In this episode, Tolik is joined by Jean McCabe, Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Product Officer at Agio, an IT management and cybersecurity service. They discuss the role of people management in product organizations, and explore topics such as the differences between managing product teams and UX teams, the ROI of UX teams, how to manage OKRs, and the importance of people management skills for a successful career in product management. Tune in to hear their insights on these topics and more!


Topics we discuss: 

The difference between managing product and UX teams is down to the difference in personalities, motivation, and driving factors of the two professions. PMs, in general, are more ambitious, and find accelerated growth a key motivator. People in UX tend to be more creative and intrinsically motivated. For them, the quality of their work is more important than meeting quantified OKRs.

Jean mentions that she is not a fan of using OKRs for her teams because OKRs are often rehashed business goals and not an accurate representation of employee performance. A better way to use them is as a tool to identify focus areas for the employees. She cites the example of her company where, last year, the overall goal was client retention, while this year it is enhancing gross margin. These overarching goals become focus areas, and individual goals pivot around the business goals.

Jean highlights that people management is an individual skill often undervalued and under-resourced. Since PMs need to collaborate with people in different business verticals, it’s important for them to learn how to manage and deal with different personalities. The ability to identify strengths and weaknesses and make people better at their jobs is a skill that companies need to teach. This is a trick most companies miss, as even while hiring for a people management role, most companies do not ask questions on this topic. 

Jean qualifies transparency as the ability to handle tough questions honestly. For example, she mentions that while inflation in the US was ten percent last year, not everyone at her company got a ten percent raise. A candid conversation with someone who got a five percent raise and hence a net pay cut is important for building trust. Managers often fear sharing company financials with employees for fear that it could cause panic. But the panic is driven by incomplete information and a lack of transparency.

Jean is an experienced and action-driven product leader who has taken new products and business lines at multiple companies through an accelerated growth path. She has built technology products in B2B SaaS and consumer spaces, managed teams for 5+ years, and brought products through 2 successful acquisitions. Data and user empathy are the key to her product management success.

Jean McCabe on LinkedIn

Agio Website

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Dima is joined by Chetan Pandya, Chief Product Officer at Pragmatic Solutions, an iGaming platform that provides proprietary core technology solutions for regulated gambling business operations. They explore the iGaming industry, including Pragmatic Solutions' proprietary core technology for business operations, responsible scaling without exploitation, and regulated versus unregulated markets.


Topics we discuss: 

Pragmatic Solutions aims to provide a modern, open, and adaptable microservices platform based on APIs for the iGaming industry, catering to the requirements of even the most extensive iGaming operators. An iGaming product requires account services, deposit management, and cashier services, including risk management. 

Drawing upon their extensive experience spanning several decades, Pragmatic Solutions has crafted a platform that enables any game product to seamlessly integrate and leverage risk management, account management, bonuses, and promotions based on the wealth of expertise accumulated over the years.

Providing a personalized experience for each operator starts with a base template consisting of X or Y modules offered by the company to all newly onboarded operators. The individual assessment of operators is determined by three factors: the market they intend to enter, the jurisdiction and rules they plan to adhere to, and their size. 

An onboarding task force, which includes two product managers, a tech lead, an assigned account manager, and a customer success manager, handles each client. With this team in place, clients can be up and running in less than a month.

Pragmatic Solutions approaches responsible gaming through two distinct areas. Firstly, the company enforces internal risk management policies that comprise five KYC (Know Your Customer) verifications to ensure that all information provided on the platform is accurate. Secondly, the company adheres to the set of rules and regulations unique to each market to ensure responsible gaming practices are followed.

Chetan suggests that there are approximately ten markets that are subject to gaming regulations, while the rest of the world remains unregulated. Nevertheless, Pragmatic Solutions has shifted its focus entirely towards regulated markets, recognizing that doing so enables the company to offer superior services and attain long-term financial stability.

Chetan describes himself as passionate about creating value for customers in the B2C and B2B space, experienced in building and scaling start-ups and managing large-scale organizations, focused on the customer journey and KPIs to drive continuous innovation, and demonstrated the ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence stakeholders. 

