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Mind the Product


The Product Experience features conversations with the product people of the world, focusing on real insights of how to improve your product practice. Part of the Mind the Product network, hosts Lily Smith (ProductTank organiser and Product Consultant) & Randy Silver (Head of Product and product management trainer) “go deep” with the best speakers from ProductTank meetups all over the globe, Mind the Product conferences, and the wider product community.


The Product Experience

Building the right thing is hard. Building the wrong thing is easy and costly. In this episode, Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at ReUp Education, dives deep into the discipline of continuous validation inside enterprise environments. From managing stakeholder pressure to proactively engaging customers in discovery, Jason shares battle-tested approaches for avoiding the classic trap of solution-first thinking.

Chapters

 • 0:00 – The risk of unvalidated assumptions
 • 1:02 – Meet Jason Sparks and his mission at ReUp
 • 3:02 – From college dropout to product leader
 • 5:19 – Product-market fit inside the enterprise
 • 6:03 – Why most ideas don’t need building
 • 8:10 – Misalignment: wrong product, wrong market
 • 10:05 – Executive interference and assumption management
 • 12:33 – Validation is not a one-off
 • 14:44 – Continuous discovery in practice
 • 15:38 – How to validate enterprise product ideas
 • 17:02 – Story decks, user interviews and field testing
 • 19:11 – Grading feedback and customer fit
 • 21:11 – The danger of over-friendly users
 • 23:08 – The power of early champions
 • 25:21 – Preparing for and running discovery sessions
 • 27:35 – Value testing and competitor awareness
 • 29:08 – When to walk away from the wrong customer
 • 31:17 – What happens after the meetings
 • 33:30 – The role of AI in user research
 • 35:46 – What Jason would do differently today

What you'll learn from Jason

— Validation should be continuous: One round of user feedback isn’t enough. Real product-market fit evolves through repeated conversations and iteration.

— Assumptions must be challenged: Build a culture where being proven wrong is celebrated, not feared.

— Don’t let leadership derail discovery: Product managers must set boundaries and bring clarity on the problem space before execution begins.

— Grading users is as critical as grading feedback: Identify the right customers to listen to—being nice isn’t the same as being the right fit.

— Use discovery decks to guide conversations: Jason uses bold assumptions, interactive sessions, and immediate iteration to refine ideas quickly.

— Tech accelerates, but doesn’t replace, human insight: AI tools for sentiment and semantic analysis are powerful but should supplement—not substitute—real human interaction.

Featured Links:

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

How to validate product features - Jason Sparks (Principal Product Manager, ReUp Education)

Why do great product ideas fail to gain traction? According to Elena Luna, it’s rarely about the strategy and more often about the storytelling. In this episode of The Product Experience, Elena Luneva, a seasoned CPO, GM, and Maven instructor, joins Randy Silver live from INDUSTRY 2025 to explore how product leaders can better communicate the why behind their product decisions. 

What we learned from Elena
— Speaking 'User' isn’t enough – Executives care about business impact, not just engagement metrics.
— Translate features to financials – Frame product initiatives in terms of ARPU, opex savings, or revenue impact.
— Use storytelling with data – Combine real user insights with projections to make your case.
— Seasonality matters – Product testing should account for time-of-year and market behaviour.
— Align go-to-market early – Synchronising product and sales is key to driving measurable outcomes.
— Ask better questions – Start with: What is it? Why does it matter? How much will it cost? When will we get it?

Chapters 
2:45 – The Ceiling for Great PMs
4:09 – Speaking Executive
5:22 – Case Study: Nextdoor Maps
9:52 – Translating Engagement to Revenue
10:49 – Embedding Finance into Product Thinking
12:43 – Pivoting During COVID
14:36 – Business Fluency at All Levels
16:00 – Building Context Across Teams
18:26 – The Four Questions
20:06 – Thinking in Horizons
22:43 – Shifting Accountability
26:23 – CPMO vs. CPTO
27:43 – Common Mistakes
29:42 – Seasonality & Cannibalisation
32:29 – Practical First Steps
34:21 – Credits & Outro

