Focus on What's Really Important
If you've ever eaten a KIND bar you've been touched by Natalie Gibralter.
Global domination by way of healthy snacks wasn't exactly Natalie's plan out of school, but social impact was. And it was one of KIND's earliest initiatives- a collaboration with nonprofit OneVoice where Gibralter was interning- that led her away from the nonprofit sector into the forprofit sector, and shifted her perspective on what it means to make an impact.
When Gibralter joined KIND as a social marketing manager it was a new role for a company with few more than ten employees and just over a million dollars in annual sales. When she left, annual revenues were into the hundreds of millions.
Fast forward to present-day NYC where Gibralter now works as VP of Product at Squarespace, another behemoth brand she's helped steer through 10x growth during her seven-year tenure.
We caught up with Natalie at Squarespace headquarters in NYC, which are as attentive to design as the platform is to the design-minded customer.
We spoke about Natalie's journey from business development into product and then up through the ranks of product leadership, contemplated the challenges of organizing (and re-organizing) product teams at scale, and why never losing focus of what's important (neither in our careers nor in our personal lives) is the best advice Gibralter can offer to any of us.
Hit play below to listen to the full conversation.
In this episode:
- Where do startups go wrong with implementing OKRs
- Can OKRs really scale for enterprise?
- What are pipelines and how do they change the way we think about product roadmaps?
In this episode:
- From retail to product management
- Why relationship building is the number one required skill a product manager could have
- The value of having confidence with humility
In this episode:
- Establishing a clear vision of your career path
- Using metrics to answer burning product questions
- What product managers can learn from biology
