Vivek Anandaramu

👋 Hey product hiring managers! You may have noticed dozens of people now with a new certificate from the Alberta Product Leadership Program. If you manage or are prospectively seeking a new PM to join your team, you should know that: 1) The program is selective. You can't just sign-up. Since it's inception, the program has sought to upskill professionals that have shown their motivation for growth and desire to hone their product management craft. 2) The graduates get broader exposure to practices and industries beyond their resume. Our sessions are interactive and facilitate sharing of perspectives and ways of working across multiple organizations - from grassroots startups to FAANG giants. 3) There's more to it than training. During the course of the program, many participants gain mentorship, build a supportive peer group, and get out of their comfort zone. The program is refreshed every year by hiring managers just like you to optimize for the skills we need to hire and promote for. So if you see the APL certificate with a candidate profile, know that candidate choose to do more than your average course. #abtech #yyctech #yegtech #productmanagement

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Are your growth metrics holding back your product's long-term success? 🤔 In a recent article with Shopify's VP of Product, Archie Abrams, I discovered how Shopify challenges traditional growth strategies. Instead of relying on KPIs, Shopify focuses on a 100-year vision and prioritizes intuition in decision-making. Key takeaways: 🚀 Activate More Users: Shift focus from improving conversion rates at each funnel stage to increasing the total number of activated users. More users can drive greater overall growth despite lower individual conversion rates. 🔄 Optimize for Churn: Lower barriers for entrepreneurs, accepting that many businesses will fail while a few become major successes. This approach aligns with Shopify’s mission to boost entrepreneurship on the internet. 📊 Long-Term Experiments: Implement long-term holdout experiments to accurately measure the impact of changes over time, rather than relying on short-term metrics that may not reflect true success. 🤝 Trust and Leadership: Foster a culture of trust and strong leadership, allowing product teams to make decisions based on product quality and long-term goals instead of immediate KPIs. This encourages innovation and sustainable growth. By focusing on long-term value and empowering teams with the right vision, Shopify builds a resilient growth engine that supports enduring entrepreneurship. Read more about Shopify’s unconventional growth strategies: https://lnkd.in/g9PZtjcZ #productmanagement #growthstrategy #longtermvision #entrepreneurship #shopify ---- Need help breaking into Product Management or accelerating your PM career? Schedule a free 1-on-1 session with me and let's chat about your goals. Link on my profile. If you enjoyed this post: 1. Follow me for more PM & career content 2. Repost to share with your network

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Transitioning to a new role at Shopify has been a journey filled with both excitement and challenges. Here are a few key learnings from my experience so far. Prioritizing Information: One of the biggest challenges has been sifting through the vast amount of information available. With so much happening across the organization and an abundance of content to absorb, distinguishing between what's actionable and what's just for context is crucial. I've learned the importance of seeking early guidance from my team to help prioritize effectively. This approach has been invaluable in focusing on what truly matters and ensuring my contributions have the most impact. It's about striking a balance between being informed and overwhelmed, and I've found that open communication with colleagues has been key to navigating this. By actively engaging in discussions and leveraging the expertise of those around me, I've been able to streamline my focus and direct my efforts where they are needed most. Embracing Change and Adaptability: This is a dynamic environment where some applications and processes have been around for ages, while others may have been introduced just the month before I started. Some systems endure because they work exceptionally well, while others might be in desperate need of a rewrite, refactor, or replacement. This mix of tradition and innovation requires a willingness to ask more questions than anyone else in the room. It's about understanding the rationale behind existing systems and being game to exploring new approaches. Through all of this, I am realizing that change, while daunting, offers a chance for growth and reinvention. I was ready for a new challenge, and I got exactly what I was looking for. The supportive and collaborative spirit of the team has made this transition not only possible but rewarding. I'm lucky to be a part of this team, where the shared commitment to Shopify's mission makes it very clear we are all rowing together in the same direction. #Shopify #SoftwareEngineering #NewBeginnings #GrowthMindset

