The "Productea with Leah" Podcast
Season 4 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership.
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Season 4
76: Malte Scholz: Product Management in 2024 and beyond
The dynamics of leadership in product management, the importance of a low-hierarchy organization, the challenges of founder mode, and the balance between control and empowerment.
74: Ami Vora - Unconventional Lessons in Senior Leadership
Ami Vora, CPO at Faire, brilliantly lays out a lot of concepts about how she views senior leadership:
73: Austin Hay - BS Marketing, Dogfooding and the future of CRMs
Cringe Marketing, Dogfooding, and the limitations of Hubspot and Salesforce with Austin Hay, the Co-Founder of Clarify (CRM).
72: Rand Fishkin - Why paid advertising sucks in 2024
If you spend money on paid ads, chances are that you’re being taken advantage of. The biggest providers do it to you because they can and they optimize their systems more and more towards it.
72: Rand Fishkin - Why paid advertising sucks in 2024
If you spend money on paid ads, chances are that you’re being taken advantage of. The biggest providers do it to you because they can and they optimize their systems more and more towards it.
69: Janna Bastow - The challenges and opportunities AI brings to Product Management.
What is the role of product managers in the age of AI and the potential impact of AI on roadmapping and expectation management?
68: Vijay Iyengar: Unbundling PLG and why BI tools are not good for analysis
When is PLG just a fad? Vijay Iyengar, Head of Product at Mixpanel discusses with me about the misconceptions around PLG and the role of analytics in driving business growth and why first principles is in our field the only thing we have.
67: Laura Schaffer: Layering self-serve into a Sales-led gig at Amplitude
Summary Laura Schaffer, VP Product Growth @ Amplitude shares her experience of launching a self-serve paid plan and a free plan at Amplitude, a sales-led organization. The changing landscape of selling, the power of self-serve product experiences, and the expectations of users. The conversation also delves into the tensions between sales and self-serve mo…
66: Henrique Cruz - AHA! How to define and reach User activation
Summary Activation and aha moments in product growth with Henrique Cruz, Head of Growth at Rows.com. How to find the right activation metric that predicts retention and how to iterate on the onboarding flow to improve activation. Examples of activation metrics and the challenges of tracking and improving activation. The importance of branding, the land an…
65: Guillaume "G" Cabane - The Future of Marketing in an AI-Dominated Landscape
Summary Guillaume Cabane and I discuss the future of marketing and the role of humans in a landscape dominated by AI and automation. We’re talking about what does drive marketing and sales teams, and how their future will look like. The conversation touches on topics such as product-led growth, market penetration, and the role of content marketing in eng…
64: Kristen Berman - Behavioral science and product growth
Summary Kristen Berman, the Co-Founder of Irrational Labs discusses with me the psychology behind decision-making, the importance of understanding human behavior in product design, and the limitations of traditional research methods. We are exploring the challenges of balancing friction and value in user experiences, the role of context in shaping behavio…
63: Kyle Pursell - Paths into Growth with the Head of Growth R&D at Shopify
Summary Kyle Purcell, the Head of Growth Optimization at Shopify, talks about impactful business strategies for growth. What is the challenge of moving upmarket, and the role of product-led growth in driving this success. And why cross-functional collaboration in growth initiatives is often undervalued.
62: Kieran Flanagan: The state of AI in 2024 in tech
Summary In the second conversation with Kieran Flanagan, SVP Marketing at Hubspot we talk about how we see AI really being used in tech and not just being a flashy thing you use once. From Sales, to Marketing to Product. Where are we today and where is all of this going?
61: Dennis R. Mortensen - How to win with building for productivity
Summary Dennis R. Mortensen is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of LaunchBrightly, which makes money by automating the most annoying things in our work lives (through AI). We talk about why it’s important to own your own data set for competitive advantage and the misconception that successful entrepreneurs should become investors. Dennis refuses to d…
60: Andrew Ettinger - Community-led growth in enterprise sales
Summary I talked with the amazing Andrew Ettinger from Appen about community-led growth in enterprise sales, the importance of cross-functional understanding, and the transformation of content and community in the sales process. We are also diving into the impact of AI on the industry and the need for cross-functional understanding and collaboration.
