Alex Topiler

Sharing real stories from the trenches of product management. First topic - balancing big visions 🌟 with building MVPs that actually solve problems 💡 Would love to hear your thoughts! 👇 https://lnkd.in/einzrwbZ #ProductManagement #MVP #Startups

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“If there is no clear owner, then it’s the PM that owns it.” I sat down with Esteban Contreras from #ProductState to discuss Product leadership, or Prioritization process at Productboard. We also dug into the concept of Extreme Ownership, which is a principle I firmly believe in. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVN47mWn #productmanagement #productexcellence #ownership

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🚰 VODA.ai is building software to make one of our scarcest, most important resources safer and more cost effective to manage🚰 It's W13 / Q2 / 2024 & this week in our MGMT Boston startup series we’ve got VODA.ai, an AI startup helping analyze our nation’s water infrastructure at a local level to deliver better service for utilities and local populations across the country. Co-Founder & CEO George Demosthenous was working in product management at a utility technology vendor that builds metering & network infrastructure for utilities. George consistently heard that while the technology Mueller was selling was effective, the external pipe detection equipment and sensors they were purchasing didn’t necessarily stop leaks. There are 2.2M miles of drinking water pipes across the U.S. In Jackson, MS more than 65% of their processed water does not make it to end customers. In Detroit’s Highland Park neighborhood an estimated 70% of water is lost from 120 year old pipes. Imagine if Apple shipped 100M iPhones stateside and 50M were littered across the Pacific Ocean floor on their way over from Asia. Crazy, right? VODA.ai is building a software company that uses existing data to assess the condition of pipes that cannot be seen and determine which ones will have the highest likelihood of an event, like a leak or a break. VODA.ai created an AI engine dubbed “daVinciTM” here in Boston that uses pattern recognition in the way that LLMs probabilistically identify the next word in a sentence. daVinciTM has been tested head-to-head with other alternative models and has always outperformed! No pressure.. Since COVID they have grown both revenue & customer count by 200%+ y/y, continuing to leverage AI with both their product & team. AI’s emergence has helped VODA.ai’s sales cycle fall from a full year to three months as utilities broadly want to leverage best in class AI software. This Seed-stage startup has already analyzed over 1M miles of pipe (almost 50% of America!) and over 2M miles of service lines with customers from Boston to San Jose, CA. They are planning to more than 2x revenue in 2024, becoming the go to decision support platform for water utilities across the country in the next five years. VODA.ai is backed by local Boston investors Innospark Ventures and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. MassCEC has named VODA.ai a top carbon reduction emission leader, the team has twice been voted (by water utilities!) the Best Smart Water Solution at the Smart Water Summit, and VODA.ai plans to continue to grow their team in Boston in the quarters ahead. Operators to Know: -Kyra Dubinsky, Chief of Staff -Cory Sides, SVP Sales -Dan Hack, EVP of Operations and International Sales -Lowell Rust, MBA PMP, VP of Customer Success If you're interested in learning more, the full post is linked in the comments! And sign up for the newsletter to see who we bring you next week, will you?? #bostontech #startups #AI

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Product Leaders: Visibility is your responsibility. Don't just say, "Oh, that's all politics." If you don't take 100% ownership of communicating your achievements to your organization, your career suffers. But even more so, the company suffers because wrong decisions get made on who gets promoted and put in charge of important things. Do the work, and then take responsibility for communicating it.

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Strategic alignment across product and field is complex and not easy to get right, but it's a pleasure to work alongside Brett Crane, Trevor Jett (Childers), and Jarod Greene. It's wonderful to be in conversation with them, sharing what we have learned, in this webinar: https://lnkd.in/gc-qp7Hk

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A really interesting and powerful performance management practice. "Use the “30-day test” to maintain a high-performance team. Create a reminder to ask yourself this question 30 days after someone joins the team: “Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person?” If the answer is yes, tell the person you’re excited about them and give them more equity—you’ll gain a lot of loyalty. If the answer is no, you need to fire them immediately, to avoid the inevitable damage they will cause to you, your team, and themselves." from Uri Levine Founder of Waze, via Lenny's podcast. https://lnkd.in/gyS2HzZP

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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Ever since we launched SHAKTI, every quarter we write a letter to our LPs = Each letter includes an update on the portfolios, the GP's (our) view on the zeitgeist, an interview with a portfolio CEO and an interview with a TITAN = So far, we have 16 such letters = it's been on our "to do" list to share these publicly (i am lazy) = then Google comes along to save lazy people like me (thank you NotebookLLM) = here's a 10 min podcast summarizing our journey since Dec/2020 with the 16 LP letters as source = if you wanted to know what we are about, this is a pretty good place to start = https://lnkd.in/db7K2TrT cc SHAKTI

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Reader feedback for my latest post about how to use AI and my PRD template to never have to write a PRD from scratch again. Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/eJjVXJUJ

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📈 Curious about the startup scene in Massachusetts? Explore our detailed funding list featuring startup names, HQ locations, and investor info. Perfect for investors and entrepreneurs alike! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dAp3xj-Q #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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Delivery-focused. Execution-oriented. Not Strategic. Or (my new favorite internet slur) ZIRPM. In a startup context, getting stuff off the production line IS strategic (despite what the haters say). Here are a few reasons why: Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog: https://lnkd.in/dPDuKYQb

