Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akil and joining me today is my
friend Bandanjot Singh. He has such a wealth and depth
of knowledge when it comes to product vision, the payments,
domain and content creation which is a few of the topics we
cover today. It was a pure joy learning from
him and I think you'll enjoy it too.
How did you find like minded people to build up kind of your
your connections here? Yeah, I think you as a person
always need to stick to certain traits.
You might have to to build that network, right.
And for me it was always about finding people I can connect
with through my writings and things that I write about, speak
about, write about on social media, etcetera.
And via that I get a lot of connections as well.
So, So that was the de facto you, you move me to any country
in the world and that would be my de facto plan to to start
networking and to and to start meeting new people.
So, So for me when I started writing about the same time, I
mean I was writing before but not like professionally or out
there on social media platforms. So that I started doing about 2
1/2, three years back and that for me led to a lot of
connections in the product world and the product community in
Europe is building up quite well.
I mean there, there are a few hubs, there's a Berlin as a hub
is, is growing, Amsterdam as a hub is growing, Zurich as a hub
is growing, growing. So you find these hubs across
Europe where the product and tech community is, is growing a
lot and that's what I started connecting to.
So that was my first sort of a circle, but it's not a very
close circle, right. Yeah.
So it's it's just set of professionals who love to talk
talk about product and tech. The the second network obviously
comes in via the company that you work for.
So when I when I came to Amsterdam I joined booking.com
and that has an immense sort of I mean it's headquartered and
everyone is required to work out of Amsterdam most of their
product and tech folks. So that was my first closer
network people with which I spend most days and you could
also spend weekends and and be together to to you know explore
restaurants or be throw home parties or stuff like that.
So so that was my second, let's say more closer network and then
I think eventually you figure out the people with which you
want to sort of you know stay in touch and keep keep meeting them
and keep figuring out what to do next.
So that that basically was the addition for me over a period of
time. Yeah, that makes sense.
I feel like I've heard this before that people that create
content, whether it's video form content or like written form
content, when they go to a country, they already kind of
know people there. I think that's such a cool,
like, cheat code. It's like a life hack,
basically. It is.
And and this is what digital unlocks for you, right?
I would say that anyone who's exploring, I would say countries
or even their own city. I mean, cities are big nowadays,
right? I mean, there's so much
happening in a in a single city, especially in the metropolitan.
So if you're out there speaking about what you like, I mean not
even content creation. If you simply post about what
you think, what you like, what you do, you can attract people
in the similar location that might be interested in meeting
or knowing more, and you can always reach out to them.
So yeah. So digital unlocks immense
networking opportunities. Yes, I think so too.
Yeah, I want to get into the the content creation side.
But before we do that, I think I just want to put a pin on that
because leading up to that, I want to learn about how you got
into a product strategy, product vision, stuff like that.
I feel like the people that I've worked with that have those
responsibilities, their background usually varies in how
they go to positions like that. In the 1st place it might be a
project lead from a technical point of view, a project manager
from more program oriented side, or even a BA side like a
business analyst. How is that for you?
Yeah, you're right. I think.
And also anything to do with strategy doesn't have very
defined roles. Even when people get into it,
they might be approaching strategy from a business
perspective, from a tech perspective, from an operations
or marketing perspective. I mean you can have, you can fit
strategy or do anything and it, it makes sense, you can have a
marketing strategy, you can have a tech strategy, right.
So you're right that the roles are not defined once you get
into it. But I would say when someone
gets into it, generally that's decided by whatever the scope of
your work is, how, how high are the stakes of your work?
What are the risks that are involved with the kind of work
that you do. Because if if you're in a market
which is changing very fast or your clients are changing very
fast, you need to have a plan that's that's certainly, you
know, we're all wired in a way to have a plan that may be like
3 months into the future. What should we do over the next
six months And as you take a bigger, more riskier roles in
the sense that you take more ownership of what would happen
over the next few months and that can come from project
management from even a senior developer or a tech lead or that
can be from product manager. You need to have a long term
plan about what's going to happen over the next 12 months
or 18 months. And and strategy is, is a word
that you can fit into these long time horizon thinking and that's
what strategy is, right. So and that's why you, I mean
they're they're rarely roles which are specifically called
strategy roles, but you do strategy on the side while you
do your main role. Yeah, so, So I think strategy as
a way of thinking should be something that everyone should
try to sharpen and and see how they can also think long term
while they're doing the short term things.
Yeah. Did it, did it grow for you
organically this way as well where you got more and more
responsibilities and started thinking of a longer term
horizon? Yeah, my experiences actually
started from I was working for this company called Gojek, which
is a big Southeast Asian super app.
Yeah, competing with Grab and also supported by a lot of these
Chinese investments. Now what eventually happened was
I was in product management roles and and growing in those
product management roles and I ended up owning a domain which
had a huge impact on the company depending on the direction it
takes. Yeah.
And I knew that I could no longer have a non strategic view
on what the team should do next. What domain was that?
So this is a super app, right? So you could book
transportation, you could book, you can order food.
Yeah, you can do payments all in a single app.
So imagine if a lot of these fintech and the Ubers and the
bowls and all came together and built a single app.
So kind of like that. So it's a huge sort of a thing
in all happening at the palm of your hand.
And the domain for me was to enable payments for all of these
services. So when you take a cab from
location A to location B, how do you pay for that cab?
And you have a lot of options which are more specific to let's
say preferences of Southeast Asian customers.
So a, Thailand is so different from Indonesia and so different
from Singapore, OK. So I was in the payments domain
and and that's when I figured out that since the stakes are so
high, I mean payments is something which you should not
worry about as a as a as a customer.
Yeah. If you have to worry about your,
your pay, your payments, that's mean that means the product did
not do a good job of it, right. It should be seamless.
