GHC 2019, Sarah Murray, Rachel Diamond, Amy Miao

GHC 2019 Attendees Most Look Forward To This

What do you most look forward to at GHC?

To kick-off my blog post series with Anita|Bees at the Grace Hopper Conference this year, I spoke with a couple attendees before the conference about what they most look forward to at GHC.

From left to right: Amy Miao, Sarah Murray, Rachel Diamond, Marlena Rehder, and Connie Wang.

“I’m looking forward to learning about other people’s experiences and the technology they work with.”

– Amy

“I’m looking forward to the code breakout sessions so I can learn new skills!”

– Sarah

“I’m excited to meet new people that have a similar passion for technology and continuously learning.”

– Rachel

“Meeting people from all over.”

– Marlena

“I’m excited about meeting other women in tech, and to listen into all the presentations throughout the week.”

– Connie

If you’d like to be featured in one of my blog posts during or after GHC, please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message.

Startup Weekend: Challenges, Learnings, and Recommendations

Over a 54 hour time period, over 100 attendees came together to start something new at Techstars Seattle International Startup Weekend. Attendees shared initial problems they’d like to solve, formed teams, received coaching support, and pitched final business plans.

As the event ended, I spoke with a few teams about their Startup Weekend experience; their challenges, their learnings, and their recommendations for others.

What challenges did your team face during Startup Weekend?

Figuring out the most salient information to share.
Validation. It was difficult to go out, and talk with people on a Saturday. We tried to ask people questions, but due to our business problem most people weren’t available to speak with us.
Time management. We started to practice pitching later in the day on Sunday. We had our deck ready on Saturday, but didn’t start practicing our pitch until fairly late.

What did you learn from Startup Weekend?

We should have thought about market validation sooner, especially on the supply side.
I wish we had thought of ways to get customer insights faster, and in a more scalable way.
It’s important to learn the business side of things, so you can quickly identify whether something is a good or bad idea.

What recommendations do you have for others attending Startup Weekend?

Develop a process for listening efficiently within the group, and with coaches and mentors; you don’t want to go around and around discussing the same topic.
Practice pitching.
For the pitch, it was less important about having a working prototype, than it was having information showing you validated the business idea; don’t stress if you don’t have a developer on your team.
Be willing to pivot your idea based on customer research insights.
Do your research of the business model canvas ahead of time; having a background in that will be helpful.
Focus on problem definition and validation.
Take advantage of the time you have here at Startup Weekend, and commit to it.

To learn more about Techstars Startup Weekend, please visit: https://startupweekend.org/

IoT Marketing: Connecting the Dots Between IoT and Marketing Strategy

The Internet of Things (IoT) is here, so let’s talk strategy. How exactly does IoT affect marketing strategy?

With an “expected 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020” consumer demand will change, according to Forbes (Greenough et al., 2016). IoT and the world of connectivity will continue to shape needs and requirements for products and services. Businesses will strategize for an IoT centric world, and so will marketers.

As a Marketer, it’s your job to connect the dots between IoT and marketing strategy — who are your customers, what (products) are you promoting, what are your customers willing to pay for your products or services and where should you promote these items?

Promotion
Rapidly Growing Audience
Early IoT consumers are more than willing to spend hundreds of dollars for the newest, hottest tech. With the new release of the Apple Watch this past year, we know this to be true.

According to TechCrunch, “Apple Watch accounted for over 50 percent of smartwatch sales in 2015″ (Perez, 2016).

The audience size will continue to skyrocket as companies continue investing billions of dollars into discovering and creating the connected IoT world.

Industry analysts predict “the IoT market [to] support total services spending of $235 billion in 2016,” (Eddy, 2015). Intel echoes industry sentiments in saying that, “the IoT world is growing at a breathtaking pace,” (A).

(A).

Narrow Targeting, Higher Costs
We can expect an explosion in data collection and data mining as IoT products and services develop. With more data we can find more granular insights around consumption and consumer trends, thus improving marketing and advertising campaigns.

Marketers can create more relevant –and personalized– messaging, editing copy and tone specific to each audience segment. More relevant campaign messaging, means more campaign engagement, therefore more leads and more customers syphoning further into the sales funnel.

