Product Drive 2023 – How to Build Products Users Love
It’s 2023, and customers have options.
This makes it more important than ever to create products people actually want to use. But how do you do that? What strategies can you implement to drive acquisition and retention faster? How do you ensure your team doesn’t lose momentum along the way?
The expert speakers at Product Drive 2023 will answer these and many more questions.
Get ready to dive into insightful discussions, practical strategies, and real-world examples that will empower you to create and manage products that meet user needs and leave them truly satisfied. Join us to learn from top experts and companies.
Let’s quickly go over what to expect.
TL;DR
Product Drive talks to help you get better at product management and leadership:
- Building products the world needs: When business interests and ethics collide by Else Van Der Berg
- The Perils of Feature Parity by Brandon Dohman
- Connecting business goals and user outcomes – drive business results with products that customers love by Büşra Coşkuner
- Roadmaps kill outcomes by Dave Martin
- How the marriage of sales teams with product, drives 400% growth by Peter Ikladious
- Product Managers should always make progress by Jason Knight
- 10x your product outcome with the Value Engine by Sandra Hinz
- You’re responsible for more than your own career by Matt Tse
Product Drive talks to help you drive more PLG growth:
- The Product-led Growth Playbook for AI/Complex Products by Leah Tharin
- Go-To-Market Strategy (GTM) for products by Maja Voje
- 10x your Growth with Customer Journey Optimization by Audrey Melnik
- Product-Led Onboarding: How to get users to value, quickly by Yaakov Carno
- Driving Growth: The Unique Role of the PLG Product Manager by Yoel Eilat
- Planning for Why, not What by June Kim
- Building Relevance and Uniqueness in 3 Steps by Ashley Cheng
- Product Packaging – how to navigate product features to enable cross/up-sell by Kris Szyszkiewicz
- The beautiful synergy of product-led and sales-led growth by Ben Williams
- Hacking (Product) Growth in 2023 by Sean Ellis
Product Drive talk for better Product Marketing:
- Finding PMF and Why the Blue Ocean isn’t a Good Thing by Melissa Kwan
Product Drive talk about AI and Product Management:
- Impacts of AI on Product Management talk by Malte Scholz
What is Product Drive?
Product Drive is Userpilot’s FREE online event where experts from top companies come to share growth and marketing insights.
The event is for anyone responsible for driving growth for their product. This includes product managers, marketing managers, customer success managers, and anyone else who wants to learn how to attract more users, improve the user experience, and increase product adoption.
The 2023 edition is the biggest so far, with 20 speakers and four categories.
Product Drive talks categories
This year’s edition comes with four talks categories to give you insights and inspirations into different aspects of Product.
Product management and leadership
From the struggle to balance innovation and market fit to maintaining a customer-centric approach to product development and navigating talks with business partners, product leaders face many challenges.
The talks in this category:
- Building products the world needs: When business interests and ethics collide by Else Van Der Berg
- The Perils of Feature Parity by Brandon Dohman
- Connecting business goals and user outcomes – drive business results with products that customers love by Büşra Coşkuner
- Roadmaps kill outcomes by Dave Martin
- How the marriage of sales teams with product, drives 400% growth by Peter Ikladious
- Product Managers should always make progress by Jason Knight
- 10x your product outcome with the Value Engine by Sandra Hinz
- You’re responsible for more than your own career by Matt Tse
Product growth
It’s possible to drive product growth without breaking the bank. But you need a solid strategy and must pay attention to creating mind-blowing user experiences.
The talks in this category:
- The Product-led Growth Playbook for AI/Complex Products by Leah Tharin
- Go-To-Market Strategy (GTM) for products by Maja Voje
- 10x your Growth with Customer Journey Optimization by Audrey Melnik
- Product-Led Onboarding: How to get users to value, quickly by Yaakov Carno
- Driving Growth: The Unique Role of the PLG Product Manager by Yoel Eilat
- Planning for Why, not What by June Kim
- Building Relevance and Uniqueness in 3 Steps by Ashley Cheng
- Product Packaging – how to navigate product features to enable cross/up-sell by Kris Szyszkiewicz
- The beautiful synergy of product-led and sales-led growth by Ben Williams
- Hacking (Product) Growth in 2023 by Sean Ellis
Product Marketing
Join Melissa Kwan from eWebinar during “Finding PMF and Why the Blue Ocean isn’t a Good Thing” to discover why the road to growth isn’t just about untapped markets but hinges on understanding and serving your customers.
