📻 Listen up! The best product podcasts of 2021

Favorite Podcasts of 2021

As we continue our retrospective of 2021, we wanted to highlight some podcasts released over the past year. Some of these podcasts focus on product management, while others take a broader view but occasionally dip into topics of interest to product managers. So charge up your favorite earbuds, stay calm and listen on.

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Andrew Chen — Metaverse, metrics, and meerkats. In this episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, Tim talks to Andrew Chen, general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, about his experiences working with and investing in several consumer technology startups. Andrew shared his observations on growth practices for products and how to use metrics to guide your growth efforts.

(via @andrewchen)

Don’t have a UX research team? Jane Davis’ tips from Zoom, Zapier & Dropbox to get you started. This episode of the In-Depth podcast from First Round Review features Jane Davis, the Director of UX Research and UX Writing at Zoom. Throughout the episode, Jane tackled the thorniest customer development questions and walked through the end-to-end research process in incredible detail, covering everything from clarifying your goals and asking the right questions, to selecting participants and synthesizing insights.

(via @firstround)

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“Hey, you should probably get off your phone.” 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been told that so many times that it’s actually embarrassing. I’ve been told that by my wife… my kids. I’m not proud of it. But I also know that I’m not alone. We’re right in the middle of a 2-part podcast on Rocketship.FM about how the very technologies we love and use so much today can cause some issues for people. You can listen to part 1 here.

But… have you ever been told to take a break… from the actual app you’re mindlessly scrolling on? Well, get ready -- because Instagram is about to tell people to take technology breaks.

On Tuesday, Instagram launched its “Take a Break” tools. According to CNN, “Users can turn on the feature in ‘Settings’ and select if they want to be alerted after using the platform for 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. They'll then get a full-screen alert telling them to close out of the app, suggesting they take a deep breath, write something down, check a to-do list or listen to a song.”

Imagine that… an app designed to tell you not to use it.

In next week’s episode on Rocketship, you’ll hear me ask Nir Eyal whether we, as product people, ought to be thinking more about creating features like this. 

His take? In short, most product people should feel so lucky to even have people use our apps at all! (Fair point). For the very, very few whose apps are in the same category as Instagram here, you can use what Nir Eyal calls “The Regret Test” to gauge your product design. 

It will be interesting to see if apps like Twitter, YouTube, and other apps many of us mindlessly scroll will follow suit. My guess? Our time on site and clicks are worth way too much to them to go much further. For now, I’ll do my best to plug my phone in upstairs when it’s family time and not rely on Instagram telling me to chill.

Competing in a sellers’ hiring market: Using transparency and authenticity. On a recent episode of the BUILD Podcast, Blake Bartlett spoke with Adam Turner, co-founder and CEO of Postscript. Blake and Adam discuss the current job market and Adam explains how Postcript’s culture of transparency and authenticity has helped the company grow from 20 people to 200 people in the past year. Listen to this episode if you’re wondering how to make sure your company measures up and can attract the right talent.

(via @OpenViewVenture)

Fighting fires in B2B product management (with Rich Mironov).  This episode of One Knight in Product features an interview with Rich Mironov. Rich talks about what a “smoke jumper” CPO is and the types of problems he solves when he works with companies. He also describes the various challenges he’s observed companies face from a product leadership and product management perspective. Listen to this episode for some real-life insights into the world of B2B product management from someone who’s seen it all (or at least a lot of it).

(via @OneKnightInProd)

Testing your ideas with David Bland. David Bland joins Melissa Perri on this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast to talk about how to identify your assumptions, experimenting within slower feedback cycles, the importance of aligned confidence, and how product leaders have to continuously walk the walk when it comes to experimentation and de-risk.

(via @produxlabs)

Business intelligence tools, analytics, and other dashboard-driven products are meant to make us, as product people — as well as our end users — smarter. But when the UX is more of an afterthought, just how "intelligent" is business intelligence? Are you certain that you've invested in your product's analytics to keep up with customer demand?

In this session, you'll learn from Laura Klein, acclaimed Author (Build Better Products, Lean UX for Startups), Consultant, and UX Manager for Indeed.com. Product Collective's very own Mike Belsito will interview Laura to answer questions like:

• Why should the UX of our dashboards and reporting tools even matter to product people?
• How can we understand what works — and what doesn't?
• What are steps we can take to ensure that we "futureproof" the UX of our Dashboards and Business Intelligence tools that we're using or are having our end-users experience?

You'll have an opportunity to ask questions of your own, so register today for this free, interactive live webinar experience.