The Product Coalition

MARCH 10, 2024

While it’s true generally as an approach to life (in psychology it’s called an internal locus of control), today I want to talk about its implication when you create your strategy. Strategy Is a Choice It is very tempting to approach strategy as if there is a right answer that we only need to find. But strategy isn’t as simple.

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The Product Coalition

JUNE 18, 2023

It took me time to understand that I need to present myself as a product leadership coach and product strategy expert rather than a consultant. One other misunderstanding that was much harder for me to explain was related to how people understood the word ‘product’ in what I do. We are here to help you.

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The Product Coalition

MARCH 27, 2022

Creating a Solid Product Strategy One of the CEOs that I work with as part of my consulting services recently reflected with me on the process we went through for creating their new product strategy. It was a lengthy process, with quite a few trials and errors, until we found the right strategy.

Customer Experience 140

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The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 11, 2023

They need your help in the form of a clear value proposition and product strategy. It usually doesn’t include a good overview of the product strategy, the value proposition, the detailed customer persona, and why it makes sense for the customer to actually buy the product. Guess what? Talk to us.

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The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 11, 2023

In part two of this summary, I am moving to talk about strategy and leadership insights. Today I will focus more on leadership and strategy. Strategy and Focus It almost doesn’t matter what drove a company to work with me originally, at some point we get to strategy. Strategy is so hard to craft and too often overlooked.

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The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 11, 2023

We were trying to catch up and close the timeline gaps SARS has created for an important tech transfer project with a Chinese startup. You need to have a product strategy. As I said in the past, a product strategy has to make sense to you before you invest anyone else’s work in it. It always helps.

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Leadership User Testing Customer Experience Customer Feedback 78

The Product Coalition

AUGUST 16, 2020

SplitShire-London-Collection-210062 When I work with companies on sharpening the value proposition and refining the product strategy, one of our information sources for the process is their existing customers. Who they are, why they chose to work with the company, what value they are getting out of the product, etc.

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User Testing Customer Experience Customer Feedback Product Strategy 171

The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 19, 2021

The first product manager in a startup is a critical role with immense impact on the startup’s success?—?both Photo by Tolga Ulkan on Unsplash When I joined Twiggle as their first VP Product I was the thirteenth employee. Shortly after I started, the CEO surprised me by saying I should hire a product manager.

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Product Management Product Manager User Testing Weak Development Team 171

The Product Coalition

OCTOBER 18, 2020

A good product strategy helps you to acquire happy customers and retain them over time. Here is how product strategy helps you overcome them. Photo by Braden Collum on Unsplash Working on product strategy is an iterative process. At this point, the importance of the process is very clear.

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The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 31, 2023

I recently started working with a new client on product transformation. It’s a mature startup, with a number of products in the market, a leader in some categories and building up nicely in others. At some point I gave the CEO homework: to analyze all the recent deals of one of the products and try to find patterns.

User Testing 108

User Testing Workshop B2B Leadership 108

The Product Coalition

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash Most of the CEOs I work with, understand that the role of the product leader is very important. Whenever I talk to startup CEOs, especially first-timers, the discussion on product goes immediately to UX and wireframes. It is much closer to the company strategy in how broad it is.

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The Product Coalition

JUNE 9, 2023

It’s nearly impossible to do, and even if you can do it, in most cases your startup won’t survive the time it would take in order to see its fruits. Each level requires a different marketing strategy. While the marketing strategy is typically not for you as a product leader to define, the unique value proposition definitely is.

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The Product Coalition

MARCH 12, 2023

It’s Not About the Plumbing When we work with startups it’s usually a long-term relationship. We help them with their product strategy as well as building a strong product organization. That, of course, includes helping them hire the right people, and specifically the right product leader.

User Testing 114

User Testing Product Research Consulting Leadership 114

Product Innovation Educators

APRIL 17, 2023

Paul acquired the breadth of experience through his leadership roles at San Francisco Bay Area startups and high-growth companies. He helps rapidly scaling early-stage startups craft their Product Strategy and everything related to it. That’s the high-level strategy for the company.