Let’s say you download a multi-purpose app, but you only use the app for health reasons. In receipt of this information (e.g. what you use the app for, what are your health goals and related statistics), the marketing team can then specialize their tone, messaging and methods for communicating with you based on your engagement.

Narrow marketing campaigns unfortunately means potentially higher costs, resulting from the increased target markets to connect with.

Increased Brand Loyalty and Customer Retention
If you own multiple Apple devices, you expect each device to have similar functionality and feeling, right? This familiarity makes new products easy to use and a more streamlined customer experience across the brand family. This desire will be augmented in the IoT world. Consumers want to connect and use their (brand-related) products in a similar and logical way.

Marketing strategy will be aimed to add value through the addition of new devices, or through up-selling and cross-selling within the brand portfolio.

We’ve seen this uphold with Amazon’s Echo. In initial release, the Echo defaulted playing music through Prime Music. Acknowledging Spotify as one of the more frequented music apps, Amazon pivoted to focus on customer retention.

“Users who are Spotify Premium subscribers, who also have an Amazon Echo, will now be able to command Echo’s virtual assistant Alexa to ‘play Spotify’ and call up their Spotify playlists, as well as artists or genres on the streaming service,” (Lundin, 2016).

Users have two options: continue to stream Amazon’s (free) music, or pay for Spotify Premium for $10 per month. Amazon streamlined the awareness and use of other related products within the Echo, but also pivoted when necessary to meet customer needs.

User experience becomes the forefront of marketing strategy — cohesive products with related ways to solve a certain problem will become dominant in the market. Products available in the IoT space will continue their focus on added value to existing solutions.

(The, 2016).

Price
New Pricing Models
Products will continue to add value through the addition of related services. IoT efforts and bundled pricing options will become more commonplace as companies build a family products focused on solving one specific problem, rather than one product to partially solve the problem.

Initially Higher Product Prices
We can expect costs for connecting devices (e.g. with the need to strong network connection) to be at it’s highest point today, per the current market share. As competition arises, we can expect prices to decline.

As users define their problem more specifically, products and marketing solutions will consequently evolve. Until there are more answers and less questions, product costs will remain high, thus marketing efforts will be slow to gain (sales) traction until products have reached mass adoption.

Paying Customers for Their Data?
IoT is such an exciting marketplace, because there is a huge potential to gain data and analyze it to create the ideal customer experience and marketing communications. With an increased effort, companies are faced wth the question,

“How do we (continue to) incentivize customers to allow us to use and share their data… and how can we get more?”

Product
Niche Products
Niche products will be the new norm. Companies will pivot toward solving problems for business sectors (e.g. manufacturing, health care, insurance). House management and time management will be controlled by certain apps or products, rather than a combination of several devices.

The Internet of Things will help develop the world of the ideal user and customer experience.

Place
With increased noise and competition online, marketers should consider more unique ways to promote online and offline; IoT represents a world of connectedness, across mediums. Everything that has a screen is now a driver of market messaging.

Moving Forward
Promotion of value added products will drive marketing efforts. More technical and IoT focused copy will drive social media and blog content. Creativity in marketing and mediums used will become even more crucial. It’s time to connect the IoT dots and create an ideal user experience.

References:
A Guide to the Internet of Things Infographic. Intel. Retrieved from: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/internet-of-things/infographics/guide-to-iot.html

Eddy, N. (2015, Nov 10). Gartner: 21 Billion IoT Devices to Invade by 2020. Silcion Angle. Retrieved from: http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/gartner-21-billion-iot-devices-to-invade-by-2020/d/d-id/1323081

Greenough, J., Camhi, J. (2016, Jan 29). Here are the IoT Trends That Will Shape the way Businesses, Governments, and Consumers Interact With the World. Forbes. Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/iot-trends-will-shape-the-way-we-interact-2016-1

Lundin, I. (2016, Feb 4). Spotify now Integrates with Amazon Echo… if You’re a Premium User. TechCrunch. Retrieved from: http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/04/spotify-now-integrates-with-amazon-echo-if-youre-a-premium-user/#.hch2q99:eLbM

Perez, S. (2016, Jan 13). Apple Watch Scooped up Over Half the Smartwatch Market in 2015. TechCrunch. Retrieved from: http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/13/apple-watch-scooped-up-over-half-the-smartwatch-market-in-2015/

The Marketing Power of the Internet of Things. Marketo. Retrieved from: https://www.marketo.com/infographics/the-marketing-power-of-the-internet-of-things/

4 Changes Affecting Product Managers

Today, Product Managers are managing more than products. Product Managers are responsible for listening to their customers, paying attending to trends and developing products to meet their target audience’s evolving needs. With the introduction of new management tools and methods, Product Managers are challenged to prioritize and balance their time appropriately.

