Moves The Needle Academy

Assumption Busting for Product Managers

Roche

Target

Audible.com

Nike

Drew Falkman

As principal of Moves The Needle, Drew coaches product managers on innovation.

Reduce risk by learning to identify, prioritize, and mitigate potential risks before full scale development

Minimize market risk by crafting good assumptions

Learn hands-on tactics to use the data you have and get new data to support decision making

Increase confidence using data-driven decisions

Stay agile and pivot based on market evidence and evolving landscapes with rapid experimentation becoming standard OP

Test bold ideas with minimal resources

Product teams often get stuck focusing on outputs and predictable delivery (what and when am I building a thing) instead of outcomes (what will change as a result of building this thing). This leaves out the critical element of making sure you are building the right (most impactful) things in the right way. Jon's has 25+ years of experience in technology companies from CNN to Google, and has created this course to provide you with a comprehensive set of tools to help you develop impactful products by shifting from output-based thinking to outcome-based thinking. You will deepen your understanding of your customers and their needs as well as identifying and de-risking the different kinds of hypotheses built into your roadmap. You will also work to understand how your work contributes to your company's strategy. You will learn and apply frameworks to ensure your features solve user problems that drive business impact which connects all the way up to your company's goals. We will also help you develop successful products by understanding customer needs, identifying opportunities, managing risks, and creating value for customers. Using a combination of lectures, interactive hands-on exercises, and case studies from Airbnb, Dropbox, Zappos, and more, the course will focus on practical application and provide you with the skills and knowledge necessary to level up and apply these tools in real-world product management scenarios.

Move from feature factory to customer outcomes and drive impact in your business

Inside-out thinking is where you focus on what you are doing to your product. Outside-in thinking is where you focus on the outcomes that your product can achieve for your users.We'll explore the benefits of outside-in outside-in thinking and how to apply it to your job. We'll also discuss common traps to avoid and provide tips for success.

Outside-In vs Inside-Out thinking

Customer journey maps are a visual representation of the user's entire experience while trying to solve the problem your product addresses. In this module, you will learn how to create customer journey maps, identify pain points, and improve user experience, and end up with a first draft of a customer journey map for your product.

Customer Journey Mapping

The Confidence/Risk Matrix is a tool for managing risk and uncertainty in product development. In this module, you will learn how to create a Confidence/Risk Matrix, understand the difference between MVP and RAT, and make informed decisions that balance risk and reward so you can "build to learn" or "build to earn"

Confidence/Risk Matrix

Impact maps are a powerful tool for product managers to align product development with business goals and outcomes. You will create an impact map and review with your peers. Then we'll workshop so you can prioritize your efforts for maximum impact to the business and your career.

Impact Mapping

Course syllabus

Four two-hour live sessions where you will learn with a group of peers via framework overviews, case studies, group discussions and live instructor feedback.

Live Sessions

Key Exercises:<ul><li>Creating your own Customer Journey Map</li><li>Creating an Impact Map</li><li>Developing your Hypotheses</li><li>Quantifying your Impact Map</li><li>Assigning Risk to your Impact Map</li></ul>

Projects & Exercises

Course Structure

You're a senior product manager who wants to delivering outstanding impact and business value to your users and your business.

You're an early career PM and want to level up your career and understand how to deliver business impact.

You're a startup founder who wants to validate ideas and develop products that meet customer needs and create value for them and your biz.

Who this course is for:

What you’ll get out of this course

You will learn how to identify the most impactful opportunities using Impact Mapping and other framing techniques and shift from output orientation ("what are we building?") to outcome/impact orientation ("what will change as a result of building these things?")

Learn how to prioritize the most impactful opportunities to move the needle for your business

You will learn how to better understand users and the problem space they are working in through Journey Maps that are customized for Product Managers

Grow your user empathy and customer discovery skills

By making explicit the different hypotheses in your plan and identifying the riskiest ones, you will be able to quickly validate the riskiest assumptions and improve your outcomes.

