 Good to be back today. I'm going to talk about the future of product If you work in product, you are definitely at the right place at the right time This is the best time in history to build digital products And I'm not saying this just because we are in New York surrounded by thousands of product leaders and joined by thousand more product leaders online I'm saying this because There's over 33% of the fortune 100 companies that already have a chief product officer. I Started product school around 10 years ago when not too many people knew what product was Thank you, and I've seen this of all from like being almost non-existent Into really being at the core of some of the most strategic decisions for companies If we keep this trend We will have over 50% of the fortune 100 companies with a chief product officer next year And these companies are not just high-tech. We're talking about oil and gas financial services Healthcare product management is not just for high-tech. It's also not just for New York or Silicon Valley It's really a global phenomenon that is only getting bigger Long gone are the days where the highest ranked product person in the organization Would report to a chief marketing officer or a chief technology officer Now we have our very own seat at the table in a chief product officer In fact, can I get a raise a hands raised for all the CPOs in the room? You go you guys are living the way the other incredible Phenomenon that we are seeing is that this role of the chief product officer is creating a domino effect That is trickling down the entire career ladder all the way down to aspiring product managers as an example NBA students are choosing careers in product over consulting or finance even in New York Absolutely incredible. It didn't happen like a few years ago But how did we get here? Well, if you were to use the word product in a year 2000 early 2000s Like most people would probably associate that with something physical only And it's at the beginning of the 2001 when the agile manifesto was released That introduced a new way of thinking about product product could be something digital and the way of building something Digital could be faster to incorporate feedback from the user in a more iterative iterative way 2003 Google launched the very first product school It was a private product school just for their employees because they realized that there was a huge supply problem There weren't really places out there training pms so they decided to create a solution to their own problem and train some of their engineers into product managers today There are many other companies that have their own associate product manager programs And of course we have a public product school as well few years later we saw how the rise of the Product CEO became a thing Companies such as Microsoft or Google Appointed their current CEOs and surprise surprise those CEOs were Product executives so the rise of the Cpo is not the end now. We are seeing product CEOs YouTube appointed current CEO and that person was the former Cpo It's really a thing a lot of startup founders are coming with a product background That's really changing the culture for entire organizations Another thing that is supporting this trend is that now there's a lot of technology built for us as product people In fact, if you look behind you at the lobby We have over 20 partners these companies started in the early 2010-2012 and today many of them are public companies or unicorns They are creating technology. They're creating tools for product managers now. We don't need to have a Technical background in order to get data. We don't need to have a design background in order to create prototypes We don't need a marketing background in order to create roadmaps now We don't have to piggyback on tools created for other functions We have our own technology which is empowering a whole new generation of builders now those builders product people as much more self-sufficient 2009 might remember venture capital firm and recent Horowitz released an article titled software is eating the world This is when they started saying that internet was not just going to be a place for content consumption But a place for transaction where individuals and companies were to be able to do business and This year McKinsey released another report saying that Every company is a software company. So boy, they were right now. It's not about what is your final product It's not about what you are selling to your end user It's really about the technology that is powering the entire internal collaboration and distribution of such final product So yes every company is a software company Few years later. We also sell in 2016 The term product led growth was coined by another venture capital firm called open view Product growth is much more well-known today But this was another way to validate that a set of Tactics and strategies that a lot of product people had been working on for many years now had a name They had a way to be productized So now you can go to many many websites including B2B and see how they're offering free trials self-service options and many of these things that were really a closed a closed box Long-owner today's where you can only purchase something if you schedule a demo and talk to bunch of humans before you get to taste the product and Then surprise surprise again. We got hit in this case by a pandemic And the silver lining one of the silver linings was that a lot of these breakthroughs that I described were really accelerated Online became not only a channel, but the channel for companies to survive and thrive Collaboration across teams especially a remote environment became much more necessary than ever So the role of the product manager really became mainstream There are more companies than ever Hiding product managers and these training only getting bigger, but we're a second now we have an economic downturn So I also want to address the elephant in the room and try to break down some of these scary headlines that I'm sure you're aware of I'm by the way that I say this with the utmost respect and empathy I don't want to diminish everyone anyone who was impacted by some of these Economic downturn by any of the companies that had to make any hard decisions to adjust The reality is if you actually double-click on some of these headlines You realize that the product team was the least affected team by those layoffs. In fact companies such as Twitter or Amazon late of around like three four percent of their total People affected where in the product team both engineers and product people are being the least affected Roles by this because they are the builders. They are the ones who are creating value long term So you don't want to cut your long term that now The other data point is