Everything I Learned From Product Leaders at the Women in Product Conference

“Why do we need more women in tech?” that is because “Why would you walk away from half of the world’s intellectual capital?” — The most inspirational and motivational advice I received from Elizabeth Ames, CEO at my very first Women In Product (WIP) conference. The diverse set of women I met were influential, confident, supportive, and kind. I have attempted to summarize my thoughts and impressions from the WIP conference below. I hope it helps and encourages women to propel their career paths in a more confident and positive way.

“Together we rise” — Deborah Liu, Women In Product Board Chair member; Facebook VP, Marketplace & Commerce.

Deborah Liu, who founded WIP in 2016, inaugurated the opening keynote conference with her enthusiasm by sharing the journey of WIP. She believes in standing together for each other as a woman and rising to reach great heights. Her vision and belief have created this large group of strong-bonded women.

“Your small choices define the path of your journey” — Peggy Alford, PayPal’s commercial leader, SVP core market.

Peggy shared her life journey experiences and career growth through a series of principles that she follows.

1. Find your North Star metric — It is imperative to find that one metric that reflects your core product vision.

   
   

2. Importance of purpose — Find what the start is and what would drive you towards the goal. Leading with purpose through change is the most crucial part of any organization.

   
   

3. Value of diversity — Diversity isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s good for business too. The goal is to create a product that resonates with the market by serving a broader and more diverse audience. It requires staying close to the community, and therefore the diversity of experience is crucial to the success of any product.

   
   

4. Making tradeoffs — It is often essential to check if you are on the right path to your goals. Be conscious of what you are doing is making you happy.

   
   

5. Straight talk — When it comes to straight talk, people working together in teams should aim to help and guide one another even in stressful situations. Take time to understand what’s essential for the product. Collaboration is the key when you intend to build a successful product. Everything is possible, but we need each other to be successful.

   
   

“If I doubt my power, I give power to my doubts” — Diane, Von Furstenberg, Fashion icon, and #InCharge feminist.

Diane, one of the iconic women in the fashion world, humorously shared her incredible life experiences. How she overcame the stereotypes by shattering all the barriers is inspiring in many ways. Her perspective on life reflects as follows.

1. It’s about the idea and vision — When you build something, you are never really sure if it’s necessary or if it’s going to work. But if you have the right idea and vision for your product, it’s worth trying and building.

   
   

2. “Every successful person feels like a loser at least twice a week. Only losers don’t feel like losers.”

   
   

3. “The only thing you have 100% with you is your character” — You can lose everything in life but not your character. Never be a victim of your consequences; instead, try building a relationship with yourself. Commit to putting yourself first, own your imperfections, and keep on trying.

   
   

4. Connect, expand, inspire, advocate — We all have these magic wands with us to change our present and shape our future.

   
   

5. On AI and machine learning technology — The only way to deal with the new society of machines is by paying more attention to the human side of us. We have to be more humane than ever to build the humanized aspect into the new emerging technologies.

   
   

“Life roadmaps don’t follow linear development” — Jimena Almendares, VP of Global Expansion at Intuit on Creating a life roadmap.

Jimena encouraged everyone to create a life roadmap to keep evolving and learning throughout the process. She ensured that we learn from our mistakes by sharing the following learnings.

1. Use your Product manager toolbox to plan and execute, which are the most critical aspects of the job. A PM should focus further on how to get things done.

   
   

2. Run life like a product roadmap — Think about the time when you thought about what you wanted to become when you grow up. One should keep thinking and asking this question lifelong since we never really stop growing.

   
   

3. Start from 100 goals to one vision — When setting up goals for your life, start writing goals by categorizing them and separating them into phases depending upon different life stages, just as you would prioritize a multi-organizational roadmap.

   
   

4. It’s ok to launch, fail, and pivot from your product goals. But learn from your failures and use them as stepping stones towards your next mission.

   
   

“The root of innovation is humility” — Katherine Kornas, Sr. Director, Growth Product and Marketing.

Katherine shared her experience and learnings by focusing on how to build a better product roadmap. She motivated to think out of the box and focus on questions to build a question-based roadmap rather than a project-based one. While building a question-based roadmap, she advised considering the following things.

