I’ve been guest lecturing at Stanford this Fall for Christina Wodtke in her CS 177: Human-Centered Product Management course. Last week, she, Albert Collell and I led a hackathon for the 80 students.

The power to create so much so quickly impressed the students and continually impresses me. These tools aren’t perfect but they have a growing role in how we manifest and test ideas.

I recently helped 40 PMs in a regulated industry brush up on their Discovery skills and get their feet wet using AI.

What made this day special? This participant quote captures it perfectly:

"The information was extremely practical and not just abstract. I felt like what I learned I could apply. The vibe prototyping was the best part as it made this more accessible to me that once before felt extremely daunting."

I’ll be answering questions about AI in Product Management at the end of July for a variety of Venture Capital (VC) and Private Equity (PE) backed companies.

What makes a product not just useful, but irresistible? At our June ProductTank Silicon Valley meetup, we’re diving into what it takes to build products that truly resonate with users- emotionally, behaviorally, and experientially.

Unlike traditional hackathons that spanned full weekends and required well-balanced teams of designers, developers, and business thinkers, this modern AI hackathon offers just two hours of focused, hands-on experimentation.

Participants explore the latest AI tools like Replit, Bolt, v0, and Lovable, and walk away having built functioning prototypes without any coding experience.

Under stress, company leaders often revert to a “command and control” culture. Product teams and their leaders can change this trajectory by using quantitative and qualitative data to earn trust, speak truth to power and win over stakeholders.

Learn how an iterative, bottoms-up transformation can deliver positive results sooner without the risk incurred with big bang reorgs and changes.

Companies set goals. Teams deliver features. But they aren't connected. Launching software isn't enough to guarantee company success. Learn to connect the everyday work of individual teams with company goals. Learn how well-written metrics can spot problems, discover new opportunities, and guide decision making.

Making outstanding products with outsourced teams is challenging. How can we create a unified and innovative team when collaborating with outsourced engineers and designers?

This panel explores the significant challenges that UX and product professionals face, particularly in securing executive buy-in for user research and what non-UX executives are looking to see.

Has your Product team created a “pixel perfect” design before even talking to users? Does your team fall in love with ideas too quickly?

Find out how to use a Design to Learn approach to create “realistic enough” experiences that are meant to learn from users, not persuade them.

Build better prototypes and get your ideas in front of customers faster.

Companies set goals. Product teams deliver features. But they aren't connected. Consistent delivery isn't enough to guarantee company success. Learn to connect the dots between a company's goals and the everyday work of individual teams.

Too often, ideas go straight from stakeholders to delivery.

How can your team focus on solving a real customer problem?

By understanding why they are building an idea, teams can ground their product decisions in customer and business realities.

In this summit, you'll learn how to perform user research with minimal resources, how to synthesize data easily, how to get product market fit and most importantly how to stay fit when you got there.

Akos Kiss-Dozsai, founder of Airtime UX, interviews me to discuss my experience with Product Market Fit (PMF).

PMF is the mantra of startups & VCs. But how do you know how to get there? What does PMF feel like? Is there anything afterwards?

My latest podcast is with Alex Smith discussing Where Product Meets Design. He cuts it down to 10 minutes which I love.

We talk about how to work with UX Researchers when you're doing squad-led user research and other topics.

I spoke virtually at the Product Management Summit held in Shanghai, China.

I did a compare and contrast on how NOT to conduct Product Discovery vs how to BEST do Product Discovery.

I covered the DOs and DONTs of managing teams doing Product Discovery.

Then I explained the best ways to run a discovery experiment to get the best feedback from users.

Companies set goals. Product teams deliver features. But they aren't connected. Consistent delivery isn't enough to guarantee company success. Learn to connect the dots between a company's goals and the everyday work of individual teams.

I led a dynamic discussion with 150+ Product Managers and Designers about how to design experiments that extract the best feedback from customers.

Join eight of the top product coaches in the world for a live, unscripted "long conversation."

It's a great line up with Nacho Bassino, Inês Liberato, Marton Gaspar, Randy Silver, Büşra Coşkuner, Christoph Steinlehner, Timoté Geimer

If you have to ask if you have hard market fit, you definitely don't have it.

People get really internally focused. Their bosses really demand the attention of product managers and engineers. The other internal stakeholders they try to dominate the conversation as if they know everything.

And I just don't think the hit rate of your average executive is that high because most startups are failing, right? So most ideas are not really working in the market.

And so what I want folks to do is really get out and talk to customers.

Speaking at the BAistanbul Conference:

Learn about Customer Interviewing. What’s a “bad” interview? What’s a “good” interview? Get actual resources to make your own great interviews.

Don't wait for a UX researcher. You can successfully interview customers. Learn when should you speak to customers and how can you get the most out of that precious time.

Don't wait for a UX researcher. You can successfully interview customers. Learn when should you speak to customers and how can you get the most out of that precious time.

Customer interviews are a critical part of the process of building great products that customers want to buy but they are rarely done well.

In this workshop session, Jim will show why customer interviews should be an integral part of your product development process and what you can learn from them.

Ideal for: Founders and Product leaders. Key Takeaways:

The value of a product discovery mindset versus traditional delivery

When to pull up and make a big product discovery investment, and who you should involve

Key steps in the product discovery process including techniques and frameworks to help prioritize ideas

How to continue product discovery in parallel with development after your start building