He is the current Chief Product Officer of Pragmatic Solutions and the Founder of Product Pandit, which specializes in providing all-range product solutions. Previously, Chetan was the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Pragmatic Play and held various roles at Lottovate.

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage.

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

Product management has undergone significant changes in recent years, with the adoption of new development methodologies being among the most notable. Although these changes may seem cosmetic, they have had a significant impact. For example, Eric's early career was focused on writing product requirements documents or PRDs, which provided a comprehensive plan in advance. 

However, contemporary product managers operate under the assumption that they do not have all the answers and, therefore, devote more time to interacting with customers before embarking on product development or sales. This approach emphasizes understanding the customers' problems and needs as a prerequisite to delivering solutions that meet their expectations.

The goals of product and project management are distinct. The product manager's responsibility is to deliver a successful product that meets the market's needs and the company's goals while maximizing profitability. 

On the other hand, the project manager is responsible for defining the project plan, managing the project budget and timeline, and ensuring that the project meets its objectives. Aligning the two functions over time requires transparency and constant communication between the product and project teams.

The foundation of a mindset is rooted in understanding the "why" behind our actions. Why is this important? Why should anyone care? Why would someone use it? These questions form the basis of a mindset. However, as you progress, you will encounter numerous forks in the road, points of transition, and decisions to make. A mindset provides a set of principles and a foundation to make decisions consistently, logically, and in a way that others can follow. 

Establishing principles to guide daily activities is crucial to maintaining consistency. For instance, designing secure products can be a core principle around which a mindset can be built. When setting a core principle, it is crucial to ensure alignment among team members. Consistently revisiting and reinforcing these principles is also necessary to maintain a strong mindset.

Eric describes himself as an entrepreneur and product leader with a profound focus on creating new market categories and building teams to tackle the challenges faced by the customers in those markets. He has over twenty years of experience leading product strategy, go-to-market, and innovation for identity management, application security, and data protection products. 

Eric is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Strata Identity and is also an Advisory Board Member of Baffle, a software development company that offers cloud data protection services. Recently, he also started the What / Why Consulting company. Before Strata Identity, Eric was the Vice President of Product Management at Oracle. He is a contributor to RSA Conference and has written and published several other articles about product management in his What and Why Newsletter.

Hosts at a Glance:

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage.

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn
Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Yasmin Kothari, Director of Product at Bumble, an online platform for connecting with people. Yasmin talks about the demand growth for online friendships and sheds light on making products that build consumer trust and make connecting a seamless process. She also shares her insight on how she fosters professional growth in her team. 


Topics we discuss: 

Three clear trends post the pandemic drive the need for these products. The first is WFH, which provides flexibility and convenience on the one hand but leads to a sense of isolation due to a lack of face-to-face interactions. Next is the need for socializing, and here, millennials and Gen Z lead the demand as the loneliest generation. Lastly, how we seek to be a part of a community is shifting to making online friends.

Yasmin highlights three critical areas while building any customer-facing product. The first is setting the right norms to deliver a consistent experience. Next, creating a suite of robust security features in your products is essential to build trust and provide security when the consumer uses your product. Next is to make interactions as seamless as possible.

Yasmin follows a three-point action plan when mentoring and catering to the growth of her team members. She likens professional development to climbing a wall where you sometimes need to move sideways before moving up. Yasmin asks the “how” questions to determine what motivates the person. Next, she analyzes the person's current skillset and what they need to add to their toolkit to function at the next level and provides a training map to upskill the person. As a last step, she looks for internal opportunities to help the person grow.

“ This process can be scaled up over months and years, or it can also be scaled down to like a fifteen-minute thought exercise to figure out what you're gonna do this week”


Guest at a Glance:

Yasmin is a Harvard Business School graduate, and she describes herself as a driven product leader, public speaker, product leadership coach, and angel investor. I am passionate about building high-functioning teams and products that people love. I love coaching PMs for increased impact on their products, companies, and themselves. 

