Product Leaders to Watch: Macy’s, ZEFR, and Universal Electronics Product Leads on Telecom, AdTech, and IoT

Transcript

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 focus 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 13 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 guess 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 Ali Rakhimov, who is the Senior Product Manager driving at first strategy for Macy’s. Hi, Ali, welcome to the podcast.

Neha and Ali Rakhimov: Telecom, AdTech, and IoT part 1

Ali Rakhimov

Good to be here.

Neha Shah

Yeah, great to have you as well. And I was looking through your background and very eclectic experience from ad tech to payments. And now you’re working at Macy’s. So tell us a little bit more about how you got started in product.

Ali

Yeah. So like many of us like it’s accidental. I never knew there was a title product manager, I had no clue what it meant. I started my career out of college in K 12 trenches, right. I worked in school and education management. And as of course, as an immigrant, we always have this entrepreneurial bug, right, we always find some, either observe or experience some problem I go, I can do 10 times better. And so for me, it was okay, I’m tired of this career ladder like working for like, let me do something and without knowing anything about software or payments, I just started my first kind of payments FinTech company, at that can also know what was the difference between a startup and a small business. 

So I started, we built kiosks, payment kiosks for schools, that accepted cash checks, carts and sync with QuickBooks. Paying the schools just to clarify schools actually, like if you think about this, right, I was a business manager for schools and reporting, tracking, and fraud were a huge issue for back office management. When my son started kindergarten, I guess as a parent, I was like, Oh, my gosh, I just want to pay for his lunch. And I had to wait 15, 20 minutes in the front office. And I’m like, This is crazy. 

We can address, for both of those users, those pain points and make it faster, more efficient. 

And so that’s why we said can we eliminate human elements, parents come in, they tap their phone number, they see little Johnny, and they pay for his kindergarten filter, for example. And from 15 minutes to 15 seconds. And on the backend like we collect money. We show the reporting in real time to business managers and everybody’s happy including the auditors happy with the whole segregation of duties and all this audit trail in essence. So that’s what I did. 

But like for the small team 200 pound machines wasn’t something scalable. So I exited that business and moved to fully SaaS and mobile. And by that I mean like we took on PayPal head on like so we built the FinTech infrastructure. We built the button and said, Hey, our payment button is 10 times better than PayPal, and for schools and k 12 And But there was gonna be a really rough experience very hard. Like we had a lot of banks reject us. 20 banks. But now, we felt like we built it.

Neha

Yeah, I guess how did you come around that? Like, what was it? What were some of the pushback?

Ali

Some of it has to do with timing. The good thing was at that time, I mean, is, you know, like in mid 2015, or so like a lot of platforms and marketplaces like, think about Uber and Lyft. And all this kind of marketplace came up. And they’re like, really pressuring banks to provide those experiences, right, where we drive the user experience, instead of banks drive it based on risk. 

Because usually, if you want to collect payments, you have to fill out 50 boxes and provide all this document. It’s very user friendly. Yeah. And we will send like in schools, once we own the vertical, we know our niche, the chargeback or disputes are like less than .02%. So we will own our risk. And so that’s how we were able to kind of get on the bandwagon of like, really companies that own their own vertical and own the risk, but they can really drive end to end customer experience. And so what happened was like we were able to onboard schools in 20 minutes versus PayPal, two weeks versus other legacy solutions, two months, so yeah. And I exited to strategic. 

And since then, I was like, okay, then I found out, there’s products, I found out all about the tech community.

Neha

You wear many hats. 

Ali

I was UX person. I was a QA person. I was the product person. I was the salesperson. And as you go, like we grew, we grew it up a bit. So we had other products and others that I mentored later on, but I mean, you have to do everything when you’re selling. That’s the beauty of it. Because you know, firsthand the experiences and the problems and you’re very close to it. And so then it’s like it started like when I moved to the consulting world. After that I learned a lot about payments and product and stuff. For the self storage industry to modernize our payments stack. We bought this company’s very legacy we want to shift to a new modern stack and modern experiences. I did a lot of cool stuff there. 

