Rocketship.fm

Introducing: People of Product

27 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Digital products power our lives, but they wouldn’t exist without the expertise and passion of real people. George Brooks and Dan Linhart co-host P...

Workplace Confessions with Lopa van der Mersch Founder & CEO of Rasa: "I stuff the complaint box" & "I'm not Steve Jobs"

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What do you do when your leadership team will only act when things are on fire? We have one of our favorite confessions from a PM who is only able to...

Workplace Confessions with Helen Tran: "My invisible agent" & "Golden Handcuffs"

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we answer two burning questions. First off, as a female freelancer, should you pretend to have a male agent for negotiations? Is this the only ...

CPO or CPNo [INDUSTRY Bonus episode w/Ken Norton]

11 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we kick off our special five part series, presented by INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, with special guest Ken Norton. Over these 5 special epi...

Zoomed Out [INDUSTRY Bonus episode w/Ken Norton]

11 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Our second episode of this special series, presented by INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, with special guest Ken Norton. One this episode Ken breaks d...

Unempowered [INDUSTRY Bonus episode w/Ken Norton]

11 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we hear from a Product Manager who's company develops a very top down roadmap, and they're looking for advice on how to have their voice heard. ...

I’m worried I’m biased [INDUSTRY Bonus episode w/Ken Norton]

11 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A Product Manager is worried that their implicit bias will creep into their work when doing product research and validation. Ken Norton offers some he...

Impostor syndrome [INDUSTRY Bonus episode w/Ken Norton]

11 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This confession comes from a product manager who's not sure they have what it takes. Ken Norton offers some sound advice and encouragement. Want to at...

Workplace Confessions with Randy Silver: "I don’t know what I’m doing" & "I’m helping create a monster, and I don’t know what to do"

08 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we tackle two confessions, one about impostor syndrome and the other about someone who is being paid to build an app that they feel is destructi...

Workplace Confessions with Sanjiv Kalevar of OpenView Venture Partners: "Our investor-driven roadmap" & "My Million Dollar mistake"

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This week we tackle a problem where a Product Manager feels like the board is driving their roadmap and a mistake that cost someone's company a millio...

Workplace Confessions with Dan Olsen: "Climbing the Ladder" & "I Suck at Hiring"

25 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What do you do when you think you deserve your bosses job? Or when you make too many bad hires? We discuss both issues with Dan Olsen, author of The L...

Workplace Confessions with Melissa Perri: "Communication Conundrum" & "More than Just Awkward"

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

"Last year, before COVID, something happened during one of the all-hands weeks. And it was incredibly awkward." What happens when a co-worker takes an...

Workplace Confessions with Jay Clouse: "Ethical Dilemma" & "A little porn-y"

11 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when your freelance client wants you to cross a line you're not comfortable crossing? Or when a freelance client uses your work in uninte...

Workplace Confessions with Christian Idiodi: "Running with an idea" & "I Don’t talk to Customers"

04 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when you have an idea so good you want to quit your company? Or what about a product manager who refuses to talk to customers? We discuss...

Workplace Confessions with Dheerja Kaur of Robinhood: "Workplace High" & "Underpaid"

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when your workplace is more like a high school? Or when you find out you're making 30% less than a peer, simply because you're a woman? ...

Workplace Confessions with Rich Mironov: "Crossing the Line" & "The Interview Roadshow"

25 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when your new boss wants you to share everything you know about your past employers' future plans? Or what about an interview process tha...

Workplace Confessions with Rahul Vohra of Superhuman: "Team Bonding" & "The all-knowing CEO"

18 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we tackle awkward team bonding and an overbearing CEO with Rahul Vohra, CEO of Superhuman. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate networ...

Workplace Confessions with Ben Foster: "Our Needy Customer" & "Roadmap Hell"

11 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we explore our first two confessionals with Ben Foster, CPO at WOOP and author of Build What Matters. *** This show is a part of the Podglomer...

Product Journeys: Earth Class Mail & Flikshop UPDATES!

04 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Season 9 of Rocketship.fm featured a lot of great stories, however, two stood out to us and we wanted to put together a follow up to find out what has...

Product Journeys: The history of Podcasts

28 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How meta is this?! From the first audio broadcast on the internet to the explosion of Serial, we explore the history of the Podcasting medium in our s...

Product Journeys: Signal

21 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Signal is having a moment. The pandemic drove unprecedented sign-ups on the encrypted messaging app, as people started communicating more online. Then...