59: Dani Grant - In-person Community building in a PLG product at Jam.Dev
Summary Jam.dev created a tool called Jam that helps product managers and engineers communicate and debug bugs more effectively. The company has grown to over 100,000 users and has fixed more than 2 million bugs. They have adopted a unique approach to marketing, prioritizing community building and sharing their journey as builders. The company uses an R&D…
58: Andy Johns - Stop. Burnout within High Performers
Summary Burnout and the pursuit of external validation in tech. The pressure to constantly achieve and the belief that success will bring happiness and fulfillment are driving some of us into ruin. It almost did with Andy Johns, a former high performer and serial entrepreneur. He was never more successful or unhappy in his life until his body hit the res…
57: Erik Allebest - From 0 to 150 million ARR - The Chess.com story
Summary Chess.com has grown from being a simple chess service to a thriving 150 million ARR business. The company has focused on making chess accessible to everyone through services around a product that hasn’t changed in centuries. We touch on the challenges of scaling a company and the role of titles and leadership in an organization and how many times …
56: Jason Fried - Motivation, forming habits and calendars
Motivation, forming habits, managing time, and why it’s important to know how much you enjoy solving problems with Jason Fried. Jason is really special to me and a 2nd time guest. Whenever we go at it, there are two worlds clashing in the best way possible. We are both never content with traditions and challenge the status quo; we just often disagree on …
55: Mike Weir - Churn & Sales compensation to fight churn
Summary The conversation with Mike Weir, former CRO of G2, focused on reducing churn and driving expansion revenue. At G2, they used a churn model with 14 highly correlated variables to identify at-risk customers and prioritize actions for the customer success team. We also discussed the importance of product and marketing in customer education and engage…
54: Anthony Pierri - Positioning your B2B Startup through your Homepage
Anthony Pierry, partner at FletchPMM, focuses on messaging for early-stage B2B SaaS startups, and he brought a lot of actionable knowledge on how to do it right to the ProducTea. Summary I talk with Anthony about how to focus and narrow down your target audience and how to communicate it through your value proposition. How do we cross the chasm between th…
53: Adam Robinson - The power of LinkedIn for B2B from zero to one
Adam Robinson, CEO of Retention.com & RB2B, is the CEO who builds in public on LinkedIn and is crushing it by discovering the power of product-led growth as he is doing it. He’s very specific about what works and what doesn’t and how he got started.
52: Casey Hill - Organic Demand with Email, Newsletters and Podcasts
Casey Hill is a Senior Growth Manager at ActiveCampaign, Institutional Consultant, and Founder. More importantly, he’s incredibly actionable and smart on LinkedIn around B2B Email channels, and that’s why I wanted to have him on the podcast. Summary
51: Julie Zhuo - Authentic Leadership
The ProducTea Season 4 is here, and we’re starting it with a friend I admire and respect highly: Julie Zhuo, Co-Founder @ Sundial, Author of THE MAKING OF A MANAGER, ex-VP Design @ FB Summary Intuition and hiring is an uncomfortable topic. We should be rational, have reasons for why we choose to work with someone or not. When should we trust our gut feeli…
Season 3
50: Jamie Gier - The good side of B2B Marketing
Summary The glorious Jamie Gier, - CMO at DexCare and former Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft - and I talk about the importance of understanding the customer and the challenges of marketing in regulated industries. We also touch on how to learn marketing without being a marketer, the concept of account-based marketing in B2B, and how to connect …
49: Peter Walker - Startup funding in 2024, the year of layoffs or recovery?
Summary Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta discusses with me various aspects of startup funding and investment and whether 2024 is another year of lay offs or recovery. We explore the value of small angel investments, the obscurity of startup funding letters, the selectivity of startup advisors, and the potential of angel investments as marketing ass…
48: Eytan Bensoussan - How to prioritize and thrive
Why is ruthless focus the most important skill in B2B and why is it so hard to get right? As the CEO of a banking service that focuses on the impact of cashflow mismanagement on small businesses, he knows what it means when people only focus on what’s fun to them in a business and the price they pay for that.
47: Jeff Gothelf - Exploring OKRs, Humility, and the Real Value of Innovation in Business
Jeff Gothelf, one of the most critical voices around OKRs and being outcome-driven, sat down with me for an hour-long amazing conversation: We touch on why using OKRS is useless if you can’t admit when you are wrong and be open to feedback from your teams.
46: Melissa Kwan - Bootstrap vs VC, Mastering the startup game
Summary Melissa Kwan, CEO of eWebinar and serial bootstrapper, discusses the challenges and benefits of bootstrapping a business versus seeking venture capital funding. She is the poster child for urging founders to focus on real customer feedback and paying customers without loading up on VC problems.
