Rocketship.fm

We explore what it really means to be a product-driven company. More than anything, it's an exercise in restraint. Don't just build because you can, or because technology allows, but because you're advancing a larger vision. Laura Roeder of Edgar shares just what that means for their company, and how it's helped them follow a guiding light to success. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons, and an ad free version of every episode of the podcast. Check it out today by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is brought to you by Phrase. Do you have a product that you want to take to a global audience? Phrase will be your single point of truth for all of your translation projects. Go to phrase.com/roc

We are in the middle of a massive shift in the way people use and buy software. It’s been well over a decade since Salesforce brought software to the cloud. Apple put digital experiences in people’s pockets back in 2009 with the first iPhone. Blake talks about how we’re in “The End User Era” -- which is a new era that we’re now living in. We may be using applications for business purposes, but even those applications are adopted not because of some procurement manager signing a contract, but adopted from the bottom up within an organization.  “The End User Era” applies to business applications like Slack, Zoom, Calendly, and others that you probably use every day. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons, and an ad free version of every episode of the podcast. Check it out today by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits

Product Marketing. The subtle art of describing your product in a way that excites everyone around you. This isn’t just for entrepreneurs pitching investors, this is for product managers and product leaders to inspire their teams to push themselves to build the best possible solution. We walk through examples from Figure One, Facebook and Sono’s with us as we attempt to break down what makes a powerful product description and what are the elements you need to improve yours. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons, and an ad free version of every episode of the podcast. Check it out today by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is brought to you by Phrase. Do you have a product that you want to ta

Jobs to be done will change the way you think about product. It will change the way you approach user personas and influence your product decision process. It is one of the most important developments in product thinking in our time, so today we're going to dive right in. In this episode we talk with Jeetu Patel of Box, Bob Moesta co-creator of the Jobs to be done framework, Benedikt Lehnert of Wunderlist (now Microsoft) and Eric White. The theory of jobs to be done was developed in part as a complement to the theory of disruptive innovation. But disruption theory doesn’t tell you how to create products and services that customers want to buy. Jobs to be done theory does. It transforms our understanding of customer choice in a way that no amount of data ever could, because it gets at the causal driver behind a purchase. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons,

Daria Axelrod Marmer, a Product Lead at Hubspot wrote about Killing it by Killing Features and we explore that more today. It's never fun to sunset a feature we worked so hard to bring to life, but sometimes growth comes from creating focus and removing unused features to either build something new or take a new approach to solve the problem they were meant to solve. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons, and an ad free version of every episode of the podcast. Check it out today by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is brought to you by Phrase. Do you have a product that you want to take to a global audience? Phrase will be your single point of truth for all of your translation projects. Go t

Ryan Singer and the Basecamp team have developed their own methodology for product planning. For one, they don't do waterfall or agile or scrum. For two, they don’t line walls with Post-it notes. For three, they don’t do daily stand ups, design sprints, development sprints, or anything remotely tied to a metaphor that includes being tired and worn out at the end. No backlogs, no Kanban, no velocity tracking, none of that. What they do instead is six week product builds followed by two weeks of cooling. Their leadership team decides how long they want to spend on tasks vs working with product estimates and if they work isn't done, it's thrown out. Today we sit down with Ryan Singer and learn more about his most recent book Shape Up which outlines this process. Read the full book at http://basecamp.com/shapeup. You can also join Ryan and Bob Moesta at their upcoming product seminar. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners g

Mental models are simple expressions of complex processes or relationships. These models are accumulated over time by an individual and used to make faster and better decisions. Today to explore Mental Models for Product Leadership and how to use them with your team every day. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secure your .tech domain name today. Rocketship listeners can receive a 90% discount on their .tech domain names by going to go.tech/rocketship and using coupon code ROCKETSHIP.  *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distrib

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill, because of our modern times, that is becoming increasingly more difficult to achieve. Today we outline some helpful practices for staying focused and achieving deeper concentration on the work that matters. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secure your .tech domain name today. Rocketship listeners can receive a 90% discount on their .tech domain names by going to go.tech/rocketship and using coupon code ROCKETSHIP.  *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a

Today we bring you the story of eBay and Amazon in the early 2000s, and how their fierce competition for market share came down to two very different product approaches. There's a winner, a loser and lots of product lessons in-between. We'll also share something that Jeff Bezos does to this day to ensure the customer is always represented in product meetings. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secur

A mental model is any concept that helps explain, analyze, or navigate the world. As product managers, our mental models drive our decision-making, the way we communicate and collaborate with others, and how we prioritize. Today we explore some essential mental models for Product Managers. From opportunity cost to confirmation bias to Semmelweis reflex and even key failure. There are countless mental models that are essential for Product Managers to understand. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean an

Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason. A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks. Today we explore some of Charlie Munger's famous mental models as outlined in his speech "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment." This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also broug

Data is powerful because it is concrete. For many entrepreneurs and product people, empirical data can trump everything else – and it’s been an important tool in helping startups solve problems in new and innovative ways. In today's episode we talk with Richard White, the CEO of UserVoice, and what it means to be "data-informed" and how to better use data inside your organization. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secure your .tech domain name today. Rocketship listeners can receive a 90% discount on their .tech domain names by going to go.tech/rocketship and using coupo

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of where of those projects where you just go, I wish we’d seen how this would end at the beginning of the project? Often times this is the result of a build vs buy decision gone wrong. Today we discuss recognizing what isn’t your core competency. This can be difficult to admit for organizations, but getting this right could save you a ton of time, money and headache. Balancing your company’s immediate needs with its long-term growth is both paramount and challenging – especially if your business is a startup. Challenging questions arise, such as whether you should invest aggressively in long-term initiatives or take the less expensive and more conservative approach. The “build versus buy” decision is a significant one that many companies face when addressing their software needs. Today we breakdown the classic product decision. To build, or to buy. Or both? This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Roc

Today we explore the history of the Product Manager from it's early ideation by Neil McElroy to it's growth at Hewlett-Packard thru it's maturation at Microsoft and into today. We talk with former Microsoft Project Manager, Ellen Chisa, Former Microsoft Engineer (and 55th hire), Mark Zbikowski and Matt LeMay, the Author of Product Management in Practice, about this evolution over the past 80 years. For Neil McElroy the Brand Men were essentially his manifesto on what would become a product manager today. Their responsibilities ranged from tracking sales to managing the product, advertising and promotions. They were to “take full responsibility” for the brands implementation of advertising and sales and take a ‘huge weight’ off of the sales managers who were both ideating and implementing growth strategies. Bill Hewlett and David Packard interpreted the Brand Man ethos as putting decision making as close as possible to the customer, and making the product manager the voice of the customer internally. In the bo

Connie Kwan walks us through her philosophy on storytelling for Product people, teaches us the essential elements of product storytelling and gives relatable use cases. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at Gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secure your .tech domain name today. Rocketship listeners can receive a 90% discount on their .tech domain names by going to go.tech/rocketship and using coupon code ROCKETSHIP.  *** This show is a

Adobe's transition into a SASS company wasn't easy. It took two painful years of losses to transition their entire business from one-time upfront pricing to a monthly subscription. For a publically traded company, this could have been the death of them. But long-term thinking and well-executed plan set them up for success into the foreseeable future. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secure your .tech domain name today. Rocketship listeners can receive a 90% discount on their .tech domain names by going to go.tech/rocketship and using coupon code ROCKETSHIP.  *** This s

Today we got a chance to sit down with Hunter Walk and discuss his career, what he looks for in founders and products that he’s investing in and, perhaps the most interesting, how he analysis someone’s career path when looking to invest in them… and it’s not exactly what you would expect. Hunter Walk is a founder and partner at Homebrew. He also has extensive experience in product development and played a key role in making YouTube one of the internet's largest websites. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at Gusto.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by Airtable, which is the all-in-one platform for product managers. Rocketship listeners can receive $50 in credit by signing up at Airtable.com/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about Digit

What’s the best kind of customer? A loyal customer. Today with breakdown how theSkimm has built and maintained am excited audience of dedicated fans. Dheerja Kaur is the Chief Product Officer at theSkimm and walks us through how they keep their audience of largely female millennials (and Belsito) and the challenges of having a passionate audience scrutinizing your every decision.  *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.    Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder.

You may be tired of writing product stories and pitching product ideas that fall flat. Here we break down how to tell compelling product stories by understanding the basic of storytelling itself. Jack and beanstalk may not be part of your everyday standups, but its the perfect way to breakdown the essential elements of a story. From screenwriter Michael Jamin to Product Manager and former Technical Director at Pixar, Josh Anon, we show you how you can use basic story writing techniques to better convey product ideas, initiatives and marketing. This episode is also brought to you by Digital Ocean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about Digital Ocean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. This episode is also brought to you by .tech, where you can secure your .tech domain name today. Rocketship listeners can receive a 90% discount on their .tech domain names by going to go.tech/rocketship and using coupon code ROCKETSHIP.  ***

Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings! or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why? In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? Today we explore John Zeratsky's and Jake Knapp's philosophy on Making Time.  *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.    Since you're listening to