Season 10 Trailer: Workplace Confessionals

19 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Season 10 of Rocketship.fm, we’re turning the microphone on you - thats right. We’re making this entire season about your workplace confessions...

Product Journeys: Cyberpunk 2077

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed and published by CD Projekt Red. The story takes place in Night City, an open world ...

Mental Models for Product Leaders

07 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mental models are simple expressions of complex processes or relationships. These models are accumulated over time by an individual and used to make f...

Mental Models for Product Managers

31 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A mental model is any concept that helps explain, analyze, or navigate the world. As product managers, our mental models drive our decision-making, th...

Charlie Munger's Mental Models

24 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportuni...

Product Journeys: BioNTech (Covid-19 Vaccine)

17 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The fastest vaccine ever developed was the mumps vaccine and that took four years, from collecting viral samples to licensing the drug in 1967. This ...

Product Journeys: Nintendo

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The history of Nintendo traces back to 1889, when it was founded to produce handmade hanafuda. Nintendo Co., Ltd. (任天堂株式会社, Ninte...

Product Journeys: Zappos

03 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Zappos was founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn who launched the company with Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin who invested $2 million through their investme...

Product Failures: eBay

26 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2000's eBay was in direct competition with Amazon but they had very different methodologies when approaching the market. Today we dive i...

Product Journeys: Youtube

19 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When it was launched in 2005, according to co-founder Steve Chen, Youtube was designed as a way for people to upload videos of themselves talking abou...

Product Journeys: Airbnb

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Long before Airbnb persuaded strangers to sleep in one another's homes and became a $31 billion company, it was just an idea to earn a bit of extra mo...

Product Journeys: Stark

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Stark, a New York-based startup that lets designers others building with design software run their files through an integrated tool that checks it and...

Product Journeys: SEMrush

29 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Back in 2008, SEMrush started as a small group of SEO and IT specialists united by one mission — to make online competition fair and transparent, ...

The 10 Dysfunctions of Product Management

22 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rapid iteration, A/B testing, and growth hacking—these buzzwords have everyone’s attention in product management today. But while they dominate th...

Product Journeys: Stripe

15 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Millions of businesses of all sizes—from startups to large enterprises—use Stripe’s software and APIs to accept payments, send payouts, and mana...

Introducing: The Teamistry podcast by Atlassian

13 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the aftermath of World War II, Japan must rebuild its economy. Certain products become vital exports in the revitalization effort, including the wr...

Product Journeys: Flow

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Flow was launched in 2012 as a side-project from Andrew Wilkinson's creative agency Metalab, who work with companies such as Uber, Slack and Coinbase,...

Product Journeys: Gimlet Media

01 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

From his first awkward pitch to investor Chris Sacca, to their acquisition by Spotify, Alex Blumburg has built one of the most influential companies w...

Product Journeys: Nikola

24 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hindenburg Research also alleges Nikola chairman Trevor Milton misled partners into signing agreements by falsely claiming to have extensive proprieta...

Product Journeys: Black Product Managers

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Black Product Managers (BPM) Network is a community of diverse product leaders who are passionate about advancing in their careers and increasing ...

INDUSTRY Virtual Mini-series: Dun & Bradstreet goes digital [ Part 2 ]

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dun & Bradstreet make a digital transformation and it's all on one Product Managers shoulders. We also discuss Yardley's founding of Women in Product....

INDUSTRY Virtual Mini-series: Dun & Bradstreet goes digital [ Part 1 ]

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dun & Bradstreet make a digital transformation and it's all on one Product Managers shoulders. In celebration of the upcoming INDUSTRY Virtual product...

INDUSTRY Virtual Mini-series: Netflix's BLM Collection [ Part 2 ]

15 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Netflix pulls 120 of it's employees together after George Floyd's death to provide answers customers were seeking. In celebration of the upcoming INDU...

INDUSTRY Virtual Mini-series: Netflix's BLM Collection [ Part 1 ]

15 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Netflix pulls 120 of it's employees together after George Floyd's death to provide answers customers were seeking In celebration of the upcoming INDUS...

INDUSTRY Virtual Mini-series: Transparent Collective [ Part 2 ]

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rohini Pandhi, Product Lead at Square and founder of Transparent Collective, faces a major choice when a blank check is presented from from an unlikel...

