Product Leaders to Watch: Fmr Groupon Head of Product and TrueML VP of Product on PropTech and FinTech

Transcript

Neha Shah

Hello, I am Neha Shah, a product manager and entrepreneur who has built and launched products in the b2b tech space for over 10 years. I am currently the founder of Kutumb Village, a kid wellness focused product company. 

Today, I get to bring you a special Product Talk mini series called Product Leaders to Watch. As part of this podcast series I will be introducing the members of the Awards Advisory Board. The awards Advisory Board is an independent panel of product leaders who will choose the winners at our next product awards. The conversations will be focused on seven different product verticals, from FinTech to the Internet of Things. And we will be hearing, as you guessed, from some of the product leaders in those spaces. 

And now, I am excited to introduce you to our first guest today. Today we are joined by Kris Drey, former head of product search and recommendations at Groupon. He is also President of Product Management at bird digital, a product management consultancy. Kris comes with over 20 years of experience in the b2c b2b technology development space. So excited to have you be part of this podcast series. Kris.

Fmr Groupon Product Lead on PropTech

Kris Drey

Thank you, Neha. I’m glad to be here.

Neha

Yeah. So just to get started. Tell us a bit more about your background and product. How did you get started?

Kris

So I’ve been in product management for what feels like 150 years. It’s actually been about two decades. I got started at CNET networks. And I didn’t even know what product management was back then. And that I wanted to be a product manager, I kind of fell into it. The senior vice president that I was working for at the time, just kind of deemed me the head of product for the group I was running. And I said, What’s that? And he was like, well, we’ll dig into that. So that kind of began my career in product. And I haven’t looked back since.

Neha

I love it. And you know, I have to make that comment. For my guests who have been in this space for decades. Like no, like for two decades. One thing that I always observe is product management wasn’t a really well defined title, kind of to your point. So if you don’t mind sharing, right, since you started, though, since you took on officially the title of product manager and to where we are now, how has the profession changed or or not changed?

Kris

Yeah, great question, because it has absolutely evolved into so much more than what it was back then. You know, I could say it seen it. You know, I ran a couple of online businesses, you know, and I had an editor working for me and an engineer, and another product person, and we basically just ensured that the online business was up and growing, you know, are we getting more traffic? are we generating more revenue, things of that nature, but, you know, it has changed and evolved immensely over the years to complete. You know, we’re business people, you know, we, we are liaisons we work with everybody in the business, you know, we touch everybody in the business. 

Whether it’s C-level management, marketers, salespeople, developers, what have you. We are sitting between all of them and have to literally understand each person’s or team’s language. We don’t go into a meeting speaking the same way to a marketer as we do a developer, right?

Neha

Like travelers or translators that are both?

Kris

Absolutely, yeah. So it’s critical that we really are very well rounded holistic people, and really understand the business tip detail. And not only that, you know, we are doing things that range from the highly tactical, you know, whether it’s writing user stories, or what have you to the very kind of strategic setting vision and roadmap and things of that nature. So, you know, again, you know, from, from the tactical to the strategic, we’re, again, very well rounded people.

Neha

Yeah, and, you know, I always joke about this. Sometimes being a product manager just feels like this impossible task of juggling all these balls in the air, which, you know. It’s not for not for everybody, to be quite honest. But coming back to you, you know, what is it that, you know, given everything, you know, given all the experiences, what is it that you love about working in product?

Kris

Well, it’s a lot of that, you know, I really love the diversity of it, you know, things like, being a product person, we have to know marketing, we have to know how to grow a business, we have to be UX, and UI people, you know, we have to understand what’s behind the user and their need. And, you know, we have to be empathetic to what they want to really understand what we’re building. If the, you know, end user doesn’t like it, or or want it, then we’re doing the wrong thing. So, you know, having a very, you know, solid empathetic background and listening to the user and, and defining their needs. 

Again, monetizing. We have to understand so many different levels, and that’s really something I love. I love setting the strategic vision, and seeing how we get there, developing that plan. And then charging, you know, I love building a product and really kind of the understanding that you don’t get it right the first time ever.

Neha

Yeah, that’s so true, right? Because sometimes I feel like we hear these success stories. But there’s so much that did not go right or so much that did not work behind the scenes.

