Marlin Equity Partners’ Post

What does it take to move beyond products not meeting customer needs and buggy tech? The cause is deeply rooted in the legacy tech leadership approach... In many organizations, Product and Engineering operate in separate silos, even when they share the same objectives. This model often results in misalignment, missed opportunities, and a lack of cohesive vision. 💡Enter ‘Two in a Box’: a transformative approach that isn’t about redefining roles but about reimagining collaboration to make dual accountability the engine of agile, customer-centric innovation. 🚀Building Enterprise SaaS at HRS Group, our CTO, Panagiotis (Takis) Aggelopoulos, and I entered the ‘Two in a Box’ model. It allowed us to go beyond conventional collaboration by becoming fully interchangeable on critical business and tech decisions. This integrated approach - seen in leading companies like Amazon or Salesforce - has proven to drive 30% faster time-to-market, reduced product rework, and improved customer alignment. 🔍Enhanced Decision-Making: Dual accountability reduces silos, essential for rapid, market-relevant decisions. 🔍Empowered Teams: Aligned leadership provides clear, consistent guidance, fostering innovation and high-quality delivery. 🔍Improved Product-Market Fit: When Product and Engineering operate as one, solutions evolve faster with a precise focus on customer needs, meeting high standards in quality and impact. 👏 We expanded this model to our tech leadership team and come to realize the scaled benefits empowering us to deliver impactful, tech-driven product experiences. Big thanks to our team: Katrin Schulte & Norbert Jipp, Niranjjani Kamalakkannan & Marko Schilde, Dr. Henning Schmidt & Dilip Balakrishna, Christopher Hecht & Khoi Vu, Olalekan Fuad Elesin & Saurabh Paramveer, James Cullum & Stefan Schnabel, Dzung Nguyen & Panagiotis (Takis) Aggelopoulos. With talent competition and rapid tech evolution, companies need more than just roles - they need dynamic, accountable partnerships. ‘Two in a Box’ enables SaaS organizations to stay adaptive, a key advantage as demands grow for scalable, high-performing enterprise technology. 📚 Book Recommendation Team of Teams by Gen. Stanley McChrystal – A true masterclass on interconnected leadership. Photo: Katrin Schulte #TwoInABox #ProductLeadership #EnterpriseTech #CustomerSuccess #Innovation

Exciting News For🎯CTO News Thursday🎯! This week, I’m thrilled to announce our guest: Pablo Dimenza 🎥✨, CTO at eg+ worldwide, joining us for an insightful CTO News Thursday Vlog. Pablo will share his journey, perspectives, and #strategies as a tech-driven leader in the #advertising sector. 👉Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ll be discussing: 📍How being “tech business-oriented” shapes his approach to leadership. 📍Lessons from his transition from engineering to executive decision-making. 📍Balancing autonomy and collaboration in building high-performing teams. 📍Navigating the hype around AI to drive real business value. 📍Insights into eg+ Worldwide’s use of proprietary tech, #SaaS, and custom platforms. Pablo’s journey spans #Argentina, #Portugal, #London, and more, offering a global perspective on tech leadership across industries. His deep expertise in both advertising and technology promises an engaging conversation you won’t want to miss! 🎥 Stay tuned for the Vlog recording this Thursday, where Pablo will also share his thoughts on key trends, methodologies like #Scrum vs. #Kanban, and maintaining discipline in a dynamic #tech roadmap. 👀 What questions would you ask Pablo about being a business-centric tech leader in today’s evolving landscape? Drop them in the comments! IT Labs - A Talent Growth Company 📺: Watch👉https://lnkd.in/ewu2CT9Z 🔗: Join👉🎯CTO News Thursday🎯 LinkedIn Group👉https://lnkd.in/eqrXberG #CTONews #Leadership #TechBusiness #AI #Collaboration #TeamBuilding

