Episode description

This week, Max Saltonstall and Stephanie Wong go behind the scenes at Google Cloud with Gabe Weiss and Anita Kibunguchy-Grant to learn how new products move from idea to market.

To start, our guests walk us through a typical end-to-end life cycle as Google creates new and exciting products for users. Starting with a problem sometimes brought to light by users, a solution is workshopped, and a team is brought together to tackle the issue. Once the product is workable, Gabe and his team step in to evaluate and pass it on to Anita for market launch. With examples like BigQuery Omni and AlloyDB, Anita and Gabe walk us through a real launch scenario, from naming the product to promotion and observing the satisfying impacts of a product solving real-world problems.

Anita details the three phases of a product launch and which teams are involved. The phases are pre-launch, during launch, and post-launch. In pre-launch, things like naming and messaging are crafted, priority is assigned via tier assignment, and plans are made to interact with various promotional and other teams who may need to be involved with the launch. Launch day activities are coordinated next as various marketing avenues are leveraged for maximum visibility and development teams work together to make the technical side successful. Post-Launch involves some debriefing on the success of the marketing as well as analysis of use, press coverage, page views, revenue, sentiment among users, and enabling sales teams for success.

Gabe talks about the importance of his team in the process as they test products for customer usability and QA before launch as well. He and Anita elaborate on the differences with Google launches versus other companies, including the stages involved in launch and the naming of these stages. Many launches are done at big Google Cloud events, like Google I/O, Anita points out as a unique feature of Google, which can be a gift and a curse. Challenges are addressed as our guests talk us through possible problems and the ways launch teams address them. Anita and Gabe emphasize empathy and communication in product launching and the importance of clear, productive feedback.

Anita Kibunguchy-Grant is a Product Marketing Lead at Google with extensive experience across Data Analytics and Databases products and solutions. Before Google, she led awareness and go-to-market programs at VMware.

She has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and is passionate about helping customers use data and technology to transform their businesses.

Gabe leads the database advocacy team for the Google Cloud Platform team ensuring that developers can make awesome things, both inside and outside of Google. Prior to Google he’s worked in virtual reality production and distribution, source control, the games industry, and professional acting.

• Leveling up your data analysis skills as a student blog
• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude site
• How Google Cloud blocked the largest Layer 7 DDoS attack at 46 million rps blog

• BigQuery site
• Datastream site
• Database Migration Services site
• Cloud SQL site
• AlloyDB site
• PostgreSQL site
• Google I/O site
• Qwiklabs site
• Agones site
• Databases blog

Max is wrapping up his hosting of summer interns and getting ready for vacation! He plans to play a lot of board games and video games!

Steph also enjoyed hosting interns this summer!

Stephanie Wong and Max Saltonstall