1. Figure out what are opportunities for your product.

   
   

2. Start thinking in terms of projects and solutions, then figure out the underlying hypothesis.

   
   

3. Ask the right type of questions (asking “How” and not “Can”). Don’t ask strategic questions that are binary in nature.

   
   

4. Make sure to align with business and tell your story to your users.

   
   

5. Try asking — How will my curiosity shape the future of my products?

   
   

“Collaboration is the key to success” — Archana Kannan, Group Product Manager, Google.

Archana provided insight on how to adapt product management to lead with emerging technologies by sharing her experiences in the Augmented Reality space.

1. Move from solving the problem to finding what problem we are solving. Think about how to help and delight users and how can the technology be helpful. Focus on one or two areas in the beginning and achieve them rather than having them all at once.

   
   

2. Keep your eyes on the NorthStar metric; it helps to make better decisions every day. Spend time with the leadership team to understand your north star.

   
   

3. Action-based learning — Learn from gathering data and start thinking about how to break down a problem rather than building a bigger problem.

   
   

4. Solve before scale — Take the time to solve before you start to scale. Engineering teams must understand this before they start building and scaling.

   
   

5. Draft with your team — Since it is essential to have a good team with the right set of people. Every team member has a different and specific role within the organization. Hence, collaborate and work together towards solving a problem.

   
   

“Detours might seem random but not wasted” — Maiken Moller-Hansen, Director, Product Management Alexa Mobile.

Maiken shared insights on the significant challenges faced while building Amazon Alexa. She further explained how the product was pivoted and then emerged triumphant after failed experiments and expectations. The following key lessons summarize her experience while building the product.

1. Be stubborn with your NorthStar metric.

   
   

2. Wandering in business is not efficient, but it’s also not random. Your product might fail sometimes, but the failure might create a new way to build other products.

   
   

3. “The biggest needle movers will be things that customers don’t know to ask for” — Jeff Bezos.

   
   

4. As a company grows, everything needs to scale, including the size of your failed experiments.

   
   

“The power of suck” — Shripriya Mahesh, founding partner at Spero Ventures.

Shripriya bravely shared her cancer journey and how it impacted her to look at things from a different perspective. Life will throw challenges all the time, but you have to decide if to get stalled or emerge stronger to fight back against the problems in a positive way. She further advises focusing on the three main things as a Product Manager.

1. Small things — As a PM, we don’t want to aim at building annoying stuff for users. Look at what bothers them by focusing on the tiny details.

   
   

2. Big things — Use the power of suck to push you towards your mission. Prioritize what you want to do in life if you’re going to succeed.

   
   

3. Product things — Focus on the rest of the other usual aspects as a PM after all products have a more significant impact on the average regular user

   
   

“Own your destiny and pave your way” — Jennifer Tejada, CEO of pager duty.

Jennifer delivered the closing keynote talk by sharing her experience as a Product leader. She has courageously paved her path as a woman and urges everyone to be one by advising on the following principles.

1. You don’t need a ‘Title’ to be a leader. A leader is defined by the influence and impact they create on others.

   
   

2. Craft your path in your journey as no one is going to make way for you (that’s what I did by racing through from the middle of the conference room to the stage just to get clicked to appear on the WIP group picture among 2000 women; you get the point, lol!).

   
   

3. Embrace the risk to lead your product towards improvement or success.

   
   

4. Open your aperture — look farther and broader, and avoid the herd.

   
   

5. Career progression is not linear; it’s a dynamic journey.

   
   

6. Prioritize things in life — Family, Health, Career.

   
   

In summary, it was astounding to be a part of this supporting and influential group of women where you can find mentors and follow the advice shared by the leaders. My product journey has just begun, and I could not be more thankful to my mentors for giving me this opportunity to be a part of this memorable event. Also, in the end, I would like to share four takeaways from my learnings at the conference.

1. Speak for yourself
2. Self-awareness matters
3. Surround yourself with great people and encourage each other
4. Do something you love and have a passion for staying happy

After all, life is all about learning, and it is we who define whether to make this journey more adventurous and thrilling to be able to share stories with others. Aim to build a more meaningful and powerful life for yourself and others!