Customer Experience 95

Customer Experience Leadership Startups Engineering 95

The Product Coalition

JULY 30, 2023

A generic segmentation like “startups of 50–100 people” is not good enough for two reasons. Once you understand what is it exactly, you can formulate a strategy. For example, my strategic consulting clients usually need me when they realize they have a product strategy problem (even if they don’t call it that way).

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User Testing Customer Experience Webinar Consulting 113

The Product Coalition

JULY 2, 2022

The Israeli Perspective In London, I felt that Israel truly is the startup nation. They are not even Amazon and Google which were born as tech product companies and are now large corporates (that have major product centers in Israel as well). Or perhaps that’s my own perspective because of the customers I’m working with.

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Workshop Customer Feedback Technical Review Product Research 122

Product Management University

JUNE 5, 2023

Free eBook: Top-Down Customer Discovery – Uncovering THE BIG WHY Sample Portfolio Vision “ To help our customers grow revenue, market share, wallet share and customer retention. If you’re thinking parent-child relationship between portfolio vision and product vision, you’ve got it! “ Let’s give it the acid test.

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Vision Product Research User Testing Customer Experience 130

The Product Coalition

FEBRUARY 18, 2023

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash As a proud member of the startup nation, startups are all around me. Every now and then, early-stage founders approach me to hear about their product idea and give them feedback. It’s no wonder there are many tools that try to resolve this. Here’s why.

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Data Visualization Customer Communications Feedback Software User Testing 140

The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 5, 2021

Last month, for example, I met a startup, which had a good indication from the market that their initial product direction was viable. The people they talked to wanted to test their product, they loved what they saw, and were intrigued to hear and get more. You need to create your vision and define your strategy accordingly?—?simply

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The Product Coalition

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

When you consider the ideal customer profile, you need to get yourself into your customers’ world and deeply understand what they need to go through before they are ready to buy your product. They take an opportunity to grow in their career, say as the CPO of a startup or as a Director in a larger company. 50 people or so?—?the

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User Testing Customer Experience Product Research Startups 145

The Product Coalition

JANUARY 13, 2021

When I first started teaching product management (at IDC’s Adelson School of Entrepreneurship ), I needed a way to break down strategic product thinking into distinct components that would help people understand and focus on one aspect each time. It is the separation that helps you sharpen your strategy. How detailed?

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The Product Coalition

JANUARY 4, 2021

at the product level, the solution level, or the problem level (that is, you are tackling a problem almost no-one else does). Each level requires a different marketing strategy. While the marketing strategy is typically not for you as a product leader to define, the unique value proposition definitely is.

Education 148

Education Marketing Weak Development Team Advertising 148

Bain Public

APRIL 17, 2020

Career Development Program Details: Whether you are a Founder or part of the Product, Engineering or leadership team, you need actionable strategies and impactful techniques that drive results today. Targeted to startups, scale-ups or SMB organizations It takes place over 12 weeks, live via Google Meet.

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The Product Coalition

MARCH 19, 2023

Level 3: Deciding What to Draw When I joined Twiggle — a seed stage startup — as the VP of Product, I thought I was extremely ready. I already led a large product group at eBay and knew I would manage a much smaller one at Twiggle so this was also a no-brainer. Are you up for the challenge?

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User Testing Framework B2B Document 149

The Product Coalition

MARCH 24, 2018

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash Defining of how people will get in touch with your product is something every startup should do very early on. This is essential, because you need to know how you’ll communicate with your potential customers and how your marketing and content strategy will look like. I’m also on Twitter.

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Customer Communications User Testing Education Engineering 60

The Product Coalition

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

Photo by Pedro Figueras from Pexels As the importance of product management for business success becomes clearer, many startups give one of the founders the product leadership role. It can be a full-blown CPO responsibility or a CTO who runs both product and technology. Don’t worry, you are still needed.