Kris

Mm hmm. And I love that, you know, we, you know, nobody’s perfect, we understand that and we go into it, knowing that we’re going to iterate, we’re going to change, and we’re going to launch over and over and over again. And we’re going to measure, and I love that part. I love measuring and iterating and changing and tweaking. I’m a tinkerer at heart, I love to tweak and constantly change. And, you know, one user’s perfection is not the same as the next. So, you know, you really need to grow and be flexible. And I absolutely love that. And not to mention the innovation that comes with product development and software development, I absolutely am completely fascinated by digital technologies and doing things differently. It’s a lot of fun.

Neha

Well, you know, speaking of innovation, and just kind of seeing exciting new products out there. So for our product award season, you will be focused on the PropTech category. And one thing that I did not mention earlier is that you come from having worked in this prop tech space for 10 plus years. And, you know, it always strikes me as someone who did also work in PropTech briefly. I don’t think everyone knows what that means. So just starting off, you know, how do you define prop tech?

Kris

Yeah, so prop tech stands for Property technology. I define it as building the physical world, which is blending the physical and the digital. It’s really kind of digitizing the physical world, if you will. The yin and the yang of the world with regards to you know. you’ve got your physical entity and then your digital aspects of it that kind of mirror or enhance it or support it.

Neha

Definitely. One of my favorite stories from my prop tech days was, I was at this big university. summer in California. and their facilities maintenance guy, like one of the not that the head of facilities, but one of the main guys there. I was like, hey, so for the, you know, we are building records for like, kind of many 100 previous assessments, inspections. Where do you store all that data? And he points out his head is like, Oh, it’s right here. 

And I was like, whoa. But you know, it’s one of those things where it’s, it’s a cultural evolution as well for a lot of the folks who work in that space because it’s, you know, that digitization is something that’s still relatively new would you say? 

So, I mean, I should kind of be just thinking about that. Right? Like, what is it that excites you about working in, in the Prop tech world? Because thinking about like, kind of where it was, and we talked about where it is today? Just, you know, if you don’t mind sharing Where do you think this industry is going?

Kris

It’s so new with regards to how you digitize the physical, right? I love the aspects of workforce productivity, and facility management and maintenance and making things more efficient, especially with regards to the environment and things like that. For example smart buildings is a big piece of our world and what we do, and as an example some projects that I’ve done in the past where making buildings more energy efficient. 

Say, you have a large meeting room, a conference room, and, you know, you walk into the room, and the lights turn on, the shades go up, the HVAC fires up magic, right, all those things just kind of happen. That happens with cameras and sensors and things of that nature. Then when you leave the room, you know, the shades go down, the HVAC shuts off, and the lights shut off, and things like that. So you can imagine how over time that really helps like, you know, your bill, for example, and, and preserving energy and things of that nature. Smart speakers and things like that, that you can kind of again, enter a room. 

It knows what meeting you’re having at the time, who’s in that meeting. It kind of is used for personalization as well, for another example, for smart speakers in the hospitality sector. So you walk into your hotel room, and there’s a speaker system, and it says, Hey, Chris, welcome to your room. You know, what do you want to do today? and it can help you with things that are local and local weather. and yeah, cooking, restaurant reservation for you and things like that. So the notion of personalization is brilliant, I am absolutely in love with it.

Neha

That kind of takes me to another angle, thinking about our product award season, you know, as a member of the awards advisory board, you are really going to be in the forefront of looking at and evaluating all, you know, through all the nominations we receive, and we receive 1000s of nominations. So I would, you know, I would kind of venture to ask you, when you’re evaluating when you’re looking at these products in the space? What is your criteria for a great prop tech product?

Kris

That’s a good question. I think first and foremost, and this is kind of par for the course, because this is kind of like we’re talking about a new sector. So innovation is absolutely critical, you know, thinking outside the box is really important. And, you know, really kind of making things easier, simpler, faster, better, you know, those are all kinds of the things that I look for, you know, is this new? Is this exciting? Does this change the world for the better? Those are the kinds of criteria I look for, especially with regards to workforce, productivity, efficiency, things like that. Those are the kinds of things I look for, you know, not things that are kind of standard, or that have been done before in one way. But, you know, it’s got to be kind of new and fresh.

