We track Product so you don't have to. Top Podcasts summarised, the latest AI tools, plus research and news in a 5 min digest.

Hello, Product fans!

Wrapping up the week, here’s Friday’s Product Tapas! 🌮

🍽️ Friday’s menu:

🔥 Not Boring News: We're serving a diverse platter today, from China's Realme mobile milestone to Scientists saving your dog 🐕️ 🐶 🐩 

🤖 GPT & Tool Time: Dive into a world of time-saving AI tools designed to supercharge your product management and design strategies 💼

🎙️ Product Bites: Feast on our carefully curated summaries, including insightful articles on growth strategies post-product/market fit and creative marketing ideas using the I.D.E.A framework. Plus, in a somewhat meta edition, we’ve got a summary of my own appearance on a recent founders podcast recapping on the journey to becoming a Chief Product Officer and successfully navigating multiple sectors. 🧠

Let’s get on with it! 🚀👇

📰 Not boring

• China's Realme celebrates becoming the 5th fastest company to achieve 200 million phone sales

• Sports Illustrated accused of using fake AI authors for its articles

• Fake AI images are showing up in Google search

• Amazon launches Q, an AI-powered chatbot for work

• Virgin plans to fly the 1st transatlantic flight on 100% sustainable fuel

• Inactive Gmail users need to act fast to save their accounts from permanent deletion by today!

• Science wants your dog to live longer

View more →

📰 Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

1. OpenRep: Elevate your digital marketing with AI-driven workflow optimization. Expand your reach, engage your audience more effectively, and save time. 🌐📈

2. Meshy: Transform text and images into stunning 3D visuals effortlessly in just under a minute. 🎨🖥️

3. Walling AI: Instantly craft exquisite webpages. Build a beautiful page in seconds to organize your ideas and present your work. 🧠💡

4. Zixflow: Manage, engage, and retain customers, through AI

5. Unremot: Rapidly create and deploy AI apps. Integrate AI/ML APIs effortlessly with no coding required, 5x faster, 1/5th cost. 🤖⚡

6. Product Tapas Product Audit tool: Our own comprehensive Product Management Audit tool 👀 👀 👀 allows you to thoroughly evaluate your organisation’s end-to-end product management practice, by gauging Product Maturity across four key areas:

   1. Strategy & Principles

   2. Execution & Delivery

   3. Team Capabilities

   4. Data-Driven Insights

   Featuring 19 targeted questions, this audit tool generates a dynamic visual output making it easy to pinpoint strengths versus development areas.

   Tailored recommendations then provide clear direction on reaching the next level of product management maturity and help facilitate productive prioritisation conversations with cross-functional partners.

   The full spreadsheet tool equips you to independently conduct audits while accessing the GPT version simplifies the process further. Drive organisation-wide product excellence through objective assessment.

   Sound interesting? Snag your free copy just by bringing 5 friends to our Product Tapas family using the link at the bottom of the newsletter [web users see newsletter for link] 🚀👇

Want more like this? Check out agent ai 👇️ 

🫦 Product Bites

🌟 Finding the Next Wave of Growth: S-Curves and Product Sequencing

This bite dives into Casey Accidental’s article on how to find new ways to grow over time.

📖 Read the full article here 

What's the Buzz? 🐝 The article discusses the challenges of finding growth after achieving product/market fit, focusing on the importance of creating scalable growth loops and the need for new products or growth strategies. Drawing from experiences at TCV’s Engage Summit, it emphasizes the continuous iteration required even after finding product/market fit and the shift in the type of product work needed.

What's the Big Deal? 🚀 Key insights include:

1. Growth Loop Dynamics: Understanding that most companies rely on a primary acquisition loop for scalable growth, which eventually reaches a plateau.

   Example: At Pinterest, the initial growth was driven by Facebook Open Graph, which later stopped, forcing a shift to Google SEO and content distribution for user acquisition.

2. Product/Market Fit Evolution: The necessity to keep improving the product to stay ahead in a competitive landscape.

   Example: Continuous iteration was key for Eventbrite; they started with a basic ticketing service and evolved by adding features like marketing tools for event creators.

3. Product Work Portfolio Shift: Post-product/market fit, the focus shifts from zero to one product/market fit work to features improvement, growth, scaling, and product/market fit expansion.

   Grubhub: After achieving product/market fit with online ordering, the focus shifted to expanding into new markets and refining their sales and SEO strategies.

4. Success and Failures Case Studies: Real-world examples from Pinterest, Grubhub, and Eventbrite, highlighting their growth strategies, successes, and missteps.

   Pinterest: Successful shift from friend-based discovery to interest-based discovery, but faced setbacks with product expansions like maps and Q&A features.

5. Sequencing S-Curves: The strategic process of layering different growth loops or products to sustain long-term growth, illustrated through detailed examples.

   Eventbrite: Layered multiple acquisition loops over time, including direct marketing to event creators and distributing event inventory to various platforms like Google and Facebook.

Why Should You Care? 💡 For product leaders and entrepreneurs, understanding the dynamics of growth loops and the evolution of product/market fit is crucial. This article offers valuable insights into managing product portfolios, the timing of introducing new growth strategies, and learning from real-world examples.

This is a fascinating article that provides a framework for thinking about long-term growth beyond initial success - worth a deep dive if you’re starting to struggle in this area!

