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Product Nation

Product Nation

By Ofer Baharav & Nir Paz

Product Nation is a weekly podcast by product managers in Silicon Valley covering how tech products get created and executed by some of the most accomplished product management superheroes in the world
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Tal Bar Or at Octopus

Product NationSep 10, 2020

00:00
30:13
Ilan Kasan at Exceed.ai

Ilan Kasan at Exceed.ai

Ilan chats with us about Exceed.ai, a platform that helps marketing and sales teams drive more pipeline from email and website visitors. The Exceed AI Assistant works 24/7/365 alongside humans to ensures every lead is followed up with, nurtured, and qualified using two-way email conversations. When a lead is qualified and ready to talk to a human the assistant will go ahead and book a meeting directly on your rep’s calendar.

Ilan compares his vision for nurturing touch points early on, when there's potentially just a light interest in a product, all the way through to conversion. He contrasts a gap in the market that chatbots alone are not addressing. Along the way he throws in pearls of wisdom about innovative ways to gain more leads. At the end he creates a brand new opportunity in less than a minute, showing a phenomenal level of creativity and agility of thought. Come hear from a polished executive in action.

Apr 12, 202138:05
Ophir Sweiry at ZaiNar

Ophir Sweiry at ZaiNar

Ophir establishes the importance of infrastructure, an aspect that he learned early on having lived his school town's transformation, and discusses developments in robotics, AR, and the coming IoT revolution

Mar 08, 202136:43
Uri Lavi at Ride Vision

Uri Lavi at Ride Vision

Deep dive into how a perfect storm brews for Uri's launch of Ride Vision in an overlooked market for rider assistance and motorbike accident prevention using computer vision and AI. Pricing, positioning, GTM, market segmentation, you're bound to find something interesting in this remarkable episode of a market about to get tapped big time.

To reach Uri: uri.lavi@ride.vision

Feb 08, 202137:41
Gadi Shamia at Replicant

Gadi Shamia at Replicant

Sizzling conversation with Gadi about conversation AI tech, finding market fit, focusing on core tech and carving out the target audience, and where this is going in five to 10 years

Jan 30, 202139:44
Iddo Lev at Zebra Medical Vision

Iddo Lev at Zebra Medical Vision

We chat with Iddo from his Tel Aviv apartment about his experience with startups in Germany and Israel, cultural differences, and how he leads product at Zebra. Iddo focuses the conversation on human-AI collaboration which is at the core of the work he does at Zebra. Notably he discusses how he brings value to clients with different market dynamics in the US, the UK, and Germany.

Jan 18, 202124:57
Nir Yahav at Applied Materials

Nir Yahav at Applied Materials

Quantum computing is here! Nir works for the office of the CTO at AMAT where he directs a Technology and Business team exploring new opportunities in Quantum Technology and manages a portfolio of the group’s programs. In this episode, Nir shares about the tech that's going to be ubiquitous in 5-10 years and shares how accessible it already is to everyone today.

Dec 28, 202027:28
Omri Dor at Obligo

Omri Dor at Obligo

An exceptional recounting of a founder's grit on the journey to finding product-market fit at Obligo. Omri chats about his humble beginnings in a small market in Israel, switching gears to a larger international market in London, then switching gears one more time and finding his perfect fit out of Manhattan and the US market while solving the pain around apartment rental security deposits.

Dec 12, 202033:37
Yuval Samet at riseup

Yuval Samet at riseup

We have an in depth conversation with Yuval about his background that led to his founding of riseup. And about processes that lead to excellent product management outcomes throughout the organization. Favorite quotes: " And I'll give you an example. We think about the discoveries, basically the process of creating new value from zero to one.  We consider it like a pull request. So when a squad comes up with a new idea, they post it on a workplace. We use it over here. They post it, as a pull request. So everybody can comment on what they've been discovering so they can get fantastic feedback and they have the responsibility to bring in the right people to the conversation in order to get the feedback". And on compassionate and impact capitalism: "Impact is measurable nowadays, so you will be able to account for positive impact, social impact in the future as a way to price a company in the stock exchange".

Nov 27, 202038:04
Eilon Reshef at Gong.io

Eilon Reshef at Gong.io

Eilon chats with us about his evolution to building products that people truly love. He takes us through his journey to where Gong.io is today valued at $2B+, from its humble beginnings in 2015. How he hires for the best. And his relentless quest for optimizing for end user experience by dog fooding and using his product in unconventional ways before shipping features to new segments. At the very end he invents a new product in under a minute.

