Northstake

northstake

— The most inspirational and motivational advice I received from 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. “Why do we need more women in tech?” that is because “Why would you walk away from half of the world’s intellectual capital?” Elizabeth Ames, CEO “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. Find your North Star metric — It is imperative to find that one metric that reflects your core product vision. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. “Every successful person feels like a loser at least twice a week. Only losers don’t feel like losers.” “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. Connect, expand, inspire, advocate — We all have these magic wands with us to change our present and shape our future. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Figure out what are opportunities for your product. Start thinking in terms of projects and solutions, then figure out the underlying hypothesis. Ask the right type of questions (asking “How” and not “Can”). Don’t ask strategic questions that are binary in nature. Make sure to align with business and tell your story to your users. 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. 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. 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. Action-based learning — Learn from gathering data and start thinking about how to break down a problem rather than building a bigger problem. Solve before scale — Take the time to solve before you start to scale. Engineering teams must understand this before they start building and scaling. 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. Be stubborn with your NorthStar metric. 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. “The biggest needle movers will be things that customers don’t know to ask for” — Jeff Bezos. 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. 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. 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. 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. You don’t need a ‘Title’ to be a leader. A leader is defined by the influence and impact they create on others. 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!). Embrace the risk to lead your product towards improvement or success. Open your aperture — look farther and broader, and avoid the herd. Career progression is not linear; it’s a dynamic journey. 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. Speak for yourself Self-awareness matters Surround yourself with great people and encourage each other 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! Also published . here

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How to define Product Goals & Metrics? Setting goals for product features is an art in product building. A product is successful only if it achieves intended objectives or goals. Defining and measuring the product’s or its features’ success need a good understanding of company goals, business, product vision, strategy, roadmap, its users, end customers, and partners. Hence, it is also a standard question in PM interviews at all levels, including the Product Execution Interviews (at Facebook). Here is a step-by-step guide about setting product goals and their success metrics before you build any product. It is also a treasure for PM interviews. Goal Metrics Interview Problems :-

How would you go about setting goals for Instagram hashtags?  
How would you measure success for IG stories?
How would you set goals for Instagram Reels? 
What goals and success metrics would you set for buy & sell groups?
How would you set a goal for Facebook Lite?
What top 3 metrics would you track for Quora?
What should Uber eats goals be for the next 12 months?
What would be the goals & success metrics for video conferencing app (Hangouts, Zoom)? So what does product success look like? A product goal describes a long-term objective or future state of the product. Product metrics are needed to track the success of the product against its goals. These metrics help to identify existing gaps, plan a roadmap and guide the prioritization of the next features and enhancements. Metrics are extensively used during Leadership approvals (business case) Product launches (as success criteria) Annual, quarterly plannings (as KPIs - Key Performance Indicators or OKRs - Objective Key Results or OSTMs - Objectives Strategy Tactics & Metrics) Sprint exercises (as acceptance criteria) To measure the success accurately, goals need to be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. What are the different classifications of metrics ? To measure the success of a product, three types of metrics are used - like revenue, profit, efficiency Business metrics like usage from various users User metrics like page load time, supply-demand matching, i.e., bookings Platform metrics Metrics are also classified as - (NSM or Key goal metrics) to measure the critical product or business value - GMV, Sales, or Daily Active Users North Star Metrics (or Product health metrics) that support Northstar metrics and measure deeper product health like number of Users or number of likes, comments, and shares Product Tracking (or Counter metrics) that are measures of trade-offs, risks, or possible cannibalization of another feature or metric e.g., NPS, CSAT Guard-Rail Moreover, leading metrics (leading indicators) are those which are forward-looking and can represent future outcomes. In contrast, lagging metrics (lagging indicators) represent current and past state and are not good predictors of the near future. E.g., When measuring sales, Revenue per user is a leading indicator while churn rate is a lagging indicator. Dropping revenue per user is an urgent sign of sales reduction, while a high churn rate of customers over a longer period will eventually impact sales. Now, let’s discuss how we set goals and metrics to define a product’s success. 1) SITUATION It is important that you understand the product, company, and problem space. Ask relevant questions to clarify the situation and develop a common understanding. CLARIFYING QUESTIONS TO ASK :-

What is the product and the company ?
What is the stage of the product in its lifecycle?  
Should we focus on any geography or think globally ?
What is the competitive landscape ?
Is there a particular company strategy to build new goals ?
What are the key user values and actions ? 
Do we have any particular customer segment or situation like Covid I should focus on?
Is there any specific time frame for goals ? Note:- Not all questions need to be explicitly asked. You may make some relevant assumptions and state the same. E.g., if the product is Facebook Live, you can mention - “My understanding is that Facebook Live is a matured product and is aimed at driving engagement for global audience.” 2) MISSION Reiterate the mission and vision of the company and/or product. This is helpful in building the right goal strategy; say - “Before I build an approach, let me touch upon the mission for Facebook ” MISSION  :-
Facebook - Make world more connected and help people build communities
Instagram - Allowing people to capture and share moments of their life
To bring you closer to the people and things you love
Google - Organize the world's information & make it universally accessible & useful
FB Watch - allows users to view videos from friends, groups & thus bring them together 3) USERS Product goals are tightly coupled with the users in almost all modern businesses. Identifying different users and their journey help to build a comprehensive list of user metrics and possible goals. Users can be Supply-side - Demand-side; Primary users - Secondary users; Internal users - External users; Buying customers or Users using the product. E.g., Instagram’s users are Content creators Influencers or Celebs Content consumers Advertisers or Brands User Journey :- Discover > Interest > Desire > Reach > Find > Access > Learn > Test > Use > Complete > Validate > Share E.g. User journey of a traveler:- Deciding Destination > Plan Itinerary > Activities > Express and Share memories USERS :-
Artists, Content creators, Advertisers, Young Adults, 
Parents, Kids, Elders, Students, College goers, Religious, 
Working professional, Traveler, Affluent, Price Conscious, 
Risk Averse, Influencer, Follower, Volunteers, Activists, 
Conservatives, Digital Nomad, Hiker-Traveler, Educators Detailed user segmentation is generally not necessary, but it is still best to ask if goals should be for any specific segment - read . segmentation 4) METRICS Now that you have better clarity about the mission and the users, let’s build a comprehensive list of relevant metrics. Generally, metrics are measured across the entire user funnel - Product Funnel Awareness Acquisition Adoption Conversion Engagement Retention Monetization Satisfaction At least two or three metrics should be identified across the funnel so that we can accurately prioritize the most appropriate metrics in the next step. It is also important to use an appropriate time frame for these metrics, which generally depends on the company’s performance review cadence (weekly, monthly or quarterly). The metrics should be measured across all relevant users, supply, demand, business, and platform (whatever applicable) - consider 2X2 of these against the funnel metrics. E.g., For Airbnb, the key metrics are LIST OF METRICS :-

