Today’s guest is the Innovation legend Alex Osterwalder - 5x best-selling author, inventor of the widely known Business Model Canvas (BMC), and Founder & CEO at Strategyzer . We covered a lot of ground here. Everything from unpacking the transformation of Strategizer from a consulting firm to a scalable SaaS platform, to Alex’s hard-won lessons from his journey navigating the tension between exploration and execution, the power of innovation scorecards, why CEOs must own innovation if they w...
May 29, 2025•57 min
This is a raw and unfiltered conversation with the legendary Unicorn founder ($2.9B exit with ForgeRock) Lasse Andresen . Every founder in Scandinavia should listen to this. We talked about why Norwegian startups need to stop thinking small, lessons learned from an IPO at Nasdaq and from the painful early days without funding, what Norway’s startup ecosystem needs to do to truly compete on the global stage, what Founders in Scandinavia should consider - and what the typical traps they fall into ...
Apr 13, 2025•58 min
Brought to you by: Gnist - Gnist is a leading boutique consulting company in Norway that helps companies reach their full digital potential. Whether you are a developer, product lead, tech lead, or business leader - Gnist can help you with the tools and practices you may need. UX Signals - Don’t let your busy schedule stop you from talking to users. Automatically recruit interviews and user tests with people who are using your product. Talk to them while their user experience is still fresh in t...
Apr 06, 2025•1 hr 2 min
My guests today are Martin Spinnangr and Shubham Bhattachary a, CPO at Munu and former CPO at Favrit - two Nordic rivals in the world of hospitality SaaS. We talked about what it takes to build and scale a vertical SaaS product, the challenges of defining your ideal customer profile, why most product validation efforts fail, acquisition vs. retention, the real cost of poor strategic alignment, and more. Shubham is currently a Lead PM at Xeneta and Martin has been a Product leader in Laerdal Medi...
Mar 19, 2025•54 min
My guest today is Ninni Høver - Head of Product at Vipps MobilePay , the largest mobile wallet in the Nordics. This conversation is part of my series of talks with more than 20 product leaders in Scandinavia. Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter so you don’t miss out! This episode is packed with lessons learned from both scaling and going through a large merger. I don’t know a single Norwegian who doesn’t use Vipps. So how does Ninni's team decide what to build? How do they balance prioritie...
Feb 22, 2025•50 min
My guest today is Tor Erik Skårdal and Stian Øien - two former product leaders at Easee , once one of the fastest growing tech companies in Norway and the largest platform of EV chargers for homes in the Nordics. This is one of the most vulnerable conversations in the podcast so far. Most people in Norway and Sweden know how difficult Easee’s journey has been. From being one the fastest growing tech companies in Europe, to having to layoff most of its people after a sudden sales ban in a crucial...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 6 min
My guest today is Francesca Cortesi , former Chief Product Officer at Hemnet - the largest housing marketplace in Sweden. This is a deep dive into Hemnet's journey into adopting the Product Operating Model and Francesca's product and growth leadership journey. Francesca shared deeply insightful stories, practical advice, and her perspective on driving change while keeping teams aligned and inspired. We talked about: * How Hemnet moved from features to outcomes. * Why Strategic context is the mos...
Jan 10, 2025•37 min
My guest today is Cecilie Skjong , Investment Manager at Skyfall Ventures - a Norwegian early-stage venture capital fund. As a founder, nailing your pitch, thinking big and challenging yourself to be more visionary, and quickly testing your ideas to get a sense of the market pull are crucial. And the same applies to a cross-functional team building a new product in a scale-up. The same applies to a product leader leading a new opportunity in a large organization. After being exposed to hundreds ...
Dec 18, 2024•52 min
Today's episode is with my friend Frederik Hansen - CPO at Ignite. Ignite is a leading sustainable procurement platform that enables companies to take control of their purchasing from suppliers, comply with regulations, and reduce costs, emissions, and risks - all in one place. Before Ignite, Frederik was CPO at Bookis. He is also the co-founder of Produktleder.no - the largest community for product managers in Norway - and a co-organizer of the ProductTank in Oslo. A true contributor to the pro...
Dec 11, 2024•45 min
Today's guest is Melissa Mills , VP of Product at Ardoc, former Director of Product at Kahoot!, and former Global Product Lead at Google in San Francisco. Ardoc is a fast-growing scale-up in Norway, recognized by Gartner as a leading Enterprise Architecture Tool. Their Series D raise is one of the five largest private funding rounds by a Norwegian tech business. Many enterprise companies like Carlsberg Group are choosing Ardoc, and this episode will give you an insider view of how they build the...
