Barry Collins

Helping Sifted, Fortune, Startups Magazine and GB News is all in a days work on budget day. Always tough to know whether to wear my Economics 101 hat from university days, Accounting hat from a former life or Founder hat from today. My view? Those with the broadest shoulders should take the load - tax hikes were inevitable under a new government and bigger businesses will pay the brunt of the increases. If we see changes to public services, it's a great thing. My fear is we'll service debt payments for years to come and see no difference at all. Prolonging the Fuel Duty Freeze? Utterly bonkers in a nation that is aiming for Net Zero. Entrepreneurs Relief / BADR changes? Far less than rumoured, not likely to change much (either in the government bank account or for the likelihood of a founder setting up a business). Anybody who is leaving or has left the country already might have used this as an excuse, but they were halfway out the door already. NI rise? It'll lead to lower job creation. Overall? Embarrassing that the government can brief (or at best not deny) wild rumours to soften the blow of reality. In the City this is called manipulating the market and leads to a lengthy prison stay. Alongside this, changing the rules so much, so quickly and so regularly does undermine business confidence and changes the risk-reward psychology for a founder. Thanks Kai Nicol-Schwarz, Prarthana Prakash, Patrick O'Donnell and Anna Wood for taking the time to listen.

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Teams on Steroids - How can you Supercharge Teams in your Organisation? 🔋 UC Today's Kieran Devlin speaks to Harkirat Degun, Product Director at Resonate #unifiedcommunications #collaboration #ucaas #ucoms #teams #msteams

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This is a post about books. Physical ones. Those marvels of modern technology that work without an Internet connection, don't need charging and don’t suddenly disappear from your shelf when a subscription runs out. A good book can halve your commute time (subjectively) and help you sleep better at night (if it isn't horror). Buying books can be an expensive business but I recently found a good source of them that I wanted to share, and give some recommended titles. If you've been to a FOP or HMV store then you may have seen they sell an array of fiction and non-fiction - two books for £7. That’s incredibly cheap but hard to find with not many branches these days. What I recently discovered is that this same offer also exists somewhere much easier to access https://lnkd.in/eYYGsNRb There are over a thousand books in the offer and here are some of my recommendations. Give and Take - Adam Grant I really love how optimistic this book is. It's about how being generous to each other, giving to charity and assuming the best of strangers can lead to our own personal success and happiness. But there's limits. Those naturally more inclined to Give must remember to look after themselves and watch out for those pesky Takers. The Art of Thinking Clearly – Rolf Dobelli A great read for those of us who think about customer journeys and influencing human behaviour. It's a compendium of our cognitive biases told through everyday stories. For instance, a supermarket offered customers the chance to sample their yoghurts before buying. On Day One they offered twenty-four flavours. On Day two just six. Sales on Day Two were ten times higher than Day One. Why? Because of cognitive bias 21 – The Paradox of Choice. Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell Why do some ideas, products or messages spread like wildfire and others fall flat? Is it mysterious and unknowable or are there three rules to explain it. Spoiler, it’s the three rules And in fiction I really like Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. A young man with an IQ of 68 is involved in a science experiment to improve his intelligence. The more he grows cognitively, the more he realises those around him were not always as kind as he once thought. But what I find most impressive is the first-person perspective. The protagonist's writing style, grammar and spelling improve with each chapter as he grows intellectually. Until, heartbreakingly... it starts to reverse. Plus there's most books made into films like Dune, the Godfather etc Were you to buy every book I've mentioned that would be £21. Enough for free shipping. I know this sounds like I'm being sponsored but I'm really not. It's just nice to share a rare occasion when passion and price come together.