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CTO Coach Reporting Tools CTO Management 97

The Product Coalition

JANUARY 24, 2021

Photo by Ono Kosuki from Pexels OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a useful tool for goal setting and team alignment, and in recent years they have gone from being used primarily in quantitative parts of the organization (namely sales and marketing) to being very popular in product and technology as well.

Analytic Tools 188

Analytic Tools Customer Experience B2C Enterprise 188

The Product Coalition

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels “Do I really need to start measuring everything that happens on the product?” the CPO of a startup that has a great product in the market asked me with a sigh. At the product level, I highly recommend starting with the startup metrics for pirates framework (AARRR).

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Data Visualization User Testing Dashboard Customer Experience 89

The Product Coalition

JULY 5, 2020

A few months ago, just before the COVID-19 outbreak in Israel, I reviewed dozens of startups and had to rate them based on predefined criteria, recommending some of them for the program and ruling out others. One of the questions the applicants needed to answer was about the impact their startup has already made. It sounds irrational?

Customer Experience 78

Customer Experience User Testing Technical Review Startups 78

The Product Coalition

JANUARY 16, 2022

Understand Your Core Values The product roadmap in a product company (as opposed to a services company, for example) sets the strategic direction of everything going on. In startups, it is actually the company roadmap. As such, it cannot be limited to include only the product-related parts like features and product KPIs.

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Roadmap Data Visualization Customer Experience User Testing 158

The Product Coalition

SEPTEMBER 11, 2022

Working in the startup nation, many of the product leaders I coach?—?either used to be engineers or even mathematicians before they shifted to product. My free e-book “ Speed-Up the Journey to Product-Market Fit ”?—?an The whole point in math is that there is a clear set of rules that defines the universe.

Customer Experience 119

Customer Experience Definition User Testing Engineering 119

The Product Coalition

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Many times along the way you will learn that the value you thought they needed isn’t what they really need and that even if it is your product doesn’t truly deliver it the right way. Other than crystalizing your assumptions and strategy, this stage is about results. And the best evidence is happy, paying customers.

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User Testing Product Marketing Marketing Customer Experience 78

The Product Coalition

JULY 31, 2022

One of the hardest challenges of any product and any startup is of course reaching product-market fit. My free e-book “ Speed-Up the Journey to Product-Market Fit ”?—?an an executive’s guide to strategic product management is waiting for you at www.ganotnoa.com/ebook Originally published at [link] on July 27, 2022.

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User Testing Product Marketing Marketing Customer Experience 128

Mixpanel

JANUARY 11, 2021

We have three distinct products: the ad-supported video streaming platform, which is what we started with four years ago; a subscription version of the business with ad-free content; and exclusive original content. We also have a kid’s product, with ebooks, video games, audio stories, videos, movies, etc.

Data Visualization 98

Data Visualization User Testing Customer Experience Analytic Tools 98

Gainsight

JUNE 22, 2022

Losing customers slows growth, so high-growth companies focus on ensuring customers get what they need from their products post sale. Increasingly, enterprises are competing with SaaS startups focusing on after-sale customer success. Don’t focus on the entire suite of features or products right away.

Enterprise 52

Enterprise Analytic Tools Data Visualization Onboarding KPIs 52

The Product Coalition

JANUARY 2, 2022

For example, I had a participant in one of my CPO Bootcamps, a VP Product in a mature startup, who did extensive research into their pricing model. My free e-book “ Speed-Up the Journey to Product-Market Fit ”?—?an When you make your recommendation, though, make sure it is one that your CEO can actually accept.

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Management Management Research Software Product Research 137

The Product Coalition

JANUARY 13, 2021

This point is so important that I want to emphasize it once more: you can educate the market to use your product if the potential customers have a strong unmet need that your product can answer. The #1 reason that startups fail is that they make something nobody wants. It’s not about your product, it’s about their unmet need.

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