Product for Product Management

On this episode of the Product for Product Podcast, we’re joined by Ran Erez, product leader, podcaster, and founder of Re.focus, for a highly practical episode on competitive intelligence tools and tactics for product managers.With over a decade in B2B, B2C, and cyber (including three years on the mobile pod at monday.com), Ran has seen the same pattern repeat: teams either copy competitors blindly or ignore them entirely. He argues there’s a better way, treating competitors as a massive time‑saver for validation and strategy, without letting them drive your roadmap.

Join Matt and Moshe as they explore with Ran:
How Ran went from QA manager in cyber to owning product and driving millions in sales
The biggest mistakes PMs make with competition: copying feature lists, believing marketing at face value, and doing “one‑and‑done” competitive intelligence 
Why focusing only on direct “budget competitors” misses the real job‑to‑be‑done
The Competitive Intelligence Pyramid:Feature level – how others solve the same problem
Product capabilities – pros/cons at whole‑product level
Messaging – how value is communicated and evolves
Product strategy – what bets they’re making
Company strategy – where the business is actually heading

Concrete methods and tools at each level, including:Finding real users of competitors through screeners, communities, and support/KB pages
Running “SUSHI” competitive user research: side‑by‑side tests of your product vs. theirs over time
Talking to integration partners and freelancers who implement multiple competing tools
Using Wayback Machine, screenshots + Gemini, and Perplexity to track how sites, pricing, and positioning change
Mining public earnings calls for strategic signals in the language leaders use

How to systematically identify your true competitors (and what it means if you can’t find any)
Treating CI as a muscle: what “small start” looks like and how to keep learning over time
Using competitors to validate your ideas by putting their products in front of your users
And much more!
Want to connect with Ran or learn more?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ran-erez
You can also connect with us and find more episodes:
Product for Product Podcast: http://linkedin.com/company/product-for-product-podcast
Matt Green: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgreenproduct
Moshe Mikanovsky: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikanovsky
Note: Any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.

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We’re joined by Thomas Hartmann, co‑founder of Product Masterclass and co-author of From Project to Product Mode: A Game Plan to Unlock Scalability for B2B Software Products, for a candid look at why so many B2B software companies get stuck in “project mode” and what it really takes to become product‑led.Thomas shares his journey from entrepreneurship and lean startup experiments in San Francisco and Munich and to working with large organizations trying (and often failing) to scale. 

Over years of coaching and transformation work, he and his co‑founder and co-author, Sebastian Borggrewe, saw the same pattern: teams with a strong product mindset trapped inside companies that still behave like project shops, where sales and single big clients dictate the roadmap and success is measured by project delivery, not product outcomes.

Join Matt and Moshe as they explore with Thomas:
- How to recognize whether your company is truly in project mode or product mode

- Why B2B software behaves very differently from B2C when making this shift

- The “egg” analogy: product teams as the yolk, surrounded by an environment (the egg white) that often doesn’t care how things get built, only that they ship

- The seven areas that fundamentally differ between project and product companies: segmentation, pricing, discovery, prioritization, engineering, configuration, and product management structures

- Concrete signs of project mode: sales defining what to build, time‑and‑materials pricing, no real discovery, prioritization driven by the loudest customer, and PMs blocked from end users

- Why not every company needs to become a product company, and why it’s a strategic choice, not dogma

- A step‑by‑step path to move from project to product mode:

- Step 1: Align leadership and name the current state (you are a project org)

- Step 2: Find alignment among all product leaders on what to change

- Step 3: Prioritize which of the seven areas to tackle first (you can’t fix everything at once)

- Step 4: Enable the workforce and shift the surrounding “egg white,” not just product team skills

- How AI fits differently in project vs. product organizations: as a delivery accelerator in one, and as a strategic validation and discovery tool in the other

- Why tools like Claude Code can help PMs brainstorm, validate, and visualize, but won’t fix a broken mindset or culture

- And much more!

Want to learn more or work with Thomas?
- Product Masterclass: https://www.product-masterclas...
- From Project to Product Mode book: https://www.product-masterclass.com/book-project-to-product
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/th...

You can also connect with us and find more episodes:
- Product for Product Podcast:

http://linkedin.com/company/pr...
- Matt Green:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ma...
- Moshe Mikanovsky:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mik...
Note: Any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.

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We’re excited to welcome Lea Khasidi, product management freelancer, founder and CEO of MaPott, and soon‑to‑be author, for a powerful conversation on gender-based data analytics for product managers.

Lea shares her journey from intelligence work in the IDF, through product roles in EdTech, cybersecurity, and beyond, to founding a health management app for women with chronic conditions. Along the way, one pivotal discovery while consolidating four cybersecurity platforms, seeing men and women use the same filtering feature in completely different ways, sparked her deep focus on how gender shapes behavior in our products, especially in B2B contexts where it’s often ignored.

