Erika Hall, co-founder of Mule Design, returns to the Inside Intercom podcast fresh from authoring a new book, Conversational Design. As voice and chat interfaces mature, she discusses the connection between human conversation how designers should think about interaction and interface design. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In his 2017 keynote talk, "The User Experience of Design Systems", veteran designer, artist and educator Rune Madsen dissected not only the benefits of design systems, but also the overlooked negative consequences he sees in terms of how they’re being applied today. Specifically, are we now over-templatizing products in a way that benefits the builder, but not the user? Emmet Connolly, Director of Product Design at Intercom, sits down with Rune to go deeper on the topic.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the first of a series of conversations with today's leading growth practitioners, we sit down with Siqi Chen, the former VP of Growth at Postmates. Siqi advocated for and founded the growth team at Postmates, and here he explains where his team found the low-hanging fruit in its earliest days, when being data-driven goes too far, the values that guided his growth team and much more.Siqi took a new role the end of 2017 as CPO at GloStation, an Alibaba-backed VR escape room experience, and he also opens up about the challenges he now faces growing a product that's much more difficult to measure than any app.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From where to make your first marketing hire (and where they should get started) to when and how to use tactics like content or demand generation, we look back at our favorite marketing lessons and insights from past episodes. Guests include Des Traynor, Krithika Muthukumar, Joanna Wiebe, Sujan Patel, Lucy Allen, Everett Katigbak and Kristina Halvorson.If you find these lessons helpful, check out our newest book, Intercom on Marketing. You can get your free copy today at Intercom.com/booksSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How will trends like voice UI, augmented reality and AI push product builders in 2018? Co-founder Des Traynor, VP of Product Paul Adams and Director of Product Design Emmet Connolly break down the buzzwords, discuss new roles the industry will hire for this year, and examine whether we've reached a point where software has become commoditized.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hana Abaza, Head of Marketing at Shopify, explains how to improve collaboration between sales and marketing teams, why you can’t view the marketing funnel as a linear process, the value of marketing operations, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How did 2017 change the way we build product at Intercom? Co-founder Des Traynor chats with VP of Product Paul Adams and Director of Product Design Emmet Connolly about what each learned in the past year – including how shipping nearly 150 customer-facing product changes in a single year changed the way we work, the way our views on bots evolved after releasing our own, why we built our own design system, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Melody Koh was the very first product hire and Head of Product at Blue Apron, where she helped grow its customer base and revenue 25x in 3.5 years. Now with NextView Ventures, she joins Intercom co-founder Des Traynor to share her lessons learned on leading a team at scale, collaboration and managing a product that's both physical and digital in nature.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Somewhere between the media hype and command line interfaces, machine learning and AI do represent the opportunity to build better products. Fergal Reid, machine learning strategist at Intercom, chats with Des Traynor about what we can expect from this technology in the next few years, which realities are far away, and the considerations you must make if you choose to build in this space.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Whether you’re at a brand-new startup, or launching a fresh offering under the umbrella of a name brand, you only get one chance to make a first impression with your product. Jenna Crane, product marketing lead for Dropbox Paper, shares why alignment with the product team from day one and a laser focus on user research are key to successfully bringing a new offering to market. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2017 the Inside Intercom World Tour visited 10 cities with 12 speakers, each sharing the toughest lessons they've learned in the six-plus years of building Intercom. Megan Sheridan, our Manager of Events, takes us behind the scenes and explains why we've invested so heavily in events as part of our marketing mix, how we measure their success, and the principles at play to get started.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shaun Clowes, VP of Product Management at Metromile and former Head of Growth at Atlassian, believes meaningful growth is fundamentally a product-related exercise. In this episode, he explains why activation is an ongoing challenge, shares his most successful retention strategies, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Founded only six years ago in a small Midwestern college town, Zapier has built not only a workplace automation tool that connects with more than 800 apps, but also a profitable business. Co-founder and CEO Wade Foster explains how to market what appears like a technical product to non-technical users, why Zapier took a lean approach to fundraising, how and when to move your product upmarket, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sujan Patel, founder of the growth marketing agency Web Profits, has led digital marketing strategy for Salesforce, Mint, Intuit, Expedia, LinkedIn, Zillow and more. In this chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he breaks down when a startup is ready for growth marketing, where they should start, and how to execute those tactics in a measurable way.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the co-founder of Copy Hackers, Joanna Wiebe is on a mission to help startups use writing as a tool to grow their business. In this chat with Intercom's Geoffrey Keating she explains the biggest mistakes she sees startups making with their email strategies, how to improve subject lines, what bottled water can teach us about tag lines, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before Asana was a publicly available product, Jackie Bavaro was guiding the company’s product decisions behind the scenes as its first product manager. In this chat with Intercom Director of Product Management Brian Donohue, she shares the way her product team works, how they tackle scoping and prioritization, how to balance intuition with data, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