Melissa will be sharing the invaluable lessons she’s learned from her experience as a 3X founder.
AI and product management
The use of AI in product management isn’t new; small and large companies have been doing it for years.
However, there has been an explosion in 2023, and you can’t escape incorporating AI into your processes.
Why not learn to do it properly?
In his Impacts of AI on Product Management talk, Malte Scholz will show you the skills and strategies you need to thrive.
Now that you’ve seen an overview of the categories, let’s get into more details about the topics and speakers, so you know exactly what to expect.
Building products the world needs: When business interests and ethics collide
Product leaders constantly have to balance business interests and ethics, and sometimes they face challenges that can lead to dark practices.
This talk will spread light on these challenges and help you overcome them. You’ll learn about:
- The Ethical Product Matrix and how to identify where your product falls.
- Strategies to strike a balance between business interest and ethics.
- Lots more that Else will unveil.
Sounds interesting? Save your spot now!
About the author – Else van der Berg
Else has over a decade of experience working for startups and scaleups but is currently an interim Product Lead/Advisor at Value Rebels.
She has a knack for strategic thinking and loves SaaS in general, especially product-led growth. She also founded SaaS consulting firm, Sonderhouse, through which she teams up with other experts to provide sound education and coaching for SaaS startups.
The Product-led Growth Playbook for AI/Complex Products
The machine learning revolution has come to stay, and with it comes many innovative but complex products. This means product leaders are constantly exploring unfamiliar settings, and the traditional approach to marketing and scaling products won’t cut it.
In this talk, Leah will show you:
- How to leverage PLG to navigate challenging markets and position yourself for success.
- Keys for dealing with the intricacies of niche products.
- The game-changing dynamics of scaling in the Machine Learning Revolution.
About the author – Leah Tharin
Leah is the current head of Product at Jua.ai. Her 22-year and counting career began in Qualitative User Research before she transitioned to Product. She runs a PLG newsletter with over 12,000 subscribers and the “Productea with Leah” Podcast.
The Perils of Feature Parity
Feature parity is tempting, especially if you’re new to the market or trying to catch up to a dominant player. However, it can also lead to feature fatigue. Users will feel overwhelmed with your features, leading to reduced usability.
But innovation and growth must continue, so how do you avoid the feature parity trap?
You will get the answer to that and many other questions during Brandon’s talk, where you will also learn:
- How to know when feature parity makes sense.
- Effective strategies to identify unmet user needs and build features they’ll love.
- How to handle conversations with your business partners or company. leadership to uphold your customer-centric focus.
Register for Brandon’s session.
About the author – Brandon Dohman
Brandon is the senior director of product and design at Schellman. He’s also a consultant, author, and adjunct lecturer.
With over 16 years of experience in product management and strategy, Brandon is your guy for coaching teams in delivering innovative, customer-centric solutions.
Go-To-Market Strategy (GTM) for products
Designing a go-to-market strategy can be an overwhelming process. You have to figure out answers to questions like, who should we target? How do we price the product? What marketing channel should we be using? Etc.
Maja Voje’s talk will help you go from overwhelmed to confident and focused.
She’ll analyze a case study of how companies develop and execute a GTM strategy by following these steps:
- Market analysis.
- Early Customer Profile Selection.
- Product.
- Pricing.
- Positioning.
- Growth.
Register for her session to unlock growth opportunities for your SaaS.
About the author – Maja Voje
Maja is the founder of Growth Lab and has directly helped over 500 companies—including Google, Miro, and Rocket Internet—develop growth strategies.
She’s also a bestselling growth hacking instructor (70k+ students) and has a GTM book coming out soon.
Connecting business goals and user outcomes: Your next step towards being more product-led
When it comes to connecting your business goals with user outcomes, impact mapping is a useful technique you want to adopt. It’s based on the following components: goals, actors, impacts, and deliverables.
