is so good” before yada-yadaing over the “gooey cheese”, then claiming that “no one else but McDonald’s could make this burger”. This video has over 10M impressions on his IG account alone, which has under 100k subscribers. It’s safe to say “the world now knows about the Big Arch” aka “the Big Mac killer”. 😆 But then we get into how “Chris K” uses AI; & it’s… special. Wow. His 2 recommended use cases are to make fake family Christmas photos in front of time square with his dog to send to “everyone” AND THEN asking his AI to study McDonald’s menu & to recommend new items. Gemini’s response was: interesting. McRib Nuggets & also “more Korean sauces”. Chris K said “he threw the ideas to the menu team – who knows what they’ll do with them”. McD’s feeds about 70M humans on a daily basis – it’s curious to know that their CEO is seemingly incapable or original thought, & thst he may be turning over the menu to an LLM. I doubt I’ll be getting a Christmas card from the K’s this year, but if so I’m will immediately discard it as AI slop – it’s kind of sad that AI slop has already made it offline. To all other CEOs & senior leadership at other companies: it’s great to show that you “eat your own dog food” (pun intended), but if you’re going to sell something, you really have to SELL it. Also, the fundamentals are: you should really know your product. If you have actual good ideas for innovative AI use cases please share them below. Or any ideas for Chris K – he is obviously open to any & all. 😂 🎥 VC: @chrisk_mcd IG

Excited to speak at the Elevate Conference at Columbia Business School , hosted by the CBS Black Business Student Association this weekend. Entrepreneurship is often romanticized, but the reality is much more complex. Fundraising, product development, supply chain logistics, sales, marketing, and people management all bring their own challenges. Yet somehow we wrap all of that into a single title: entrepreneur. Looking forward to a great conversation about building, scaling, and navigating the realities behind the title.

What does it take to build a $1.2B global learning platform? The Fedoriv Vlog 🇺🇦 came by Preply’s Barcelona hub to find out! In this recent episode, Preply co-founders Kirill Bigai and Dmytro Voloshyn, along with Chief Brand Officer Sofia Tavares, take you behind the scenes of how Preply was built. Tune in for honest conversations on:  - The early marketplace bets that paid off - Expanding internationally (and the mistakes along the way) - Why brand matters as much as product - How we think about AI + human expertise - What it takes to build at global scale Thanks, Andriy Fedoriv and team, for sharing our journey. Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eBYBCsgT #Preply #StartupJourney #Leadership

Having a strong budget doesn’t always guarantee product success. Many well-funded product engineering initiatives still fail due to factors like unclear product vision, poor market validation, scope creep, technical debt, and weak execution strategies. Even with significant investment, projects can struggle if they lose focus on real user needs or lack a clear roadmap. In this blog, we explore the key reasons why well-funded product engineering initiatives fail and what organizations can do to avoid these pitfalls — from better planning and market alignment to building scalable architectures and maintaining product-market fit. Read More: https://lnkd.in/e64j99e9 #ProductEngineering #SoftwareDevelopment #TechStrategy #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #ProductManagement #StartupLessons #EnterpriseTech #EngineeringLeadership #BusinessGrowth #TechTrends #EngineeringExcellence 🚀

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐍𝐘𝐂 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬. In a market as fast‑paced and competitive as New York City, fractional Chief Product Officers (CPOs) are becoming a strategic advantage — bringing executive‑level vision, rapid decision‑making, and product discipline without the cost or commitment of a full‑time hire. Top NYC‑area Fractional CPO professionals featured: – Brian Root – Nita Stella – Tommi Forsstrom – Greg Schirripa – M. Chloe Mulderig, PhD – Kevin O'Neill – Dave Reinhold – Jeff Ng 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 how these leaders bring clarity, strategy, and execution power to product teams — from early‑stage startups to scaling B2B and marketplace platforms: 👉 https://lnkd.in/g33eebY6  — read more 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞’𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬.

I’m #hiring. In my experience, culture eats strategy for breakfast, and attitude, curiosity, and mindset often matter more than formal qualifications. Percepio® is on an exciting growth trajectory, and we are now looking for a key person to join us in product leadership as we scale. Johan Kraft, myself, and the whole team would be excited to welcome the right person into this next chapter. I suspect many in my network will immediately think of one or two people: “She would be perfect for this.” Or “He should talk to Andreas.” What I can offer and vouch for: this will not be a comfortable corporate passenger seat. It will be fun, meaningful, and at times grueling. But it will be for real, and we would be on that journey together. Please share! And if someone special comes to mind - ping them.

HIRING: Sr. Product Manager, GenAI Experience at PitchBook (Seattle, onsite) We’re building AI-powered, conversational search experiences that change how investors discover insights across private and public markets. This role owns the end-to-end user journey for our GenAI and conversational workflows, partnering closely with engineering, ML, design, and executive leadership. ​ WHAT YOU'LL DO: - Lead product strategy for AI and conversational search inside the PitchBook platform, from vision to shipped features. 💻 🔍 - Define high‑value natural language workflows that help users ask complex questions and get trustworthy, explainable answers. 🔄 ➡️ - Drive roadmap, experimentation, and iteration with cross‑functional teams (engineering, ML, UX, data ops, GTM) to deliver measurable customer and business impact. 📝 🧬 - Champion UX quality in AI-assisted experiences where output can vary, ensuring reliability, guardrails, and delight at scale. ⚠️ 🧮 APPLY HERE:  https://lnkd.in/dby_AqXE

I could not be MORE HONORED that one of my articles has been featured on Dscout’s People Nerds blog! I so admire their thought leadership in this space (both virtually and in real life conferences) and am exceedingly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with them. If any of you have experienced trying to influence the roadmap from a UX perspective, I think this article will resonate with you! https://lnkd.in/gcsDyKUM

I’m pleased to share that I joined Calix in November 2025 as Regional Vice President, Solutions Field Strategy. I waited to make this announcement until I had time to fully engage with the team and align on our priorities. After several months, I’m fully energized by the opportunity and confident in the impact we’re building. In this role, I lead a tenured, seasoned team of field strategists as they drive revenue growth and accelerate Calix 3.0 adoption and value realization, strengthening alignment across Sales, Success, Product, and GTM. Our focus is on driving GTM execution by translating customer and field insights into scalable actions through clear strategy, strong feedback loops, and disciplined enablement. This role builds directly on my experience leading and scaling similar field strategy and GTM organizations. What stands out at Calix is the clarity of vision, depth of talent, and commitment to empowering teams to deliver meaningful outcomes for customers. Looking forward to what’s ahead.