Then started at T Mobile again, consulting on innovation projects on wallets and all the cool stuff actually patented. Really something Oh, it’s I don’t think it’s gonna, they’re gonna implement it. But it was a really fun experience. And they gave me something. Yeah, yeah, we created something. 

But with larger enterprises, as many folks know who work there, it’s like, it’s really slower. Right. And but for me, it was really important to really understand how to be a product manager for an enterprise company working with all those dependencies in groups. And so that was an amazing kind of orthotics, kind of experience for me, personally, for two years. 

Neha

And then, once you got into product, though, at what point were you like, Oh, my God, I love this. I love working in product.

Ali

I think once I exited my startup, and I started researching about this, I’m like, Okay, I really love addressing problems. I know end to end user experience. the flow, I know what capabilities to build. But at the end of the day, I’m really centered on really addressing the problems and addressing them in a way not just like a feature. I really, I could care less about features, like I really cared about addressing the problem and wowing my customers. 

And that’s why for me, it was like, like, when we build Skokie, we said, Okay, we’re gonna be 10 times better. What does it mean? It means that learning curve is so easy that a fifth grader can understand it. it means that we don’t have contracts, we don’t have fine print all this gimmick stuff that I hated myself as a business manager as negative any gimmicks, you’re going to be honest company, and would they’re not going to sign any contracts, because it’s going to be pay as you go just like the Pay Pal button, right? 

Then we’re gonna make it 20 minutes, everybody’s in the industry, there’s like two weeks, two months, we’re gonna make it 20 minutes. And so that’s gonna really help kind of understand what value adds are driving and some of them are not even customer selling. It’s like, we have to know that as a product manager, you have to really not only see what they ask, but intangibles like what are the root cause? And how can we make it 10 times better? And so, once I kind of found out this abundance, like, Okay, I think I’ll be a good fit for product.

Neha

I like what you mentioned there. I think oftentimes in product management, we talk about the voice of the customer, but there’s also the intuition aspect, and also kind of hearing what the customer is not seeing. like what they need, you know, and I think that’s that’s a that’s a really, that’s a difficult thing to figure out.

Ali

Absolutely. And I mean with any industry, right? I mean, especially, and there’s a lot of discussions about generalist versus specialist. and I’m like 5050. I don’t know which one but at the end of the day, like for any company that I worked on. like bit self storage, bit telecom bit, like right now with Macy’s with retail, I always go and like to the natural habitat of those customers, be it internal colleagues or representatives who are using it, or its actual end users or customers who are engaging with your software or your mobile app. 

And it’s so important to really understand. ask questions beyond the sales calls and hear those, all those bets, good and bad feedback to really get to the bottom of what is really driving, what are the patterns you’re seeing with data? And also true, psychology like behavior, right?

Neha

Definitely. So, for this product award season, as one of the members of our awards advisory board, you are going to be focused on the telecom industry vertical. I know there’s a lot in there, I guess, what excites you about this particular vertical, as you, you know, as you’re assessing, kind of what’s happening in this in this sector

Ali

Telecom, like, as someone who worked at T Mobile, amazing company really, like mature from the digital transformation perspective, and looking at the future, right, like, we’re talking about IoT Internet of Things, everything is becoming smart, right, whether people want it or not. And, of course, there’s discussions about data privacy, but at the end of the day, like, we want to have convenience, we want to really address a lot of inefficiencies or the in our daily lives. And so with telecom and the IoT, the biggest thing, right, it’s, for those things to communicate. you need to have WiFi, you need to have a really solid cellular kind of network infrastructure. 

And so and that requires a lot of bandwidth, like more. more kind of stuff you put into the bandwidth more, it’s gonna get slower, right. And as an example, today at Macy’s, this is one of the things like where we’re driving the most amazing in-store experience, right? Like you can be driving up and talk about, we’re going to create the most amazing augmented reality this and that. 

You have to realize that augmented reality, all of these things are only as good as your network. 

And this is not specific to just Macy’s, it’s like all the stores. Yeah, there’s a lot of dead zones. And even though some companies say, Oh, we have 5g, and we know this, it’s actually not funny, it’s like, everything is loading. And the funny part is, when I was at Macy’s and was reading all this feedback, I’m like, even customers don’t know the difference between WiFi and network cellular, for example. It’s like, sometimes it’s education, right? They think their phone has WiFi, but it’s actually not WiFi. 

