Derek Osgood (00:00:02) - Launches are, at the end of the day, not a project that you need to get done and get through a checklist. They are an enablement exercise. It's about how do you take the core product that's been built and translate it into messaging positioning. That's going to help your customers understand the thing that you built and the value of it. And then how do you translate that value to all your internal teams, sales success, etc., that need to tell customers about it in a way that they are then able to translate it to them?

Ariana Cofone (00:00:32) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of operations one episode at a time. I'm your host, Arianna. Phone in. Today's guest is Derek Osgood, founder and CEO of ignition, which is a go-to-market platform for product and marketing teams. Now, Derek is a seasoned product marketing leader. He's worked at a bunch of businesses that you've heard of, including PlayStation, Rippling, and in founding Ignition. He's trying to solve a lot of the problems that he has done and navigated over the years. Derek has launched over 100 products, and those products have generated over $1 billion in revenue. So he really knows what he's talking about. And again, as someone in operations, it was really insightful to understand how we as operations people can help enable product marketers and product marketing teams to do their best work. So let's jump in.

Ariana Cofone (00:01:31) - Derek, thank you so much for coming on to Secret Ops. It is absolutely lovely to have you here.

Derek Osgood (00:01:37) - Yeah, so pumped to join Ariana. This is going to be really fun. I think we're going to talk about a bunch of good stuff.

Ariana Cofone (00:01:44) - Yeah, we got, we got a laundry list going. Well, I've got my checkboxes. But for those listening, I want to just kind of kick off with something that we had discussed previously, which is for the majority of your career, you have been involved and have had feet in two worlds, the product world and the marketing world. And for a lot of people, those worlds live separately.

Ariana Cofone (00:02:06) - But for you, you see them as one world, and that has been in your roles across your experience, from PlayStation to Rippling now and starting your own business with ignition, you are constantly bringing those worlds together. And I want to kick off with like, why? If you're listening and your product and if you're listening in your marketing, what is it about the fusion of those that that drive you and your mission?

Derek Osgood (00:02:32) - Yeah, it's so funny. I feel like there's this, like, little holy war that goes on between the product and product marketing teams all the time. And, you know, like when you start talking about, like, oh, one of them's a discipline of the other, like, you start just ruffling everybody's feathers and they get all upset. And the reality is like, you know, the reason that I view these so closely intertwined is because I actually came up, you know, like aging myself here, but like, I came up, you know, in a world where, you know, product marketing and product management weren't two different functions, partly because, like, tech hadn't really matured as an industry.

Derek Osgood (00:03:03) - And like, so, you know, a lot of the norms within companies were based on, you know, old kind of CPG brand practices. And so I was a brand manager at PlayStation, that was the function. And the role itself was actually like holistic end-to-end management of both product management and product marketing. I owned everything from, you know, product strategy to what we were to like a lot of product experience all the way through our integrated campaign planning and all the product marketing work, and even down all the way through Demand Gen and the campaign work that was being done. And, you know, I was kind of acting as like the central nervous system for the organization where, you know, you had marketing, other marketing teams within, you know, a much, much larger marketing organization. But they were all, you know, kind of centered around the specific tactical activity that was supporting, like rolling up to that, like larger kind of strategic plan. And the reason that I've, I've carried that with me through tech is like, because basically every company I've gone to after that just feels like it's massively dysfunctional.

Derek Osgood (00:04:09) - That setup was not at all like when that's when when we were building the team, when the team existed at PlayStation. Like I would argue that PlayStation is probably the best short of Apple company at launching things like it is literally their DNA, launch is so critical when you're in the gaming world to get right, and so everything operated like a well-oiled machine. And I attribute 99% of that to the fact that, like product and marketing, were so tightly aligned, and the reason they were so tightly aligned was because they were one person. But like, that doesn't mean that, you know, the best way of structuring this is in one person. It's just that you need to not have them have this big widening gulf that exists between them in today's tech, you know, companies, you know, I think a lot of, product teams have gotten, you know, and this is just the nature of having these roles, you know, and like how their incentives are set up. You know, product teams have over the years been drawn further and further close to, engineering.

Derek Osgood (00:05:14) - And like building the products and marketing teams have gotten closer and closer to the customer activity and top of funnel demand, gen and tactical work that they're doing. And so there's this big gap that's emerged in the middle, where there's no longer any kind of strategic cohesion between them. And oftentimes, like, the marketing team doesn't even know what shipping on product and product doesn't know what marketing is doing or how they're talking about the products that they've built. So there ends up like massive friction between those teams and lack of trust, which makes them then not operate well together at all. And so I just, you know, I've seen it work in good and bad scenarios and I know which one works, and it's the one where they are closer together. And I've seen that, you know, and if you look at some of the very best companies that are the most respected, you know, marketing orgs on the planet, like Apple and Airbnb, like they have all adopted this model where product marketing and product management are, if not one function, they are at least joined at the hip to the degree that they are not at most companies.