It should almost be invisible. Yeah, when you try to do
payments right, it should be just something that you do
subconsciously. It could be that easy.
Yeah, if that doesn't work, my whole trust goes down the drain.
Exactly so, so and and that's when I started seriously
thinking about the long term aspects of what decisions we
take while building these payment solutions in the app.
So if somebody is taking a cab, just to take an example, and you
offer them two options, one is to pay instantly and the other
option is that maybe that person takes too many cabs in a day
because he or she is is travelling from office to home
everyday taking a car ride, then they might not want to pay every
single time because they're travelling too much.
Maybe they want to pay once at the end of the month.
So you could just club all of your bills into a single bill
and let them pay by the end of the month.
Yeah. And these two kind of customers
are very different, the ones who want to pay instantly and the
ones who want to club everything towards the end of the month.
And it's about convenience and seamlessness.
Now, how do you as, as a product team, as a tech team, design
things in a way that you can cater to these very different
needs? Yeah.
And then there are implications on your infrastructure, your
security, your network, what platforms you build, what
experiences you build. And and and it just becomes not
so easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get.
That it can, it can become complex very soon and that's
where my first, let's say seriously thinking about what
should be the strategy if we do this, what is going to be the
reaction of the market, of the competition of the regulator and
so on and so forth. And that makes it multi
dimensional. That makes it complex.
But also you need to learn on the go.
You cannot have answers. So, so you need to know, you
need to know just enough in your strategic process to try out
things, but not so much that you think you have a perfect plan.
So somewhere in between that's that's the strategic thinking
part. Yeah, I I love strategic
thinking and even now I think that product vision, product
ownership is something that interests me.
It always has kind of from a creator perspective, from a
software engineer perspective. In that team, as I hear your
story, for me the stakes sound very high because you're in a
huge company. Payment is the most crucial
part, as you say, if it's not seamless, people lose trust in
the whole, the whole brand recognition and the image can go
down and down because of that. And then you come into a
position where you say, OK, we have to experiment, we have to
try things out. You're probably also learning on
the go. How was it within that
environment when the stakes were that high?
Yeah, I think it's it's it's something that everyone learns
in their careers, right. I don't think there is a book
which which tells you what to do when stakes are.
High. Yeah, I wish.
Yeah. And and I haven't found a leader
as well or a mentor who can say exactly what to do in such
situations because to be honest there is no one size fit all in
in different kind of situations and it it sort of varies and
that's what makes it interesting and challenging at the same
time. Yeah, what works in one company
and that's where a lot of this experience bias comes in.
So you you saw some things working at one company and you
go to the second company and nothing works whatever you
learned. Yeah.
Yeah, because the company is different, the market is
different, the customers are different and that's why I, I I
wish I had one answer. But to me the IT it, it lies in
some sort of a framework you should have in a mind, yeah,
with more than one possibilities of the possible outcomes, right.
So in in in the experience that I talked about for go check, it
was always about I can do it two ways.
Either I invest so much into upfront research that I have the
strongest hypothesis about what can work or not.
Yeah, yeah, they're almost always valid.
Yeah, exactly. And then that upfront research
is also a craft in itself. How much research, what are you
trying to validate? Yeah, till what extent do you
want to validate? You cannot validate it too much.
So you run out of time in the market and you cannot validate
too, too less. Otherwise your hypothesis that
may not be strong. So that's one way to do it.
And I would say companies with great market research and
customer research cultures mostly go for this approach
where they try to come up with the strongest hypothesis to
through research and validation and then those hypothesis can
become your strategic bets. For example, the other approach
that I've seen in companies which do not have strong market
and customer research in house is experimentation.
So you may not know which hypothesis are strong or weak.
I mean, you always have a hunch, or you may have some anecdotes.
And you know, there's always some senior person telling that
I know what the fuck it is. Yeah, so I know.
You can, you can get it right. You can get it what you can try
out in the market, let's say. So the second approach is more
about experimentation, in which you literally throw out your
best two or three ideas into the market and see the traction over
the first few months or weeks depending on what kind of
product and market it is. And then you figure out, is it
going in a positive direction from a metric perspective or is
it going in a neutral or a negative direction.
Then you decide to stop or scale or pivot.
And and this experimentation approach requires a good
infrastructure you should have on experimentation side.
Yeah, like AB testing or whatever it is.
And and then there are companies in between.
I've taken 2 extremes. So good in customer research and
market research. The second one is
experimentation. Then there are companies in
between who do a little bit of both.
So I So when I join a company, I first look at where, where is
this company on the spectrum, Yeah.
And then what? What can I try out without
overloading the system with like new tools and stuff and start
throwing what I learned in the previous company.
So I try to avoid that and just see what what are the strengths
of this company? How can I build it?
I like that a lot, yeah. I think from my personal
history, I've always been more so involved with companies that
did not have kind of strong market research to build up
strong formulated hypotheses. And also from the implementation
point of view, I I have been in projects where we built up the
experimation in so much so that we could do that and then also
be part of for example building features and then testing them
out. The struggle I've seen there and
also I think this is just personal bias that is in there
is OK you you always have a preference for a certain
outcome, right? And if then the data sways
towards a different outcome, it might be like OK, is this the
technical implementation? Did we do it right?
Did we set up the experiment right?
Or am I just wrong? And mostly, that last part is
hard to acknowledge sometimes. It is.
And you know, I think being in
companies with strong experimentation culture has
taught me one thing, which is you are most you are.
I mean you, even if you do not do any experimentation and let's
say you have no customer research, you have a probability
of 50% to be right or wrong. Yeah, let's just assume that.
Right. And in the companies where I was
doing a lot of experimentation, which was in Gojek and and
booking.com, more than 50% of experiments actually failed.