James Buckhouse, Founder of the Sequoia Creative Lab, shares this short story to inspire and remind us all that we’re never just designing pixels or features or new user flows. We’re designing complements to the human condition, and in the process, there’s a wealth of value to be found in the events happening around us on any given day.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2013 Ryan Hoover founded Product Hunt, a community of product enthusiasts who share and discover new products every day. In this interview with Intercom's Adam Risman, Ryan talks about his journey from product management to founder, scaling a community of enthusiasts, and tips for founders to trying to stand out from the crowd. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Stripe's first marketing hire four years ago, Krithika Muthukumar spanned anything from positioning and branding to developer campaigns, product launches to writing copy. In this interview with Intercom's Adam Risman, Krithika shares how the marketing team has evolved over the years, the importance of launching with intention, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Barrows is a sales trainer and consultant whose client list includes Dropbox, LinkedIn, Twilio, Salesforce, Bitly, New Relic and yes, even Intercom. In this chat with Intercom VP of Sales LB Harvey, John explains when a startup is ready for a dedicated sales team, how to better align sales and marketing, the traits that make for a promising sales hire, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Following an eight-year run at Google, where he designed Google Flights and co-founded Android Wear, Emmet Connolly joined Intercom as Director of Product Design in October 2014. In this chat with Intercom's John Collins, Emmet shares how he's evolved the way his team works as its grown, the importance of our design system in that process, how that system serves the product team as a whole, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Head of R&D and Work Futurist at Atlassian, Dom Price travels the world studying how Atlassian teams work, and visiting with outside teams across industries to share insights, with the aim of keeping teams autonomous, innovative and nimble. In this episode he explains the importance of cognitive diversity in high performing teams, maintaining a culture of innovation at scale, how to check the health of our teams, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before advising startups at Greylock Partners, Casey Winters played a prominent role in shaping the successful growth strategies at Pinterest and Grubhub. In a chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he explains when a startup is ready for a dedicated growth team, the problems they should tackle first, user onboarding best practices, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As perhaps the only UX researcher on staff at a VC fund, Michael Margolis is parachuting into startups year-round to help them better understand their users. In this chat with Intercom Director of Research Sian Townsend, Michael walks us through his "start at the end" research framework, the ways in which he quickly develops rapport with new product teams, how to conduct research faster, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the author of "Content Strategy for the Web" and founder of the content consultancy Brain Traffic, Kristina Halvorson has built her career around connecting with audiences and users and spurring them to action. In this chat with Intercom managing editor John Collins, she explains the evolving definition of content strategy, how it intersects with content marketing, the common mistakes many startups make with content, and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

James Buckhouse spent nearly a decade as an animator at Dreamworks, helping craft the Shrek and Madagascar franchises. Today he's the founder of the Sequoia Creative Lab, where his team applies story-driven design to products and experiences for Sequoia and its portfolio companies. In this chat with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, James explains what film can teach us about designing products, exercises your team can do to uncover your own product’s story, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Karen Church joined Intercom from Yahoo in January 2016. Her mission: create and lead a cross-functional team of data analysts, data scientists and data engineers. In this conversation with Intercom editor Geoffrey Keating, she explains the metrics the matter most to her team, the importance of storytelling in her work, how to democratize data across a company, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jason Calacanis is one of the most successful angel investors in Silicon Valley and was one of the very first in the door at Uber, Thumbtack, Robinhood and Wealthfront. In this conversation with Intercom's Des Traynor, Jason explains the qualities he looks for in founders, when they should begin pitching angel investors, how to approach valuation, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In less than two years, Jeetu Patel has taken Box Platform from a mere idea to an open platform with more than 175 partners building Box content management into their own products. In this episode, Jeetu explains how startups today can repeat Box's process. He covers how a product team's mindset must change, building relationships with developers, and why your customers – not your competition – should dictate your integration strategy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this chat with Intercom software engineer Ingrid Epure, Honeycomb co-founder and veteran infrastructure