How to make product breakthroughs
Meet Thomas, a product owner who currently handles self-care for the customer engagement team at VEON. In this interview, we get insights from Thomas on what it takes to innovate and build successful products.
In this interview, we catch up with Thomas. We’ll hear about his journey from São Paulo to Amsterdam, learn how he’s building the engagement platform at VEON, and get some career advice and productivity tips.
Let’s get to it.
What did you do before VEON?
I did my own startup in São Paulo. It started as an open group buying marketplace for the Brazilian market. With only 5 guys, we faced the challenges and drew sweat and blood on our keyboards to learn, pivot and adapt. Due to external forces we ended up adapting our platform to online coupons and outlet discount scanning. We built a great product — one that I consider at higher level than other big players. I was proud of that, but that wasn’t enough to win the game.
Was the experience worth it?
When you’re a startup, your ego is bruised on daily basis! You work long hours and weekends with no clarity whether there will be a reward for it. Our biggest mistake was spending too much time and budget focusing on the product and not striking the right balance with marketing and growth. We lacked capital and our burn rate was too high for our funds.Other big companies entered in the same time-frame as us, they had all the capital in the world to buy market share with an inferior product and we were totally crushed.
Overall it was a great experience and worth all my time and effort. I learned more than I would if I had done a second MBA. It didn’t just improve my ability to build products. It also showed me how to better manage the business and marketing side. It enabled me to evolve.
You’ve lived and worked in two great cities. What’s great about São Paulo?
Sao Paulo has one of the best night lives of the world. You just can’t get bored in Sao Paulo. I really love the Japanese restaurants scene in São Paulo. They are superb and only seem to be improving. I think social media has pushed this. It shows the importance of social-media driven trends. In Brazil, trends on social media have a bigger influence when compared to other countries.
Do these trends stick?
It depends on the size of the wave. Some stick around and prove transformative; others fade away. The trend of Japanese restaurants is now embedded in the Brazilian culture, not only because it is perceived as healthy nutrition, which is one of our obsessions, but also because our exceptional chefs have adapted and innovated to our own unique and delicious Brazilian fusion.
As a product manager, it’s helpful to pay attention to such trends. Some trends may simply take off because they’re novel, and eventually disappear. For me, I want to capitalize on authentic, long-lasting trends , which will expose (and change) patterns of human behavior.
Now that you’re in Amsterdam, what do you think of the city?
I love the architecture and the canals atmosphere. The multi cultural diversity of people and places here is incredible. There’s always something new to discover.
The urban infrastructure blends seamlessly withe the city architecture. This is not an easy task to accomplish and really inspires me to keep pushing to perfect our product at VEON. We need to keep going until we hit perfection.
Now, let’s talk about how your role at VEON evolved.
I am the product owner of the self-care for our customer engagement platform, Veon. I’m actually the first product owner here. I’ve been here from the start and I’m the one the first contributors to the large concept baseline that makes the engagement platform ambitions today. Now, the team has scaled, with more product owners that take focus on each of the platform verticals. Currently my focus has been on self-care which is the key vertical that will enable Veon to take over existing user base from the local market apps.
What’s the key challenge for your team?
Our key challenge in self-care is launching a common UX globally. While striving to implement a superior product, we have to overcome localisation challenges against regulations, payment partners, privacy and security standards.
So, there will be continual improvements. What will the app look like in a few months?
Everyone will be surprised. We are now building strong foundations and a lot of our efforts are not yet visible. At some point, the result will start appearing very fast and it’ll look awesome.
We live in a world of skepticism. People will only trust us once they see that the product works. But you don’t engineer software the way you engineer hardware. In Software and innovation you try, break, fix and validate till the point the actual crowd starts to own it and driving it to success.
Are there any apps that inspire you?
Musical.ly is one. What people can do on it is amazing. My nephew is actually doing some cool stuff in Brazil with it.
From a product creation perspective, what’s great about musical.ly?
The whole story of musical.ly can teach a lot about how to innovate and build a great product. Because the company started as an educational social network. It was originally a failure. Then, CEO Alex Zhu suddenly had an idea to combine social media, photos, videos, and music. Now, it’s this big success.
If startups want to succeed, they must be ready to pivot and evolve when opportunity comes knocking. That’s a lesson I learned from my startup and I wish to apply it here more and more.
What makes a great product?
A great product solves a problem or supports a very meaningful task for a group of users. A great product cannot be the the sum of all stakeholders opinions. Every choice has a trade-off and we can’t go in circles with negative and positive opinions. We must break this pattern, map the right model of assumptions and then validate it.
What made you decide to go into product management?
I’ve build my 19 years career as a tech guy in IT but a majored in Business so and I was always eager to learn the business side of digital better. I’ve learned how to communicate and market better now. I believe the future for product guys lies in a good combination between technology and business skills. Having this blend is fulfilling.
When you hire someone, what do you look at?
I look at soft skills. I think any hard skill can be acquired. Communication is key, because in digital you work with a wide spectrum of people: executives, engineers, marketeers, lawyers, etc.
What’s your advice to someone who applies at VEON?
Understand this is a startup within a huge organization. Know we are pushing innovation, so take an attitude of non-conformism. When you achieve disruption, it should be like a silent “I told you so” moment :-)
Do you have any productivity tips?
Value the agile approach. The faster we deal with our problems and mistakes, the closer we get to our ultimate goals.
Punch down the wall! Great things await….
Now you know what it takes to punch down a wall and start building something better. The destination may not be right in front of you. To reach success, you may have to change course and get yourself more tools.
Even when you reach a point of satisfaction, don’t stop. As Thomas says, “Never be in love with your product. Because you can always improve.”
