There’s a widespread belief in the product community that product managers are CEOs of their product. While some may agree with this statement, others like Sara Wood prefers to say that PMs are shepherds of their product, leading teams to greener pastures of success.
Sara’s product career spans over 2 decades in the fashion and retail space. Currently, she is leading her team at Farfetch to create innovative shopping experiences for customers by leveraging technology.
Come join me in this episode to learn about her story from retail to product, why relationship building is the number one required skill a product manager could have, and the value of having confidence with humility at your workplace.
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About Sara
A seasoned product management leader and Current VP of industry frontrunner Farfetch, Sara is masterful at advising start-ups on how to accelerate growth and avoid pitfalls.
Sara has been leading Product teams since long before the discipline had a name. Starting in the early days of the first dotcom boom in San Francisco managing products such as Salon Magazine, she survived the bust and came through that period to lead teams at the executive level at Flickr, Wikia/Wikipedia, early stage starts ups such as Layer that won TechCruch Disrupt, as well as large Fortune500 companies such as Gap Inc global. Sara serves as an early-stage advisor to young companies, hoping to help accelerate their vision, while avoiding the all-too-common land mines along the way.
Sara has developed her own outlook on what makes a team, a feature, a product and a company successful. She has worn many hats (depending on the size and maturity of the organization) and lived every incarnation of “process.” She has learned first-hand how to manage through complexity and changing economics (she also credits her years as a waitress and bartender for this as well!).
In her current role, as the executive leader of Product at Farfetch, Sara is responsible for all product, design, data science, and analytics work across global markets. Farfetch is by far the leading innovator in both the fashion/retail space, but also in how technology platforms can build an ecosystem that allows many companies to benefit. Farfetch is poised to reinvent the shopping experience wherever the customer may be.
To learn more about Sara, check out the links below.
In this episode:
- From Marketer to VP of Product at Netflix
- Delighting Customers through Consumer Science
- How to Hack your Product Leader Career
In this episode:
- Pros and cons of having a consulting background
- Importance of sharing "war stories"
- Embodying the persona as customer research
In this episode:
- Empowering teams through the Prezi Model
- Key differences between B2B and B2C product management
- Why embracing discomfort can boost your product career