Build Winning Products: Secrets of Product Management at Brand24

Introduction

Wiktor Żołnowski: Welcome to Pragmatic Talks, a podcast and video series where we discuss startups, contemporary digital product development, modern technologies, and product management. We believe that everyone should have equal access to knowledge about product development and entrepreneurship, and also everyone should have the opportunity to apply it in pursuit of making our world a better place. Through this series, we aim to create an impact on the future world. In today’s episode, we welcome Karol Kłaczyński. I’ve met Karol a few years ago at one of the unconferences, and just after the first 10 minutes of our discussion, I already knew that I was talking with most probably one of the best product managers I ever spoke to. Karol is a former Agile Coach and Scrum Master, but for the last few years, his focus was mainly on product management. Currently, he is working as a Head of Product at Brand24, a tool offering media monitoring services on the internet and one of the most recognizable startups in the Polish scene. Today, we are going to talk about product management and development, as well as tools and methods such as Continuous Discovery Habits that Karol is successfully using in his day-to-day work. Please welcome Karol Kłaczyński. Welcome to the next episode of Pragmatic Talks. Today our guest is Karol Kłaczyński, a Head of Product at Brand24. It’s a pleasure to have you here, and it’s great that you agreed to join us in this episode.

Karol Kłaczyński: Well, thanks for the invitation in the first place. I’m also really happy to be here.

Karol’s story and Brand24

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, like a standard first question that we always have: who is Karol Kłaczyński and what is your story?

Karol Kłaczyński: Currently, as you said, I’m Head of Product at Brand24. I’ve been in IT for more than 10 years now. My story started as a business analyst, so something that is also useful when it comes to product work. But then I moved to various different roles. I did some testing, I did some sales as well. I was also a Scrum Master for a few years, but then I decided that there’s something new I should do, and that was the product world. So I joined the product world a few years later–I think it was like three, four years ago, something like this. And I must admit, that’s the place I’m really happy that I’m in, and I want to pursue this path now.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, just to tell you how I met Karol, probably more than two years ago, it was at some conference or unconference. And when I met you, I thought that, okay, this guy maybe does not have a lot of experience in product management yet, but he has a lot of experience in IT. The mindset that you already had at this time, and then when we met a couple of times later, I noticed that your knowledge about product management and a product-oriented mindset was something that was impressive. And this is actually why I decided to invite you here. So I’m sure that this conversation will be very effective, very dense in terms of product-oriented stuff, and I’m sure that people who will listen to it will learn a lot. But before we’ll jump into the product, could you tell us more about Brand24?

Karol Kłaczyński: Brand24 is, simply speaking, a platform that helps you monitor the internet. For example, if you want to know what’s happening, what is being said about your brand–usually about a brand, but also some kind of topics or influencers or a specific person that you’re interested in. Let’s say Pragmatic Coders would like to know, okay, what’s happening with Pragmatic Coders in the net? So this is where we jump in. We’re helping companies to really get to know what’s happening, also providing some analysis, like what we call the stream of mentions. So who said what about, for example, Pragmatic Coders, but also do people talk positively or negatively about Pragmatic Coders, or if there’s no sentiment at all and so it’s just more informative. We also tend to use more AI nowadays. It’s a hot topic everywhere.

Wiktor Żołnowski: We’re going there, okay, okay, we’re going there.

Karol Kłaczyński: But we started doing this before it was popular. So we’re doing a lot of that, like for topic analysis, for example, to help you get to know, not only using your own mind to see what’s happening there, but also extracting the essence and saying, for example, okay, when it comes to Pragmatic Coders, one of the main topics is, I don’t know, good quality software, stuff like this. And a lot of different things that are helping our customers worldwide, because we have customers all over the world now, which I’m really happy about. Because this is a Polish company, and I’m always happy when a Polish company is really well-known worldwide and helping customers everywhere, basically. That’s great.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So could you tell us a little bit more about those customers? What type of companies are there? Like small companies, bigger brands? Who is the customer of Brand24?

Karol Kłaczyński: All of them, really. Even specific people. If you have a huge company, it’s probably not the CEO of the company. If you have a smaller company, it will probably be a CEO. Because as you probably know, the more a company grows, the more departments you have, and the more specialized you become. So with bigger companies, we usually work with marketing departments, marketing and PR specialists, people that are more interested in those topics. When it comes to smaller companies, we probably work with the C-level, as we call them, or an agency. Sometimes we also work with marketing agencies. Marketing agencies usually, everyone is working with Brand24 because they just tend to do all the analysis for their customers.

Product development at Brand24

Wiktor Żołnowski: So tell us more about how Brand24 works from the inside. How big is the company? How big is your team? What are you working on?

Karol Kłaczyński: So currently, I guess we have around 80 or 90 people cooperating with Brand24. And my teams, we can call them–because I think it’s hard to call them my teams, because everyone is working to make the product better–the development teams, let’s say. They are development teams, however, I like to call them product teams, and there are three. And this is something that might not be typical for, let’s say, a typical Scrum person, because you tend to think, oh, we have to have feature teams, we have to focus on that. But it really depends on the technology and generally how your product looks. So we have teams that are more on the front-end side, closer to the customer itself. We have a team that focuses on getting the data. And we have a separate team that works on research and development, mainly focusing on machine learning and LLMs.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So not classic Scrum cross-functional teams, but rather not even component teams, just layers that you’re working on?

Karol Kłaczyński: A bit like layers or components, something like this. But of course, if there’s a possibility to do a feature end-to-end, we’re trying to do this. But because the data area is so complex and the front-end is also complex itself, this is why we are not doing this end-to-end. Because there’s a vast amount of knowledge around those two topics, we decided that it has to be specialized for now. It might always change in the future, but for now, it works like this.

Wiktor Żołnowski: When you were talking about it, I was thinking, I had this Spotify model in front of my eyes. Not because you are copying it, but rather the biggest misconception in the Spotify model was that they designed their organization structure in that way and then they followed it. It wasn’t that way. It was actually the other way around; the organization structure was developed from the structure of the code base, of the product that they have. And as you mentioned, you did actually the same. The organization structure followed the structure of your product.

