We all want real advice on how to grow a career, right? Meet this week’s guest, Laura Schaffer, Vice President of Growth at DigitalOcean. Laura got her start in sales, and now leads a cross-functional team that includes Growth R&D and Marketing. Prior to DigitalOcean, she built Growth and Product teams at companies like Twilio, Amplitude, and Bandwidth, bringing a depth of experience in product-led growth and experimentation. In conversation with host Shannon Peavey, Laura offers her perspective on making your mark as a product manager, and talks about the power of spending time on validation and fast-fail experimentation.
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message
01:48 How a sales job lead to a growth career
06:50 North Star metrics for the win
09:03 How PLG work WITH, not INSTEAD of sales
10:00 Bringing sales “snacks” to yield a “buffet”
18:34 Validation doesn’t have to mean A/B testing
24:00 Experiment fast - and often
27:00 Big wins can come from small changes
30:00 How is product management changing?
33:00 Make time for AI
📚Resources:
Reforgehttps://www.reforge.com/
DigitalOceanhttps://www.digitalocean.com/
Amplitudehttps://amplitude.com/
Bandwidthhttps://www.bandwidth.com/
Twilio
🌟 Where to find Laura:
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraschaffer/
🙋🏻♀️Where to find Women in Product:
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-in-product/posts/
Website https://womenpm.org/
Join the Community https://womenpm.org/wip-community/