It's already one year ago that I stepped into the role of Managing Director at OPTANO GmbH. It has been an intense, yet exciting year. I would like to share the mandatory three key learnings - out of many: 1️⃣ Clear strategic positioning is everything. Mathematical optimization is an incredibly universal capability. Precisely because it can be applied so broadly, focus becomes critical. In a time where AI enables very good solutions to be built quickly, it’s even more important to invest time in developing truly differentiated capabilities. At OPTANO GmbH, we focus on doing two things exceptionally well: 1) Enabling our customers in the transport industry to excel in network planning. 2) Solving optimization problems whose complexity goes beyond what standard market solutions can handle (e.g., in the design of complex supply chains or in production planning). 2️⃣ AI is changing everything. From how we develop software to how users will interact with products in the future, nothing remains untouched. We strongly believe that mathematical optimization will continue to solve many problems more efficiently and reliably than pure AI approaches. At the same time, we are building an “AI wrapper” to democratize optimization and make both data preparation and results interpretation far more intuitive. With change at such a high speed, the human component matters more than ever. I’m grateful for a team that approaches this uncertain future with openness, courage, and a real will to shape what’s next. 3️⃣ Beyond strategy and AI - we are human. The holistic responsibility of this role in such a fast-moving environment has required significant personal growth. I’ve learned that it’s not always easy to switch off when so much more could be done. I’ve felt what it means when mood is affected and focus in everyday life becomes harder. To ensure I can remain energized and sharp, I try my best prioritizing sleep, good nutrition, movement, and time with people and activities that truly make me happy. My sincere thanks to our customers for their trust and partnership. To the entire OPTANO team for all your efforts. And especially to Jens Peter Kempkes for the trustful collaboration at eye level, as well as to Ingmar Steinzen and Stefan Bunte, thank you for building such an outstanding company that I’m proud to help shape. Finally, also to our dear shareholder Kearney for your trust and support: Ben T. Smith, IV, Suketu Gandhi, Sumit Mitra, Marco Gutierrez, Thomas Fliedner, Mirko Wichmann to name just a few. I am excited for the next year. #firstanniversary #grateful #OPTANO

This week marks the end of my chapter at ClickUp and some of the best years in my career so far. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing our entire global EPD team assembled in Las Vegas for an offsite. It was a bittersweet trip for me. I had hired, managed, shipped features, or battled incidents with almost every engineer there, and it was tough knowing that this was the last time I would see many of them. At the same time, the sheer magnitude of talent assembled in that room was both inspiring and humbling. In just 48 hours of hacking, this group delivered an impressive array of improvements and innovations. I joined ClickUp in 2021 as their first engineering management hire. Hard to believe now, but at the time, it seemed like an incredible risk. I left a comfortable job to join a team of strangers, work on a product in one of the most crowded software categories, and lead a small group of engineers in an org half the size of my team at the time. Almost 5 years later, and ClickUp’s growth has been nothing short of legendary. We’ve launched 100s of new features and products, grown the eng org 20x, solved every scaling issue imaginable, and had a ton of fun doing it. I’m so grateful that I took that chance, but even more grateful for the people who took a chance on me. Thank you, Zeb Evans and Alex Yurkowski, for taking a risk on hiring an unknown Sr. EM from SurveyMonkey. Thank you Justin M., James Bilous, Joe Hasbani, and Scott Walter, for taking a chance on working with me again at a different company. And thank you to all of the people I’ve worked with over the past 5 years. ClickUp was, and will continue to be, an absolute rocket ship of a company, but it’s the energy and passion that you bring every single day that brought out the best in me.

After an incredible 16 months, I'm moving on from Block/Square. At Block, I’ve had the opportunity to lead a new product and business area within Square focused on accounting and financial management solutions for sellers across all verticals. Helping nearly 4 million businesses better understand their profits, costs, and the complexities of running their operations has been deeply meaningful work — and I believe there is still tremendous opportunity to add even more value in this space. During my time here, I learned a ton about: - Leveraging AI agents to perform real business tasks at scale - Taking zero-to-one products to millions of sellers - Building within a powerful two-sided ecosystem across Square and Cash App - Scaling new business lines inside large, fast-moving organizations I’m now back in the market and excited about what’s next. Previously, I was CEO & Founder of ProfitLabs, where our product, Profit AI, helped restaurants transform how they manage their finances. We ultimately joined forces with Square to accelerate that vision. Before that, I co-founded and served as CEO of xtraCHEF, built on the idea of bringing enterprise-grade technology to the corner café. In 2021, we sold xtraCHEF to Toast, where I stayed on for three years to help scale the business. If you’re building in fintech, vertical SaaS, AI-powered tools, or products that help SMBs thrive — I’d love to connect. I’m open to conversations about operating roles, building something new, or partnering with great teams tackling meaningful problems. Feel free to reach out directly or drop a note in the comments.

A few weeks ago, CodePath became Anthropic's first US Economic Mobility Partner, putting Claude into the hands of 20,000+ students across 1,000+ colleges, including HBCUs, community colleges, and state schools. https://lnkd.in/gZ2haZMU I'm looking for a Product Manager to build what comes next. CodePath is the largest CS education nonprofit in the country. 20,000 students, growing 50-100% every year. Almost three quarters come from families earning under $60K. Our students are already using Claude Code to ship contributions to open-source projects like GitLab, and Howard University is offering our AI curriculum for academic credit. What most people don't know is that before CodePath was a nonprofit, we were Silicon Valley's top upskilling organization during the platform shift from web to mobile. We created Airbnb's first engineer onboarding program, redesigned Facebook's global engineering onboarding, and at one point had trained 25% of Coinbase's entire engineering team. We are best in class at upskilling for platform shifts. Now the biggest one in a generation is here, and we need a 10x PM to build our enterprise AI upskilling product from scratch. AI is disrupting millions of workers, not just software engineers. Companies know it and they're spending thousands per employee on upskilling that mostly isn't very good. Leading AI labs and tech companies need to partner with CodePath if they're serious about transforming the nation's technical talent. We've already started. The enterprise product is the piece that doesn't exist yet. CodePath's ambition is to scale well beyond 100,000 learners per year to meet the displacement that's coming. But we don't believe in charging students from low-income backgrounds. Period. Our business model is simple: enterprise revenue funds free student access. That's why this PM role isn't just a product job. It's the financial engine that makes the whole thing work. I don't care about years of experience. I need someone who identifies as an entrepreneur, who knows the PM craft but has become obsessed with how AI transforms the user experience. Strong across design, technical depth, and AI-native product thinking. This is a dream role for a PM who wants to build at the cutting edge of AI, working with multiple leading AI labs, while transforming education and work at massive scale. There is no existing roadmap. There is no product team to inherit. You build it. DM me. And if you know a PM who should see this, please share. Cc'ing a few friends who may know great product folks: Abe Ankumah, Jules Walter, Ran Makavy, Nick Caldwell, Michael Wolfe, Prakash Janakiraman, Hootan Mahallati.