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, exactly. Great.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Are you using any frameworks or methods like Scrum, for example, that we already mentioned? Or maybe you figured out something more, something better?

Karol Kłaczyński: That’s a tough question because, generally, sometime ago when I was a Scrum Master, it was like, “Yeah, Scrum is important, Agile is something that will help you grow your business,” and so on. But when I chose the product path, it’s not super important, to be honest. This is one of the things that I hate about Scrum because there is just the name “stakeholders.” For me, customers are not stakeholders. Customers are customers. They are the number one goal. They are paying for your service, they finance your whole company. Customers are way more important than the CEO; they’re not on the same level. For me, customers are not stakeholders; customers are customers. Because what we need to do is to create a product that meets the needs of the customer, that customers are willing to pay for, basically. So the question is, how to do such a product? And one of the answers is quick testing, and so on. Scrum probably helps a bit, for example, with quick deployments, quicker iterations, and so on, but this is just a tool. It’s like 10-15%, the development process is 10-15% of the product work, in fact.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So you started focusing more on the product side rather than the just development and implementation side?

Karol Kłaczyński: We’re using something like “Scrum-ish,” we can call it. So we’re taking the elements that are helping us. And if there’s something that doesn’t help us, or we think that might help us, we’re taking it. But it’s not like, “Yeah, because the Scrum Guide says…” Absolutely no. I don’t think that’s a good way to do anything. And if we find our way to do something better, then we just test it and see if it works or not. If not, okay, let’s pull back and check something else.

Wiktor Żołnowski: That just confirms my theory or observation that I have from the last couple of years, that the crucial part in product development is product management. And if we have great product management and great product managers on board, then everything else doesn’t matter as much as good product management. A product manager needs to serve the vision, people need to know that vision, need to follow that vision, deliver it, and figure out what is the best way to achieve the goals and to realize that vision.

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, absolutely. As a Scrum Master, I’ve been working with bad product owners. And the development teams were really good ones; they were really smart people. But if you have a bad product owner–I’m not saying that those people were stupid or something, no, absolutely not, they were smart–but there are certain elements of being a product person that help the company grow, and those people didn’t have that. For example, one of them was always saying yes. In a huge corporation, it’s really tough to say no. But when you’re a product person saying yes to everything, that’s going to end very badly. And everyone was frustrated. If you have a really good product person and developers who are not yet good, from my experience, they can become good developers, they can become good programmers. And even if it’s going to take time, until then, you’ll create enough value to get more people to help you develop the others. I totally agree that product management is super important, probably one of the most important. I would even say the most important thing, but okay, let’s leave it here. I’m a Head of Product, so it’s tough to say.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I’m already brave enough to tell it. Even if our company is selling–what actually is our value proposition is product management, and then on top of that we add some developers who are also great and very product-oriented. We are already starting with the top-level product management, top-level developers, a top-level place on the landscape. But that’s not about it.

The role of a Head of Product

Wiktor Żołnowski: Regarding running Brand24 and your role. So what actually is your role? Or maybe let’s start somewhere else. You started at Brand24 as a product manager, a product owner, however we call it, whatever. And now you’re Head of Product. So what changed in your job in this last year when you were promoted to Head of Product? What changed?

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, I started with one team because I was still that young, I didn’t have that much experience, and this was a new company, so there was a lot of uncertainty. So it was like, okay, let’s start with one team, let’s see how it goes. And it went pretty well. So in time, I started working with more teams directly. I was working with everyone right from the start, basically. The C-level, so the CFO, the CEO, and so on; with the marketing team, with marketing automation, with the customer success team, because they are directly working with the customer, so I’m super interested in that. So I started working with more development teams, product teams, let’s call them. That’s one thing that changed. And in time, I’m also trying to be on a more strategic level. So I’m building the product strategy now. The vision and the mission were always there, but the product strategy was not that well-said, directly said. Brand24 knew where we were going, but it’s good to also have some kind of document because you can always raise questions. Someone is reading those things, like, “Is this really something that you want strategically?” So it’s also a good document to ask questions to yourself or to others and maybe find the weak spots or something where we have to make a decision. So I’m going a bit on a more strategic level, you can call it, from working mostly on a daily basis with development.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So you’re still working with development teams? Are there any product managers or product owners aside from you?

Karol Kłaczyński: Not really. The team that is working on the product itself, aside from programming, there’s a product marketer, a product marketing specialist, and a UX designer. This is also the team that is working on a product. This is more like a team, let’s say, directly underneath me or partly underneath me. But generally, I do not have product managers that are reporting directly, if you can say so. I’m trying to give part of this responsibility to the product teams. It’s not like I’m the only one coming with ideas and so on. The product itself is a joint responsibility of all product teams. This also makes my job easier because I do not have an army of people underneath me to make sure that developers are doing exactly what I’m telling them to do.

Wiktor Żołnowski: You mentioned the strategy document. That caught my attention. Could you tell us more about this strategy document? How should it look like, or how does it look in your case?

Karol Kłaczyński: I’m doing this more like, okay, this is what I feel the strategy document should be. There are lots of books, lots of materials on what should be there, what should not be there.

Wiktor Żołnowski: This is why you’re asking, because I read a lot of books and I see different, contradicted opinions on how the strategy should look.

Karol Kłaczyński: I think there’s no one answer. It really depends. If it helps you, if it helps you drive your direction, if it helps you cut a lot of decisions and stop doing some things that are taking your time but are not getting you closer to your goal, that’s good, I guess. And that’s the answer I can give you. So for example, if you put in your strategy document what your company or what your product is *not*, for sure, that’s a good start.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Or for whom it is not for.

Karol Kłaczyński: Exactly. So let’s say if you have some buyer personas and you say, okay, we had 10, that’s quite a lot.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Yes.

