Sandi has had a remarkable career so far. She trained as a civil engineer at MIT, did an MBA at Stadford, moved into product management at Amazon, and now runs a very successful SaaS company, Skilljar. Skilljar, founded in Seattle in 2013, is a fully distributed, ~150-person company that provides a customer education platform to over 400 customers.

We discuss:

• Why do product managers make great founders?
• How has your product planning process evolved from founder to startup to scaleup stages?
• As CEO with a product background, how do you interact with your product team now? Has it been challenging to pull back?
• You used to work at Amazon. What are key similarities and differences in product management from a large company to a startup?
• What have you found as your blind spots as a former Product Manager?

Dave and Thomas talk about their experiences as product leaders, and the differences between PM in big companies and small companies. We look at how Salesforce, SuccessFactors and other large companies manage product teams, and explore if that helps or hinders in the context of small companies. One nugget. Big company product management is usually big M small p. Start-up product management is big P small m. We talk about the day in the life of a product leader, and we also mention rhinos and kangaroos.

Simon sold his first venture, an HRTECH company, multiposting, to SAP. After successfully delivering on the post merger integration, Simon has started a new venture, Reveal.co. It aims to revolutionise how sales and marketeers collaborate between companies.

In this episode we talk how product management has changed in the last 10 years, becoming more commercially savvy, and aware of what it takes to build a successful business. We talk M&A, and how to do post merger integration well, and we continue to explore the themes of product led growth. We also talk Paris as an innovation hub and start up mecca.