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And it's a wrap... After just over 1 year heading up product development at Cartelux, my journey came to an end and I couldn't be prouder of what our team delivered during this time. My greatest contribution has been bringing together an exceptional team and giving them the tools to succeed. As Richard Branson says, "Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business. It's as simple as that." Some of our team's achievements: - Rolled out the beta program, which allowed us to be faster to market, get early feedback from customers and reduce wasted resources 🚀 - Increased our product ops efficiency by 99.92% through automation and streamlining of processes 🤯 - Boosted conversion rates by up to 11x 📈 - Enhanced campaign efficiency by up to 79%, allowing campaign budgets to be effective in bidding on audiences with higher propensity to convert 💸 - Delivered a brand new analytics page that allows national sales companies (franchisors) to have full visibility in a glance of the performance of their network broken down by location, product and campaign type across all channels 📊 - Beta launched our very own proprietary generative AI that produces ad copies that follow best industry practices and are brand compliant 🤖 - Developed a 1+ year roadmap that will make our platform even easier and more powerful - Reduced internal operational costs by $xxK through AI agents 🤖 Special acknowledgments: • Joshua D. Williams: Heartfelt thanks to our CEO, who took a bet on this bearded Brazilian, bald father of 7 kids! 🚀 • Triad partners in crime: Thank you Prashant Maheshwari and Patricia Parrela PhD for putting up with me and my stubbornness. ❤️ • Operation leads: Jake Soper and Eduardo Cortez your leadership, expertise, professionalism and customer centricity have been key for our success. 👨‍💼 • Our A-M-A-Z-I-N-G software engineers: Thank you Dale Ramirez and John Manuel Aquino, for your technical expertise, agility and high quality work. You truly embodied the company values. No job is too big or too small for you. 👨‍💻 I’m grateful to have been part of this incredible journey and can't wait to see what the future holds for Cartelux. Hervé Genin Kae Hum Kristin Harder Stephen Burns Rose Ann De Guzman Valery Philippe Blumereau Carla McAloon —your hard work and dedication have been instrumental in our achievements.

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MONEY SPENT ON PRODUCT TALENT = GREATER LEVELS OF OUTCOMES? I missed the ProductTank where David Cox spoke but have read his blog post on Mind The Product website on the same subject Organisations starving on a diet of low-hanging fruit (link to post in comments) It's really interesting and the crux of the article focuses on the idea of marginal gains and the concept doesn't really apply in Product Because people can waste too much time on marginal improvements in areas that don't have much of an impact The piece discusses the marginal gains culture at British Cycling that led to improves Medal hauls at major championships That yes, it was part of the story, but the biggest factor was increase financial investment Which ties into a question I posed a Product leader last week........ Regardless of the Product itself, the most successful Product teams: are they successful because they are paying the best, so attract the best leaders and the best talent? My reasoning was that the best leaders and the best talent ask the difficult questions, know how to say 'no' and recognise that commercial outcomes are fundamentally linked to every task that you are committing to sprint-to-sprint. As such, that Product talent develop better track records and command better money. It's a lot like Dave's British British Cycling analogy or a Football Team: those that spend the most on talent, achieve the better outcomes. Except Manchester United of course 😂 But thinking locally to the better paying firms that invest not only in good wage levels to attract & retain, but also in their wider culture. They think about how to refine their hiring processes to weed out the mediocre talent that is invariably attracted by the money, rather the broader opportunity. Those businesses tend to perform really well, even if they weren't the first Product of their type, to go to market Cheaping out on talent rarely ends in outstanding outcomes!

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When it comes to the portals, I admit I am a bit of a “super fan” 🤩 Which is why I am so excited about our latest feature that integrates the powerhouse of Rightmove, the UK's No. 1 property data, directly into our products. This collaboration supercharges our data & research tools with the latest on-market listings and area insights, providing our members with even deeper comprehensive views of every property, plot or official title in the country. The team have again worked their magic to combine technical title and risk data with real-time trend analytics, to create something that's not only incredibly powerful but also simple use and beautifully visualised. 😻 Thank you to all the team for this work, your relentlessness and energy is inspiring. You are smashing it! Come have a play and see how it can transform your research. Even better, join our community and start using Addland for your business or investment! Platform, Reports, Data. Addland Rightmove #propertydata #research #proptech #portals #marketinsights