So in some cases, we’re actually encouraging them, hey, use store Wi-Fi, because you have a dedicated bandwidth specific to our store’s experience, right? And then from depot target out of sight might be kind of testing it. But even then, even with Wi Fi, sometimes they’re dead zones, because there’s only so much, I don’t know, like access points, beacons, you can put it to boost it. But sometimes it’s really, it’s very expensive. And especially if you have a lot of retail locations, if you’re a brick and mortar, like all of the stuff, it adds to the cost, right? And then like, at all to, oh, maintenance and like initial costs. 

And that’s like where you have to put your business out like, okay, it’s amazing. We want to be customer obsessed. But is juice worth the squeeze here? Like, are we gonna get what we need? Right? So it’s a very delicate balance that everybody’s playing, especially those in retail and are trying to make their app really amazing at certain locations.

Neha

Yeah, you know, one interesting thing that I thought of, as you were sharing. We think a lot about the power of software and all the cool things we can do, using, you know, these things that we build on the development side. but at the heart of it, like the basic infrastructure, if that cannot scale with the usage of, you know, what we do as businesses as consumers, I mean, that can be a limiting factor for sure.

Ali

Absolutely. And I mean, aside from that, there’s a lot I think, from telecom and IoT perspective is. It’s one thing to provide hardware. It’s one thing to provide software, even bandwidth, but then it’s, especially for product managers, I think one of the things, data is our ammunition, right? You can have the best weapon, but if you don’t have ammunition, like it’s useless in war, right, so you’re gonna want to look at it. And data is like really monitoring and seeing this data, correct data is important. AI could potentially come in, right. we can really come through 1000s of like millions of data points and give us the right patterns, behavior and data points. So they’re monitoring this a lot of data and really coming up with a way of tying back to the user personas and their behaviors is really important.

Neha

Yeah, not I think this is a good segue to the next question that I have for you. Because, you know, as a member of our awards advisory board with this upcoming season, where last year, we got over 3000 nominations for the product awards, we’re expecting potentially more this year. So my question to you would be right, like you made these points, but like, what is it that as a product manager, evaluating other products, like what do you consider are the criteria that makes a great product?

Ali

I mean, every company is amazing. There’s a lot of niche specific solutions, right? That they’re addressing problems that we might not know so. And then the day is, whether it’s enterprise, whether it’s going to b2b b2c, or what other platform it is, is really to what degree they are differentiating themselves. to what degree they’re addressing something 10 times better. And something that nobody kind of dared to address. And sometimes it’s also like, I think one of the things that we as product, when we always talk about customers, but at the end of the day, it’s like monetization and revenue, right? Because there’s one great indicator if somebody’s willing to buy your product, and they’re coming over and over, it may say like it, it means you have some stickiness to it. Right. So those are like very important, I guess going to baseline criteria.

Neha

Well, that’s definitely a lot to think about. Thank you so much, Ali. for being on the awards advisory board, for being on today’s podcast episode. Look forward to seeing how it all goes.

Ali

Absolutely. Thank you for your time.

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Neha and Bharat Manglani: Telecom, AdTech, and IoT part 2

Today, we’re joined by Bharat Manglani, who is a Senior Product Manager at ZEFR. Bharat. You’re a longtime products that count community member and editorial contributor. Great to have you on this podcast series.

Bharat Manglani

Thank you, Neha, awesome to be here.

Neha

Yeah. So just to get started. Tell us a bit more about how you found your way into product.

Bharat

Oh, sure. Yeah. So I started my journey. Studying technology, computer science at Drexel. And not knowing what I wanted to do in the beginning, went into management consulting. got a lay of the land, and then wanting to come back into tech. And that’s where I found some b2b technologies to help big brands target the specific b2b brands that they’re looking for at DemandBase. And then moved into other areas of ad tech as well within cybersecurity. so disrupting the economical cybercrime and ad tech, yeah. and then now helping brands to target and measure across the world’s largest walled garden platforms. It’s been an interesting journey.

