 This is the age of the product leader When I started the company product school eight years ago I saw the role go from almost Non-existent to really be at the table and be part of some of the most important decisions of the company in fact One out of three companies in the fortune one hundred have a chief product officer today Let me say that again 33 percent of the hundred biggest companies in the world already Recognize the need for putting product at the table and have a chief product officer Not so long ago the highest ranked product person in the organization was reporting to a chief marketing officer or a chief technology officer So that is providing a huge shift into how companies are going about building and shipping these days The other data point that is huge for me is that over the last three years This role has grown over 41 percent. So it's only getting bigger for all of us And by the way, I'm not saying all of these just because we are surrounded by 2000 or more product leaders in London and joined by many more thousand p.m From all over the world online. This is truly a global phenomenon that is happening all around the world And today I'm going to do my best to show you how to make the most out of it for you and your teams But before we go into the Future I want to take a quick step back and show you where we're coming from Because if you use the word product in the light in the late 90s Most of people would probably associate that with something physical like a physical product Obviously that definition has evolved quite a bit 2001 the agile manifesto was launched And that was a huge Infliction point for all of us because they showed a new way of building they they show how you can build Detail products differently than physical products how you can take feedback from the customer How you can shorten some of your delivery times and iterate quickly based on feedback not so much on a whiteboard idea 2002-2003 Google launched their first associate product manager program a p.m. Program and they did it because they were hiding product managers They realized they needed more product people However, there weren't really, you know external solutions out there so they built their own a mini or an internal product school and That was also a new indicator that the market the traditional education Institutions weren't really providing the type of professionals that some of the companies were looking for So as we move forward This adventure capital firm called and recent Horowitz. It's a huge one one of the most They're one of the biggest and most prestigious venture capital firms They were they were creating 2009 and then in 2010 they launched this incredible block article became very popular was titled software is eating the world and in that article they Reference how the internet was here to stay how internet wasn't just a place for people to consume information It was also a place for businesses To do business for peers to do business. They talked about the adoption of smartphones They talked about the adoption of social media and some of the macro trends that are here today Few years later, and I'm sure you realize or you resonate with this We started seeing the evolution of some of the tools and products that product managers use on a daily basis Long gone are the days where we have to piggyback on tools designed for designers or marketers or engineers, you know Like now product managers have their own tech where they can build roadmaps. They can create wireframes They can run a test and these tools are specifically created for them in mind In fact, all of the sponsors that you see here with us today started around 2010 2015 and Now many of them are public companies or have a unicorn status So this is definitely here to stay and it's growing really fast I'm part of it is because those tools are also very very visual or even no code And that's huge for a lot of us as creators because now we can be much more self-sufficient We can get to value faster. We can build more independently without having to rely too much on additional teams 2014-2015 Microsoft and Google appointed their current CEOs and they both come from product backgrounds So this is not just about having a seat at the table It's also happening that many companies have product CEOs She's super encouraging for a lot of us because that mindset can be applied to build for your own The same way you can build at a larger organization And of course, you know, if you think about the coronavirus This probably exposed a lot of these trends and accelerated them the last time we did product on London in person was in February of 2020 and I'm so excited to be back and it looks so so different in a good way because now Remote work is not a new thing anymore. And it's proven to be working in many cases A lot of businesses in many different industries were forced to use online as as the channel to survive and thrive So we're seeing how all of this is really really empowering more creators Ultimately, we are realizing that being a software product or so a sorry a software company is not enough Now eight companies are not just tech companies companies are digital experience companies and product leaders are living the charge here We are in this age and I wanted to take a few minutes to Give you real human examples of some of these product leaders because I think it's important to put a face to the name I Had the privilege to interact with many product leaders throughout my career And I wanted to handpick these three For different reasons first of all when I use the word product leader. I mean it in the most inclusive way Leaders lead regardless of their title. This is not just for CEO's CPO's Executive vice presidents of product or other fancy titles to me a product leader is someone who has the mindset of Partnering with other people in the organization with their team outside their team in order to build and ship Something that matters to their users So Mamuna is the VP of product Shopify some of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world Alex is a principal product manager at Slack and Stephanie is the head of product at Twitch two of the things these people Having common other than building products for millions of people every day is number one They are very active contributors to our community They truly want to give back and participate as instructors because they didn't have a platform like this when they were getting started And number two is that none of them have a computer science degree And by the way, there's absolutely nothing with compute against or wrong with computer science degrees. I actually have one My point is that becoming a product leader is not so much about what you studied a few years ago In terms of your traditional degree. It's really about who you want to become When we run a report with amplitude we found out that 73% of the product managers we interviewed didn't have a computer science degree And I'm saying this because I think it's very important for us to realize that there's a lot of misconceptions around What do I have to study in college or if I do a need an MBA? Well, I might help you But that's definitely not a requirement these days in order to break or lead products so Here's the promised land if you are a product led Organization if you have some of these product talent in place, you're going to immediately notice some improvements and Number one is revenue growth Product is not just at the end of the experience behind a paywall product is at the center of the business and it's part of