Yasmin Kothari on LinkedIn

Bumble Website

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Abraham Alappat, Product Manager at Georgian, a fintech accelerator for startups and CEOs. Abraham has over fifteen years of experience in product development and management. He shares his insights on key product touchpoints, including designing MVPs, technical skills required by product managers, and creating an empowering and result-driven culture. He also unpacks the skills toolkit that upcoming product managers need to master.

Abraham explains that rapid progress is critical when designing and releasing a minimum viable product. It’s important to remember that when planning an MVP, there will always be a set of unlisted and unstated requirements that will need to be added in. The whole point of an MVP is to get feedback on required add-ons. There’s no point in delaying the MVP process as you try to figure out all variables. An MVP needs to prove the core concept; it doesn’t need to be perfect.

The servant leadership model hinges on the belief that a leader's primary responsibility is to solve problems, serve their teams' needs, and enable them to win. The leader is responsible for the team's success because they set the vision and direction. Abraham explains that at Gregorian, every success is presented to the management by the product and technical teams, while he presents failures. It helps in building team camaraderie. 

“ Some of us have to step back, put our egos aside, and focus on team success”.

Companies on the high-growth path have teams that can scale quickly and consistently deliver results. Efficient teams deliver results in a culture that promotes teamwork and one where no one is considered a superstar. Teams win and lose together, and these teams are innovative. This culture starts from the top and permeates its way downward. 

Abraham highlights three key skills that all product professionals must have in their toolkits. The first skill is to become proficient with the required processes and the ability to work with people. You also need to understand the nuts and bolts of agile methodology. Next, you need to have good functional knowledge of the technology stacks being used. He recommends taking training courses for the critical stacks. Lastly, all product professionals must learn the art of critical thinking when solving problems and understanding why a product is being built. 

Abraham describes himself as an entrepreneur and an MBA graduate passionate about product, finance, and strategy. He is putting this passion to work at Georgian - spearheading the development of our internal ML-driven investment engine.

Abraham Alappat on LinkedIn

Georgian Website

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Dima is joined by Sylvain Grande, CPO at PayFit France, a software platform for digitizing all aspects of HR management. Sylvain walks us through his twenty-plus years in product development and management and shares how the essence of successful product development lies in being close to the customer in both B2C and B2B domains. He also shares valuable tips for young and upcoming product leaders and discusses type one and type two decisions PMs take.

Topics we discuss: 

Sylvain is a product leader with a passion for design. He recalls his days at Nokia, where he developed Here Maps, the precursor to Google Maps. He was actively involved in UI design, which sparked his passion for design. He believes that the best products have minimalist designs, thereby making the product user-friendly. Sylvain believes that design is an integral part of the product development process.

Customer centricity for a product leader has two aspects: how close you are to your team and an ongoing interaction and feedback loop from potential customers. While the latter is easier to do in the B2C domain, more B2B companies should include product leaders in client meetings. Listen to the podcast as Sylvain explains how customer empathy ties into product development.

 Success and failure go hand in hand for all product leaders and must be treated differently. The euphoria of successfully launching a product is often short-lived because something bigger and better will come along. On the other hand, failure is a time of introspection and learning because you learn something new every time you fail. Product leaders need to look at success and failure as two imposters and treat them as such.

Sylvain advises product leaders and team members to spend more time defining the project's scope and clarifying the priorities. Spending some more time at the start can prevent delays down the line. Next, explicitly communicate all trade-offs and their short- and long-term implications. Categorize all decisions as categories one and two, where one refers to revolving door decisions that can be changed down the line, and category two decisions are pivots that can’t be retracted. Listen in as Sylvain explains how product managers are multi-specialists and why they need to develop anchor skills.

Sylvain Grande is an expert in digital advertising and subscription revenue models with strong experience in general management, revenue development, and product management. Over a twenty-year career in product development, he has managed P&Ls from scratch and up to $350m.

