Discussion, advice, and reviews regarding online products, the people behind them and the trends they represent, from Modular Innovation and Product Management to User Experience and Quick-UX.
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community.
Each week we highlight some of the recently posted openings. Check out this week’s newest, below…
Over the course of the night a few of the highlights were…
Featured Product: Powerlinx exploring the product, its challenges and successes, from partnering to team buy-in (thanks to Yoni Cohen)
The Intersection of Product and Content from content preceding product to validating value
The Product Groupmeet-ups are an opportunity for Product People (managers, strategists, marketers, etc.) to come together to meet, interact, and network in a roundtable setting. It’s awesome to meet fellow Product People in a laid-back, conversational gathering.
If you are a Product Person and are interested in having your product featured or participating as a featured guest expert at an upcoming meetup of The Product Group, contact me(or email at jhorn (a-t.) tpgblog DoT com).
I am looking forward to seeing everyone at our next meetup…
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community.
Each week we highlight some of the recently posted openings. Check out this week’s newest, below…
Guest Post by: Sam Kolich (Mentee, Session 3, The Product Mentor) [Paired with Mentor, Jonathan Berg]
As product managers, we are tasked with managing stakeholder expectation throughout the lifecycle of our products. In doing that, one must master presentations so they are always prepared to speak on behalf of their product. It doesn’t matter if you are producing fire hydrants or making a mobile app, solid presentation skills are required for the success of your product. During this mentorship, I learned and demonstrated in my current role, the presentation strategy AIM. A highly effective and easy way to create presentations based off of three key principles: Audience, Intent and Message.
At my current job, I noticed my presentations were becoming less and less effective and after every meeting, I would have to spend time reiterating the message either in email or in person. In other words, I was having to defend my idea after the presentation instead of getting an immediate blessing from whoever I was speaking to.
Public speaking is not an easy task but I was not struggling with the sheer act of talking in front of people. I was struggling with making the message memorable. By learning the AIM model, it quickly diffused any problems I was having when creating the presentation. As mentioned above, AIM is broken down into three ideas, that do not have to be followed in order:
Audience
You need to analyze your audience and figure out exactly who will be attending or eventually viewing your presentation. Getting a brand’s blessing to work on a product under their name is different then requesting investment for a new idea no one has seen or heard of before. You must know the wants and needs of whatever group you are speaking to.
Intent
In addition to understanding what your audience needs to get out of your presentation, you also have to establish what you intend to get out of the meeting. By identifying your intent and setting the objective, it will bring immediate purpose to the presentation.
Message
Unless you are able to make your message persuasive you will likely have trouble leaving people with something learned. By establishing your key points and making the message memorable, you greatly increase the chances of a successful presentation.
Another positive side effect of this new format for presenting is the ability to scale your presentations. Let’s say you have a 10-minute presentation planned. Because of the way AIM is structured, you can express the same key message from that planned 10-minute presentation into a 30-second elevator pitch for when you run into a senior level executive heading home for the day. Even though you are leaving out some details from the longer talk, your message is quickly transferable at a moments notice. By identifying your audience (executive in the elevator who represents part of the business), what your intent is (what you need out of this brief meeting) and the ability to persuade them (get to the point and make it memorable), you should be able to get off the elevator with a sense of accomplishment.
In closing, adopting this new process into my professional artillery, I was able to make significant improvements in the way I was communicating to anyone no matter the severity of the project. I now feel more confident that my message is not getting lost and my audience is left with the intended knowledge I worked so hard in preparing.
About Sam Kolich Sam recently completed his first full-time role as a product manager at the publishing company Rodale. Previously, he worked as a photographer, photo editor and freelance product consultant while gathering the skills to transition into a new career in product management. At the moment, Sam focuses on mobile and web products, working to help brands develop a larger reach in the mobile world.
More About The Product Mentor The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Management Mentors and Mentees around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community.
Each week we highlight some of the recently posted openings. Check out this week’s newest, below…
In our a recent live stream from one of our mentors of The Product Mentor, Jonathan Berg, lead a conversation around “Connecting the Product to Stakeholder Value”. We are always looking for more product mentors from all around the world. Signup to be a Mentor Today!
View the live stream…
About The Product Mentor
The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…
Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community.
Meet the mentors…
Jordan Bergtraum VP Product Management, ServiceChannel
Jordan is a Management level, revenue-driven, B2B SaaS Product Management and Project Management leader. He grows revenue and adoption, and ensures product by turning business problems into profitable, simple, easy-to-use solutions Jordan works closely with his market, executives, and internal subject matter experts to develop roadmaps, and communicate these roadmaps internally and with clients. He translates complex business problems into solutions that are easily consumed by engineering, marketing and sales. Jordan has enterprise Software-as-a-Service experience within the facilities management, legal and pharmaceutical verticals, having most recently worked at ServiceChannel, Epiq Systems and Medidata Solutions. Jordan has a BS in Biology from Union College and an MBA & MS in Information Systems from Boston University’s School of Management. Jordan lives in Manhattan and in his spare time likes to play soccer.