Ariana Cofone (00:06:18) - When you had talked to me about this initially, it all of a sudden brought a lot of clarity to frustrations that I was feeling in a more end to end operational standpoint, because a big part is, you know, my job is to make everything smooth across all the different teams. But I would always feel frustrated working with product teams because they were so technology focused. And then you have marketing teams, you know, that are so social media focused, or they're so content focused, they're using separate tools, they're not working together with those cadences. It's choppy. Somebody then thinks, alright, the product is the problem. It's like, no, the marketing of the product is the problem, and it's just because they're not aligned and not in sync. Although this is going to, we're going to get into Ignition and how that's solving a lot of these problems. All of it also comes down to communication skills and personalities in leading those teams. So what are some qualities that you look for in individuals that are really good to bridge that gap? Because I'm guessing other founders are listening, being like, oh my God, I got the same problem. What do I need to look for? So so what are some of those qualities?

Derek Osgood (00:07:26) - Yeah, I mean honestly it's going to sound reductive, but like, you know, when you're looking for product leaders, you're looking for product leaders that are business minded, it's funny because when I'm evaluating product leads, like obviously there's product chops that are baseline table stakes that you have to have. And like you have to understand, you know, the technical components of building product. But like, the number one thing that I'm evaluating for is do you understand the business impact and the downstream revenue impact of the things that you build and how to operationalize the product work that you're doing to support those other functions outside of product? And on the flip side, when I'm evaluating marketing leaders, like, I don't want marketing leaders who only think about the top of funnel demand gen work that they're doing and campaign work because they need to understand that, like the product contributes as much to the way that they're positioning the company, it contributes as much to the campaign effort that they're going to be rolling out.

Derek Osgood (00:08:24) - It contributes as much to the end customer experience, which is what they should really be thinking about at the end of the day, as any of the marketing work that they do, if not more. And so I look for marketing leaders who are very product minded, and that can think about how product is going to interplay with the marketing that they're doing. And this is why, like, you know, when I look at, you know, product marketers, like, I'm really bummed that I don't see more product marketers stepping into CXO leadership in either the product world or the marketing world, because I have historically felt that, like product marketing within organizations is like the one role that's uniquely suited to actually have that cross-functional view of how marketing and products fit together. So it's really just like, you know, making sure that you are not being siloed in your mentality. Like, more so than anything. It's like, you know, there's enough siloing that happens just in the way that those teams are operating, the tools that they're using, that you don't need to aggravate that by also thinking about things in your own little, like fiefdom. And you really need to be thinking holistically about how it's going to interplay with the rest of the company.

Ariana Cofone (00:09:31) - Fiefdom is such a good word and completely underutilized in conversation. I just want to say, but I totally agree too. I think also, I get the question a lot, as when I talk to operators who are like getting their footing, they're like, you know, I really like everything. I like to generalize. I love the end to end. I love all these different pieces. But I feel this pressure to constantly be specializing, or I feel this constant pressure to like, you know, have a certain journey in my career. And what I've learned looking back now, ten plus years is like where I went rogue and where I learn different things in different industries and on different teams is actually the greatest strength. Because I can step in their shoes, I can see what they need, I can communicate with them. I can also then counter them with the other team's needs and like essentially become a translator for the business through those different lenses.

Ariana Cofone (00:10:23) - And it sounds like what you're saying is that exact thing, which is we need people that can translate with each other, with the business objectives in mind. And a lot of that stems from, you know, defining clear metrics, understanding what success looks like. So how have you been able to do that over the years, because you were doing product and marketing way before it was really even like a thing that we could talk about or an industry that we were discussing. So how have those success metrics been defined, and how has that changed over the years to what we're seeing today? You know, with AI and all these different things, I find that people are having trouble knowing what metrics to follow and what metrics really make an impact. So how have you solved that?

Derek Osgood (00:11:07) - It's funny, I was gonna go to the exact same point is, you know, I think like the way that you set incentives obviously drives human behavior. Right. And so, you know, if you're measuring the wrong thing, you are going to aggregate these silos that already, like, naturally exist in these teams.

Derek Osgood (00:11:23) - And so, you know, a good example of the bad way of doing this is, you know, like when you're incentivizing your product team, like you're setting metrics around feature velocity and you're like, okay, you're like, we're going to ship this number. It's things that we, you know, set to build, set out to build this this year. And on the marketing side, the flip side is you're looking at things like MQLs, or you're looking at, you know, just pure top of funnel metrics that like marketing can, you know, easily manipulate through top of funnel activity. And so basically, you know, like when you set those like team specific objectives and obviously teams need their own individual specific objectives, as well, you end up with like poor cohesion across those teams because they're optimizing for two totally different unrelated things. So the right way to do this is like by having actual shared objectives. And this is again where like, you know, I come at this from the perspective of my old brand management function that sat across both product and marketing was I was setting top level OKRs which like can be just company level OKRs in some cases, depending on, you know, how big the product is relative to the company.

