Turning Product Insights into Product Actions

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.

Successful product managers are always learning, from the moment they start their career to the day they take on leadership positions and beyond. Throughout that time, they stockpile product lessons to take with them into future projects and pass on to emerging product managers. How can these lessons be used to develop a framework for other products? Rakuten Kobo Product Leader Elyse Clement, discusses taking product lessons and using them to build frameworks.

About the Speaker: Elyse has developed her passion for product management by finding creative ways to solve problems through technology in various businesses to launch Quebec retailer's first eCommerce experience, building user experiences in the global fashion space of BCBGMAXAZRIA in Los Angeles, growing the product craft on the agency side of Tribalscale through large scale product innovation, leading product and design teams, and enterprise digital transformation in Toronto, Boston and Dubai. Elyse is now taking these experiences into the digital reading world of Rakuten Kobo, where she is currently the Director of Product Management.

Amidst a global pandemic, most businesses were faced with unprecedented challenges, while others found opportunity. As CTO and head of Product Management at REEF, one product leader had a front row seat to one part of their business falling off a cliff in demand and the other side of the business seeing skyrocketing growth. So, how did they evolve product strategy while staying true to their core values and vision? In this session, Matt Lindenberger, Reef Technology CTO, discusses specific examples of how Reef Technology adapted their product strategy and execution to meet rapidly changing market conditions by creating and testing new brands, creating new lines of business, showing grit, and being true.


Matt Lindenberger is currently the CTO at Reef Technology, which transforms static parking facilities into thriving mobility and logistical hubs. He has extensive management and entrepreneurial experience including multiple mergers and acquisition transactions - the most recent of which resulted in a public offering on NASDAQ.

Product Managers build their products, so it only seems fair that they would take an active role in their product’s go-to-market. There are so many reasons it leads to a more successful launch, from a clearer message regarding the product to a more continuous feedback loop. But sometimes, organizations divide roles and responsibilities between product and marketing and it affects the impact product managers can have. What steps can a product manager take to play an active role in the launch of the product they built? Subha Shetty, Head of Product at Loop Commerce, a Synchrony company, discusses how to craft an effective product-led go-to-market strategy.

For a long time we’ve imagined that simply having the right data was all a Product team needed to build a great product. But this isn’t true. Even the best data isn’t useful if there's no easy way to bring it into your team’s workflow and decision-making processes. So how can you turn insights into action to build amazing products? We’ve invited Matin Movassate - Heap CEO, 2x Product Award Winner, Product Visionary - for a fireside chat with product veteran and Products That Count founder, SC Moatti. They’ll share technological and process-related strategies for bringing data into existing processes, and making it easy for the entire product team (if not the company as a whole!) to share data and make better decisions.

Matin Movassate is the co-founder and CEO of Heap, a product analytics company. Movassate is a 2x Product Award Winner and Product Visionary with experience at Facebook as a product manager. Additionally, he interned at Google as an Associate Product Manager and Mozilla as a Software Engineer. Movassate earned a B.S. in Computer Science and Economics from Stanford University and completed coursework toward a M.S. in Computer Science.

Building and launching a new Enterprise SaaS product from scratch is one of the hardest things a product manager can embark on. But how do you figure out how to take it from zero to $10 million and develop an effective go-to-market strategy? Box Product VP Alok Ojha dives into the Product/Market Fit journey and shares what he learned along the way, so you don't have to start from scratch on all dimensions and be left unsure of which direction to take.

Alok Ojha is VP of Products at Box, Inc. Box is the leader in the Cloud Content Management market with over 97,000 customers, including 68% of Fortune 500 companies. Our mission is to power how the world works together. At Box, Alok leads security and enterprise product portfolio, driving Box's product strategy, long-term roadmap, and vision. Alok has conceptualized, delivered, launched, and scaled products in the enterprise software, SaaS, and Cloud Security markets. Alok is a strategic thinker with a growth mindset and has proven execution and leadership experience. He has worked at leading Enterprise SaaS software companies, including Proofpoint and RSA. He has also worked at startups, including CloudPassage and Syncplicity. Alok enjoys working with technical founders of startups, advising them on how to execute on a new product from concept to launch to growth.

Organizing product teams can often be the last thing on your mind, but the approach you take often impacts the success of the individuals, the teams, and the company. How do you create focus, adaptability, and resiliency when change is a constant? In this session, Jay Bergesen, fmr Etsy VP & Head of Etsy.com and current Artifact Uprising CPO, discusses iterating through approaches to organizing product teams at companies of varying scale and the patterns that have emerged and sustained over time.

Jay is a product executive with consumer technology and marketplace leadership experience at all levels of scale. He has two decades of experience building internet products. He’s currently the Chief Product Officer at Artifact Uprising, a Denver-based technology and consumer product company that helps people honor the meaningful in their lives through printed photo gifts, books, and more. Jay previously served as SVP of Product at Ibotta, the largest consumer tech company headquartered in Denver; VP of Etsy.com and other senior product management positions during a six year, high-growth period at Etsy; and Head of Product Management at Bloomberg.com. Earlier in his career, Jay served as Staff Interaction Designer at Yahoo and came into product management after holding several design and engineering roles.

Design Thinking is a powerful set of creative tools to learn more about your customers and design solutions to real problems. However, if your leadership team isn't bought in on the power and purpose of these exercises, it can be deflating and demoralizing. In this session, Robin Reynolds, Head of Product at uShip, discusses a time when design thinking worked well and when it didn't, making the case that product leadership plays an important role in its succes.

Robin Reynolds is the Head of Product at uShip, researching and planning their pivot into the e-commerce furniture space, while building up and mentoring our product and design group. She’s worked in product across several different industries from advertising, to internet of things, to logistics and has worked in four person startups to 11,000+ personal corporations. Robin is a two time University of Texas at Austin graduate with a Masters in Technology Commercialization. Outside of work she loves to dance and work with her co-founders on their education tech startup!

Too often, and before you know it, the situation surrounding your product will change. Your latest solution or feature will become irrelevant. How can you avoid this? In this session, Rob Newsome, stack.io Product Lead, discusses agile product management and how speed and failure can take you to success.

Rob Newsome is the Head of Product Management at stack.io - a Toronto based business for technology companies that seek DevOps expertise through modern, open-source solutions. He is passionate about the "people first" approach on both sides of customer and company with an aim to build promoters of the product both inside and out. Originally from small town Wales, Rob has been living in Canada for the past 10 years.