Katie Reilly: Winning is when all boats rise

Katie Reilly, long-time product management leader, describes how product management is the glue between technology, sales, and go-to-market and how any organization can benefit from product management. Katie and Tom discuss how the discipline of product management is needed to make sure a product meets the needs of the market. Tom asks Katie how she applies product management to her own life. Katie tells how winning is when all boats rise - helping others achieve outcomes and how improving the offering of a business leads to better outcomes for the business. Tom and Katie talk about how parenting is like running a start-up. Katie talks about listening first and making a decision based upon those inputs. Katie tells why she loves product management, how it's central to a business but always has new challenges, and how having a direct impact on the business is important to her. Tom and Katie talk about kids and sports and having fun. Tom suggested not making kids play sports if they are not good at sports. Katie tells how series A and series B companies are where she has the most fun. Tom asks Katie about how to close the gap between founder vision and what customers want to do. Katie talks about prioritization and creating business cases for development, building a customer success team to manage inbound requests and to do outbound support and research, how she assess product managers, how she helps an organization move from web to mobile, and why knowing why something needs to be done is so important. Finally, Katie tells how she wishes she had thought bigger with her start-ups even though things worked out great.