The best product people are the ones that are insatiably curious, who want to learn more, who want to get better at all aspects of the job. In many businesses this can be hard – there’s not always an established culture, or people around who have done the job before and can help upskill the teams around them. As Head of Product at Founders Factory, a corporate-backed accelerator and incubator for early-stage startups based in London, Seb Sabouné works with founders and teams to become more product led. He joined us to chat about how to approach training (for yourself and for others), how to quantify the value you get, and how to focus on the right things.
With over 10 years of experience in product development, previously at both Elsewhen and ustwo, he has build product for both big corporates as well as startups, and he brings insights into what he believes is the future of product management.
Quote of the Episode
A lot of the time the way that we teach – or get people to be more comfortable – is by trying to explain how you might feel when things go wrong, or that things are going to change – and that that’s OK.
Listen if you’d like to learn more about
- Product Coaching
- Coaching Frameworks
- Product Thinking
Links mentioned in this episode
- Follow Sebastian on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Sebastian’s page at Founders Factory
- Sebastian’s Product Coaching Framework piece at Mind The Product
Hosts
The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.
Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. Now the Product Director at Symec, Lily also runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media and entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. Now a trainer, Discovery and Leadership consultant, he’s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), the Business of Software, Turing Festival, a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.
Music
Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page
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