Derek Osgood (00:12:29) - But, you know, you're setting, at the end of the day, a really high level metric, which is probably revenue. It could be a profitability metric. It could be, you know, something else that's like a business metric. And then you need to break that down into what I like to, you know, frame is like business. You have your business objective, you have your marketing objective, and you have your communication objective. And the marketing, the business objective is the number that you're trying to move, which is usually a revenue number. You have your marketing objective, which is how you are going to move that number, which is usually something like we're going to create a category, we're going to grow a category, we're going to penetrate a category, something like that. And then you know the the communication objective is what you need to get the market to believe in order to move that market area, in order to drive that marketing objective. And within each of those things, you're going to have sub objectives and sub key results, which are going to be your strategies.

Derek Osgood (00:13:24) - And like that's where you know, like you can have product and marketing sub objectives and strategies live together to roll up to that top level metrics. So you know if, for example, your goal is like grow a category, you know, your product team could have an objective of ship, you know, ship two major new products that roll up to that category and reinforce the company's position within that space. The marketing team's objective could be, you know, publish X number of pieces of content that are going to help educate the market on that specific category. But those two things need to be planned together from the same goal. And so if those teams don't share the same ultimate objective, then they can't ever actually think cohesively about how products objectives are going to interplay with marketing to drive it.

Ariana Cofone (00:14:15) - Oh, that's that's a beautiful way to even so, when we're talking about objectives and key results, oftentimes I find that the objectives, especially the key results, sort of get nested by team where like product does this marketing. But you're saying essentially fuse those, those key results so that they're mutual their mutual key results and then have those initiatives underneath that feeding into them specifically for the teams. So ultimately there's alignment, not just from, hey, what are we trying to do here at the end of the day? Also, from a timing perspective, who collaborates with who to make that happen? It seems so simple, but it's.

Derek Osgood (00:14:51) - It’s super simple.

Ariana Cofone (00:14:51) - Simple. It seems so simple. But I I've seen that over and over again because I think, listen, as humans we want to bucket things into clear categories and boxes. And so it makes sense to have like a one for one, like one key result matches one team, when in reality that's doing you such a disservice because you don't have that collaboration and you're perpetuating the silos. That is a really good hack. I'm going to take that for sure.

Derek Osgood (00:15:12) - That's why I like to align teams around product lines instead of aligning teams around functional teams. Like, you know, when you have kind of product pods or product pods. And then by product pod, I mean like product line pods, not, you know, product team pods, you actually have so much better cross-functional alignment because there's some person who's kind of doing the core strategic planning, cross that whole product line who can set those top level objectives and make sure that everybody else's initiatives are rolling up to it. And then all the teams that are working on it don't feel like, you know, they're competing against another function. They're competing with the other product lines. And it's like, you know, humans naturally want to be like somewhat tribal and like pick their, you know, their little unit that they're going to operate in, like, you know, prioritize. And, you know, one way that they'll do that naturally is by prioritizing themselves around their team. But if their team is a product line, then suddenly everybody's orienting themselves around that product line success instead of around like the way that product, the team is working.

Ariana Cofone (00:16:16) - That makes total sense. I love that too. I work in businesses where it has to be by specialization for the most part, but the product line makes a ton of sense. I actually think you could do that with like different service lines. You know, you can sort of like lump those teams together where you can have that cross-pollination that's everybody just has their squad, their product squad, their service squad, whatever it may be. Even a regional squad too. Like if you are doing execution by region, you can have those things that naturally happens.

Ariana Cofone (00:16:34) - But, I wanted to touch base on your time at Rippling because. It's a product and a platform that solved a personal problem I had experienced for years and years and years, which is employee management, platform management, all these different things. Essentially, I hadn't heard of it. And then all of a sudden everybody was recommending it to me. Oh my God, have you seen Rippling? Have you checked out rippling? Have you gone in there? I'm like, what is this thing? And then I did a demo. I was like, oh my God, this solves all the things, all the headaches in one platform. Now, you were part of that initial team that was getting everything spun up with Rippling and spearheading the marketing, product marketing aspect of that. How? Because let's be real, HR CRMs aren't that sexy. Technology management platforms aren't that sexy. How did you approach making this very slick, yummy platform, something that people are constantly talking about? I mean, constantly getting sent the link. What was that journey for you and how did you do it?

Derek Osgood (00:17:49) - Yeah, I think, I mean, well, so Rippling, you know, like had its roots long, long before that. You know, Parker obviously started Zenefits. And so like Rippling was kind of a continuation of a lot of the learnings and product vision that he had built over many, many years building Zenefits. And so it's you know, I think it's not a common situation where you're able to have that depth of market knowledge and connectivity that, you know, they had going into it.

Derek Osgood (00:18:18) - So, you know, like I take very, very little credit for any of what went on with what we're playing, you know, through those early days. The reality is, you know, I think the, the product, because of that depth of experience that they had building it, you know, in the earliest days, the product was always an amazing product experience. You know, it's like one of those cases of just like extreme product market fit, where you like you said, it solves like all the problems that you had and did it really elegant way. That's the result of many, many years of like probably getting it wrong and Zenefits and like learning what you know gets how to do it right. I think when in terms of like the actual kind of execution that we did around marketing and like bringing that thing to market and, you know, turning it into this household name. Part of it was, you know, solving the positioning challenge. The positioning is super hard with platform plays like that, where they have multiple products, multiple different personas that we went after, lots of different segments in terms of company size.