Understand the risks and hypotheses built into your roadmap

By working through user outcomes and how they drive business outcomes, you will be able to clearly tie your features to user behavior that drives business results.

Understand how your features tie in to the company goals

The course is designed to provide you with practical experience applying these tools to real-world product management scenarios. You will build actual journey and impact maps for your actual users &amp; products.

Create actual artifacts for your products

You will benefit from an instructor who has seen product management done well and poorly in his career as a product leader and consultant. Learn best practices and traps to avoid from companies like Google, CNN, Ford, and numerous startups and midsize companies.

Learn from an industry expert with 25+ years of experience

By developing these skills, you can enhance your PM career prospects and become a more valuable member of your product teams.

Boost your career

Learn with and from our community of product leaders from companies like Google, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and ServiceNow both in the course and in our community Slack channel for class alumni.

Become a part of a community of impactful product leaders

Up-level your PM career by shifting your thinking from outputs to outcomes and ship features that deliver results for your company.

Jon Harmer

Product Management Leader

October Cohort

Cohort 9

If you are :﻿✔️ An aspiring entrepreneur who wants to build a world class technology product✔️ An existing founder who wants to maximize their runway✔️ A startup founder who is building a tech startup but lacks technical background✔️ A startup founder who wants to explore outsourcing This is the single most valuable resource for you. In my career spanning 17+ years I have been fortunate to have played the role of a startup founder who wants to build his MVP as well as of a technology consultant who works with startup founders to help them bring their startup dream to fruition. I have used this unique mix of experience from both sides of the table to assist multiple startups successfully traverse their 0 to 10 startup journey. I have now distilled all of this experience in to a concise and actionable learnings in the form of this course. This course is specifically built keeping in mind the needs of a new startup founder who if bogged down with huge amount of content telling them the theory of building their startup and MVP but does not provide them the tools and actionable items which they can start using immediately. Once you have completed this course you would have learned how to : 🏆 Clearly define a truly lean and minimal MVP.🏆 Get feedback from your ideal customer profile without needing to write a single like of code.🏆 Take key technical decisions about your product which have the potential to make-or-break your startup.🏆 A framework to identify the correct partners for you, be it hires or outsourcing agencies.🏆 Avoid common mistakes/gotchas that could end up as a huge drain of your time, money and effort.🏆 Have complete ownership over your IP while working with multiple third parties🏆 Actionable checklists, frameworks, templates and references to jumpstart your startup journey. I want you to immediately get to work towards building your startup MVP as soon as you finish this course. That is the guiding principal of how this course has been designed.

Jumpstart your startup journey by building your MVP the right way. 

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

The course will be conducted over a span of 2 days with 4 hours sessions on both the days.

Thursday and Friday

The next cohort goes live on Oct 3rd 2024 and will start at 8:AM EST

Oct 3, 2024

We will practice all that we learn, as we learn, in the form of a do-along case study. In this we take existing popular, complex startup product and go through the complete journey of building the MVP together.

Do-Along Case Study

Course schedule

Aspiring entrepreneurs who want to build a technology product by do not know where to start.

Existing startup founders, bootstrapped or funded, who want to maximize their runway.

Non technical founders who want to build, manage and scale a successful technology product.

Dreamers who are planning to build their startup soon.

Who is this course for

This course is much more than explanation of concepts and dos and donts. My goal is to equip you with tools that you can start using the very same day to start building your dream startup. I will provide you with actionable checklists, frameworks, legal templates and contacts.

Get actionable checklists, frameworks, legal templates and references to supercharge their startup product building journey

What used to take weeks can now be done in days (any many times hours) using the powers of GenAI. I will tell you how you can use AI tools to significantly speed up your MVP development without breaking the bank

Use GenAI to significantly speed up all aspects of MVP development

You will not have to wait for the final MVP to be built before you can get feedback from your target customers. I will teach you how you can build prototypes quickly so that you can collect valuable feedback quicker and course correct faster. Without writing a single line of code

Learn to get feedback on your idea without spending a single dollar on development

Converting ideas in your mind to actionable specs is an art that I have perfected over the last 17 years. I will teach how you too can build specs that are extremely cost and time efficient and will be loved by your designers, developers, contractors and you.