most AI panels are 4 people who read the same blog post and argue on stage. this one's different... march 10th. Houston. SaaStock Local. the topic: "𝗜𝘀 𝗔𝗜 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗮𝗮𝗦?" here's who's answering that question: Karen Gutierrez — CIO at HCA Healthcare. 22 years in HealthTech. Board member at Latinas in Tech. Advisor at the Texas Medical Center Innovation HealthTech Accelerator. She's not tweeting about AI changing enterprise buying behavior. She's making the actual procurement decisions — at one of the largest healthcare companies on the planet. That perspective doesn't exist on a podcast. Vivek Dixit — Investor, Entrepreneur, C-Suite Leader. 25+ years. CTO, CIO, SVP of Products at Oracle, Gartner, Cognizant. Multiple boards. Works directly with startup founders. He's seen it from every angle — building large-scale systems AND guiding investment thesis. When the question is "Is AI killing SaaS?" — he can tell you what's happening to software economics and what the money is doing about it. Mark Scott — Founder & CTO, Sozala.ai. Co-founded multiple venture-backed startups. Raised over $15M from angel through Series A+. Built and scaled SaaS platforms across North America, Europe, and Asia. Now he's leading real-world Agentic SDLC adoption — reshaping how software gets designed, built, and shipped. Not theory. Code AND cap table. David Williamson — SVP Engineering, Quorum Software. 17 years at Quorum. Let that sink in. Consultant to SVP of Engineering. Scaled globally. Built teams in India. Ran acquisition integrations. Founded their annual global hackathon. When someone says "scaling SaaS platforms at enterprise" — David didn't read it off a slide. He lived every painful, unglamorous moment of it. A healthcare CIO. A multi-board investor-operator. A serial CTO shipping agentic AI right now. An engineering leader who's been scaling the same platform for nearly two decades.... Same room. Same conversation. Invincible — 801 Travis St, Houston March 10th — 6:00pm to 8:30pm register - https://lnkd.in/gJY8NdJV if you're building in SaaS or AI, this is the room to be in next week. early-stage founder counting every dollar? message me directly. I'll hook you up with a free or discounted ticket.

بعد أن قررت شركة InVision اغلاق الشركة بنهاية العام … ماهي ابرز الدروس المستفادة من شركة كانت عملاقة وقائد في سوق الـ UX Design الى خيار الإغلاق بعد تعدد المنافسين ودخول تطبيقات الـ AI بقوة.

After nearly a decade working with startups, I noticed something interesting about growth. It rarely fails because of a lack of ambition. More often, it struggles when vision and execution drift apart. Over the years, I had the chance to work closely on: • GTM & Growth strategies • Demand generation, New Business Development and Strategic Initiatives • Scaling products, Teams, and Processes And somewhere along that journey, one question kept returning to me: What if growth could be approached like a mission? Not just campaigns. Not just revenue targets. But a clear North Star. A crew. And a journey toward something bigger. That thought slowly started taking shape. And today feels like the perfect day to announce that mission. On the festival of Holi, a celebration of colors, energy, and new beginnings. I’m excited to share the first step of that journey. 🚀 Introducing Lunar Crew. A modern business consulting firm built around a simple belief: Vision to Value. Because most organizations don’t lack ambition. What they often lack is clarity on how vision turns into execution. At Lunar Crew, we partner with organizations to: • Discover their North Star • Design scalable growth systems • Turn ideas into real, measurable value Just like astronauts don’t explore space alone, meaningful growth is always a crew effort. That belief inspired the name. And today’s Holi creative captures that spirit beautifully, astronauts celebrating with colors, symbolizing energy, optimism, and bold beginnings. To everyone who has been part of my journey over the years; mentors, colleagues, founders, partners, and friends — thank you. Your influence is part of this mission. Like every mission, this one begins with curiosity, courage, and the belief that the journey will teach us more than the destination. Wishing you and your loved ones a very Happy Holi 🎨 May this festival bring joy, positivity, and new possibilities to your journey. And if you're building something ambitious, exploring new markets, or navigating growth… Maybe it’s time to assemble your crew. Curious to hear from fellow founders and builders here, what has been the biggest growth challenge in your journey so far? #HappyHoli #LunarCrew #FounderJourney #Entrepreneurship #GrowthStrategy #GTM #DemandGeneration #DigitalTransformation #VisionToValue #Leaders #Consulting

Is Product Management an art or a science? Last night, I had the pleasure of hosting a powerhouse panel of Product leaders to dive into the reality of breaking into and scaling in the PM world. We covered everything from military transitions to the impact of AI "co-pilots." The consensus? While technical curiosity is a must, the "human" skills like storytelling, getting buy-in, and obsessive customer empathy, are what truly move the needle. Key takeaways from the evening: 1. Non-Traditional Paths: Whether coming from the military, engineering, or apparel operations, a "360-degree view" of the business is your greatest asset. 2. The "Manager" in PM: It’s about leadership and prioritization. You have to be the one to find the blind spots and translate technical hurdles into business solutions. 3. What Hires: Employers aren’t just looking for a resume; they want to see what you’ve shipped, your ability to be authentic, and your "bottom-line" impact. 4. The AI Shift: In a world of rapid change, adaptability and independent problem-solving are the skills that will keep you ahead of the curve. A massive thank you to our brilliant panelists for sharing their time and career blueprints with our students: Humphrey Okeke MBA, CSPO – For the reminder that PM is often more art than science. Travis Clemens, GISP – For the insights on geospatial transitions and executive presence. Stephanie W. – For highlighting the importance of UX and finding customer patterns. Atrin Assa – For the focus on authenticity and the human side of AI. Tyler Price – For the masterclass on incremental progress toward business outcomes. Luke Hale – For the emphasis on a growth mindset and continuous learning. Rich “Richnovated” Gilliam – For showing us how to bridge the gap between engineering and the "big picture." Students: Don’t forget to reach out and keep the conversation going! #ProductManagement #CareerDevelopment #Networking #NCState #MBA #ProductLed #TechCareers NC State Poole College of Management Career Services at NC State Poole