Dec 05, 2024•53 min
Would you like to know how Norway's best mobile bank builds its products? Today's guest is Thomas Allan Nygaard - Product Leader at Sparebank 1, one of the largest banks in Norway and named Norway's best mobile bank. Thomas and his team are constantly trying to push their boundaries and this conversation walks you through their ongoing journey into adopting and continuously adjusting their product operating model. We covered: * Sparebank's journey from breaking the monolith * How their teams app...
Nov 28, 2024•46 min
My guest today is Beth Stensen . Beth is a gem in the Design world in Norway. She was Head of Design at Ruter (the company responsible for the plan, coordination, order and market of public transport in Oslo & Akershus), she then became the CEO at Netlife (famous for their Y Oslo Conference), and now she's the Head of Design at Posten Bring - the leading post company in the Nordics. Beth has a lot of experience with transformations and this conversation is packed with insights and advice fro...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr
Today’s guest is the one and only Christina Wodtke - Professor at Stanford and author of several bestsellers, including the famous book on OKRs “ Radical Focus ”. We covered: * Foundations and misconceptions about OKRs * Prerequisites for successfully use OKR * Why OKRs might not be for you * The importance of psychological safety and strategic context * Outcome-based key results vs. output-based results * Cross-functional team collaboration and shared objectives * Cadences and Principles * Expl...
Nov 15, 2024•52 min
I've interviewed more than 30 Product leaders in Scandinavia, and this is one of those conversations. Subscribe for free so you don’t miss out on future conversations and related content Today I'm talking with Marius Røstad - CPO at Aidn - and Espen Sundve - former CPO at Oda , who’s now a Senior Advisor at Schibsted . Marius used to head up product at Ruter before joining Aidn as Chief Product Officer. Aidn is one of the coolest healthcare scaleups in Norway, aiming to disrupt healthcare. Espen...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Today’s episode is particularly special. A 2-hour masterclass on discovery that every designer, product manager, founder, and product leader should hear With bestselling authors Teresa Torres (Product Discovery Habits) and Petra Wille (Strong Product People) - two of my biggest references. My god, this was fun...! Is it the first long-format episode on discovery with 2 industry legends? Possibly... Will there be advanced lessons, golden practical nuggets, and plenty of spicy takes? Oh yes... The...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 57 min
My guest today is the globally renowned marketing expert April Dunford . April has probably advised more B2B tech companies on positioning than anyone in the world. April's book Obviously Awesome is one of the biggest best-selling marketing books out there - and I'm so happy we had time to dig into everything you need to know to nail Product Positioning so that customers get it, buy it, and love it. Every founder, marketing, sales, and product person should listen to this episode! We discussed: ...
Oct 19, 2024•57 min
My guests today are Itamar Gilad and Bruce McCarthy . Itamar is a former product leader for Gmail, Youtube, and Microsoft - and is the author of the bestselling book Evidence Guided . Itamar’s latest book is about creating high-impact products in the face of uncertainty, and he also has some strong views on roadmaps, roadmapping, common traps to avoid, and what to consider instead. But so does Bruce! Bruce is the author of the book Product Roadmaps Relaunched and, most recently, the book Aligned...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr
My guest today is Melissa Perri. Melissa is the author of the bestselling book " Escaping the Build Trap " and recently co-authored “ Product Operations : How successful companies build better products at scale”. She runs a successful CPO Accelerator, is a former professor at Harvard Business School, serves on several Boards, and is the Founder of Product Institute. In this conversation, we explore: * The role of Product Ops * The main misconceptions with Product Ops * The 3 key pillars of Produ...
Sep 17, 2024•50 min
Stay tuned by subscribing for free: https://afonsofranco.substack.com/ My guest today is Ryan Singer . Ryan is the author of Shape Up , an excellent guide to help teams and companies work in a better way to ship work that matters - consistently over time. Ryan's work is incredibly important to understand. Whether you adopt Shape Up or not, there are so many golden nuggets in how Ryan sees the world of how teams should work. In our conversation, we covered: * Why do Scrum and other agile framewor...