INDUSTRY Virtual Mini-series: Transparent Collective [ Part 1 ]

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rohini Pandhi, Product Lead at Square and founder of Transparent Collective, faces a major choice when a blank check is presented from from an unlikel...

Introducing: INDUSTRY 2020 Product mini-series

12 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In celebration of the upcoming INDUSTRY Virtual product conference, we're bringing you 3 amazing stories from Rohini Pandhi - Product Lead at Square, ...

Product Journeys: Waze

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

While carpooling isn't new, Waze Carpool is a fresh way to share the road and the cost of commuting. A cost-effective alternative to rideshare ser...

Product Journeys: Tesla

03 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tesla, Inc., formerly (2003–17) Tesla Motors, American electric-automobile manufacturer. It was founded in 2003 by American entrepreneurs Martin Ebe...

Product Journeys: Veil

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Veil is a near-future climate change techno thriller, but how does a high researched, science based fictional book like this come into existence? Toda...

Product Journeys: Amazon Echo

20 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Amazon Echo (shortened to Echo) is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal as...

Product Journeys: Drip

13 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When Rob Walling launched Drip, he was doing $7K in monthly recurring revenue. But he quickly realized that his revenue had already flat-lined and tha...

Product Journeys: Tenor

06 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tenor is an online GIF search engine and database that was acquired by Google in 2018. Over the life of the company they instilled a culture in relent...

Product Journeys: Apple's iPhone (The Purple Project)

30 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2003, Apple was working on new types of inputs for the Mac. The plan was to get rid of the mouse and keyboard, and the team began to experiment wit...

Product Journeys: Flikshop

23 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

From Maximum Security Prison To CEO, Marcus Bullock, is now building Flikshop as a way for incarcerated individuals to stay connected to their familie...

Product Journeys: Kairos

16 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Facial recognition startup Kairos, founded by Brian Brackeen, was one of the only companies in it's space with a black CEO, and it turned out to be t...

Product Journeys: Hey!

09 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hey! a new email platform, many opinions...and it's creators, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson (known to the internet as DHH, the creator of Ruby...

Product Journeys: Live from Tomorrow!

02 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How did Matt Hooper build a company singing about Blockchain? Today we explore the product journey of Live from Tomorrow! a live show that's been runn...

Product Journeys: Walker & Co

25 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Walker & Company Brands, a startup making health and beauty products for people of color, was acquired by consumer giant Procter & Gamble in 2018. The...

Michael Sacca on side projects, creative outlets and the beauty of constraints from Creative Elements

21 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired on Jay Clouse's podcast Creative Elements. Rocketship.fm Host Michael Sacca is the VP of Product at Dribbble and cohost ...

Product Journeys: Backstage Capital

18 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hamilton founded Backstage Capitol, a venture capital firm, in 2015, when she was homeless. The firm seeks to address funding disparities in the techn...

Product Journeys: Go Together

11 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kimberly Moore, CEO and Co-Founder of Go Together, is an entrepreneur completely passionate about building one of the most exciting companies in the ...

Diversity in Tech [Part 1]

04 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Diversity can be a difficult issue to discuss, but the truth is the tech industry has a problem. Even a brief look at the data collected by the Equal ...

Diversity in Tech [Part 2]

04 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Part Two of our look at Diversity in Tech we hear from how Stripe increased their percentage of underrepresented candidates in their internship pro...

Product Journeys: Shift

28 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Shift is an online, peer-to-peer, marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Founded in 2014, Shift is an American company based in San Francisco’...

Product Journeys: PayPal

21 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

PayPal was originally established by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek in December 1998 as Confinity, a company that developed security softwa...

Product Journeys: Earth Class Mail

14 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Earth Class Mail was founded over 16 years ago with the ambitious mission of “taking over the post office of the world." They were one of the first ...

Product Journeys: Instagram

07 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Instagram’s explosive rise reads like a Silicon Valley fairy tale, with the company gaining staggering momentum within a few short mont...

Product Journeys: Asana

30 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Founded in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google-and-Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein, who both worked on improving the produc...

Product Journeys: Square

23 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Square was founded to solve the pain point of a well known glass blower in San Francisco who lost a sale because he couldn't accept a credit card tran...

Product Failures: MoviePass

16 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The stock was tanking, and the company kept hemorrhaging cash. Investors sued. Some users even filed a suit. It was a losing battle from the start but...

Product Failures: It's not you, it's your team

09 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today we discuss another type of failure that is all too common, especially in young companies - team failure. We talk with Latif Nanji, the founder a...