engineer Charity Majors explains when your startup actually needs a dedicated ops team, why engineers need to get comfortable with failure, the role cross-pollination plays in a healthy engineering culture, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joe Haslam, a startup founder and professor at IE Business School with a focus on how to scale companies, breaks down the common pitfalls cause premature scaling, paths to growth outside the Silicon Valley norm, the pros and cons of getting big, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With his new book, Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams, hot off the press, Martin Eriksson chats with Intercom's Adam Risman about what skills define successful product leaders, how startups should approach their first product leadership hire, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Skyliner co-founder and former Stripe and Etsy VP Marc Hedlund opens up about what he's learned from past startups, lessons in engineering management, how to begin correcting tech's diversity problems, and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do you better help new users understand what actions to take within your product? Amy Thibodeau, Content Strategy Lead at Shopify, explains how interface content done well can nudge users to success – and when crafted poorly can lead to frustrating, unintended actions. She also takes us inside Polaris, Shopify's new, publicly available design system, and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Monteiro is the co-founder and design director of Mule Design and speaks frequently and passionately about both craft and business. In this conversation with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, Mike explains the responsibilities designers have to their users and community, why the veil of ignorance is perhaps the greatest tool a designer can use, the issues he sees with design education today, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s often said that good product design is simple, and supporting all of the pixels and interactions we create are the simplest element of all, words. John Saito, UX writer at Dropbox and previously the very first UX writer at YouTube, explains how to find and document your product's voice and effectively use words to guide users to success. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nothing will drain your startup's talent pool faster than a bad manager. So what makes for a good one? Kim Scott, author of the bestselling book Radical Candor: Be a kickass boss without losing your humanity, explains how to create a culture of giving and receiving feedback that will help your team do its best, most fulfilling work. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can product makers offer more functionality without making it harder for users to be successful? Andrew Ofstad, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Airtable and former product manager at Google, explains why complexity slowly creeps in, how his team at Google pared down the Maps UI using first principles, how he keeps product simple at Airtable, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Des Traynor, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Intercom, recounts lessons and stories from the early days of the company and explains how they apply to those who are navigating early-stage startup life today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Golden Krishna, author of The Best Interface is No Interface and a design strategist at Google, explains the trap of screen-centric thinking, what hardware can teach us about software design, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Edmond Lau, author of The Effective Engineer and a leader on Quip's user growth and engagement team, shares how engineers can make a greater impact, avoiding the layers of product and organizational complexity that often block them, strategies for prioritizing work, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Monal Chokshi was hired as Lyft's first dedicated researcher and tasked with building out the ridesharing company's UX research team and culture – something she'd done successfully before at SoundCloud and Intuit. She shares how researchers can prove their value, the way she’s structured her teams and why lightweight, guerrilla research – an exercise she likens to dating – is the user research gateway drug for startups. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Colin Bentley and Brian Donohue, Group Product Managers at Intercom and two of our first product hires, reflect on how their roles have changed at scale, what they’ve done to stay close to customers, learning to work with marketing and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everett Katigbak has played a key role in shaping the brands of Stripe, Facebook and Pinterest. In this chat with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, he shares how brand design can support product and spread culture, the story behind Facebook's Analog Research Laboratory, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If your product is going to grow, new users need to find success with it, fast. Behance co-founder and Benchmark Capital venture partner Scott Belsky explains how to design your product’s first mile, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Janna Bastow, Co-Founder of Mind the Product and ProdPad, talks with Intercom's Adam Risman about how to build and scale product roadmaps, say no to feature requests and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nearly five years ago Jeff Gardner became Intercom's first customer support hire. Today he manages a team of 50+, who are handling more than 25,000 customer conversations a month. In a chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he explains how to keep your customer support personal as you scale. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Long before becoming a successful startup founder, Bridget Harris could be found busking Celtic Folk in London. In a conversation with Intercom's John Collins, she explains how her busking days shaped the way she runs YouCanBook.me, why she opted to bootstrap over the conventional VC funding route, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.