ACQUISITION OR REACH - User Traffic or hits ( direct, organic, referral, promotional )
, Bounce rates

ADOPTION - Install/downloads, Unique Users, Sign ups, # Sessions/DAC, 
%age of new users

ACTIVATION  - No. of groups, no of groups/users, Bookings/user, 
Avg days for first 3 bookings (measures key event after adoption)

USER GROWTH - channel traffic, new users, repeat users

ENGAGEMENT   
- %age of users using the feature on daily, weekly, monthly basis - DAU, WAU, MAU  
- Activity or User actions - creations-posts, click, session, view, like (passive), 
comment(active), share, subscribe,  session length (in terms of users or session)
, notifications viewed/ctr, card abandonment rates, #messages responded or viewed
- Response rate, response time, TAT 
- Avg reach of content - Number of views per post, Ad views per user

RETENTION - DAU/MAU, cohort - D7, D30, weekly repeat active users

STICKYNESS - DAU per MAU, x actions per month

CHURN - Not active for X days, not renewing

COVERSION - to goals like subscription, check-ins, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

MONETISATION -  Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), Revenue, CTR, Avg Revenue/User (ARPU)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Subscriptions/conversions, Revenue per Ad

SATISFACTION - CSAT, SUS, NPS, User ratings, Referrals Note:- Many of the metrics are heavily inter-related e.g., Facebook makes revenue via ads (monetization), and ad revenue is directly proportional to the engagement and conversion metrics of users like clicks, subscriptions, and also their retention on the platform 5) PRIORITIZE In the previous step, we defined various metrics for each funnel stage that indicate movement towards multiple possible goals. Now, it’s time to build a goal strategy by prioritizing a goal and selecting the most relevant and impactful metrics. Goal Strategy First and foremost, the product lifecycle stage (new, growing, mature) is used to identify which part of the funnel to focus on as a key goal. Select the most appropriate goal from the funnel (awareness, acquisition, adoption, engagement, conversion, retention, monetization, satisfaction) which complements the company and product strategy. For e.g. - If the product is , the primary goal is generally adoption (number of users). Hence, focus on acquisition, conversion, and engagement metrics instead of retention metrics. new or is being launched If the product is in , the goal is generally to increase engagement (e.g., Instagram reels), then the focus can be on engagement and retention funnel stages which are closer to the goal. growth stage For products like Facebook, the goal is mostly engagement (most important), retention of its huge userbase, and matured monetization. Prioritized metrics North Star Metric is the most important broad indicator (leading metric) to track the goal. It indicates whether the product is benefiting the users as well as impacting the business (i.e., satisfying core product value). Based on the strategy, different companies, even in the same industry and lifecycle, optimize for different goals and metrics. For the interview, it is recommended to specify one North star metric, and two to five supporting metrics that relate best to your identified goals. It is also advisable to provide a couple of counter metrics or guard rail metrics to track any counter affects and risks associated with the product or feature. E.g., For the feature, the company’s goal is engagement, and it is measured by the primary metric (North Star Metric or NSM) of Daily Active Customers actively engaging with Reels. Instagram Reels - Daily Active Customers, engaged with Reels (with >15 secs view time) North Star Metrics - No. of User Engagements on Reels (likes, shares, comments), No. of Reels Created, No. of Customer Views, $ Revenue from ads Product health metrics - User Session time or Time spent on Reels vs. other areas of Instagram Counter Metrics NORTH STAR METRICS :-