Here's my quick take on volume vs quality for driving growth (search + AI visibility) FYI Doing a 1.5hr WORKSHOP on this later this month. Link in comments. DISCLAIMER: This is backed up by: 1) 2,000+ pages we're publishing/updating weekly for customers 2) Study we did a few weeks back on 600K AI responses + citation 3) Collecting 2M+ AI responses + scraping every citation monthly via CheckThat 4) Our own sites we manage (see screenshot below as example) TLDR: You need both. One is about learning, another predicting value to audience. Let me explain... ***** >VOLUME = Speed of experimentation and learning Volume for volume sake is stupid. Volume (quantity of pages) is about speed to signal, quantity of signals, and ability to learn AND act on those signals. If you create or update 5 pages per month, your rate of learning is about 60 per year. That means you have 60 "experiments" to figure out what works. Your "sphere of direct influence" on AI and search engines is also limited to the surface area you have. So if you're not publishing and updating pages at scale your ceiling of growth is limited because you just don't have enough sphere of influence and you are not learning and adapting fast enough. **** >QUALITY = Predictor of being the best answer to your audience People convolute the crap out of this IMO. WTH is quality anyway? Quality can mean too many things so we need to decompose it. We think of quality as a predictor of: ---> Best answer/resource on the internet for [persona] with [intent] A good way to measure this is by page engagement in relation to lookalike pages. But that's lagging. So you have to look at qualitatively on the signals that engines reward and then over time correlate those actual page engagement (and later conversion). ***** LAYERS OF QUALITY 1. Context (company, product, persona, market, buying category, competitors, taxonomy/ontology, guidelines) 2. Strategy (consistently finding and prioritizing best opportunities to create or update pages that will give you best show of outcomes you want like visibility, traffic, conversion) 3. Research (quality of sources, depth and breadth of research, fetching->ingesting->synthesizing-> adapting -> using the research, fact checking) 4. Planning and iterating (between opportunity brief, research, and plan so agents and humans know how to best executve) 5. Drafting 6. Post processing (fact checking, compliance, copy editing, formatting, image enrichments, cross linking, ctas, citations/references, etc) 7. Polishing + publishing (a lot can get messed up here) ****** You can't scale without quality and you can't grow without volume. Our fastest growing like Lovable have one thing in common: >> Speed to signal, iterate fast. Double down on what's working. Expand as you gain confidence. OK I'm out of characters... Link in comments for workshop on this.

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve had the privilege of leading and supporting technology companies through growth, transition, and transformation - from early scaling challenges to exit preparation. And today, I am excited to announce my new venture - Win Win Architect. My career began as a leader at PepsiCo and Brady Corporation, where I built a strong operational foundation that shaped my disciplined approach to leadership and execution today. Since then, I’ve served as CEO, President, and COO across PE-backed, founder-led, and growth-stage organizations, often stepping in when growth outpaced operational maturity, accountability became unclear, or leadership teams needed alignment around execution. Across those roles, I’ve helped organizations: • Navigate operational resets and scaling inflection points • Transition revenue models from 7% recurring revenue to 90%+ SaaS ARR • Led divestitures and exits that generated substantial value, with the organizations continuing to thrive post-transition. • Rebuild leadership accountability and execution systems • Modernize products and operating models to enable sustainable growth Most recently, I led enterprise planning, organizational realignment, and go-to-market transformation initiatives restoring operational health, revenue visibility, and improved EBITDA performance. Increasingly, this work has included practical AI adoption, helping leadership teams improve decision speed, visibility, and productivity without proportional cost growth. After many conversations with founders, investors, and operators facing similar challenges, I’ve decided to formally launch Win Win Architect, a fractional CEO and operating partner practice. Through Win Win Architect, I partner with private equity sponsors, boards, and founders to help stabilize performance, align leadership teams, and build the operating systems required for scalable value creation. Typical engagements include: > Fractional or Interim CEO leadership > Portfolio company stabilization > Leadership team alignment > Founder transition support > Exit readiness and post-acquisition integration I’m excited to begin this next chapter supporting organizations navigating growth disruption, leadership transition, or performance recovery. If you’re facing one of those moments, I’d welcome the conversation. #FractionalCEO #OperatingPartner #PrivateEquity #SaaSLeadership #PEPortfolio #BusinessTransformation #AIinBusiness #ExecutiveLeadership #GrowthStrategy

I’ve never thought of myself as a creator. But years of speaking, teaching, and sharing insights have directly fueled my fractional CTO/CPO practice. Including being hired through AI search by clients who already trusted my thinking before we ever spoke. (https://lnkd.in/gC6Ag9Wn) That’s the power of visibility. 📅 On March 6, I’m joining a panel to talk about: • Building authority without becoming an influencer • Turning expertise into inbound • Leveraging content to grow a consulting or fractional business If you’re navigating the shift between operator, consultant, and creator, join us! RSVP: https://lnkd.in/gWEDMyQj Ashley Grace, Tish Dignam, Lauren Elizabeth Pearl, Shanae Brown, Brand Curators, BrainStation

How does a scrappy SaaS go from $0 → $2M ARR in 18 months? It’s usually not the product. And it’s rarely the marketing budget. From working with founders, one pattern keeps showing up: The startups that stall are waiting for perfection. The ones that grow start selling early. What fast-moving founders do differently: Sell before everything is “ready” Talk to customers constantly Focus on one growth channel, not ten When revenue appears, they double down immediately What actually drives growth: • Pick one channel and master it • Let customers shape the roadmap • Charge early — polish later • Protect what works once it’s proven The market doesn’t reward perfect plans. It rewards execution, feedback, and momentum. The founders who win aren’t the ones with the best decks — they’re the ones who move, learn, and keep shipping.

Our first hire for our tech startup, Parkzy, wasn’t an engineer. It wasn’t a developer. It was a UX research intern. Meet Frances Cheung, our UX Research Intern at Parkzy, and truly one of the best decisions we’ve made so far! This all started when I reached out to my professor, Dr. Jason Buhle, PhD, asking if we could collaborate with students from my master’s program on a consulting project. That specific idea fell through. At the time, it felt like a missed opportunity, but in reality, it was redirection. Frances reached out expressing interest in working with us on Parkzy, and everything clicked. She went on to spearhead an entire UX research initiative for our app, dedicating tens of hours to user interviews and usability testing. She sat with real users, observed how they navigated the platform, identified friction points, and turned feedback into actionable insights that directly shaped our product. The impact was huge. Our product direction became clearer. Our development became sharper. Our confidence grew stronger. I’m sharing this story because it holds a couple of important lessons. First, create opportunities for yourself. We did not have a UX internship role open. We were not actively hiring. But Frances took the initiative to reach out. We had a conversation. We saw alignment. And from that alignment, we created the opportunity. Sometimes the role does not exist until the right person does. Second, build with your users, not just for them. So here’s my unsolicited advice to anyone building a tech startup: Conduct UX research early. Before you scale. Before you overbuild. Before you assume. Listening to your users is not optional. It is the product strategy. Frances, we’re so grateful for the thoughtfulness, rigor, and heart you’ve brought to Parkzy. We are so excited to continue working together as we launch this month and build what’s next ✨ Pictured: Vala Makhfi, Milad Farazian, and Frances Cheung co-working together on USC’s campus after we all met in person for the first time 💛

