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Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill (UX for AI Data Products, SAAS Analytics, Data Product Management)
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153 - What Impressed Me About How John Felushko Does Product and UX at the Analytics SAAS Company, LabStats
Manage episode 442923782 series 2938687
In today’s episode, I’m joined by John Felushko, a product manager at LabStats who impressed me after we recently had a 1x1 call together. John and his team have developed a successful product that helps universities track and optimize their software and hardware usage so schools make smart investments. However, John also shares how culture and value are very tied together—and why their product isn’t a fit for every school, and every country. John shares how important customer relationships are , how his team designs great analytics user experiences, how they do user research, and what he learned making high-end winter sports products that’s relevant to leading a SAAS analytics product. Combined with John’s background in history and the political economy of finance, John paints some very colorful stories about what they’re getting right—and how they’ve course corrected over the years at LabStats.
Highlights/ Skip to:
- (0:46) What is the LabStats product
- (2:59) Orienting analytics around customer value instead of IT/data
- (5:51) "Producer of Persistently Profitable Product Process"
- (11:22) How they make product adjustments based on previous failures
- (15:55) Why a lack of cultural understanding caused LabStats to fail internationally
- (18:43) Quantifying value beyond dollars and cents
- (25:23) How John is able to work so closely with his customers without barriers
- (30:24) Who makes up the LabStats product research team
- (35:04) How strong customer relationships help inform the UX design process
- (38:29) Getting senior management to accept that you can't regularly and accurately predict when you’ll be feature-complete and ship
- (43:51) Where John learned his skills as a successful product manager
- (47:20) Where you can go to cultivate the non-technical skills to help you become a better SAAS analytics product leader
- (51:00) What advice would John Felushko have given himself 10 years ago?
- (56:19) Where you can find more from John Felushko
Quotes from Today’s Episode
- “The product process is [essentially] really nothing more than the scientific method applied to business. Every product is an experiment - it has a hypothesis about a problem it solves. At LabStats [we have a process] where we go out and clearly articulate the problem. We clearly identify who the customers are, and who are [people at other colleges] having that problem. Incrementally and as inexpensively as possible, [we] test our solutions against those specific customers. The success rate [of testing solutions by cross-referencing with other customers] has been extremely high.” - John Felushko (6:46)
- “One of the failures I see in Americans is that we don’t realize how much culture matters. Americans have this bias to believe that whatever is valuable in my culture is valuable in other cultures. Value is entirely culturally determined and subjective. Value isn’t a number on a spreadsheet. [LabStats positioned our producty] as something that helps you save money and be financially efficient. In French government culture, financial efficiency is not a top priority. Spending government money on things like education is seen as a positive good. The more money you can spend on it, the better. So, the whole message of financial efficiency wasn’t going to work in that market.” - John Felushko (16:35)
- “What I’m really selling with data products is confidence. I’m selling assurance. I’m selling an emotion. Before I was a product manager, I spent about ten years in outdoor retail, selling backpacks and boots. What I learned from that is you’re always selling emotion, at every level. If you can articulate the ROI, the real value is that the buyer has confidence they bought the right thing.” - John Felushko (20:29)
- “[LabStats] has three massive, multi-million dollar horror stories in our past where we [spent] millions of dollars in development work for no results. No ROI. Horror stories are what shape people’s values more than anything else. Avoiding negative outcomes is what people avoid more than anything else. [It’s important to] tell those stories and perpetuate those [lessons] through the culture of your organization. These are the times we screwed up, and this is what we learned from it—do you want to screw up like that again because we learned not to do that.” - John Felushko (38:45)
- “There’s an old description of a product manager, like, ‘Oh, they come across as the smartest person in the room.’ Well, how do you become that person? Expand your view, and expand the amount of information you consume as widely as possible. That’s so important to UX design and thinking about what went wrong. Why are some customers super happy and some customers not? What is the difference between those two groups of people? Is it culture? Is it time? Is it mental ability? Is it the size of the screen they’re looking at my product on? What variables can I define and rule out, and what data sources do I have to answer all those questions? It’s just the normal product manager thing—constant curiosity.” -John Felushko (48:04)
105 bölüm
Manage episode 442923782 series 2938687
In today’s episode, I’m joined by John Felushko, a product manager at LabStats who impressed me after we recently had a 1x1 call together. John and his team have developed a successful product that helps universities track and optimize their software and hardware usage so schools make smart investments. However, John also shares how culture and value are very tied together—and why their product isn’t a fit for every school, and every country. John shares how important customer relationships are , how his team designs great analytics user experiences, how they do user research, and what he learned making high-end winter sports products that’s relevant to leading a SAAS analytics product. Combined with John’s background in history and the political economy of finance, John paints some very colorful stories about what they’re getting right—and how they’ve course corrected over the years at LabStats.
Highlights/ Skip to:
- (0:46) What is the LabStats product
- (2:59) Orienting analytics around customer value instead of IT/data
- (5:51) "Producer of Persistently Profitable Product Process"
- (11:22) How they make product adjustments based on previous failures
- (15:55) Why a lack of cultural understanding caused LabStats to fail internationally
- (18:43) Quantifying value beyond dollars and cents
- (25:23) How John is able to work so closely with his customers without barriers
- (30:24) Who makes up the LabStats product research team
- (35:04) How strong customer relationships help inform the UX design process
- (38:29) Getting senior management to accept that you can't regularly and accurately predict when you’ll be feature-complete and ship
- (43:51) Where John learned his skills as a successful product manager
- (47:20) Where you can go to cultivate the non-technical skills to help you become a better SAAS analytics product leader
- (51:00) What advice would John Felushko have given himself 10 years ago?
- (56:19) Where you can find more from John Felushko
Quotes from Today’s Episode
- “The product process is [essentially] really nothing more than the scientific method applied to business. Every product is an experiment - it has a hypothesis about a problem it solves. At LabStats [we have a process] where we go out and clearly articulate the problem. We clearly identify who the customers are, and who are [people at other colleges] having that problem. Incrementally and as inexpensively as possible, [we] test our solutions against those specific customers. The success rate [of testing solutions by cross-referencing with other customers] has been extremely high.” - John Felushko (6:46)
- “One of the failures I see in Americans is that we don’t realize how much culture matters. Americans have this bias to believe that whatever is valuable in my culture is valuable in other cultures. Value is entirely culturally determined and subjective. Value isn’t a number on a spreadsheet. [LabStats positioned our producty] as something that helps you save money and be financially efficient. In French government culture, financial efficiency is not a top priority. Spending government money on things like education is seen as a positive good. The more money you can spend on it, the better. So, the whole message of financial efficiency wasn’t going to work in that market.” - John Felushko (16:35)
- “What I’m really selling with data products is confidence. I’m selling assurance. I’m selling an emotion. Before I was a product manager, I spent about ten years in outdoor retail, selling backpacks and boots. What I learned from that is you’re always selling emotion, at every level. If you can articulate the ROI, the real value is that the buyer has confidence they bought the right thing.” - John Felushko (20:29)
- “[LabStats] has three massive, multi-million dollar horror stories in our past where we [spent] millions of dollars in development work for no results. No ROI. Horror stories are what shape people’s values more than anything else. Avoiding negative outcomes is what people avoid more than anything else. [It’s important to] tell those stories and perpetuate those [lessons] through the culture of your organization. These are the times we screwed up, and this is what we learned from it—do you want to screw up like that again because we learned not to do that.” - John Felushko (38:45)
- “There’s an old description of a product manager, like, ‘Oh, they come across as the smartest person in the room.’ Well, how do you become that person? Expand your view, and expand the amount of information you consume as widely as possible. That’s so important to UX design and thinking about what went wrong. Why are some customers super happy and some customers not? What is the difference between those two groups of people? Is it culture? Is it time? Is it mental ability? Is it the size of the screen they’re looking at my product on? What variables can I define and rule out, and what data sources do I have to answer all those questions? It’s just the normal product manager thing—constant curiosity.” -John Felushko (48:04)
105 bölüm
Tüm bölümler
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1 166 - Can UX Quality Metrics Increase Your Data Product's Business Value and Adoption? 26:12