📖 Read the full article here 

🪴 How To Find Your Next Big Marketing Idea - the I.D.E.A framework

Continuing our growth theme today dig into this post by Tom Orbach (head of Growth Marketing at Wiz) featured on Elena’s growth scoop newsletter👇

📖 Read the full article here

What's the Buzz? 🐝 Tom Orbach, a renowned growth marketing expert, shares the I.D.E.A. Framework, a structured process for generating effective marketing ideas. This framework is based on the premise that 'new' ideas are actually creative combinations of existing ones.

What's the Big Deal? 🚀 

• Identify: Orbach emphasizes the importance of observing successful marketing activities of other companies, using tools like Google Alerts, browsing Product Hunt, and following hyper-growth companies.

• Decode: The process involves reverse-engineering these activities to understand their success factors, including recreating the activities, deep diving into content, and analyzing historical changes.

• Extract: This step is about distilling insights into actionable ingredients, which are then prioritised based on impact, confidence, and ease.

• Apply: The final stage is creatively combining these ingredients with your company's internal resources to create unique marketing strategies.

Why Should You Care? 💡 Marketers and founders seeking fresh, impactful marketing ideas will find the I.D.E.A. Framework invaluable. It offers a systematic approach to creativity, enabling sustainable and predictable idea generation.

This easy to remember method is particularly useful for those looking to stand out in a crowded market; those wanting to follow it should take a deeper dive into the article.

📖 Read the full article here

Want more like this? Check out PMM Camp 👇️ 

🎙️ Pod Bites: The Path to CPO

This Pod summary covers a recent Pod Alastair did with Rupert from RMG on his Fireside with Founders Podcast. We cover unconventional paths, Product-Oriented mindset (outside of traditional Product roles) and the Future of Finance (Web3) :).

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes. Time saved 45 minutes 🔥

In this episode of the Fireside with Founders and Leaders podcast, host Rupert interviews Alastair Preacher, co-founder and CPO of Unblock, a Web3 Cross Border Payments company and Crypto<>Fiat portal. The conversation covers Alastair's journey into product management, his experience in both corporate and startup environments, and his work in the Web3 and blockchain space.

🔥 Theme 1: Alastair's Journey into Product Management

Alastair shares his career history, starting as a strategy consultant in the comms and high-tech industries. He then transitioned to roles in corporates, such as Lloyd's Bank, where he gained experience in commercial product management. Alastair's passion for understanding customers and solving their problems led him to transition into startups, where he could directly impact product development.

💡 Practical Tip: Alastair emphasizes the importance of finding interesting people to learn from and following your North Star when making career decisions.

🤖 Theme 2: Balancing Digital and Physical Products

During his time at Tesco, Alastair worked on projects that focused on both digital and physical products. He highlights the importance of service design and understanding the complete customer journey. Alastair shares examples of projects he worked on, such as improving the freshness perception of produce and optimizing delivery slots for home delivery and click-and-collect services.

💡 Practical Tip: Alastair emphasises the value of speaking to customers and gaining insights from their experiences to drive product improvements.

⛓️ Theme 3: Exploring the World of Web3 and Blockchain

Alastair delves into the world of Web3 and blockchain, explaining the concepts of decentralization, cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts. He discusses the potential benefits of Web3, such as faster, cheaper, and more transparent transactions. Alastair shares his experience working on Alluo, a Web3-based mobile app that aimed to democratize access to financial services. He also mentions Unblock, a company focused on using blockchain as a new payment rail.

💡 Practical Tip: Alastair highlights the need (and huge opportunity) for improved usability and user experience in the Web3 space, as well as the importance of building trust and finding trusted partners in this emerging industry.

😰 Theme 4: Navigating the Challenges of Web3

The guests discussed the challenges of working in Product in the Web3 space, including the complexity of the technology, the impact this has on user experience and the need for education and trust-building. He mentions the volatility of cryptocurrencies and the importance of finding the right routes to market. There’s also coverage of the potential use cases of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in gaming and other industries.

💡 Practical Tip: Alastair emphasizes the need for education and finding trusted partners to navigate the challenges of the Web3 space.

Overall, this podcast episode provides interesting insights into Alastair’s journey into product management to CPO, his experiences in both corporate and startup environments, and his work in the Web3 and blockchain space. It’s packed with practical tips on understanding customers, balancing digital and physical products, and navigating the challenges of emerging technologies.

🕒 Timestamp Details:

• [00:00:41] Web3 and blockchain

• [00:06:49] Improving fruit and veg

• [00:08:40] Tesco's blend of physical and digital

• [00:11:24] Freshness perception and customer insights

• [00:16:43] A/B testing in smaller businesses

• [00:21:44] A faster, more efficient process

• [00:24:39] Less places to hide

• [00:27:23] Web3 and decentralization

• [00:31:08] Access to financial services

• [00:35:27] Usability and onboarding challenges

• [00:40:39] NFTs and their use cases

• [00:44:47] Web three and its future

• [00:47:58] Trust in Finance

🔗 Link to Full Audio

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That’s a wrap. Today we focussed on growth, be that growth after finding Product Market Fit, how to find your next marketing I.D.E.A or personal growth - highlighting one path taken to CPO.

As always, the journey doesn't end here! Keep exploring, keep questioning, and most importantly, keep growing in your product journey. Until our next issue, keep savouring the bites of wisdom we've shared. 🚀👋

Alastair & the Product Tapas Team 🍽️.mark