Featured Links: Follow Elena on LinkedIn | Elena's Substack | Industry Conference Cleveland 2025 recap at Mind The Product | Sign up to Elena's coaching course 

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Connect your product metrics to company goals - Elena Luneva (CPO and Coach)

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Dan Dalton (Director of Product Management at Sage) about the current state of product management, and how the role must evolve in today’s climate.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction: product management at a crossroads
1:00 Dan Dalton’s background and path into product
3:00 The evolution of product management: 2010 to today
8:15 Framework‐fundamentalism, the broken ladder & career expectations
13:45 Why many product careers are being set up to fail
19:20 Responding to disruption: returning to basics, focusing on impact
24:40 The role of soft skills and mindset in product leadership
28:55 How Dan’s team operates: fast prototyping, design system, code assets
31:10 Hiring and developing product talent: soft skills over tick‐boxes
35:30 AI, hype and bubbles: what product leaders need to keep in mind
40:15 The mental flywheel: pragmatism, curiosity, resilience, detachment
45:00 Wrap up & closing remarks

Featured Links: Follow Dan on LinkedIn | Sage | 'Why is everyone hating on Product Managers?' feature by Peter Yang

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

A masterclass on rapid experimentation - Dan Dalton (Director of Product, Sage)

You can’t build great products on gut instinct, and yet, according to IBM’s global study of 1,000 enterprises, 77% of organisations using generative AI aren’t seeing any financial benefit. In this episode on The Product Experience podcast, Lily Smith sits down with Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering and Design Partner at IBM, to unpack the four key traits that drive ROI in AI-powered product teams: flexibility, incremental and targeted delivery, data-led decisions, and cross-functional collaboration. 

Recorded live at the Industry conference, this conversation offers practical lessons for any product leader navigating the hype and reality of AI adoption. 

Chapters
00:00 – The danger of building on gut instinct
00:37 – IBM’s global study on generative and agentic AI adoption
01:00 – Meet Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering Partner at IBM
02:00 – Why most enterprises aren’t realising ROI from AI
04:50 – What the top-performing 20% of companies do differently
05:10 – The four key behaviours driving success
07:00 – Flexibility: adapting quickly to market feedback
08:10 – Incremental and targeted delivery — the “golden thread” principle
10:30 – Data-led decision-making versus the HIPPO effect
11:45 – Cross-functional collaboration and robust adoption
13:10 – Behavioural factors that make or break AI adoption
14:20 – Inside IBM’s “value orchestration” framework
15:10 – The Golden Thread in practice — a sticky-note story from Dallas
17:10 – Transparency and traceability in product development
18:00 – How IBM helps teams that aren’t seeing value from AI
21:00 – The paradox of moving too fast or too slow with AI
24:00 – Making the Golden Thread a living document
25:20 – Inside IBM Garage: speed of a startup, scale of an enterprise
27:40 – Why productivity savings, not hype, drive AI ROI
29:00 – How large organisations structure innovation teams
30:00 – The future: 800 million new products by 2026
31:00 – Why 95% will fail — and what the 5% will get right
33:10 – Final reflections: value, purpose and the human element

Featured Links: Follow Matthew on LinkedIn | IBM Garage | Industry Conference Cleveland 2025 recap at Mind The Product

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Four behaviours that drive successful AI products - Matthew Certner (Partner and Garage Lead, IBM)

Christian Idiodi, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, and Co-author of the valuable product book Transformed, dismantles some of the most persistent myths in product leadership. 

Drawing from his global perspective and work across Africa’s fast-emerging tech ecosystem, Christian makes the case for a new kind of leadership, one grounded in clarity, context, and radical trust.

