Products That Count holiday party featuring Uber early VC

Moving from leading product improvements to leading product managers is a huge change and an opportunity that can be hard to make and then even harder to succeed at. The nuances can take time to grasp and then own. Alexa Maturana-Lowe, Director of Core Experience at Fivetran and former Product Lead at Pandora, joins Products That Count to speak on that transition from being a product builder to being a product leader. Join us to learn how you can get the promotion, then survive and thrive on the other side.

In 2020, the pandemic rapidly accelerated the delivery of digital products and shaped how companies packaged and priced products. The rise in subscriptions and demand for transparency is influencing the trend for value-based pricing models. How can product leaders drive larger profits from the new normal? ProfitWell strategist, Rob Litterst, shares his deep expertise in product packaging and pricing on how product managers can leverage different models as a strategic lever to drive monetization.

Navigating a career in product management means considering the possibilities from all angles. Is it better to be a generalist or a specialist? In a new opportunity, do you begin completely from scratch or start with existing knowledge and dig deeper? Pulling from her extensive experience as a mentor and coach, STRIVR CPO Yelena Drabkin joins Products That Count to speak on the numerous dimensions of the product manager career journey and how to be a generalist in a world of specialists.

Product leadership requires extreme adaptability. Zooming out to think about the big picture and the product’s long-term path. Zooming in to complex problems or feature decisions that impact short-term business goals. How can product leaders seamlessly transition between the two perspectives? Peek.com CPO Navya Rehani Gupta joins Products That Count to speak on how to maximize your impact as a product leader by maintaining the right horizon and right focus in every situation.

Digital Transformation is critical to the ongoing success of nearly every company, however, the vast majority of these efforts fail. All too often, enterprises make the faulty assumption that digital transformation is simply about applying technology to existing processes, rather than fundamentally changing their strategic approach. As competition accelerates, how can companies de-risk the effort, while maximizing both business and end-user value? Cognizant Product VP Jeremy Horn joins Products That Count to share how product managers can be the driving force behind digital acceleration.

Campaign effectiveness has two performance levers: media & creative. To date, the ad tech industry has focused primarily on solving for the media lever, with hundreds of companies built to optimize ad budgets. But what about the creative side? How do you bring an ad tech lens to a subjective space, and how do you build a product around it? In this session, VidMob Product VP Bethany Gostanian speaks on how to think about “creative data” and the challenges faced when carving out a new category of ad tech.

User experience for online advertising isn’t something that's necessarily associated with the word exciting. In fact, it tends to be an arena that users try to avoid. So how did one company turn that dread for online ads into a fun, satisfying, and ultimately rewarding experience? Brave VP of Services and Operations Jimmy Secretan shares the challenges he faced when distilling a complex, technical protocol into a comprehensible UX, all while flipping the narrative on its head by rewarding the user.

Many teams focus on internal ownership of products instead of customer problems and delivering value across the business. This can lead to local maximums and small thinking. How can product managers adjust their thinking in order to deliver larger value at scale? Rev.com Sr. Product Director Barron Caster joins Products That Count to speak on how to break out of an internal mindset to get the most out of your product resources.

Experienced product managers are precious commodities with more than 75 percent of PMs having been in the role for less than two years. That means as you learn and grow within your role, the value you offer increases significantly. But how do you know when it’s time for the next challenge in your product career? In this session, Products That Count CPO and Microsoft fmr Product Lead, James Gray, reveals ways in which product managers can join, shape, and drive the product conversation and get that dream job.

Product managers come to the role from many different backgrounds and the demands on PMs are always high. With those challenges, it can be difficult to find a way to stand out internally at your company and get that promotion. So, how can PMs level up? In this session, Products That Count CPO and Microsoft fmr Product Lead, James Gray, discusses ways in which product managers can join, shape, and drive the product conversation in a way that will help them get noticed by the product leaders and executives and get their career on a fast-track internally.

Product management is a rapidly growing field. With that, there is a high demand for experienced PMs. So, how can you make yourself stand apart from your competition? In this session, Products That Count Founder, SC Moatti, and Executive Recruiter, Monica Bua, sit down for a fireside chat to discuss what product executives are looking for during the hiring process.

Building great products begins and ends with a strong foundation, be it in company and in self. In a relentlessly tumultuous year like 2020, however, it can start to feel like that very foundation is rocking and rolling. Though individual experiences may be unique, what are some ways product leaders can all adapt in order to weather the storm, and even come out stronger? Slack Product Director Ellie Powers joins Products That Count to share how products, teams, and product leaders themselves can adapt in strange times to build resilience.

For product teams, creative thinking will develop into efficient and fruitful customer-focused solutions. But how much time are product teams really allocating for talking to, understanding, or reflecting on their customers? During this webinar, H&R Block Product VP Vanessa Jupe explores how data, research, and ingenuity can help build creative, customer-focused teams. She shares her firsthand experience of the deficit that comes from being internally focused.

When working in a regulated industry, building products can be anything but straightforward. The path to innovation can seem daunting when the boundaries are already defined. How do product leaders reframe creative restraints to drive product inspiration, and even find competitive advantage within a world of regulations? Airbnb Product Lead Colleen Graneto joins us to speak on how product leaders can turn industry regulations into product innovations.

In his book, Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan said that “the culture of any tribe within an organization is primarily defined by the shared language it uses”. While he is referring to various tribal stages within an organization, some designers are more effective than others across disciplines for a very specific reason; they speak the language. What are the keys to being a multilingual designer and how do product leaders go about putting language fluency over technical skills? Drory Ben-Menachem, Zonar Systems Product Design Senior Director, speaks on the multifaceted value that multilingual designers bring to the larger tribe.

Acquiring new customers is great, but generating repeat purchases and converting customers into loyal brand advocates is even better. For today’s trend aware customer, what are the strategies product leaders use to gain brand and product loyalty? In this session, Google Product Lead Shilpa Vir discusses specific examples of how companies utilize tools like multi-touchpoint experience design, commerce optimization, lifecycle marketing, and consumerization of IT to leverage loyal customers for rapid growth.

Curiosity and empathy are two of the biggest drivers in creating a successful product, but are likewise pivotal in building the team behind the product itself. Understanding how to create and organize teams is crucial to the success of a product. With the massive world of team building literature available to product leaders, what is the best way to organize a team that runs as smoothly as the product you’re designing? Instapage|Postclick VP of Product, Camila Franco, speaks on how to hire, coach, and organize product and design teams made to adapt, thrive, and maximize your customer outcomes.

What product looks like and how it functions can vary widely between companies big and small, traditional and digital. Understanding the differences and similarities helps product managers deliver more value early and often. But how do you turn information into insight? Anheuser-Busch Product Head, Kurt Williams, shares ways product managers adapt to their environment effectively.

Kurt Williams oversees customer-facing products at Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's largest brewer, transforming the way the company's retail customers interact and transact with it globally. He's worked at small, digitally-native companies in the B2C space and larger, more traditional companies. Kurt is a graduate of Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.