Convert ideas to actionable specs faster without ambiguity. Specs that your developers and partners will love.

A new founders journey is full of decisions, all of which can make or break the startup. I will teach you the framework using which you will maneuver decisions like which contractors to choose and how to hire your team making sure that you do not lose valuable resources and time.

Learn to Identify the correct partners to build your startup. Make informed decision on whether to hire devs or find agency.

Working with others is hard. Its even more challenging when you are a new fonder with not enough time and funding. I will simplify and codify the process for you so that you can ensure a smooth working relationship with partners while maintaining complete indemnity and onwership

Learn to avoid the common pitfalls when working with third parties, safeguard your IP and avoid unnecessary hiccups in your startup journey

MVP is just the beginning. You want to build a product that will scale with time as you grow. Something that will make prospective investors comfortable when choosing to invest.

Build a scalable and investable business.

I will teach you how you can maximize your capital efficiency by simply tweaking some product development decisions and significantly improve your runway. This is even more crucial if you are a bootstrapped founder.

Increase your runway significantly

Leverage GenAI to fulfil your startup dream by learning to validate your idea, translate idea to MVP & find right partners for your startup

Akhil Gupta

Cohort 2

Cohort 3

Most people think that corporate partnerships are about selling and pitching, it’s really about listening, planning, and collaborating. Position your startup to work with corporates and win that first pilot, proof-of-concept, or deal.

Stop pitching and start listening

<ul><li>Knowing who is the customer is not always as easy as it seems and picking the right markets to focus on is life or death for your startup.</li></ul>

What markets do you want to reach?

<ul><li>You'll be able to identify key decision makers in your target customer and tailor your message to speak directly to them. </li><li>﻿You'll practice finding and listening for keywords that point to their biggest pain points which keep them up at night.</li></ul>

How do you map stakeholders?

<ul><li>See what it takes to get people over the hump and try before they buy. </li><li>Find ways for you to introduce new concepts and behaviors into a big company culture.</li></ul>

De-risking your solution

<ul><li>Demonstrate the case studies or proof points you need to keep growing and eventually scale!</li></ul>

Get the social proof to scale

Let's plan to test, learn, and iterate right away in your business.

Weekly projects

Course Schedule

Founders and CEOsYou want to be more strategic in your approach when identifying the best markets and industries.

Business DevelopersYou want to find the right decision makers and establish traction by partnering with big companies.

Marketers and Product ManagersYou want to make progress even if you don't have product-market fit. We'll focus on how to get going.

Key outcomes

Be more strategic when it comes to market size and sectors, find the best industries and decision makers who need their products, then understand how these prospects think.&nbsp;

Get the right strategic footing

Conduct world class customer development. Everyone's got problems in big companies. So are you good at identifying them? That's the secret to great customer development that makes your product better and creates new channels for your business.

Solve Valuable Problems for your Future Customers

How do you ask people to take a bet on you? I'll share the importance of building a pilot program. Together, we'll go create one. You will de-risk your startup's product/service for decision-makers so they will advocate for you.

De-Risk your Solution for Decision Makers

You'll need social proof to succeed. Turns that first win into a compelling case study for others to follow

Develop Results that Produce Momentum

Discover the secrets to influencing decision-makers and designing a pilot program that gets a YES. (Now in a one-day workshop).