Sylvain Grande on LinkedIn

PayFit France Website

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Vivek Bhaskaran, Founder and CEO at QuestionPro, a leading provider of online survey software. The platform offers tools for creating, polling, distributing, analyzing surveys, and data visualization. Vivek shares his insights across a broad spectrum of topics, including bootstrapping, prioritizing product development, always be selling, and the secret behind success and longevity.

Topics we discuss: 

Vivek mentions that bootstrapping, if anything, has gotten simpler now. He recalls how he started eighteen years ago by writing code and building his server by himself. Today, software development is a much simpler and quicker process. For founders wishing to go the bootstrapping route, there are many more opportunities today. He also mentions that the constant across the eighteen-year timeline is that the real challenge is getting the software in the hands of the first thousand users.

How you handle customer feedback-based product modifications depends on your growth phase. In the initial stages, when you’re still trying to optimize product market fit, you must resolve the customer problem in totality. In effect, you’re customizing your product for the user. When you’re further down the growth path, you first generalize the customer issue and apply minor tweaks to the product. Customers who still want specific issues to be addressed are an opportunity to open a revenue pipeline through customization.

 Always be Selling

Many people have issues with selling, yet we have all been in a situation where we need to do the selling. The key is to look at selling as solving a problem. You have something to offer that a specific group of people need; all you need to do is find the buyer-seller match. Another fear linked to selling is the fear of rejection. The way around this is to stop personalizing the rejection. If someone says no, keep moving on till someone says yes. 

Viveks pegs his longevity as a founder to motivation. He stays motivated by taking regular breaks and not the vacation types. He took a break from QuestionPro from 2010 to 2015 and trusted the management team to run the company successfully. He started new ventures and learned new skills. When he returned to QuestionPro, his role changed from the day-to-day operation to a more strategic vision of taking the company to 100 million dollars in sales. Listen to the podcast to get insights on how to stay motivated and prevent burnout.

“Taking a company from one to ten million is very different from taking it from ten to thirty and on to 100”  

Vivek Bhaskaran describes himself as a computer engineer driven by two things every day; motorcycles and client success. He is the Founder and CEO of QuestionPro, and he has bootstrapped his way to a thirty-million-dollar company.  

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Dima is joined by Sohaib Thaib, Chief Product Officer at Foodics, a cloud-based POS and restaurant management platform. Dima and Sohaib have a free-flowing conversation around product management, including hiring and retaining, customer centricity, and the discovery to the GTM cycle in product management. 

Sohaib starts with a value match of the company and the candidate, assessed over multiple interviews. Next, he looks for a curious mind that doesn’t accept things at face value but digs deeper for greater clarity. Equally important is the ability to give and receive feedback. With these checkpoints, Sohaib establishes the candidate's experience, scope, and impact. On the retention side, it’s important to make the employee feel like they are a part of building a solution for a real-world customer need instead of just being paid to do a job. 

Customer centricity lies at the heart of product management. Good product managers and teams always represent the voice of the customer in an organization. Product teams leverage qualitative and quantitative data to determine the customer's wants. Good teams always discuss customer needs and use this to shape the product.

Your competition isn’t everyone providing the same service that you do. The competition is other players offering the same service to the same segment of customers that you serve. That is the starting point. Awareness of what the competition is doing is a must, but there is a big difference between having an onlooker's awareness and blindly copying what they’re doing. 

The discovery process marks the start of the product journey. Qualitative data from customer feedback and quantitive data are combined to derive high-level assumptions. The engineering and product teams collaborate to build the prototype, which is beta tested with the customer and feedback is sought, and modifications are made. There could be two to three iterations before the product is ready to be rolled out. 

Sohaib is a seasoned product leader recognized for entrepreneurial thinking with a pragmatic and data-driven approach to delivering growth at scale. He is an expert in building high-performing teams across mobile gaming, e-commerce, and two-sided marketplaces. 

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Abhishek Jain, Chief Product Officer at Devtorium, an artificial intelligence software company providing services ranging from product, web, and SaaS development. Abhishek shares insights on the future and challenges in the AI space and breaks down the benefits of open and democratic work culture and how it helps attract the best talent. 