Yeah, technical reasons or maybe that it's a wrong sample that we
rolled out the experiment to or the product or the feature, the
hypothesis was wrong. I mean there there's so many
reasons as you as you rightly said.
But it taught me that if I'm more than 50% wrong in companies
where I'm experimenting, I should be really careful in
companies where I'm just relying on on non experimentation
techniques. Because without experimentation
you tend to have some sort of confidence in in your in your
thoughts and ideas and beliefs. And I, I, I'm, I'm now just more
careful when I'm trying out things in companies with, let's
say, less experimentation, focus, but more research focus.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it teaches your bit. I think that's a fantastic
insight. Yeah.
I I wouldn't have guessed that even with the strong
experimentation culture that you'd be wrong.
Like kind of like 50% of sounds. Yeah, it makes sense.
But that's often actually yes. Yeah, that's true.
So I mean it, it just tells you about, you know, it's it's this,
this whole product and tech is, is not so easy and ideas have
become commodity in a way. Everyone has ideas, but who has
more successful ideas that can work out is is where the real
thing is and that's why we're all working together to make
things happen, right. So yeah, so that's that's an
insight from from an experimentation driven culture.
Yeah, love that. When you touched on those ideas,
how do you come up with those ideas?
Is that you and kind of a strategy team or who do you
involve? Yeah, from that idea kind of
incubation. Yeah, I think I I see this as
different phases of where your product is.
If you if you take all the products in your company,
depending on if you're building it for your company or for a
client, you can almost map your products on some sort of a
product stage. Yeah, yeah.
So you could have early stage products that are that do not
have product market fit. You can have growth stage
products that have a product market fit and are getting
traction. Or you can have products in like
highly mature stage right, where you know it's going to get
tougher because the market might be saturated or the competition
may be too high, the margins are too low or the product is not
selling right. And in these three different
stages you they're very different approaches to get
ideas. And and you one has to be really
careful if you if you, if you do not take into account the stage
of the product and start consolidating ideas without
considering the stage of the product.
You can actually end up in a situation where you're asking
your strategy team or your internal stakeholders for ideas
for product that doesn't have a product market fit.
Because in those case the ideas have to come from the customers
and clients and their interactions with your product.
Yeah, yeah. But if it's a mature product
where you already know how customers react to it and there
have been years of building that product over there, ideas can
come from internally as well in terms of what can we do with
this product next, do we modify, do we change it, do we shut it
down? What do we do with it.
So one has to be careful with the stage of the product.
Now if I take example of the early stage product with no
product market fit, that's where the ideas should mostly come
from, the market and the interactions of your customers
with your product and that's where the idea should come from.
So customer interviews spend as much time in the market
understanding which clients, which customers, how do they
interact with their product. If it's a digital direct to
consumer product, then how do consumers interact with your
app? What do they like, what do they
engage with? And and retention is probably
the biggest metric in in an early stage product.
So you have to find what makes people come back rather than
what makes people use the app because the first this is
easier. I mean you can always throw
incentives for people to use the app, but what makes them come
back? Yeah, and that's where you
should search for more ideas. Are you directly involved, kind
of, in that research? I think if you're in product,
you should find out time to be involved in the research, yeah?
However, I also know it's not always easy because it depends
on how the company is wired and what the culture of the company
is. But let's say if you were
thinking of an ideal situation, I think I I would even say that
the tech and the designers should also get involved on what
what is the customer behaviour. And just to understand a little
bit more as a team, yeah, yeah. And get involved on those
customer research elements more and more so that the next time
you're building it. We talked about the 50% success
rate. So let's not be a team that is
throwing a dice. Let's be a team that knows what
number will come up and we throw the dice.
Yeah, be predictable. Yeah, be more predictable and
that would happen if if in an early stage product you're
spending more time with customers, OK.
And it and this can change a bit if if the product is high
maturity product then you could be getting ideas in different
ways, yeah, for example. And then from those more mature
products in different product phases, yeah, do you then spend
as much time kind of being glued to a customer or what else do?
You do there, I think. I think as as the product
becomes more mature at least the assumption is that you have
worked on that product for for years or you know a lot a fairly
long period of time that you understand your customers their
behaviours quite well. That's an assumption that you
always take in mature products and that's what I see when I
when I join a company as well. And in those cases you you do
not need to invest into customer research as in going into
interviews and focus group discussions because hopefully in
your company you should already be getting daily real time data
on how customers, what are the customer complaints.
So what are the top 3 customer complaints?
I mean that should already be with their customer service
team. For a mature product and and
long enough data you would already know what the
competition is doing. So you know which features are
are competing, which are not competing, which are not doing
well for example. So in a mature product, this is
more about observing the data, making sense of the data and
then acting on the data, whereas for early stage, you do not have
data, so you spend more time with customers, Yeah.
And in mature products, if the data quality is good and you're
getting the data in the right manner, that can be a good proxy
to understand customers, Yeah. Yeah, interesting.
I I always thought this might be the case, but it's very much
reliant on any information you can get, right?
Any data that you have. And if you don't have the data,
you go close to the source, which is your customer.
Yes. And you start talking to them to
get any form of data. Yeah, exactly.
That's qualitative. And then once you have a bulk of
customers that's willing to pay, you have that product market
fit, then you can rely on the numbers, right, that
quantitative data. Exactly.
And and this is what happens in really, really large scale
companies. Once you become a company of a
size of, I don't know, 5010 thousand 20,000 employees, yeah,
of course you'll have customer interviews being done, but for
majority of the products you have to rely on the data
insights because you're you might be serving thousands or
100,000 or millions of customers.
It's just the scale. And because of the scale, you
have opportunity to get data from so many sources.
So that may be your App Store you, that may be your reviews
that people leave on sites or your customers.
I mean there's so many sources that you should probably have a
good infrastructure to to get the insights from that data.
But it's not so easy as I'm saying it, because it's very
difficult to collect data in the right manner and then clean it
up to make sense out of it, right.
So I know it's not easy, but that should be a general
approach for for mature products, yeah?
Yeah. If that's the vision, then let's
see how we can get there. Yeah.
Have you also find yourself found yourself in an
organization where kind of these information processes,
regardless of the project product phase we're not in place
and where you had to strongly advocate for guys, this is, this
is basically what we need to do our job, to do my job basically
in a correct manner. Yeah, this is what we need.
Yeah, I would say companies who right from the early days did
not think of investing into data pipelines, data infrastructures,
the the whole framework that you need did struggle towards later
years. And if companies end up
implementing those exercises towards later part of their
later part of their timeline then becomes really difficult to
do that. So to your question, I would say
I've seen more companies struggling with making sense of
the data, not because they're not getting data, but they never
planned things in a way early enough to know in what format,
in what sense and how should we get the data And is it clean
data or is it unclean data. And a lot of companies are just
spending time in parsing the data, cleaning the data
etcetera, because in the early days they just thought they they
should get some customer things over e-mail or over some sort of
customer service platform, but they never planned it that maybe
someday this data might be useful for us.
So again, so I think now the companies are becoming more
aware about the fact that data is literally the gold mine.
So when you start building a project or a product, you start
thinking about setting up the right data infrastructure right
from day one. But a lot of companies that have
been around for, let's say you know, more than a decade or even
you know, 40-50 years, the big ones, for them it is really
difficult to do it now. Yeah, they're playing catch up.
Yeah, yeah, they're playing catch up and there's no other
way around. They cannot stop playing catch
up so. So it's about managing how much
do you invest time into those elements versus the other
elements which is right related to you know, your regular
business and growth topics etcetera.
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because both
sides have then an interesting challenge from playing catch up.
It's hard to play catch up. You're behind and you have to
have pillars in place and you have probably a huge amount of
data because you've been established for a long long time
and then from just starting up you wanna start up and you wanna
do a lot. So then what is the balance in
between doing enough and not doing too much?
Cuz doing too much might slow you down.
That's a hard one. Yeah, yeah, it is.
And this is where a lot of these investments are going into your
transformation activities, digital transformation, etc.
And you know some companies take the route off and sort of and
trying to acquire if there is already something that's out
there that can help them streamline things faster rather
than building it in house. I mean the decisions eventually
come down to two things, right? How much are you able to
sacrifice or balance for the perceived benefits you might get
out of this whole exercise of data cleanup etcetera versus not
doing that and continue to invest in your products and
services? Yeah.
And this balance is exactly the reason that the management and
the team members, I would say even for product teams, they
should have a plan and which in over a long time becomes the
strategy, right. Because if you're investing in
your infrastructure, let's say over the next 6 to 12 months,
you know, it comes at a cost. Yeah.
And the cost is you might lose out on the way market is going.
A competition is catching up and that's a cost.
Yeah. And as long as you put all of
these on the table and say, OK, these are the trade-offs you're
willing to take as a company, yeah, that is what is called
strategy, right. Strategy is what lets you act in
the right manner. And that's why I always keep
going back to these product strategy discussions because
exactly what you asked, these things are not easy for for
anyone to take decision. And and you know, we humans are
wired in a way that we think about our existence in the
company, how to optimize it. And we, we do not often optimize
for the organization's lifetime because organizations can have
have a longer lifetime. I mean, they can go beyond your
career. Absolutely.
Yeah. So who in the company is
thinking for the lifetime of the organization when, you know,
most of the people in the company are mostly optimizing
for their own careers? Yeah.
So if you have someone who who thinks I want to spend four or
three years or five years in the company, they're optimizing for
that kind of thinking. Yeah, mostly I used Payout for
themselves. And that is the biggest, I would
say, a dilemma that leadership always has, right.
How do you make sure that people think for close to the lifetime
of the company rather than the lifetime of their careers in the
company? Yeah.
And this is the the biggest trade off right if in terms of
how you build your employees, how do you train them etcetera?
Yeah, very interesting. I think it if it is a win, win,
that is the best scenario because then it goes hand in
hand. Yeah, in a way.
And The funny thing is, from a software perspective, just by
virtue of doing pull requests and putting information in kind
of the history in a log, I do that for myself.
I do that for my team and the people that come after me.
Yes. And that is a very much
structured approach of making yourself kind of obsolete and
then having enough information for the people that follow to
understand what happened in the past.
Absolutely. And and you know, I, I was
reading a few days back about you know some some articles on
strategy and innovation and there was an interesting fact to
what you said also around you know, how to make things easier
for others that come after you. Yeah.
So in in 1955, if you look at the Fortune 500 companies list,
90% of them do not exist today. So 10% of those companies exist,
90% do not. Yeah.
And now if you just extrapolate that to today's, let's say the
top companies and you can do it by region or just look at
Fortune 500, let's just assume that 90% of those will not exist
in next 50 years. Yeah, wow.
And that's, that's a big fact And what happens to those 90%
companies, You have a great team, you have a great
leadership, you're all right minds, you're thinking about
strategies and still 90% of companies stop existing.
I mean either they get bought out or they get shut down or
whatever something happens to those companies.
And this is a great learning to say that over our lifetime and
and the careers that we invest into, right.
The market is always overtakes a bit of what you think you're
doing versus what the organization is thinking because
market has existed long enough and then market changes even
faster today than it existed 50 years back.
Yeah. So the point that you mentioned,
coming back to that point, small things like documentation, I
mean, should we do documentation?
This is such a small point for a leadership to discuss.
But if the leadership is really concerned about the lifetime of
the organization, they should emphasize documentation.