New episode of Uncapped with Y Combinator's leadership, Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, and Jared Friedman. We talked about YC's core value prop, how AI is changing the process of finding product market fit and raising capital, San Francisco and California, the future of YC, and more. (0:00) Intro (0:18) YC's product (5:05) AI and the new builder (13:01) Pivots and upcoming trends (22:26) Making something people want (24:50) What’s in store for SaaS (33:02) Capital in the age of AI (36:28) The human capacity for desire (42:18) Building in America (44:29) Fixing San Francisco (47:58) Scaling YC https://lnkd.in/ggWMW9zK

I learned one of my most important leadership lessons during a crisis I didn’t see coming. Six months into a recession, the division I was leading missed a major revenue target. The kind of miss that makes the room go quiet. The easy reaction would’ve been to freeze, cut back, and wait it out. Instead, my team and I reframed it as a chance to rebuild our resilience. Here’s what we did, fast: 1. Found untapped opportunities inside our existing client base 2. Accelerated product enhancements that had been sitting on the backlog 3. Repositioned our offering to deliver even more value in a recessionary market Six months later, we were back on plan. But the real lesson wasn’t the recovery. It was this: Every crisis tests your character more than your strategy. During tough moments, your team isn’t just watching what you decide. They’re watching how you show up. Over the years, from Fortune 200 environments to private-equity transformations to my work now at K1x, I’ve learned a few things about resilience: Builders beat managers. Managers maintain. Builders create from zero, under pressure, with limited resources. When the stakes are real, you want builders next to you. Consistency builds trust. Clear, early communication matters: “Here’s what we know.” “Here’s what we don’t.” “Here’s what we’re doing next.” It sounds simple, but most leaders skip these steps when stress hits. Reliable systems create calm. Urgent fixes are temporary. Well-built processes keep the team steady long-term. Personal resilience is a discipline. When your chips are down, people take their cues from your steadiness. That responsibility is real and it never goes away. At K1X, Inc., we bring that philosophy into how we build: people-first, clarity over complexity, and systems that scale. That’s how we now support 40,000+ organizations with AI-powered automation of K-1s, 1099s, W-2s, and 990s. Crisis doesn’t create leaders. It reveals them and refines them. Curious: What’s one leadership lesson you learned the hard way?

📌 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫: 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐳𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢 𝐝𝐢 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐚 Negli ultimi giorni è uscita un'intervista del nostro Chairman Andrea Pietrini, che approfondisce il valore del modello Fractional Manager per le aziende in crescita. Oggi molte imprese si trovano ad affrontare: • passaggi organizzativi delicati • riorganizzazioni • riposizionamenti strategici • accelerazioni di sviluppo In queste fasi, servono 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐳𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢 𝐝𝐢 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨, ma non sempre è sostenibile l’inserimento stabile di una figura dirigenziale a tempo pieno. Il modello Fractional risponde proprio a questa esigenza: un manager senior entra in azienda con un ruolo esecutivo, obiettivi chiari e un impegno calibrato nel tempo. 🎯 Competenze mirate. 📈 Impatto concreto. ⚙️ Flessibilità strategica. È questo l’approccio che YOURgroup porta ogni giorno nelle imprese italiane. 👉 Per approfondire il tema e leggere l’intervista completa: https://lnkd.in/dCAvbjfU _____ A questo proposito, se sei una o un #FRACTIONALMANAGER BRILLANTE e stai cercando una nuova sfida professionale insieme al Gruppo che ha portato in Italia il modello, guarda qui 👉 https://lnkd.in/d8MSfacY Se invece sei una o un #IMPRENDITORE e desideri sapere come YOURgroup abbia aiutato in questi 15 anni centinaia di imprese ad avere successo, guarda qui 👉 https://lnkd.in/d8MSfacY ➡️ Se ti interessano spunti di riflessione manageriale, segui il profilo 👉 Andrea Pietrini e quello delle pagine di YOURgroup: yourCFO, yourHR, yourDIGITAL, yourCEO, yourCOO, yourCPO, yourCMO, yourCCO, yourCLO e yourREP. #FractionalManager #Management #Strategia #Leadership #PMI #YOURgroup #CPO

𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗮 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲‑𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 — 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗸 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆, 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 — all without the overhead of a full‑time hire.** For teams navigating rapid change and scaling challenges, outsourced CPO expertise is a strategic advantage. At Digital Reference, we apply a research‑driven evaluation lens to spotlight service providers with proven track records and measurable impact. Our latest resource — “Best Fractional Chief Product Officer Services in the United Kingdom” — surfaces agencies and consultancies helping UK organizations elevate product leadership outcomes. Here are the UK‑based fractional CPO service providers highlighted in the article: • Produxity • Fractional CPO • inherent ventures • Appeus 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 → https://lnkd.in/gxxrtt4j Explore Digital Reference’s extensive Talent Ecosystem Resources to stay ahead with the latest strategies and market trends.

𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 — 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲, 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀.** When full‑time CPO hires aren’t feasible or fast enough, fractional Chief Product Officer services deliver senior strategic leadership, clearer roadmaps, and faster outcomes for teams at every stage. At Digital Reference, we apply a research‑driven methodology — reviewing real outcomes, client feedback, and leadership influence — to spotlight the firms helping Canadian organizations accelerate product strategy and execution. Our latest guide — “Best Fractional Chief Product Officer Services in Canada” — features agencies and consultancies delivering flexible, outcome‑oriented product leadership. Here’s a snapshot of the fractional CPO service providers featured in the article: • Matador Consulting Ltd. • Qatalyst Labs • Bespoke Digital Inc • solace 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 → https://lnkd.in/g-SnNCaM Explore Digital Reference’s extensive Talent Ecosystem Resources to stay ahead with the latest strategies and market trends.

After spending meaningful years building and scaling at Bhanzu, it feels like the right time to close this chapter and step into the next one. What I will miss most is working with the team that helped shape this into a global math company. We built distribution across geographies while staying disciplined on unit economics. Leading and managing a 100+ member marketing and growth organization through that phase changed how I think about scale. The real shift was building systems and leaders so growth no longer depended on one person. Pramod Reddy Yerra, Sai Bharath G, Suraj Naik, Rithika Reddy, Sarthak A., Kiran Kumar Aluvara, Sonali Kanojiya, Darshan Bhat, Sahaj Puri, Lakshmi M V and Shivangi Jaggi thank you for consistently raising the bar and taking ownership beyond defined roles. There are many others I may not be naming here, but your contribution mattered just as much. Working closely with Neelakantha Bhanu during this journey gave me a front row view of conviction. The ambition to build a global math brand remained steady and I was entrusted with real ownership and accountability across markets. That trust shaped this chapter for me. To Srinivas Jonnalagadda, Prachotan DL, Alluru Uday Kiran and Krishnakanth JSS, thank you for the alignment, support and partnership that made complex decisions simpler. Deepak Sonawane, Parth Vasa, Parvesh Garg, Nitin Agarwal, Richa Mathur, Silita Simantika and Afaque Khan, along with the broader sales, product, tech and operations teams, thank you for the collaboration and discipline it takes to build across functions and time zones. Scale is always a shared responsibility. This phase strengthened my belief that sustainable growth is built through structure, clarity and people who take ownership when it matters. To everyone at Bhanzu, thank you for being part of this chapter. I leave with respect for what we built together and with genuine belief in what the team can continue to create.

