When I initially chatted with Joe about being a guest on the show, I quickly regretted not having the mics already rolling.
What began as a quick introduction fast became an enchanted storytelling spanning fifteen years of product management experience beginning in Arizona in the early nineties.
Today Joe Dahlquist is the VP of Product Management for an exciting cybersecurity startup called ThreatSTOP. But well before he found the world of software-as-a-service (SAAS) and stopping internet threats, Joe developed hundreds of electronics products - first with Rockford Corporation and later with Chamberlain.
Not having any idea what he wanted to do with his life but knowing as a teenager he loved cars and music, Joe found his first job working as a car audio customer support representative.
Talking with customers day in, day out only deepened his connection to the products he was supporting and before long he was invited by the product team to join an internal beta testing program.
Tune in below for Joe's story, which also covers:
- Managing the hardware product development cycle
- The importance of collecting feedback that ISN'T tied to your product
- How to effectively pivot once you've already shipped thousands of units
"I think an area where product managers can get caught up sometimes is trying to be the subject matter expert in an area that they don’t need to be a subject matter expert in and that product managers, I know myself at least, I've really had to choose my battles and choose where I spend my time. That’s why you have an engineering department that’s great at laying out a circuit board and getting it all to work, that’s why you have mechanical engineers that are going to design the heat sink or the housing or something and make it functional. What you have to do as a product manager is figure out how to connect all of those people and get them all working on the same project at the same time with common goals and a common understanding of what you’re trying to achieve and then yielding to those people that have that subject matter expertise in the different areas that you need." Joe Dahlquist
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