A message about mentoring

I'm passionate about mentoring & think it is a high leverage activity for product managers as they develop in their careers. I mentored 76 people in Q1 2022 but have realised I don't scale so am working with a buddy to match mentors & mentees. Sign up here to be a mentor, mentee or both!

About this Episode

An interview with Sophia Höfling. Sophia is a former Head of Product at Babbel and now co-founder and Head of Product at Saiga, a Berlin-based productivity startup where they're aiming to save people from life admin. Sophia's passionate about life-centred design and collaborative product discovery.

We talk about a lot, including:

• The mission behind Saiga and how they have started with a Wizard of Oz product as they try to work out the most important problems to solve
• The tricky transition from established product companies to new startup foundership and having to do everything yourself
• The concept of life-centred design and why we can't just listen to users but have to consider the holistic impact of our products on all stakeholders
• What to do when your customers don't care about the ethical merits of your product but you want to do the right thing anyway
• The importance of collaborative, rather than cooperative, product discovery and how to include people from outside the classic product trio in your discovery journey
• Whether doing all this discovery slows you down, whether that's OK and the importance of timeboxing discovery efforts to avoid getting caught in an infinite loop
• How to get buy-in for product discovery from sceptical leadership and convince them of the benefits of a good discovery flywheel

And much more!

Sophia's on Medium

Check out Sophia's articles on Medium, including

It’s time we move to life-centered product development

The importance of collaboration in product discovery (and how to get it right)

Contact Sophia

If you want to catch up with Sophia, you can reach out to her on LinkedIn.

Related episodes you should like: