Thoughts, ideas, and reflections on technology, AI, design, and personal growth from Alexander Hipp, an independent product leader based in Barcelona.

Key Points

Articles on product management and leadership
Insights on AI and technology trends
Reflections on personal growth and learning
Practical advice for product professionals

Topics: blog, product management, AI, technology, personal growth, design

Articles (40 total)

Staying clear under pressure
This is what I have come to believe great product management really looks like when things start to fall apart.
Date: 2026-02-09| Categories: Product Management
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Notes on using AI in product work
Generative AI did not only change what product managers are responsible for, it fundamentally changed how much they can own and how much judgment the role now requires.
Date: 2026-01-29| Categories: AI, Product Management
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How AI connects sales and product management
Joel Eiglmeier is Strategic Account Executive for enterprise sales for financial services and insurance at GitLab in Germany. With over fifteen years in software sales, he’s learned that how sales and product teams work together determines whether a company scales or stalls. In this conversation, Joel shares how GitLab’s radical transparency connects both functions, how AI can be used in sales conversations to drive it towards product direction, and why empathy still drives the most meaningful enterprise relationships.
Date: 2025-11-06| Categories: Perspectives
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Context matters more than code
We started with a small test, make the logout button work, and ended up rethinking how we build our side projects with AI. This is the first part of a series documenting what I'm learning while experimenting with coding agents, from writing PRDs for machines to designing the "teams" they work in.
Date: 2025-10-09| Categories: AI
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The waterfall trap is back
You describe what you want in plain English: “a shared calendar app with Slack notifications.” You press enter, and a few minutes later, the AI hands you a working codebase. It runs. It looks polished. It feels like the future.
Date: 2025-08-06| Categories: AI, Product Management
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How Flodesk designs for quality in the age of AI
Yuri leads the product design team at Flodesk. In this piece, he shares how stepping into a new role changed how he thinks about quality, how the team is using AI to prototype smarter, and why taste still sets great products apart, especially when everyone can build something fast.
Date: 2025-07-20| Categories: Perspectives
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You’re Not the User
Why product teams drift from reality and how to stay anchored in it. In product, we love to talk about being “user-centric.” But staying user-centric, especially in the messiness of building, scaling, and shipping, is much harder than it sounds.
Date: 2025-07-16| Categories: Product Management
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How Super.work builds AI products without PMs
Fadeelah is COO at Slite (the company behind Super.work), where she helps shape both the product and the business. In this conversation, she shares how stepping out of product management and into a new role gave her a broader lens on what really drives impact and how building AI products has changed how her team works, decides, and ships.
Date: 2025-07-08| Categories: Perspectives
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Quo Vadis, Product Leadership?
In my conversations with PMs and leaders, I keep noticing the same disconnect. This article is an honest reflection on that pattern.
Date: 2025-07-05| Categories: Product Management
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How Miro runs strategic user research
Josh leads user research at Miro, where they turn real user insights into strategic decisions. Here, he shares how they've turned user research from something nice to have into a critical strategic function that helps them to make smarter decisions every day.
Date: 2025-05-23| Categories: Perspectives
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Owning the outcome
Seb is a product person who doesn’t just think like a founder, he operates like one. Leading product at Alan Spain, he brings a grounded, high-ownership mindset to everything he does. In this piece, he shares how he thinks about strategic decision-making, staying close to customers, and building conviction, not through decks or processes, but through action and impact.
Date: 2025-04-24| Categories: 1% Collective
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Bringing structure to curiosity
Hernán brings two decades of experience and an unshakable curiosity to his role as Head of Product at rebuy. From web design beginnings in Argentina to leading cross-functional teams in Berlin, his journey is defined by transformation: from creator to connector, from building things to building value.
Date: 2025-04-14| Categories: 1% Collective
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Lindy Effect
Timeless product principles often outlast the latest trends and buzzwords.
Date: 2025-04-01| Categories: Product Management, Mental Models
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Why making confident product decisions matters more than ever
Making great product decisions has never been more important - or more challenging. With increasing pressure to deliver impact, teams can easily fall into a cycle of rushed, low-confidence choices that weaken their products. This article explores why confident decision-making matters, why it’s harder than ever, and how to build a process that leads to stronger, more reliable outcomes.