Instagram - Weekly Active Customers (engagement) 
Facebook - Monthly Active Customers (engagement) 
Uber - Bookings completed per week (conversion) 
Airbnb - Nights booked per week (conversion) 
Quora - Number of questions users answered (engagement) 
Whatsapp - Number of messages sent weekly (engagement) 
Youtube - Total engaged watch time (watch time >10 secs) (engagement) 
Netflix - Number of subscribers with watch time >1 hours in the month (engagement) 
Salesforce - Number of records created per account (engagement) 
Adobe - Revenue from subscribing customers (monetisation) 
Walmart - Purchases per week (conversion) 
Amazon - Purchases per Prime subscribers (custom strategy) 
Prodbee - Number of page views (acquisition) Pro Tips :- - Keep the prioritized metrics as simple as you can - As companies evolve from new to growing and matured, their goal shifts in the funnel from Acquisition to Monetisation and Satisfaction - New products have simple metrics around customer acquisition; mature products have more detailed/custom metrics like number of engaged users >30 sec watch time - Do not use the vanity and non-actionable metrics - Try to use absolute metrics than rates to avoid the base effect - Do not forget the timeframe of measuring the metric (e.g., no. of new sign-ups weekly) - Avoid competition benchmarking metrics like market share unless necessary. For e.g., new business launch - You can also measure metrics as target vs. actuals like quarter to date Tradeoffs It is recommended to critique your metrics by discussing any broader risks and foreseen fallback. You can discuss the counter metrics to highlight cannibalization, overuse, and customer satisfaction issues. E.g., If a product feature is newly launched, it is important to closely track the customer reactions on social media, customer support issues, bugs, resolution time, and various platform performance indicators like downtime, # bugs, average load time, etc. Tracking edge-cases or failure rates such as are also key metrics to measure the success of products depending on their maturity and business relevance. no matches, no results page, and inactive users Note:- In interviews, goal setting question is often followed by another like - Product Execution Question What would you do as PM if this product metric X goes down by Y %? (see ) Solving a Product issue "Happy Product" means "Happy users' & "Happy numbers"
Still have questions or need any help on Goals and Metrics ? Drop a comment
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Khamisi Hamisi HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - DIGITAL-MARKETING 2 awards in a row? We don’t get enough Noonies around here for . Khamisi Hamisi HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - LIFE-LESSONS 'The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.' Aristotle And the recipient of this Noonie is no one else but, Liz Eddy HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - BLOGGING Astonished by the consistent production of top-notch stories on HackerNoon, The Noonies is more than honored to give this award to . Elizabeth Lvova We love you here, much like your colleagues at Evrone! HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - MARKETING-STRATEGIES Your stories about marketing strategy are awesome. We might just steal one or two and use them for ourselves. Thank you in advance, . Ritika Mehta HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - PRODUCT-DESIGN You are something of a design celebrity, y’know. Your design influence is massive, especially on Hackernoon. Thank you for your longevity and good stories, . Jordan Bowman HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - PRODUCT-DEVELOPMENT You rock! We want to honor you with a Noonie award for your wonderful content. Keep pushing out wonderful stories, . Adetolani Eko HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - DESIGN-PATTERNS Your stories about how to use different design patterns are awesome! We appreciate you and your content, . Sukhpinder Singh HR Department With the Best NO BS Job Descriptions In the simplest words, we don’t like BS when it comes to job descriptions. Thanks to this HR department, that is now a reality. Thank you, for having No BS Job Descriptions. AppSignal HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - CREATIVITY Creative block SUCKS. SO. BAD. You have helped us conquer work and impostor syndrome with your creativity boosts. We look forward to more how-to-use stories from . Hua Shu HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - DESIGN-THINKING You’ve made us come to the harsh realization that design is not just about colors, shapes and text (childhood ruined!). Actually, we appreciate all exposure you’ve given us in the design world. Here’s a Noonies medal for you, . Jordan Bowman HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - WRITING Writing is as old as time itself. No matter how much technology evolves, writing will always be a vital part of it. The Clash of the Titans: Video vs Audio vs Written Stories will always have a clear winner. Thank you, . rhortx Best Online Lecturer Since school moved to the internet, life has been SO MUCH EASIER OMG! Online learning is more effective in some cases, and this is not just because we can now learn while only wearing underwear. Either way, much thanks to you for being a walking and talking school, ! Dr. John Campbell HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - PERFORMANCE Performance, the ultimate benchmark for measuring success. Thanks to you, we now know . To we say a massive thank you. which database is best for us Margo McCabe HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - BRANDING Your story was fire (spoiler alert, it’s not about how to shoot a basketball). The Noonies congratulate you, . Keep shooting to the top! NBA Top Shots Rao Vinnakota HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - INSTAGRAM Thanks to you, many of us have been able to get more IG followers. No jokes, we are now mini-IG