45: Chris Tottman & Richard Blundell - focussing your business to success while dreaming big
Chris Tottman and Richard Blundell joined me for a fantastic conversation about how they think from their own operators’ perspective when it comes to investing in successful businesses and their people. Why you should not talk to investors who never went through the personal pain of failing and why it most of the time comes down to the basics of running …
44: Casey Winters - Thinking about your leadership career like a long term investor
A Journey I’m in the middle of as well: How to transition from senior leadership to taking care of yourself to the moment where you enter again. Casey Winters, ex-CPO Eventbrite, walks through the entire journey and how he thinks about our current markets; our technology is drastically changing while the new distribution channels have not developed yet.
43: John Cutler - Everything wrong with everything in a business
John Cutler is one of the best systems thinkers I know. Whenever we talk, there’s a beautiful meta-analysis around systems happening. Why do we work the way we do? Why can we not figure out how to run businesses efficiently if we do it so often? Why do inexperienced, brilliant people constantly …
42: Jason Fried - Finding yourself in business
Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals (Basecamp with a valuation of 100 billion, no really), is one of the most positive, successful, forward-looking people that I got to know. He doesn’t care about retros and dwelling on the past and constantly pulls forward without looking too much at what other…
41: Adam Fishman - How to get the yearly planning frustration under control
Adam Fishman and I elaborate on how we look at the inevitable yearly planning exercises from an operative and leadership perspective. How to do a rolling planning instead of doing the depressing exercise of wasting everyone’s time for a month at the end of each year:
40: Andrew Davies - Monetization & Growth for PLG from the CMO at Paddle
Andrew Davies, CMO at Paddle, on the latest learnings on monetization and pricing. A topic that is still underserved because almost no one has good, conclusive data about it. Paddle does, and Andrew is sharing a lot of actionable advice on: Willingness to pay
39: Brian Donohue - How to handle the untameable beast of AI products at Intercom
Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership. This episode gave me a lot of peace of mind. Intercom is dealing with the exact same problems that we all have when building around and with AI.
38: Mike Pilawski - Overcoming your doubts through first principle thinking
Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership. Mike, a product and growth enthusiast - used to be my manager and quickly became one of my most important mentors through the years. In this very personal episode with a lot of inside stories, …
37: Carilu Dietrich - How to think in hypergrowth environments
Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership. Carilu’s wheelhouse starts where mine usually ends. She’s an accomplished advisor to big-scale hypergrowth companies and has a way with words. How do we think of problems at different stages? H…
36: David Yockelson - How to get plg RIGHT in B2B
Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership. I followed David’s succinct learnings as a Gartner Analyst around PLG for quite some time and you’ll get to know why. He has a way with words. Talking about PLG in a B2B context usually lacks n…
35: Lloyed Lobo - Grassroots to (growth) Greatness
Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership. This episode is very difficult to summarize because it’s fil…
34: Benjamin Lamson - Selling things through a product lens and Jobs-to-be-done.
Season 3 of the ProducTea: We spill the tea on how to Go to Market through Product-led Sales and Product-led Growth in B2B and the realities of senior leadership. Benjamin Lamson had a great exit and no more sleep due to having a baby at home. His insecurities with rising success, how he manages to deal with it daily, how to structure product and sales s…
33: Alexa Grabell - VC backed accidental Product-led realities
Alexa Grabell shares honest perspectives on why she recommends every senior leader to have a product coach and how she accidentally ended up being a founder of a VC-backed gig to ...
Season 2
S2E20: Leah & Shanee Ben-Zur - How to Senior Growth Leadership
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Today with the growth wonder Shanee Ben-Zur, her unconventional career path into senior leadership at top brands like DropBox, NVIDIA, Crunchbase, and Salesforce, and her honest account for what happened to make her what she is today.
S2E19: Leah & Dave Kellogg - EIR Balderton Capital, consultant/advisor, author of Kellblog
Season 2 of the ProducTea! I’m joined by a silicon valley legend: Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital, independent consultant/advisor, and author of Kellblog. We delve into the pitfalls of building a product strategy on shaky foundations and highlight anyone’s job of designing effective ex…
S2E18: Leah & Gaurav Vohra - How to be a Growth Superhuman
Season 2 of the ProducTea! In this episode, we’re looking at how awful or delightful it is to work with your sibling. There's a deep dive into Superhuman and my disdain for email, along with the importance of creating defensible moats in product development. We elaborate on what it …
S2E17: Leah & Elena Verna - How to Solopreneur
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Elena Verna joins me to openly gossip about our diverse income streams: Advisory, consulting, and everything else in that word salad. We both dive into our different modes of engagement with an emphasis on what the ideal duration and conditions are for each of them.