Nov 05, 202038:18
Oren Inditzky at Expedia Group

Oren Inditzky at Expedia Group

Oren has a paved a phenomenal career in product management and shares from his toolkit in this amazing episode about PM strategy, how to pick a goal for your team, how simplify and choose metrics, how to hire the best, and he shares the future he sees for the travel industry. This is an episode you'll want to listen to a few times! Please share with your colleagues and don't forget to subscribe to Product Nation from your favorite podcast player!

Oct 25, 202040:28
Mickey Alon at Gainsight PX

Mickey Alon at Gainsight PX

Mickey has built and sold two companies in a relatively short amount of time, to both Marketo and Gainsight, creating phenomenal value to his shareholders. Come hear from this product management pro about iterating fast to reach product market fit, then drive growth. Mickey also ties his superior product management skills to traveling the world over. You will have to listen to find out how :)

Oct 13, 202035:12
Noa Ganot at CPO Bootcamp

Noa Ganot at CPO Bootcamp

We chat with Noa about the importance of weaving strategy into the product management role. Noa is based in Israel from where she runs a bootcamp for Chief Product Officers - yep you read that right, a bootcamp for product management execs! Noa brings a wealth of experience in product management that goes all the way back to her early days as developer and team lead, when she made the leap. A most inspirational conversation you don't want to miss.

Noa's blog: https://ganotnoa.com/

CPO Bootcamp: https://cpobootcamp.com/

PS: The word Taarikhe is thought to have semitic origins (from the root y.r.kh, same root as that used in the Hebrew word for moon, yare'ach) and made its way into Persian rather than the other way around as mistakenly suggested early in the podcast 

Oct 06, 202033:23
Elad Shani at Amazon

Elad Shani at Amazon

Elad shares about his career trajectory as product manager at Amazon, gives examples of how its leadership principles shape his work, and at the end shares a feature he'd like seen as a way for adding value into battered post corona mom and pop services.  Join in on the lively conversation!

Oct 04, 202032:59
Aviad Pinkovezky at Hippo Insurance

Aviad Pinkovezky at Hippo Insurance

Aviad chats with us about his journey into insurtech, being the first employee at a Silicon Valley startup gone unicorn, how he built the product management team and at what point to hire additional PMs and expand the product management team, and being design centric. Towards the end we get a glimpse into his creativity in a startup he creates from scratch in a matter of minutes and shares how to reach him.

If you're a founder, a PM, a developer, a CTO or engineering manager, a designer, CEO, or any of role that touches product, please subscribe to Product Nation in your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Castro, etc. by searching for "Product Nation" inside your podcast app, and tune in to 30 minutes of weekly learning.

Ofer Baharav & Nir Paz

Sep 26, 202027:22
Lior Hakim at Hour One

Lior Hakim at Hour One

We chat with Lior about cutting edge machine learning use cases in product, giving us a glimpse into not only the future, but more importantly, use cases that solve real problems in the market at a fraction of the old cost. Come learn from the best in this thought provoking episode on ML meets GTM.

Sep 23, 202030:01
Na'ama Moran at Cheetah

Na'ama Moran at Cheetah

We chat with Na'ama about pivoting a company in a rapidly changing market post Covid while she leads to product market fit. The conversation runs like a classical MBA Harvard Business Case to the drumbeat of a very accomplished, agile, humble and empathetic product manager and CEO. Come learn from the best, and if you're in the Bay Area and shop for groceries online, you're in for a treat: download the Cheetah app from https://www.gocheetah.com/ and shop away, same products, often much more affordable than Costco. Special VIP code to those that get to the end.

Sep 15, 202031:48
Tal Bar Or at Octopus

Tal Bar Or at Octopus

If you haven't really dug into cloud-enabled Physical Security Information Management Systems (PSIM) - you're about to! Tal Bar Or delivers like a boss, and tells it like 007. Tal tells the story of how he built Octopus by listening to customer's needs to efficiently manage all physical security and cyber security threats from one holistic system with a smart command and control engine.