Absolutely. Teams.
Yeah, because if you're building an organization for 20305060
years, whatever, maybe beyond your lifetime, you should put in
practices in place like documentation for for for
different teams and different roles as as a signal to the
company that we care about the lifetime of this organization.
Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
I I didn't know that statistic. And then even then knowing that
statistic could influence kind of your role in a company,
right? Because if you have the mindset
of in 30 years, this company's not going to be this company,
it's going to be different, then you might act completely
different based on that. It's very different, right.
And and again, nobody can predict the future.
So we are really saying your, we're really talking about the
mindset over here, right? Your mindset would change and
then you do things which in a meeting you might argue about,
but now if you if you think about long enough, they just
make sense because because of the the, the, the to make a
sustainable business out of the current company, there's some
practices you need to do. Yeah.
I can imagine is that also why you've kind of been focused on
staying within this payment domain because payments as a
domain are across organizations, right?
It's an interesting, complex domain, and it's complex also by
region, by organization, how we do it here and that kind of like
a life skill you carry with you as you go throughout your
career. Yeah.
I I've been on this side where
I've stuck to a domain for a long time of of course, in
different geographies and different kind of companies.
And I've also got friends and colleagues who have changed
companies and domains every few years.
Yeah. And while I see the benefit of
the other side as well, now speaking to them because now
they experience multiple domains and they they they become more
journalistic in the problem solving approach rather than
more specific to a domain. So I do see advantages on the
other side as well. But from my point of view, I
think you have to eventually find out what problems are you
solving for the end consumers which are humans at the end of
the day. So payments is something which
will never go essentially right. Money is going to be a key part
of you know exchanging value with products and services,
buying things etcetera. Yeah and payments can take so
many shapes and forms. I mean look at the last few
years, right. We, the digitization of payments
is something that we've all seen.
Some countries are leading, some countries are still catching up
with respect to digitization. So that's one aspect of payments
and that in itself is a very interesting depending on your
role and which geography you are in.
When I was in in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and I was you know
that time surprised when it was the 4th.
It it is the 4th biggest company country in the world with
respect to population and the and the the opportunities it has
for digitization of payments and the and the issue for those
consumers was access to finances.
Yeah, well. Yeah.
So credit demand is big, but there are no institutions that
can give credit to consumers. Small credit, I'm talking about
small credit, right, not not big mortgages and stuff like that.
And any products that you build that can give access to credit,
small credit over a short period of time was a big win in those
countries. Now when I move to the
Netherlands, and of course I'm working across multiple
countries in in the Europe, access to finances is not not a
problem. The problem is about
convenience. How seamless it should be and is
it available when I need it and should not be too interfering in
my daily life. Yeah, which is completely the
opposite of of many of these Southeast Asian consumers.
So payments is just a vehicle for me to think about how
different people and humans interact with their, you know
with the payments and what they do on a daily basis.
And and I feel that you know money is something which is
always central to our behaviour even if you do not talk about
it. I think we're all driven by
certain things which you know how can I get most value out of
my money, how can I save the most or whatever maybe your
idea. So I think it has the payments
remain has helped me of a lot of insights into how people think
in different geographies and that's that's that's been a
great learning for me and I'm that's why I've been sticking to
it I guess for a long time. It's fascinating to hear that
what can be challenging in a region or a set of countries is
like in abundance over at other countries.
And then all of a sudden you go to kind of subsequent challenges
because of that or how do you become an outlier and then kind
of out outperform your competition in that way.
But for me and from kind of a strategic point of view, you are
very valuable within the payments domain because you
bring the diversity not only within payments but also from
organizations, right. And you have that depth that is
OK. This was challenging here, this
is in abundance here. Those learnings might still be
applicable. And then kind of distinguishing
yourself. Yeah, I think I'm not sure if
that is unique to kind of a product leadership role because
for me from a software engineering point of view, like
I've, I've had a lot of experience in e-commerce, but
e-commerce for me, I've kind of done that.
So I I want to do other things as well and learn from that.
Maybe it comes into kind of the people you talk to with a more
generalistic mindset, but I I'm not sure if from a software,
from a creation point of view, the domain might be diverse
enough for half that depth as you have from a kind of a
visionary strategic point of view.
Yeah, Yeah. And and that's where I would say
that it just depends on at what level are you contributing to
the field. In a way, Yeah.
So. And you're absolutely right.
Right. Like the set of technical
challenges that existed in e-commerce world, let's say,
have mostly been solved or at least, you know, there is a
solution. Yeah.
Rather than it, you know, you don't have to invent stuff
anymore. And now e-commerce is getting
automated so much with these platforms.
So it's moving in a certain direction, right?
Yeah. And then as as as a software
developer you would then move to a new challenges that might
exist in other domains for example, right.
And and that's where 11 unique thing about product is that
there are two variations of product people that I've seen
one who are more tech aligned who like to work with the
software developers think technically also think about
scalability, reliability and all of that stuff.
So they're more tech minded product managers.
Yeah, but I'm also seeing a change where now a lot of
software developers are becoming more product thinkers.
Yeah, that's a good change. I think so.
Yeah. Yeah.
But then I also see a shift in the roles of product managers.
Now they are expected to be more market oriented because if
engineers are moving towards more product mindedness, then
product managers are now expected to become more market
oriented. Yeah.
And that is, I would say that in in my last six to seven years
I've seen or experienced personally the most second kind
of product roles myself. I've been doing that where a lot
of my technical team members were aware enough about the the
problems at hand and how to solve them with with some some
help and guidance wherever needed.
But then I thought my responsibility is no more to to
you know, guide technical team members on what to build because
they're they're smart enough and that's the change that I see in
their roles now. And I have to make sure I
understand the market, the competition well enough.
Yeah, so that there's an external view and there's an
internal view into what we are building.
