Podcast: Marketplace Thinking and Fur Babies with Christopher Nheu

Christopher Nheu (Head of Product at Australia-based Mad Paws) came to our attention after speaking at ProductTank Sydney. His presentation, Product Thinking for Marketplace Startups, does an amazing job of documenting the differences between pipes and platforms, the three fundamental forces of marketplaces, and the specific challenges of catering to customers concerned with the well-being of their fur babies.

Quote of the Episode

Once you start thinking of users as "bad actors", it makes you frame their intentions really negatively – and it makes you challenge the brand and design decisions you're making to build for this [specific] case.

Listen if you'd like to learn more about:

• The fundamental way marketplaces differ from other B2B and B2C models
• Using metrics to drive product decisions
• The theory of matchmaking
• How a marketplace deals with off-line interactions among its users
• The psychology of placing pets
• The surprising things he learned about geography as a driver
• Why Mad Paws is the Harry Potter of their user's lives
• Fur babies!

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Sangeet Paul Choudary – in the Harvard Business Review (Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy) and his personal site

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. This year Lily will be launching Productcamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

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 & 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. He's also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & 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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