Büşra is an expert in this area. She will be showing you:
- How to go through each component of the impact map and ensure you strike a balance between business objectives and user experience.
- How to derive OKRs with an Impact Map.
- The difference between being PLG and being product-led—and why it matters.
Register for her session to get the perfect balance between user experience and business.
About the author – Büşra Coşkuner
Büşra Coşkuner is a seasoned product coach with over a decade of professional experience. She’s worked in both product-led and non-product-led companies, so she understands the intricacies.
Aside from being a coach, Büşra is a Product Management guest lecturer and speaker.
Roadmaps kill outcomes
Fixating too much on roadmaps can get you trapped because it prevents you from exploring creative alternatives.
Dave advocates a more dynamic and customer-centric approach.
In this eye-opening session, he reveals:
- The key to consistently delivering value, driving customer satisfaction, and fostering innovation.
- Ways to truly know what customers want.
- How to become an outcome-based leader instead of one that sticks to a one-dimensional approach to product development.
About the author – Dave Martin
Dave Martin is the founder of Product Leader coaching service RighToLeft, executive coach, and Chief Product Officer with over 20 years of experience.
He has helped many leaders and teams refine their product strategies and shift from being feature-focused to product-led. Dave is trusted by product leaders from scale-ups and large companies like Adobe, GitLab, Synk, MentionMe, Contentful, BT, Rotageek, etc.
10x your Growth with Customer Journey Optimization
Customer journey optimization is a key strategy for unlocking growth opportunities. It involves mapping out the user journey, collecting data on customer interactions, and using this data to make informed decisions about how to improve the customer experience.
In this talk, Audrey Melnik will help you:
- Understand the psychology of your customers. What are their needs, wants, pain points, and emotions? What motivates them to buy from you and stay with you?
- Find the right tools and methodology for creating sustainable growth.
- Create a customer-centric culture that puts the customer first in everything you do.
Register for Audrey’s session.
About the author – Audrey Melnik
Audrey Melnik is a 2x startup founder and co-founder of the growth consulting firm Unlocking Growth.
Audrey created a unique Customer Journey Optimization methodology she uses to empower non-technical teams to experiment and iterate on the Customer Journey without developer involvement.
How the marriage of sales teams with products drives 400% growth
In his words, “the whole discussion of ‘is PLG right for me’ or ‘should I have PLG instead of sales’ is wrong.”
Peter Ikladious will be sharing:
- How product-led and sales complement each other perfectly.
- Real-life examples of companies maximizing both to drive growth.
- A practical guide for creating a cohesive go-to-market strategy that combines product-led experiences with a sales team.
Ready to start driving real growth? Sign up for his sessions now.
About the author – Peter Ikladious
Peter co-founded Unlocking Growth with Audrey Melnik.
Before Unlocking Growth, he held executive roles at different companies, including IBM and SafetyCulture. Peter’s wealth of experience across various disciplines and industries informs his rich approach to growth.
Finding PMF and Why the Blue Ocean isn’t a Good Thing
If you ask founders why they’re in business, you’d essentially get two types of answers: to build a successful business or to change the world.
There’s no right or wrong, but many startup founders gravitate toward the second answer. It’s good to build products that leave a dent in the world, but the real question is, are you READY for what it takes?
In this talk, Melissa will be sharing:
- Why Blue Ocean is not the best for regular entrepreneurs who want to build a lifestyle business with limited access to capital.
- Her challenges from painstakingly building two businesses in new markets and lessons to help you grow.
- The right ways to find PMF fast.
Sign up to learn from Melissa.
About the author – Melissa Kwan
Melissa is a 3X bootstrapper. Her previous startup was in the real estate tech space and was acquired in 2019.
Currently, she’s the co-founder and CEO of eWebinar, a platform that combines pre-recorded videos with real-time interactions to let you run webinars without being there in person.
Product Managers should always make progress
Through effective decision-making, product managers can significantly impact users’ lives for good.
But this doesn’t happen as frequently as it should. In fact, the PM team is often seen as the place where good ideas go to die, but you can change the narrative in your company.
In this talk, you’ll learn:
- Some of the common issues hindering product management teams.
- Ways to overcome those challenges.