Neha

So consulting to product. Were there any differences in the kind of skills you needed to apply for either profession? Was there a lot of overlap? What was that transition like for you?

Bharat

Yeah, it was interesting. I think working in management consulting, you get to see a lot of different problems, a lot across various industries. And you get to see best practices of what the solutions are there. That was interesting. We worked on large scale implementations, which really does parlay really nicely into product. And it just, we just didn’t have the title of product manager. 

And as I worked more in consulting. I actually got more closely aligned to the digital products. We worked at a large bank, where we revamped their website. And that’s where I got to work with the agency partners and creative departments, as well as the engineers across the entire tech stack. And I think that really brought me to where I am today. So it was nice.

Neha

That’s super exciting. And so now that you’re in product, are you like, Oh, my goodness, I’m so happy. I found product management, this is it. This is what I love to do. So you’ve been in product management now for a couple years. Is there and as someone who you know, we see as a product leader to watch, and, you know, lead so many different product initiatives? What is something that you consider your biggest achievement? something that you’re most proud of?

Bharat

Yeah, sure. So here at Zephyr, you know, we work with a lot of the world’s largest walled garden platforms. as I mentioned, tick tock YouTube, meta. And so one of the initiatives we recently launched is actually having human moderated reviews of content. 

Because we want to make sure that we have subject matter experts taking a look at from a brand perspective as well, making sure that the brands are advertised against content that is suitable for their brand. they don’t want to be against content that’s about weapons, or there’s a lot of different headlines that we hear about every day. And so having that human subject matter moderator review and applying that to our machine learning. to then give a decision onto that content and help our brands to stay on content that is most suitable for them and brand safe.

Neha

And that’s really important. Because I mean, you know, the human, the human reviewer aspect is so important. but then it’s so hard for business to scale, especially the speed at which everything’s taking place. especially in the ad tech world, I imagine.

Bharat

Yes, definitely. I think with these walled garden platforms, the advent of new ones coming up every day, and the just the number of creators that are on these platforms. and all this content is at the end of the day, user generated content. So there’s really, you know, anything can be uploaded. And so that’s something we help and I’m proud to be helping platforms with that

problem. 

I mean, I think you know, part of it, that I’m also passionate about is we’re helping brands to advertise against good content. But we’re also helping platforms to keep this content off. You know, if we find something that’s highly unsuitable, we will let the platform’s know. And they will take that off. And in that sense, we’re helping to keep the internet safe. And I think that’s very important to me as well.

Neha

Yeah, you know that what you just shared makes me think. about so you’re, as part of our awards advisory board member for this product award season, you’re focused on the telecom, IoT and ad tech space. And so you’ve already kind of underscored some of the important work happening in this vertical that’s so critical to really how, how we run our everyday, everyday lives. But could you tell us a little bit more about this vertical about, you know, what else is happening that maybe the average person doesn’t know about that you also think is pretty exciting?

Bharat

Yeah, sure. I think one day we spoke about was expanding this capability of analyzing content. to understand whether it’s safe, not only for brands, but is it safe for the web, to do that across all of these different platforms. 

So one that we recently partnered with his meta newsfeed. We were the first partner picked to work with them on analyzing their content and making sure that we’re serving against brand safe content for brands. And it’s just interesting to see all of the different content types that we have to deal with, as well as all the different angles that a content can be about. So I love working with these industry standards, such as the Global Alliance for responsible media. They have a framework out there too.

Neha

Who, who runs the global is it? Like, can you tell us more about this standard?

Bharat

Yeah, sure. So that’s standard developed by the four A’s, as well as collaboration across the industry. And really thinking about content from various different angles. is about 12 categories out there. Recently, misinformation was added as well. And that’s a huge hot topic, hot button topic, and all these platforms. but it talks about weapons content, adult content, you know. terrorists and things of that nature, where we then take a look at that piece of content and will rate it, whether it’s high, medium, or low, or no risk against any any one of those categories. 