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Last night, I attended BetaKit's Town Hall on the state of innovation in Canada. It was an inspiring event that brought together Toronto's brightest minds to discuss how we can move forward. Every speaker resonated with me, but a key takeaway is the immense opportunity we have to showcase Canadian craftsmanship in building world-class products. We can also empower the next generation to follow suit. Here are the top points that struck a chord with me personally: 1. Tech Talent: Scale up your career in Canada and make monumental impact here. (Ivan Zhang of Cohere) 2. Canadian Government: Continued innovation is crucial for solving problems in outdated industries like healthcare and pharmacy. Don't stifle our ability to make a real difference in the everyday lives of Canadians. (✨Joella A. of MedEssist | Transforming Pharmacy with Technology and AI 🏥) 3. Top Tech Leaders of Canada:  Our arguments about stagnation hold weight across Canada. Let's focus on the most impactful solutions. Is capital gains tax the most effective approach to get buy in from the average Canadian? (Ali Asaria, formerly Transformer Labs, Tulip) 4. Industry Veterans: Our mentorship is invaluable, especially for young professionals entering the remote workforce post-pandemic. Make time to guide them. (Jocelyne Murphy of Socratica) 5. Canada: Our differentiator is our CRAFTSMANSHIP. We have excellent product builders. Let's keep building here. Let's keep learning here. Let's get better here. (Tobias Lütke of Shopify) Let's go 🚀 #CanadianTech #Innovation #BetaKit #TownHall

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We've been fortunate to work with Arshan Khatri for our design needs, and he's just written a great blog post on common pitfalls in popular business website forms. Did you know that Expedia lost $12 Million dollars due to a poorly-designed form? 😮 Learn from their mistake and read Arshan's full blog post in the comments. Here are some of the key takeaways: - Don't underestimate the importance of a well-designed form. Expedia's loss is a cautionary tale for all of us. - Just because a sales page looks great doesn't mean it's optimized for conversions and data collection. Framer and Webflow are good examples of this. 😢 - Engage your users with multi-step forms, gamification 🎮 , and built-in scheduling options. Providing optionality is key to a successful form. Thanks for sharing your insights, Arshan!

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One of the best thing that happened at Loblaw Digital is at when I joined we were in process of migrating our analytics from Adobe to Snowplow. What this meant was, Snowplow will be housing data into BigQuery, and everyone in the org will be able to build views with Looker. This was a kinda big deal for me because it would unlock and unblock SEO team on a lot of data analysis part. Of course we would help of data teams - pros like Liam Baird and Mykyta Todorov (which they thankfully did(and still do), and SEO team is in forever gratitude of) but still there were things we could do on our own without having extremely heavy reliance. There was a bit of learning curve at start because BQ and Looker was new to me, but since I spent good time in LookerStudio(formerly DataStudio), it was easy for me to capture a lot of it. The result of this entire exercise has been extremely positive on SEO Team. Duane R. has been a great partner in this journey of learning new platform, and developing skills, views and reports. I'm happy to say, we are on our way where SEO Team will be able to pull in and join data from GSC(through BQ), Google Ads, Web Analytics(from snowplow). This will help us answer a lot of business related questions. It will also help us build monitoring views, reporting views and more. Better yet, now we could think of using these data as a feedback loop into our Helios Platform. We are already thinking/planning to automate building dynamic pages using this data in a way it makes sense for business. pSEO? wink wink. All this to say, I completed 2 years here last week. And these two years have been extremely rewarding in terms of my personal growth. I want to take an opportunity to thank everyone(without tagging anyone specific) for giving me the opportunity, the runway and resources to build what we could build together with Duane R. at LD. I'm sure there is more to come here, and I'm excited to continue to build SEO practice that's rooted in data, and anchored in driving meaningful results to the business.

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You’re back—great news! This is the second post in a four-part ridealong series as Storyblocks updates our Vision - sharing resources and learning. 1️⃣ Do You Need to Create a Vision? ✅ 2️⃣ Open with Empathy: Ground Yourself in the Customer 🎯 3️⃣ Anatomy of a Vision: Choose Your Framework 4️⃣ Bring it On Home: Start with the Long Letter The first step is often the hardest. At Storyblocks, we started by immersing ourselves in our customers and distilling what we heard into 3-5 key themes around which we would craft our vision. To tease out those themes, we wrote down a few questions that we wanted to answer: * What do we do better than everyone else? How have we uniquely improved our customers’ lives? * What does “even better” look like for our customers and where do we need to invest to extend our differentiation? * Looking forward, what are the major unmet needs that, if solved, would create even more loyalty? * What customer stories can we share to bring these findings to life? There are countless techniques for conducting customer research and building your intuition, but we found three particularly helpful. We’ll link Resources at the bottom of the post to give more detail about applying each technique to your business. 📊 Product Market Fit (PMF) Surveys: PMF has long been one of the most written topics, but also the most difficult to measure…until Sean Ellis developed a simple survey that offered a strong leading indicator. PMF is often thought of exclusively in the context of early-stage start-ups, but you can use the same technique to tease out what “even better” looks like if you’re a more mature company with established PMF. 🐶 🐱 Dogfooding & Catfooding: Dogfooding is using your product to complete everyday tasks that a customer would pursue. It isn’t testing but actually going through the process from start to finish until you’ve reached your objective. Catfooding is doing the same but with your competitors’ products. 🎙️ Qualitative Customer Interviews: Nothing beats hearing from your customers in their own words. We conducted a series of interviews to help us tease out the key customer themes related to the questions above. 📖 Resources (PMF) How Superhuman used PMF surveys to uncover customer needs. https://lnkd.in/eCZfau_N (PMF) Must read/listen for any subscription business from Lenny Rachitsky's Podcast. https://lnkd.in/ewDxs_cT (UX) Uncovering Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal. https://lnkd.in/e62yrhr9 (UX) Mixed-Methods Podcast: Podcast & blog “for UX researches, by UX researchers.” https://lnkd.in/evQEkg8Q (Dogfooding) If anyone is interested in the template we used for our internal workshops, please DM me. (For Fun) Origins of the term "dogfooding." https://lnkd.in/e7EhwAev