Neha

And then also to that you and the point you made earlier about that the impact that it makes on kind of our everyday experience anything that’s, you know, the consumer experience, or just the just the experience of the user gets into an exciting part of how, how we, you know, how we use these products to write.

Kris

And, you know, proptech really serves two customers, the internal and the external, right? you know, you’ve got, for example, you mentioned your friend in the maintenance of facilities. You know, one thing we built in the past was, you have these people that are out in the workforce. And say, for example, a maintenance person is called, and that person comes to your building and opens up a control panel and sees a bunch of wires and buttons and knobs. 

So we use immersive computing, which is AR VR, and we build an iPad app that you can, this maintenance person may not be an expert with this particular pen, right? So they can hold the iPad up to it. It would look at the panel and then put a digital overlay on it, naming every button and wire and everything and then give you step by step instruction. And on how to fix the problem and diagnose the problem. And it’s just, it is absolutely fascinating. You know, I mean, to help someone that really has no idea what is going on in that particular moment, get through something that’s very technical and very difficult. That is just fascinating and super powerful.

Neha

It’s so true. it kind of also helps us think about the evolving labor market and kind of, you know, to your point, like, whom are you building this for? And what kind of business challenges are they solving? I think the other thing we’re talking about before we started recording was how prop tech, you know, it’s new, but it’s kind of been around for years and has different names. But yeah, I feel like the future as you’re saying, it’s extremely promising.

Kris

Yeah, for sure. And to that point, you know, I mean, AI, and ML is playing such an incredible role in it today, you know, again, speaking to, you know, productivity and things like that RPA has been around for a long, long time, that’s robotic process automation, but now is just so advanced, you know, you can help someone save hours and hours a week by, you know, training bots to do very manual tasks. Like, for example, an HR department, you know, someone, say, leaves the company. And think of all the documentation involved in, Oh, yeah, fill out this form and, and file this and change that. And you have to go to this spreadsheet to grab that cell and enter it here. 

Those manual tasks that take a person, you know, an hour to this, click and copy and paste and drag and copy. It’s inane. You could be doing things that are more difficult too, you know, and more important. So, you know, you teach a bot to do these things. And they can copy contents from a cell and paste them in a, in a web form, or what have you and just do all of these things in seconds.

Neha

Yeah, absolutely. I’d love it. Yeah, well, I could talk about this for hours. really, really exciting the work you’re doing and all the best to you. And of course, all our product Award nominations coming your way. I think it’s gonna be a very exciting product award season. So thank you so much, Kris, for being on the podcast today.

Kris

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure meeting you and talking to you.

Neha

The pleasure was all mine. Thank you. 

–

TrueML VP of Product on FinTech

Neha

Continuing the discussion on PropTech and Fintech, we’re joined by Michael Krafft, VP of product at true accord. He has years of experience in FinTech. And I’m very excited for him to be part of our podcast series today, and also be part of our awards advisory board. Michael, great to have you on the episode today.

Michael Krafft

Great. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited.

Neha

Yeah. So just to get started, I always ask all my guests, how did you get started in product?

Michael

Thanks for asking me. Like many MBAs, I kind of tripped into software product management. Somewhat accidentally. I had been working at American Express, where I joined in the strategic planning group after business school. I took a kind of marketing strategy role after that role. And had done well working with some of our global teams. I was asked by one of the senior leaders at American Express who needed a New York based leader to lead one of his global product management teams. I didn’t know anything about software product management at the time. I probably was terrible for the first six months in the role. But I learned product management, how to deliver in agile and essentially became a student of Product Management at that point. And the rest was history.

Neha

Yeah, so were you self taught? Or did Amex also have training sessions they sent you to or had internally? What was that process like?

Michael

Yeah it was a little bit of a mix, I think there was a little bit of trial by fire. I actually think I learned the most when one of my managers changed teams, and I kind of was in there working with JIRA, understanding the users. And essentially working very, very closely with the engineering team. Coupled that with a lot of reading. I became a big Marty Kagan disciple. And sort of just kind of immersing myself in a lot of the literature, which there wasn’t as much back in 2015 or 2014. Now there’s tons. But I do consider myself to be a little bit of a student of product now. I get really excited and then nerd out on some of the product talks and, and podcasts. 