Increased Social Presence
With continued importance around digital branding, Product Managers reap the benefits of representing and promoting their product in a positive light online. They are responding to product issues and questions and sharing relevant content about their company and product on social networks.

A social media presence is mutually beneficial; Product Managers can more deeply understand the end user’s needs, while customers can openly express their product questions and concerns, thus increasing product loyalty and awareness among end-users. An open and engaging presence is a win-win for everyone.

Increased User Education and Engagement Demands
Gone are the days of simple customer support. With constant (almost bi-weekly) changes to software, companies are partnering with popular third-party apps Intercom, Pendo and Inline Manual to achieve product and company relevant goals (e.g. increase product engagement or increase client retention, post onboarding).

“Intercom allows us to ‘scale authenticity’ and foster a passionate community of users. By A/B testing message format and content, we see open rates above 75% for all of our onboarding emails,” Ben Jordan, VP of Customer Experience, Invision.

Of course, with this demand comes the question of resource management and how to properly balance product and business goals.

New Internal Communication and Management Tools
Real-time responsiveness is key, and with new tools such as AHA! and Slack, Product Managers can quickly and easily communicate with their stakeholders.

While Jira used to act as the primary platform for adding, editing and prioritizing new features and bugs, the introduction of AHA! provides separate management and communication methods specific to a subset of end-users.

AHA! is great for requirements gathering, prioritizing and roadmap planning, approval and sharing. The visual heavy aspects are immensely helpful for teams that may not connect with the PM org on a daily basis, such as the sales, marketing, and account management teams; instead of constantly answering one-off questions around what’s on the roadmap and when will it be released, Product Manager’s can easily share a link to the most updated roadmap.

While the combination of AHA! and Jira are useful for roadmap communication, Slack combines the most necessary daily communication functionalities into one platform. Product Managers can create project or team based Channels specific to whom they wish to communicate with (e.g. Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Scrum Team, etc.). Slack’s integration with Jira is especially beneficial; PM’s can receive ticket updates from Jira simultaneously in a Slack Channel.

Whether it’s through Jira, AHA! or Slack, Product Managers are expected to readily answer product related questions at the drop of a hat. Dependent on the end-users and the size of the company, multiple communication and management platforms may be the best way to answer those questions in a scalable manner.

Specialization
Product Managers are specializing in multi-disciplinary educations (e.g. technical PM or design-savvy PM) to align with new HR requirements. This was pulled from a recent Google Product Management job description,

“Minimum Qualifications: BA/BS in Computer Science or related technical field… Preferred Qualifications: Product management or design experience with a focus on software products and technologies.”

Since Product Managers work with the design and engineering teams on a daily basis, it’s helpful to understand how each team functions. From a startup perspective, Product Managers can more easily market themselves as a technical or design focused Product Manager — the knowledge they have can eliminate previously required resources.

At the end of the day, Product Manager’s roles, much like products, are constantly changing. With continued learning and application of design, engineering and communication trends, Product Managers can get ahead of the game and set themselves, their business and their product apart from the crowd. The question remains that remains is how to properly balance time executing tasks versus learning new management tools and methods.

7 Skills More Important Than A Technical Degree

While I don’t formally have an engineering or technical degree, I’ve held a product management role for the past few years. I’ve worked for corporate companies, as well as start-ups and found it to be true that,

“Not all Product Managers need a technical degree.”

As a Product Manager, you’re responsible for managing the product through each stage of the Product Life Cycle (PLC): strategy, roadmap planning, marketing, sales, forecasting, etc. Each of these stages require a certain skill set, but most important the skill of communication. When pressed with technical questions in the past, I found that if I asked questions about the things I didn’t understand, that the skills I had superseded the knowledge lacked.*

Overall, there are 7 skills all Product Managers need to succeed.