1 165 - How to Accommodate Multiple User Types and Needs in B2B Analytics and AI Products When You Lack UX Resources 49:04

1 164 - The Hidden UX Taxes that AI and LLM Features Impose on B2B Customers Without Your Knowledge 45:25

1 163 - It’s Not a Math Problem: How to Quantify the Value of Your Enterprise Data Products or Your Data Product Management Function 41:41

1 162 - Beyond UI: Designing User Experiences for LLM and GenAI-Based Products 42:07

1 161 - Designing and Selling Enterprise AI Products [Worth Paying For] 34:00

1 160 - Leading Product Through a Merger/Acquisition: Lessons from The Predictive Index’s CPO Adam Berke 42:10

1 159 - Uncorking Customer Insights: How Data Products Revealed Hidden Gems in Liquor & Hospitality Retail 40:47

1 158 - From Resistance to Reliance: Designing Data Products for Non-Believers with Anna Jacobson of Operator Collective 43:41

1 157 - How this materials science SAAS company brings PM+UX+data science together to help materials scientists accelerate R&D 34:58

1 156-The Challenges of Bringing UX Design and Data Science Together to Make Successful Pharma Data Products with Jeremy Forman 41:37

1 155 - Understanding Human Engagement Risk When Designing AI and GenAI User Experiences 55:33

1 154 - 10 Things Founders of B2B SAAS Analytics and AI Startups Get Wrong About DIY Product and UI/UX Design 44:47

1 153 - What Impressed Me About How John Felushko Does Product and UX at the Analytics SAAS Company, LabStats 57:31

1 152 - 10 Reasons Not to Get Professional UX Design Help for Your Enterprise AI or SAAS Analytics Product 53:00
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