🌟 Unlock Success with Effective Product Discovery : Building What Customers Really Want!" As per Harvard Business Review, more than 2/3rds of the start-ups do not deliver positive returns. In the year 2000, Microsoft launched Window me which was a follow up to windows 98. By 2004, Microsoft announced that they do not want to support anymore and in 2006 they ended the support for this product. Have you ever wondered why many products fail to attract customers and achieve product market fit ? The significant reason for many products' failure to achieve product market fit is due to the lack of thorough product discovery, the top reason being lack of funding. ✨ So, what is Product Discovery ? Product Discovery is the foundation of product management and is the process of understanding customer's needs, business context and using that knowledge to decide what to build next. The output of product discovery is a validated product backlog. ✨ Why Product Discovery ? Doing thorough product discovery helps in increasing the chances of building products that customers actually want and thereby achieve product success. ✨ How to conduct product discovery ? Product discovery can be executed in two phases. 👉 Exploration Phase This entails list of activities to understand customer problems, desires, needs and preferences and ideate the solutions. This phase includes research, ideation and evaluation. 👉 Validation Phase Before anything is designed, products should pass a test to understand whether the ideas can generate value for end user. The activities involved in this phase are prototyping, testing and learning from feedback. #Gratitude Shravan Tickoo #productmanagement #productdiscovery #Ideation #productresearch

Product-centric operating models have gained significant traction over the past decade – and for good reason! Rooted in the software-driven culture of Silicon Valley, this approach prioritises creating real customer value through tech-powered solutions, supporting long-term innovation and value creation. But despite the growing adoption of these models, the expected benefits often fall short in larger organisations. Personally, I have seen many companies lose significant productivity by trying to implement product-centric models in a very dogmatic way: sometimes with a big-bang approach, sometimes without taking existing products lifecycle into account, etc. 🚀 My colleagues Jochen Gottschalk, Olivier Abtan, Oli Freestone, Stefan Stroh, Dr. Christian Rapp, Catherine Grayson and Antoine Chauvel share how businesses can set themselves up for success: https://lnkd.in/ekqKNF_b #Product #OpModel #Technology #Innovation #Transformation #Agile

Listen to Episode 4 of Powering Product Innovation for an in-depth interview with Microsoft’s Nathalie D’Hers. As corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital, Nathalie and her team serve as Customer Zero, the first customers to deploy Microsoft products and services at scale. Join Cognizant’s Deb Eastman, Head of Platforms and SaaS & VP, as she and Nathalie take a deep dive into Microsoft’s evolution to an AI-led, experience-centric organization and explore how product development teams can partner more effectively with the enterprise. Key takeaways include: • Why establishing a shared vision with product engineering teams is key. • Processes for capturing feedback from a global user base • Lessons learned for effective product deployment and adoption • Advice on driving Copilot adoption Listen today and learn how to position your company’s product engineering for success. https://lnkd.in/eMcdNjta #productdesign #Microsoft #Cognizant

✨ Embark on an inspiring journey with us as we proudly introduce DevRev as our Official 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 for the much-awaited '𝟖𝐭𝐡 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐭 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒'. 🗓️ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 – 𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝟏𝟐𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 📍𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 – 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐫𝐚𝐝, 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐮 DevRev is an AI-native platform that consolidates customer support and product development by unifying end users, sellers, support teams, and developers into a single platform, reducing the need for multiple business apps. Unlike traditional CRMs, it offers a flexible approach to collaboration, AI, and analytics, boosting product velocity and lowering customer churn. With $100 million in funding from Khosla Ventures and Mayfield, and a $1.1 billion valuation, DevRev, founded by Dheeraj Pandey and Manoj Agarwal, is recognized on Forbes’ 2024 list of America’s Best Startup Employers. To know more visit www.devrev.ai Join us at the Product Management Summit—an exclusive gathering of product Leaders aimed at fostering transformative product thinking and customer-centric innovation. Learn from industry leaders about navigating the AI-driven landscape, participate in networking opportunities, and share best practices to drive business success. Dheeraj Pandey Manoj Agarwal Neeraj Matiyani Kavya Kommareddy ✨𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮'𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀 ! 🌍𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰 - https://lnkd.in/dmPZ-rMC 🏵️For Queries, 📞𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘂𝘀 - +𝟵𝟭 𝟴𝟬𝟴𝟬𝟭𝟲𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬 ✉️𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝘁 - 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗮@𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺𝘀.𝗰𝗼𝗺 / 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆@𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺𝘀.𝗰𝗼𝗺 #UBSFPM #productmanagement #productmanager #marketing #productstrategy #productowner #innovation #digitaltransformation #technology #product #productdesign #8thEditionproductmanagement #ubsforums