Chapters
00:00 — The environment, not the people
02:00 — Building product leadership in Africa
06:00 — Stories of impact
10:00 — What real leadership means
14:00 — Managing minds, not hands
19:00 — The “first team” mindset
23:00 — Focus, not prioritisation
25:00 — Scaling and the myth of process
29:00 — AI and the redefinition of excellence
35:00 — Creating space for practice
40:00 — Product crits and leadership feedback
41:30 — Inspire Africa Conference

Key Takeaways
— Better outcomes start with better environments. Leadership is about designing the conditions for people to do their best work — not managing their output.
— Africa is building for Africa, by Africans. The Inspire Africa Conference is catalysing coaching, capital, and community to accelerate meaningful innovation.
— Strategy defines focus. If prioritisation is hard, the strategy probably isn’t real.
— Leadership is a different sport. Managing people’s minds, not hands, requires context, clarity, and trust — not control.
— AI won’t replace good leaders. But it might replace bad leadership. Judgment, product sense, and curiosity are the new differentiators.
— Create practice space. Growth requires safety to make mistakes, experiment, and learn — at every level of the organisation.
— Critique is culture. Teams that coach and critique together develop sharper thinking and stronger product judgment.

Featured Links: Follow Christian on LinkedIn | Silicon Valley Product Group | Inspire Africa 

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

What do great product leaders do differently? Christian Idiodi (Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group)

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sahil Jain, co-founder and CEO of Samepage.ai, about one of product management’s hardest challenges: keeping teams aligned. 

From his early career at Yahoo and AOL to founding multiple startups, Sahil shares lessons on building products that tackle “unsolvable” problems like communication and alignment. He explains why shared understanding matters more than speed, how product managers can become better storytellers, and why early-stage startups should obsess over just a handful of teams before chasing scale.

Chapters

0:00 • – Why alignment is so hard
1:14 • – Sahil’s unconventional career path
4:00 • – First foray into startups at AOL and beyond
6:50 • – Founding AdStage and lessons from raising early capital
9:00 • – Moving into product leadership after acquisition
12:53 • – On delusion, motivation, and tackling “unsolvable” problems
16:34 • – Starting Samepage.ai and the problem of information asymmetry
22:43 • – Validating the problem and testing prototypes
27:22 • – Why product managers are the perfect early adopters
29:20 • – The first 10 obsessed teams: startup focus
34:00 • – Neurodivergence, communication, and shared understanding
36:43 • – From Claude Shannon to storytelling: frameworks for better communication
39:59 • – Lessons from Duolingo on multimodal learning
41:19 • – Where to find Samepage.ai

Featured Links: Follow Sahil on LinkedIn | Samepage.ai | 'What we learned at Industry conference - day one' feature by Louron Pratt at Mind the Product

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

What obsessing over communication taught me - Sahil Jain (Co-Founder and CEO, Samepage.ai)

In this episode of The Product Experience, hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Damilola Adelekan, Lead Product Manager at Remedial Health, who discusses building pragmatic, people-centred solutions in Africa’s fragmented and under-resourced healthcare system. 

Chapters
05:30 – Early Lessons from Volunteering and Nonprofits
07:00 – Why Digitising a Broken System Isn’t Enough
10:00 – Tackling Trust, Funding, and Fragmentation in Healthcare
12:30 – Collaborating Beyond the Organisation
14:30 – Building a Full Healthcare Supply Chain
16:00 – Pragmatism Over Perfection in Product Vision
18:00 – Cross-Team Collaboration at Scale
20:00 – Structuring Product Work Across Functions
22:00 – Communications Tips for Cross-Functional Leadership
24:00 – Increasing Tech Adoption Among Low-Digital-Literacy Users
26:00 – Customer Research in Low-Tech Contexts
28:00 – Voice of the Customer: Calls, Feedback, and Sales Teams
30:00 – What Inspires a Product Manager in Nigeria?

Featured Links: Follow Damilola on LinkedIn | Remedial Health | Inspire Africa | 'How I got my job in product' feature with Damilola at Mind The Product

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Lessons from building healthcare products in Nigeria - Damilola Adelekan (Lead Product Manager, Remedial Health)

In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products. 

Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal bias with customer needs. 

He also reveals how Irembo is evolving into a super app, why sales enablement is crucial in a B2B context, and the lessons he has learned guiding teams through the move from project to product to product portfolio.

Six things we learned from Patrick

Project to product mindset: Repeat customer demand signals value, turn ad-hoc projects into structured products with identity, principles, and strategy.