Sep 10, 202030:13
Reneta Jenik at Foodom

Reneta Jenik at Foodom

Reneta walks us through a zero to one scenario with the startup she founded, Foodom, all the way from researching to testing to finding a market fit. By the time you're done hearing her story, you'll have clarity for how she isolates the problem, and addresses it with a thrilling solution you'll be wanting try out for yourself.

Aug 31, 202031:03
Lior Sion with Bringg

Lior Sion with Bringg

We have a LIVELY discussion with Lior who is founder, CTO and head of Product at logistic platform Bringg (for everyone outside of Amazon). Lior has a very special take on how to do product with the least amount of waste: They're just-in-time for paid features only basically. Fascinating and different take, and a complete do-away with roadmaps. Enjoy!

Aug 20, 202036:04
Eran Agmon at Dreamed Diabetes

Eran Agmon at Dreamed Diabetes

We chat with Eran about the many iterations he takes in the search for product-market fit, one of the toughest challenges product managers solve for, especially in a startup or entity that's going from 0-1. Listen attentively to uncover some not-so-obvious gems in his discovery process.

Aug 15, 202026:59
Ofir Eyal at Viber

Ofir Eyal at Viber

We chat with Ofir about the way he manages production teams at Viber. We chat about product management processes at scale, and how to hire the best with intentionality. Favorite quote: "The PM role is such a difficult role because you need to be a master of all. You need to be good with people, with numbers, UX, see the small and big picture, and zoom in and out in your thought process".

Jul 29, 202037:44
Amir Fish at Facebook

Amir Fish at Facebook

We have a lively chat about product-market fit with product management veteran Amir Fish, who spends time with us on defining and owning the problem space. Favorite quote: "So you can see how, by going back to the problem and owning the problem space, you can actually generate your next set of ways to unblock your customer or business"

Jul 15, 202029:40
Allie Vogel at Microsoft Azure Cloud + AI

Allie Vogel at Microsoft Azure Cloud + AI

We chat with Allie about use of machine learning in product design over various product iterations, while highlighting the importance of striking a balance between personalization versus narrowing options down, all while keeping users engaged. In addition to her corporate job Allie shares about a nonprofit that she founded in Tel Aviv and a fun product she developed on a recent hackathon.

Jun 27, 202025:43
Gilad Bonjack at Platterz

Gilad Bonjack at Platterz

We chat Gilad up about the changing landscape of employee benefits due to Corona, specifically in the way of food benefits which is what Platterz originally set out to do, but not only that. At the end Gilad points to what types of solutions he gravitates to and values in product. Favorite quote: "I'm very much interested in companies that provide a product experience. There are many companies that provide great solutions, technology, products, but that's not my thing. My thing is companies that have a product experience, that sell the product experience that customers are looking to buy."

May 27, 202027:10
Jonathan Friedman at TripActions

Jonathan Friedman at TripActions

We chat Jonathan Friedman up about launching products from zero to one. Jonathan describes in detail what it's like to ideate and execute a  new product, and how he and his team adapted to change due to Corona. He posits that the biggest issue with new products is the "why", "why us", and "why now", which should lead to a solution that is strong enough to break the barrier of indifference. Enjoy the listen!

May 09, 202021:38
Noam Segal at Wealthfront
May 03, 202030:56
Arnon Avitzur at Chegg
Apr 20, 202032:56
Roi Lavan at ZipRecruiter

Roi Lavan at ZipRecruiter

Roi is a product management veteran, starting his leadership career in an elite unit in the military, to software engineering, to MBA at Tel Aviv University, product management at analytics startup Convertro, through an acquisition by AOL, PM'ing at Lyft and now at ZipRecruiter, we learned a bunch! Favorite quotes: "You need to spend 90% of your time on understanding really what the problem is. Understanding really what is the alternative. Why is it so important that you come up with a different approach?"

"The most successful companies were built by hacking through that 10% of solution, but spending a lot of time with that 90%."

"Many times you hear, yeah, we validated that there is a problem. But you actually did not understand the underlying need. So there is a much larger problem that you didn't see and is actually much more impactful."