And that gives us a standard way to talk about content across all of these platforms. And I think that’s really important. So that brands have a high level view of how their ad spend is doing across all of these different platforms that will be meta or tick tock and. and also be able to apply, you know, their specific comfort level across these categories. So I think that’s, that’s something that’s very interesting and evolving daily,

Neha

I think that’s definitely top of mind for everyone, especially with so many eyeballs on all these different sources of, you know, media, like the content and content is huge these days. And also, I guess my question would be, you know, do you see, what do you see as maybe the top challenges that this industry is also facing that, you know, would be something to watch out for here?

Bharat

Yeah. And in terms of challenges, I think, as we mentioned, like the scale of just the number of content that’s uploaded, and all these platforms daily, these these creators who, you know, could be bad actors have different kinds of intentions, uploading this content and just know, sort of control over that. And I think these added layers of protection help mold to keep the web safe, as well as brands advertising against good content. 

And I think we talked about, like some headlines, recently heard about the, in the Ad Age article where our CEO, Richard, and was quoted. that they mentioned the crisis at Twitter, where there was a report from Reuters, about illicit accounts, sharing links to illegal content related to child sexual exploitation. So it’s just, it’s scary, what kind of content can be out there. And I think these protections are very important.

Neha

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So you know, this is another aspect of the award season that we have. and something again, as a member of our awards advisory board, you know, you really get to look at all the product nominations that we receive. especially in this particular Telecom, IoT, and ad tech, vertical. And I know last year received, I think, across the board 3000, over 3000 nominations. And, you know, I think that’s a testament to the innovation that we’re witnessed too. 

And especially given the challenges you mentioned, you know, there are going to be a lot of great products out there that are looking to tackle these problems. So, you know, when you and other board members are. let’s say specifically, when you’re evaluating these products out there, what are you looking for in a great ad tech product?

Bharat

Yeah, that’s a good question. I think when it comes to ad tech, there are just so many vendors out there. so many solutions out there, but It can be hard for brands and agencies to, like, digest the breadth of those products. and understand which one they should be using. If at all possible, if that product can kind of expand across the brand or agencies media spend, I think that’s, that’s one thing I would look for. So making it kind of one platform, one stop shop would be important. 

Also working across both the targeting and measurement side. So having solutions not only to measure how your campaign did against brand safety or suitability, but giving you the capability to then action upon it. So then in future campaigns you can learn from those from that measurement. and make sure you’re not running against whatever content wasn’t suitable. In this case, I think those are two. 

And third, making it easy, like if we can make it just autopilot where we’re measuring what’s not doing well, and then automatically applying that into the targeting piece, I think that just gives our customers one less thing to worry about. So I think those are the three things I would look at right now. 

Neha

And I what I liked about your answer is, at the heart of each of those points is the usability factor and, and thinking about how we could make you know how we can help these agencies and these brands, make better informed decisions. in a way that’s manageable, you know, given all the many, many responsibilities are juggling. So I know you definitely have very thoughtful points that you raised there. 

Bharat

Yeah, and maybe if I could add one more actor, is the consumer. the consumer of all of these media across these platforms. And I think, you know, another hot topic is making sure that we have consumer privacy at the center here. And there’s a lot of great industry collaboration that was at the IAB tech lab a couple of weeks ago, and just talking about privacy enhancing technologies and all of the different partners that are involved in the different proposals out there, including cleanroom. So I think that’s another one that you know, we always want to keep that in mind.

Neha

Definitely, I think that can be stated enough, you know, whether or not consumers realize that I think it’s a responsibility of the tech sector to to be thinking about this and all the designs and all the all the work we’re doing now. Great points. Thank you. Thank you both for sharing that with us. And very excited to have you on the board this year and excited for this award season.

Bharat

Yeah, me too. Thank you. Looking forward to it.

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Neha and Nikki Ahmadi: Telecom, AdTech, and IoT part 3

Thank you. Today we’re joined by Nikki Ahmadi, who is the Senior Director of Product for cloud and entertainment and universal electronics. Nikki has spent over a decade working in Product Engineering and Management for multimillion dollar technology and startup companies. I’m super excited to have her be one of our guests as part of this product leaders to watch series. Nikki, thank you for being on the show today.