Karol Kłaczyński: Let’s cut it to five. This, this, this, and that. We’re not interested in those. We need some research, or we generally believe–even if you’re just believing, because in product management, not everything can be tested. Sometimes it’s just a gut feeling, and we have to live with that. So if you can cut those five personas out and focus on the other five, that’s a great start. So less is more.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Less is more, always. I totally agree with you, especially with the part of defining what the company is not doing or what the product is not doing. We did the same a couple of years ago when we decided, okay, we are, for example, not doing regular outsourcing and body leasing. And that helped us a lot to focus on the things that matter.

Company culture and teamwork

Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, so let’s get back to the culture, the Brand24 culture. How would you describe the company culture? And how are you working on the culture? Because I’m pretty sure that as a Head of Product, you have a huge impact on the company culture.

Karol Kłaczyński: It really comes from the top. As you say, as a Head of Product, I have a huge impact on that, but it’s not like I’m coming there and building the culture. The culture was there, and it was created by all the people who are at the top. And we have to agree that the culture is not coming from the bottom. Sorry, but it’s always coming from the top, mostly. At the end of the day, the top-down will win.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Yes, exactly.

Karol Kłaczyński: So it’s really hard to start from the bottom. It’s always the top that has to show how the culture works. And I guess this was something really great because Brand24 is a cool company. Everyone is, let’s say, more or less on the same level when it comes to talking and discussions, at least with the teams that I’m working with and with the people I’m working with. So I always try to be quite direct. So if somebody comes up to me and says something direct, that’s fine. I’m talking directly to them, no matter if they are the CEO or someone from the customer support team, the customer success team. That’s basically the same from my point of view. What I also really like to show is that everyone has an idea; everyone can come up with a problem they’re suggesting, everyone can come up with some initiative, and so on. Which helped a lot. For example, we were introducing one of the features. We thought this is going to be great, this sounds like value for our customers. We also discussed this with customers a bit. And one of the back-end developers–usually people that you would imagine, okay, somewhere in the basement, “Sunlight, what’s that?” No, I’m joking, of course. But not someone that you would imagine is a strictly product person. He said, “You know what? I think that’s too good for some of the customers. That’s super valuable. Maybe you can limit that, at least for the trial. Why should we just give it for free?” It’s like, “You know what? That’s a great idea. Let’s do that.” And we did. I think this is showing that, guys, we are all part of the product. It’s not like–I remember during one of the interviews for a product role, there was a question, “How do you come up with ideas for next product features or improvements?” Why is it a question only to me? It’s a question to everyone because everyone can spot a problem or something to solve. We are really lucky that we are also the users and the customers of our own product. That’s super comfortable, that’s absolutely great. Because I hear from time to time, “Yeah, guys, I was using this, and the UX of this part is so bad.” Why? Because of this, this, and that. Then we can look into, for example, some recordings of how our regular customers are working with our product. We can verify some data, like how many customers are using this in fact, so is it worth solving? Stuff like this. But this can come from everyone. The customer success team as well. They’re talking to the customers, customers are coming to them and asking for help or saying, “Hey, we didn’t get that.” It’s like, cool, guys, it’s good that you’re telling us this. But for example, the important thing is, do not tell us what customers told you would be a great feature. Tell us what the problems of our customers are. Because behind every feature that your customer is asking for, there’s some kind of problem that they are trying to solve. This is the most important thing to us.

Working with customers and data

Wiktor Żołnowski: So how do you work as a Head of Product, or maybe as a whole team, with your users, with your customers, to figure out what’s the best for them next?

Karol Kłaczyński: I would say that there are two things that we have to distinguish, which is the qualitative and the quantitative distinction. Let’s say, when it comes to quantitative, we’re taking a look at the data analytics. We have a lot of analytics, and I’m super happy we have that, really. Because when I joined Brand24 and I asked, “What does the basic funnel look like, coming from each of the pages, from sign-up until sales?” And Michał Sadowski, our CEO, said, “Give me a few minutes,” and he sent, “Here you have.”

Wiktor Żołnowski: Wow, that’s impressive.

Karol Kłaczyński: You have all of that. Because in the previous company, this was really tricky, and we had to build the analytics. It was all there. Maybe not all, but a lot of that was there. So this is one thing. And they’re trying to, if we have an idea or we, for example, discuss something with customers–because I’m trying to take part in some customer meetings, no matter if it’s a sales meeting, somebody has some feedback, or I’m doing an interview, because we’re trying to do a lot of interviews. So if we see that, for example, there’s a customer talking to the customer success team, and they’re asking for some kind of feature, I’m trying to say, okay, let me talk to them. So we’re scheduling some calls with our customers, and I’m trying to get at what the problem is. I want to see the underlying issue, what are their goals. I’m not sure if you’ve read “Continuous Discovery Habits” by Teresa Torres. This is what we’re trying to do. So mainly meeting with clients, with customers, as often as possible and learning from them.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So what type of questions do you ask? Because I know that asking the questions like, “Okay, dear clients or dear customers, what is your main problem?” is one of the worst-case questions you could ever ask.

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, “How much would you pay for it?”

Wiktor Żołnowski: How much… I’m doing this right now with my startup, but whatever. But yeah, asking them the question, “What is your problem?” is not the best question. So what questions do you ask your clients?

Karol Kłaczyński: It really depends on what you’re trying to achieve. But there was also a great podcast, Lenny’s Podcast, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with that, with Teresa Torres. And she gave a really great example: try to focus on factual questions and give a specific time period. For example, starting with, “When was the last time you did something?” So for example, in Brand24, this would be, “When was the last time you reported to your boss?” or “In the last month, how many times did you report something from Brand24 to your boss, or generally concerning the marketing of your product or your brand to the boss?” This is something that gives you, first, the information if they even do that, and how frequently. And then you can follow up on those questions. So what’s in the report? What kind of questions were asked by your boss the last time? What was he thrilled about? What was he shocked about? So getting really the facts, that is something that interests me the most, because I can see how frequently a problem occurs, if it pays off, how much time do people spend to solve this problem, and what are the “aha” moments.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I was smiling because you’re calling it a “problem,” which is, “How often did you talk to your boss last month?” Talking to a boss is a problem for your users. Okay, I understand it. For some marketing person, that could be a problem to actually go and report to the boss.