Team restructuring without turnover: Shifting from project delivery to product development requires reorganising teams around capabilities.

Spinouts emerge from features: Payments and identity started as embedded features, but with scale and external demand, became standalone products.

Bias is real: Teams naturally over-index on the dominant revenue product. Separation, customer interviews, and rebranding are critical to balance focus.

Sales enablement matters: Without educating sales and customers on new platform capabilities, adoption stalls and value is under-communicated.

Leadership lesson: Product leaders must bring the whole organisation on the journey—marketing, sales, finance, and operations—not just product teams.

Featured Links: Follow Patrick on LinkedIn | Irembo | Inspire Africa 

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Why saying no to customers builds better products – Patrick Ndjientcheu (CPTO, Irembo)

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sally Foote, a seasoned product leader whose journey from product roles to C-suite commercial leadership spans Carwow, Go Compare, and The Guardian. They unpack the increasingly vital intersection between product, marketing, and sales.

Sally explains why growth is a shared responsibility, how product managers can become commercially fluent, and why understanding marketing economics is now critical. Expect actionable advice on working across functions, owning growth levers, and designing products that fuel acquisition and retention. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, there’s something in here for every product leader looking to elevate their commercial impact.

Key Takeaways:
— Modern product managers must understand marketing funnels, ROI, and acquisition costs to create scalable impact.
— Propositions beat PPC: In saturated digital channels, differentiation must come from product innovation.
— Stop the handoffs: A strict separation between product, marketing, and sales creates missed opportunities and inefficiencies.
— Product roadmaps matter to the business: While sometimes shunned by PMs, roadmaps help align and activate sales and marketing functions.
— Product marketing isn't enough: What’s needed is cross-functional growth thinking—not just better product copy.
— B2B is a rich source of insights: Embedding PMs in sales cycles and advisory panels unlocks product innovation directly from the source.
— AI is reshaping go-to-market: From focus groups to pricing strategies, machine learning is changing how teams make commercial decisions.
— Your funnel is only as good as your data: PMs should design products with marketing data needs in mind to drive better acquisition performance.

Featured Links: Follow Sally on LinkedIn | YourRoom AI focus group | Carwow | Watch Sally's 'Maximum Possible Products' talk at #mtpcon London 2019 | Sustainable living made easy with Bower Collective 

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

How product can work better with sales and marketing - Sally Foote (Advisor, Bower Collective)

Product decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating. 

Chapters
04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay
07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share over retention curves
10:36 — When iteration is slow: prioritising problems under seasonal cycles
14:28 — BELT framework: behaviours, enduring vs transient problems, lock-ins
21:56 — Spotting enduring problems: “what will still matter in 10 years?”
24:11 — ICE framework overview for infrequent products
26:03 — Engagement: active retention, complexity, single- vs constant-touch
29:55 — Predictable vs unpredictable retention; referrals as a strategy
31:06 — Lifetime retention: seeding frequency hooks (e.g., estimates, salary data)
33:01 — Distinctiveness and brand: why CAC collapses when you own the memory
33:48 — Control over experience: monetisation through end-to-end journeys
36:13 — Research that works: ethnography, diary studies, “follow-me-home”
40:22 — Example: discovering the real tax filing pain (document collection)
43:04 — Ethics and value: “cures vs treatments”, utility vs entertainment products

Featured Links: Follow Vivek on Linke

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Retention strategies for single-use products - Vivek Kumar (Investor and Advisor, Atlys)

In recent years the Fintech industry has exploded with many product managers delving into this fast-growing sector. However, what would it be like to pack up all of your things and land a Fintech job in a completely new continent? On this week's podcast, we spoke with. Makera Kigarada, Principal Product Manager at Fintech start-up M-KOPA to hear about how he got started in the new market as a product manager, and his key lessons learned so far.
 
Featured Links: Follow Makera on LinkedIn and Twitter | M-KOPA | TechCrunch piece on African Fintech growth | Economist feature on mobile phone boom in Africa

We’re taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.
Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here.
 
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
 
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Lessons learned while working for an African Fintech company - Makera Kigaraba on The Product Experience

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