Neha

Definitely, I mean, even just thinking about the Products That Count community and the resources we try to put out there for aspiring product managers or even existing product leaders. A lot of that like you said, it was hard to find. It was such a niche industry and a lot of people, I think even now people are still defining What product management really isn’t? I’m sure you’d agree just kind of depends, right?

Michael

Yeah. I think back to business school. Product management was not a discipline that was taught in business school at all. Now I know that those are some of the most highly subscribed courses at Columbia, where I went. Or at Harvard Business School or UPenn. And so I think, yes. Now there is so much more rigor around what product management is. it’s much easier to learn about.

I think there still is a significant amount of education, outside of Product Management outside of technology in terms of getting people to understand, you know, what do we what do we really do? Oh, you’re not writing code? Oh, you’re not a designer. So kind of what is there for you, but obviously, you know, for those who are steeped in the discipline. They know how critical the role of product is, in terms of building the right thing. Building the thing, right and delivering great value to users?

Neha

Definitely. So given your start in product that happened by chance, and you kind of were thrown into this role and picked up all the a lot of the discipline by yourself, how do you feel now? I’m just teasing you, but I’m guessing you love working in product now. Right?

Michael

I love working in product. I love this analogy of being sort of the conductor of the orchestra. Where I think I actually think I actually think a lot of MBAs can do really well. I am a perfect example of somebody that maybe didn’t come from a computer science background. But because I brought skills in marketing and finance and operations, good communication skills, good soft skills. I think that it actually really lends itself well to doing well in the product, especially at a leadership level. So yes, now I’m, you know, a big podcast listener. I’m not as much of a creator myself, but I consume a lot of content from some of the product greats. Tres. Doshi? iski. Marty Kagan. There’s so many great ones that I love listening to.

Neha

Well, I was gonna say, now we’ve kind of flipped that for you. Because you’re on this podcast, and you’re part of our team. So welcome to the world of creators.

Michael

Thank you. I’m excited about that. 

Neha

Yeah. So jumping into your role on our Awards Advisory Board and the upcoming product award season. So you will be focused on the FinTech industry. But you bring, as I mentioned, a lot of experience in the FinTech space. So let’s talk about that. From what you’ve seen, and from your roles, how do you define fintech? And where’s the work you’re doing right now, at TrueAccord, fit into everything that this vertical encompasses?

Michael

There are a number of different verticals within fintech. And I’m sure you can get as many definitions of FinTech as there are people. Digital lending payments, Blockchain digital wealth management, InsurTech, quite a few different verticals present. There’s also b2c. There’s also b2b, b2b banking technologies, plaid, stripe, mercury, ramp brex. These are all companies that are enabling small businesses with a very user centric approach that are pretty exciting. 

TrueAccord is a little bit of a different company. They are reinventing debt collection. What TrueAccord does is combine machine learning with a very much human based approach to transforming debt resolution. They help get people on the path to financial health. Something like 70 million Americans each year have a negative experience with debt. And so what TrueAccord does is they provide personalized digital experiences, that sort of guide users and lenders through a very challenging financial process. Which I think this in time where we are with the economy, you know, a lot of people are unfortunately in debt. They need companies to help them sort of steer out of that type of situation. So that’s sort of what TrueAccord does. I lead kind of the core platform there.

Neha

One thing that really stood out to me and what you shared TrueAccord is trying to do is the humanization of debt collection. Because I mean, I think we’ve either personally experienced this or we’ve seen this in you know, memes or even on TV. That person calling and just you know, having the line saying hey, like we need to collect this money from you. You got to pay up or there goes your credit, you know, down the toilet. It’s very stressful and it’s also a lot of shame. There’s like, definitely the human emotion is very strong in that entire experience. And I feel like a lot of people just don’t even know how to handle it because it’s so embarrassing for them to talk about. So I’m very intrigued by how you’re looking to tackle that entire experience.

Michael

It’s fascinating. And I think the idea of a person who’s buying a bunch of outlandish things and not ever expecting to pay is sort of not who we have found the end user to be. It’s people exactly have experienced some sort of financial hardship that they didn’t expect. They lost their job, they had to pay for a hospital bill. And a lot of the customers of TrueAccord are the Buy Now pay later is like, affirm after pay Klarna. That segment of customer. And so you do have people that intend to pay. Many of the users are sort of digital first type of people. They definitely don’t want to get called a million times a week. And to a court doesn’t actually do those outbound calls. 