Karol Kłaczyński: However, okay, let’s call it an opportunity.

Wiktor Żołnowski: An opportunity, a challenge, or whatever. Okay, you already talked about analytics. So what data do you collect? What data are you basing your decisions on? You already mentioned a funnel, but maybe you have other significant data, quantitative methods to make decisions, to figure out what to do next.

Karol Kłaczyński: I guess first, we’re trying to start with the qualitative data because it narrows down what you’re looking for. So if we see that when we discuss or we try to ask for feedback from our customers and they say, “Oh, I didn’t know it’s possible,” there’s a small lightbulb over their heads. I think, okay, this is something to look for. And then, for example, we will be looking for the usage of that specific feature or place in the application over a month compared to other places. So it really depends on what our customers are saying and what our business or functional goals are in a given moment because you cannot analyze everything at a given time. It just doesn’t pay off. It’s impossible physically at the moment.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Maybe with AI.

Karol Kłaczyński: Maybe with AI, who knows. Buzzword again. But the important thing is also, when we talk about strategy, what’s the next goal when it comes to business? For example, if we say we want to diminish, limit the churn rate in our app–churn, the number of customers that are leaving our app. Then I would go and see, okay, what are the main points? I would try to talk to those people, but churning customers are really, really hard to get to talk to. But then I would look, okay, what is the common element of the churning customers or the customers that are not churning? So maybe there’s something great that our customers who are not churning do, but those that churn, they are not doing this, so they do not see enough value. So then I would take a look at this kind of data, if I have enough. And I don’t know, maybe it’s like the stickiness of the app. So you say that the customers that are spending on average five minutes a week–let’s say, because in every company, in every app, it’s going to be different, because some apps are used weekly, monthly, every quarter, or daily. So depending on what you’re doing, let’s say it’s five minutes a week. So if your customer is in your app at least five minutes a week, the possibility that they will leave is lower, I don’t know, by 30% compared to those that are less than five minutes. Then, okay, our next goal is to increase the number of customers that are weekly longer than five minutes by 50%, let’s say. So then you’re trying, okay, what are the functional goals that you have to meet? And you drill down and drill down.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So this is the work that you are doing together with your team, or this is the work that you do together with your UX designer, product marketer, whichever?

Karol Kłaczyński: Everyone. It really depends on what we’re looking at. Now we also have a small team that is an analytics team, so they are helping a lot. I’m also trying to do this with customer success to get a bit more of the qualitative data. I’m working with the C-suite because they’ve been in the industry for years, so they know a lot. But I’m also asking my development team, the UX designer, and the product marketing specialist. So the UX designer and product marketing specialist, usually someone from all three is taking part in the customer interviews, so they’re also providing information from those customers, especially if they find out something interesting.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Do you follow any structure, any framework? You’re meeting weekly or something, you have a specific time?

Karol Kłaczyński: As much as possible. However, my goal is to meet with at least one customer, I personally, at least once a week.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Once a week. At least. That’s pretty often. I would say that many product managers I know, if they ever met their customer, it’s a success. But if they do this monthly or quarterly, it’s great.

Karol Kłaczyński: When I started this, because I started working with the customer success team a lot, and when I started this and I really pushed, they were really helpful. For, I don’t know, two and a half months, it was really every week. Then, I guess because it was the holiday period or something like this, for probably a month, month and a half, it was way tougher. So maybe once every two or three weeks. But now it’s coming back. So for example, I think last week, I attended three calls with customers. And of course, they are different calls. Some are about the feedback about specific features, some are things like taking part in the sales calls to discuss something more technical or stuff like this. But I’m trying to always include a bit of interviewing in those calls. So I guess we’re getting back on track, and at least once a week is absolutely possible.

Collaboration with marketing

Wiktor Żołnowski: Like this customer success team, product marketing… you started a podcast recently. I listened to your first episode just two days ago, since we are recording it. It will be published, so I’m pretty sure there will be more than one episode. But that episode was great. You had a great interview with your head of marketing. Could you tell us more about, wrap things up, how your cooperation with marketing looks like? And how do you think it should look for any product company?

Karol Kłaczyński: I think what our head of marketing said in this podcast is really important: we should go in the same direction. Giving the marketing team information or generally providing the communication about the product, because this is their goal, has to be consistent with the product itself. If we are building a knowledge platform and they are communicating this to our customers as an insurance–so we’re trying to get as many people to use Brand24 during the week as much as possible, but then we communicate this as an insurance, and insurance is something that you do not use every day–those are different directions. So I guess the strategic alignment is super important. That’s A and B, that’s the basic thing. And when it comes to daily work, I guess it’s just including people that are from marketing. As I said, we have a product marketing specialist who is a kind of a bridge, but I’m also talking a lot to our head of marketing for many reasons. One of them being, because she is, in fact, in our company, our main customer. As a head of marketing, she’s the main user, the main heavy user of what we’re doing. So if something bothers her, there’s a high probability that it might also bother other heads of marketing or other customers.

Wiktor Żołnowski: We are saying, I’m pretty sure that you will notice that we are talking about Brand24. Maybe you too?

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, probably. I think that if you type Brand24, it’s going to be in the description, maybe somewhere in the title on YouTube. So I guess Brand24 will pick it up and show it in the project that she’s maintaining.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Perfect. You can send us a screenshot, so we can add it to the episode later on, show a caption. So this working with marketing, how do you work? Is it in a way that marketing is promoting the features that you already developed, already released? Or is it more like marketing is building some pressure or some attention about what you are going to release, and you have some deadlines? Or is it more product-led or marketing-led? Or maybe sometimes both, where you’re using marketing to test some hypotheses?

Karol Kłaczyński: I would give you a good consultant’s answer: it depends.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Yes, exactly.

