Owning the outcome

Main Takeaways

• Impact matters most. It’s not about how you get there, but whether it made a difference.
• Stay close to the problem: talk to people, pitch ideas early, and listen with empathy.
• Align teams through shared ownership and clarity, not over-polished artifacts.
• Think like a founder: measure success with business outcomes, not vanity metrics.
• Avoid using experimentation as an excuse for poor execution.

Who are you in a nutshell? What do you do, and why do you do it?

I’m a product manager and I’ve been leading the product team at Alan Spain for four years, after previous roles at N26 and Typeform. I’ve always gravitated toward products that are well-designed, opinionated, and genuinely improve people’s lives, whether that’s in health care, banking, or even how we fill out forms. I do this work because I care about creating experiences that are both delightful and meaningful.

What’s your setup? What tools and products do you use?

I like to keep things simple. I work a few days a week from a coworking space and the rest from home. I have a simple home office setup with a standing desk, but nothing fancy. It's pretty much a MacBook and good headphones.

What’s your biggest challenge at the moment?

The challenge is to choose between different potential directions, as well as deciding how much to invest into different areas of opportunity, balancing stakeholders and time horizons. The hard part isn’t the frameworks, it’s finding the time and mental space to actually think deeply while still executing.

In your opinion, what defines a top 1% PM?

It’s simple: impact. Not credentials, not frameworks. Just, did you actually make a difference? Too many organizations are filled with smart people who ship products & features that don’t matter. What matters is that what you worked on moved the needle for real people or for the business.

How do you rapidly validate ideas with minimal resources?

Start by talking to people. Really talking to them, understanding workflows, listening deeply. That’s how I build conviction. Once I have that, we put something in people’s hands and see how they use it. For example, we launched a flexible benefits product by having deep conversations with experienced HR managers. That context shaped almost everything about the product, together with a solid financial analysis of the unit economics.

Can you share an example of using Opportunity Solution Trees?

I’ve used them several times, especially when the problem space is broad or unfamiliar. They’re great for mapping out complex spaces, like improving product differentiation or reducing claim costs in health insurance. They help you visualize trade-offs and guide team conversations. I’ve also used them as a coaching tool with other PMs.

How do you make confident decisions with incomplete data?

First, know whether it’s a one-way or two-way door. Most decisions are reversible, so just make the call and move. For the big ones, I try to break the decision down, mitigate risk, and lean on my intuition, which is only trustworthy if I’ve spent enough time close to the problem. That means talking to customers, staying in context, and understanding the system deeply.

Alan has a strong bias toward speed: make the call at 70% confidence and learn through action. That mindset, plus staying on the same scope for four years, has helped me build sharper instincts and better pattern recognition.

How do you balance quantitative and qualitative data?

They’re not trade-offs, they complement each other. Quant tells you what, qual tells you why. Relying only on numbers leads to blind optimization. Relying only on anecdotes leads to noise. I stay close enough to the problem to sense when a number doesn’t tell the full story, or when a quote is just one person’s view.

What systems do you use to keep discovery continuous?

I don’t force a weekly cadence. Instead, I stay embedded in the work: in Q1 alone, I joined 75+ sales calls and now I’m helping with renewals. That keeps me close to the customers without needing a separate discovery process. When big decisions come up, I front-load conversations and learn fast.

How do you go beyond surface-level feedback?

It’s empathy and people skills. Listen closely, not just to what’s said, but what’s not. Look for honesty. Build trust. If someone’s holding back, find someone else. You’re looking for real transparency, and that only comes with the right people and the right environment.

How do you present your vision and maintain alignment?

The key is clarity, why does this matter, and how does it make the world better? The best format is visual and customer-facing: not a dense document, but something like a landing page or an ad. Show the product. Make it tangible.

Once people understand the why and can rally behind it, momentum will start to build. Keep the story simple & consistent, iterate on execution, and only revisit when alignment starts to drift or the context changes.

What non-traditional metrics do you use?

At Alan, I’m measured on business impact, things like ARR. It goes against the common advice that PMs shouldn’t own metrics they can’t fully control. But it pushes me to think like a founder. I don’t just care if a feature gets adopted, I care if it helps us grow. That mindset fosters collaboration across sales, marketing, and product. We’re all in it together.

How do you build a culture of experimentation?

From what I've seen, the biggest risk isn’t that people don’t experiment, it’s that they call bad execution an experiment. “We’re just learning” becomes an excuse. I push for rigor: clear learning goals, thoughtful design, and respect for the user’s experience.

In B2B with long sales cycles, we don’t A/B test everything. Instead, we pitch ideas early, get feedback before we write code, and only ship when it’s polished enough to be valuable, even if scoped down.

Can you describe a time when new information made you pivot?

It happens regularly. We revisit product strategy every 6–12 months. The challenge is knowing what’s signal and what’s noise. The key is to communicate clearly: here’s what happened, here's what we're doing about it, and here's why Sometimes you change course. Sometimes you double down. But the narrative has to make sense. For your customers, your team, your stakeholders, and for yourself.