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Wendy Xiao, Molly Alter, Aaron Liu, and I recently hosted a dinner with CMIO / CIOs from top NY health systems and execs from startups who are building solutions across the care delivery and back-office billing stack. A few takeaways: - Delivering value-based care at scale changes the incentives for health systems in such a way that they require unique point solutions that can help them triage and manage at-risk patients. - While scribing platforms are certainly powerful in the administrative burden they can take off of doctors, their full value may not be unleashed until they can convert notes into the appropriate fields / codes for billing. - More attention needs to be paid to social determinants of health. For example, certain types of new addiction treatment, like gambling, may soon be covered by insurance if data continues to show that there are serious negative health implications for people affected. Treatments like Ozempic are also showing promise in the field of addiction. In the coming years there will an increasing acknowledgment of how interconnected social factors and medical health are across all patient populations. If you’re a healthcare exec looking to learn more about what the next generation of healthcare IT startups are building, or a healthcare startup looking to get involved, please reach out. cc Northzone

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Charter to the moon Key Takeaways if you don't listen: Modernizing the Space Industry is more than needed There's a critical need to update tools, processes, and risk management in the space industry, particularly in areas like software solutions and insurance, to drive innovation and efficiency. Interdisciplinary Problem-Solving drives innovation Success in addressing space industry challenges increasingly requires drawing insights from diverse fields, combining technical expertise with perspectives from areas like military logistics, law, and even science fiction. Space Technology is impactful but hidden There's a significant disconnect between the actual impact of space technology and public perception, highlighting the need for better communication about its importance and potential for future breakthroughs. #SpaceIndustry #Modernization #SpaceInnovation #TechForSpace #InterdisciplinaryInnovation #FutureOfSpace #AerospaceEngineering #SpaceTechnology #RiskManagement #SpaceInsurance #HiddenImpact #ScienceFictionToReality #SpaceTech #InnovationInSpace #SpaceExploration #CharterToTheMoon #ModernizingSpace #vibecap #vibecapital

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Stop throwing a North Star Metric at your team without any context. It doesn't work. A NSM is not a concept that will create immediate alignment. "Here's the metric, now go optimize the product to improve the metric." Product teams need more to figure out what is influencing the NSM. And management needs more to prove its value. The CoCoCo for successful North Star Metric implementations 💃🏻 1️⃣ CONTEXT 2️⃣ CONNECTION to business value 3️⃣ CONNECTION to user value AND 💫 BONUS 1 - Co-creation 💫 BONUS 2 - Co-ownership With a shout-out to Amplitude and Daniel Schmidt. A comparison of Amazon vs. Patagonia. And the evolution of Netflix’s NSM over time - with a surprise, if you haven't heard it yet. 👉 Ask Me Anything: Drop your NSM questions in the comment 👇

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Nils Davis, I appreciate you for a great conversation about the current state of product management! Nils put a spotlight on key factors impacting product managers in the B2B space. He also shares what he believes are the essential skills of product management success. It may a surprise to learn that Nils puts a premium on developing soft skills and the ability to communicate through storytelling. Key Take Aways from this episode include: •          Storytelling is Product Management a superpower •          How to avoid the feature factory •          Go-to-Market skills are a key differentiator Don’t miss this episode of GTM Disrupted! Click the link below to listen:  Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gN_jk-QN  #GTMdisrupted #gtmstrategy #prodmgmt #cpo #GTM

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Lenny Rachitsky I listened to your amazing podcast with Todd Jackson about product market fit. The 4P framework ( persona, problem, is amazing. All the benchmarks, strategies, and tactics that Todd Jackson shared are spot on. Recently, Sequoia Capital put out a solid framework, the ARC Product Market Fit Framework for Hair On Fire, Hard Fact, and Future Vision. When I combine these two, 4P relates well with the Hair on Fire category of the products. I wonder how the 4P framework would work with the products' Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. Lenny Rachitsky Todd Jackson I wish I could hear more about PMF in the Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. For rest, These are amazing content about #productmanagement, #productmarket fit, #startups Here are links: 1. This is the link to the entire podcast: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 2. This is where the 4P description starts: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 3. This is the link to the ARC Product Market Fit podcast. https://lnkd.in/ezprPT-Q

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Trigger warning. UK founders to VCs: "you (generally) suck". I was taken aback by the intensity of comments made during an exit fireside chat organised by our friends at ARGO, Jeff and Aneesh. Room full of founders, we're talking about the importance of starting exit planning very early (say 3 years+ prior to exit) and the message is: "I would never feel comfortable bringing this topic up to my board, I just would not trust them to handle any of it well". Ensued a discussion about Tier II board vs. Tier III boards, how much VC boards suck, how VC's just do not know how to interact with founders and how a number of key topics are best actively avoided. Nods across the room. The Tier I Board, the kind of place where you could actually bring up strategic topics like, you know, "who might actually want to buy us some day and how do we start building the right kind of relationships today" seemed to be a sort of faraway land, as if sitting with the Knights of the Round Table or the Jedi High Council would actually be easier to achieve. Damn. So we can say all we want about founder-friendly blah blah but if this is still the prevalent reality for UK and European founders, what the heck are we doing and when do we start the topic of "being a great board member" seriously? We need to collectively get out shit together and start training investors to be better board members.

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