They are sending emails or text messages, and providing customized plans for people based on the behaviors and how they sort of interact with the communication, that TrueChord sends. Again, I think the idea is if you can treat people with respect and give them choices and options, that they actually will be able to latch on to that. And sort of try to get themselves out of what you said can be a very shameful and embarrassing experience. The idea is to sort of help them through that. Rather than, you know, just sort of hammer calling them or or, you know, knocking on doors. Which I think is sort of how people think about debt collection.

Neha

Exactly. Yeah. And you know, just thinking about, again, given your experience and background, as you look forward to 2022. Well, I should say 2023 and beyond now, since we’re coming up on the end of the year. What excites you about this vertical? And what can we look forward to?

Michael

Yeah, when I think about what I’m excited about, I would say overall, just the extreme degree of user centricity that a lot of the fintechs have adopted. I mentioned some companies earlier, Brax, and mercury and rap, you know. These are companies that are providing a much more user centric experience to b2b companies to be able to extend banking services in this sort of user centric way to small businesses. I think that is a big, that’s a big trend. I’m also very much closely watching this web three and decentralized finance space. 

We’ve had some pretty clear turmoil in the crypto market. Crypto’s almost become sort of a bad word. But there’s so much promising about blockchain and using Blockchain to improve traditional finance. But then also on the other hand, we’ve had hacks and fraud, stolen money in crypto. How does that weigh on sort of people’s willingness to adopt these products that have, you know, some pretty clear value. Then I would just say, lastly, application of AI or machine learning to improve user experiences, for example, like how TrueAccord is creating those customized user experiences using machine learning and AI. So those are kind of three areas that I’m looking at within FinTech. But of course, there’s so many. I’m excited to see all the submissions from the companies that are submitting.

Neha

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, one thing, what’s interesting about everything you shared is I think, I would say traditionally have always thought of FinTech as one of those verticals, that is a little more cautious, a little more risk averse. But I think based on what you’ve shared, you’re seeing people are willing to not ask to be cutting, like super bleeding edge, but still be able to willing to push the boundaries and challenge how we be kind of expected traditional, you know, I guess, financial instruments to work in a way that really expands how users can can get more access. And can actually, you know, reap some rewards from it. So I think based on what you’re saying, it seems like there’s a change or a shift of sorts that we can probably see coming.

Michael

I think that’s right. Compliance and legal and regulatory is a massive part of fintech. So having people that have experience working at large financial institutions. I know I talked about working at Amex for 10 years. I think that is very helpful in terms of ideating in the space. But yes, I think, you know, you hear of companies that are using, you know, new underwriting models for lending, where they’re not, they’re not using traditional FICO score, but they might be using other things like, like geolocation or the number of people that you regularly communicate with to underwrite for, you know, micro loans like that is exciting, right. That innovation phase. Maybe we haven’t had, you know, a tremendous amount of innovation before.

Neha

Absolutely. Well, I guess this leads to, you know, a very top of mind question as we get into and think about the award season. So you’re a member of our Awards advisory board. You’re going to be reviewing 1000s of nominations that we receive. So when you look at all the submissions, what are you looking at? What is your criteria for how you define a great FinTech product?

Michael

Great question. I probably apply a pretty similar framework to what other product leaders would apply. And I think it all goes back to the user experience. Number one this whole idea of utility, usability and desirability. So utility, is the product useful? Does it have a core set of users who are now saying, like, I can’t live without this product? That to me is like a really, you know, strong signal? Utility? Is it easy to use?

And then desirability, you know, does it look beautiful? Does it generate brand affiliate affinity? Is it hard to get or desirable to have? I think those are some key factors. And, you know, I like to see, is there an application of innovative technology in sort of solving a problem? I think that is sort of what I’m looking for a little bit.

Neha

Yeah, those are great points. I hope listeners are taking note. And thank you so much, Michael, for being on the Board and for taking the time today to speak with me. Really excited to see how it all goes.

Michael

Thank you so much. Now I’m really excited and, and good luck to all of the participants.