Ep 41: Martin Henk
Product management principles & work-life lessons from building a Unicorn
Martin Henk is the CTO and Co-Founder of Eventornado, a software solution for organising online hackathons and challenges. Martin is also a partner and angel investor at Honey Badger Capital, however most people will recognise him as one of the Co-Founders of an Estonian Unicorn, Pipedrive.
In this episode we do a deep-dive into product management, covering everything from best practices and building efficient product teams to common mistakes. We also talk about life after a unicorn exit, the current projects Martin is engaged in as well as overall work-life balance throughout different stages of one's career.
CLICK one of the links below to listen to the episode
The topics covered in this episode (with Timestamps)
🔈 [01:45] - ON PRODUCT AND WHY PIPEDRIVE WAS SO SUCCESSFUL
Creating a new user persona
Focusing obsessively with the main end-user
Super narrow product focus
Saying no to immediate distractionary opportunities
Unfair advantage from founders with industry experience
🔈 [09:30] - ON BUILDING YOUR FIRST PRODUCT TEAM
Keep it simple, keep it small
Avoiding premature scaling
Focusing on customer feedback for PM
Turning chaos into discipline
Optimal product team size
Enabling complete focus on the mission
Cutting meetings
🔈 [13:50] - ON PRODUCT MISTAKES AND MEASURING PROGRESS
Introducing too advanced procedures
Scaling up technology prematurely
Avoiding vanity metrics
Focus on result-based metrics
A/B testing
🔈 [17:05] - ON PRODUCT MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
Tailoring the process to specific company
Keeping product focus
Regularly communicate vision
Best product examples
🔈 [24:00] - ON LIFE AFTER UNICORN EXIT
Resting & investing
Motivation to jump back in startups
🔈 [27:00] - ON GREEN INVESTING
Investing in Estonian forests
Looking for ways to monetize without cutting down
🔈 [30:20] - ON EVENTORNADO MARKET OPPORTUNITY
Managing and organising hackathons as a challenge
100s of hackathons daily around the world
Future of hackathons
🔈 [33:55] - ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP LESSONS FROM PIPEDRIVE
Maintaining focus
Knowing the right company size for yourself
Evaluating if you need outside funding or not
🔈 [39:00] - ADVICE TO YOUR 20 YEAR OLD SELF
How to approach work-life balance (hint - it’s overrated)
Taking care of your health
To reach out to Martin use:
Website: https://badger.ee
Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/
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