productboard named a Rising Star on the Forbes 2018 Cloud100 and why it matters

Yesterday productboard was named one of 20 Rising Stars as part of the Forbes 2018 Cloud100, the definitive list of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in collaboration with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The 20 Rising Stars represent young, high-growth and category-leading cloud companies who have raised less than $25 million to date and are poised to join the Cloud100 ranks.

We’re very excited to be featured alongside some of our amazing partners — Slack, Intercom, Zapier and InVision — and strategic investors — Intercom and InVision. While it’s exciting to be recognized as one of the fastest growing and most funded cloud companies in our category at our stage, what’s truly incredible is how many of our customers have been recognized as well. We would like to congratulate Algolia, Auth0, Braze, Freshworks, Hootsuite, Intercom, UiPath for being recognized on the Cloud100 list as well as Gong for being listed on the Rising Stars list.

Now a bit on why this matters…

When we announced productboard’s Series A in July, we explained how the funding would help us accelerate towards our vision of helping companies achieve product excellence. It’s something we’ve been working towards since 2013, but the official recognition that product teams have problems worth solving is certainly welcome.

In speaking with thousands of product managers, we’ve discovered that delivering a remarkable product to market is a necessary challenge to be solved. It’s not just a matter of figuring out which features to build when but whether they’re the right features to begin with — the ones that your customers will appreciate and value, that drive affinity and retention. And the solution to this distinct problem is product excellence.

Product excellence is the distinct quality that differentiates the truly awe-inspiring, easy-to-use and viral products that we love: the iPhone, Dropbox, Spotify, among others. It incorporates everything from the way initial ideas for these products arise (how customer feedback is received, recorded and processed) to how product managers craft a product vision and communicate it across the organization.

Product excellence is not just about the quality of the products you build. It’s a mentality, a drive, even a way of life that powers the PMs behind visionary products. It’s the desire to get their hands dirty and solve important challenges for users. It’s the ability to rally the entire team around an idea, a vision, and a plan to deliver memorable, transformative products that customers love.

In sharing this approach with our users and members of the product management community, we’ve seen how quickly these concepts seem to gel. And beyond that, how companies accelerate their growth by embracing it. This is why, for us, Cloud100 is not just an ordinary milestone and not just an opportunity to congratulate our customers and partners, but validation that product excellence is the only option for companies who want to succeed and grow at an astronomical rate.

And while product excellence is a goal to strive towards, we know that it’s not always easy to achieve, which is why we want to do everything we can to help you along the path. We’ve put together a handy framework that you can keep in your back pocket to see how far along you’ve, but we’re also putting together some resources and events to get you there faster. Are you looking to accelerate along the path to product excellence?

Send us a note (hello@productboard.com) and we’ll send you some resources to help!