Senior IC Product folks (IC 7+) at the top companies have an incredible ability to move between complex product problems in different domains and land impact in short amounts of time. They exhibit high levels of product thinking in addition to organizational savvy in execution.

People with strong product thinking capabilities across levels (IC5 - IC8) are not just highly desired within the companies they currently work at, but are coveted by companies across the tech industry.

In order to expand your product thinking, you need to go broad and think about a lot of products/markets from first principles. The challenge that people face is that they only get to work on only 1 or 2 products every few years and become fully immersed in that space. They put in the effort to broaden their product thinking only when they are looking for new jobs. That is already too little, too late!

This course will help people Uplevel Product Thinking Skills for digital products in a short amount of time.

The unique approach I will be taking is:

1. Break down digital technology products into 12 themes & ~50 markets / product types.

2. Demonstrate how to think about product problems in those themes and markets/product types

3. Leverage 30 min interview styles questions to help people practice product thinking across markets.

Theme 1: Entertain, Educate and connect people!

- Media - By Studios: Netflix, Disney, HBO, CBS, Peacock, YouTube TV…

- Media - Traditional Publishers: NTY, Economist, WSJ, Yahoo

- Media - Music / Podcasts / Audio Books: Spotify, Itunes, Podcast, Audible

- Media - By Creators: IG Reels, TikTok, YouTube, Snap, IG/WhatsApp Channels

- Media - By Community: Reddit, FB Public Groups, LinkedIn

- Media - By Friends & Family: FB Feed / Stories, IG Stories, WhatsApp Status

Theme 2: The middlemen making connections!

- Marketplaces - Local: Yelp, ZocDoc, Thumbtack, OpenTable, Tripadvisor,

- Marketplaces - Ecommerce: Ebay, FB Marketplace, Etsy

- Marketplaces - Real Estate: RedFin, Zillow

- Marketplaces - Short Term Rentals: AirBnB, VRBO, ..

- Marketplaces - Transportation: Uber, Uber Freight, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart

- Marketplaces - Travel: Kayak, Expedia, Hotels.com

- Marketplaces - Jobs: Upwork, LinkedIn, Indeed,

- Marketplaces - Dating: Tinder, Match, Bumble, …

Theme 3: Makes it easy to spend money!

- Ecommerce - Everything: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco

- Ecommerce - Local: DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart, Amazon, Walmart..

- Ecommerce Verticals: United, Marriott, BestBuy, HomeDepot, HelloFresh / Blue Apron, Chewy,

Theme 4: Always On Connection to People!

- Communication - Private: WhatsApp, iMessage, Messenger, IG Direct, Snap, Linkedin, X, Telegram

- Communication - Large Group: Slack, Discord, Microsoft, Google, Workplace, WhatsApp, Telegram

Theme 5: Do More With Less!

- Productivity - Personal: Notion, Coda, DropBox, TaskList Apps, Grammarly,

- Productivity - Enterprise: DropBox, Box, Google bundle, Microsoft 365, Atlassian,

- Productivity - No/Low Code Tools: Zapier, Airtable

Theme 6: Amplifying And/Or Replacing Humans on Some Tasks!

- Gen AI - Business Agents: TBD

- Gen AI - Consumer Agents: TBD

- Gen AI - Creator Agents & Tools: TBD

Theme 7: Enhancing world and How we interact with it!

- AR: Assistants, Spatial computing 

- VR: Games, Experiences, Communication & community

Theme 8: Portal to the Internet!

- Consumer Hardware: laptops, phone, watch, glasses, health trackers, AR/VR

- Consumer Platforms - Operating Systems: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android,

- Consumer Platforms - Browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Arc

- Search: Google, Microsoft, Perplexity, YouTube, TikTok, ..

Theme 9: Pays the bills for the free stuff!

- Advertising - General: Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, YouTube, TikTok, Snap,

- Advertising - Vertical: Yelp, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash, Expedia, Kayak, LinkedIn

Theme 10: Makes it easy(ier) to make money

- Ecommerce Logistics: Fulfillment by Amazon, Shopify Fulfillment, Flexport, Uber Freight

- Ecommerce Dev & Marketing: Shopify, Meta Pages / Shops,

- Business Website & Marketing: Yelp, FB Pages, WhatsApp Business Accounts, Wik, Squarespace ..

- Business - HR / Finance: Intuit, Service Now, ADP, Zenefits, Workday,

- Business - Marketing/Sales: Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, SAP, Oracle, Marketo, Mailchimp, LinkedIn

Theme 11: Moves, Stores and Invests Money!

- Payments - Dev Platforms: Stripe, Paypal, Adyen, Shopify Pay, Bolt

- Payments - Peer to Peer: Venmo, Zelle, Paypal

- Finance - Banking & Credit: Wells Fargo, First Republic, Citi, Mercury, Monzo, Nubank

- Finance - Investments: Charles Schwab, E*Trade, Fidelity, Robinhood, Coinbase

Theme 12: Build On Top Of Others!

- Developer Platforms - Infrastructure: AWS, Google Cloud, Azure,

- Developer Platforms - Tools: Cloudflare, Twilio, statsig, Datadog, Splunk, Okta, Stripe

- Design Platforms: Adobe, Figma, Canva

Who is this course for:

This course is going to help you:

- No matter how many years of product experience you have. IC, Manager, Dir, Sr. Dir, VP

- What function you serve in product org. PM, Eng, Design, DS, UXR, PMM etc.

- What ever company you currently work at in the product landscape