As product leaders, we tend to enjoy the product experience as both producers and consumers. Indeed, it’s a superpower to remember to think like a consumer and let those thoughts inform our projects. With that in mind, we’ve pulled together some top resources for product managers from product leaders we’ve featured recently. Check out the list and be sure to add your own favorites in the comments section.
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Bethany Gostanian, Head of Product at VidMob
Asked about her favorite product, Beth Gostanian said, “Right now, I’d say Flipboard. The app aggregates and categorizes news and media content across a ton of different sources and viewpoints, which is its main draw for me. Importantly, I also love the UI because with just a few thumb swipes I can just as easily flip through headlines in a certain category to get a pulse on the news of the day as I can dive deeper into an article to read the full thing. And I can personalize the categories/subjects to fit my tastes. Solved a need for me, and did it simply. I love it.”
Other top resources for product managers Beth finds useful include the Silicon Valley Product Group, Mind the Product, and Crossing the Chasm.
Watch the video to learn more about Beth’s approach to product management.
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Senior Strategist at ProfitWell, Rob Litterst
Pricing strategies can be make-or-break for any company. ProfitWell’s Rob Litterst notes that “Value-based pricing really has two key axes. There’s usage and there’s features, which can also be talked about as consumption and capabilities.”
Resources that help Rob stay informed include Stratechery, Matthew Ball, and Matt Levine of Money Stuff. “A recent favorite is April Dunford’s Obviously Awesome, which I would highly recommend for anyone working on product.”
Another resource on Rob’s shortlist is Feedly. “It’s an infovore’s swiss-army knife. I use it to follow sources that I love and also use the chrome extension to save articles to read later. It’s my one-stop-shop for curating and maintaining an interesting reading list,” Rob said.
See more about pricing strategies in the video.
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Katie Holden, Senior Director of Product Management, Design and Engineering at Workday
Managing for horizontal products is a newer twist in the world of product. “For product managers and product leaders, it’s interesting to understand that you have a choice when you’re creating products, and one of those choices might be to be more horizontal,” Katie Holden notes.
Her go-to products recently include Twitter, but her favorite might surprise you. “My favorite product recently is my pedometer. There are so many ‘smart watches’ out there, but the killer feature for me is battery life. So having a simple pedometer with great defaults and an easy few-button-interface has been a delightful add to my routine.”
Watch the video to learn more about horizontal products.
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Vice President of Product at Dfinity, Brendan Foley
We are living in the “golden age of product,” Brendan Foley said, and product managers are in a prime position to be the instigators of that change.
“There’s really never been a better time to be in product management than right now. We’re living in a time of incredible opportunity,” he said.
Brendan has an extensive list of resources that have helped him, including the books The Lean Product Playbook, Inspired, The Design of Everyday Things, Don’t Make Me Think, and The Future is Faster than You Think.
Another compelling resource will not be a surprise: Amazon e-commerce. “They’ve done a terrific job in understanding their customer, personalizing the experience, iterating fast to deliver value, and structuring their entire organization to move fast and deliver value,” Brendan said.
Learn more about “The Golden Age of Product” in the video.
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Britt Myers, COO and Product Head at GameClub
“As a product manager, look at your work like you’re making investments because that’s really what you’re doing,” said Britt Myers. “You have a team of people that cost money, and you have a limited amount of time and resources to get a return on the spend and you have to make decisions about those investments. I think it’s important that the product team has all the inputs to make those good decisions. Ultimately, they are the decision makers to those investments.”
Among all his suggestions of top resources for product managers, Britt’s favorite product is his AirPod Pros. “I use them probably more than I use any other product I own,” he noted. “They are more of an audio layer – a tool that delivers not just music to my ears, or immersive audio for video content, but communication with friends, family, colleagues, and my phone to boot. One of the few products I own that if I lost, I would unquestionably immediately buy another pair. And yet somehow, until I wrote this paragraph, I totally took for granted.”
Learn more in the video about making investments as a product manager.
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