the entire end-to-end experience from hey I'm a visitor to this website or mobile app even before I become a customer all the way through Not only I became a customer. I'm also a super fun And I'm using this on a daily basis and I want to stay engaged so We're seeing product teams owning part of revenue. This is basically allowing users to Buy directly throughout without human interaction, but not only that Product-led growth organizations are also empowering sales teams to focus their time on Type of clients that actually require human interaction or they need some some sort of customization So sales folks you're not disappearing by any means Being in a product-led organization is actually going to make sales grow For your team as well the same way no code tools are not here to make engineers disappear by any means It's actually empowering pms to be more self-sufficient and help engineers in this case to focus on Specific parts of the product that actually need engineering So this is a report from a busy VC firm called open view where they focus on the SAS industries software service And they show that companies that are applying product-led growth Strategies are growing revenue 30 percent 13 percent faster than the ones that are not applying PLG yet The second thing we see in product-led organizations is that they're actually building deeper Partnerships with different functions within the entire company. I'm sure you're familiar with this classic Venn diagram That shows product as the intersection in between business technology and design That is not enough anymore Product if product is at the center of the whole company We are going to need to build deeper partnerships with additional functions such as customer success Data and sales just to name a few So if you zoom in into this Venn diagram How are we actually going to make it happen? Well, the actual product org is evolving as well It's looking more like a tea has a tea shape because the product team is not only made up of product managers There are business analysts. There are software engineers. They are designers Many of the roles. I consider those roles to be generalized roles now if we're saying that we need to empower the product team to really build those deeper partnerships and Be more self-sufficient to be able to ship faster and more efficiently We're also going to need to develop certain capabilities inside the product org We're seeing certain roles such as product operations product analytics growth product, yeah, I See some of these people in the room today and some of the stats are taken from Companies like Pendo or LinkedIn. We're seeing that the same way the need for chief product officers and product managers is growing The need for more of these product analysts growth PMs and prototypes people is also growing with it So I'm kind of sold because okay if I'm more P Product lead and I hire the right product leaders. It seems like I'm going to grow revenue I'm going to build stronger partnerships with different teams within the organization But Houston or London, we have a problem here Which is okay. How do we go about it? Really, you know, if you're in startup environment Maybe your company was remote first or the founder is a product CEO You can still make those adjustments or maybe you don't even need to make any adjustments because You were born with this type of mindset But obviously reality is different for every company at all stages and what we noticed is that 26% of the product managers we surveyed in our reports called the future of product management We surveyed over 5,000 product money So 26% of them said that they are considering to leave their current company within the next 12 months Some of you may be thinking well, that's not me because I run an NPS survey and my employees said that they're all happy. Well But what if it's you? What if in addition to having to worry around Hiding more product talent to become more product lead We also need to hire to replace some of the rising stars that we have in the team already and by the way Even if you just hire good PMS and you keep a leaky bucket, they might leave soon as well So the retention is real not just for users, but for team members Now here's the good news The same people that said that they were open to leaving the company They also said that they were willing to stay So 94% of the people that we surveyed in the entire in the entire report said that the number one Non-financial incentive the number one reason why they would like to stay in a company for a long period of time is if there is investment in their own learning and growth By the way, there's another misconception in product around well Training is good for the aspiring product manager or the junior person if I'm in the game already. I'm good Well, let me tell you something Yes, so many things obviously we can all learn from experience by hitting walls but failing I get it and I'm you know also doing that and I think there's certain best practices and frameworks that can be applied by just looking to our neighbor or by looking to different neighbors So the point here that I'm trying to make is that Learning or training is the bigger lever for employee retention And when you look at the market You see that the cost of hiding a product manager is around 200,000 pounds if you bake in Hiding fees and maybe the time that it takes for this product manager to be up to speed I know my slides in dollars. I I'm coming from San Francisco, but I try to do the real-time translation here And that's insane because even if you want to throw money at the problem It's just not going to be a sustainable strategy in the long term So obviously there are many flavors to how companies approach Learning and development. I mentioned Google before there are a few other companies that have their own associate product manager programs examples are Uber or Intuit or Amazon That's great for the very few people who get in Other companies give Education stipends to their employees to empower them to pick whatever type of training or solution they need They are mentoring and coaching programs. It's all good in my mind. The point is Truth is somewhere in the middle and while acquiring talent is is critical Retention is the name of the game So before I leave you I just want to share one more thought And I want to appeal to the moral Of all of you here I Want to appeal to the morale of the product leaders and I and I and I see some nervous laughs Not going to put anybody on the spot. I'm a huge fan of Star Wars and So in true Star Wars fashion You probably have the dark side of the force telling you one thing on the bright side of the force telling you another Dark side of the force is saying hey None of this stuff that you just there is new I knew it, but I'm good Because I have recruiters pinging me all the time on LinkedIn. I know that product management is not a secret anymore It's hot that more companies hiding product managers than ever before Maybe I just got a raise or a title promotion. So I can just cruise and you might be right for a short period of time The bright side of the force is saying hey There is a window You have a beautiful opportunity. This is probably the best time in history to be building digital products and If you capitalize on this opportunity For you for your team if you really care about them and invest in them They are going to take better care of your users and ultimately they are going to take better care of your business So I encourage you to consider the bright side of the force. Thank you very much