Apr 17, 202027:03
Rotem Iram at At Bay

Rotem Iram at At Bay

We Zoomed with Rotem Iram about building a novel product in a new world of Cyber-Insurance. Rotem starts his career at an Israeli intelligence unit, works as a software engineer, then at McKinsey, gets an MBA at Harvard, works in cybersecurity, and launches a startup in insurtech after experiencing the need from a customer's vantage point. Favorite quote: "This channel that you select, through which you are going to be selling your product, is a major factor in how you design your product. Because the channel is the keyhole through which your product needs to fit. And if you're building a product that didn't take that keyhole into consideration, there's going to be a lot of squeezing." And another: "One of the smartest investors I know just gave me a ton of money after I told him my plan. It must mean that my plan makes sense, but it doesn't. it's just that you have a good starting point."

Apr 13, 202029:15
Gilad Turbahn at Apttus

Gilad Turbahn at Apttus

From PM'ing at a special unit within 8200 to a Human-Computer Interaction undergrad at the Hebrew University and a Kellogg MBA, to Fring, Microsoft, and Apttus, we have a lively chat with another product management superhero in Silicon Valley. Gilad shares his experience building an enterprise grade chatbot that his customers love using. Our favorite quote: "It's not about what they (customers) say they want. It's about understanding the underlying need behind what they say or the underlying pain point, and coming up with a solution - then satisfying it." You can reach Gilad at gturbahn@gmail.com

Apr 03, 202032:29
Oded Klimer at Rubrik

Oded Klimer at Rubrik

We chat over Zoom with Oded Klimer, a User Experience leader who has been driving UX innovation, strategy and methodology within organizations  like SAP Labs, Microsoft, HPE and Micro focus for over 20 years. Currently he is the VP Head of Design for Rubrik. Oded shares a unique point of view about innovation and decision making in product and design management, challenges the 'follow the behavior of customers' with his own reality distortion field path, and chat about a Netflix series that he really values from a design perspective, and explains why. We had a blast chatting with Oded even during these trying times. Please enjoy and share with your networks, and if you know of a good UX designer - Oded is hiring.

Mar 27, 202029:46
Itai Vonshak at Google

Itai Vonshak at Google

We chat with Itai Vonshak, Head of Design & Product for Material Design at Google. Itai describes how tearing apart ideas then building them back up has worked for his teams at Pebble building smartwatches, Facebook building Portal, and now at Google. He makes an excellent book referral, credits a great designer, and chats about the difference between a good designer/pm and a great one.

Mar 06, 202035:30
Itamar Orgad at Houzz

Itamar Orgad at Houzz

Nir and I chat with Itamar about product management at LinkedIn and Houzz, frameworks, the impact of great design on product, and a 'how would you build xyz' ... at (surprise!) 

Feb 28, 202034:38
Roy Rapoport at Netflix

Roy Rapoport at Netflix

I chat with Roy Rapoport, Director of Engineering at Netflix, covering product management from an engineering perspective, how to partner or even manage it, his learnings about geographical cultures and a great book recommendation on the topic, and other invaluable insights about engineering from a Silicon Valley vantage point.

Feb 23, 202036:59
Ido Josef at Intuit

Ido Josef at Intuit

Ido chats with Ofer Baharav and Oz Wasserman about his upbringing in the north of Israel, PMing in the military, Technion, McKinsey, startup, Facebook and Intuit. He lays out what he loves most about PM'ing, how he works cross functionally especially bringing the voice of the customer back to engineering and design, the importance of culture fit, and what makes him pumped about product management. In the end he gives a taste for a much needed product improvement he has in mind, and ways to get in touch.

Feb 19, 202028:46
Youli Ashkelony at Google

Youli Ashkelony at Google

Youli chats with us about her thrilling career that starts with a startup, on to an acquisition by VMWare, what it's like moving offices from London to NYC to Silicon Valley, how cultures shape companies, and up to her role in product and strategy at Google, building productivity tools for engineers. Toward the end Youli shares a surprise. You're guaranteed to stay glued to your headset for an inspiring 30 minutes with Youli.

Feb 14, 202028:54
Oz Wasserman of FireEye

Oz Wasserman of FireEye

Oz chats with us about his work at startups and large companies alike, his experience in cybersecurity, shares how he juggles customers and engineering, and offers a vision for a product he would love to see built.

Feb 11, 202028:02
Dan Barak at Stackbit

Dan Barak at Stackbit

Dan talks to us about his amazing story as a product manager working at Face.com and getting acquired by Facebook, working at Lyft, and founding Stackbit. He walks us through the different aspects of managing product at startups and large companies alike, and gives an exciting example of how a market can inform new product usage

Feb 09, 202032:13