Ladislav Bartos Product Manager, Gumtree.com
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci Ladislav believes that success is in simplicity that’s why his aim is to help companies to make complex products simple for users. He lives in London, currently working as Product Manager at Gumtree.com, an Ebay company, previously led product at international startups and large organisations. Ladislav focuses on user centric product development, especially on brand, usability and revenue product challenges. He is passionate about Lean and Agile Product management, innovative business models and business and product strategies.
Dustin Levy Director of Product Management, Gentex Corporation
Dustin Levy is a Director of Product Management at Gentex Corporation—the leading supplier of high-performance flight equipment for military, law enforcement, and rescue aircrew worldwide. In this position, Dustin’s primary responsibilities include product portfolio management, new product introduction and product line strategy deployment. Prior to joining Gentex, he was a Senior Product Manager at Smiths Detection and in that role launched several new chemical identification solutions into the global security market. During his career, Dustin’s research efforts have been supported by fellowships from the National Research Council and National Institutes of Health and include a track record of several new product innovations, patents and publications. Dustin is a graduate of the doctoral program in Physical Chemistry at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the MBA program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Paul Hurwitz Director of Active Analytics, ActiveHealth Management
Paul Hurwitz is Director of Active Analytics at ActiveHealth Management, a Healthagen Company and subsidiary of Aetna. He is responsible for the strategic roadmap and execution of the Active Analytics product suite, which is focused on providing standalone clinical analytic solutions and business intelligence modules to internal users and the payer/provider customer base. Paul is an experienced product management professional with over 15 years of experience in technology management and 10 years in product management. Prior to joining ActiveHealth, he led a cross-functional team at Medidata Solutions working on life sciences software for the design and optimization of clinical trials. Prior to Medidata, Paul led product management and was head of technology at Centage Corporation, a budgeting and financial forecasting software company in Natick, MA. Paul is a member of the Boston Product Management Association, Boston CTO Club, the Boston-NY CTO HIT Club, co-founder of the Boston Jewish Outdoors Club and product management consultant. He is a graduate of Yeshiva University’s Syms School of Business with a degree in Marketing.
Amanda Ralph Product Management Consultant
Amanda is an experienced product management leader with over 20 years of experience in product portfolio management and innovation generating significant revenue and market share growth. In a career spanning a range of corporate and not for profit sectors within Australia and the Pacific Islands, Amanda has championed organisations to embrace product and service innovation opportunities. In her most recent role, Amanda spearheaded the Corporate and Overseas portfolios for Australia’s largest private health insurer, Medibank. Amanda is passionate about customer led product design and in product prototyping to deliver best in market products and customer outcomes. Amanda has a Bachelor of Economics and a Master of Arts (Asian Studies) from Monash University. She is a University of Melbourne Asialink Leadership Fellow and Asia Education Foundation Literacy Ambassador. Amanda lives in Melbourne with her family and in her spare time likes to explore all things cooking related (with a dose of the gym thrown in to try and work it all off!)
Adrienne Tan CEO, Brainmates
In 2004, Adrienne Tan co-founded Brainmates with Nick Coster. As the Brainmates CEO, Adrienne draws on 20 years of senior Product Management experience gained at The Microsoft Network, Telstra BigPond and AUSTAR. Adrienne has a Masters of Economics (Social Science) with distinction from The University of Sydney. She majored in Industrial Relations in her undergraduate degree. Her other academic pursuits include lecturing at the University of Technology Sydney in Information and Interaction Design and co-authoring a chapter in the book Digital Experience Design. Adrienne recently contributed to two Product Management books; 42 Rules of Product Management and the 42 Rules of Product Marketing.
Dominic Gadoury Director Product Management, ADP
Dominic is the Director of Product Management at ADP’s (Automatic Data Processing) New York City based Innovation lab. In his role in this lab of ~100 employees Dominic leads (and geeks out) in the fruition of roadmap deliverables for Employee Engagement, Analytics and Workforce Management solutions. Dominic has been in various product owner roles at ADP for the last 14 years including ADP’s creation of an employee mobile app that is actively used by nearly 2 million employees worldwide. Dominic was also a key player in helping ADP transition from a waterfall SDLC to agile in less than 2 years time. Dominic has a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts.