that if you Google product management jobs on LinkedIn today, you will find there is over 20 or 200,000 opportunities This is something that we should be highlighting more because yes, even though there is a Clear setback the trends can only be going more up and to the right So there are three trends that we identified that are now kind of impacting Most of the companies that are going through transformation or trying to invest more in product as a long-term mode Number one in terms of economic uncertainty Best products win having an excellent distribution is not enough You know why? Because you cannot fake an excellent customer experience This is the time where most of us are really digging deep to identify how we are spending Our money like what are we placing our bets? How is it going with every single? marketing channel so We're taking a harder look at how our teams are using certain products And if your team is actually getting value from certain products They're not going to cut that. In fact, they're going to retain that customer and potentially upsell that customer The other huge benefit to investing in an excellent customer experience even now is that those existing customers are your most cost-efficient Channel to acquire net new customers That's at the core of product led growth product led growth is about leveraging your product as an inbound channel To upsell existing customers as well as bring net new customers This is a report from OpenView where they surveyed a lot of B2B SaaS companies and realized that the companies that were implementing PLG were growing revenue 13 percent faster than companies that weren't implementing PLG At today we're in a safe space. It's all product leaders But I think it's important to remind ourselves that PLG sales team's best friend This is not about an either or decision It's not about are we sales growth and pushing from the top or are we PLG and are we pushing from the bottom? It's actually when you use both motions when you can get the best results the second trend that we noticed is that Product is getting a seat at the table as I mentioned at the very beginning But what's really the impact of this? Well, I'm sure you are familiar with this initial graph that shows how product sits at the intersection of engineering design and Marketing that's an old-school definition that doesn't fly anymore Product is literally at the center of the entire organization. It's building bigger And more relationships with many more functions such as customer success data or sales just to name a few so if we believe in Investing in our user experience I'm putting the product team in the middle then we need to support that product team because This is not just about having a CPO check a box like this is really about identifying Career growth for the different members of the product team now There is much more definition around what it would take to go from being an individual contributor all the way up to a CPO We're also seeing career ladders for individual contributors that they want to stay in touch directly with engineers designers And don't want to become people manager. So this is really the moment where our role is being Defined and officialized. So when we go to a different company, they also can have a similar understanding of what product really really means It's also taking more of a t-shape because in a product team It's not just about Having a lot of pms with different levels of seniority. That's like the vertical part of it But the the horizontal part of the T is all these new Functions these new roles within the product team that are being created to support these new relationships that are being built with adjacent teams such as product marketing Growth product product operations product analytics For example, you Google number of open jobs You put number of open jobs on LinkedIn for product marketing. See there is over 65,000 openings right now. So this is really growing across different dimensions both horizontally as well as vertically now Here's the catch In order to really power and power our product team We need to take care of our own people Retaining key product people is the name of the game in order to start thinking about retaining customers and things are not looking great out there at the recruiting space because If you look at the data in terms of how much money it would take to hire a product manager in New York It's around $300,000 if you bake in recruiting fees and ramp up time So even if you have very very deep pockets Just going out there to hire net new talent. It's not a sustainable strategy because the counterpoint with notice when we created our report on the future is that 60% of product managers today are considering to leave their companies within the next two years Just think about it. You're throwing money at the problem and still that doesn't seem to be enough It's literally another retention problem So here's a silver lining the same people that said that they're willing to leave are interested in leaving their companies Are willing to stay for at least one more year if they see investment in their own learning and development 94% of the same people So this is another report from LinkedIn that explained that even in 2023 when a lot of companies are definitely adjusting budgets They'll say in companies are increasing their budgets for learning and development 41% of the companies in 2023 are Increasing their budget in learning and development and they're making those policies much more flexible. So sending employees to a Long program in a university is not the only option for them to start acquiring skills and applying them right away So I want to leave you with one more thought here because in terms of takeaways We structure this as a loop We know that investing in an excellent customer experience Is key to win long term and that's why those companies are trying to protect their product and engineering teams as much as possible Because those teams are the ones in charge of retaining customers and leveraging such customers to bring net new customers But in order for this loop to work We also need to empower the product team product team is not a shipping Features shipping factory anymore. It's really a strategic function that is partnering directly with so many other teams that Wouldn't always end the picture such as customer success or users research Now if we really want to do this We need to retain our key talent the budget that is being now Allocated for training is not discretionary budget anymore It's strategic talent budget for our teams to grow and thrive because if you really want to take care of your customers You need to take care of your people If you want to take care of your customers, you need to take care of your people first. Thank you very much