In the first episode of the Augusto Digital Insights podcast, Brian Anderson interviews Mike Belsito, founder of the INDUSTRY conference in Cleveland, Ohio and co-host of Rocketship.fm.

Mike considers himself a product person that just so happens to manage a totally different type of product: a community and a conference. He explains that his journey into product management started before he even knew it. When his start-up failed, several companies approached him—one for a director of product strategy role.

Mike remembers Googling “what does a director of product strategy do?”. He hadn’t gone to school for it, so he felt he wasn’t qualified. But the company laughed and said, "Oh no, Mike, nobody went to school for product management. You'll be fine."

As he began reading books, listening to podcasts and talking to other product people, he realized there was a potential niche for a community centered on product management. That idea sparked the launch of INDUSTRY and the Product Collective. 2021 will be the seventh edition.

Mike goes on to explain that a product person doesn’t sell solutions but rather pulls out the problems customers are experiencing and guiding them to new solutions. He defines the product mindset as a hypothesis that needs to be validated by getting as close to customers as possible.

He shares that the best relationships between product managers and engineers are when there’s an immense level of trust. The product manager has to demonstrate that they deserve trust by being able to speak the engineers’ language, ask enough questions, and understand what tech stack they’re operating. On the flip side, engineers need to have a natural level of curiosity about what needs to be built and the business implications of it all.

We thank Mike Belsito for his time on the Augusto Digital Insights podcast and wish him the best with Rocketship.fm and the INDUSTRY conference!

Augusto Digital focuses on custom software design and development, cloud computing, and support solutions to enable our clients to realize their digital vision in Healthcare, financial services, logistics, and manufacturing.

Discover why it’s so important to meet with real users when building digital products. Featuring Rich Mironov, 35-year Silicon Valley veteran. 

In this episode of the Augusto Digital Insights podcast, Brian Anderson interviews Rich Mironov, a 35-year Silicon Valley veteran—of mostly B2B enterprise software. He published a book called The Art of Product Management, Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator and has 19 years’ worth of blog posts on his website about trends in product management.

Brian and Rich sat down to explore more about Rich’s career, and the insights he’s gained. Today, Rich primarily does two things: serves as the interim head of product or coach product executives on how to do their job better. He considers it a matter of pride that he never gives advice he wouldn’t take himself.

Rich describes the product mindset as a mix between the customer-facing and engineering-facing parts of the job. He notes that he expects both his product managers and himself to spend half their time with real users, discovering what’s important, needed, and going to move the needle. The other half is inward facing, communicating with development and engineering teams to collectively figure out how to fix the problem.

He goes on to explain the importance in having multiple people from different perspectives at the table when beginning a project—at minimum, a product person, a designer, and a developer—so they can notice unique issues, fallacies, and solutions.

Rich continues to highlight the importance of meeting with real users, providing an example of a company that makes cancer therapy machines. Each year, the organization brings in cancer survivors to share their stories and, according to Rich, “You’ve never seen a bunch of software specialists and physicists work harder for the next three months than when they’re coming to work to save lives.”

We thank Rich for his time on the Augusto Podcast and wish him the best of luck in all his future roles!

Augusto Digital focuses on custom software design and development, cloud computing, and support solutions to enable our clients to realize their digital vision in Healthcare, financial services, logistics, and manufacturing.

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews Michael Sacca, founder of Rocketship.fm—the very popular digital product management podcast—and vice president of product at Dribbble, the leading destination to find and showcase creative work for design professionals.

Michael had an interesting introduction to the industry. About 20 years ago, he moved to Los Angeles to work in the music business. While struggling to find a job, his roommate taught him PHP coding. Michael began taking his roommate’s freelance scraps, and found that design was where he had the most natural inclination. He built up a small agency that worked for Scholastic, GE, and Kobe Bryant.

From there, Michael joined Crew, working on experimental products as the company developed the highly successful Unsplash—which later was acquired by Dribbble. Along the way, the holistic insight Michael gained built him into a great product leader.

Michael thinks of the product mindset as solving the problems of businesses, becoming the focal point of companies’ revenue generation. He sees product teams quickly becoming the foundation of organizations and product leaders as the people who have to balance the needs of the board, customers, CEO, marketing and sales teams, and much more.

The two then dive into the main players in a solid product team before analyzing the importance of scaling appropriately for growth and discussing product management frameworks.

Michael shares several examples when the product and engineering relationship has gone wrong—typically because one team doesn’t feel bought into the solution or when people want to build stuff just because they think it’s cool.

Finally, Michael provides advice on how he sources product engineers and designers via contractor networks and freelance agencies.

We thank Michael for his time on the Augusto Podcast and wish him the best of luck in all his future projects!

Augusto Digital focuses on custom software design and development, cloud computing, and support solutions to enable our clients to realize their digital vision in Healthcare, financial services, logistics, and manufacturing.