Women in Product Seattle — Lessons learned from building successful (and failed products)
@Microsoft hosted the 5th Women in Product event in Seattle on April 20th. The topic was ‘Lessons learned from building successful (and failed products)’. Panelists included senior product leaders from Microsoft, Starbucks Coffee, @Amperity, and Go Daddy.
Jennifer Wong, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Starbucks, shared how ‘tasting is believing’ and the way they launched Via, the Starbucks instant coffee brand. Mira Lane, Director of Design and Ethics for Business AI at Microsoft, talked about the role of art in the workplace and how to foster creativity, and what made Microsoft Teams the success it is. Gail Giacobbe, VP Product and Experience Design at GoDaddy, talked about focusing on the customer journey from beginning to the end. Mona Akmal, Head of Product at Amperity, talked about her startup and failure and how customers aren’t always right. Tara Roth, CVP Office Customer Success Engineering at Microsoft, pulled together this fascinating panel and talked about her inspiration to be in tech — seeing a small business transform with technology and software.
We had a sold out event, some great food, and a beautiful custom insulated bottle that says “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” Jennifer also managed to get a lot of coffee samples from Starbucks for all the attendees.
If you missed it, you can view it at http://aka.ms/wip0420
Huge thanks to the volunteers who helped pull this event together and to Ti Jefferson, Group Engineering Manager at Microsoft, for securing the funding for the event.
- Ada Cho, Archana Nair, Kavita Kamani, Linh Tran, Sharon Lo — Core Microsoft WIP event team
Women in Product is a highly-engaged community of women builders and leaders. Join our community or sign up for our newsletter for monthly events, networking opportunities, and much more! Please check out WIP website for a list of upcoming events.