celebrities. The only thing we don’t have is the blue tick, for now. Thank you, . Anupriya HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - SOCIAL-MEDIA-MARKETING Another consecutive win! Seems like you’re something of a Social Media Sensei. Keep blessing us with all your wisdom and knowledge, o great one. The incredible, . Anupriya Best Tech Educator on Instagram Another Mark Zuckerberg app takeover! I’m sure IG wasn’t created to teach Tech but this content creator has turned it into Udemy. All hail for creating Instademy! Julie Smith HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - CHATBOTS We can all agree that we are happy that Chatbots don’t ask us to verify if we are humans. Shout-out to . kunal rajput HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - CONTENT-MARKETING First of all, we love your interview stories with tech celebrities. Nothing beats getting first-hand knowledge from a Pioneer of the tech world. Kudos to you, . Elizabeth Lvova HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - HACKATHONS Hackernoon and Hackathon sound so good together. We love your stories and would also love to read one of your books one day. Take a bow, . Helder Vasconcelos HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - LEARNING We’ve all had moments where we loved and hated learning. Ultimately, learning is why we are all here today. The Noonies congratulates Azamah Jr for helping us rediscover the importance of learning. HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - REMOTE-WORKING Your Story, was very insightful. Thanks to you, a lot of Post-Pandemic questions have been answered. Muchos gracias, . To Offshore Or Not To Offshore Alcor HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - UI-DESIGN Design is so vast and not easy to grasp. Thanks to this brave man, one of the concepts, UI Design, seems a bit simpler to understand. you, . Tank Vivek Tank HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - TWITTER Ah yes, Twitter. We all have a love-hate relationship with Twitter. Cheers to for his great Twitter Content. Jack would be proud. Daniel Jimenez HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - ART Whether it is art in the museum worth $10 Million or an NFT worth 500 ETH, we can all agree that art proves that beauty is expensive. We want to give a shout-out to . We appreciate all you do for the world of art. Christian Kameir Tech Podcastor of the Year You proved that listening to tech podcasts is as interesting as listening to true-crime podcasts. Dear, we appreciate you, sincerely. Thank you for leading us to the NorthStar. Gagan Gehani HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - UX-DESIGN The Noonies celebrates the amazing people who power the technology industry. And especially those who write, those who shine a spotlight on triumphs, fumbles, hacks, why's that, how-tos and breakthroughs. This award is for the highest quality UX-DESIGN stories on , . HackerNoon Vivek Tank HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - UI We cannot emphasize enough that UI is not UX. Thank you, for being an advocate of UI. #UXisnotUI Gábor Boros HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - REMOTE-WORK When we hear remote work, we all think of the bogeywoman, Ms. Rona. COVID-19 changed the world in a bad way but also brought about some good opportunities. We appreciate for giving us good insight into remote work. Rohit Jacob Mathew HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - UX We have more content about User Experience thanks to Vivek Tank for telling us why users almost always come first. Tanks HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - INTERNET “We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.” - Stephen Hawking. And who’s the better person to connect us all, via stories, than... , You rock! Christian Kameir HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - USER-EXPERIENCE You are only as good as your website's bounce rate. Congrats ! Vivek Tank HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - MOTIVATION In a slump? The Community is here for you! keeps us motivated. HackerNoon Lomit Patel HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - BOOKS All the BOOK NERDS, please bow down to for writing the highest quality BOOKS stories on Adora Nwodo HackerNoon. Data Science Influencer of the Year From every piece of data we could possibly encounter, please give a warm congratulations to . Your data indeed influenced us ;) Kirk Borne Best Technology Email Newsletter The only reason we check our mailbox every morning. Big SHOUT OUT to . Eddie Shleyner at VeryGoodCopy Critical Thinker of the Year 2 years in a row??? Let’s give it up for . Nebojsa ”Nesha” Todorovic Thanks for always asking the big questions, forecasting the next big things, and never shying away from playing the devil's avocado. 🥑 HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - NEWS This is for the highest quality NEWS stories on , and the award goes to . Thanks for spending a chunk of your time writing quality news stories, now you can go back to testing software! HackerNoon Sergei Shaikin More Information: If you’re a winner, please answer ! If you’re a reader, participant, or just a curious individual, consider answering one of our other interviews . this interview here Read about the Noonies . To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any award, and view the name that appears at the top. here this site Or follow for posts with the list of names released over the course of the week of February 14, 2022. this account The will announce some of the top founders, hackers, and makers in all 6 categories. Noonies Winners Annoucement series Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! The Noonies Awards are sponsored by: , , and hosted by: Bybit Avast TECH Domains HackerNoon This post was written by and . Kien Dao Joshua Kevin Omale If you have any questions or concerns or would like to report a discrepancy please email ellen@hackernoon.com.