Derek Osgood (00:19:17) - So, you know, it was really vertical using both the like product offering, but also the way that we talked about it so that you had kind of a top level platform message, but then it was easily digestible through a bunch of different, like specific front doors that were more vertical. So, you know, you could talk about the platform in aggregate, where it's a workforce management platform that helps with all this stuff underneath that. But you can also just talk about like, hey, it's a payroll tool and, you know, it's the best possible payroll tool because X, Y, Z. And so and you can buy that payroll tool independently of all the other stuff. You don't need the other stuff. And so, it was creating the, the, the marriage of like a really compelling platform story with like the individual use case stories.

Derek Osgood (00:20:01) - Then I think from a, from a growth perspective, like, you know, we, I mean, there are a bunch of tactics that we used for just like growing it in general. But, strategically, you know, we always really invested heavily in customer, in telling our customer stories. So, you know, we automated we set up a lot of like reviews, automation in the earliest days with, you know, like and we were incentivizing people to go and like tell us what they thought about the product. And people were because we had delivered such a good product experience, they were more than willing to go do that. And so we ended up with like a really high volume of reviews relative to what, you know, a typical company at our stage would have had just because we were investing time and energy in it. And it wasn't really anything fancier than that. And then, you know, we also did like we did come at the branding of the product very, very much from the perspective of like, look, HR tech is not sexy. It is not something anybody has fun with. And, you know, we went out and like, you know, I came from like a heavily brand oriented background, you know, for my days at PlayStation, I wanted to build it into, you know, the equivalent of a like consumer brand for B2B. And so, you know, we invested really heavily and again, like the teams that we were building out there. So, you know, we brought on, Nick Wiener's close friend who, you know, ran brand for us for many years. I mean, he's still there. And, you know, he had come from great brands like Samsung and, and, you know, he worked at Leo Burnett, as you know, the lead creative director there for a really long time. And, you know, we were able to just build a really compelling, fun brand. And we, you know, part of that is a cultural thing internally, like being able to have the executive level sponsorship to take some risks, like a lot of that stuff, you know, like a lot of.

Derek Osgood (00:21:49) - A reason that, you know, things like HR tech end up feeling unsexy is because the founders who start those companies don't have as much personality, and they're not as willing to take those risks. And, you know, they just attract a different breed of entrepreneur than, you know, like, let's say a crypto company that brings the high risk taking, you know, like the high B. Let's make it all really fun and, you know, exciting type of founder. And so, you know, we we were lucky enough to have founders in like Parker and you know, the rest of the exec team that were willing to, you know, actually take some of those risks and speak to people like they're humans and actually deliver entertainment value on top of, you know, just the pure tangible like, product value. So it was a lot, a lot of like, cultural things, you know, at the end of the day, like, you know, a lot of little stuff that feels obvious, but, you know, it's like hard to put into practice and in real day-to-day life.

Ariana Cofone (00:22:46) - Totally. And there was such a difference in what I saw as like the launch and the adoption of that as a tool. I mean, it's something that of course, I would be jazzed about because this is like what I, you know, sleep and breathe and and live in this is the world I live in. The coolest part, though, is that it needed very little explanation for people who weren't in that world. And that's what I loved about it, because we have to explain so much about why do you do this thing? What does it improve the investment of the cost in the platform? All of it was human from end to end. Everything you could just sort of say, this is what this is. This is kind of a best in class tool of if we can afford it, we should absolutely do it. And here's X, Y and Z reasons it sold itself, which was again, like, I cannot underestimate how much time is saved in just making that storytelling super clear. Ultimately, any tool that I am pitching to a team has got to be human driven, because the person that is going to be giving me that budget or allowing that budget to happen is a human, it seems so simple. It's such a cultural component. But if you can do it well, it just makes everything so much easier,

Ariana Cofone (00:24:02) - Which gets us into Ignition. And the company that you founded, which is essentially a go-to-market platform that helps product and marketing teams launch new products in a super smart way. And this is I guess all of this experience is culminated into you founding this business, and not just the worlds that you're coming from, but also understanding how to get that adoption in place. Now, I don't even need to say why. We know why. What was it like stepping into the role of a Founder for a business with a mission that you are personally very driven by? What was that shift that had to happen, or were you like, ready to roll and just happy to hop in the deep end?

