March in 2021 has looked a lot like March 2020. Covid cases are on the rise and everyone is concerned if and when another lockdown is going to be enforced.
In times like these, we would like to use this platform and relay the same messages all of us have becomes used to over the course of last year -
Please wear a mask
Don't touch your face
Wash your hands for at least 20secs as often as possible.
We hope you, your family and your friends are safe during these times as well.
And since we did not get to wish everyone earlier, Happy Women's day!
The rare IPO
I am sure you’ve seen this particular GIF before. It was trending on all social media platforms a few weeks ago.
In case you are not aware, this is Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble. Bumble is a US company, which operate a popular dating app that goes by the same name. And they recently went public.
What makes this IPO “rare”?
Of the 559 companies that have gone public in the US over the past 12 months, only two, aside from Bumble, were founded by women.
Only 8 IPOs from last year (again US) had a female CEO
Over 70% of Bumble’s board is women, not a common sight.
Bumble’s IPO catapulted Wolfe’s net worth to 1.5 Billion - a self-made billionaire. Of the 500 wealthiest people in the world, self-made women account for <5%, per Bloomberg.
At 31, Wolfe is also the youngest woman to take a company public.
Whew. That was some IPO.
“Hopefully this will not be a rare headline ” said the newly minted billionaire in one of her recent interviews.
Have you heard about NFTs?
Q1: Have you seen this painting before?
Its name is Salvator Mundi. You might not know the name but this painting by Leonardo da Vinci is the most expensive piece of art ($450 million) in the world.
Take a minute. Spend some time to explore the creative genius.
Q2: Do you know that is the third most expensive piece of art (by a living artist)?
Sold recently for $70 million, is Mike Winkelmann’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days.”
I am not daring to compare Da Vinci and Mike Winkelmann. What I want to stress is that this is digital art.
Yes, a digital photo was sold for $70 million.
No physical copy of this art exists. This is it! This image in your inbox is worth that much.
Did that blow your mind? If not, then it should. And all of this was possible because of blockchain. More specifically, Non-fungible token or NFTs.
Honestly, this whole thing is very difficult to wrap our head around.
And I cannot attempt to explain the concept of NFTs in this short newsletter. So you can read this excerpt from Verge and if you’re still curious, click on that button to view the entire article.
“Non-fungible” more or less means that it’s unique and can’t be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin is fungible — trade one for another bitcoin, and you’ll have exactly the same thing. A one-of-a-kind trading card, however, is non-fungible. If you traded it for a different card, you’d have something completely different.
Top 100 product Managers in India
Product Tank Pune is partnering with Forbes(through GMI) for the “Top 100 product managers in India” Survey.
This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about your strengths and weaknesses. The best PMs will get a chance to feature in Forbes and a rare certificate.
If you would like to participate in the first-ever great Product Manager survey in India, please submit this form:
Upcoming Events
Coming back to real-world events, which happen in the physical world, ProductTank Pune is organising a meetup soon.
But that depends on how covid progresses. Let’s hope for the best. Till then there are two upcoming online meetups
Fire-side chat with Ameesha Prabhu
Ameesha Prabhu has over 28 years of Indian retail experience in lifestyle, department & speciality stores, brands & value retail formats including TRRAIN.
TRRAIN (Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India) is a public charitable trust with an aim to be a catalyst for change in the retail industry, with a vision to empower people in retail.Product Tank April - Product Management with Mindbody
Later in April, we have an event featuring a few familiar faces from Product Tank Pune Community. Naveen and Rupal along with the rest of the Product team at MindBody will talk on various topics related to the wellness industry to managing products while being part of the offshore team followed by a workshop.
What tools do you use to capture customer feedback?
Customer Feedback is like bread for product managers. We strongly believe - You are not a product manager if you are not constantly collecting customer feedback.
One of our community members, Shafique asked the following question on our WhatsApp group -
Which is a good product management tool, good for feeding user feedback/customer research and product roadmap creation and fits in the budget of a start-up?
There were a lot of opinions and names of various tools were mentioned.
One such response -
I have found customer journey maps maintained on a physical wall or miro to be very useful to capture all aspects of feedback at different stages: motivations, goals, touchpoints, frustrations, delights, opportunities, quotes.
It can easily feed into the roadmap from there. This is provided that you are doing an active research.
For passive research where you want to capture feedback or customer satisfaction online at various interactions. I am using hotjar lately. It is also provides with video recordings of every user session so you can analyse the heatmaps, frustrations etc
Resources on internet
Mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world.
Mental models are really effective given that they are applied in the right context.
Paras Chopra, founder and chairman of Wingify, has posted his collection of mental models. Although these were originally created for founders, we feel these apply to members of our community too - people creating products.
You can use the long weekend to go through this list of brilliantly defined mental models.
Jobs
This month, we have some amazing job opportunities. Click on the link to find the right fit for you.
Stay connected
This newsletter is just one of many places you can find ProductTank Pune.
For example, our Whatsapp group is where you can find all the unfiltered conversations there.
Our Meetup page will help you stay on top of all the amazing events we conduct all around the year.
That’s it.
Thanks for reading. If you find this month’s edition useful, please share it with your friends and families.