Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with Alex Hanthorn (Drift, TripleByte, Nielsen) to explore the evolving world of user research. From scrappy research methods in early-stage startups to the more formalized processes at large tech companies, we delve into the challenges and opportunities of understanding user motivations. Alex shares insights from his experiences, including his time working with companies from Taco Bell, and discusses the art of balanc...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben are joined by Varun Puri , CEO and co-founder of Yoodli, a platform helping people improve their public speaking skills. Varun shares his journey from working with Sergey Brin at Google to taking the leap into entrepreneurship. The conversation delves into Varun’s time at Google X, the early days of building Yoodli, the harsh realities of founding a company, and the joys of actually making a difference. This episode is a must-l...
Oct 07, 2024•43 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with Melissa Chi , COO and former head of product at Pathpoint. We explore Melissa's transition from a product leader to COO, the importance of maintaining user empathy in a remote, operations-heavy environment, and how she continues to support and coach her team. Melissa also shares insights on managing time effectively, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and prioritization in a growth-stage startup. This episo...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with longtime friends and co-founders, Joshua Herzig-Marx and Ben Sprecher , to explore their journey from childhood friendship to building a company that was acquired by Google. In this candid conversation, Joshua and Ben share their co-founder origin story, the challenges they faced scaling a startup, and how they managed their relationship through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. They also dive into the crucia...
Sep 24, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Welcome to another episode of the Supra Insider. This time, Ben and Marc are joined by Katie Kent , who shares her unique experience transitioning from a product leadership role back to an individual contributor (IC) as a staff PM at Semgrep. Katie talks about how her background in leadership has sharpened her skills as an IC, the lessons she’s learned from the security industry, and why she believes in staying hands-on with product work. The conversation explores the value of remote and hybrid ...
Sep 16, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with Josh Brewer , former CEO and Co-founder of Abstract, to discuss the nuances of creative leadership in today's fast-evolving tech landscape. Josh shares his unique perspective on building high-performing teams, delegating effectively, and fostering an environment of openness and authenticity. The conversation delves into the concept of "founder mode," the future of design amidst AI advancements, and the critical ro...
Sep 09, 2024•1 hr 13 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben explore the timely topic of taking time off. Recently returning from their own breaks, they share experiences, insights, and reflections on the value of truly unplugging. The conversation delves into their activities during time off, common challenges of stepping away from work, and effective strategies for fully disconnecting. They also discuss the personal benefits experienced and the lessons learned, which they are excited t...
Sep 03, 2024•56 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we feature Brenton Sellati , a seasoned product leader who went from managing four teams to leading 50 at Wayfair. Brenton introduces his framework for exponential growth, focusing on critical thinking, problem-solving, and influencing skills. He shares how applying these principles to his career led to rapid advancement and offers practical advice for PMs at all levels. This episode is packed with insights for anyone looking to elevate the...
Aug 26, 2024•58 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with Rich Mironov , an experienced product leader and 6x interim CPO, about the challenges of managing product strategy in sales-driven environments. We discussed building better relationships between product and go-to-market teams, why burnout is so common among product leaders, and how to thrive in these high-pressure roles. This conversation is a must for anyone navigating the complex dynamics of product leadership,...
Aug 19, 2024•46 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with Allison Braley , partner and head of marketing at Bain Capital Ventures. This episode delves into common marketing and communications mistakes made by founders, the importance of an authentic online presence, and how to build effective partnerships between product leaders and marketers. We also touched on Allison’s transition from an operational marketing leader role to supporting founders as a VC and why this new...
Aug 12, 2024•39 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. In this episode, Marc and Ben sit down with Chris Hulls , the founder and CEO of Life360 , the world’s leading location-sharing app for families. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in scaling a tech startup and Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. In this episode, Marc and Ben sit down with Chris Hulls, the founder and CEO of Life360, the world’s leading location-sharing app for families. This episode is a must-listen for anyo...
Aug 06, 2024•46 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc & Ben sat down to talk about Ben’s recent experience launching a course on Maven . This episode will be extremely relevant to anyone considering launching a course. All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify , Apple and YouTube (video). New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 In this episode, we covered the following topics: * Ben’s motivation for the course * What it took to get the ...
Jul 29, 2024•48 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Ben joined Estee Goldschmidt on her podcast, The Estee Show , to dive into Ben’s learnings from the past six months of fractional product work. All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify , Apple and YouTube (video). New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 In this episode, Ben and Estee talked about: * What fractional product work means and why it’s appealing to people * How to build a pipeline...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our second conversation with Josh Herzig-Marx (a follow up on episode 16). Josh was one of the early facilitators in Supra , has been a successful founder who sold his company to Google, held multiple early stage product leadership roles, and in recent years has found meaning in his role as an early stage product coach. All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify , Apple and YouTube (video). New to t...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 30 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Heather Phillips , Senior Director of Product Design at Slack. New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 Before Slack, Heather held multiple design leadership roles at companies including Abstract (where she worked closely with Ben), Designer Fund, RelateIQ, and Yammer. In this episode, we talked about * What it means to make a product “sing” * The benefits of i...
Jul 08, 2024•53 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Josh Herzig-Marx . Josh was one of the early facilitators in Supra, has been a successful founder who sold his company to Google, held multiple early stage product leadership roles, and in recent years has found meaning in his role as an early stage product coach. New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 In our conversation, we talked about * Josh’s decision tw...