Derek Osgood (00:24:43) - Yeah. It's funny, I mean, I like I, I always knew that I wanted to be a founder and like, you know, every step of my career, despite the fact that I went into some really big companies, like, seemed so far away from entrepreneurship, like the reason that I did that a PlayStation was because of the scope of the role that I was able to have early on and like, get exposed to, you know, all this other parts of like a very scaled business. So I always knew I wanted to be a Founder and I kind of made excuses for myself for a long time about why I wasn't ready yet, You know, and I, I wish that I'd started earlier. But, you know, basically the the stuff that had to come together for it, you know, I had to kind of finally feel like my skills were in the right place, which, like, they felt like I probably could have started a little earlier than I did. But, I think, you know, the big thing for me was like, honestly, Covid hit. And I was like, look, if I don't do this now, I'm not going to do it. And it was, you know, I think Covid made a lot of people kind of reassess priorities and, you know, rethink like what they wanted to do with their life. And, you know, I was like, look, I've wanted to do this for for forever. I know this is a problem.

Derek Osgood (00:25:47) - I've had this problem that now every single company that I've been at, including like outside of PlayStation, it was a problem for other reasons, but like pretty well oiled machine. But every other company that I've gone to has had these coordination problems between product and marketing and sales and like launches have been ineffective. They haven't really, like, moved the needle as much as they should be. And I know they should be from past experience. And, you know, I think that I saw these problems just repeated over and over it enough companies in enough different shapes and sizes and configurations that I was like, there is actually a business to be built here. And, you know, I felt confident enough in my own abilities at that point. But my own perspective on this market, you know, had some value to add in that, in that space that I just kind of pulled the trigger and I was like, all right, I gotta go do this. And it's been, you know, it's a wild ride, like being an entrepreneur.

Derek Osgood (00:26:40) - Its own, its own beast. And like, now, you know, I went from feeling like I had just finally reached the point where I'd gone through the whole Dunning-Kruger effect and I'd like, you know, had a period where, like, I don't know anything. And then, like, I finally got back to the point where I was like, okay, like, I probably am an expert here. I know, I think I know what I'm doing pretty darn well. And then went to be a Founder, and now I'm way back at the bottom of the trough and I don't know anything, but,

Ariana Cofone (00:27:03) - Yeah, I feel like it's just being a Founder of a business. My husband founded a business and it's just watching cycles of eating humble pie of like, you don't know what you don't know until you stumble upon the new thing or the next thing and experiencing it myself. It's interesting, though. I feel like there's a level of satisfaction that happens that, you know, when you've done so much in your career like you've done, and you've really kind of perfected and gotten so low level in this specialization, there's this new challenge, which is, okay, I need to now make this I want to make this a product. How do I explain to people what this product is doing? Because again, like product marketing is now more common to hear, but it's still new to a lot of people. So how does the educational component of distilling the specialization? Into a widely adopted platform. Like, how has that been and what things have you learned along the way in doing it?

Derek Osgood (00:27:56) - Yeah. It's funny. I mean, product marketing, like everybody hears the words product marketing. They're like, oh yeah, I need a product marketing. Like I know what product marketing is. And like then you start asking them a couple nobody knows knows what they're talking about. And even product marketers like product marketers as a function. Like, I would think if you go and talk to 100 product marketers, you're going to get 100 of them complaining about their number one problem is like articulating what product marketing is within their company, because even they are not great at articulating it themselves. And like I would say that I'm still not perfect at it. And I've been doing most product marketers same thing.

Ariana Cofone (00:28:31) - It's the same thing with the operations world where, like, we all suck at explaining what we do. We need to get better at it. We're the problem.

Derek Osgood (00:28:37) - Exactly. So like, I think, you know, it is an ongoing challenge. And like, I think the biggest thing for us that we run into is like the way that people think about go to market and launches is fundamentally grounded in, you know, the idea that it's like some kind of project, right? And it's like, okay, there's this like checklist of things that I have to get done and to get this thing out the door. But I think about launches fundamentally differently than that, like launches are at the end of the day, not a project that you need to get done and get through a checklist on. They're an enablement exercise. It's about how do you take the core product that's been built and translate it into messaging positioning. That's going to help your customers understand the thing that you built and the value of it. And then how do you translate that value to all your internal teams, sales success, etc., that need to tell customers about it in a way that they are then able to translate it to them.

Derek Osgood (00:29:42) - And so that is like fundamentally a different mindset to approach go to market from and like when we when and also, you know, like go to market, we have a budget. We're building a product that's like in a space that's on hard mode when it comes to the education component, because not only do we have to educate people on what product marketing is, we have to also have to educate them on our concept of what go to market is, which, you know, a lot of teams think about go to market as sales now because sales is kind of started using that terminology. We think about it more through the lens of bringing new things to market, going to market, and that includes the researching of that thing that you're going to build and making sure that you build the right thing in the first place.

Derek Osgood (00:30:16) - So that's understanding your market, which is your competitive set, your customers and what their feedback is. It's then prioritizing the right thing to build and building it. And then it's actually doing all that launch and enablement work to orchestrate, getting that information into the hands of sales and success and everybody else. And so our product, like people look at it and they're like, oh, yeah, like it's probably a project management tool because that's what they're used to. And we have to like really break their frame of reference and be like, look, no, like we do project management is part of our platform. We do have some project management tools baked into it. We also integrate into your existing road mapping or project management stuff. So like if you're using something else for that, great.

