Fireside Chat with Manuel Bronstein, VP of Product for Google Assistant

If you want to learn about product management, look no further than Manuel Bronstein, Vice President of Product for Google Assistant.

Manuel leads the strategy and product teams that design and build the Google Assistant experiences across all devices. He is also an active investor and advisor to tech companies. Prior to working at Google, Manuel held positions at some of the most successful tech companies, including YouTube, Zynga, and Microsoft. We were incredibly excited and honored to have him sit down with our company and share his experience and thoughts.

Here are some of the highlights our team came away with:

1. “When building a new product, think about what the best experience imaginable (BEI) would be and then scale back depending on limitations.” — Marija B.
2. “Your competition is not another company. Your competition is the way that your customers are doing things today.” — Melissa H.
3. “The importance of having a North Star metric that everyone works towards. Then working towards that metric and figuring everything else out afterwards.” — Ihsan K.
4. “The organization structure should reflect the dependencies between teams. If teams can operate independently, go autonomous. If not, make sure they are interconnected. Trying to force a system will not work.”- Jeff E.

Who is Manuel?

Manuel Bronstein is Vice President of Product for Google Assistant, leading strategy and the product teams that design and build Google Assistant experiences across all devices. He is also an active investor and advisor to tech companies.

Prior to this role, Manuel was Vice President of Product Management at YouTube, overseeing YouTube’s mobile, desktop and living room applications, as well as growth, live, community and infrastructure. Previously, Manuel led the teams that launched YouTube’s Kids, Music, and Gaming apps.

Before joining YouTube, Manuel was VP of Product and General Manager at Zynga, where he led games and platform teams working on Poker, FarmVille, FarmVille 2 and the Zynga Network. Prior to Zynga, Manuel worked at Microsoft where he led product, strategy and business for several Xbox products.

Stay tuned. We have lots of exciting leaders and visionaries coming to speak with us in the coming months. We look forward to sharing with you what we learn.