Join Matt and Moshe as they explore with Lea:How a real-world analytics puzzle revealed stark gender differences in workflow, and changed how she thinks about usage data

The three pillars of context we can’t change (who users are, how they act, where they work) and the one we can: what we give them in the product

How “hacks” and workarounds used by different genders can hint at your next features

A practical system for existing products: using analytics to segment by gender, spotting behavioral differences, then following up with observation and interviews

How to approach gender representation when validating new products, and why balanced samples matter even for seemingly “neutral” tools

Ways to lean on existing research about gender patterns in your domain (health, education, finance, etc.) instead of guessing from scratch

Why early-stage startups should ship faster and learn from usage, while mature products might rely more on A/B tests and targeted outreach

The risk of building solely from our own biases and assumptions, and why gender should be on the PM checklist, even if it’s not always the first lens

Lea’s upcoming book on gender-based analytics for PMs

One piece of advice she has for founders learning to trust their insight while staying open to the data

And much more!

Want to connect with Lea or learn more?LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lea-khasidi/ 
Website: https://leakhasidi.com
MaPott: https://www.ma-pott.com/

You can also connect with us and find more episodes:Product for Product Podcast: http://linkedin.com/company/product-for-product-podcast

Matt Green: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgreenproduct/

Moshe Mikanovsky: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikanovsky

Note: Any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.

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We’re delighted to welcome Radhika Dutt, product leader, founder, and author of Radical Product Thinking, for a deep dive into her newest work: the OHLA (formerly OHL) Toolkit.

 In this episode, Radhika joins Matt and Moshe to challenge how product teams set goals, measure progress, and use frameworks, proposing a puzzle‑driven alternative to traditional OKRs and “framework-following” culture.

Drawing from her journey from electrical engineering and startups at MIT, through painful “product diseases” like Hero Syndrome and Obsessive Sales Disorder, Radhika shares why recipes and templates alone don’t create real progress. Instead, she introduces OHLA as a lightweight but powerful way to cultivate a Jedi mindset, one that keeps teams grounded in first principles, context, and learning rather than chasing vanity metrics and rigid targets.

Join Matt, Moshe, and Radhika as they explore:Radhika’s path from engineering and founding to Radical Product Thinking and now the OHLA Toolkit

Why classic goal‑setting and OKRs often backfire, creating “alibi progress,” outdated goals, and incentives to hide bad news

OHLA in practice:

Observe – what’s really happening in your product, team, or market

Hypothesize – what might explain it and how you’ll test those ideas

Learn – what the results actually tell you

Adapt – how you’ll change course based on evidence

“Puzzle setting” vs goal setting: defining puzzles with Observation, Open Questions, and an Objective summary to stay longer in the problem space

How OHLA complements design thinking by forcing teams to remain curious and uncomfortable before jumping into solutions

Practical stories, from maritime platforms to enterprise teams, where puzzle thinking led to very different solutions than OKR‑driven targets

How managers can shift conversations from “Did we hit the number?” to “How well did it work? What did we learn? What will we try next?”

A realistic path to transition: starting with your own puzzle, then introducing OHLA within your immediate sphere of influence

And much more!

Want to explore the OHLA Toolkit or connect with Radhika?OHLA Toolkit: https://www.radicalproduct.com/toolkit/#OHLToolkit

Radical Product site: https://www.radicalproduct.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhikadutt/

You can also connect with us and find more episodes:Product for Product Podcast: http://linkedin.com/company/product-for-product-podcast

Matt Green: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgreenproduct/

Moshe Mikanovsky: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikanovsky

Note: Any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.

Please leave us a review and feedback ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We’re wrapping up our AI Tools series with a special episode featuring just the two of us—Matt and Moshe—looking back at what we really learned (and where we’re still confused) about AI in product management.

Across this conversation, we revisit the core themes that emerged with our guests and in our own experiments: from “vibe coding” and no‑code builders, to LLM assistants, enterprise privacy, agentic workflows, and the evolving role of the product manager. 

We share candid stories of using tools like Google Stitch, Figma/Figma Make, FlutterFlow, Base44, and others to design and prototype a real mobile app; what worked, what broke, and why credits, pricing, and model limits matter far more than the glossy demos suggest.

Join Matt and Moshe as they explore:
How our AI Tools series evolved, from “let’s review tools” to “AI is not one thing, it’s many different problem spaces”
Why “vibe coding” is a misleading umbrella term, and how it means something different to devs, PMs, and designers
Lessons from using AI for design and prototyping: inconsistent outputs, beta‑stage rough edges, and the pain of credit-based models
Build vs. buy for AI: integrating foundation models vs. building your own, and what that means for pricing, UX, and reliability
Enterprise realities: privacy, security, and why tools like Copilot/Gemini have such an advantage where data and IT policies matter
How conversations with our guests (Sani, Eva, Elena, Stav, Yaron, Marcos and Adir) shifted our thinking about workflows, orchestration, and agents
The future of agent-to-agent interactions: what happens when AIs negotiate purchases and workflows with minimal human prompts
Why first principles and business outcomes still matter more than any single AI tool
How the PM role is changing: less tool‑chasing, more orchestration, strategy, and clarity about what problem we’re actually solving
What topics we’d tackle next, like pricing, packaging, and credit models for AI products, and how this series is shaping our own careers
And much more!
You can connect with us and keep following what comes after this AI Tools series:
Product for Product Podcast: 
http://linkedin.com/company/product-for-product-podcast
Matt Green: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgreenproduct/
Moshe Mikanovsky: 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikanovsky
Note: Any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.

Please leave us a review and feedback ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️