Derek Osgood (00:30:49) - The real magic in what we do is how we help to plug into your existing data like your CRM data, your sales, all your sales data, all your voice of customer data, customer call transcripts, support tickets. We then extract insight out of that and like tell you why you're winning and losing deals, what features customers are asking for, how valuable those features are based on the value from your CRM data, and then we help you prioritize that on a roadmap, and then package it up into a launch process where you can put generate all the positioning, messaging, and collateral that is needed in order to bring that to market and push that to sales and success. And like, that's just a workflow that we have to constantly be reiterating to people and telling the story through our, you know, content on our website, which needs work. It's not quite there yet, and most of it ends up being like a lot of sales and us being on demos and like walking people through it.

Derek Osgood (00:31:49) - And, you know, a lot of we have so many customers that come into us and they're like, this thing sounds pretty cool on the surface, but like, I don't really understand what it does like. It sounds like you guys are kind of like a fancy project management tool. And then we get them on a demo and they're like, Holy crap, I didn't realize that you guys do all this, like, this is incredible. And it's showing not telling, you know, at the end of the day and just trying to like, turn this into as many good visuals and demos as we possibly can so that people can really wrap your head around it.

Ariana Cofone (00:32:19) - That the demoing process, you know, it's exhausting. But I find when I'm assessing tools that there is nothing more helpful than seeing somebody bring to life what my problems could look like within that world. Yeah. And honestly, you're saying all these things and I'm in my head, I'm like, that's impossible. Derek. That sounds. That sounds like a fool's errand to try and do. I can't imagine the scope of building your platform. Like, I can't even imagine how you figured out the scope of what you wanted to build, because in your mind and in your experience, you have all of these things that you know that you want to bring to the market in Ignition, but then you've got to prioritize. So in the development process, how have you determined what should be prioritized? Is it really just like you listening to your customers. But again your customers don't know what you know having walked in those shoes. So how are you balancing that?

Derek Osgood (00:33:15) - Yeah. It's funny. So I think, you know, like some of this shows in like, you know, me being a first time founder, like, you know, I think in the earliest days we built the first version of the product that we'd kind of gotten feedback on and like, you know, iterated on at prototype level. And that was sort of like our vision. And then the second that we hit the market, we were like, okay, now we're going into like just react to customer feedback mode. So we like customers kind of tell us what they needed, what they wanted for a while, and we just sort of built exactly what like our design partners were asking for. And it's funny because we ended up breaking a lot of our own rules and doing that, like we in our first version of our PRD, we literally were speaking out like, okay, what are the things that we are never going to build? And like the number one thing then probably I think the only thing that we were like, we will just absolutely never build this that we had in there was task management.

Derek Osgood (00:34:04) - We're like, I because I fundamentally built our product because I was like, look, using solving this problem through something like Asana is not the right way to solve the launch process. Like it's not a series of tasks, it's a workflow. And so the first thing that we got banged over the head with by customers for the longest time was task management, task management, task management, and building this really robust project management tool on top of it. And so that wasted a lot of time, honestly. Like and I wish that we hadn't. And it's like one of my core regrets of like the early days prioritization that we did is that like I didn't stick to my guns on some of the like vision and I over over index on some customer feedback and I think, you know, since then, you know, we've taken a much more balanced approach where we try and prioritize things based on things that customers have asked for, married to our longer term vision. And, you know, we try and basically mix it, you know, about 60/40 in the roadmap that we're building in any given month where, you know, 60% of things are things that are reinforcing or that like customers have asked for or that in some way, shape or form, they may not have explicitly asked for that feature, but, you know, they've indicated something related to it.

Derek Osgood (00:35:17) - And then, 40% are big net new things that help push kind of the vision forward for what we can be and what we know that we should be at the end state and we're really delivering on this, but we also break a lot of our own rules when it comes to like product strategy. You know, like we we have built so much more than I would typically recommend to any startup at our stage. You know, it's partly because we're trying to solve for such a like hugely scoped problem. It's like we touch every single part of the business in some way, shape or form. And so that requires a lot of product, which means in some cases it's not prioritized really ruthlessly. It's just build everything and build it fast and make sure that you can get it all out, like at high quality out the door.

Ariana Cofone (00:36:03) - It's funny too, because I'm thinking how meta this is for, for you, you know, building Ignition that's focused on, you know, go-to-market, product marketing while doing that yourself for your own product and also knowing the practicing and the preaching and those things not always lining up.

Derek Osgood (00:36:22) - I always tell customers like, do as I say, not as I do like. The way that we build ignition is not how 99% of companies are built and how, you know, they should be building this stuff.

Ariana Cofone (00:36:33) - But, you know, if you're solving for a wicked problem that hasn't been solved before, you have to you have to create your own adventure on how to get there, because it's not you don't have a very clear roadmap of how to do that. You've got to figure it out on the way. And usually that's through. Like failing, succeeding, falling on your face, everything in the in between. Thank you so much for your brain and for really fusing these things together again, I think product marketing is a word that we hear often. We don't really understand it, and I love hearing how ignition is solving that.

