Stories From The Everyday Life of a Product Manager - Idoh Gersten, Circle CI

Product Innovation Series with Aram Melkoumov

Embracing product bias. Navigating conflicts with design teams. Directing clients that don’t have clear goals. Everything is on the table as behind-the-scenes anecdotes of client meetings and discussions are revealed.

Idoh’s main frustration with B2B SaaS companies is that they don’t talk to end-users enough. In fact, he tells the story of his time consulting for a company that has never before spoken to its end users. Tune in to find out what he discovers when he becomes the first person there to speak to an end-user - and lots of other tales from his product management escapades with many different clients.

About Idoh
Idoh Gersten is a Product Manager at Circle CI. Previously, he was Senior Product Manager at Dynamic Signal and Director of Product Management at ROBLOX among other roles. He is a law school graduate from the University of Iowa. Idoh believes that there is a universal consciousness that we collectively tap into. Also, if it were up to him all websites would be designed like Craigslist.

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 | Who is Idoh Gersten?
03:17 | Why having product bias is POSITIVE. OR Why you should have product bias.
08:54 | Should you release products that aren’t fully polished?
11:46 | Having conflicting design philosophies
15:37 | Most difficult features to work on as a product manager
21:52 | How to convince clients to prioritize workflows.
23:32 | Important product data that B2B SaaS companies skip over.
34:12 | The golden rule of shipping better products.
34:29 | The right question to ask customers (instead of asking them what they want).
35:22 | Only throw money at your product problems after achieving this.
36:46 | Is there a universal consciousness?
37:34 | Idoh’s personal goals and note to self.

QUOTES:
“One way of thinking about bias is what tradeoffs you’re making. Where on the tradeoff spectrum do you just kind of land?” [07:25]
“I think there’s a huge amount of uncertainty around plans and I think having a very high-level vision makes a lot of sense but having an extremely detailed plan that stretches out for 6 months…once things go out into the real world and hit customers, plans always change.” [08:13]

Follow Idoh:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idohgersten/