S2E16: Leah & Kieran Flanagan - CMO@Zapier | ex-SVP Marketing Hubspot | Sequoia Scout | Advisor
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Kieran Flanagan is one of the most valuable things I read every day on LinkedIn, his incredible ability to connect the dots when it comes to AI and Business is the reason why it will stay that way for quite some time. He delves into the 'Content Para…
S2E16: Leah & Teresa Torres & Hope Gurion - Moving orgs and teams from output to outcome
Season 2 of the ProducTea! For the first time, I’m joined by 2 guests and it’s none other than Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion. We discuss the importance of leadership tied to people management and highlight the value of working from a unified knowledge base from C-level to operational teams. The conversation navigates through …
S2E15: Leah & Ravi Mehta - Co-Founder Outpace, Ex-EIR Reforge, CPO Tinder, Product Facebook, Tripadvisor, Xbox
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Seasoned tech leader Ravi shares his insights on founding a business amidst AI disruption, the evolving capabilities of AI in empathy, and the challenges we faced of leadership post our careers at Microsoft. We also explore the concept of dual career ladders, some crazy pivots…
S2E14: Leah & Sam Richard - Head of Growth ngrok - Self-Service and PLG Leader
Season 2 of the ProducTea! We discuss key distinctions in B2B contexts, notably between buyers and users, and individual versus team metrics. The importance of KPI design in product-led companies and why you can’t skip on this secret weapon, the critique of being in large tech corporations right now, and we explore the…
S2E13: Leah & Patrick Campbell - CSO Paddle, Founder Profitwell -
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Patrick is the real deal, he ships more than a shipyard and is vulnerable and open with what most likely makes him successful: His unbending will to build something that lasts and how it all connects together with the last step of a buyer’s journey: monetization.
S2E12: Leah & Adam Fishman - Interim Exec, EIR @ Reforge - Useless Metrics in practice
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Adam is funny, a friend, a dad from San Francisco, and does not get any kickback for not recommending JIRA. He’s also an incredibly accomplished brain when it comes to anything Growth and Growth Leadership. We have both a united love for actionable metrics and we talk about those th…
S2E11: Leah & Tanja Lau/ Founder Product Academy & Angel Investor
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Tanja is the founder of Product Academy, a Mom, an Angel Investor, and someone that wrestled control over her calendar through years of experience, burnout, and other incredible lifehacks. Her family runs on OKRs and we both dive deep into how our understanding of behavior is driving everything.
S2E10: Leah & Gagan Biyani/ Founder Maven / Udemy - How Learning changed
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Gagan is a serial entrepreneur who cannot get enough when it comes to enabling efficient learning. He co-founded Udemy and Maven, both huge learning platforms. We’re talking about the importance and future of learning and why it’s becoming more relevant than ever, how you need…
S2E9: Leah & Petra Wille / Leadership coach
Season 2 of the ProducTea! Petra is an expert in coaching and wrote one of the most popular books on the topic “Strong Product People” which is a fantastic operative, down-to-earth guide to growing future leaders. Listen / Watch it now:Subscribe to not miss out on any future episodes of the Prod…
Season 2: Leah & Elena REMASTERED Part 2: Product led Growth/Sales
This is a remastered, recut episode of a podcast we recorded in January 2023. It now sounds clearer and tight Elena Verna and I are talking about Product-led Growth in sales and all the baggage that comes with it. Also, what’s coming after product-led growth?
Season 2: Leah & Elena REMASTERED Part 1: The personal side
This is a remastered, recut episode of a podcast we recorded 2 months ago. It sounds better and everything with Elena is better anyways. Elena Verna and I are talking about the insecurity side of content production in a broader scope and our favorite topic: Impostor syndrome and how we’re deal…
Season 2 PLG - Episode 8: Leah & April Dunford
Season 2 of the Productea, product-led growth! April is an expert in positioning and she graced me with her presence to talk about it. Turns out we are quite fun together and spilling the tea with her was incredibly fun. She even managed to interrupt …
Season 2 PLG - Episode 7: Leah & Yuriy Timen
Season 2 of the Productea, product-led growth! Yuriy the advising legend. The man that crashes your browser memory because he has so many companies listed. He helped bring Grammarly to its legendary status and is an advisor to lots of prestigious companies like Airtable, Canva, Oyster, Whimsical, Flo, and many more.