Karol Kłaczyński: But really, it depends. We had some time when it was a bit tricky because we started doing new things quite fast, which was pretty surprising for marketing sometimes. So I was posting on internal channels, “Hey, we just released that,” and it’s like, “Hey, it would be good to know at least two days before that you’re planning to do something like this.” So now we have established our own ways of communicating. We’re trying to give some updates in advance that, “Hey, in the next few days, we’re planning to release this, it’s going to look like that.” So sometimes it’s on the spot when something is released, we’re providing some insights. But there are lots of things that we’re releasing. So now we’re switching a bit. And of course, when it comes to the features, when something new comes up, we put it in our changelog, something to promote or generally inform our customers that something new came up that they can use. And that’s one thing. Of course, internally is the first place where we’re letting everyone know that something comes up. Sometimes we’re using early access options, so for a limited number of customers, to test some kind of an MVP to see if this is something that they would like to use or something that gives them value. If not… okay. We had one solution, for example, that was AI-based, but when I took a look at it after we did it, it was like, okay, probably that’s not our strategic goal at the moment. It was just an MVP, a few customers used that. Even though they said, “Oh, okay, that’s nice,” we’re not doing this anymore. So the early access is sometimes used. And I guess also remarketing many things is possible because there are so many things happening in Brand24 now that even after months, customers still do not know about some of the things. We’re trying to cover it up. One of the things, for example, in the last quarter what we did, we’re trying to also switch into more need-based marketing. So instead of just promoting features, we’re saying, “Hey, for example, the end of the quarter is coming up, so probably you would like to do some kind of a summary for your boss or for your customer. This is what you can use and how in Brand24 to make it quick, to make it look nice.” Stuff like this. So more like need-based marketing rather than feature-based marketing. And sometimes there are things that we have to do because of a deadline, like the Black Week preparations that we did this year. So this was something that… okay, I don’t like roadmaps or timelines personally, because this is very project-oriented. A product is not a project.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Yeah.

Karol Kłaczyński: But it happens. There are some fairs or stuff like this that you have to prepare for. So this is something that’s timeline-based. But everything else, we’ll do this on our own pace to bring the value, and then we’ll market it. We know sometimes how to market it upfront because part of the marketing is in-app. So it’s not purely marketing, but it’s also the code. So for example, if something big comes up, we were testing how to communicate with our customers in-app. We had some small successes, some things that were like, okay, this should have worked but it didn’t, moments as well. So we’re also learning how to communicate with our customers.

Learning from surprises and feedback loops

Wiktor Żołnowski: So could you give us some example of things that were, let’s say, the most surprising for you as a product manager? You figured out that, okay, we have this brilliant idea to do this, this, and that, and after you released it or after you started testing it one way or another, it turns out that the users are totally not interested in, or oppositely, something that was surprising for you.

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, I guess mess-ups are more interesting for people, so I’ll start with that. When I joined Brand24, there was already a huge project of rebuilding part of the application, the main part, from old technologies into React, GraphQL, to make it more developable, so it can be easily improved in the future, which was not the case with the old app, but also to make it look better. So one of the things that we did was that we had this old view with a huge graph with the number of mentions and the sentiment of the mentions. Because it was discussed with some kind of UX agency, we made it smaller and put it on the right. And we did an A/B test. At the beginning, it was like, yeah, they’re more or less selling the same, so that’s good, we can move to the new one. And we did. But then it turned out the old panel was selling better than the new one. It’s like, damn, what went wrong? And the thing about this A/B test was that one of the mistakes that we did–however, we were lucky enough that we more or less knew what went wrong–but with a huge A/B test, the problem is that if a lot of things are changing, you don’t know which one is the most important to change. We felt that it was the graph. So we created a new version of this new panel with a full graph in the middle instead of a small graph on the right. And it worked. So it turned out, this is another thing that we thought was happening, and then it turned out a year later, something like this, that what we thought was the impact, what was the thinking behind the scenes in our customers’ heads, and what was really happening, we were also probably mistaken. Because we thought, okay, probably our customers want more analytics.

Wiktor Żołnowski: You made an assumption based on some…

Karol Kłaczyński: Yes, because they wanted this huge graph and so on. So we did another test, and we put some more data around this graph. And it turned out that it didn’t change anything. Probably because–and this is something that we still think–it’s not like people want more analysis there, but people want to know more or less what’s happening, if it’s going bad or not. And this graph is giving exactly this information. Just having one metric that shows them where we are. And then if it’s wrong, they’re diving deeper. Giving one picture. So I’m going in, and within three seconds, I know if there’s something I should do or not. I can check it every day and then make a decision if there is something that I should do, if I can sleep well and just dive into analysis, or if I should jump in because there’s a fire.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So this is one of the feedback loops that you are using at Brand24. Are there any other kinds of feedback loops that you’re using? How short are they, or how long are they? And how often do you learn about your product, about your audience? Or maybe you’re doing it somehow continuously?

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, we’re doing this kind of continuously. With some things, you can spot the difference right away when it comes to the usage, for example. Usage is one of the things that we really strive for. It’s really the question of what kind of metrics you set up a bit upfront that you thought should be going up or going down. So for example, when we were doing some view exchanges, we then decided to verify in one of the analytics tools if the number of dead clicks was lower. Because this was one of the goals, because we saw there are a lot of dead clicks–things looking like buttons but not clickable. So that’s something that we would like to limit. And it turned out that yes, we did. Okay, cool. But of course, some things like this always take time. We’re trying to use more short testing solutions now, like fake doors. That’s absolutely great. So creating a button that generally does nothing but tells your customer that, “Hey, there’s an option to do that,” and seeing if people are clicking this or not. So this is a very short loop. It really depends on what we’re trying to achieve and if this is something that we can quickly develop. Because if there’s something that we can quickly develop, that’s probably a no-brainer. Just do it and see how it works. If there’s something bigger, of course, we’re trying to go and see what our customers are asking for, understand their business cases. Because sometimes it’s like, okay, a few customers asked about this, but this is so universal that other customers can use this as well, maybe in other things. Let’s do this. We’re trying to balance the testing, because you cannot test everything. So we’re trying to balance the testing a bit with our gut feelings, that, as business shows, can be very powerful as well.

Dealing with stakeholders

Wiktor Żołnowski: We talk about users, and from what I hear, they are your most important stakeholder.