Abhishek shares the example of his current company as one with a genuinely democratic work culture and how it leads to an environment where people are no longer afraid to challenge themselves. The company is patterned on the Swiss democratic system, where everyone has a vote on key issues. A democratic culture is where the junior most person can question a c-suite decision openly without fearing retribution. Abhishek explains how this requires a shift in mindset, especially from senior management, but the benefits are higher productivity and lower churn.

Abhishek says there are two elements for attracting the best talent. The first is the company culture, and the second is the company's philosophy. Achievers are people who aren’t afraid of challenges, and the company philosophy should be forward-looking. While custom development jobs pay the bills, the company should also focus on developing tomorrow's technology. Once this is in the company’s DNA, attracting clients and talent becomes easy. 

Bringing AI-generated content at par with human-curated content is the holy grail for content generation tools. And with all the industry majors, including Google, Microsoft, Bing, and Yahoo working on it, it sets a trendline for future things. Every successive generation in content creation tools takes us a step closer to the goal, and the underlying objective is to get AI to think like humans.   

The biggest challenge in AI is anticipating what’s the next big technology. Technology has evolved from building frameworks and data sets to having multiple framework templates at your disposal to directly get to the problem and the logic you need to build. The main challenges when dealing with new technology are its stability, scalability, and ability to evolve, bringing us back to the challenge of predicting tomorrow. 

Abhishek Jain describes himself as a builder of highly successful and scalable marketing strategy, technology solutions, and product development teams in digital, cloud, mobile, and Artificial Intelligence, with expertise in start-ups and scaled growth stages.

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Aniket Naravanekar, Chief Product Officer at CHEQ, a social payment platform that connects consumers to food and beverage businesses. Aniket is a computer science engineer who has transitioned to product management. He shares insight on the pros and cons of having an engineering background in a product management role and details on the product at CHEQ. 

Aniket recommends a multi-faceted approach when seeking customer feedback for a more holistic view of the problems. It is important to have multiple channels to gather feedback, including direct one-on-one conversations with the customers. It’s important to ask qualitative questions like why you chose this product and how we can improve it. This feedback loop is supported by feedback loops from sales and customer service teams. Ask customers to rate your product to get an idea of where you stand. Then convert this raw data into insights and new product development goals. 

From a growth perspective, a CPO can always look at creating additional revenue streams by either modifying an existing product or designing and creating a new one to fulfill the additional needs of existing customers and attract new customers. Product development in both cases stems from customer feedback and the ability to identify unmet needs in that feedback. The scene then shifts to hiring the right talent to deliver the updated or new product.

We all learn from our mistakes, and Anikiet recounts the time when he started creating a product based on his understanding of user pain points. Long story short, after devoting substantial time and resources to the development, the product did not meet the customer's expectations. The fault lay in not acquiring a deep understanding of what the customer really wanted. Aniket’s learning from the project was to always interact closely with the customer at the discovery stage before transitioning to product development. 

Aniket Naravanekar has a Master's degree in computer science and has spent four years in an engineering role and eight years in product management at companies like Microsoft and RingCentral. 

Aniket on LinkedIn

CHEQ on LinkedIn

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Aniket Naravanekar, Chief Product Officer at CHEQ, a social payment platform that connects consumers to food and beverage businesses. Aniket is a computer science engineer who has transitioned to product management. He shares insight on the pros and cons of having an engineering background in a product management role and details on the product at CHEQ. 

Aniket answers the question by saying that it depends on the situation. For instance, at the product development stage, an engineering background helps to talk to the engineers in a language they understand. It’s also helpful when you need to update the version based on customer feedback. At the same time, one needs to watch out for jumping the gun and diving into the technical design without fully understanding why we need to design or redesign the product.  

Aniket explains how different sets of audiences require different pitch strategies and how to tailor strategies to individual audience personas and sales cycles. He cites the example at his organizations where there are two distinct customer bases, one that is venue based in stadiums, while the other is the customer at a restaurant. The customer's needs will differ at the two touchpoints; hence, the onboarding and selling strategies differ. 