Season 2 PLG - Episode 6: Leah & Blake Bartlett
Season 2, product-led growth! Another banger! Blake Bartlett is the man who’s at fault for all of this mess. He coined the term product-led growth and is a social media magician when it comes to bringing product-led growth knowledge to the hungry tech masses.
Season 2 PLG - Episode 5: Leah & Ben Williams
Season 2 is all about product-led growth! Ben Williams is a friend and an amazingly structured advisor in the product-led growth space. If you have ever wondered specifically how we structure our work, either as someone that looks into advising themselves or as a company that wonders how then this episode is for…
Season 2 PLG - Episode 4: Leah & Kyle Poyar
Season 2 is all about product-led growth! Kyle Poyar(Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged) joined me on the ProductTea to talk about anything that makes businesses and VCs tick. I love this conversation for the simplicity of how Investors make decisions and what the future of our industry might very well look like. You should leave this podcast once you listened to it wi…
Season 2 PLG - Episode 3: Leah & Wes Bush
Season 2 is all about product-led growth! Wes Bush joined me to talk about everything product-led. Wes specialized in advising companies on product-led growth through his courses and successful book. He’s a fun, authentic person to be around and I loved every minute we spent together.
Season 2 PLG - Episode 2: Leah & Dave Boyce
Season 2 is all about product-led growth! Dave Boyce started to talk to me about meatloaf. The logical follow-up to this topic is of course that he is a board member at Forrester. And a great human to be and spend time with. He advocated for PLG through Winning by Design, an am…
Season 2 PLG - Episode 1: Leah & Elena
Season 2 is all about product-led growth! And we kick it off with a banger! Elena Verna and I are talking about the insecurity side of content production in a broader scope and package everything inside of "Product-led Growth". Plus memes and trends in the industry :D It turned out to be an episode that I treasur…
Season 1:
1: John Cutler, Product-led Growth, crazy stories from the inside
John Cutler, product evangelist at Amplitude, and a class-A super mensch. Every time we talk there's something weird and beautiful coming out of it. 🙌
2: Matt Greenberg, on how to be a great Leader in tech, no filter no bullshit.
Matt Greenberg, CTO (actually CTPDDO) of Reforge. A candid account of how we are all human, what's exciting about our jobs, and the future of work.
3: Laura Erdem, an introduction to Attribution
Laura Erdem - The queen of B2B revenue attribution at Dreamdata, total mastermind when it comes to social media and selling. And a fantastic human being <3
4: Adam Fishman, How to not lose your humor and kick ass in Growth
- Adam Fishman - Reforge Partner, Exec in residence, former Lyft growth wizard, and former VP of Product at Patreon. To list all his advisory and investment positions I need a second LinkedIn subscription. His growth experience paired with a clear articulation of what's going on makes him very easy to listen to. And you should too.
5: Matthew Skelton - Why only the best organizations are worth building and how
Matthew Skelton - Director at Conflux, Co-Author of "Team Topologies" the tech organization bible. He helped countless teams not to burn their talent in bad structures. Mine included.
6: Jennifer Montague - What it means and takes to be a great VP Growth
Jennifer Montague - She calls herself a business-driven marketer. VP Growth at Onomondo. Says it like it is and is rescuing marketing into growth where it belongs. Her content is actionable, well-founded, and awesome.
7: Scott Brinker, on AI, Marketing at Scale and what to expect in the future
Scott Brinker - VP Platform ecosystems of HubSpot - the Martech man. I don't know anyone that posts so many insights about Martech which he finds himself. For some reason, he must be in love with his job. And we're here for it. I talk with Scott about AI, Marketing at scale, and my favorite topic: why MQLs suck.
8: Tim Geisenheimer, on how to know when to pull the trigger in Sales by qualifying. Product-led Sales
Tim Geisenheimer - CEO & Founder Correlated. I talk with Tim about everything related to product-led sales.
Specifics on what PQAs / PQLs can do for you and how to qualify your accounts the right way.
If you are working product, are interested in product-led growth, or toy with the idea to bring in product-led sales, this episode is for you
09: David Pereira, on the BS in product management. “Untrapping Produc Teams”
David Pereira on when product management goes wrong and it's better to be called bullshit management. When things get overcomplicated practical advice is needed and egos are hurt. In the end, it's about delivering value for the users. David has a talent of getting to the level where agile is a framework that belongs to the past. He talks about Strategy, decision making and how to deal with prioritization.