Yeah. And and that is where the the
product managers are not getting closer to market and the
business outcomes rather than the technical outcomes of their
products a bit. And and and that's where to to
your question, I think that has been the biggest reason that
domain has become so important for product people.
Whereas for software developers, the domain is important but not
as much as the product people, because the product people are
becoming more external focus focused towards the market,
whereas the software developers are focusing more towards the
let's say within a certain boundaries of product
complexity, they can operate quite well as long as they know
what needs to be solved. That's an.
Interesting thing. It's a bit of a nuance in how
the market is evolving now. Yeah, I think that's a a very
interesting insight and it might also explain kind of the the
ranges and experiences of of product owners and product
managers that I've worked with. Yeah, because.
But to your point, I have worked with product owners that were
very much focused on the technical nuances sometimes to
their demise as well where they were anchored in a solution and
it turned out to be different and it's very hard because of
that kind of tie to technology, yes.
And then more so as of late, I've worked with product owners
and product managers that. Give a lot of product choice
freedom to the team that are like OK, I I also want you to
understand the customer, right. But because of that the product
might be better at the end of this and this is my area of
expertise and for these things I trust you.
For these things I provide the info and together we do this.
Yeah yeah. And I think that's that's really
cool to see that that involvement.
Yes, it's a change that's happening now also with all of
the the books and the authors and you know that's the kind of
culture that's being encouraged in general products building
nowadays. And to be honest I think it's a
it's a it's quite a good change and I think it's just on the
willingness of product owners and software developers to then
adopt that change. That change is available but how
comfortable are you to adopt that change?
Yeah, that has. That is also not easy because
I've I've also seen product owners who love to own the
technical, not own, but they want to be a big contributor to
technical decisions. Yeah.
And I've also seen software developers who feel too
comfortable in just building the tech part of it and leave the
customers and market to the product people.
So as long as you're able to get out of the comfort zone, both
sides from product and tech, yeah, then this new kind of
evolution of product and tech roles is what we are seeing
because people are getting out of that comfort zone now.
Yeah. I think from a, from my
perspective, from a tech perspective, it's easy to gain
an area of interest into how what you're building is being
used and how they then do that more effectively.
Yeah, yeah, I think and this might be my assumption from a
product perspective, if you've always been kind of involved in
more so the technical side to go more high over it to think about
strategically what is the market, what is our domain, what
are our competitors doing like that abundance of information.
Some people might not know where to start when that is all of a
sudden kind of the evolvement of their role.
Yes. I think that might be
challenging. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
And and there's no textbook for, for you know a lot of
engineering leaders that I've worked with, I mean they they
might not have seen that change, but now the the now we are
changing, seeing that change. So there's no textbook or or an
onboarding where you can now start making sense of this the
the customers and the market. So and and I completely see
where you're coming from because that that is, that is complex
even for product managers and product owners when you ask them
to empower your team. Yeah, What does that mean?
Yeah, right. And and I see this word, I mean
there are a lot of words now being thrown around empowerment
and stuff, but what does it mean?
Can you put some tangible steps to it?
Can you put some tangible ideas and iterations to it?
And, and I would love to see, I mean, there are a lot of great
product authors who have tried to do that quite well.
So not taking anything away from them.
But I've seen that companies have gotten into this issue of
saying we need to empower our teams.
But they think empowerment means letting people throwing problems
at people and letting them solve it, which is never helpful
because you need to give them context, need to tell them
overall what direction we are going as a company and what are
things we will do and not do. Give them some decision making
framework and then you know, talk about empowerment or
whatever that means in the company.
And the problem is, a lot of companies throw empowerment
because they just want people to work out things on their own
without giving them the decision making framework, and that's
always makes it so complex. Yeah, I love that.
Empowerment needs to be facilitated by the environment
and provided through information and kind of processes or at
least enough processes to to allow for empowerment to happen
in that way, right. It's a it's kind of a how do you
say that? I don't know how you say that it
needs to. The ground needs to be.
Yeah, fertile. Fertile.
Yeah. I I had Dutch.
Like Dutch, yeah, for for like stuff to grow in that way.
I think that's a great analogy. Yes, yes, true.
I love learning about kind of your depth within this field,
but from a domain perspective as well as from a kind of roles and
responsibility perspective. And I know you have a
newsletter, you write about the content, Is that like correlated
in a way? Did it get stronger your your
knowledge also through kind of research and creating and how
did you start creating content in the 1st place?
Maybe that's a good place to start.
Yeah, I think I would say that I I've been part of this two
different patterns that I saw in in the social media world,
right, where it was initially a lot about your personal stuff
and career and stuff like that. And then saw people start
putting ideas about their how to think about certain domains or
certain skill sets etcetera. Yeah, I mean, if you just go a
decade back with we were not seeing so much content creation
happening, although I mean people had always had great
ideas, but they just were not comfortable putting ideas onto
social medias, social media platforms, right.
And then something changed over the last five to seven years I
would say where people started actively coming out publishing
on different platforms and stuff like that.
And what I predict going forward is I think everyone to some
percentage needs to be a content creator as as a skill set in
general. And I'm not talking about like
starting a newsletter or stuff like that.
I think if you are serious about creating your brand and and
creating attracting the right set of people, you need to start
putting out something out there in the world.
And today the world is digital, so the the only means is to
start doing it digitally so you can do things within your
company. But to to let the world know how
you think you should. I think everyone needs to be a
content creator in the future. Maybe just the percentages have
to be different. Somebody just spends 1% of their
time. Some spends 50% of their time,
but people have to start putting ideas out there a bit.
Why is that? Yeah, I I think now going back
to the question which which you asked about, about when did I
start and how do, how did I start content creation?
Yeah, I think eventually you need a bit of sparring and
brainstorming about do I think the right way?