Vikas has over 15 years of experience in Telecom/IT industry with over 10 years in the field of Product Management. Vikas started his career as software developer with Siemens. After doing IT consulting for some time he moved into Product Management at Lucent Technologies and held various roles developing and launching multiple telecom software and hardware products. He led a large, multi-location product team in developing a new mobile technology that provides voice (VoIP) and data services over Satellite to phones of size comparable to traditional cellular phones. Currently, Vikas is a Product Management Leader at Alcatel-Lucent bringing 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi capable Small Cells to marketplace. Vikas did his Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Information Systems from XLRI Jamshedpur, India. He did his Bachelors of Engineering (Honors) in Electronics and Communications from Delhi Technological Institute (formerly Delhi College of Engineering) Delhi , India.
Ari Tiktin Mobile & Emerging Media Product Director, CNBC
Ari is an award-winning executive who has led cross-functional teams to launch dozens of multiscreen products for premier consumer brands. He is currently the product head for a healthcare startup aiming to introduce innovative solutions to help parents with young children. Previously, Ari launched WebMD’s mobile web business and grew it to 23+ million monthly unique visitors. Prior to that, he launched Discovery Mobile which included two-dozen mobile web sites, smartphone and tablet applications.
Jonathan Berg Director of Product Management, Schoology
Jonathan is Director of Product Management at Schoology, a fast growing startup in education technology, and he is excited about how technology is unleashing the future of education. Prior to Schoology Jonathan held a variety of product roles in web and mobile. From head of product at an early stage startup to managing global web properties at American Express, his career has taken him to the UK, France and back to New York. A hands on product leader, Jonathan relishes close collaboration with design and engineering teams. When digging into a new challenge, he starts by establishing a long range product vision, then ruthlessly prioritizes opportunities and features to find the sweet spot between customer needs and business strategy. When he’s not building products, Jonathan enjoys rediscovering suburban life with his wife and two kids.
Felix Sargent Product Manager, Bloomberg
Felix works at Bloomberg as a Product Manager for their Corporate Compliance suite. Having been a support person out of college, he transitioned into operations, then programming, then into Product Management. He finds the diverse background helps him communicate effectively to build good software. When he’s not doing product management, he trains for long distance cycling, and dreams of opening a tiki bar.
Krishna Madhuvarsu Director of Product Strategy, Oracle Inc.
Krishna enjoys creating new products and works at the intersection of the technology, design and strategy. Krishna believes in “Mobile and Social eating the world” and helps enterprise customers to make use of technology to increase their productivity. Krishna spent several years in building Platforms and brought scalability to several products. Previously, he started his career as a software engineer in embedded systems and moved to application software before venturing into Product Management. Krishna has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and an MBA in entrepreneurship and marketing. Krishna is an author, enjoys writing blogs and tutorials on anything technology.
Ian Multon Product Manager, TouchTunes Interactive Networks
Ian Moulton has over 10 years of experience in digital product management. He began his product work at Broadcast Interactive Media, where he launched a video publishing platform for broadcast news sites. He later joined the Associated Press, where he managed AP’s Online Video Network, as well as AP’s YouTube channel. Ian is currently a product manager at TouchTunes, where he led a design engagement and development effort to create a new user interface for over 60,000 digital jukeboxes. Ian loves capturing learnings from users, even when they are proving him wrong. Ian has a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University. When not doing product management Ian enjoys playing the guitar, hiking and mountain biking.
Addi Regev Director of Product, Outbrain
A passionate customer advocate and result-driven executor with deep mobile expertise, Addi is leading teams in creating consumer and business digital products, for startups and Fortune-500 companies alike, for more than a decade. In her current role, as Director of Product at Outbrain, Addi is re-imagining a content-marketing platform. Previously Addi was theProduct Manager behind the redesign of the American Express mobile apps and before that she managed a startup that focused on mobile marketing and content delivery. She also provided strategic advice to Fortune-500 companies as a Management Consultant. Addi started her career trying her hand in customer support, QA, project, sales and marketing management before finding her passion in product management in startups that focused on mobile and its application in business settings. Addi holds an MBA from the University of Michigan, and a BA in Occupational Therapy from Tel Aviv University.
Dan Mason Head of Product, People Magazine
I am a digital product executive and engineer with 15+ years experience in product development, with a focus on media, advertising and emerging platforms. I know what it takes to innovate and break new ground, and I have an unrelenting focus on my customers, who are always right! I have a wide range of experience in product, tech, and strategic business development. I have built and managed Agile teams from both the product and engineering perspective; I have built products in house, with offshore teams, with partners and through acquisition. I strongly advocate a Lean, customer-driven product process and embrace analytics and data-driven experimentation. I have deep domain knowledge in mobile, advertising, real estate, SaaS, video, TV, sports, and news, and I am a fast learner who enjoys the challenge of developing new expertise.