Nikki Ahmadi

Thank you for having me, Neha. 

Neha

Yeah, so you’ve got all this experience doing really innovative work and really collaborating with teams across the entire business. But let’s talk about you and product management. How did you get started in product?

Nikki

Oh, boy. Well, I started my journey as an electrical engineer, hardcore hardware there. And then somewhere along the way, I became what was called back then an IPTV it, which is an integrated product late. And that was really the beginning of my journey into products. I mean, if you can imagine back in the day, there were no official product organizations, right EPIC system engineers, or your system engineering org, really took on the work of what we call product folks these days. 

And since then, I’ve had many different roles in product and product creation, across many different industries. from defense to FinTech, when FinTech was not a word to consumer electronics. Today, I get to work with awesome people on solving problems in the connected home domain. and thinking about new ways of interacting with devices and services within the home.

Neha

And that’s super exciting and very relevant for I would say, more people today than it even was, I would say five years ago, right? Like this entire industry has seen huge adoption. a lot of just a lot of change in how folks are expecting devices in the home to behave and support support their smart living, right.

Nikki

Absolutely. I mean, concepts such as connected home are now a reality thanks to this enabling technology that I’m very excited about to have as part of AAB which is IoT. You can today 38% of households own at least one smart home device. I’m working from home and the doorbell ring, then it’s a package. I could unlock the door, you know. I mean, like, it’s just liberating. But it wasn’t always that way. I remember when it wasn’t, and people were terrified of what the technology was, or the technology wasn’t as accessible or super expensive. So there’s been a lot of innovation in that sense, too.

Neha

Absolutely. And adoption, as you’ve mentioned, has been skyrocketing.

Nikki

So yeah, there’s been a lot of adoption. You’re right. 

Neha

But let’s come back to you and your experience in product. You know, given your experience working with so many different teams that are responsible for building and launching the product. What is it specifically that you love about working in product?

Nikki

You know, I love seeing people use the products that I built. At the end of the day, it gives me tremendous joy to know that my products are deployed in over half a billion devices globally. When I look at the transaction run rate against my cloud infrastructure, that makes me extremely, extremely proud. If you think about it, personally, as part of my day to day job. Everyday, we’re working to innovate and revolutionize the meaning of wireless control, whether that’s through our silicone software or turnkey products. 

And we continue to reinvent how consumers interact with these devices and services in their home. And our goal is to make the connected home smarter, easier to connect and use, and more sustainable. And I love our mission. And I love the fact that every day we get closer and closer to democratizing that, and bringing that vision to consumers.

Neha

So as a product builder, as a product manager, I think your excitement is actually seeing them come alive and make that difference to the end users.

Nikki

Absolutely. Because I wholeheartedly believe that’s what matters the most when it comes to technologies. especially technologies like IOT, right. a lot of IoT devices, is the perception of absence of technology. In a way things should just work. See what magic? Yeah, exactly. So you want to make sure that the technology blends in the background. And if it adds friction, or starts to be an obstacle or is in your face, then you’ve already failed, right? So for me as a product builder, not only does it boil down to seeing and watching that product come to life and be, you know, deployed in masses, but also that it actually truly adds value to everyday life.

Neha

Definitely. No, that’s so true. And this kind of comes into you know why? And I know you mentioned this, and we know as part of the awards advisory board this year, you’re focused on the IoT category. Let’s just first start with and I know for listeners have already been hearing out they probably have an idea from hearing your answers. But how would you define IoT tech first?

Nikki

Okay, very good question. Because if you had not asked me that I would have already started by trying to define it. So IoT, or Internet of Things describes physical objects that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems, over communications networks. Essentially, it’s when you embed digital technologies into the physical world. If I were to abstract everything I said and simplify, it’s a bridge between the physical world and the digital one. Right? 

Neha

I love the simplified answers because it helps people, helps our listeners really visualize it. and especially those who were new to the field or intrigued about the field really paints the picture for them. So given you know, we already talked about the excitement around connected homes, smart homes. Can you talk a bit more about you know, from your perspective, what is it that excites you about what’s happening this vertical? What really, you know, more consumers, more users can expect?