And if I think the right way, do people also acknowledge it, or
do people also agree with it, or they disagree with it?
And if you're getting into more complex domains or let's say
complex problems within your skill set, one way for you to
get your brainstorming and sparring or intellectual
enlightenment, let's say, is within your company.
That's that's the simplest one. And I would say that if you're
working in a great company, maybe that's it.
You you get all your ideas from within the company, you discuss
them. You always learn more.
You have a great environment and you just need to be a content
creator inside your company. You don't need to put it out on
the social media, which means that you should be actively
involved in whatever communities are there within your company,
whatever you know, sessions that you can do for for your, you
know, your team, your leadership etcetera on specific skill sets
that you have. So, so I I also mean content
creation in the sense that within your company as well.
So not only only on social media, yeah, but if for whatever
reason you might not be able to get that intellectual
enlightenment inside your company, then the 2nd way is to
get outside of of this zone that you have.
And that can be being part of communities within your city.
For example, communities that you can build, if not in the
same location, then probably finding communities that connect
people across the globe. And then the the third one is
obviously you start, you can start publishing.
So these are the different percentages or different levels
of content creation and content absorption that you can do.
Yeah. My problem, if somebody is not
doing that at at all, even within the company, let's start
with that, is that are they thinking enough about their
domain and skill sets? Because if somebody is not
actively brainstorming and sparring about hey, are we doing
the right thing? Did we launch the right feature?
Hey this, this happened with the last feature, so maybe we
learned something. We should try it now.
I mean, everyone is trying to in a way, brainstorm, inspire about
what's the best outcome we can get as a company.
Yeah, yeah. And for me, the reason I started
content writing was I eventually had to get out of my network and
I had to learn more to be successful in my roles.
Yeah, it came to a point where I where I where I thought that OK,
the kind of problems we are facing in the company or the
kind of problems I want to solve in the future, I'll not get
enough just from my network. I need to start writing.
I need to, I need to put it out there in the world to be
criticized. That's completely fine or to be
agreed or acknowledged so that I have a feedback loop about am I
thinking in the right way, am I not thinking?
So that's how I started writing, although it it has changed a bit
and we can go through the journey now you I always start
writing to put it out there in the world and and get a feedback
on am I thinking in the right manner.
Interesting, Yeah. And you also mentioned you, you
were writing before you put it out in the world, right?
So you were already in that kind of content creation mindset.
And I think people have a connotation when it comes to
content creation that it's very much tied to putting it out on
the Internet for others to see. But I think it's, it's about the
essence and quality of information, right.
I was thinking, you said there's this trend that it's like five
to seven years ago and content has been more so online nowadays
than it was before. And I was thinking why that is.
And one of my thoughts brought me to maybe it's maybe it's the
information abundance. That stuff has been more
established nowadays and there's a numerous amount of
information. So then people look to, OK,
where's the quality? Right.
Where I can find, where can I find depth?
Yes, outside of kind of this ocean of information, where are
my little golden Nuggets that are going to bring me far,
either within my personal life or my career?
And that might be why people were creating that because I
think it might be demand based. Yeah.
No, you you touched upon a great point, right?
I mean, everything that works out in this world is always a
balance of supply and demand. Yeah, content creation would not
work out if there was no demand, as simple as that.
If you if you look at the two sides of supply and demand, the
readers are looking for high quality information and there's
a lot of noise right now in in content creation, right.
The people just writing some recycled stuff and the people
who are writing original stuff, so there's a lot of noise and
readers are looking for quality. So there is demand.
People want to learn more, they want to learn better and now the
learning has shifted away from that.
I go do a university course in the middle of my job to can I on
a frequent basis absorb little bit new information or
meaningful information so as to keep learning on the go.
Yeah. And people are looking for good
information, right. So there's demand on the supply
side. Content creation has now become
a bit competitive I would say. Yeah, so when I started writing
that was three years back. Three years is not a long time
if you if you look at the overall horizon, but three
years, things changed so much in product and tech.
When when I started writing, there were hardly let's say one
to two fellow product writers who were really doing it on on a
scale and pushing it out on social media and stuff.
I was also doing that. And now that has gone up by 5
XII see around 14 to 15 content writers really putting it out
there. And you know I may be missing
out on half others because they're just not part of my
network. So there's it has become more
competitive. And now the challenge for
content writers is, are they publishing it to get read?
Then they have to write things in a way that it gets read.
Yeah, and that's where it's the it's the biggest dilemma that
content creators like me have who started writing to to get
ideas, to share ideas. But now if I build up a certain
reader base and they expect certain kind of content from me
and that's what changes the dynamics so much, because I
never started writing to to to appease my readers.
I was only writing to to share my ideas and write about, you
know what I think about product strategy.
And that was mainly the domain I stick to till till date.
But now I get a lot of feedback from my subscribers.
I can see it in the likes and comments.
What kind of content do people like and not like?
And it's sort of plays with your mind, right?
You cannot get out of it. And then you think, OK, this
time I write it about this and did not go well.
Maybe I should go back to writing about that topic, but
then really, am I doing what I started with?
Yeah, the essence. Yeah, that's that's basically
now the dilemma for all content writers.
Unless you blatantly say that, hey, I'm writing for my readers,
I don't care if you're that content writer, then OK, problem
solved. Because just from a mindset
perspective. But for me it's a bit of both,
and I'm still trying to figure out how much am I writing that
makes sense versus how much am I writing that makes sense to my
readers. And I hope both.
Both are not two different things.
Yeah, I was going to ask that because you you very distinctly
said I started creating content because I wanted to.
It was more so from personal growth, right depth in whatever
you were doing, like your career and probably you enjoyed it as
well. And now you've gotten to a point
where that is still the case. You probably still want to align
in ideas and get better at what you do.