Karol Kłaczyński: They are customers. They are the number one goal. They’re paying for your services, they’re paying for your products, they finance your whole company. Other people are also important, but customers are not one of the groups. Customers are way more important than the CEO; they’re not on the same level. There are some things that you have to do, and it really depends on the industry that you’re working with. Probably in the medical field, that would be a bit different because some internal stakeholders might be a bit more important than others, and so on. But still, users or customers will be the ones that pay for all of your services. They will pay the CEO, they will pay the CTO, CFO, whoever. So they are number one, and the others are stakeholders.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, so how do you deal with stakeholder requests, stakeholders who are not customers?

Karol Kłaczyński: Well, you say no sometimes. Yes, it happens. You also have to balance to whom you can just say no. But no matter what, I’m always trying to, if I’m saying no, I’m trying to provide some explanation, whether it’s someone from the customer success team, someone from marketing, or it’s the CEO. I’m trying to provide an explanation because, probably also from psychology, if you’re providing an explanation, it’s easier to accept. But if somebody comes up with an idea or whatever, the first thing I’m always asking is if it’s more of a gut feeling or if you have some data to back it up, or if you can get some data quickly to back it up. This is the first thing I’m trying to ask those people for. Because I have lots of things. The number of ideas that we can implement is infinite, really. Especially if you have three teams, there’s no way that we can do everything. Even if we did, it would be a total spaghetti, both for our customers and the codebase. So no, we’re not doing this. So I’m asking, guys, I have lots of things and I need to make a decision on what’s the most valuable at the moment. To do this, I need your support, I need your help. And if you think this idea is great, please try to convince me, probably with data, that would be the best. And sometimes you have to discuss a bit more, like, okay, I know that you know the market, but maybe we can check. If somebody is very persistent, then I’m trying to find the data on my own, or if I know that I’m talking to someone who has access to customers, I say, “Okay, please ask five people this question and let’s see what they answer.” Basically that.

Managing risk and ownership

Wiktor Żołnowski: So data are crucial. What about risk? What about taking risks? Because sometimes you might not have data, but you see that there is some opportunity. How do you deal with taking risks and how do you manage the risk?

Karol Kłaczyński: In my head.

Wiktor Żołnowski: That’s a quick response.

Karol Kłaczyński: No, but I’m trying also to discuss this with a few people, saying, “Hey guys, we would like to test this. What kind of problems do you see?” And when it comes to, for example, some development work or the system complexity–the system is pretty complex–I’m trying to also get to know the system, how it more or less works, and which people to ask if I suspect that there might be some increased risk in some places. So it’s like, “Hey, this is the idea, this is something we want to test.” And what I also like, what I think one of my main goals is, is to provide the context to the teams. “This is how our customers work, this is how frequently they are usually using the app, this is their goal,” and so on. So thinking about the customer context, what are we striving to solve? And then, “Hey, what kind of risks do you see?” Because I can see some, some people can see other risks. And then basing on this information, it’s basically my responsibility, my decision. This is what I’m paid for, to also take the risks, be responsible for them. And if they become real and they become harmful, that’s my responsibility.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Great. So taking the risk is one thing. Before, you mentioned that you are taking a lot of ownership for all the decisions. You have huge empowerment from all the stakeholders to make decisions on your own. So how hard was it to actually get this, to work on that, and to get to the point where the stakeholders trust you even with their own stakes, their money at the end of the day, and that you can make this kind of decision, take the risk on behalf of them?

Karol Kłaczyński: That is hard, to be honest. I guess at least not from my point of view. I guess you would have to ask probably my CEO how hard was it to give it away. From my point of view, I really love solving those things. That’s one of the things why I feel that I’m in a good place. I’m jumping into those problems, I’m trying to solve them. Maybe this is one of the things that convinced the C-suite at Brand24 to make it possible for me to take more ownership. Maybe. Maybe is the answer.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So do you think that the fact that you actually started behaving as if you had this ownership before they promoted you made an impact?

Karol Kłaczyński: Maybe. Maybe. It’s hard to answer this because it’s not a question for me.

Wiktor Żołnowski: It’s not a question for you, yeah.

Karol Kłaczyński: I just started doing what I love and what I felt was the most valuable for the company and what was the best direction. And I guess I was given quite a lot of trust at the beginning, and I hope I used this trust properly.

Growing the product while keeping it user-friendly

Wiktor Żołnowski: So one more question about the product itself. The product is growing every year, every quarter. You’re adding new features, new functionalities. There are more and more users using it, correct? The company value is growing. I assume it is? I don’t have stocks yet, but I see it. Don’t tell me anything, no, no, no.

Karol Kłaczyński: I’m happy with what’s going on. I don’t need to know the details.

Wiktor Żołnowski: The company is growing, the product is growing. How do you keep the product user-friendly when it’s growing, when you’re adding new features, when you’re changing a lot? I know that many people, most of them, actually do not like changes. So how do you manage to grow the product, change it very often, and still keep users happy and work on the low churn?

Karol Kłaczyński: If you’re changing something that is helping them, they are totally okay with that. So we’re not striving to change the processes of our customers. We’re trying to find the spots that, for example, they spend a lot of time on, but still, we provide more or less the same value, just quicker. So generally saving their time. Or we’re providing new things that might help them, so automating the analysis. If they’re sending reports to their bosses or to their customers, then we say, “Okay, you do not have to do this by hand now. You can do this automatically.” “Wow, cool, that’s great.” So we’re not trying to change the behavior of our customers; we’re trying to use it, embrace it, and support it. Of course, we’re adding lots of stuff, which also can make the whole application a bit messy and so on. We also analyze the touchpoints of our app. We are pretty careful when it comes to changing the parts that are the most used. Because usually, you have parts that are used most frequently, all the time, and you’re trying to be pretty careful there because, as you say, it can become frustrating. Again, the good thing is that we are also users of our own software. If we see that it’s getting messed up, it’s like, “Oh man, this is not usable anymore, we have to do something about this.” And then we do something about this.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So are you using an internal development version?