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Shout out to Beamery for hosting a cracking event in their fancy offices last week and to Ed Biden and Susannah Belcher of Hustlebadger for organising speakers on the theme of “pivotal moments in my product career”. Special mention goes to Tom Shurrock for winding back the clock and transporting us to 2009 when he launched an egg timer app to great acclaim snapping up 5 star reviews in the UK market. 🥚 🐤 ⏲ What a story. It did so well that he decided to take it worldwide. 🌍 And this is when it blew up. 1 star reviews, personal affronts and total confusion. How could the results of something as simple as boiling an egg vary so wildly by geography? 🤔 Was it culture? Breed of bird? No customer feedback or reviews held the answer. He continued to search. 🕵️‍♂️ Until he found this. The image attached - a paper title “Boiling Eggs on a Mountain” with its graph showing how relative to sea level, eggs take longer to cook. Suddenly the complaints from Nepal from pregnant ladies claiming he was trying make them eat unsafe, unboiled eggs made sense. 🤰 You’d have to ask Tom for how he coped through this testing time. I’m still not sure how he cracked it. 🐣 Takeaways: - Answers can come from unexpected places and - The same product can thrive or dive depending on the context of use Got any peculiar tales of product failure? I’d love to hear them. #weirdfail #product #pivotalmoment #eggs

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"Live data is bloody hard" is something I said on the Unofficial Partner podcast, a sentiment that will be shared by anyone else who has worked in this space. Bringing live heart rate to fans on traditional broadcast and second-screen means you have to deal with the unpredictable nature of mobile Internet connections, operational challenges in fitting sensors to athletes, and outliers, as you're the one responsible for cleaning the data (you can't show someone at being at 150% of their max heart rate). That's all before you have some reliable data. Then you need to turn the data into information and insights that tell stories and increase fan awareness and understanding. Once you're there, the fans will have a whole new dimension to interact with. Many people naturally focus on the impressive outputs you see on screen, but there's so much in the supply chain that needs to be done right before information is surfaced on-screen.

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Crowdsourcing “what next” worked. Just wow and thank you to all of you who commented on my curiosity post (see 👇 👇 👇)… and for those that DM’d and WhatsApp’ed. I have exciting coffee and lunch catch ups in the diary - what next ????? * a lead design/experience role, * a lead Enterprise Architect with new found experience mindset * join the Ai Pioneers * become a NED * help hire the best in architecture, service design and change * become an advisor/mentor * consider lecturing * go for it - business founder * become a tiktok influencer * write that book * buy a camera??? Let’s see … and to everyone out there pondering what next you really can’t beat asking those that have experienced working with you - try it ! #whatnext PS - if you haven’t added your POV yet then please it’s never too late - any perspectives even if it’s been suggested by others - all adds to the mix. Image generated with chatgpt

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It's astounding how much someone can misunderstand the delivery of public services. Of course, if there were no constraints, services could be automated, and many of the people working on public services have that capability. It does not take 'tech founders'. However, the constraints of serving the public with services that are not designed for profit and are linked with policy and other services across HMG - the art is to innovate a low cost and at pace while dealing with those constraints.

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Throughout the years I have talked to Italian startups (many are impressive) and occasionally have been surprised by companies solely focused on the Italian market, which will seem limiting for a typical US VC investor or entrepreneur, mostly (I speculate) because of the goals of their strategic investors. In the, US the domestic market is large enough to support a single market strategy, and still most companies focus on a global footprint, with rare exceptions (e.g. Zillow only expanded to Canada; OfferUp is US only). In Israel, where the domestic market is tiny, all startups (especially consumer internet startups, e.g. the many free-to-play game companies) are default-global. If you focus on a single market, it'd better be big, because as copycats emerge across the world, catching up to a global footprint may no longer be an option.

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Good to see the PM support both a free press and a paid press. Proof will be in how skilfully the govt can balance a) making the UK an AI growth centre as per the recent Industrial Strategy (which requires good relations with the major platforms) vs b) helping support journalistic protections for copyright (which they will resist) Encouraging words today though.

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Thought for the week after IBC. The scale of the amount of time, effort and money being expended by many organisations to maintain legacy technology and approaches to delivering content to consumers is incredible. Now if only those same organisations expended the same amount of time, effort and money on leaning into the new technologies and approaches to delivering content to consumers, they might actually survive beyond the next few years and in fact they might explode with a flourish to lead those areas and build new revenue streams that put what they have had recently into shadow. Managing strategic change is critical. I just wish more would realise that they need to do it. You know were we are...

