Juttu

Founder

Niko at Work - Product Consulting

- Go-to-Market and Product Ideation for 2trde
Discovering an opportunity for a new vertical in 2trdes business. Building first MVP to validate our solution. Pitching partners and planning go-to-market strategy with them.

- Product Discovery for Nioomi
Strategic Discovery to help determine Nioomi's potential path to monetisation and sustained growth.

- Product Ideation & Discovery for Fountain.fm
Analysing one of the biggest user pain points when using the app (related to audio editing) and discovering potential "pain alleviators".

- Revamp Groups Strategy for New Work SE

Product Coach & Consultant

XING Events GmbH

More of a strategical focus, overseeing integrations with other teams, people management of Junior PO, driving key projects through three functional teams

Senior Product Manager

First Year: Product ownership of B2B product, developing new pricing strategy, cross-team project lead to bring data-analysis product to market
Second Year: B2C Product with focus on mobile first development, SEO optimisation and conversion rate improvements on key metrics
Third Year: Managing two cross-functional teams to deliver holistic product improvements

Product Manager

Implementation of user stories, Migration from SSR with Rails to ReactJS, Tech-lead on project initiatives

Junior Software Engineer (Fullstack)

Rails backend work, implementing business logic, optimising data base queries

Software Development Working Student

AutoScout24

Build monitoring system to decrease response time in case of production issues - Rails, JS.

Working Student Software Development

Nolio solutio

Customer Acquisition, Project Management, Building custom websites using a variety of frameworks/technologies such as wordpress, jekyll, magento.

Web Developer

smartpatient

Intern Content Management

Mission → 1k teams to adopt weekly prod. discovery. 📈 curr: 8/1000

Actions speak louder than words:
🚀 Now: Building Juttu, a B2B SaaS solution getting teams to talk to the right users, every week.
🤝 Before: Coached  10+ organisations to adopt product discovery and iterate weekly.
🧱 Before: PM for 5 teams. Managed B2B, B2C products with 6+ million users. Without screwing it up.
⚡️ In my free time I share my lessons on how to get better at Product Discovery.

Hey - I'm Niko,

after coaching companies for 2+ years on how to adopt more Product Discovery I realized one thing.
The single biggest action any team can take, is getting to talk to users, every week.

So, that's what juttu.co does for teams.

Automate having two appointments in their calendar - with the right people - at the right time.
Getting started with Weekly Discovery Cycles has never been easier.

If you want to chat: nikoatwork@pm.me
If you want to read more about the founding journey: https://x.com/nikoatwork

In any case, have a great day ahead.
And keep building products users love.

Niko

You don't do any actual work as a coach.
Must be nice, to charge by the hour.
You're spending too much time on LinkedIn.

I get quite to hear quite lot of opinionated voices.

It's Easter Monday and none of those voices are heard today.
Because they are enjoying their time off.
A short reflection.

In my inbox today:
- somebody wanting to prep a podcast
- somebody requesting me as a speaker
- somebody building juttu

It's all about trade-offs.

3 years ago I decided to go the entrepreneurial route.
I was naive to these trade-offs.
I underestimated how much work it is.

I'm
- writing up two offers for clients today
- doing my monthly VAT returns
- prepping LinkedIn content for the week

I don't really get offended by peoples opinions and I understand their perspective.
I might have said the same.
Until you do the work you cannot see.

If you are thinking about going out by your own and forgo paid holidays, I am here to help were I can.
But if it isn't for you - I applaud you for the self-awareness.
This is not for everyone. It's for anyone.

Iuliia inspired me to post this, as you can see on my screen. She's building todya.

Niko Noll

I randomly stumbled upon "Extreme Ownership" years ago.
I was really put off by title and cover.
Yet I've learned a lot from that book.

One element I found particularly interesting is the focus on "preparedness or readiness" in military theory.
Because that is under-indexed on in tech.
As you say, lot's of complexity and unpredictability in warfare, yet the military is all about preparedness in the face of that uncertainty. 

A second point that I"m still pondering: Decentralised Command.
We've all been hearing about flat hierarchies. But this is different. Yes, leaders should empower team members to make decisions and take ownership, fostering a culture of trust and autonomy. But hierarchy is obviously very present in the military - and it is not flat.
I think we've taken empowerment so far that sometimes we just leave our product teams lost and confused.