Aug 29, 2024•52 min
My guest today is Janna Bastow . Janna is the Co-founder of Mind the Product - the world’s largest product community - Founder & CEO at ProdPad, and the inventor of the widely adopted roadmap framework “Now, Next, Later” There’s so much Janna and I could have talked about but we focused on what great roadmaps look like, and the future of product management. We discussed: * The story behind how Now Next Later was invented, from idea to widely spread roadmap framework * Different ways to frame...
Aug 22, 2024•57 min
Subscribe for free: https://afonsofranco.substack.com/ My guest today is Daniel Elizalde . Daniel has trained more than 1500 people in product management, including folks from top tech companies like Tesla, Microsoft, and more. He's been working in Product for over 25 years, in so many different industries - and is the author of the book The B2B Innovators Map. This conversation was a deep dive into Product Management applied to B2B products, covering: * The importance of mapping out your indust...
Aug 15, 2024•59 min
My guest today is someone special to me: Bruce McCarthy . Bruce has probably seen and helped more companies with product roadmaps than anyone in the world. He's the author of the best-selling book " Product Roadmaps Relaunched " and has just launched his new book Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders . Bruce and I met in Madrid a couple of years ago. Our first 1:1 was over breakfast, where we talked about different things - including the new book he was writing at the time. I knew ...
Jul 29, 2024•53 min
My guest today is one of my favorite product people out there: Petra Wille Petra is the author of one the best books for product leaders you can find " Strong Product People ", she's the founder of an amazing product conference " Product at Heart ", and one of the few product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed . Petra is such a great human being, and I am a big fan of her work. We covered a lot and, even though I am clearly biased, every product leader and manager should list...
Jul 21, 2024•1 hr 3 min
My guest today is Manuel Pais . Manuel is the co-author of the masterpiece book "Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow". He's recognized by TechBeacon as a DevOps thought leader, and is today an independent consultant and trainer, focused on team interactions, delivery practices and accelerating flow. We covered a lot, including some questions and comments from Lyse and Shibsted (read the full case here ): * Different types of teams and interaction modes, and wh...
Jun 04, 2024•54 min
My guest today is one of my favorite product thinkers: John Cutler John is an absolute legend in the product community, and one thing I love about John is his dedication to sharing the messiness and contextual nuances in the world of building products. John has worked in Product with some of the most exciting tech companies around the globe and is the author of one of the most-read Product newsletters in the world: The Beautiful Mess . Everyone wants to work like the "best" product organizations...
Jun 01, 2024•1 hr 7 min
My guest today is the one and only Bob Moesta . Have you heard about Jobs to be Done theory? Bob was the one creating it together with Clayton Christensen - who's for many the Father of Disruptive Innovation. Bob is the Founder and CEO of the Re-wired Group . He has worked on & helped launch more than 3,500 new products so far, is a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School , and started his career by being a mentee of Dr Deming himself - the father of the Toyota Production System. He’s also...
May 24, 2024•54 min
My guest today is Niko Noll . Niko is a software engineer turned product manager turned product discovery coach . He has learned Product at scale - shipping value to 18 million monthly active users - and spends most of his time coaching teams and being a founder at Juttu, a tool that helps product teams talk to users every week. Niko is very dedicated and passionate about helping product teams discover value sooner - and so it was a bit of a no-brainer for us to get together and talk about all t...
May 16, 2024•52 min
My guest today is my friend Carlo Mahfouz . He's the Vice President of Strategic Technology Partnerships at Laerdal Medical and the author of the book Reality Check . Carlo is such a well-articulated thinker. I love how he breaks things down and I really miss working with him. We talked about: * How to become a better listener * How to let go of your ego, and why this is key in great leadership * How to foster collaboration between Engineering, Product and Design * Why Engineers should be highly...
May 02, 2024•51 min
My guest today is Gabriele Bufrem - one of the product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed. I met Gabi last year and love talking with her. She's both a superstar product coach and a great human being. Today's episode is like a mini masterclass for product leaders and managers, where Gabi shares practical tips and advice from her experience coaching strong product leaders and teams in companies that we have all heard about. We covered: * The 4 biggest challenges product leader...
Apr 25, 2024•51 min
My guest today is Marty Cagan . Marty has probably observed and advised more product teams and leaders than anyone in the world. For many, he's the Godfather of Product Management. Bestselling author of some of the most iconic books in our industry (Inspired, Empowered, and recently launched Transformed ). Probably the world's most requested speaker in Product development conferences. And founder and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group - for many, the most credible and highest-quality produc...
Apr 14, 2024•59 min