Marc Wendell Director of Product Management, Worldnow
Marc Wendell currently is Director of Product Management at Worldnow where he oversees day-to-day product development and product strategy. Prior to Worldnow, Marc held a number of senior-level roles in product development were he facilitated the execution of a number of different products across a broad spectrum of industry verticals. His expertise includes product development and customer experience across various platform experiences. His industry experience includes media, start-ups, publishing, financial services, interactive agencies, tier 1 research intensive academic institutions and the stock media industry.
James Alexander Founder and Head of Product, Vizibility
James builds products and services which delight customers and differentiate companies. He recently sold his third start-up, Vizibility, an enterprise-class digital business card solution. Vizibility is a SaaS delivered service in the mobile wallet ecosystem and received outstanding reviews and recognition, including 4 stars by PC Magazine. As a successful technology entrepreneur of three start-ups (with two exits), and as a product management executive at Adobe for seven years, he has led cross-functional teams through every stage of the product life cycle. James has held responsibility for $100M+ productportfolios and managed both small teams and large organizations. He has worked on four continents and localized products and services for 27 countries. James holds an MBA from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and has been awarded 12 patents.
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community.
Each week we highlight some of the recently posted openings. Check out this week’s newest, below…
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community.
Each week we highlight some of the recently posted openings. Check out this week’s newest, below…
Over the course of the night a few of the highlights were…
Featured Product: Apploi exploring the product, its challenges and successes, from love of bread to design sprints (thanks to Tom Gebauer)
Product in a Service Driven Landscape from mindsets to customers
The Product Groupmeet-ups are an opportunity for Product People (managers, strategists, marketers, etc.) to come together to meet, interact, and network in a roundtable setting. It’s awesome to meet fellow Product People in a laid-back, conversational gathering.
If you are a Product Person and are interested in having your product featured or participating as a featured guest expert at an upcoming meetup of The Product Group, contact me(or email at jhorn (a-t.) tpgblog DoT com).
I am looking forward to seeing everyone at our next meetup…
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community.
Each week we highlight some of the recently posted openings. Check out this week’s newest, below…
If you are a great product person looking for a great product job, or vice versa, check out our job board. Thousands of employers across all areas of product, from management to design, from digital to physical, are looking to fill positions from our community. 
![TBPP2016_alt-abrv-114_thumb2_thumb_t[1]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/tbpp2016_alt-abrv-114_thumb2_thumb_t1.gif "TBPP2016_alt-abrv-114_thumb2_thumb_t[1]")
As product managers, we are tasked with managing stakeholder expectation throughout the lifecycle of our products. In doing that, one must master presentations so they are always prepared to speak on behalf of their product. It doesn’t matter if you are producing fire hydrants or making a mobile app, solid presentation skills are required for the success of your product. During this mentorship, I learned and demonstrated in my current role, the presentation strategy AIM. A highly effective and easy way to create presentations based off of three key principles: Audience, Intent and Message.
Sam recently completed his first full-time role as a product manager at the publishing company Rodale. Previously, he worked as a photographer, photo editor and freelance product consultant while gathering the skills to transition into a new career in product management. At the moment, Sam focuses on mobile and web products, working to help brands develop a larger reach in the mobile world.
In our a recent live stream from one of our mentors of 
Jordan Bergtraum
Ladislav Bartos
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Adrienne Tan
Dominic Gadoury![Vikas-Batra_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thumb[2]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/vikas-batra_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thumb2.jpg "Vikas-Batra_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thumb[2]")
![Ari-LinkedIn_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thum[2]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/ari-linkedin_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thum2.jpg "Ari-LinkedIn_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thum[2]")
![Jonathan-Berg_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thu[1]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/jonathan-berg_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thu1.jpg "Jonathan-Berg_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thu[1]")
![Felix-Sargent_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thu[2]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/felix-sargent_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thu2.jpg "Felix-Sargent_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thu[2]")
![Krishna-Madhuvarsu_thumb2_thumb_thum[1]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/krishna-madhuvarsu_thumb2_thumb_thum1.jpg "Krishna-Madhuvarsu_thumb2_thumb_thum[1]")
![Ian-Moulton_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thumb[2]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/ian-moulton_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thumb2.jpg "Ian-Moulton_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thumb[2]")
![Marc-Wendell_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thum[1]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/marc-wendell_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thum1.jpg "Marc-Wendell_thumb2_thumb_thumb_thum[1]")
![James-Alexander_thumb2_thumb_thumb_t[1]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/james-alexander_thumb2_thumb_thumb_t1.png "James-Alexander_thumb2_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
![TBPP2016_alt-abrv-114_thumb2_thumb_t[2]](https://theproductguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/tbpp2016_alt-abrv-114_thumb2_thumb_t2.gif "TBPP2016_alt-abrv-114_thumb2_thumb_t[2]")
