Rocketship.fm

Today, we’re going to dive into the concept of Product Leadership, and specifically the differences between Product People and Product Leaders. We'll go over proven methods to move up inside of an organization and common pitfalls to watch out for once you've been given the opportunity.  Here to discuss with us is Rich Mironov. Rich coaches product executives, product management teams and agile development organizations.  He also parachutes into software companies as interim VP Products/CPO to address company-level product/market/engineering/revenue issues.  A seasoned tech executive and serial entrepreneur, Rich has been the “product guy” at six start-ups including as CEO and VP Product Management.  

Today we talk with Ash Maurya, the creator of the Lean Canvas and most recently the author of Scaling Lean. His posts and advice have been featured in Inc., Forbes, and Fortune and we're incredibly excited to share his insights with you on scaling through the lean methodology.

On today's show we talk with Clive Thompson, the author of "Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World." We discuss why Coders were such a focus for him, and given all the recent news about Facebook and our personal data, it wasn't hard to figure out why he has such an intense focus on them.  Data and surveillance are one of the biggest issues of our time. Product teams, product leaders, coders, designers, data scientists - these are the people that can help fix it. They are the people that can help move is in a better direction.   I hope you’re able to walk away from this today and feel comfortable that what you’re working on, what you’re bringing into the world, has a net positive impact for the greater good. You can check out Clives book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-World/dp/0735220565/

Well, we’ve taken quite a trip these past few weeks, haven’t we? This whole Blockland journey took us to quite a few places.  Starting outside of Cleveland, in places like Miami, Puerto Rico and Las Vegas. Then into the boardrooms of Cleveland’s civic elite and to the Convention Center where Blockland’s Solutions conference took shape. Then the luxury car dealership where the architect of this whole thing makes himself at home. But, where does this journey take us all next?  Not just for the listeners of this series,  but the people in Cleveland who are on this Blockland journey? We’re going to try to figure that out today on the finale of this special series on Blockland.

As we drive along this nondescript suburban street -- dotted with your standard fare of KFC’s and Pizza Hut’s and CVS Pharmacies, it seems like most other main suburban neighborhood thoroughfares here in Northeast Ohio.   But as we pull in to the Mercedez Benz of North Olmstead dealership, I wonder to myself if everybody else knows that there’s something a little special to this place. I don’t mean the shiny glass structure itself or the ambient waterfall that cascades inside.  That’s probably par for the course for any luxury car dealership. But… do people know that hidden inside this bastion of classy automobiles sits the biggest advocate of bringing Blockchain to Northeast Ohio? I do.

Today we’re going to let the skeptics speak. Today we’re going to hear from people who are doubting the initiative.  People who have questions. People who may not be buying into all that Blockland has to sell.

As we're sitting here taking in the first ever Blockland Solutions conference, it’s pretty wild to see what’s unfolding.  To many, it might not be that mind-blowing. It really seems like… plenty of other professional conferences. It’s in a nice convention center.  The coffee and snack stations scatter abound. There are panels… and main-stage speakers. And a mix of suit-and-tie types and hoodie-clad, beard-faced technologists wandering around.

In the first few episodes of the Blockland series, we learned a bit about what the Blockland initiative was all about, why it started and who started it, and even rewound a bit to learn a bit more about Blockchain in general… and its impact on businesses. But today, we dive into Blockland, the initiative.  There are so many tentacles to this so… it’s best you just buckle up and get ready… to enter… Blockland.

Everpedia is the world's largest encyclopedia on the blockchain. It's decentralized, democratic, censorship-resistant and offers a financial incentive for those participating in creating and editing content.  It also has a secret weapon. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger joined the company in 2017, nearly 3 years after it's formation after spending much of his life pursuing a high-quality crowdsourced database of knowledge. Sanger said, "Everipedia is the encyclopedia of everything, where topics are unrestricted, unlike on Wikipedia." Today on the show we discuss the evolution of Everpedia, how building on the Blockchain creates a better encyclopedia and what challenges they will face by allowing financial incentives into the crowdsourced knowledge eco-system. 

Blockchain is a system in which a record of transactions that are maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network.

The constant fluctuations of the Bitcoin market. One minute it’s going to the moon, the next it’s tanking and will never come back. This isn’t a story all about Bitcoin, because as Bitcoin and it’s siblings Litecoin, Etherium and the thousands of other alt-coins that have come and gone over the years, the underlying technology, Blockchain, is becoming the real star of the show with Banks and Financial institutions around the world researching how they can best use this technology.

Something is happening in Cleveland, Ohio. A movement, unlike anything it's seen before, has taken over the city. Cleveland’s top business leaders, civic leaders, politicians and lawmakers, people running educational institutions have all dedicated to making Cleveland the Blockchain Capital of the world. And this initiative, as strange as it may sound, is led by none other than a local car salesman, Bernie Moreno. On season six of Rocketship.fm, we're taking you behind the scenes of a movement that's happening inside the civic buildings all over Cleveland, a movement to reposition this blue-collar city into a global technology center. Season six is the story of Blockland.

Something is happening in Cleveland, Ohio. A movement, unlike anything it's seen before, has taken over the city. Cleveland’s top business leaders, civic leaders, politicians and lawmakers, people running educational institutions have all dedicated to making Cleveland the Blockchain Capital of the world. And this initiative, as strange as it may sound, is led by none other than a local car salesman, Bernie Moreno. On season six of Rocketship.fm, we're taking you behind the scenes of a movement that's happening inside the civic buildings all over Cleveland, a movement to reposition this blue-collar city into a global technology center. Season six is the story of Blockland.

One of the most import roles as a product owner is building the right product team. In part two of this two-part mini-series, we take a look at what high performing product managers and product leaders are doing inside of their organizations to manage and lead a high-performing product team. In this episode, we dive into the strategies that managers use to lead their teams successfully. It's not easy and we're not all Steve Jobs (although most of us think we are from time to time) so what do high performing managers from Facebook and Box do?  That's the question we answer in this episode.  Featuring Alison Go, PM at Facebook, Austin Bales, Director of Product Design at Facebook, Sam Goertler PM at Kickstarter, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, VP of Product Marketing at Facebook, Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer & Chief Strategy Officer at Box, & Sebastian Speier, Director of Design at Nike.

We welcome Jeetu Patel, the Chief Product Officer, and Chief Strategy officer at Box to the show today.  He leads the company's overall product and platform strategy, driving Box's long-term roadmap and vision for cloud content management in the enterprise. Have you ever wondered how companies like Box approach emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence? Well, today is the day you find out. He also gives amazing advice on building effective product teams, the magical number for the size of a product team, when and how you should decide to build a new feature and how Box guards against disruptors.