Being a CPTO in a software company is many things. It’s product strategy. It’s technology decisions. It’s long-term vision. It's working directly with different teams. But it’s also boarding gates, whiteboards, and standing on stages. The next two weeks look like this: ✈️ Amsterdam → Germany Time at our HQ in Tutzing with our infrastructure, product and engineering teams. Deep dives. Technical discussions. Roadmap alignment. Making sure vision translates into execution. ✈️ Germany → Copenhagen At the FSN Capital Partners Leadership Conference (our Private Equity partner), I’ll be sharing how we built Product Management at Lobster from scratch — turning a feature-driven organization into a product-led software company. Not theory. Real structure. Real trade-offs. Real lessons learned. ✈️ Back to Amsterdam A few days at home — to reset, reflect, and prepare for what’s next. Because the week after, we go big. SummitX — Rotterdam In my hometown, we’ll welcome a few hundred leaders at our SummitX. Together with our CEO Tim Srock, I’ll take the stage to talk about how to create truly connected supply chains by applying AI — with data as the foundation. Because AI without structured, integrated, governed data is just a demo. What I love about this role? Switching between: - Strategy and execution - Investors and engineers - Architecture diagrams and keynote slides All in the same week.

After 4 unforgettable years, today I’m closing my chapter at Kueski. What started in 2018 as curiosity about a startup turned into one of the most defining experiences of my career. From improving transaction times by more than 70%, to launching and scaling products that exceeded expectations, the impact we built together is something I’m deeply proud of. I’m incredibly grateful for the leaders, mentors and (sometimes) friends I found along the way. Thanks Elisa Hernandez Ulises Figueroa Ramírez Tharaneesan Nadarajah for the debates, the pressure, the resilience and the laughter along the way. You shaped me not only as a product leader, but as a person. Now, I’ll be taking some time for myself and shift my focus to my MBA journey. Thank you, Kueski, for the lessons, the trust, and the journey.

"And they all lived happily ever after…" ·      Quality improved by 34%. ·      Employee turnover dropped by 46%. ·      Customers saw the improvement, and they kept coming back. That's the end of the story. But here's the thing — that's also where I start. What's your ideal outcome? That's the first question I ask a division head or subject matter expert before we build anything. Not "What content do we need?" Not "What's the first step?" What does success actually look like when we're done? This approach has a name in the academic world: Backwards Design. You start with the desired result, then work backwards to figure out what has to happen to get there. It's how I was trained as an instructor and coach, and it changed everything. In instructional design, this means I don't start by asking "What content should we cover?" I start by asking "What should people be able to DO differently when this is over?" Then I work backwards: What decisions will they need to make? What practice do they need? What's the minimum they need to know to actually execute? Everything else gets cut or moved to performance support. That focus on the end performance — not the content — is what separates training that drives results from training that just checks a box. But here's what most people don't realize — this isn't just a curriculum design theory... The business world uses the same idea, they just call it something else. Amazon famously uses a "working backwards" process where they write the press release for a product before they build it. Same concept. Define the end state first, then reverse-engineer the path. Most struggling initiatives fail not because of poor execution, but because the goal was never clearly defined upfront. Backwards Design forces that clarity before you spend a dollar or assign a single task. So before you ask "What do we do first?" — ask "What does success look like when we're done?" Then work backwards. #StrategicPlanning #ProjectDesign #InstructionalDesign #BackwardsDesign #OrganizationalPlanning #Leadership

✨ I didn’t expect a digital badge to make me pause… but this one did. “Mastering Project Delivery.” It sounded simple enough until I realised it mirrored so many parts of my own career journey. A few years ago, I remember sitting in a meeting where every stakeholder had a different definition of “priority.” One wanted speed. One wanted perfection. One wanted visibility. And I? I just wanted us all to speak the same language. Back then, I hadn’t yet learned that expectations aren’t just stated, they’re interpreted. And people interpret them through their fears, pressures, KPIs, hopes, histories. It’s messy. Human. Real. This programme brought me right back to that moment and finally gave language to things I’d learned the hard way. To prioritise expectations, you must first understand people. Not tasks. Not timelines. People. It taught me how misalignment doesn’t appear suddenly it creeps in through small assumptions, unasked questions, and the fear of saying “this deadline isn’t realistic.” How risks aren’t obstacles they’re early whispers that something needs attention. How accountability isn’t enforced it’s built through trust and clarity. And as I moved through the modules, something clicked: Everything I was learning about project delivery applies directly to product management. Because product isn’t just features and roadmaps. It’s orchestrating voices. Balancing tensions. Seeing around corners. Creating a rhythm the whole team can march to willingly. Here’s what truly stayed with me: 🌱 Involving people early isn’t a scheduling tactic it’s an empowerment strategy. 🧭 Aligning skills to needs isn’t resourcing it’s respect. ⏳ Realistic timelines aren’t constraints they’re care. 🤝 Meeting expectations isn’t luck it’s communication with courage. This badge wasn’t just a badge. It was a reminder that delivery and discovery project and product are two sides of the same human story: People trying to build something meaningful together. And I’m proud to carry these lessons forward not as a checklist, but as a mindset. Here’s to better alignment, braver conversations, and building products that work because the teams behind them do too. 🚀 #ProductManagement #ProjectManagement #Leadership #ContinuousLearning #DeliveryExcellence #StakeholderManagement https://lnkd.in/gvSxAR4q