Date: 2025-03-18| Categories: Product Management
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Building products users love through empathy, rigor, and deep customer insight
Meagan combines empathetic leadership with rigorous attention to detail to shape intuitive product experiences. As a product leader at Flodesk, she keeps users at the heart of every decision, deeply invested in empowering small business owners through thoughtful and beautiful design. From her home base in the Pacific Northwest, Meagan shares insights on maintaining simplicity amidst complexity, building deep customer understanding, and why true product success always comes down to people.
Date: 2025-03-17| Categories: 1% Collective
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The map is not the territory
Roadmaps and metrics are useful guides, but reality often diverges from neat plans.
Date: 2025-03-12| Categories: Mental Models, Product Management
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Capture authentic customer voices from the web with AI
Understanding your customers isn’t just helpful, it’s essential for building successful products. But with feedback spread across countless platforms, keeping up has become increasingly difficult.
Date: 2025-03-04| Categories: AI, Product Management
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Aligning strategic goals and tactical execution for product excellence
Olivier is a seasoned product leader with a knack for blending strategic foresight with tactical execution. Currently spearheading a new initiative at J.P. Morgan, he combines his analytical roots in strategy consulting with hands-on experience in fintech startups. Olivier believes product success emerges not from singular ideas but from creating systems that empower teams to innovate, validate efficiently, and execute confidently.
Date: 2025-03-04| Categories: 1% Collective
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Inversion
Instead of asking how to succeed, first identify all the ways you could fail.
Date: 2025-03-02| Categories: Product Management, Mental Models
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Occam’s Razor
Your engagement dropped? Start by assuming the simplest reason before diving into complex analytics.
Date: 2025-02-28| Categories: Product Management, Mental Models
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How to avoid one-dimensional roadmaps
Product teams often fall into the trap of weighing only one factor when choosing what to build next. Maybe they listen to the loudest customer requests, bow to an executive’s pet idea, prioritize whatever sales says will close the next deal, or tinker with technology for technology’s sake. The result is a roadmap that leans on a single input and misses the bigger picture.
Date: 2025-02-22| Categories: Product Management
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Second-Order Thinking
A new feature can drive engagement but also adds complexity, increasing cognitive load and making onboarding harder for new users.
Date: 2025-02-20| Categories: Product Management, Mental Models
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Finding the balance between speed, future-proofing, and empathy
Nick blends years of entrepreneurial drive with an unwavering focus on real user needs. Staff Product Manager at Strava, he leads the Maps team with the belief that success lies in getting people outdoors, not glued to screens. In this article, he shares how he balances speedy execution with long-term vision, stays close to user problems, and nurtures a culture of experimentation that turns bold ideas into practical, impactful solutions.
Date: 2025-02-10| Categories: 1% Collective
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A deep dive into value dimensions
We often find ourselves at the intersection of business goals and user needs. And don’t get me wrong, we’re all happy about that. But while this is a crucial starting point, there’s much more to the story when it comes to creating real value.
Date: 2025-02-02| Categories: Product Management
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Building products with confidence at the intersection of clarity, purpose and impact
Megan Murphy brings over a decade of product leadership experience to her role as VP of Product at Circuit, where she shapes the future of last-mile delivery management. From her early tech career in San Francisco to leadership roles across Brazil and Spain, Megan's journey offers valuable insights into effective product leadership, decision-making, and staying true to your mission.
Date: 2025-01-23| Categories: 1% Collective
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Value of Product Management
Most product managers don’t deserve the title because they focus more on project management. It’s not entirely their fault, they’ve never experienced real product management. They were sold the wrong idea of what it should be.
Date: 2025-01-22| Categories: Product Management
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How mislabeling features hurts product prioritization
What if the primary barrier to your product’s success isn’t your backlog or roadmap, but the terminology you use to describe your work? Labels can subtly yet powerfully influence your strategic direction.
Date: 2025-01-11| Categories: Product Management
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Experimentation as a catalyst for transformational product success
Luis is a passionate advocate for experimentation, blending his diverse experiences as a computer engineer, UX consultant, startup founder, and product manager into a singular focus: helping teams learn, iterate, and grow. From sunny Lisbon, Portugal, Luis shares his insights into building better products, fostering a culture of experimentation, and navigating the challenges of organizational change—all with the curiosity and precision of a scientific mindset.