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Are you a Product Leader / Manager? Would you like to speak at an event in London on 18th June? We’ll be discussing OKRs and metrics: how to implement (or how you learned from failure) - pitfalls and top tips? Get in touch via my DMs. 🤓

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Exciting news - Open Meetings (https://openmeetings.co.uk) is live and we just sent out comms to 250 athletics clubs, telling them all about it. We are classing this as a soft launch - given there aren't huge numbers of meetings going on at the moment. Things will really get going from March 2025 when the outdoor season starts. I suppose in the corporate world we'd call this the "test and learn" phase. The key differentiator with Open Meetings vs other event sites is that our search function allows users to find specific event types. For example if you’re after an open discus competition, for O60 athletes, in London, in August, our search function will find it for you. A really practical way to help boost participation in grass roots athletics by simply consolidating information. Over the coming months we'll be looking to partner with some like-minded organisations to help monetise the site and ultimately give back to the sport via athlete sponsorship. The purpose of this endeavour has never been to make profit, but to boost grass root athletics. If this sounds like something you or your brand could align with, please get in touch. Big kudos to Harry Mattocks my partner in crime for some long hours getting this over the line. Grass Roots Automation | Emeka Udechuku OLY MSc BSc | David Hooper | Matthew Buckner | Jon Mulkeen | Chris Jones | TIM HUTCHINGS | jack buckner | David Collins | Tim Grose | Jon Ridgeon | Frank Dick | Matthew Brown 🇸🇪🇦🇺🇬🇧 | Nicola Sutton (nee Bamford) | David P. | Richard Peach | Mike Winch | Andrew Day | Paul Heywood | Simon Heggie | Brendan Reilly | Katherine Vinnicombe | Steve Smith | Roger Skedd | James Kershaw-Naylor | Larry Achike OLY | Tom Buckner OLY | Rebecca Gallop | Alex Henley-Good MAPM | Oliver Carrington | Jacob Carrington | Jo Wilkinson | Derek Fraser George Palmer will be pleased to hear that Ruby on Rails is alive and well!

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Don't confuse estimates with commitments. An estimate is a best guess of how long a piece of work will take, not a date you're committing to deliver by. You can use estimates to inform timescales (e.g. we think it could take 3 months to build X), but never to define deadlines. After all, you know the least about a project at the start. It's much easier to know how long a project will take when you've completed 95% of it than when you've completed 5%. Why? Because the beginning is the vaguest point on the journey. There'll always be unknowns that will derail your assumptions.

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The beauty of managing the Planet Talk business is that I am a first generation migrant with a deep-rooted ties back home and a genuine need to use the app. One thing is to run a business and you have to test the product. Another thing is to use the product because it meets your need. The Planet Talk app (www.planettalk.com) is now loaded with cross-border bill payment proposition. Maybe we can proudly brag that we are the first to put low cost international calling, mobile airtime and data top up and now bill payment; all in one app. Help spread the word! Ayoola ADEYANJU Oluseyi Ayedun Stella Angwalas-Huson Janet Milner-Walker Dash Adedipe Maurice Iwunze Echo (QinQin) Liu Ian Shaw Amelo Ejalu Celestine Iwendi, PhD SMIEEE FHEA FIMC CMC Nneka Ochonogor Jesse Adeniji

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🚨Episode 10 of the Crave Connection In Product podcast is LIVE! In this episode, we are joined by Áine McKay, Head of Product at AutogenAI. 🚩 Áine recently introduced the topic of ‘The evolution of the Product Trio’ at our In Product Meetup. 🫶This podcast focuses on the emergence of new roles, practices, and value drivers due to the rapid expansion of Generative AI. Sharing her firsthand experience and learnings, Áine will also share some predictions about the future when integrating AI into established practices. In this episode, Aine brings her opinion and insight from a Product Leadership perspective and discusses 👇 ✅The blending of roles in the Product Trio. ✅Developing skills, and navigating career progression in an increasingly hybrid landscape. ✅The introduction of new roles to the Product Trio and specifically Prompt Engineering. We hope you leave this episode with an insight into the traditional Product Trio, and insights from the conversation as to how this has evolved.  You can listen in or watch the full episode through the below links: 🎙️ https://lnkd.in/euaUvt23 🍿 https://lnkd.in/eB72vzix #podcast #ai #ml #productmanagement #productcommunity #productrio

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