 This is the best time in history to build digital products. I'm not saying this because I'm in front of an audience of thousands of product leaders from all over the world. I started product school nine years ago, and I've seen the role of product evolve from being almost non-existent into being the most strategic function for the entire organization. Today, I'm going to share how you can make the most out of this opportunity for you and your company. Starting from the top, we have seen the rise of the chief product officer. Over one-third of the Fortune 100 companies already have a CPO. That is huge because not so long ago, the highest ranked product person in the organization would report into a chief marketing officer or a chief technology officer. Now, we have our own seat at the table. By the way, it's training is only getting bigger. We estimate that by the end of 2024, over 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies will in fact have a CPO. Let's not forget that most of these companies are actually not in high tech based in Silicon Valley, New York, or other tech hubs. Talking about companies in oil and gas, consulting, consumer package goods, healthcare, financial services, and this is because every company is a software company. This is not just for high tech companies anymore. McKinsey published this report at the first quarter of 2023. The main reason why they say that is because they are seeing how more traditional companies are trying to look like software companies regardless of the product that they are selling, because there are tremendous benefits for that. Let's start from the beginning and one of the reasons why this wasn't really a possibility in the past and why it's changing dramatically is because now there's much more education around what product is. How can people upskill? Well, product school was an example. We started nine years ago. We're also seeing more and more companies creating their own product schools to help some of their employees in engineering and other functions transitioning to product. We're seeing how more traditional universities are also creating product programs or at least incorporating product management as a subject to MBAs and other degrees that they offer. This is all good. This is leveling the playing field for more product professionals. We're also seeing more companies investing hard in digital transformation. They are using technology to reduce cost, to increase efficiencies, also to increase distribution on sales. Now online is a huge channel that can be leveraged to get to a wider audience, and that also giving them the opportunity to come up with new products, digital products or services that they can sell in addition to other physical products or part of their portfolio. Other part that is encouraging this whole new generation of creators or product people to build and build faster is that this much more technology and tools available to them and those tools are easier than ever. Long gone are the days where we would need to be an expert in CQA in order to be able to run a data analysis or we will need to know how to code in order to build something complicated. It's a whole new array of low-code or no-code tools that are helping people be much more self-sufficient. By the way, those tools are created by product managers for product managers. They are dedicated use cases for us so we can create roadmaps, run AB tests, build prototypes and do thousand other things that are required by us. Let's not forget that AI is also a tool for charging those tools. They are making them much more intuitive, much more faster, they're helping us go from data to insights and ultimately making us more and more and more self-sufficient. So again, we can build faster and hopefully better as well. But let's not also ignore the elephant in the room. We are all aware of the fact that during the first half of 2023, there's been a lot of layoffs, especially in tech. For example, companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon or Salesforce had to let go at least 10,000 people, if not more, at each of those companies. And then of course this affected other types of companies, different sizes, different industries. So it's been terrible in that sense. And I definitely say this with the utmost respect and empathy for anyone that got affected. I just want to zoom in into some of these scary headlines to show a little bit of hope, especially for people that work in product because the product roles are some of the least affected by layoffs. For example, 3% of the people that were affected by layoffs at Amazon were working in product. And 4% of the people that got affected by layoffs at Meta were working in product. That is very, very small compared to other functions such as marketing, sales, or talent acquisition, just to name a few. Why? Well, because the builders, people who are really creating that long-term value are the last ones to go. The companies know that it's absolutely critical to retain that type of talent because it pays dividends. So being in product is definitely very, very good right now. And let's also see the other side of the coin. There's still a lot of companies that are hiding product managers. Today, there are over 75,000 open jobs on LinkedIn for product-related roles. That's absolutely massive. Again, there's never been more and more companies and more and more product manager roles available in the market right now. And I believe this trend keeps going high because of all the digital transformation and all the investments that we are seeing, not just from high-tech, but also the rest of the world into being more high-tech. So let me highlight the three key trends that we are seeing for the future of product. Number one, in times of economic uncertainty, the best products win. It's not about having great distribution only. Why? Well, because now our companies are looking under the rug, trying to adjust budgets as much as possible. Our clients are also trying to adjust budgets as much as possible. And that means that they are not going to renew investments in tools or other services that are not adding