Karol Kłaczyński: As well. We have some dev versions, but they’re changing constantly. But we’re trying to use the production version more. As I said, we also have some things that are on early access. Early access is always available internally to check something, especially in the customer success and marketing departments, and give us the first feedback. But we are also using this for our own purposes as well.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Cool. I think it’s always the best to use your own product and to feel how it feels. That’s a huge difference.

Karol Kłaczyński: Absolutely huge difference.

Team development and empowerment

Wiktor Żołnowski: Let’s talk about the team. I know that you are also spending a lot of time mentoring your people and teaching them, sharing the knowledge with them. Could you tell us a little bit more about this?

Karol Kłaczyński: I’m trying to think what they might be interested in or what would help when it comes to the mindset. I guess the mindset is the most important thing to me. And I’m also trying to let them understand what’s happening behind the scenes. So this is what I’m usually sharing. The people that I’m working with have enough experience, knowledge, and so on, for example, to build their own companies, to build their own startups. Then we have a group of really, really well-trained people who are trying to create the best product possible.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I completely agree with it. I think it was already five years ago when we decided at Pragmatic Coders that one of our big, audacious goals will be to make as many people as possible leave Pragmatic Coders and start their own businesses. We already managed to grow, I think, five or six people who left us and started their own businesses. And there are a few more who are already working after hours on their products. So about five or six people who are pretty successful in that are running their own businesses. There’s a saying, I guess it’s a saying in business: “What if we train our people and they leave us?”

Karol Kłaczyński: “What if we don’t, and they stay?”

Wiktor Żołnowski: Exactly. So I think that this is a mantra that every company founder, every leader in the company should follow. Every good leader. I hope that everyone who is listening is at least aspiring to be a good leader and hopefully will be or is. That would be great.

Prioritization and backlog management

Wiktor Żołnowski: So let’s come back to product management, to product backlog management, prioritization, and backlog refinement. Those two topics are very interesting for me and for our listeners as well. How do you prioritize the backlog? You already mentioned data, a lot of user feedback. Is there anything else? And one more thing, how do you do this backlog refinement? I mean, okay, you have this idea. How are you turning this hypothesis into an implementable idea?

Karol Kłaczyński: So what I’m trying to do is also think about our goals. So this is the first filter, really. Somebody comes up with an idea, it’s like, okay, is it going to help us with achieving our goals–business, functional, whatever? If not, okay, probably not now. If yes, how can we test it quickly? And it’s again, it’s kind of a gut feeling thing. So if somebody comes up with something that might have a huge impact, what do we need to check? And then if you have a lot of granular, small things that you want to check for various things, this is usually easier because you can take elements from very different ideas. A lot of them can be tracked against the data. For example, if you have a process, like adding a project, whatever. If you build a list of elements that must be met for it to work, I can probably check lots of them using analytics. For example, if it’s easy enough to set up a project correctly within a minute, I just go to the analytics tools and I see, okay, most of the things that must be met are fine. So there’s just one last thing that I need to test, a small thing. Okay, let’s create a fake door. We’ll also be building soon, or testing in fact, if we can create some kind of a test or quick question framework to get more quality data in the app. In the app directly, to test quickly within a few days such things to get enough quality data to see if the direction that we’re looking at is fine. So in this case, it comes really easy because within, I don’t know, two weeks, you can verify five, six, ten ideas, maybe even. And probably one of them will be worth implementing in the next quarter. So if out of ten ideas, you know that one is worth implementing, it’s way easier to manage the backlog. So in fact, then the prioritization is way easier.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Getting back to your role as a Head of Product, how would you describe in one or two sentences what’s your main responsibility, what’s your main goal as a Head of Product at Brand24?

Karol Kłaczyński: Help our customers achieve their business goals. Basically like that. That’s what we’re trying to do. And this is why I like to really ask them what are their business goals because they have a lot in common, but sometimes they differ a bit. But that’s the most important thing as a product person. No matter if I’m just a product manager of a part of the solution or I’m Head of Product of everything, I’m really trying to help our customers achieve those goals. And towards the company, I guess the most important thing is to provide this context, really. What are those business goals and how would we like to help our customers?

Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, so are you measuring it somehow? Or have you any idea how to measure it?

Karol Kłaczyński: By sales. At the end of the day, it’s sales. No, but there are various functional things, and I guess we’re getting this a bit granular and looking at that because there are so many customer paths, customer journeys that our customers have, that it’s really hard to say with one metric, okay, it’s going good or not. Even sales. If you have good sales or good conversion, it can come from various different things.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Like excellent marketing.

Karol Kłaczyński: Excellent marketing, for example, and our marketing is really great, is really doing a great job. So for example, the sales also take into account the funnel. Even if the funnel does not change, if you have 50% more leads, you might have 50% more sales. Or maybe less, because with more leads, the quality of the sales process is changing. But still, this can come from marketing; it might not be your thing. And the other way, you might have a great product, but if you have 50% fewer leads and you have 25% less sales, okay, probably the product is doing good because the number of leads is way lower, and we have a bit lower number of sales. But this is very tricky. So I’m trying to focus on the functional goals. For example, recently we did some improvements to YouTube mentions, and the data that we were looking at was more around engagement with those mentions from YouTube, and they are doing really well. So this is a very direct connection. There’s no one metric that we’re looking at when it comes to the product.

The impact of AI on product management

Wiktor Żołnowski: Perfect. Okay, so just a few questions at the end. First of all, my favorite, about artificial intelligence. I was waiting to surprise you.

Karol Kłaczyński: Oh yeah.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I already told you that we are planning to do a Christmas special, maybe not this year but the next year, with all the answers to the questions about AI. So how do you think AI will impact the product manager’s role in organizations in the next couple of years?