Vijay Rajendran

20+ years of investing in and supporting entrepreneurs on their journeys

Cohort 7

Cohort 8

Product people are naturally curious — but many work in this role without being equipped with the essential skills. Instead of driving business growth and building products people love, they end up feeling stuck and exhausted. We created this course to change that — not by just teaching theory, but by helping you apply learnings in your real-world context. Whether you’re a PM with a few years of experience, transitioning into Product from a related role, or stepping up as the lead of a product team, this course is for you. Why This Course is Different There are endless great resources out there to learn Product, but understanding the ideas fully and applying the techniques in your individual setup and environment is a very different game. We designed this course drawing from over 25 years of experience across various product roles, companies, and industries. We bridge the theory into practice without getting lost in framework details. We’re not from big tech — but we understand what it’s like when things get tough. We know there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for effective product work. You’ll learn directly from us and other product professionals who face the same challenges you do. This isn’t about hypothetical scenarios; it’s about learning and training the exact skills you need to succeed in your role. With small cohorts, we ensure you get personalized attention and meaningful engagement with others, helping you grow both your skills and your network. How You Will Learn This six-week program is packed with actionable knowledge. We use a flipped classroom approach: you get the theory as compact video content, and our sessions are dedicated to discussing, exploring, and training these skills within the group — as no other course does. What We’ll Cover •	Understand the big picture of product management and how discovery, strategy, and delivery fit together.•	Identify knowledge gaps to learn more about your business.•	Practice talking to users to uncover insights that typically stay hidden.•	Craft a basic business case and tell a compelling story to get the buy-in you need.•	Dive into the tech details to build confidently and minimize gaps in your specs.•	Communicate and align effectively with stakeholders, and learn to resolve conflicts.•	Create a clear strategy and stay focused using the right tools. Check out the full curriculum for everything we’ll cover together. Why This Works We provide a safe space for you to learn, practice, and take action. That’s why we run this course in small cohorts—to give you the environment you need to succeed. Join us and a community of forward-thinking product managers, and let’s set a new standard for your career.

Unlock the Secrets to Becoming an Outstanding Product Manager

We'll meet three times a week from 9:00am to 10:30am CET (GMT+1). This will be our

Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays

We follow a "flipped classroom" model that provides you with short, focused videos and theory and concepts to maximize the use of time in our live sessions

Knowledge input

We'll facilitate additional practice sessions to go deep on certain topics (e.g. interview training, business case building, communication training)

Weekly practice sessions

Product people with a few years of experience who want to level up their skills and get the basics right.

Product adjacent roles (e.g. UX design, QA, Engineering, ...) that want to move into product management.

Young product leads with a different background who need to get a grasp of the foundations to better lead their teams.

Understand the roles and responsibilities of a product manager so you can find your areas of improvement

Product Role and Responsibilities

Learn to build up the knowledge you need to make profound decisions and convince stakeholders

Building Domain Expertise

Master the art of user research by actively training the skills and learn ways to get the insights you need

Master the Art of User Research

Learn how to root-cause insights and ideate the right features that drive user and business impact.

Solve Problems that Matter

Learn how to assess opportunities and prioritize them so you can ensure to build features with impact

Opportunity Assessment

Explore different techniques to experiment and validate hypotheses and fill knowledge gaps

Experimentation & Hypotheses Testing

Learn about the characteristics of a vision, mission, roadmaps, goals, and KPIs and how to use them to make decisions and stay focussed

Strategy, Roadmaps & Goals

Craft a business case and understand the financial aspects of the features you build

Business Case modeling

Learn to tailor information-flows so you and your teams are well-informed and build trust with your peers

Information Flows

Master the art of communication to resolve conflicts

Conflict Resolution

Learn how to craft a story to convince people and get the buy-in you need

Storytelling

Learn to align with stakeholders, your team, and key people in your work so you can work collaboratively with ease

Collaboration & Team Alignment

Practice ways to create good products from customer-facing to uncover technical details that your development team needs to perform. Understand the principles needed to build high-quality products while still shipping fast

Building the Product

We offer a 1h coaching session after the course to discuss very individual questions you might have

Bonus: 1h Coaching Session

knowledge, tips, and tricks on how to run Product better and more efficiently.

...and many more

Become a better product manager with a guaranteed impact on your business – in only 6 weeks.

Lightning Lessons

Assumption Busting for Product Managers