Product Failures: Acquisitions

02 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Exit. Liquidity. Acquihire. Merger. No matter the name, it’s a milestone in any entrepreneurs life. Today we take a look at the real stories beh...

Product Failures: Path

26 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Path was created in 2010 by former Facebook employee Dave Morin as a sort of anti-Facebook. It stood out with one good idea: limits for friends. You c...

Product Failures: Blockbuster

19 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2000, Reed Hastings, the founder of a fledgling company called Netflix, flew to Dallas to propose a partnership to Blockbuster CEO John Antioco ...

Product Failures: Audible

12 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

From creating unsafe driving conditions to aggravating spouses across the globe, todays failure is a lesson in what happens when your team lacks diver...

Product Failures: American Airlines

05 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On September 11, 2001 two American Airlines airplanes were hijacked. One was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center and the other crashe...

Product Failures: The Psychology of Failure with Jerry Colonna

27 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We've been talking a lot about well known product failures, but at this point in the series, we're going to take a little pause. Today, we remember th...

Product Failures: Color

20 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Raising $41 million dollars before launch, Color should have been an instant hit, but instead met a swift demise. When it launched, the application ha...

Product Failures: Google+

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Google+ was an ambitious project to take down the social networking giant Facebook, unfortunately we all know how it ended. What went wrong along the ...

Product Failures: eBay

06 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2000's eBay was in direct competition with Amazon but they had very different methodologies when approaching the market. Today we dive i...

Product Failures: TurboTax

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It was November of 2014 and Brian Crofts was preparing for a meeting with two senior executives at Intuit. One was his boss, CeCe Morken, who ran Intu...

Product Failures: Webvan

23 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Business schools around the nation study Webvan’s overly ambitious rush to the biggest IPO to date in Silicon Valley, as a prime example of what to ...

Product Failures: Skeletons in Our Closet

16 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone fails at some point in their career. Small failures, big failures. We're going to cover them all on this season of Rocketship. Today Michael ...

400 Episodes 😱

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Right before we kick off Season 8 of Rocketship, we wanted to go back and look at some of our favorite episodes of the past 6 years. From relationship...

The implications of the surveillance economy

02 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

With companies such as Google and Facebook we are trading our data in exchange for the benefits of their product, is the solution to stop giving big c...

The Incredible Evolution of Big Data

26 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the second part of our series on data we talk about the origins of Hadoop, the technology that formed the very foundation of what we know as “big...

Stop that A/B Test (and do this instead)

19 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today we talk with Ben Foster the Chief Product Officer at GoCanvas and former product manager at Ebay. Ben is a wealth of Product knowledge and exper...

The (Abbreviated) History of Product Management

12 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today we explore the history of the Product Manager from it's early ideation by Neil McElroy to it's growth at Hewlett-Packard thru it's maturation at...

Blind Spots

05 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We all think we know everything there is to know about our customers, but data shows that we often know a surprising little amount about who our custo...

Twitter Confessionals

28 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Love isn’t rational. It doesn’t always make sense. But when love is in the air, nothing can come between you and a public tweet. Today we talk to ...

The Brilliance of WeTransfers Brand

21 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What would it look like if your company built a boat? Would your customers know what to expect? Launching your first product is punishingly hard. Gett...

Overcoming Cognitive Bias

14 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

You've probably made a bad call at some point in your career, that's ok. Today we'll talk about ways to prevent it moving forward and how to recognize...

The Trick That Supercharged Superhuman's Growth

07 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Often times, finding true product-market-fit can be the most difficult part of the process in launching a new product. In this talk, Rahul shares his ...

Powerful Product Positioning

31 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Positioning can make or break a new product, yet it rarely gets the attention it deserves. On todays episode, April Dunford the CEO at Ambient Strateg...

How Sendlane Created Huge Growth Through User-Centered Design

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Marketing automation platform, Sendlane, hit a plateau in both revenue and ideas until they tried using user-centered design to unlock growth. The sol...

What type of Product Manager are you?

17 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Catherine Ulrich, a Managing Director of FirstMark Capital, invests in a broad range of enterprise and consumer start-ups. She has a deep passion for ...

How Airbnb approaches SEO

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, comes in many forms. There’s the classic blog post optimization where one would write a piece of content and try...

The Best Product Advice We've Ever Received....

03 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 6 years we've had some amazing conversations with product people and entrepreneurs. Today we're going to bring you some of our favorite ...