Karol Kłaczyński: That’s a tough one. I guess when it comes to building the product and including AI in the product offering as well, it will impact it a lot. We see this in our product itself. We are using a lot more artificial intelligence, even though we were using a lot of AI before, but now it’s kind of a game-changer in many industries. So it gives you a lot of new possibilities. That’s one thing. The other thing is, not like Bitcoin or blockchain, it has a very… I wouldn’t say specific, but it gives you already some value. At the beginning, you can easily think and you already have lots of apps that are basing on it and that are providing real value. We see this in our product as well. We create, for example, some reports using artificial intelligence, and the customers are like, “Wow, that’s a great summary. I can send it to our customer or boss like this, and I don’t have to spend the whole day preparing such a report. That’s absolutely awesome, and I can do this on a weekly basis.” So that’s great. So I can already see how it enhances our product and other products as well. Probably, if you’re following MKBHD’s YouTube channel, there was an app that was creating an avatar in a different language. You can see someone that you know and it sounds like them in Chinese, or German, or Spanish, or whatever. That’s a very huge thing for example for webinars, for some instructional videos, whatever. It becomes super, super cheap. Now if you have, probably you know DeepL, the translation service. Localization in the past was an absolutely super huge project, to even create the panel or the app in another language was huge, really huge. Now if you have an architecture that is good enough, you can do it during a day.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Or even hours.

Karol Kłaczyński: Yeah, like just providing a YAML file, whatever, use it, put it back, maybe some quick proofreading because some words can mean different things concerning the context. But still, it’s super quick. In Brand24, we have, for example, two new, maybe not brand new, but we have two language versions for Spanish and for Indonesian. Spanish, okay, but Indonesian, that’s another very common language. We have customers from Indonesia that were interested in that, and we did this, and it was pretty quick. And this is because of the AI algorithms. So that’s a huge boost to the product itself. When it comes to product management itself, I know there are a few apps that are currently being developed using AI. Mostly, from what I know, they’re focused around feedback gathering, summarizing feedback, which is really tricky, especially when you talk to your customers on a weekly basis, and not just by yourself but a group of people. This is tricky to get to the main points of those talks. So AI, I guess, can help here. However, I guess product management is generally quite… there’s a lot of gut feeling here. There are a few things that can help a lot, but I guess mainly the feedback and the analytics. I guess in analytics, it can be helpful as well. Instead of building your own dashboards and so on, which takes time, I can imagine if you can just ask the analytics tool–and I guess some already do that–”Provide me the analysis of this period concerning this, this, and that,” and boom, you have all the answers. That might be powerful.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So for this kind of market research or analyzing your own product data as well?

Karol Kłaczyński: Okay.

Key tools and learning resources

Wiktor Żołnowski: So aside from AI, do you think, or maybe you already know, that there are some game-changing tools or methods or approaches to product management out there that you are already following somehow and you think that they will…

Karol Kłaczyński: I already mentioned one, and I’m just sticking to that because I guess it really does 80% of the job, and it’s Continuous Discovery Habits and generally product discovery. Everything around it is just an addition. Of course, it’s a tool, but the principles behind product discovery itself are so universal, or so general and so helpful, that’s the base. And everything else, we’re coming up with ourselves or we’re taking parts from other frameworks or however you call it into our daily work.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So as I mentioned before, when I met you for the first time, you already impressed me with your knowledge and attitude. But later on, when we met a couple of times, I’ve seen how you’ve grown as a product manager, how you develop your skills. Where are you learning from?

Karol Kłaczyński: Just as in every product: just try it out yourself. “Continuous Discovery Habits,” from my point of view, is a must-have book. “Inspired” by Marty Cagan as well. “No Rules Rules,” the history of Netflix, is interesting. Not everything that I agree with, however, it’s pretty interesting and gives you a different perspective. I guess also some things around psychology are interesting. In Poland, we have a guy, Professor, a law professor, Maciej Kawecki. He’s got a really cool podcast. Again, I do not agree with everything he says, but from the psychology, from the philosophy even, he gives really nice insights. One of the philosophers that I also like and that I feel is helpful in life generally, also in product development, is Erich Fromm, and “Escape from Freedom,” I think, is his main book. Absolutely great. There are lots of materials over the internet. Lenny’s Podcast as well, a good source. But again, try it out yourself. With “Continuous Discovery,” my adventure with the book was like, I read four or five pages and it’s like, let’s try that. I try, then I read another four or five pages, and then I try new things. And it really also builds the confidence that, hey, if you read something here, there’s a huge probability it will work. The important thing about product management is that because it’s quite a huge responsibility, it’s not an easy role, I guess, and it’s not for everyone. Not everyone will feel good about it, and that’s fine. Not everyone has to be a team leader, not everyone has to be a specialist. Some people are better at managing stuff, some people are better at being specialists. Same with programmers. Some of them love digging in the code, some of them would like to more manage the team and have some interpersonal feedback. Some people prefer sales because they feel good around people and they like making deals. Absolutely. So if you’re watching this video and you do not feel that it’s a place to be, it’s absolutely fine. Because sometimes, I was talking with one of the also experienced product managers, and we said that generally product people are really down to earth. Because if a project fails, especially in a huge company, it’s like, okay, it happened, let’s move on, let’s create another project. But if you have a product company that relies on the product, if it fails, it’s the end. That’s a much bigger pressure because your decisions impact the whole company, especially in the early stages. If you have some buffer, it’s easier, it’s less risk. But because you’re building startups as well, I was building my startup some time ago, if you make a mistake, especially late in development, you might not recover from that. That’s a huge pressure.

Wiktor Żołnowski: That’s true. I think that concludes our discussion today. Thank you very much, Karol. It was a great pleasure to host you here.

Karol Kłaczyński: My pleasure as well.

Final thoughts and where to find Karol

Wiktor Żołnowski: Where could our audience find you? How to find you, how to approach you?

Karol Kłaczyński: Follow me on LinkedIn. I provide some materials there. As you said, I also started my own podcast, “Karol Kłaczyński Podcast,” so you can find it on Spotify and some other platforms as well. So I guess those are the two main sources. I also usually have some lectures at universities. I’m also a mentor in the Econverse competition for young people. So if you are young and looking for a win, go for it.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Thank you very much for being here. And thank all of you for watching and for listening. If you want to help us, subscribe to our channel on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you are listening and watching. That helps us a lot with the algorithm so we can reach more people and share the knowledge for free to everyone everywhere about product and contemporary startup development. So thank you very much, and I invite you to the next episodes as well. Bye.

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