🌟 About last week... I had an inspiring day at #ProductCon! Particularly sessions with Michael Cieri and Jeetu Patel 🚀 Mike shared incredible insights on managing a multiproduct ecosystem at Gusto: ⚡Creating a cohesive experience for customers, where each product enhances the value of the others ⚡Reduce learning curve by leveraging existing products and features to build new ones ⚡Increased customer loyalty, who doesn't love a one-stop-shop? Jeetu discussed the importance of integrated security solutions and how Cisco is innovating at scale to provide comprehensive protection across networks: ⚡Security cloud innovations that minimize the need for multiple point solutions ⚡Hyper-distributed security at every layer of the network Their wisdom resonated with me as a PM working in enterprise applications. While managing multiple in-house ERP modules at Tesla, it is critical to ⚡ Navigate the multiproduct ecosystem with confidence, ⚡ Build new solutions leveraging existing products and features, and ⚡ always, always keep customers and stakeholders close It's a testament on how a large, complex company like Tesla can operate with startup mentality. We must build products at speed, without hierarchy, and reward simplicity: communicate clearly and concisely to avoid misunderstanding-driven blockers. Huge thanks to all the speakers and to Product School for such a fantastic event. Looking forward to implementing these learnings and pushing boundaries on what's possible! #ProductCon #ProductManagement #Innovation #Gusto #Cisco #Automation #Learning #Tesla #ERP #Product #PM #StartUp

Listen to Episode 4 of Powering Product Innovation for an in-depth interview with Microsoft’s Nathalie D’Hers. As corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital, Nathalie and her team serve as Customer Zero, the first customers to deploy Microsoft products and services at scale. Join Cognizant’s Deb Eastman, Head of Platforms and SaaS & VP, as she and Nathalie take a deep dive into Microsoft’s evolution to an AI-led, experience-centric organization and explore how product development teams can partner more effectively with the enterprise. Key takeaways include: • Why establishing a shared vision with product engineering teams is key. • Processes for capturing feedback from a global user base • Lessons learned for effective product deployment and adoption • Advice on driving Copilot adoption Listen today and learn how to position your company’s product engineering for success. https://cogniz.at/3ZSNCau #productdesign #Microsoft #Cognizant

"You only get places by running an experiment and finding data that points in that direction." Scott Shindeldecker, LaunchDarkly Experimentation Solutions Specialist Building a culture of experimentation is one of the most impactful ways to understand the true value behind your KPIs. With experiments, we can more confidently measure and attribute results, directly linking feature performance to revenue impact 💥 Here’s why experimentation is powerful: - Clear Value Attribution: Experiments create data that directly ties user behavior to product changes. - Risk Reduction: Control groups allow us to measure both gains and potential risks, so poor ideas don’t scale across the user base. - ROI Clarity: Winning, losing, or neutral results all tell a story—each helps optimize future decisions and aligns teams with real, actionable data. For a full breakdown on how experimentation drives ROI, check out our blog at the link below: https://lnkd.in/gvXQ-N4w #Experimentation #DevOps #RiskMediation

Listen to Episode 4 of Powering Product Innovation for an in-depth interview with Microsoft’s Nathalie D’Hers. As corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital, Nathalie and her team serve as Customer Zero, the first customers to deploy Microsoft products and services at scale. Join Cognizant’s Deb Eastman, Head of Platforms and SaaS & VP, as she and Nathalie take a deep dive into Microsoft’s evolution to an AI-led, experience-centric organization and explore how product development teams can partner more effectively with the enterprise. Key takeaways include: • Why establishing a shared vision with product engineering teams is key. • Processes for capturing feedback from a global user base • Lessons learned for effective product deployment and adoption • Advice on driving Copilot adoption Listen today and learn how to position your company’s product engineering for success. https://lnkd.in/eSdBw6X2 #productdesign #Microsoft #Cognizant