How does that look like in the 'ideal' product team? I'm yet to figure that out but it fascinates me.
Happy to hear your thoughts!

Long day.
So pumped to be close to the release of https://juttu.co/ 

Will share more about what I as a PM did wrong building our own SaaS. Short: a lot.
For now just tired and proud.

It's my master plan to get 1000 teams to do Discovery weekly (check profile headline for mission).

I'm thankful and happy to support a few clients a quarter.
I will continue doing that.
But I just don't scale.

And we like scale.

Have a happy unscalable weekend everyone 🌴

juttu.co

My LinkedIn feed sucks.
I'm re-building my manual feed.
Who is your favorite person to follow on here with less than 10k followers?

I want to know.

6 months ago I had "my list™ ".
With 50 humans on there, that regularly publish great things here.
The links all go straight to the latest post of the person.

Like so: linkedincom/in/{{NAME}}/recent-activity/all/

Quite efficient way to get to high signal content.
It saved me so much scrolling.
So many ads. So much "woho I got a certification" posts.

But many of these creators have gone silent.

So I'm looking for new people to put on "my list 2.0™" .
New voices that have something to say. 
Who is somebody great you follow with less than 10k followers?

Drop them in the comments below. Thank you!

PS: Happy to share my list afterwards if anybody cares 😄 

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than a two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

Many PMs fake being happy in their job.

Try finding an exit ramp from your fake smiles.
These ramps come in different shapes and sizes.

Joining a small company with less politics than an old telecommunications provider?
Working on a vertical you believe  more in than random blockchain startup?
I'm no career coach person, never want to be.

But fake smiles are an anti-pattern I observed on myself.

PS: Also, found this random photo I took in Thailand 10 years ago.
--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

I'm looking for pricing page inspiration.
And I got really angry.
What do you think?

Currently working on the pricing page for Juttu.

Our goal is to keep it simple.
Our differentiator is not pricing, it's product.
So I thought I'd get some inspiration.

And I found the most frustrating pricing page out there (see photo).

This is nothing against the team at Cycle, it's just one, my (n=1) users experience.
1 - Sick glasmorphism "transparency" button. I'm interested.
2 - the word BS appears on a B2B pricing page -> You have my attention.
3 - Small print: "But it does depend" 😡

You lost me.

That's trying to be cute.
Especially because the factors that determine pricing seem to be easy to make transparent.
In any case, I learned something, so I'm thankful.

1 - I'll focus on the content and not the UX of the pricing page
2 - I'll make pricing transparent without saying it
3 - I'll be humble when I think I'm being clever

Let's see who roasts our pricing page next time 😃

PS: What do you think about this pricing page? Clever, cute, or infuriating? Would love to know. Leave a comment below!

But it's a hell of a good start.

Discovery fanatics scream from the roof tops:
"Stop blindly shipping. Hire UXR, do Discovery, avoid bias, measure everything."
And I might be perceived to shout that too.

So let me set that straight.

The foundation is shipping often.
That's the most important building block.
Without it nothing matters, no Discovery, no fancy analytics.

Shipping often is where we started a few decades ago.
CI/CD. Modular software. Feature flags. Rollbacks.

Discovery practices are something to build on top of that foundation.
Not intended to tear that foundation down by deeming it unimportant.

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than a two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

Who cares about who does what in a product trio....

The real question is: 
What needs to be done so you achieve the goal we set ourselves?

But that highlights a big issue I see with product trios.
Roles & Responsibilities  need to be figured out.
Individually and context specific.

Instead of relying on semi-formal role definitions we need to find the most effective way to collaborate.
That takes work and intentional focus on our ways of working.

Not something a PM, UX or Tech that has been in a somewhat clearly defined role for years has a lot of experience with.

It's worth it though - in my experience.

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than a two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

Figure out user problems and their solutions in a hypothesis-driven way.

That’s how I like to explain Product Discovery.

Now here are the key points to each part of the explanation:

1️⃣ User problems are your opportunities. Understanding problems is an exploratory process. 

2️⃣ Solutions are to be viewed separately. A given opportunity has several potential solutions.

3️⃣ Hypothesis-driven: Being methodical in our learning. Formulating clear invalidation points (“when are we wrong”) help bring quality to your iterative process towards user value.

Most teams just jump straight to building a feature.
If that is you, there is a whole set of tools/practices that ensure you don’t waste time building things nobody wants.