Date: 2025-01-10| Categories: 1% Collective
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A PM's guide to smarter ROI decisions
Product ROI isn't just about numbers - it's about making decisions that create immediate value today while building a stronger product portfolio for tomorrow. Here's what I've learned about balancing both.
Date: 2024-12-30| Categories: Product Management
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Feature factories vs. real solutions. Not every improvement needs code.
We Product Managers have fallen into a dangerous trap: we mostly believe that every problem requires a code-driven solution. This mindset isn't just inefficient, it's fundamentally breaking how organisations solve challenges.
Date: 2024-12-17| Categories: Product Management
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Why strategic visibility matters
Are you focused on the right things, or just staying busy? Strategic visibility helps uncover whether your efforts truly align with your product’s purpose. What would change if you could clearly see the bigger picture?
Date: 2024-12-11| Categories: Product Management
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Solving product problems at the intersection of strategy, data and insights
Yana combines over a decade of product management experience with a unique blend of analytical rigor and creativity. Having led impactful initiatives at Stripe and Lyft, her career showcases her ability to tackle high-stakes challenges, from building “zero-to-one” products to scaling them for millions of users. She brings a data-informed, user-centered approach to her work, empowering her teams to create solutions that not only meet business and technical goals but also genuinely serve user needs.
Date: 2024-12-10| Categories: 1% Collective
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Rethinking product prioritization with the Opportunity Spectrum
We’ve become prisoners of our own frameworks—RICE, ICE, and other scoring methods that promise clarity but fail to account for the full spectrum of opportunities. These tools, once innovative, now limit our thinking and block our best ideas.
Date: 2024-12-03| Categories: Product Management
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How to build trust in a complex ecosystem and drive product success
Daniel Thomason brings a diverse background to his role as a fintech product expert leading payments at Google Wallet. Originally from Australia, Daniel has worn many hats, from central bank economist to escape room founder to product leader. Now based in San Francisco, Daniel combines his technical understanding with a people-first approach to make confident, impactful decisions in a high-stakes, global ecosystem.
Date: 2024-11-29| Categories: 1% Collective
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Balancing short-term goals with long-term product success
The push for quick wins makes it hard for product teams to focus on lasting impact—how can we find the right balance?
Date: 2024-11-17| Categories: Product Management
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How to create technology that fits people, not the other way around
Naomi leads with purpose, crafting technology that meets people where they are. She blends human-centered design with a collaborative team approach, always seeking to build solutions that truly resonate. By diving deep into user insights and embracing a spirit of continuous discovery, Naomi brings thoughtful strategy to each decision, ensuring the products she builds are not only scalable but deeply meaningful to those who use them.
Date: 2024-11-06| Categories: 1% Collective
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Why decision-making is a Product Manager’s most valuable currency
As product managers, our ability to make decisions is our most powerful asset. A product is ultimately the sum of numerous choices made by various people within a company. Product managers are involved in or drive a significant portion of these decisions. Yet we still talk too little about what makes a good decision and how to improve our decision-making skills.
Date: 2024-11-04| Categories: Product Management
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Building genuine confidence in strategic product decisions
Today marks a pivotal moment for Beyond. After hundreds of conversations with product managers and leaders, I’ve decided to focus on what I believe is the most crucial challenge in product management today: building genuine confidence in strategic decisions.
Date: 2024-10-28| Categories: Product Management, About Beyond
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Are we solving the right problems?
At first glance, this might seem easy to answer. But in reality, it’s often much harder than it looks. It’s not just about building many features or solving customer problems, it’s about knowing that your team’s current efforts are going toward the problems that matter most to your product, user and business.
Date: 2024-10-22| Categories: Product Management
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Decision tree templates for making confident product choices
A few years ago, I was a product manager at a fast-growing fintech startup. I faced a tough challenge when the leadership team tasked us with cutting a feature’s profit and loss in half in the next three months. The team I inherited had accumulated a lot of technical debt due to the company’s fast growth, which led to the loss of millions of Euros.
Date: 2024-08-09| Categories: Product Management
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