The entrepreneurial journey of today’s brilliant guest has been an interesting one—from product manager to founder and chief strategist of ProductPlan. ProductPlan is a roadmap software used by thousands of product teams at the world’s leading companies to power their product roadmaps. In this episode, Jim Semick shared what the journey of starting and scaling a product-led company has been like. He also covered other engrossing topics like product-market fit, the role of pricing, and how product management has changed over the years.
Show Notes
[00:33] Why he founded ProductPlan
[02:47] What his WHY was for starting the company
[05:18] How has product management changed over the years
[08:41] His market validation process
[13:00] His definition of product-market fit
[18:56] What the transition to self-service has been like
[21:18] The biggest challenge they have encountered
[24:20] One thing he’ll do differently knowing what he knows now
[27:07] The role of pricing in a product-led business
[28:56] When they decided to have someone in sales
[32:02] How they went about hiring their first sales person
[34:31] How they are different compared to the traditional sales-led companies
[36:50] How their compensation model has changed
[38:29] Where people can go to learn more about him and ProductPlan
About Jim Semick
Jim Semick is a mentor, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has also written books on Product Roadmaps, Product Leadership, and Product-Market Fit. Jim is also the co-founder and chief strategist of ProductPlan, the world’s leading roadmap software. ProductPlan makes roadmapping collaborative, transparent, and easy. Today, leading companies like PBS, Nike, Intuit, and Alaska Airlines has been relying on ProductPlan to guide their product decisions daily.
Links
Profile
- Jim Semick on LinkedIn
- ProductPlan
- ProductPlan Blog
- ProductPlan Resources
- ProductPlan on Facebook
- ProductPlan on Twitter
- ProductPlan on YouTube
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About The Product-Led Podcast Hosts
Wes Bush is the author of the bestselling book on Product-Led Growth.
He’s the founder of the Product-Led Institute and host of the popular Product-Led Summit.
Bush is best known for challenging the way SaaS leaders approach growth and has been featured in over 100 media outlets, including Forbes, MarketingLand, and Openview.
Ramli John is a product-led consultant and educator with Product-Led Institute.
He's the founder and host of the Growth Marketing Today podcast, where he's interviewed marketing experts like Rand Fishkin, April Dunford, Hiten Shah, and more.
Ramli works with SaaS companies to optimize their user onboarding flow and retention rates.
