A short ppt about some of the greatest product people ever.

1. A Few Lessons from the Greatest
Product Managers of all Time

2. What this is
• As a “product guy” in tech for the past ~15 years, I love great products and admire people who
make great products… this ppt is about some of those people
• As a product management professional I am constantly thinking about how to make better
products… this document started out as a way to distill and capture some of the best practices /
patterns that make some product managers great
• I’ve focused this list on “makers of great products” at the exclusion of many brilliant
engineers, scientists and business leaders who are not uniquely Product People
• In my own view, the best Product People are leaders who uniquely synthesize:
• Applied innovative thinking and making (engineering)
• Deep and perceptive market understanding (marketing)
• Intuitive connection with customer needs (sales)

3. Iconic Product People
Thomas J. Watson Good product design is good business
Henry Ford Good products won’t saturate the market
Steve Jobs Decide what not to do
Bill Gates Great products can create new markets
Ferdinand Porsche Great product can stir emotions
Kelly Johnson Protect the product team
William Harley Great function outlasts fashion
Barney Roos Iterate to exceed product expectations
Leo Fender Simple products rock!
Contemporary Product Visionaries
Elon Musk Have conviction in product vision
Larry Ellison Compete with passion
Jeff Bezos Focus manically on product growth
Larry Page Great product makes the hard stuff seem easy
James Dyson Make products you’d want your name on
Product Visionaries You May Not Know About
Marissa Meyer Enforce product vision
Jack Dorsey Identify disruptive opportunity
Thomas Kurian Use your products
Tony Hsieh Great customer service is a product itself
Lessons from product people who changed the world

4. Good design is good business.
-Thomas J. Watson Jr.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only
willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of
devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.
-Thomas J. Watson Jr.
Good product design is good business

5. Yes, there is some debate about whether Ford actually said it, but the underlying wisdom for product management stands.
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking. - Ford
Good products won’t saturate the market
1st job is to make good product. - Ford
A market is never saturated with good product, but it is very
quickly saturated with a bad one. - Ford

6. Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what
to do… it’s true for companies and it’s true for products.
-Jobs
if you focus on making really great products, then the
profits will follow. -Jobs
Decide what not to do
After retaking the failing company (90 days from
insolvency) in 1997, Jobs slashed the product lines
to focus on 4 products: a consumer desktop
product, a consumer portable product, a
professional desktop product, and a professional
portable product. By 1998 Apple had turned a
$300m profit and was on the way toward becoming
the highest valued corporation in history.

7. “When Paul showed me that magazine, there was no such
thing as a software industry,” Gates recalled. “We had the
insight that you could create one. And we did.”
In 1982 IBM asked Bill Gates to produce an operating system
for its personal computers, not having one he licensed QDOS
from Tim Patterson for $50k, modified it, renamed it MS-DOS,
and resold it to IBM.
IBM thought all potential revenue was in hardware but Gates
knew better and negotiated the deal with IBM to allow
Microsoft to market the operating system separately. Gates
became the wealthiest person ever.
Great products can create new markets

8. Great product can stir emotion
“A formally harmonious product needs no decoration; it
should be elevated through pure form”
-Porsche

9. SR-71
• 18 months from contract to prototype
• 30+ years as fastest and highest flying
Protect the product team
Legendary leader of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, he
famously insulated his teams from politics and any
unnecessary bureaucratic distractions. His leadership
contributed to over 30 aircraft including the P-38,
Constellation, F-80, U-2, SR-71, and F117 stealth fighter.

10. 1909 2009
Great function outlasts fashion
William Harley was the chief product engineer for Harley
Davidson Motor Company, more than 100 years later, the
V-Twin remains the most iconic engine design in
motorcycle history.

11. (in product engineering) “…don’t be afraid of making
mistakes, but be awfully afraid of being afraid.”
-Roos
Lead product designer
of the iconic Willys Jeep
and head engineer for
the Studebaker and
Chrysler inline
engines, Barney Roos
had a strong reputation
for delivering
focused, iterative
improvements to early
prototypes.
Iterate to exceed product expectations

12. Fender could look at something
and immediately discern the
simplest method of whatever had
to be done
-Les Paul
…rock and roll as we know it could
not exist without Leo Fender
-Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The design of each element should
be thought out in order to be easy
to make and easy to repair
-Leo Fender
Simple products rock!