Ariana Cofone (00:37:01) - The last piece that I wanted to kind of walk away with. So a lot of our listeners are founders of businesses. We also have obviously a ton of operators. So people who are in operational leadership positions, chief operating officers, managing directors, etc. as operators, how can we support product marketing people best? What are we doing potentially that is messing with y'all's workflow? And what could we do to help you do your best work better?

Derek Osgood (00:37:34) - It's a really good question. You know, I think like it's funny, it's also the I love that. Question coming from you, because I feel like I've always described like the very best COOs are the ones that, you know, they're just kind of always asking, like, how can I help you do your job better across the organization? And so I think, the biggest things for product marketing is like making sure that there's clear lines of communication and, and like there are two components to that. One is making sure that, like, there are actual just lines of communication between these teams. And so, you know, that's making sure that the tooling decisions that are being made across the organization are not reinforcing the silos that already exist within teams.

Derek Osgood (00:38:14) - And so whether that's having everybody kind of exists in a shared tool or just making sure that like tooling decisions are being made with integration in mind and how information is flowing between these different stages. The second big one is prioritizing effort, because oftentimes, like product marketing, the number one reason that product marketing fails within companies and like is not able to be effective around this process is usually because, they are overloaded. Because they're kind of the do everything factory like they can, they can do anything in marketing and they can do anything in product like they're they're very, very hard core generalists. And so they basically become the person that everybody goes to whenever they need something or whenever they have a question. And so sales is always bombarding them with inbound questions about like, hey, this customer is asking about this feature. Like, how do I talk about it? Or product is asking them for copy for a new feature that they built or to launch something that they just released. And marketing is asking them for all sorts of collateral for different, sales enablement efforts or for different, you know, campaigns that they're spinning up.

Derek Osgood (00:39:22) - And the problem is, nobody really gives them good air cover and they'll often report up to the CMO. But oftentimes the CMO didn't come up through a product marketing background, doesn't really actually understand like the volume of what's on their plate. And so they can't really shield them effectively from those other teams. And then they don't have a visibility into what those other teams are asking them for, because they're so focused on driving the marketing team and say, or if they were born in the CPO, it's the exact same situation. And so COOs really like getting with the product marketing team and, and working with them to identify what the real priority areas that they're seeing are and understanding how the other work that's being dropped on their plate from across the organization is impacting that has a real meaningful impact in unlocking product marketing's ability to, like, act as a strategic driver and, like really impact these go to market efforts positively. And I think it's like very rare that it happens. But, you know, when it does, I think that that is where you see the best product marketing teams emerge.

Derek Osgood (00:40:27) - And like the COO can really help drive alignment across the other executives within the organization so they know how to communicate, you know, downwards to their teams on how to engage with product marketing, like what product marketing is. Function is within the organization.

Ariana Cofone (00:40:43) - Oh, that makes so much sense. And also, you know, I always say that as an operator, we have to see the dominoes before they fall. Right? Our, our goal is to line up the dominoes so they fall perfectly beautifully at the right time. That's that's the ultimate goal. It's impossible within a product company to not leverage a product marketing person to be able to see all those dominoes, because they're going to see it, feel it before we've even had an awareness of it. So the tighter that you can bridge that gap, the better. I think that you can plan for scaling. You can plan for the next hire, right? You can then also protect them and say, hey, we got to slow down or we have to speed up or we need to hire more people. Again, just helping to advocate and also be that bulldog for them to to say like, stop distracting them. We've got to focus on this one thing or this needs to wait until this just again, like being there for them so that operations can be super duper smooth. Also, to prevent burnout. From what it sounds like, I'm guessing product marketing people are always at the edge of burnout.

Derek Osgood (00:41:48) - I would say that product marketing, I mean, I can't speak for every team in the company, obviously, and I'm obviously biased, but like, I fundamentally believe that product marketing is probably the most prone to burnout role within any company. And like I talked to product marketing leaders all the time. They all are bailing out of product marketing and bailing out of like, corporate life as a whole because they are so burnt out. So it's really common, for sure.

Ariana Cofone (00:42:12) - Yeah, you got to take care of the people that can see the whole picture and again, be aware of they are only a person or they are only a team. They might be the Wizard of Oz and all knowing, but we gotta take care of them. Make sure that they're that they're able to do their best work, which is not always about doing, but sometimes about thinking strategically, applying all those other pieces of the pie.

Derek Osgood (00:42:36) - I think to your point earlier, too, it's like identifying what are the dominoes that can fall. So it's like, you know, when you're talking about long processes, there are so many downstream risks that CEOs have a lot of visibility into in terms of like support volume increasing because, launch didn't go didn't go well and didn't educate customers effectively or, you know, like product elements, breaking and cross are like one of the few roles that actually has visibility into all of that stuff. And COOs being able to help surface to the product marketing team components that need to be part of that launch process in order to make sure that they don't start breaking.