Customer Love
Understand and love your customer. Be empathetic to their pain points and make decisions with the customer in mind.
Think Strategically
Define and re-define the problem your product solves. Listen to customers as their problem(s) and factors of influence change. Investigation into your marketplace and competition will provide insights into the direction and positioning of your product.
Plan and Prioritize Accordingly
Foresee potential changes in the way your product solves the customers’ problem and how and when your customer makes decisions around the purchasing or use of your product. Develop your roadmap with those possible challenges and changes in mind, along with proper engineering estimates and product designs.

“The product manager owns the product roadmap. [S]he is the person responsible for defining, in detail, the ‘why’ and high level ‘what’ of the product that the engineering team will be asked to build.”
– De Haff, CEO of AHA! (2015)
Influence Others
You need to explain your product, the reasoning for the direction of your product, as well as why and how your product solves a particular problem better than anyone else’s product. Since Product Managers work cross-functionally, the ability to build relationships across various teams will ultimately determine the success of your product; if you cannot get other teams to support your product then how can you expect your customer to?
Focus on Details
Annotate – in detail – the client’s requirements and feedback throughout the Product Life Cycle (PLC). From color choice to font type, each decision made influences the customer experience and their opinion of the product. Clarity is important; product decisions need to be explained from the point of view of the customer.

“Like all forms of design, visual design is about problem solving, not about personal preference or unsupported opinion.”

– Bob Baxley, Head of Product Design at Pinterest (2003) (Cornett, 2008).
Analyze Data
Decisions should be made based on data, not gut feeling. Because data is irrefutable, it’s simple to explain why or why not a product decision was made; it removes opinions from the conversation and leaves only facts. The analysis of data can additionally provide new insights, which may lead into the development of new features or products.
Execute
Product Managers need to execute the product goals and roadmap plans outlined. If you follow through on the commitments and timelines promised, you’ll gain trust, respect and support from your fellow colleagues.

I found that pairing these seven skills with passion and ability to overcome ambiguity in the workplace, that my lack of a technical degree did not affect my level of success as a Product Manager. As a Product Manager it’s much more important to be fearless — ask questions, be curious and learn from others.

References:

de Haff, B. (2015, July 8). The product manager vs. the engineering manager. Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-de-haaff/the-product-manager-vs-th_1_b_7733156.html

Cornett, C. (2008, June 2). Visual design is about problem solving. inspireUX. Retrieved from: http://www.inspireux.com/category/bob-baxley/

Everyone Wants to Hire a Techpreneur

Randi Zuckerberg and I
ROCHESTER, NY (October, 16, 2015) — The ambitious, sassy and entrepreneurial Randi Zuckerberg discussed the opportunities and trends in technology during the Gasser Lecture Series, hosted by the Saunder’s College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Today, the opportunity to succeed relies heavily on involvement with technology. Radi discussed three things you can do achieve success: (1) participate in a hackathon, (2) pay attention to your brand, and (3) get hooked on technology at an early age.

Everyone should “participate in a hackathon,” said Randi. Hackathon are events that drive out-of-the-box thinking and problem solving. “Hackathons allow people to eliminate the fear of failure,” said Randi; when people feel as though they can speak freely, they share ideas more often and more openly. Companies such as Intuit, Facebook and Google host monthly or yearly hackathons, of which frequently produce the most innovative and thoughtful products to date. By displaying original thinking during a hackathon, or at your current job, people will admire and appreciate your unique perspective; you’ll always be someone who brings new ideas to the table.

Next, Radi discussed the importance of “paying attention to your brand.” Companies, such as Amazon encourage their employees to “respectfully challenge decisions should they disagree.” It’s important to think differently than others; a unique brand is the most important thing you can have. With the opportunity to interact and “post in real-time,” with social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, people can get ahead of trends (and their peers), said Randi. Your online brand is how people perceive you, so pay special attention to it.

While on the subject of your online presence, Randi urges that you to “get hooked on technology at an early age.” There are so many opportunities that a knowledge of technology can provide. Not only can people learn to build technology, but people can learn to solve problems using technology. “(As we’ve seen with Facebook), advancements in technology can change the world,” said Randi. Some of the most successful tech companies have started with young adults, such as Box, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest.

If you become immersed in technology at an early age, you’ll gain skills companies look for when hiring; an innovative and forward-thinking mindset, and a fearless attitude. Wouldn’t you want to hire someone like that?