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Are you ready to unlock the full potential of Product Operations? 🔍 Only 2 weeks left until Product Ops: 101 - Getting Started with Product Operations on October 30, 2024, led by Denise Tilles! With only 2 spots left, this hands-on workshop will give you practical tools to implement and scale Product Ops strategies. By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap to drive better outcomes within your organization. Secure your spot now: https://lnkd.in/exBcs2V5 🎟️ #productops101 #productoperations #productmanagement #workshop

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The downfall of big ed-tech has sparked a lot of talk that "there is no tech left in ed-tech." At GrowthSchool, we’re changing the game. While others go for aggressive sales, we’re all about being product-centric and tech-driven. Our mission? To redefine ed-tech. We focus on advanced AI, personalised learning, and interactive content to transform education. Case in Point: We recently rolled out a new Learning Management System (LMS) in just a month—a process that used to take a quarter. Our tech team’s intense hustle led to an on-time launch with nearly zero customer support issues. Now, we're integrating AI into our LMS, which will unlock endless possibilities. Every time I hear "there is no tech left in ed-tech," it fuels my belief that GrowthSchool is here to build a tech innovation legacy in education. To make this happen, we need world-class engineers! We have several positions open. Join us and help shape the future of education technology. 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐢𝐫𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐬! Here are the open positions: - 𝐒𝐃𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐈 (𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫): https://lnkd.in/gKsDwVHh - 𝐒𝐃𝐄 𝐈𝐈 (𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫): https://lnkd.in/gW74k-QQ - 𝐒𝐃𝐄 𝐈𝐈 (𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫): https://lnkd.in/gHkmrMR7 - 𝐒𝐃𝐄 𝐈𝐈 (𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫): https://lnkd.in/gHia9NxW - 𝐖𝐞𝐛𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/gGjthaBM Non-Tech roles - 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡𝐎𝐩𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/gSbtrJic - 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/gMEeisxu - 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/gPi9qjgD - 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: https://lnkd.in/gT_psnVH - 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐑𝐁𝐏: https://lnkd.in/gfAcZKmt - 𝐕𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫: https://lnkd.in/gjpAXkPz Join us to be part of a team that's driving innovation in EdTech! #hiring #hiringalert #bangalore #edtech #engineering

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Losing Product Market Fit – The Canada Problem* ➡ Over the past 6 months I’ve done a lot of talking, and writing, about the importance for scaleups not to Losing Product Market Fit. Losing PMF happens when a scale up starts to get traction, perhaps £2m to £10m in revenue, but external forces start to pull the company away from its mission and destroying PMF. The best anecdote I’ve found over the past few months is from Marc Randolph, Netflix Founder, who calls this the “Canada Problem”. As Netflix were growing, they had the chance to move into Canada, something that would grow revenues 10%. They decided not to, this new geography would have become a distraction. There would be new languages, regulations and operational requirements, all of this would soak up aload of time and focus. So, Netflix leadership decided their time would be better spent on their core proposition - subscription DVDs in the US. Any time spent in Canada could be spent on their core proposition. Every time something came along that wasn’t subscription DVDs, such as selling DVDs online or physical rental machines, they focused on their core offering – ultimately defining what it meant to be a B2C subscription business. Randolph describes this throughout his book as "The Canada Problem". Earlier in the year I was privileged to speak at SaaStr where I talked about this alongside some other losing PMF topics. Jason M. Lemkin is someone I follow closely, so to speak at his conference was a real honour. This is a link to the conference…. I come in at 3 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds…. Apologies for the first 10 seconds where I get blinded by the lights. https://lnkd.in/eaetVsW8 So, if you’re a founder, and you’re ever been tempted away from your mission, remember Netflix Canada problem, and you just might just hold on to Product Market Fit! My three-part blog series on losing PMF is in the comments below. #losingPMF, #founders, #venturecapital *Canada is not a problem – just a metaphor for the dangers of losing PMF.