Jun 25, 2024•48 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. After Ben shared a fun story on LinkedIn about how he got his first tech job, we thought it would be fun to do an episode about how we landed our first jobs in tech. New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 In this episode, we talked about * The story of how Ben joined Life360 as employee #35 through a roadtrip * The story of how Marc joined Asana as their first PM intern * Actionable takeaways from these stories for dr...
Jun 17, 2024•48 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Kelly O'Shaughnessy , Head of Product - Self Serve at Airtable . New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 Getting new products off the ground at established companies is notoriously challenging. But when it works, it can meaningfully expand the company’s TAM and introduce new revenue streams. Kelly O’Shaughnessy is one of the earliest members of the Supra commu...
Jun 10, 2024•46 min
A couple of months ago, Ben wrote a thought-provoking LinkedIn post about the potential damage Marty Cagan's advice on Lenny's podcast could cause to feature factory PMs. This sparked a conversation between Ben and Estee Goldschmidt on The Estee Show, which caught the attention of Lenny Rachitsky. Recognizing the importance of the topic, Lenny invited Ben to write a guest post for his newsletter, " In defense of feature team product managers ," which went live today. New to the pod? Subscribe be...
Jun 04, 2024•52 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down to reflect on the first 11 episodes of the pod. New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 In this episode, we talked about * Key decisions we made at the offset and how those have played out * Our runbook for publishing episodes * How we gather and incorporate feedback to make every episode better * Where we’re hoping to go with the pod from here * Why podcast analytics are terrible * And...
May 28, 2024•46 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Jeff Whitlock , CEO at Grain . New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 Jeff’s most important job is as a father of three. His second most important job is as the CEO of Grain, a role he took on after holding a few other roles at the company, including President, Head of Product and Head of Operations. Before Grain, Jeff started his career at McKinsey, then joi...
May 20, 2024•40 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. We changed things up for this episode and instead of Ben and Marc interviewing a guest, Ben interviewed Marc. New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 In this episode, Marc and Ben dive deep into various aspects of the Supra community, including: * Supra’s founding story * The importance of curating a high-quality, committed member community and matching people into the right groups. * The role of executive coaches in f...
May 14, 2024•43 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Nan Yu , Head of Product at Linear. New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇 Nan had a super interesting path to his current role: he started his career as a software engineer at Goldman Sachs, then served as the CTO of Everlane for nearly six years before joining Abstract as an engineering manager (where he paired with Ben as his primary PM counterpart). After...
May 06, 2024•1 hr
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, we’re excited to bring you our conversation with Aakash Gupta. New to Supra Insider? Subscribe to get each episode straight to your inbox 👇 Aakash is a former product leader who was most recently VP of Product at Apollo, Head of Product Growth at Affirm, and other great companies. He’s lately become known for his Substack newsletter, Product Growth , where he has a very large subscriber base, as well as his LinkedIn where he has 200k+ foll...
Apr 29, 2024•54 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and I are excited to bring you our conversation with John Cutler. John writes The Beautiful Mess, a popular Substack newsletter in the product community and frequently posts on LI to his 100k followers. We both learned about John’s work during his time at Amplitude, where he spent 4.5 years as a product evangelist and coach for hundreds of product teams around the globe, giving him a unique vantage point about reality on the ground in ...
Apr 22, 2024•49 min
In this episode, Marc and Ben are joined by Brenton Sellati . Brenton is the incoming VP of product at Pie Insurance (Series D insurtech company) where he will be leading the product and design team and leveraging his past experience driving innovation strategy and product management at Liberty Mutual Insurance where he started his product career. Between Liberty Mutual and Pie Insurance, Brenton had a stellar run for over 5 years at Wayfair, where he worked his way up from managing 4 teams as a...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider! In this episode, Marc and Ben are joined by Diana Kimball Berlin, a Partner at Matrix who invests in early-stage B2B SaaS & AI companies, from concept to Series A. Diana also sits on the boards of Accord and Meshcapade. Prior to becoming an investor, Diana spent 5 years at Quip, working up from an IC product manager to VP of Product. Before Quip, Diana was a senior PM at SoundCloud and has held roles at Kickstarter and Microsoft. In our chat with ...
Apr 09, 2024•45 min
Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. Following up on last episode’s discussion of the current PM market ( episode 3 ), we wanted to add a new perspective to the conversation by inviting a product management recruiter to the show. In this episode, Marc and I are joined by James Jordan, the founder of Producto , a recruiting agency focused on PM hiring from ICs all the way to executives. James is coming up on two decades in recruiting and has a wealth of knowledge about the historical prod...
Apr 02, 2024•49 min
This is a wild market for product managers. The hiring landscape has shifted more in the last year than it did in the previous decade. With hundreds of thousands of people actively looking for their next role, we thought it would be helpful to invite a couple of folks from the Supra community to have a chat about how to navigate this job market. For those unfamiliar with Supra, it’s an invite-only community for elite product leaders that Marc founded. In this episode, Ben and Marc were joined by...
Mar 27, 2024•44 min
Josh Doody has coached 200+ high earners in tech through salary negotiations, leading to an average of 16% increase in liquid first year compensation. He’s a published author of Fearless Salary Negotiation and shares tips regularly on YouTube. In this episode, we talk about: * Why people should negotiate * What’s a typical negotiation timeline * How to negotiate without a counteroffer * Go over common negotiation pitfalls/mistakes * How to negotiate in the current job market (Q1 2024) * Why chan...
Mar 19, 2024•49 min
