Avrum Laurie on the path from the Microsoft to startups, his product leadership philosophy, and product stories from Wealthsimple and Freshbooks
S01 E03 | The Black Box of Product Management Podcast
Brandon speaks with Avrum Laurie, VP of Product at Wealthsimple and his former boss at Freshbooks over a decade ago.
Avrum has an exceptional product mind, and is equally cogent in engineering and design. Brandon and Avrum discuss his journey from big company PM at Microsoft to his foray into startups Freshbooks and Wealthsimple, that he helped build into two unicorns over the last decade.
Given their shared history at Freshbooks, Avrum and Brandon go deep on some key projects they worked on, and reflect on the challenges and lessons they held. Avrum shares his philosophy on product leadership, and finally explains why Wealthsimple has so many damn apps.
This was such an awesome episode!
Brandon's interview style is quite intimate, human and "deep"!
In this episode, they cover a few gem topics:
- Deep case study of how Freshbook did their complete product redesign/rebuild over 6-8 years. I've been involved in three redesigns in my own career. But never heard something of this scale. So fascinating!
- How product teams at WealthSimple are formed and needed skillset for each type of PM.
- PM at startup vs. big companies.
- Transferring ownership from the founders to the first PM/head of PM in a growing company.
- Past and future of PM.