The discourse around agentic product development is based solely around the concept of productivity at the implementation stage of roadmaps. If we are not able to harness higher productivity within our teams without the outcome being to maintain the expectation of what success looks like, if these tools are not multiplying also what an organization expects, amplifying not only the work but also our objectives. If the first answer is to look at headcount, if in the face of more being possible the answer is to truncate ambition at the roadmap level, to reduce costs in order to not risk the possibility of larger scale and profitability, then, America, we are fooling ourselves. We are hedging scalability to favor the leadership and their cozy relationship with power and money, we are not really serious about the future. Take a goddamn risk. Go for the big win. Open up a path for the ideas that surfaced from the talented people who built the company you have today, or the newcomer with big dreams. Let human innovation happen without the ego of leadership squashing it flat. Deliver the promise withheld over the years of “right now we can’t afford this luxury”. Now you can. Spawn the future. Your competitor might have already caught up to this opportunity. Don’t be caught in the comfort of your Board of Directors and your bonus. The future will not wait for you. This was sparked by an amazingly candid and deeply reflective post by someone who, at one point in my career, led the company whose main product was my competitive benchmark. They asked the right rhetorical question. A statement to be admired — and one that leads directly into this. #AI #AgenticAI #ProductDevelopment #Leadership #Innovation #FutureOfWork #AIStrategy #TechLeadership #Growth #Productivity

If you’re a non-technical founder building with AI right now, read this carefully. Most people don’t fail because of bad code. They fail because they didn’t define their MVP properly. I’ve seen this pattern again and again: You: • Use ChatGPT • Build a prototype • Add features • Get excited Then users arrive… And everything breaks. Not technically. Strategically. Here’s what most founders don’t clarify: What is the core action your user must complete? What metric defines success? What should NOT be built yet? What happens when 100 users arrive? Who owns the product decisions? Before writing code, we run founders through a simple structure. I turned it into a short framework: 👉 “The 8-Week MVP Roadmap for Non-Technical Founders” If you're building something serious in 2025, Comment MVP I’ll send it.

The more we build, the more we realize how much we have to learn Exactly a year ago we won the Chairman’s Award for Best Young Product. It was a whirlwind of excitement and yes today “we did it two times in a row” But this year’s Chairman’s award for Best Initiative feels even more special. Why? Because it was born out of a moment of silence and listening. In Product Management, it’s easy to fall in love with your own roadmap. But practicing intellectual humility taught us that the most impactful "initiatives" aren't the ones we brainstorm in a vacuum—they are the ones the users practically beg for through their behavior and feedback and this one we owe to the field team & secret sauce of field marketing Insights are the bridge between a good idea and a great impact. I’m happy, humbled, and more curious than ever to see where these insights take us in Year 3. Pidilite Industries Limited Digesh Mehta Shweta Shridhar #ProductPM #CareerGrowth #IntellectualHumility #UserExperience #Insight #Teamexcellence #BTL

So, someone recently asked us whether it's better to focus on paid or organic growth as a strategy... and I thought, what a great question! Let's talk about it. For us, it's not either/or - it is all about the sequence! When founders start thinking about growth, one of the first things on their minds is: "Should we focus on paid growth or organic growth?" But honestly, that’s not really the right way to look at it these days. The real question isn’t which one you pick, it’s when to use each! Think of organic growth as your testing ground, the place where you get to see what really resonates with people. What does that look like? - Brand-owned social content - Email and community building - Earned influencer mentions - Gifted collaborations - Word of mouth and social proof Organic tells you whether your message resonates. Especially in areas like parenting, wellness, or household products, trust is everything. If your content isn’t connecting with people organically, running paid ads won’t magically fix that, it’ll just make any problems bigger, faster. What does doing organic answer... Does this messaging land? Do people trust us? Does this creator actually influence behaviour? Are we solving a real problem? If you can’t get traction without paying to get your message out there, that’s usually a sign to pause and rethink, not just a scaling issue. Paid growth is what accelerates what’s already working!!! What does this look like?... - Meta, TikTok, YouTube ads - Google search & shopping - Sponsored influencer posts - Whitelisting / creator ads - Boosted posts With paid, you get predictability, speed, audience expansion, and consistent acquisition. But here’s the thing, paid works best when you already know what gets people excited and ready to buy. Brands that run into trouble are often the ones that treat paid ads as a shortcut instead of a way to boost what’s already working organically. Here’s our simple framework: Prove → Refine → Scale Here’s how we like to break it down: Prove with organic. Refine with insight. Scale with paid. Organic builds trust. Paid builds momentum. When you get the sequence right, growth gets way more efficient and a whole lot less risky, too.

There are two key factors that every aspiring entrepreneur must keep in mind when they're building their business. The "What" and the "Who".   • The "What" behind your business is the product, the technology, the market.   • The "Who" behind your business is your customer base, your team, and your other critical relationships. Passion for the "What" behind your business is vital when you launch a startup, but it won't be enough when it's time to scale. That's because when you're only paying attention to the product, you miss out on opportunities to address the people problems that can derail a great company. When you instead focus on your people, they can focus on the product you're delivering, which is the key to growth and long-term success.

New week. Lots of moving parts! I’m trying to be more deliberate about how I use our time instead of just reacting to whatever feels urgent. Because at this stage, it’s easy to confuse motion with progress. Here’s what this week actually looks like for us at Mettara AI • Finalizing payroll. We signed up for Wagepoint and are starting setup. It sounds operational, but it’s a real milestone. It’s wild that we’re even at a point where this is necessary. • Tightening bookkeeping. We explored a few options and decided to keep it lean for now. Google Sheets paired with our own AI layer gives us control and visibility without overcomplicating things too early. • Reopening three conversations with prospects. Earlier, our product simply wasn’t ready for what they needed. That wasn’t a sales problem. It was a readiness problem. Now that we’re much closer to filling that gap, it’s time to circle back and understand where their priorities sit today. • Converting 1 out of 4 implementations into contracts. We have 4 active implementations. Two are still blocked by one integration we weren’t satisfied with. Over the weekend, Steve Day made serious progress there. If testing holds up this week, that unlocks movement immediately. And closes 2 contracts right away. On paper, this isn’t a flashy week. There’s no launch announcement. No viral moment. But this is the part most people don’t talk about. Growth is rarely one big leap. It’s tightening systems, unblocking constraints, and reopening doors at the right time. What I’m learning is that early-stage progress is about sequencing. If payroll isn’t clean, it creates stress later. If bookkeeping isn’t tight, clarity disappears. If product readiness isn’t there, outreach doesn’t convert. If integrations aren’t stable, revenue doesn’t stick. It’s all connected. Together... The real takeaway (and reminder tbh) for me this week: The work that feels small is usually the work that compounds. Finishing setup. Cleaning up systems. Re-engaging conversations. Unlocking integrations. None of it feels dramatic in the moment. But it’s the difference between scrambling and scaling. This week is simple: Finish what’s close. Reconnect where timing was the only issue. Turn groundwork into commitments. Let’s see where we land by Friday... Fingers crossed 1 out of 4 closes!