#Noonies2021 Awards: The List of Winners in the Internet Category

(a.k.a. ) is the most common question asked during PM interviews. It should not be confused with the UI-UX or system design challenges. Here, product design is a journey where you explore diverse questions and challenges pertaining to product discovery & development. The journey begins with the search for answers to and . However, all of these need to be investigated in a limited time frame of 30-45 mins during an interview. Product design problems can be either case studies or open ended questions on technology or physical products. Product design Product sense Why, Who, What, Where, When How PRODUCT DESIGN PROBLEMS: Design an app for the Louvre Museum Design Youtube for Concert Lovers Design a Travel app for Airport Layover Design an alarm clock for blind Design a solution for gardening Design an education product for Facebook How would you improve Instagram ? How would you a design a pen for Scuba Divers ? How would you monetize Whatsapp ? If you are FB PM, how will you design a product for people moving to a new city? As a startup, how would you build a product to combat climate change? The varying degree of vagueness in these problems is intentional. Some questions may have a specified goal (monetize Whatsapp), while others may have some specified users (Scuba Divers), product (Travel app), use case (Gardening) or a company (Facebook). The intent is to assess how a PM candidate organises the provided information and discovers the absent information while navigating the path of decision making. The thought process must reflect and . Goal clarity, Customer Empathy, Knack for details, Creativity Pragmatism 10 Steps to Crack Product Design/ Sense Interview Step 1. Situation Understanding - Ask Clarifying Questions First, narrow down the broad problem by gathering as much information as possible. PMs are expected to throughly understand the problem and the underlying context before moving to solutions. Reiterate the problem to avoid any misses.
E.g. “Let me make sure that I understood the problem clearly….[state the problem statement here]”.
Also, if it is an existing product, verify your understanding of the product with the interviewer.
E.g. “My understanding is that X product does…….” Else, clarify “What do you mean by ……. ? What is the product about ?” CLARIFYING QUESTIONS TO ASK :
Would it be safe to assume that it would be part of main App than a separate one? 
Would this be a web product or a stand-alone app?
Where is the product in its lifecycle  - new/growth/maturity? 
Is it an Existing or New? 0 to 1 product? Related products?
Is it going to be digital or physical product?
Do we have any particular customer segment or situation like Covid I should focus on?
What market/geography the product serves?
Are there any constraints in terms of cost, time or effort? Is there any urgency?
Should we focus on any platform like android, web, desktop in particular?
Do we have any data to focus on a particular user? any core flow or pain point?
Are there any specific goal(s) that you would want me to focus on? company goal? Interviewers generally allow you to make assumptions but it is best to ask and clarify. Assume wherever you can but just call it out. ASSUMPTION : 
"Scope is limited to Facebook.com both App and Web. We are not focusing on 
Instagram, Whatsapp or other Facebook owned properties" * For e.g. - Problem: How would you__improve Instagram__? Questions: What needs to be improved? UX? Monetization? Customer engagement? Are we talking about Instagram for regular users or influencers or advertisers? Mobile App or Advertisor tools?* Pro Tip : #Try underlining key words to better understand the problem. Step 2. Mission Determine how the product relates to the company’s or entrepreneur’s (or rather the interviewer’s) vision. Reiterate the mission and the synergies. MISSION  :
Facebook - Make world more connected and help people build communities.
Instagram - Allowing people to capture and share moments of their life. 
To bring you closer to the people and things you love.
Google - Organize the world's information & make it universally accessible & useful. For instance, if the given problem is around building a travel product, it does make sense for each of the above companies as per their mission statements, . In a way, travel as a use-case is an extension of their core missions. Step 3. Structure Lay down the steps of your problem solving approach. This will keep your thoughts organized and help the interviewer follow the conversation easily. FLOW :- 
Users-> Needs-> Solutions-> Prioritisation-> Recommendation-> Tradeoff-> Metrics Step 4. Users PMs represent the Voice of the Customer in Business. Designing a product is not possible PMs represent the Voice of the Customer in Business. Designing a product is not possible without thinking about its users/customers. Generally, PMs engage in a dialogue with users to better understand them and their needs. This involves research, customer interviews, FGDs and documentation of insights. However, you would proceed with user-thinking and assumptions while interviewing for PM role. Things to note: Consider all potential and current users Identify primary user and secondary user E.g. A product for kids will have kids as primary users, parents as customers/secondary users whereas teachers or coaches may be the other users. Group the product users into two or more segments (preferably three or four) based on some common traits, needs, and behaviours. It is recommended to use 3-4 characteristics to define each segment for clear segregation and representation. Example user segments could be: User Segments Young professionals (M/F) of age 20-25 years with above average income Millennials who are Information & content seekers, Socially conscious and Tech Savvy USER SEGMENTS :
Working professional, Student, Homemaker, Parents
Demographic - Age, sex, family status, Income, Profession
Millenials(25-40), GenZs (<24 yrs), Baby boomers (40+)  (timing)
High frequency, Medium frequency, Low frequency users based on usage
Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards

OTHER USERS :
Artists, Content creators, Advertisers, Young Adults, 
Parents, Kids, Elders, Students, College goers, Religious, 
Working professional, Traveler, Affluent, Price Conscious, 
Risk Averse, Influencer, Follower, Volunteers, Activists, 
Conversatives, Digital Nomad, Hiker-Traveler, Educators For more details, read . segmentation While building the product for a selected user group, design a detailed user persona if you have time. This will help to uncover the user’s lifestyle, behaviours, objectives - what/ why/ where/ how/ when? User Persona (Optional) Once you have derived user segments, the next step is to envision the use-cases in which the product will be used. A use case is a description of how a person uses the product to accomplish a goal. E.g. in payments product, the typical use-cases are Person-to-Person (P2P), Person-to-Business (P2B), Business-to-Person (B2P) and Business-to-Business (B2B). Use Cases USER SCENARIOUS : When, Where, Why, What, With Who ? At this juncture, it is recommended to prioritize or eliminate user segments/use-cases after giving a reasonable justifcation. It often makes sense to also define the product goal immediately if you have the goal clarity. * #Think of both supply and demand side when identifying users. For example - buyers, sellers #PMs especially interviewers love matrixes/grids. Try creating a matrix or table of User segments on one side and use-cases on the other or a grid of User demographics and their usage frequency #After identifying the users and use-cases, ask some clarifying questions to see if the interviewer wants you to focus on anything specific.* Pro Tips : Step 5. User Needs, Pain points & Goals After figuring out the right user segments and use cases, pivot to user needs, desires, motivations & objectives. User needs are often referred as “pain points”. Let’s say the problem is “To improve Instagram Stories” and the target user is “Gen Z, College goer, High Freq User”. The pain points here will be: Share updates with friends asap Stay updated about friends Engage socially through likes and comments Maintain privacy amongst network KEY PAINPOINTS :
Awareness, Discovery, Value, Selection, Creation, Ease, Clarity, Effectiveness, 
Privacy, Authenticity, Integrity, Fairness, Relevance, Poor Experience, Support, 
Community-social needs, Performance, Accessibility, Reach, Efficient To uncover more pain-points, put yourself in user/customer’s shoes. Envision the user journey User Journey USER JOURNEY :
Discover-> Reach-> Access-> Test-> Use-> Complete-> Validate-> Express-> Share E.g. User journey of a traveller: Decide the place -> Itinerary/route -> Activities/experiences -> Split expenses -> Share memories-photos/videos -> Review & Refer * #Think of edge cases and error scenarios while building use-cases* Pro Tip : It is best to get the goal clarity as soon as possible - when asking clarifying questions*(Step 1)*, or while discussing your/company’s mission or when identifying users . Before solutioning, you must specify the objective of the product which you are going to build. In order to identify the goal, it is recommended to first prioritize (or omit) user needs / pain points based on the following parameters: Objective/Goals (Step 2) (Step 4) Product lifecycle Users - Volume, Motivation Unique opportunity Competition Company mission Company Strengths Existing solutions * #For new products, the goal could be user adoption wherein the user group and use case could be selected based on market size or gap. #In a real world scenario, a PM will first check the data of the conversion funnel if the product is an existing one. It may be possible that the actionable issue is regarding the discovery of the product and not the usage or engagement.* Pro Tip : Step 6. Solutions Build a list of solutions or feature set based on key user needs, gaps and goals identified above. Take some time to brainstorm and show off your creativity. Ask the interviewer if s/he prefers a particular solution for detailing. It is recommended to have at least 3 solutions to be able to prioritize fairly. The proposed solutions must address the key user pain points. You can build a flat list of features/user stories e.g. - Features W (registration), X (booking) , Y (forum), Z (referral) which will be prioritized later Alternatively, you can build a list of solutions with a subset of features in each. e.g.- App with W, X, Z features as solution 1 and Website with W, X, Y features as solution 2 (and prioritize between App and Website later) IDEAS :- 
UI-UX improvements, New APP, Feature within App or Website,  AR-VR, AI-ML, 
Enable Messaging, NFT, Blockchain, IOT, Robots, Drones, Autonomous vehicles, 
Video conferencing, Virtual rooms, New channel/category Launches, 
New Experiences - learning, live, Payments, Pricing models- Subscription, post-paid
Manual Operations, 3rd Party Vendors, Tele-calls, Video walkthroughs. * #Use SCAMPER framework for creative ideas - Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify/Minimise, Purpose/Put to another use, Eliminate and Rearrange/Reverse #Companies like Google love to hear moonshot ideas. Keep yourself upto date on new technologies* Pro Tip : Step 7. Prioritization Evaluate and prioritise the list of solutions based on the following factors: on the user could be assessed by determining whether the proposed solutions address a major pain point. The impact to business is analysed in terms of coherence with the mission or the selected goal. Impact in terms of time to implement, technology and, engineering resources required. Cost could be value risks, usability risks, feasibility risks or business viability risks. Risks PRIORITIZATION OF SOLUTIONS :-
Impact - to user & business
Cost - time, effort & feasibility 
Risk - confidence Step 8. Recommended Solution Now that you have put forward a constellation of propostions, it is time to finally recommend a solution and justify. Based on the prioritisation, recommend a solution with its set of features. The chosen solution should have relatively high value, low overall cost and low associated risks. RECOMMENDATION :
Why would people use it? Differentiator? What would you build as MVP? 
How would people use it? Is it a unique opportunity or have large target audience?  
Is it a Low Hanging fruit or a Quick win? * #Select a combination of features for your MVP and describe each to build an overall picture of the recommended product* Pro Tip : You can also share a contingency plan and chart a rough roadmap of the product. Based on the success of your MVP (i.e. recommended solution), you can include the rest of the features from your solution list in your roadmap*(Step 6)*. Have instrumentation, do A/B testing, take customer feedback and if possible share product vision. Roadmap (optional) Highlight pros/cons and the risks of the recommended solution. Think of the edge-cases and negative user flows. In real world, the biggest risk for any new product is the lack of data and customer research. Tradeoffs KEY TRADEOFFS :
Cannibalisation, customer satisfaction, overuse, safety, integrity, privacy, 
disparity, opportunity cost of another customer segment/ pain point/ geography Step 9. Success Metrics The primary expectation from the recommended solution is to acheive the goal described earlier but how would you quantify it? Measuring the product success is a vast area in itself and deserves another chapter. For the interview, it is recommended to specify 2-5 key metrics that relate best to your goals and the final product. Product Metrics are of the following types: Northstar (or Goal metrics) - Be top 10 app in its category, Traffic Product Tracking (or Product Health metrics) - #Users, Engagement Guard-Rail (or Counter metrics) - Measure of tradeoffs, cannibalisation KEY METRICS :
Adoption - Install/downloads, signups, # of users
Growth - %age Increase in New Users, DAU, MAU
Engagement metrics  -  DAU, MAU, session time, view, like, share, comment
Retention - Cohort activity D7, D30,  DAU per MAU
Monetisation - Revenue, CTR, ARPU, Subscriptions, Revenue per Ad
Customer Satisfaction - SUS, CSAT, NPS, User ratings, Referrals * #For new product, measure adoption as number of users using the product and active users #For measuring engagement use #active users as the base than just #users* Pro Tip : Step 10. Summarize Finally, outline your approach, beginning with the problem and ending with your recommendation based on the key criteria you selected. * #Use STAR to summarize - Situation, Task, Action, Results* Pro Tip : COMMON MISTAKES :
Not asking enough questions to ensure common ground on product, users
Lack of mission alignment between company and product
Lack of structure in problem solving
Incomplete or no user journey
Poor customer segmentation - overly detailed, just age-based
Prioritising users, pain points, or solutions without proper reasoning
No connection between Goal-User-Painpoint-Solution
No tradeoffs or counter metrics for the recommended solution
Not clarifying #events or #unique customers in metrics
Too long a summary * * Expert Tip : #Break the structure and pattern wherever you can. Customize it.