13. Iconic Product People
Thomas J. Watson Good product design is good business
Henry Ford Good products won’t saturate the market
Steve Jobs Decide what not to do
Bill Gates Great products can create new markets
Ferdinand Porsche Great product can stir emotions
Kelly Johnson Protect the product team
William Harley Great function outlasts fashion
Barney Roos Iterate to exceed product expectations
Leo Fender Simple products rock!
Contemporary Product Visionaries
Elon Musk Have conviction in product vision
Larry Ellison Compete with passion
Jeff Bezos Focus manically on product growth
Larry Page Great product makes the hard stuff seem easy
James Dyson Make products you’d want your name on
Product Visionaries You May Not Know About
Marissa Meyer Enforce product vision
Jack Dorsey Identify disruptive opportunity
Thomas Kurian Use your products
Tony Hsieh Great customer service is a product itself
Lessons from product people who changed the world

14. “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against
you, you should still do it.” -Musk
“Starting and growing a business is as much about the
innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as
it is about the product they sell.” -Musk
At a young age he saw 3 things that would change humanity in his lifetime:
1) the internet, 2) sustainable transportation, and 3) space exploration. So,
he set went and built products for the future he saw.
Have conviction in product vision

15. “the only way to get ahead is
to find errors in conventional
wisdom”
- Ellison
"I enjoy the competition and
the process of learning as we
compete. The whole thing is
just fascinating. I don't know
what I'll do when I retire. When
I go sailing, I look around ...
anyone want to race?
I just love competing as
opposed to just going out and
watching the sunset.“
-Ellison
Compete with Passion

16. "Your margin is my opportunity.” -Bezos
“There are two kinds of
companies, those that work to raise
prices and those that work to lower
them”
-Bezos
Focus manically on product growth

17. We are trying to find user needs
that aren’t being met at all
-Larry Page
Great product makes the
hard stuff seem easy

18. “The trick is not to keep looking over
your shoulder at others, or to worry,
even as you begin a project, that it is not
going to be the best possible example of
its kind. As long as it works, and it is
exciting, people will follow you.”
-Dyson
I am a creator of products, a builder of things,
and my name appears on them.
-Dyson
Make products you’d want your name on
People buy products if they’re better.
-Dyson

19. Iconic Product People
Thomas J. Watson Good product design is good business
Henry Ford Good products won’t saturate the market
Steve Jobs Decide what not to do
Bill Gates Great products can create new markets
Ferdinand Porsche Great product can stir emotions
Kelly Johnson Protect the product team
William Harley Great function outlasts fashion
Barney Roos Iterate to exceed product expectations
Leo Fender Simple products rock!
Contemporary Product Visionaries
Elon Musk Have conviction in product vision
Larry Ellison Compete with passion
Jeff Bezos Focus manically on product growth
Larry Page Great product makes the hard stuff seem easy
James Dyson Make products you’d want your name on
Product Visionaries You May Not Know About
Marissa Meyer Enforce product vision
Jack Dorsey Identify disruptive opportunity
Thomas Kurian Use your products
Tony Hsieh Great customer service is a product itself
Lessons from product people who changed the world

20. Enforce the
product vision
As a Google product manager and later executive, Mayer was credited with enforcing
a rigid vision across Google's user-facing properties; she became the linchpin of
integration between products, and she kept tabs on every engineer and designer,
high and low," David Auerbach writes in Slate. "She is also accused of being
stubbornly single-minded, ignoring others' opinions, disrespecting seniority and
prestige, and being more focused on vision than on necessary compromises or
Yahoo's quarterly earnings.“
Marissa Mayer became the youngest woman to ever be listed on Fortune’s 50 Most
Powerful Women list, and the only person to appear in all three of Fortune lists in a
single year (Business Person of the Year, Most Powerful Women, 40 under 40)

21. At 13yo Jack Dorsey was already writing code for his startup, as
the first CEO of Twitter he captured a market that nobody else
knew existed.
As founder and CEO of Square, he’s now aiming to revolutionize
the banking payments industry – a market he was drawn to
precisely because it looked ripe for disruption.
Identify disruptive opportunity

22. The highest paid product executive in the
world (Fortune), for good reasons… a
relentless focus on consuming his own
technologies as part of a cohesive pre-
engineered solution.
Thomas Kurian has a reputation for hyper
attention to product details, guiding product
decisions no matter how small.
He started as a Product Manager himself,
putting Oracle’s middleware on the map
before eventually buying BEA, Sun and taking
on all Oracle’s product responsibilities.
In the $180b+ enterprise software industry,
there is not a more influential product leader.
Use your products

23. Great customer service is itself a product
Famously focused on customer service, Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness” was the #1 New York Times best
seller where he links profits to great customer service and great customer service to happy employees…sounds
simple but he’s embedded that culture deep into his company, and customers are rewarding his vision with
loyalty and profits. More than any other, his product is customer service itself.

24. Some final thoughts about great product managers
• 1/3rd of the people on this list had their own name on their product, as a product manager would
you put your name on yours?
• 80% of the people on this list had engineering or technical background, but that alone was not
sufficient, they all had relentless drive to deliver exceptional product experience.
• In compiling this list, common themes emerged from reading each product leader’s own advice:
• embrace and learn from failure
• be confident in being unconventional
• if you’re not encountering obstacles then you’re not innovating
• making is its own reward – but when you make great product, profits and markets will follow
• It’s not easy… great product management takes repeated efforts in the face of failure, and the
dedication and conviction to persist on your product vision when surrounded by doubters