- Why product managers should always be moving forward and showing progress.
About the author – Jason Knight
Jason has over two decades of experience in tech and product. He’s worked in multiple companies, from scrappy startups to big corporates.
Currently, Jason coaches startups and scale-ups to help them build effective product teams and great products as a result.
Product-Led Onboarding: How to get users to value, quickly
Product-led onboarding uses the product itself to guide users through the onboarding process. This contrasts traditional onboarding methods, which rely on external resources such as documentation, training, or customer support.
Yaakov Carno is experienced in this area, and in this talk, he’ll:
- Guide you through the core concepts, shedding light on what product-led onboarding truly entails.
- Explore common mistakes that hinder user onboarding.
- Provide insights to help you overcome these mistakes.
Interested in getting product-led onboarding right? Sign up for this session.
About the author – Yaakov Carno
Yaakov is a PLG enthusiast and founder of Valubyl—a PLG consultancy firm that helps clients achieve predictable and scalable revenue.
Yaakov is also a SaaS Advisor and writes a weekly PLG newsletter.
Driving Growth: The Unique Role of the PLG Product Manager
Product management in PLG companies comes with challenges you won’t typically have to deal with in sales-led organizations.
That’s just one of many challenges. However, the benefits of PLG are worth all the effort. In this talk, Yoel will:
- Explore the distinctive aspects of being a product manager in a PLG-focused company, unveiling the skills and intricacies that set it apart from traditional PM roles.
- Demonstrate how to envision the complete user journey, manage user expectations, and harness the power of in-app messaging to drive user actions.
- Delve into the contrasting growth considerations of early-stage startups versus growth-stage scaleups.
- Highlight how PMs and marketers can better collaborate to drive growth.
About the author – Yoel Eilat
With over 15 years of career experience, Yoel has held several leadership positions in top companies. He was VP of product at Walkme, where he pioneered the PLG model, and Head of Product at Powtoon, where his contributions turned the product into a PLG powerhouse.
Yoel founded Everything Product, where he does product-led growth consulting and mentoring.
Planning for Why, not What
Planning for Why instead of What, helps to ensure the product is aligned with user needs and business objectives.
Join this talk as June shows you how to:
- Align individual values with user needs.
- Use your product as a channel to express your values.
- Shape your product vision into foreseeable goals, each one a step towards fulfilling that big vision.
About the author – June Kim
June is a software engineer and has worked with different companies, from small startups to tech giants like Google.
He’s passionate about tech and building high-performance development teams.
Building Relevance and Uniqueness in 3 Steps
Relevance and uniqueness will help you attract and retain more customers. People will clearly see how you’re different from your competitors and won’t have a problem identifying the value you provide.
So, how do you make this happen? It’s all about positioning, and in this talk, Ashley Cheng will show you:
- The secrets to creating a unique positioning and vision that fosters collaboration across teams.
- How aligning marketing, sales, and product efforts can lead to focused growth.
- The strategy to effectively map customer Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) and uncover competitive gaps.
Register for Ashley’s session.
About the author – Ashley Cheng
Ashley is currently the head of growth at Usersnap. Prior to that, she held product marketing positions in various companies, including Microsoft and Zalora.
Her core expertise includes:
- Positioning and messaging.
- Product marketing.
- Demand generation.
- Data analysis for making informed decisions.
Product Packaging – how to navigate product features to enable cross/up-sell
Small changes to your product packaging can boost or drastically reduce revenue.
Good packaging is simple, showcases value add-ons, and makes it easy for customers to know how each feature combination/access level is different from the other.
Join Krisztof Szyszkiewicz’s session and learn how to:
- Structure your product in a way that maximizes revenue for your company.
- Effectively prioritize and highlight key features that meet customer preferences and generate significant value for your organization.
- Identify pain points and friction within your product, and learn strategies to enhance customer satisfaction and retention.
About the author – Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz
Krzysztof (Kris) Szyszkiewicz is an expert in price, revenue, and margin management. He’s also a member of The Professional Pricing Society, a pricing idea marketplace where experts meet to network, discuss pricing, and educate themselves.