Even if you’re an innovator and the first to market to fulfill an unmet customer need, always build a differentiator into your product to competition-proof the product. Aniket cites the example of CHEQ, where the app tells the customer the average wait time at the different concessioners in the stadium, thereby allowing the customer to choose one with the shortest wait time. 

The complexities arise from aligning and coordinating with diverse sets of audiences. Aligning with the engineering team requires some degree of technical skills so that you can communicate in a language they understand. Aligning with sales requires a different skillset and the ability to break down the product into a language that sales understand. 

Aniket Naravanekar has a Masters degree in computer science, and he has spent four years in an engineering role and eight years in product management at companies like Microsoft and Ring Central. 

Aniket on LinkedIn

CHEQ on LinkedIn

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Maxim Kalinovich, Senior Product Manager at EZ Texting. Maxim unpacks the playbook for aligning organizational mindsets to discovery and outcome-based mindsets that align with customer needs. He also shares some insights on an efficient product development process at startups and offers tips for product managers who are just starting out.


Topics we discuss: 

 A discovery mindset has roots in discovering and understanding reality, understanding the user's reality, not yours. Do the solutions you’re working on align with the user's needs from their perspective? There’s little point in working on a solution if you haven’t done a discovery process for the problem. When we look at product development from this lens, we move the needle from output to outcomes.  

As a product leader, it’s essential to spread this thinking across the company. A simple way to do this is to talk to the stakeholders and identify those with a similar mindset, and they will spread the word among other stakeholders.

“The discovery process starts with you stepping away from your ego and asking questions like what is our segment, who are our users, and what are their needs”?   

Aligning Outcomes with User Needs 

The first step is to get in front of the user to try and understand their issues. Customer support is the one-stop shop for insights into what the customers say and their issues. Try and get in front of your most active users with surveys. Opportunities for product development will emerge through this discovery process.

You then need to convert the opportunities into outcomes and goals. Of course, each discovery process will throw up multiple opportunities, and you will need to prioritize based on your defined matrix. 

The discovery process should start with identifying the audience segment you’re trying to address; that is the first goal. Next, identify ten to twenty users in the segment and conduct a discovery process. Keep surveying till discovering new information starts diminishing, and each survey is like the previous one. Now check if your concepts align with the actual customer needs. If you need to pivot, do it before developing your concept proof. 

 Start with your sphere of influence, say your product team, by instilling the discovery and outcome-based mindset in them. Let them become the ambassadors for spreading the word in the company. Spreading the word is a bit like a good coach. The coach doesn’t tell the athlete what to do; instead, they ask questions that drive the athlete’s thought process towards a direction. When outcomes align, the idea belongs to the athlete, just like in inception. 

Maxim describes himself as someone with ten years of product and project management experience for high-trafficked B2B and B2C web SaaS and mobile apps.

Maxim on LinkedIn

EZ Texting on LinkedIn

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Dima is joined by Alejandro Carrillo, Senior Product Manager at Oyster. Alejandro shares his insights on a wide range of topics, including the importance of customer-led growth, intuitive vs structured decision-making, and the current environment for startups. 

Let’s say you’re thinking about solving a problem for your customers. The intuitive way would be to think of the solution that would solve the problem and then build your product accordingly. The structured way to solve the same problem is to go through a discovery process and collect and analyze data to arrive at a solution. The basis of your decision-making is different in both use cases. 

Generally speaking, intuitive decisions work well when dealing with less-developed products with more uncertainty. An example is when you want to develop features that differentiate your products. While structured decision-making works well when the product is well developed and less uncertain, for instance, Amazon, Meta, and Google. 

Companies that are driven by a vision and mission tend to focus on more than just revenue and profitability; they aim to make a difference in people's lives. Alejandro gives the example of Oyster, a company that helps hire off-shore resources. Their pricing policies vary with geographies and the economic development of the country. The company prices its products below cost in some geographic locations to provide employment and make a difference. Mission-driven companies generally have more motivated teams.

“If you put money in someone's pocket in those countries, you will generate a positive economic loop in that geography”.  