Nikki

There are so many reasons why I’m excited about this track to begin with, with billions of things connected, it opens up endless possibilities for innovation in every single aspect of our everyday lives. Everywhere you look, there are applications waiting to be unleashed, either by creating a new set of offerings, or by improving and enhancing the features provided by existing products, anything from self driving cars to autonomous manufacturing robots, and even applications and health care, which we saw really increased during COVID, or agriculture. 

These are all possible as a result of these networks of connected things. And I think most importantly, for me. It’s very evident that IoT has transformed the way we live and do business. If you think about it, every single industry today relies on data. And when you expand and improve that data, by connecting these billions of devices. And in making it possible to share and analyze large data sets to improve your decision making. It definitely adds that extra layer.

And not only has IoT become already one of the essential technologies driving human interaction in our time. But also, it’s simply merged the physical universe as we know it with the digital ecosystem. So in short, to summarize, the IoT space has already transformed life as we know it. It has endless possibilities, which is what excites me about the space.

Neha

Yeah. And, you know, coming to our product award season. And, you know, it’s on one hand, you think, like, Oh, my God, so much has already been done. What else can they do, and I think, as one of the members of our awards Advisory Committee. You will be reviewing the 1000s of nominations that we receive. and really pinpoint towards that next big, big product, right? So I guess I have to ask them, you know, that’s, that’s a tough, tall order. Given all the innovation, all the exciting things you’ve already shared that are going on in the IoT space. So when you’re, you know, looking at these nominations, and looking at your criteria checklist. What are you looking for in a great IoT product?

Nikki

So I think I’m going to answer that question in two folds. At a high level, I think it boils down to really what is a great product to begin with. Whether it’s IoT or not, right. And this is applicable to any products I’ve ever dealt with. And I think a great product is simple to understand, leaves an impact. Those are the two biggest criteria. I have the majority of these products, they have a very complicated technology behind them. Which I have tremendous respect for. But ultimately, it needs to be easy to set up, use and create value in our everyday life. Right. 

Now, when it comes to IoT specifically, it’s very difficult to come up with a set of generic guidelines for what makes a great IoT product. That is mostly driven by the segment that the product is addressing. IoT products can range anywhere from consumer facing devices to connected equipment and industrial assets, like robots, machines, etc. So it’s difficult to have a generic set of guidelines on what makes a great IoT product without taking the segment’s into account. 

That being said, I think, on the other side, there are guidelines that OEMs and service providers can follow when building these products. things like prototyping early, prototype, early, relentlessly and extensively. Because you want to test for usability. You want to test the assumptions that you have on user behavior. 

And here we’re also dealing with hardware. The cost of hardware and components is important. And I don’t mean just monetary costs. I also mean the energy cost that’s associated with it. 

For me, it’s important to ensure that these products that we’re selecting are reducing friction at the end of the day for its intended users. 

So these are some of the things that I keep in mind. And I’ll maybe add one more thing too. absolutely, building hardware at scale is costly. So for the majority of people, the majority of good products start simple. And they try to build the features in the software, where there’s more flexibility to iterate. So when evaluating these products, we’re not just looking at the hardware, we’re also looking at the software. And we’re also making sure that as device makers, they are always, always always respecting users’ privacy. and build with security, top of mind. 

So these are some of the things I look for, again. not an answer that fits every single category. But generic guidelines that tend to match the majority of the industries that it would be covering.

Neha

Now that was very comprehensive and thorough. And I think what what I love about what you called out, at the very beginning. Context is so important. Even when you’re talking about a category like IOT. It needs to be very specific when you’re evaluating in terms of who was being served. What industry has served and the impact it’s making. So that was an extremely thoughtful answer. And I’m sure listeners submitting nominations for the product Awards really appreciate that level of insight. This was really wonderful. Thank you for sharing your experience and your perspectives with us, Nikki. Super excited about this award season.

Nikki

Likewise, I’m very excited for what’s to come. hope to see you in person, hopefully this time.

Neha

I’m hoping for it. Thank you.

Nikki

Thank you very much, Neha, have a good one.