How to Solve Product Design Questions|The Great PM Interview

Masayoshi Son says his SoftBank Group is the goose that lays the golden eggs. At the group's earnings meeting on Feb. 8, he wasted no time in telling attendees about his recent investments in artificial intelligence startups and said he wanted to replicate a number of unicorns in Japan, sweeping away the sluggishness he felt in front of investors this time last year. The bottom line is that SoftBank's results have improved dramatically, with a total net profit of about $29.9 billion between April and September 2020 (up 371 percent year-over-year). Nearly 40% of this profit was made in the last three months ($11.7 billion), and the year-over-year increase for this period was an impressive 879.5%. SoftBank's profits were made up of a variety of investment income, helped by last year's hot stock market. in the fourth quarter of 2020, the SoftBank Group made a profit of $13.45 billion through the appreciation of its investments in the Vision I and II funds, and another $1.035 billion through speculation in the secondary market by the Group itself and its NorthStar unit. This helped SoftBank to have its best quarter ever. "We're finally in the harvest phase," Son said at the revenue press conference. But he also said the profits were just accounting bookkeeping numbers, not happy or sad. "As a businessman, as an entrepreneur, this is not a satisfactory level yet. We still have room to grow." At this point, a slide behind him shows a goose with a sign around its neck saying "Artificial Intelligence for Change." As he spoke, the goose on the slide laid golden eggs. Each egg represents a successful IPO exit that SoftBank is betting on. But this bookkeeping is extremely volatile. Tens of billions of dollars of profit in good times, and when the market is poor, such as in early 2020, it is easy to generate a lot of losses. Warren Buffett, who also holds a lot of underlying investments, has warned investors not to pay too much attention to his net profit changes, because that does not truly reflect the company's operations. Note 1: SoftBank's cumulative investment income from its big openings. This follows the loss of WeWork investments and the shrinking valuations of several other companies that led SoftBank to lose nearly $17 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2020. The market didn't believe him -- SoftBank shares fell to a two-decade low early last year; shareholders didn't believe him -- and no institution was willing to inject capital into the second phase of the Vision Fund. "In the second half of the first phase of the Vision Fund, we had some difficulties, didn't perceive some situations, got a lot of criticism and learned a lot of lessons," Son said. "But at the time, I mentioned that we had learned our lessons...and despite our unpopularity, we just launched Vision Fund II with our own money to run this business. Our vision and strategy never changed." As of Feb. 5 of this year, the 12 public companies in Phase I of the Vision Fund added $25.464 billion in value to SoftBank. The three listed companies in Phase II added $5.349 billion in value. SoftBank also launched four shell companies (SPACs) dedicated to mergers and raised $1.4 billion from investors. Note 2: Investment income of Vision Fund I as of 2021.2.5 Excluding Alibaba and Yahoo, the biggest contributors to SoftBank's profits were Doordash (+$10.7 billion), a take-out company that went public last December, and Uber (+$5.1 billion), which went public even earlier. DoorDash has benefited from the post-epidemic boom in the U.S. take-out restaurant market and the abundance of capital in the market after the Federal Reserve's big let-down. from January to September 2020, Doordash's revenue was $1.92 billion, nearly four times the same period in 2019. Uber's share price recovery is also linked to takeaways, as UberEats fills the revenue gap left by its shrinking ride-hailing business and tries to recoup capital and improve margins by selling businesses such as the money-burning Autopilot in a bid to meet the company's commitment to the board of directors to break even by the fourth quarter of 2021. The valuation fix is partly due to the fact that its main business, online taxi orders, has exceeded year-ago levels and that Drip has made progress in a number of new businesses, and partly because the market value of Uber, which it uses as a benchmark, has rebounded sharply. Alibaba and Ant Group are inseparable topics for Masayoshi Son. Both because of SoftBank's significant interests in the two companies, and because he and Jack Ma maintain a personal relationship of up to two decades. So when reporters got to the Q&A session, Masayoshi Son was quickly asked how he viewed China's recent introduction of new regulatory policies such as anti-monopoly guidelines, and whether he had recently contacted Jack Ma and how he viewed his Bund speech. Masayoshi Son took a more positive view of regulatory adjustments overall. He said things like Ali and Tencent are now probably in the middle of such (monopoly) discussions for the first time, after Chinese Internet companies did almost anything they wanted to do. But in Europe and the United States, antitrust laws and strict financial regulation have long been in place, and SoftBank has had problems and setbacks in those markets and will learn from them. A similar regulatory framework is necessary for larger, longer-term business growth, and the policy adjustments in China are "not beyond what we've seen in our own country, in the U.S., or in Europe. So I think we will continue to see good growth and even a more positive impact on the future of the Internet." On the issue of Jack Ma, Son said the two exchanged hobbies like painting and did not talk business. As for the Bund speech, "I don't know the details, I just know from the news what happened and I don't want to make any detailed comments." But he re-expressed his positive view of Alibaba, "Alibaba and Ant Group have been a very worrying topic for the market, and we have experienced and seen Alibaba's share price fall. I understand that many people are worried, but it has recovered at this stage. Last week Alibaba also announced a 50% increase in net profit, so the business itself is actually running smoothly and growing steadily. That's how I understand it."

The Future of SoftBank: The Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs

, my assumption is that you have given your pivot into product management, some thought, per-chance even simulated your foray end to end. No surprises. I was you, in February 2010, with countless sleepless nights digging hundreds of product management blogs and resources. Why Product Management? Was I aware it was called product management? By now Served across 4-5 episodes, this series aims to help every person who is mostly tired of reading all the recycled and same content guides on “How to pivot into product management”. You’ll enjoy this series in the following format ; Succinct 10 year PM multi-territory journey overview with key scenarios. My product management mistakes, so you do not have to go through them. How I got into product management, complete with practicable steps on pivoting to products management and thriving as an outstanding product manager, My carefully crafted workbook on how to land full time and contract PM roles - includes all inside tips and tricks on staying on top of the game. BONUS - A focus group webinar and PM telegram group to track everyones progress in a results/output focused community + one on one access to product mentors. Stick with me and stay strapped for this journey!! The year is 2005, my 1st year in college, Computer Science Major and I had always wondered how stuff worked. From hatch-backed computers, to how Facebook, Flikr, Hi5 got millions of eyes. My head asked probing questions, who’s leading these teams? how do they know what to design next? the next launch plan? how did they figure what users liked? I began to dig - From YouTube, to SourceForge, blogs, any leads to guide me home exposing the logic to handling all the moving parts, that would ship these products to end users like me. I found a few skeletal leads. In 2005, not a lot of founders knew they were product managers. They barely chronicled, documented or even shared their creation journey, as their northstar was to get the product across to as many users as possible, get feedback, and continue to iterate. (goal, target, key KPI) Next step was to get into the mind of the developers. Enters SourceForge - Like a full 40hour work week job, I majorly used SourceForge to extract and (legally) download thousand of website source-code, host them locally on my 17inch Packard-Bell PC running Windows Vista, to foray the design perspective of the founder/developer and spent very long hours interacting with the products. This gave me the best shot at understanding design principles, the philosophies behind early stage design, feedback collection, customer usage, iterations, north stars, metrics and several logic that centered any product. Few questions for you (Please feel free to reply this email) ; a. What does product management mean to you? Without taking a cursory google search? b. Do you ever wish you were in charge to decide the direction of those favorite services you love to use? c. If you could, how likely are you to build a features shelf for your favorite Apps. d. Who do you love the most, your customer or your shiny App? Fast track to 2nd year, I had journeyed into Microsoft products, XP,Vista, Active directory, networking and other new technologies. I had written over 20 of those certifications whilst in college, just for knowledge sake. The idea was to dive deep enough to predict the future of these technologies and where they were headed, hence I moved quite swiftly with the times. With every new product I could lay my hands on, I would naturally critique them, the amount of time it took me to login, good/bad user experience and generally how I perceived the product or service. This was meant for my use only. Between 2005 - 2009, I had critiqued over 30 products from dating apps, to enterprise services, to productivity tools, peer-to-peer services and co. I just had fun doing it. BIG SURPRISE! I pivoted from product management in my final year and took on web development in PHP/C# stacks. Biggest influence to this, was my quite consuming final year dissertation. This led me to explore a different aspect to design thinking from a developer perspective. Applying my dev. know-how and with the help of an old friend, I built 2 websites that drove 200,000+ unique visitors and also co-founded a successful certification training startup that trained over 200 students in its first 4 months. (or so i thought) That startup died anyway :( . I found my way back to the customer centric based side of things when I realized too much of my design principles as a developer was based on how i wanted the subscribers to interface with the products. That made me really guilty and I reverted to my old normal. Anyone pivoting into products management must be ready to think like the customer , 99%, popularly referred to as empathy”. Are you ready to take this jump? Here below are some lessons I believe every product manager should learn from the above ; Develop a product mindset for everything you do - Life is a product and everyday is an iteration. Every time you encounter a glitch in an app, gradually critique them and cohesively maintain that list. You will need to write a lot. Product Managers do a lot of writing - from user requirements, to user stories, road maps, empathy maps and co. Writing is a great excuse to read. You do not need to learn to learn a programming language - Based on my experience, I personally recommend that you learn basic SQL. You must be open to learning widely about how products work and keeping abreast of how designs, data and market trends to understand how everything connects and enables one another. will focus on - Paths into product management, product manager mistakes and how to avoid them and the most important skills to build. Episode 2 TELEGRAM FOCUS GROUP The Product Management Telegram group link will be shared in Episode 2. It features - Tens of PM tools, exclusive resources that has guided me on my 10 year product management journey, co-building simple products and guiding you through the entire lifecycle, critical thinking on improving existing products, access to other product mentors, and many more. Please know that I am happy to read your replies with any questions you may have. I would be responding to them as well. See you on the next post. Salem.

How To Pivot to Product Management?

Catch up on the latest episodes of the Hacker Noon Podcast This week Trent Lapinski interviewed David Sønstebø, co-founder of , and Joshua Strebel, CEO of and . IOTA Pagely NorthStack Distributed Ledger Tech with IOTA Co-Founder David Sønstebø Today’s show would not be possible without Digital Ocean , who is offering a $100 credit at https://do.co/hackernoon The Future of Cloud Computing with Joshua Strebel from Pagely and NorthStack Don’t Forget to Subscribe to the . Available on , , and . Hacker Noon Podcast iTunes Google Podcast YouTube And lastly, stay up to date with Hacker Noon as we launch 2.0 from scratch via . this form

The Future of IoT, Distributed Ledger Tech, and Cloud Computing

Episode 36 of the : An interview with Joshua Strebel, CEO of and . Hacker Noon Podcast Pagely NorthStack Listen to the interview on , or , or watch on . iTunes Google Podcast YouTube In this episode and Joshua Strebel discuss serverless, cloud computing, devops, WordPress, and Joshua’s new project NorthStack. Trent Lapinski “You talk about AI and specifically around content publishing, there’s those crazy algorithms now that you can give it a sentence and a closing and it’ll write a thousand words in between and it will be on point. You’re like ‘I couldn’t have written this any better!” — Joshua Strebel The Future of Cloud Computing with Joshua Strebel from Pagely Production and music by Derek Bernard — haberdasherband.com/production Host: Trent Lapinski — https://trentlapinski.com P.S. If you dig the new Hacker Noon Podcast , consider giving us a 5 star review on iTunes. Also check out , and . April top stories the latest stories today’s homepage

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