The current economic environment is characterized by slower growth, tighter money supply, and a flatter customer demand curve. This trend will play out for 2023 and the first half of 2024. The conventional wisdom is that this is the wrong time to start a business venture, but the fact remains that some of the biggest startup stories have happened in a tempered business environment. If the idea is validated, investors will be ready to fund it.

Alejandro describes himself as a product manager who launches and scales startups globally. He has over five years of experience in product leadership roles across a wide spectrum of companies and industries, including at startups. 

Alejandro Carrillo on LinkedIn

Oyster on LinkedIn

Hosts at a Glance:

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Tolik is joined by Andrea Ho, Senior Growth Product manager at Atlassian. Andrea unpacks the critical skills for product professionals and explains the difference between a product manager and a growth product manager's role. Tolik and Andrea discuss topics, including using A/B testing for decision-making. Andrea touches on advice for professionals coming to product management from a different business stream.


Topics we discuss: 

A product manager needs to collaborate with teams across different functions, from design to engineering. The two critical skills are at least a surface-level knowledge of what the team in a given function is trying to achieve and the ability to communicate in the language they understand. 

Within the product team, the product manager needs to be familiar with the concept of A/B testing for decision-making and to keep a sharp focus on the deliverability of the product without getting distracted by the noise. As a product leader, you either need to have these skills or quickly develop them by interacting and learning from different teams.

 “When collaborating across functions, it’s important to speak their language and understand why they are doing something instead of exactly what they’re doing”.

Andrea shares how every product manager she’s spoken to carries varying degrees of insecurity because they only have surface-level knowledge on multiple topics without being a specialist in any. A jack of all trades but a master of none.

Her response in these situations is to reassure the manager by telling them that product management is a generalist role where the leader needs to have functional knowledge across multiple verticals but a holistic vision that ties the functions together and delivers the final product.   

A traditional product manager is focused on developing a new product that meets a particular user need. It’s a product-focused approach where the core objective is to deliver a product with predefined attributes in a given timeframe and budget.

On the other hand, growth product management is revenue-centric, focusing on maximizing the revenue pipeline for a company's existing products. Revenue product management has a commercial bias, and the core objective here is to continually grow the user base for different products.

“In growth product management, we’re not building new products for new customer value; instead, we’re focused on taking the existing product to new customers”.  

 Advice for Professionals Starting Out in Product Management

Andrea has a unique take here. Her advice to those starting out in product management is to start by reimagining themselves as a product. Start by understanding your goals and the milestones you need to achieve. Build the ability to pivot on these as you learn more about the role. Seek a mentor who can guide you and help you acquire the requisite skills.

A critical part of your learning process is your ability to create your professional network by connecting with the community. Make it a habit to attend product meetups and project management conferences. You will learn a lot by interacting with peers across different industries and make an effort to meet different companies at these conferences; they could be your future employers.  

Andrea describes herself as someone who started out as a fashion designer before transitioning to product management with a passion for teaching and mentoring.

In her current role as Growth Product Manager at Atlassian, Andrea is responsible for creating growth strategies for Atlassian products through cross-flow expansion.

Andrea Ho on LinkedIn

Atlassian on LinkedIn

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Dima is joined by Satnam Singh, CPO of Tax and Trade, Global API, and Cloud Leader at Thomson Reuters. Satnam shares his insights on the critical skills that every effective product leader needs and a five-point framework for product development.


Topics we discuss: 

Most companies focus on the sales pipeline, but you must also create a customer insight pipeline to measure and monitor how effectively your product solves customer problems. Customer insights are developed from feedback received from every customer touchpoint, including sales, customer support, product marketing teams, and user research.

“It’s important to understand the relationship between what we’re putting out in the market and what is or isn’t resonating with the customers and leads”. - Satnam Singh

ACE stands for accountability, curiosity, and empathy, which are skills integral to a successful product leader's role. Accountability is the ability to accept imperfect outcomes and thrive in an environment that doesn’t penalize mistakes. Curiosity is the innate desire to understand the problem at its base level, and often, the best solutions flow from this curiosity. 