So don’t be afraid to ask! 
Nobody I know started with a great Product Discovery skill set.

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

Hiding behind data?
Hiding behind "talking to users is full of bias"?
Making good decisions requires talking to users.

I'll just let Jeff Bezos explain.
From his 2016 annual shareholder letter.

"I’m not against beta testing or surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering. Then, beta testing and research can help you find your blind spots. A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste. You won’t find any of it in a survey. "

To make good product decisions, to create good product judgement we need more than proxies.
We need a deep feeling (yes, feeling) of connection with the users, their problems and our ability to solve them.

It's not a numbers job.

PS: That doesn't mean data is not important. It's just not as important as we might have thought.

Product Managers are responsible for shipping fast.
I thought it was a tech responsibility .
Create a CI/CD setup and tech stack that allows for quick iteration.

And sure it is to some degree.

But in recent months I've learned the hard way:
Even with a fast and agile tech setup, an unfocused and bloated product will not be fast to market.

Is there more fat we can cut off this product?

Descoping hurts.
Using your brain to lean out your initial offering.
Finding creative ways to cut out whole parts of the user journey.

And it's why making product decisions is so hard.

But the upside is: Product Managers are way more influential  on shipping and iteration speed than they think.
Sure, the tech matters.
Embracing ruthless focus on a feature level will help matters dramatically.

And will win you more karma points than complaining that "the devs are too slow".

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than a two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

3 things you can do to improve your Product Discovery this week. 

Try the three, or try just one. But get started. 
And don't be afraid to ask for help. 

💡 Reach out to 3 users to get one interview. 
💡 Measure - get data on the problem to know what your solution changed inside your product / user's daily life. 
💡 Get help - you don't have to do it alone.

What's your strategy to just get started with Product Discovery?

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than a two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

What's up with LinkedIn culture? Is it all about genuine human connection or a numbers game of collecting connections?

Let's test something (I'm a PM after all):

Got any questions about starting or refining your Product Discovery methods? Drop them in the comments! Don't be afraid to ask.

And now, seasoned pros in Product Discovery, this is your call to action! Take a look at the questions in the comments and lend your expertise! Take some time to give back.

Remember, sharing is caring.

#productdiscovery #usercentricity #uxresearch

Go further together.
Let's not take drive and motivation for granted when we see it.

It remains the most important ingredient for great product teams.
And yet, it is not enough.

Look out for the rare combination of competence, self-awareness and motivation.

Imagine a product trio. A UX Designer, a PM and a tech lead.

1️⃣ Competence
Clear cross-functional expertise and an understanding how it can benefit the team. Red flags: dogmatism (e.g. "technically we must do it that way").

2️⃣ Self-Awareness
Understanding of where the own area of competence ends. And where others might be able to fill in the gap. Advanced: Awareness of which character traits might impede the trio to run smoothly.
 
3️⃣ Motivation
While it is okay to be motivated by different things, all three must be motivated by building a high-performance team that ships solutions to user problems frequently.

I'm obsessed with what makes high-performing product teams.
Happy to learn always. Any tactical exercises  you run with team to surface areas of improvement?

Most important factor when choosing where to work might be looking at the questions being asked.

Are they complex, fuzzy or not even questions at all?
The quality of questions being asked influences our decision making. And it will infect yours too.

So listen carefully to the Qs instead of the As.

"How do we measure success?"
Such an elegant question. Simple, easy to understand but more importantly :
It frames the response in a pretty tight perimeter.

"We are optimistic and have good confidence that our launch is going to be great success. Or projections tell us ...."

Let me stop you right there. 
By the way the question was phrased we immediately know that the response was flawed.
Not in the perimeter.

If the company you are interviewing for or trying to partner with asks tight questions, clear questions on different levels of abstraction ... then you might just have a keeper.

Having no support and customer success team to save costs is not called self-service. It's called lazy. 

Building a self-serve product is not cheap.
Having manual onboarding and CS teams can be better.

Self-service is not always worth it.
But if you believe you should build a self-service product, do it with INTENTION.

Let's not be lazy and build with intention.

--------
I post 5x a week here in an attempt to get 1000 companies to iterate weekly.
I'm at 11/1000. Which is one more than a two weeks ago.
Follow along to see if I make it before turning 90 - and shoot me a message if you need a little help to get your Discovery rolling.

#productmanagement #productdiscovery #uxresearch

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