Top 5 Product Management Podcasts of 2020
Are you looking to level up on your product management knowledge? Product podcasts can help and Roadmunk has you covered! Some spotlight tactical advice (like sharing product strategy, product management tools or how orgs decide what goes on their team roadmap), while others have a more holistic style of storytelling that dives into conversations with product people.
Here's Roadmunk’s top 5 product management podcasts for product managers in 2020.
1. Product Love
The Product Love podcast is hosted by Eric Boduch, co-founder of Pendo. (The podcast is also owned by Pendo.)
In a recent episode, Nancy Wang, Head of Product at Amazon Web Services, was a featured guest. She spoke about representation in product as well as the difference between being a PM at Google versus Amazon.
Nancy started the non-profit Advancing Women in Product because it was difficult to find mentors in product management that looked like her. AWIP has surpassed 15,000 members and offers workshops, webinars and mentorship. The streams of programming cover a variety of product management topics, like technical skills, how to dive into product analytics, leading through influence and a more advanced look at how to handle board meetings.
Looking for a new product podcast to subscribe to? Roadmunk's Product to Product is for you!
2. Women in Tech with Ariana
The Women in Tech with Ariana podcast is hosted by Ariana Waller, who’s a keynote speaker, entrepreneur and innovator. Ariana has a background in Electrical Engineering as well as software development. She’s the founder of Wallway Technologies, a technology firm that offers services like mobile app development, UI/IX design, web applications and technology consulting. (The podcast, owned by Wallway Technologies, shares “resources to help women navigate the tech industry,” the show notes say.)
In 2019, a year after launching, Medium named it one of the top 10 podcasts for women in tech.
In a recent episode, Ariana interviewed Bukola Somide, the founder of CompSci ABC (Computer Science Awareness In Black Communities) and they spoke about the power of believing in yourself. Bukola also authored a children’s book titled “Somi The Computer Scientist” and is the creator of the first interactive computer science doll.
3. Product to Product
The Product to Product podcast is our very own production, hosted and produced by us, Roadmunk! In this product podcast we talk about all things product management with experienced product leaders.
In season five, we talked about the growing pains of a scaling product company. We dug into topics of where it really hurts! We talked to product leaders about proper alignment, how to communicate effectively when growing the number of employees and even suggesting a toolkit for hyperscale. We featured guests like The New York Times alum Priya Wellington, currently Medium’s Group PM, who said over communicating is the key to a product org's alignment. She adds that when there’s alignment, teams work toward the same priorities and not in a silo.
In our latest season, we focused on feedback and idea management. How does a team go from feedback to feature? For this season, we interviewed guests like:
Rose Yao, a Senior Director of Product Management at Google Maps Platform, who says feedback and idea management is part science and part art. PMs can look at data to determine the ROI and impact the feature will have, but it’s also important to seek out patterns, she says. Propose big questions like: “Where is the world going?” and take it from there.
Niki Agrawal,a Product Manager at Bumble, who says while users point to the problems that Niki’s team will set out to solve, it’s up to the PMs and stakeholders that have influence to determine what will actually be shipped. With Niki’s team, they also take the input from their BI (business intelligence) group that has more insight into user feedback.
Abhi Bhatt, the Head of Product at Amazon's Alexa, who says teams need to work backwards when building something that hasn’t been done before. You’ll need to figure out the segmentation and what the customer base will look like. Also, find out what these customers care about. Based on the psychographics and demographics, choose a segment that has the most resonance. Ultimately, product teams should be spending a lot of time with their customers, to the point that they become your “partner” in development.
You can catch the latest episode here or on your preferred podcast platform. Just search for “Product to Product Roadmunk.”
4. Master of Scale
Masters of Scale is hosted by LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman and consists of conversations with company leaders. His guest list includes Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates, Spotify’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek as well as ClassPass’ founder and chair Payal Kadakia, just to name a few.
As a response to the covid-19 outbreak, they launched a spinoff series called Masters of Scale Rapid Response. The episodes offer “real-time time wisdom from leaders to leaders throughout the current crisis,” according to their website. The episodes have featured **TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot, General Motors chair and CEO Mary Barra and Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky. **
Masters of Scale also proclaims to be the “first American media program to commit to gender balance for guests.”
5. The Growth Show
The Growth Show is hosted by Hubspot’s VP of Marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson. The podcast “explores the inspiring stories behind how people grow a business, an idea or a movement,” the show page says.
In an episode, Meghan interviews Arum Kang, the co-founder and CEO of the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, about how she turned down a $30M offer from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.
On one of the more recent episodes, Meghan spoke to Katherine Tallman, executive director at Coolidge Corner Theater about pivoting to online screening due to covid-19 and what she thinks future moviegoing experiences will look like.
That’s our list for now, but by no means is it an exhaustive list. There are always new shows popping up and we are constantly adding to our library too! If you have any feedback, feel free to send us a message at podcast@roadmunk.com.