What I thought entrepreneurship was going to be:   Big vision meetings Pitch decks Exciting launches Freedom Scaling "Building an empire"   What it actually is:   → Fixing a bug at 11:47pm → Rewriting copy for the third time → Chasing a payment → Testing something → Testing it again → Launching it → Realizing it doesn't work   What I thought starting a business would be:   Strategy Growth Momentum Recognition   What it actually is: → Doubt → Iteration → Uncertainty → Tiny improvements no one sees → Doing things you've never done before and pretending you're calm about it   You imagine entrepreneurship as big wins.   In reality, it's small corrections over and over.   It's not one breakthrough moment.   It's 1,000 micro-adjustments.   It's not glamorous. It's operational.   It's not "being a CEO."   It's being:   Customer support. Product manager. Sales. Finance. And janitor.   At the same time.   The highlight reel is funding announcements and big launches.   The real story is fixing what broke today.   And tomorrow   And the day after that.   And when you look at the numbers, it makes sense.   9 out of 10 startups fail. The average founder works 50+ hours a week. And CB Insights found that 35% of failed startups didn't die from bad products, they died from no market need paired with running out of cash.   Nobody talks about that part on the highlight reel.   If you're in it and it feels less glamorous than you expected...   Good.   That means you're actually building something.   Because entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle.   It's problem-solving on repeat.   And the people who win aren't the most visionary.   They're the ones who keep showing up to fix the boring shit that nobody posts about.   PS: What's the most unglamorous part of running your business right now?   Follow Shahriar Islam for more!   ♻️ Repost to remind a founder that the messy part IS the real part!

Perception can attract attention. But only value sustains a brand. Yet many companies confuse the two. And this is what happens when branding is used to hide a weak product. An axe with a wooden blade. - Looks polished. - Nicely shaped. - Well presented. But fundamentally… useless. Every year, companies hire marketers with one expectation: "Make this a brand." So, - We build the deck. - Define the positioning. - Launch the ads. - Push the narrative. But nobody pauses to ask: Is there real demand? Is this solving a painful problem? Is it truly differentiated? Marketing can accelerate growth. It cannot manufacture product–market fit. And the harsh truth? When it fails, marketing gets blamed. - Not the product decisions. - Not the strategy gaps. - Not the lack of market validation. Before scaling ads, fix the blade. You can polish the handle. You can sharpen the narrative. But if the blade is wood… no strategy will make it cut. What's harder: Telling leadership their product is flawed, or watching your campaign fail because of it? #BrandStrategy #StartupStrategy #DigitalStrategy

Today I reсalled that I've been designing behavioral systems since 2010... Did I even know what I was doing? ⠀ 🔴 When people complain to me that their children are choosing some disastrous (from the parent's perspective) directions, I reply: "Get off your kids' backs." Today, it doesn't matter where you start. The main thing is that you remain flexible enough to change your field of activity if your current one makes you sick. ⠀ Very often, the market itself will thrust you into a new direction. Sometimes people around you will (accidentally) toss out ideas that will blow your mind - they'll be so obvious and you never noticed they'd be a perfect fit for you. ⠀ Here's the circle I've made over 15 years: ⠀ 🔘 I have a teacher-colleage degree (the most useless, in my 20-years-ago opinion) and it turned out that pedagogy (especially andragogy, teaching adults) is the foundation for a strong methodology in human development. Which is very useful in team management too (team building, development & motivation). 🔘 Since 2010, I've been working (first in-house and then as an external consultant) as a methodologist who helps companies design learning and development programs. Many would say I'm all about learning & development. 🔘 While working on leadership development projects in companies, I completed several training programs and became a professional in game formats for business (business games, business simulations, educational games and gamification). Many know me specifically as a developer of business games. 🔘 From designing serious games I moved into mobile gamedev. Gamedev, what many don't understand about it, is a very precise system for managing player behavior and experience, shaped in specific narratives and storytelling. Still have the target to bring money as any other products. 🔘 All of it together resulted in me returning to teams where I manage the strategy, development and results of products and product systems. 🔘 For all 15 years, I constantly studied everything that would allow me to manage the product better: I dove into and figured out everything: from product customer-centricity to digital marketing and statistics. ⠀ ☝🏻 And now here's the question: could I have designed such a professional path for myself 15 years ago? – Never! Do you beleive you can foresee how successful will your professional path be or what to choose in order to get the perfect fit for your personal profile? ⠀ No one could have predicted that over 15 years - everything would change so radically and then it would turn out that for all these 15 years I was simply designing behavioral systems and user experience. The systems and their goals just changed. I got it only around 3 years ago and I really got shocked!

𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐢𝐬 "𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞," 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲. I watched this happen more than once. A leader walks into a pipeline review. Doesn't know the accounts. Hasn't been in the customer conversations. But he's missing his number, so he delivers the mandate: "We need to sell more." The team exchanges glances. They've heard it before. But this time, they push back: "We need updated marketing materials." "The presentation deck is two years old." "Can you join some customer calls? They want to hear from leadership." "Customers keep raising the same product concerns. Can we get a real answer?" And what do they get? In meetings, there's confusion. A blank stare. Questions that show he doesn't understand why the ask matters. In emails, silence. Or worse, a vague "I'll look into it" that never goes anywhere. Weeks pass. Nothing changes. Then the quarter ends. Numbers are short. And suddenly, the same leader who offered nothing is back with a new message: "The team didn't execute." Here's what I need leaders to understand: You can't demand results while ignoring every request for help. You can't stay absent from the work and then blame the people doing it. You can't call it accountability when you gave them nothing to work with. 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞.

Your Visionary brain is flying blind. And you don't even know the navigational instruments are broken. After coaching hundreds of Visionaries, I've noticed a pattern that shows up in almost every single one of them. They're brilliant at thinking about the business. But almost completely undisciplined about thinking about their own thinking. They'll obsess over strategy, agonize over the right hire, rework a product roadmap fourteen times. But when it comes to their own mental patterns... They're running on autopilot. Here's what that looks like in real life: You snap at a team member for missing a deadline... while ignoring the fact you've been silently resenting them for three weeks over something completely different. You greenlight a new initiative because it feels urgent... not realizing the urgency isn't really strategic, it's your anxiety talking. You postpone a hard conversation with your Integrator for the fourth time... convinced the timing isn't right. Visionaries who become truly great learn to watch their own mind the way a pilot watches instruments. Not obsessively. But consistently. Am I proacting or reacting? Is this urgency real or manufactured? Am I thinking about what I think about... or just thinking in default mode? This might be the most underrated leadership discipline there is. Because the quality of every decision you make flows from the quality of the thinking behind it. And if the thinking is clouded... the decisions will be too. This week, try something simple. Before your next big decision, take 60 seconds. Write down three things: 1) What am I feeling right now? 2) What's driving this decision? 3) Is it strategy or something else? You'll be shocked how often the answer is "something else." Follow Mark C. Winters for patterns that help Visionaries lead with clarity.