Impacts of AI on Product Management
From automating minor tasks to streamlining data analysis and helping teams understand customers better, AI is empowering PMs to make the right decisions.
It’s time you jump on the bandwagon, and Malte will be your guide. In his session, you’ll learn:
- How to incorporate AI technologies into your product roadmap.
- Ways to optimize the user experience and drive innovation.
- The skills and strategies needed to succeed in this new era.
About the author – Malte Scholz
Malte is the co-founder, CEO, and CPO of Airfocus. His enthusiasm and understanding of product management stand him out, and he has a proven track record in developing SaaS and mobile platforms.
10x your product outcome with the Value Engine
The value engine framework was developed by the team at ValueRebels to help product managers dispel confusion and simplify their processes.
It cares not just about what you have in the backlog (Delivery), but also helps you fill the product backlog with the right things (Discovery)
Join Sandra’s talk to learn:
- The value engine concept and how it can help you eliminate common pitfalls.
- Ways to foster a culture of experimentation within your organization and accelerate your success.
- Practical strategies to streamline your workflows, identify bottlenecks, eliminate redundant steps, and enhance cross-functional collaboration.
About the author – Sandra Hinz
Before co-founding ValueRebels, Sandra worked as a Product Manager and Product Lead in companies like Zooplus and Justeattakeaway.
Together with the ValueRebels team, they’re on a mission to help product managers in Europe and beyond build successful products.
The beautiful synergy of product-led and sales-led growth
What if you don’t have to choose between product-led and sales-led growth?
With the right approach, you can combine them and get the best of both worlds.
The big question: How can you do it well?
This session answers that. You’ll learn:
- The distinct strengths and advantages of each approach and how they cater to different business contexts and objectives.
- Specific scenarios where PLG excels and where SLG shines. This will help you combine them properly.
- How to align your product strategy, sales processes, and customer engagement tactics to create a seamless and effective growth engine.
Join Ben in this session!
About the author – Ben Williams
Ben is an advisor to B2B SaaS companies.
In his over 20 years of industry experience, he’s built, nurtured, and scaled high-performing product and cross-functional growth teams, driving strategic impact. Popular among the companies he’s worked with are Synk (former VP PLG) and CloudBees (former VP product).
You’re responsible for more than your own career
If you want to be an average Joe, only ship features and products to meet customer needs. However, great PMs know their role continues beyond there.
As a PM, you’re also responsible for:
- Helping your team grow in their careers.
- Helping the team navigate tough times—layoffs, change of strategy, etc.—without losing focus and productivity.
- Being a role model internally and outside your company.
Ready to increase your influence and impact? Join Matt in this session as he shares practical tips.
About the author – Matt Tse
Matt is the Principal Product Manager at Atlassian, working on growing the Enterprise business for Atlassian’s Cloud portfolio.
He has over 7 years of experience as a product manager and has worked across different industries: B2B SaaS, telecommunications, and banking.
Hacking (Product) Growth in 2023
By leveraging innovative strategies, data-driven decision-making, and continuous experimentation, you can rapidly test and refine your approaches for driving user acquisition and revenue growth.
In this talk, you’ll:
- Discover the significance of product-market fit.
- See ways to harness the power of virality for product growth.
- Learn how to leverage AI and data to your advantage.
Ellis will also share case studies, shed light on successful growth strategies, and introduce the must-have tools and techniques for 2023.
Join Growth Hacking guru Sean Ellis to learn proven strategies and tactics to help you succeed.
About the author – Sean Ellis
Sean is credited with coining the term growth hacking, introducing the ICE Prioritization Framework, and developing the widely popular Product/Market Fit Test. He uses these as part of his toolkit for helping launch and grow several well-known startups, including Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn, and Lookout—all companies are now unicorns.
Additionally, Sean is the bestselling author of Hacking Growth and host of The Breakout Growth Podcast. He also regularly teaches growth at leading business schools such as Harvard, UC Berkeley Haas, CKGSB (Beijing), Oxford (UK), and INSEAD (France).
Conclusion
Product Drive 2023 holds October 3rd and 4th. Register now so you don’t miss any sessions!
You can choose the topics that interest you or simply register for all the talks. Don’t think you’ll have time to attend live? No worries! There will be replays.