Ariana Cofone (00:43:08) - Yeah. Well, and I also I'm very happy that product operations now is becoming a thing that's just more well known and that we're discussing. That's a role that is officially being formalized within businesses to, again, to bridge that gap, to help bring and connect all these teams together that are doing similar things, but in different specializations. Also, it seems like product marketing, product operations are a bunch badasses are in those rounds. I'll always love to talk and I always learn a ton from them.

Ariana Cofone (00:42:43) - But, Derek, such a joy. I want to wrap up with some questions about you as a human being, because now we know about ignition. We know about all your work, but we need to know about you. So I've got a couple rapid fire ones that I'm going to throw your way. So just go with your gut response, and then we'll move on to the next one. Cool.

Derek Osgood (00:43:54) - Sounds good.

Ariana Cofone (00:43:55) - Awesome. What is the favorite part of your day?

Derek Osgood (00:44:02) - Honestly, it's like all the work that I get to do with, like, product and design work, you know, like, I think I really geek out on that stuff. And, you know, it's like fun for me, finding what the challenges are that, like, users have that we can solve through just better workflows, better designs. You know, I think that's that's always a blast. But, I mean, outside of that, like, it's always, you know, a good customer call trumps at all. You know, it's like if I get off, call somebody and they're raving about the product and they're happy we've delivered value to them like that. Honestly, lights up my whole day.

Ariana Cofone (00:44:32) - Yeah, I'm sure you walk away floating on a cloud a little bit after those. What book are you currently reading or what audiobook are you listening to?

Derek Osgood (00:44:42) - I literally just finished the Challenger Sale and, really digging it. I have been on a big kick to beef up my own sales process skills. We just hired our first sales person, so I've been, you know, working on getting myself up to speed so that I know. I know the language you speak in, and, it was great. I mean, it was fun. A lot of applicable learnings, especially for, like, category creation, projects kind of like ours. So, it's been good.

Ariana Cofone (00:45:10) - Well, what is something that makes you little kid happy?

Derek Osgood (00:45:15) - Oh, new fantasy book. Honestly.

Ariana Cofone (00:45:19) - Any particular book series that you'd recommend in that if you are not into fantasy or haven't gone into it yet

Derek Osgood (00:45:27) - If you’re not into it yet. I really like the King Killer Chronicle as a starting point for folks. If you are into it, I go real deep with, it's called The Storm Light Archive and it's like deep fantasy. It's great.

Ariana Cofone (00:45:39) - I love it. I'm gonna have to check those out for sure. I haven't dove in a dove in a fantasy yet, which seems ridiculous. Now I've got to do it. What is the best purchase that you've made under $50?

Derek Osgood (00:45:52) - Oh, that's a tough one.

Ariana Cofone (00:45:53) - I know this is hard.

Derek Osgood (00:45:55) - Oh, I don't know. I mean, probably, like, there's this one supplement that I use called Amplify that's like, it basically just curbs all my appetite. It gives me a ton of energy. And I also. And, like, I just feel great when I, when I have it. So probably that sounds amazing.

Ariana Cofone (00:46:12) - At this stage in your life, what is the most important lesson that you've learned?

Derek Osgood (00:46:20) - A lot of them. Probably. I mean, honestly, like the biggest one probably is, you know, don't like, take life too seriously. You know, like I think everybody's everybody has like, ups and downs and you know, like in most cases you're not like you're not curing cancer. And, you know, the world's not going to end if you mess up. So, you know, like just keep going and like actually going back to my fantasy novel, you know, kick there like my favorite quote that I've got up on my walls, like the most important step someone can take is and isn't is it's sorry it's not something, but it's the next one and so let's just keep going.

Ariana Cofone (00:46:59) - Yeah. One foot in front of the other. Last one for you, which is. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Derek Osgood (00:47:07) - Am I not grown up yet?

Ariana Cofone (00:47:09) - No. Not yet. We got plenty of time left.

Derek Osgood (00:47:12) - All right. Well, I did always want to. Like, I love storytelling. I mean, that's part of why I got into product marketing. And so I always wanted to, either become an author or, you know, make movies. And so I would love I would love to do that at some point, you know, like, if and when, you know, money and time or no object. But, but yeah, probably something to do with storytelling.

Ariana Cofone (00:47:33) - Amazing. Thank you, Derek, so much. If people are listening and they want to learn more about you, keep up to date with what you're doing, what Ignition is doing. Where can people find you?

Derek Osgood (00:47:44) - Yep. So, I'm on LinkedIn. That's where I do most of my, like, content publishing, and I'm pretty active on there. So, if you just look up Derek Osgood at again, Derek Osgood three and then, if you want to get in touch with Ignition, we're at haveignition.com. And, if you want to get in touch with me there directly, it's derek@haveignition.com.

Ariana Cofone (00:48:03) - Fantastic and we'll put both of those in the descriptions that people can easily find them. Again, thank you so much for your brain. And thank you so much for your knowledge. I really feel filled with all this new information that I need to go nerd out on. And a big thanks to the Secret Ops listeners. Again, we so appreciate your time, your attention. Please follow us wherever you find your podcasts. We're also on YouTube so you can watch us here then and listen next time. Bye.