A product leader deals with multiple verticals across the company, including engineering, sales, marketing, and customer support. Empathy is the ability to look at issues from different points of view and understand the challenges faced by these stakeholders.

Product leaders must be aware of industry regulations and compliances that apply to the product being delivered. Statutory compliances like HIPPA and GTPR are norms across a wide range of products. No customer wants to buy a product where they need a supplementary product to ensure that it is industry compliant. Compliance needs to be woven into the design stage for all new products.

The five P framework for product development is built on purpose, plan, priority, principles, and promotion. The purpose of any product is to integrate seamlessly into the user's workflow. Hence, awareness of the user’s upstream and downstream workflow activities is critical to ensure that your product integrates into this workflow. Once you understand the user’s workflow, it becomes easy to plan the development activities of your product. 

Priorities are easy to define but must allow for a certain degree of agility and flexibility. Everything will not go according to your plan; hence, priorities will need to be shuffled around. Every product leader will come to a fork in the road where they need to take a call on going left or right. Well-defined principles define their decisions at this juncture and ensure that decisions aren’t taken under pressure.

Promotion is the ability to share your success within your team and the across the organization, and important to ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Satnam Singh is a mechanical engineer by qualification and a product leader by practice. He describes himself as a commercially minded, execution-focused leader with a proven track record of value creation. He has fifteen years of expertise in product management, data, analytics, and AI. He is also a Columbia Business School graduate and mentors MBA students at Columbia Business School and Rutgers University.

Satnam Singh on LinkedIn

Thomson Reuters on LinkedIn


Hosts at a Glance:

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end user’s issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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

In this episode, Dima is joined by Jamin Brazil, Chairman of HubUX, a platform for qualitative and UX Research. Jamin describes himself as a career market researcher and career entrepreneur. He shares his insights on using customer inputs to develop a product they will love to use and how product pricing strategies impact the revenue stream.

Market-led product development gives you a base product; you’re now offering the basics offered by your competition. You need to refine this with customer insights to gain a competitive edge and delight your customers. Pre-launch, ensure you have invested in the discovery process, where you talk to a relevant audience and understand their real problems. Post-launch, you continue tweaking your product based on customer feedback. Product development is a bolt-on approach. 

In the pre-market stage, you need to focus your spending on the discovery process, including customer interviews and continual prototyping. You’re investing in identifying the real issues of the audience and testing if your prototype addresses those issues. Post-launch, the investment focus shifts to creating awareness of your product through marketing while constantly seeking out customer feedback on what they like and dislike and the additional features they require.

Focus on collecting qualitative feedback from your customers. Quantitative data like NPS scores don’t answer why the customer rated you a five instead of an eight on the one to ten scale. Identifying and refining based on the why is the difference between retaining a happy customer or losing them to the competition. 

How you frame the questions defines the feedback you will get, and for qualitative questions, show the stimuli or solution before asking the question. The reason here is simple. Most times, our purchase decisions are based on emotions, and that is the side the questions should address. Customer feedback should be garnered using qualitative surveys that provide a business with feedback on user experience and potential growth opportunities. 

Jamin firmly believes in the credo, “if you’re providing a service to the customer, that service should be monetized.” He believes that freemium pricing is essential for getting a customer to try your product, which applies at both a startup and enterprise level. However, freemium pricing should have a time limit; otherwise, it negatively impacts a company’s revenue stream. 

In the B2B space, you’re competing for customer dollars already being spent on your competitor's product. To win over those dollars, you need a product that outperforms the competition, and you need to look at issues like pricing and trade terms.

Jamin Brazil is passionate about building products that address endemic problems in business and is a strong proponent of customer-led product development instead of a market-led model. He has over 20 years of experience using market research to collect customer insights and then apply them to build great products. 

Jamin Brazil on LinkedIn

HubUX on LinkedIn

HubUX Website

Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company with a commitment to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian. 

Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving company’s and user’s issues from an early idea stage. 

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn

Fireart Studio Website

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