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I had the honor of seeing Shreyas Doshi's live presentation as the podcast "4 Questions Shreyas Wishes He’d Asked Himself Sooner" was recorded on stage during Lenny Rachitsky's summit in San Francisco. One insight that stuck with me: His answer to "Why am I so busy?" was —“Most 2-way doors are actually one-way doors.” Once a feature is built, it’s hard to walk it back. The solution? Take the time to think. A few hours or days of reflection can save months of wasted work not only for you but for your entire team. Thinking is cheap, and we should do it more. What’s your approach to creating space for deep thinking in the chaos of product development? #ProductManagement #Leadership #Wisdom #Prioritization #DeepWork

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The product lifecycle is like a Bollywood movie: Starts with a bang, full of drama in the middle (bugs!), and ends with everyone wondering if there will be a sequel (new version) or if it's just a one-hit wonder. #productmanagerlife #productmanagement #productmanager #agile #productowner #officehumor #worklifebalance #softwareengineeringhumor #uxhumor #customercentric #productlifecycle #productlaunch #bugs #productdevelopment #newversion #bollywood #softwareengineeringhumor #productmanagerlife

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Deep Dive: Lessons from 50+ Conversations with VP Product / CPOs Over the Last Year 🔍 In the past 12 months, I've engaged in enriching discussions with numerous VP Product and Chief Product Officers. These conversations have been insightful, revealing both challenges and best practices shaping the product management landscape today. Here’s a detailed list of the top 10 takeaways: 1. Integrative User Research: Successful products are built on a foundation of continuous user research, integrating feedback loops into every stage of the product life cycle to refine UX/UI. 2. Agile Leadership Evolution: Dynamic markets demand leaders who not only advocate for but actively implement agile methodologies, ensuring rapid adaptability and resilience. 3. Advanced Analytics for Predictive Insights: Leveraging sophisticated analytics tools to not only interpret current data but also predict future user behaviors and market demands. 4. Building Scalable Systems: Emphasizing the need for infrastructure that supports scaling, particularly as products grow and evolve in complexity and user base. 5. Enhanced Cross-Functional Synergy: Encouraging seamless interaction between product, marketing, sales, and tech teams to ensure a unified approach to product development and launch strategies. 6. Focus on Product-Led Growth: Shifting strategies to center around the product as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. 7. Emphasis on Continuous Learning and Development: Investing in continuous education and professional development to keep skills relevant and teams innovative. 8. Strategic Experimentation: Cultivating a culture where calculated risks and strategic experiments are encouraged to quickly test new ideas and learn from the outcomes. 9. Enhanced Customer Journey Mapping: Detailed mapping of the customer journey to understand and anticipate every touchpoint, improving personalization and identifying opportunities for product improvement. 10. Regulatory Compliance and Security: Staying ahead of regulatory changes and enhancing product security to safeguard user data and comply with global standards. Each of these points reflects a broader trend in product management that demands attention and strategic action. I’m keen to hear how others in the industry are navigating these complexities. What challenges have you faced, and what solutions have you found effective?

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🚀Hi Folks, I'm Taking on the Product #Teardown_Challenge along with Arindam Goswami! 🚀 As part of an exciting challenge by Product Space, I’m stepping into the role of Senior VP of Product at #Zepto Quick Commerce! Zepto’s already crushing it with 10-minute deliveries across 30 cities in India, but there’s so much more potential to unlock! 💡 Here’s the mission: ➡️ Increase Zepto’s Average Order Value (AOV) to ₹600 🛒 ➡️ Boost product discovery and engagement to encourage bigger, more frequent orders 🔍 ➡️ Elevate the purchase experience to keep customers coming back for more 🔄 And I need YOUR help to make it happen! 🙌 🎯 Your insights on quick commerce platforms like Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart are key to shaping these strategies. I’ve put together a short survey, and your feedback will be crucial in tackling this challenge! 💥 Thanks for your support—let’s crack this together! 🙌 Link to the form - https://lnkd.in/g5v2y4wR #ProductTeardown #QuickCommerce #ProductManagement #ProductSpace

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