Ilan Abehassera (Insensi)

Serial Entrepreneur. Founder of Producteev which was acquired by Jive in 2012. Founder of Insensi, the makers of Ily the family phone.

WTF Product: If you were meeting someone in the street who knew nothing about product management, how would you describe this role?

Ilan: For me, a product manager is the manager of a team. Someone who has a product idea and knows how to assemble a team around this idea to bring this idea to the MVP state.

WTF Product: You’ve worked in companies of various sizes. What in your opinion is the main difference between product in a startup vs. product in a bigger company?

Ilan: In a startup you define your product as the whole company, whereas in bigger companies the product will be more around a set of features. Sometimes your product is even only one feature. My situation at Jive was particular though because we were acquired. So in a sense, managing the Producteev product as a startup or within the Jive group was a very similar job for me.

WTF Product: How did you first get involved in Product?

Ilan: Very late actually (laugh). I used to define myself more as the creative/idea guy. Initially I came up with the Producteev idea, because I knew there was a need in the market. However I wasn’t a good product manager. And this is why the first initial directions of the product were complete failures. We survived because we were very good at other stuff that kept us alive like UX/UI or innovating in a space where there was not much innovation (Productivity Apps). But I was not being a good product manager.
Then I started to listen to users and realized the need was actually a very simple product. I started to understand that the set of features we were trying to include was too wide. I started to narrow down the scope and have a clear idea of what we had to build to make it successful. This is when I started to understand the mechanics of product management and started to define myself as the product guy.

WTF Product: You became a Product Manager when you started to listen to users?

Ilan: Yes but No. Producteev was never really driven by customer feedback or customer metrics that much, and in retrospect I think it was a good thing. Because when you’re innovating and creating a new product, in some ways most users don’t know what they want until you provide it to them. We are supposed to be the one who knows what they want because we are the ones who came up with the idea. However what I learned is listening to customers sentiments and identifying what they like or dislike is way more efficient than the features they are dreaming of.

WTF Product: Was there any moment, when you launched a new product and the outcome was really surprising to you?

Ilan: The one example that comes up to my mind is the Producteev Mac App. It was the defining moment that drove the success of the company. Sometimes we’ve been acquiring 8 000 to 12 000 new users a day (which was big for us and big for a productivity app). This is where we realized that being first to market on a platform was key and this is when the vision started to come together. We always knew we wanted to build a platform with different apps, different clients. But doing it for real and launching our first client showed us the impact of the vision on the success of the company.

WTF Product: What did you learn about your product failures? Could these have been avoided in some extent?

Ilan: Again over the first 2 years of Producteev I haven’t been a good product manager and I learned that having the vision and having enough experience to understand what you need to get to that point is key to a successful product manager. These failures helped me gain the confidence to approach a way more ambitious and hard to build project like Ily (including Hardware, Software, UX, industrial design…). Now I know what it takes to build something new, I’m convinced that I could have start a clothing company and manage the product the exact same way.

WTF Product: In terms of team dynamics, how do you see the most efficient way to collaborate with design, engineering or other disciplines?

Ilan: It’s the most difficult part. I think Ben Horowitz said that product managers are all entrepreneurs within their company, as such product managers need to understand all the interactions between people, teams and departments necessary to define and build a product. You need to inspire respect as the Product Manager, most of the time you’re looking for Product Managers who has an engineering or design background because lots of the time engineers and designers won’t appreciate being told what to do by someone who doesn’t understand the technical implications of a feature or have no clue what design means. It’s important to have experience and proven record of successes and launched product to build up your legitimacy.

WTF Product: What is the ideal team structure? How are you organized currently?

Ilan: I do think building your team yourself is very important so I built Insensi’s around myself. That way I know the dynamics between people, I know the way they operate within the team. I think a key piece of the engineering team is someone who leads the team, it allows you to have one main contact in the team and it streamlines the communication channels. At Insensi we kind of have two CTOs: one for the software team and one for the hardware. They are my main engineering contacts. They are well respected individuals in the field with proven track-records and I know that every time I will talk to them I can be sure that the communication will go through the rest of team.

WTF Product: This is engineering but what about design?

Ilan: We have one designer and he is my partner, my counterpart as a product manager and CEO. We work VERY closely together. Usually I have an idea and will talk with him first, design some initial mocks then we bring this to the team to gather general feedback and identify potential technical challenges then he will work directly with the two engineering team. We actually leverage our demo meeting (every Thursdays) to showcase what everybody is working on, especially new feature designs.

WTF Product: Is there any product out there that you’re currently obsessed about?

Ilan: I’m really addicted to Timehop. I plays a lot on the psychological aspects of making you feel good about what you’ve done. Not just professional achievements but also the pictures you never shared on any networks or old Facebook posts. I think it’s a good way to reflect on things. I don’t use their sharing features at all, it’s really just for me. I open this religiously every single day. I wish I could say Pokemon Go, but I’m not obsessed with it (laughs).

WTF Product: Thanks Ilan! Can we take a picture?

Ilan: Sure it’s free :)