real value. So we all know that obviously retaining our customers is cheaper than acquiring net new customers. And you cannot fake an excellent experience if you really want to retain your customers. Now, here is the magical piece. This is what some people call product-led growth. If you invest in building an excellent user experience for your product, you're not just going to increase the retention rate of your users. You're also going to be able to leverage your users to one, upsell them, and two, to bring net new users. That's the entire flying wheel that we are trying to generate by investing in the quality of our products. Ultimately, this is all about growing revenue. It's not just about adding user value. This is a report from venture capital firm OpenView that showed how SaaS companies that are leveraging product-led growth are growing revenue by 13% more than the same type of companies that are not leveraging product-led growth. By the way, let me send a reminder to our sales friends. Product-led growth is not about replacing their job. Product-led growth is a strategy that can turbocharge other strategies that they are implementing. For example, better qualifying the leads that the sales team should be talking to. This is not just about only selling through direct channels so the sales team cannot get commissioned. It's really about combining a product-led approach which is more bottom-up. With a sales-led approach, tends to be more top-down so we can all grow the pie and become stronger companies. The second trend we're seeing as part of the future is the fact that now more and more companies are creating a seat at the table for the product role. And this is not just for the CPO. Of course, CPO is important, but the real trickling effect that we are seeing is that now product is at the intersection of everything. Long gone are the days where product was explained as just the intersection between engineering, marketing, and design. We're seeing how product is really at the heart of the companies and it's interacting with other functions including customer success, sales design, user research, data, just to name a few. And why? Why did product move to the middle? Is it just because we hired a CPO and checked a box? Well, not really. We're literally building entire career ladders now for people that work in the product team. We're seeing associate product managers, product managers, senior PMs, director level PMs, VPs, and of course, C-level product executives. But this is not just for the people, managers. We're also seeing how companies are creating career ladders for strong individual contributors that want to continue being in touch with engineers, with designers, and want to grow as individual contributors. So those titles are typically called principle product manager or lead product manager. Again, it's not just for even the product team. Like the product manager, sorry, it's not just about product managers. The product team is made of many other product roles including product marketing. Emerging roles such as product marketing are now all the rage. I'm sure you are aware of the talk that the CEO Airbnb gave around how product marketing are now being better integrated and how the role of product marketing is becoming more and more relevant than ever. And I believe in it and I'm a huge advocate for more product roles within the product organization because this is ultimately going to help us strengthen the relationships with other functions, not just marketing. And last but not least, if we believe that it's important to invest in our product including a delightful experience for our users because those are the ones who are not only going to stay with us but also upsell and bring us new customers. We first need to look inside and take care of our own people, meaning investing in obscuring our product talent. Because we have a huge problem here. We run survey for over 7,000 PMs in our community and found out that at least 60% of them are interested in switching companies within the next two years. That is scary because the cost of recruiting a product manager is just very high. It's around $300,000 on average in the US if you include not just the salary but also the time, the recruiting fee or the ramp up period. So sure, there's always a time and a place for acquiring new talent and the problem is that that cannot be a sustainable strategy. We can't just throw money at the problem at all times because even if we do, we're still going to need to retain that type of new talent. So the key is training to increase retention of our talent. The same people that said that are very interested in switching companies also said that they will consider staying longer if they see an investment in their learning and development. So best way we can invest in the learning and development is through good training. And this is a trend that is being supported by LinkedIn. They recently released a report confirming that over 41% of the companies are increasing their budget in learning and development in 2023. And not only that, those policies are becoming much more flexible, meaning this is not just about sending employees to long full-time programs. There's many other options that are much more cost efficient, short-term that are allowing people to acquire the skills they need today and start applying them to the business without spending too much time. In summary, the three trends we're seeing as part of the future of product are that the best products win. It's not just about distribution and it's definitely about investing in the quality of our user experience. Second one is that there's more and more product roles being hired and also at the top starting from the chief product officer. And number three is that in order to create a delightful user experience and have a good product, we first need to have a good product team. And best product teams are the ones that are being retained and obscured through high quality training. Because if you take care of your team, they will take care of your customers. If you take care of your team, they will take care of your customers. Thank you.