And now you have an audience with expectation, and as the
number grows, the expectation gets bigger.
And all of a sudden when you put out an article that people don't
enjoy, then you see that in the numbers.
And that might just hit kind of the confidence and the
motivation as well. Yeah, that's a hard it's a kind
of scale. It's a hard one, yeah.
A recent example a couple of weeks back was I I wasn't
feeling for many months. I wasn't feeling too.
I mean, we talked about this empowerment, right?
Yeah, it's a word thrown around a lot.
Some books have been written on it.
So I I wrote about my ideas about why, you know, there's a
trend about certain things which started as best practices.
They became almost like a cult when it came to the.
I mean every, every skill set has a a cult thinking in the way
that this is how you do marketing.
Yeah. This is how Steve Jobs does
marketing. That's a cult thinking.
Yeah. Yeah.
And maybe in tech, you know, now there are some great practices
coming out of some leaders. So this is how the CTOCTO of
Stripe does it. Yeah.
So, and this is what I call cult thinking because people start
thinking that if this guy does it or this person does it, then
this is how it would work out in my company.
And I wrote about this thought I had about Marty Keegan who's the
writer of Inspired and and and empowered and I and I just wrote
about that. You know, the intent of that
book and his writings is is great, but people have converted
it into a cult and people should actually think for themselves
what works in their company, but just use it as a best practice.
And I got so much feedback and personal comments, not not
personally on me, but directly to me on my e-mail that hey, I
should not write about some somebody's practices and stuff
like that. So this is what where it is
right on in content creation. Now if if I write what I'd like
to say, yeah, then I should also be ready to to have the
implications of that. Yeah.
To get feedback, Yeah, to get feedback.
And that may be like not so good, but at least I'm happy
that I'm sticking to writing the way I started even after
thousands of subscribers etcetera, right.
So but it's but it's a hard challenge I would say.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's admirable to uphold your values,
right? To be like, OK, this, these are
my ideas and that's what they are.
They're not right or wrong. It's it's almost like you own,
you also have your kind of cult following and they expect you to
behave in a certain way, like in a weird way.
And funny thing is, we we talked about kind of a book, There's no
one way book to kind of show you how some things are done within
an organization, within product, even within software
development. But The funny thing is just just
by virtue of you writing about it also, people do take that
book and are like, this is the Holy Grail.
This is the book, this is going to show me how it's done.
And I agree with you that that is not kind of how I think.
That is not how I think people should think.
They should use that as information.
And it can kind of anchor in information bias and they can
help it form their perspective. But the context matters so, so
much always. Yeah.
So then to hear people say no, no, no, you shouldn't, you
shouldn't write. That's that's a hard one.
And I I fully can empathize with you because also for the
podcast, people like, oh, if you do this and this, your podcast
might be bigger, might be better, might grow a bigger
audience. And I really like doing whatever
I want, whatever interests me and that the problem is just my
personal challenge. It's a lot.
And I I think still if I enjoy whatever I'm doing, I hope that
people will enjoy it. And that is kind of my mantra.
Yeah, yeah. And and I think that's how it
should be as well. And I think being your authentic
self is is kind of getting more difficult nowadays because the
feedback loops are quicker. People just tell you what they
want to see or you can see what other successful newsletter
writers and podcasters are doing and you may want to do that but
but it's it takes a lot of effort to stick to your
authentic self. Yeah, nowadays more than
previously, I would say. Yeah, even even subconsciously,
right? You might be like is is this,
this is what I am, but it might be just based on anchored
feedback that you got. I think what helps and this is
my assumption is just keeping your network right your your
fellow content creators or the people within your domain within
your organization or the people close in relationship wise, they
can give you that feedback also if they're interested in
whatever you're doing, they might just be kind of your your
grounding point. Yes, to touch base with.
Yeah, yeah. No, your, your closest circle is
is always important. I would even say personal.
Your, I mean, your partner or your family also sometimes play
a role in encouraging you to stick to why you started and
stick to, you know, because I think more than anyone else
your, your, your personal circle sees why you started something.
Yeah. And they see the motivations
that, you know, your professional circle might not
have seen. Yeah.
So I think it's always good to go back to your roots.
And when I say roots, it it it mostly it's honest friends and
honest family members that can tell you, hey, this is your
ground. This is why you started.
Yeah. And whenever you're too high,
they can get you back to the ground and say, OK, This is why
you started, right. So I think you should have a
good circle. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. I love that.
When you're too high, they bring you, they ground you, and when
you fall down, they're there to support you.
Yes, that's the best part. Yes.
Cool, man. I've really, really enjoyed this
conversation. This was a blast.
Yeah, yeah. Amazing.
I think as as a fellow content creator to another, I think I I
really enjoyed sharing some of these nuances and just dilemmas
right, that we all have when it comes to content creation and
how it connects to your careers and your day-to-day work life,
right? So great conversation, Loved it.
Absolutely. Great conversation.
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing.
Thank you so much, Patrick. One final thought is this kind
of similar to the other podcast you've done?
No, actually this was this was different and I don't even know
how much time you've spent completely lost track of time
and that's only a good indication if you've lost track
of time. I'm not looking at my watch, so
love the the the honest discussions and also just being
here in the moment. We a lot of podcast experiences
have been very virtual and not so personal with with less
personal connect, but this has been great.
So so thanks for having me on the podcast.
Yeah. Thanks for coming on man.
I I fully agree with you. I I love the in person dynamic.
I think you have a depth of knowledge and it was just a
pleasure to learn from at this side of the table.
So thank you. Pleasure to share it.
Cool so much. I'm going to round it off here.
I'm going to put all abundant socials in the description
below. Reach out to him, let him know
you came from our show. And with that being said, thank
you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.