Ignite Product: Jeff Gothelf on Lean UX and Product Strategy in the Age of AI | Ep282

**Jeff Gothelf** (0:00)
There's literally no excuse, honestly. There is no excuse not to do this. Today, you could argue that 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, well, there's cost and there's time. That was always the excuse. It's you're slowing us down with all this customer conversation stuff. Today, there's absolutely no excuse. Collecting the data, finding people to talk to, getting in front of them, showing them something. It's absolutely ridiculous to say that this is not something you can do. And equally as importantly, that's actually only half the work.
The other half is then taking all of that insight that you've collected and synthesized and actually changing course based on what you learned along the way.
I get it. Founders have strong opinions. They have visions. They have a sense for where they're going. They want to get on that way. Terrific. But we've all seen those diagrams, right? A path is not a straight line. That path is going to be a variety of twists and turns. And those twists and turns should be driven by market insight, customer feedback, customer evidence, what you're hearing from the people that you're trying to serve.

**Brian Bell** (1:21)
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast. Today, we're delighted to have Jeff Gothelf on the mic. He's one of the people who taught a generation of teams how to build software. He co-created the Lean UX movement, wrote the book on it, literally, Lean UX, and now is now in its third edition, and followed it with the Harvard Business Review Press Book, Sense and Respond, and most recently, Who Does What by How Much? I love that name.
A customer-centric take on OKRs. Thanks for coming on, Jeff.

**Jeff Gothelf** (1:46)
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

**Brian Bell** (1:48)
Well, we've heard about the books, but I'd love to hear from the man. What's your background? What's your origin story?

**Jeff Gothelf** (1:53)
I was a failed musician. I tried to be a rock star and gave a real shot for a couple of years, toured with a couple of bands on the East Coast, the US. Those guys are still my best friends to this day. In fact, we all just got together again recently, about a month ago, and it was so nice, but it didn't work out. Ended up the web was becoming a thing at that time.

**Brian Bell** (2:14)
The World Wide Web, or just the web?

**Jeff Gothelf** (2:16)
Not the World Wide Web, but the Interactive Internet.

**Brian Bell** (2:20)
The Information Superhighway?

**Jeff Gothelf** (2:22)
Yeah, exactly. I taught myself HTML and basic website design, and began to build websites for myself, my band, my friends' bands, and that type of thing. Then back in 1999, if you could spell HTML, you could get a job.
I started building websites and doing web design, and that led to interaction design in UX, and then ultimately leadership roles in design, and then product management. And then finally in 2012, I went out of my own and started a consulting, but it was a services business, building apps and services in a way that seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. That was kind of in contrast to the way that most software was being built at the time, and we built that business. It was called Neo over four years, and then when that sold in 2015, I was out of my own for a long time, and then really collaborating very closely with co-author Josh Sidon, working together independently on the content, and then in the last few years, we have, among other things, solidified that into Sense and Respond Learning these days, which is our product management training.

**Brian Bell** (3:25)
Wow.
So much to unpack there. What a journey. I love the, started as a rock star. What instrument were you playing?

**Jeff Gothelf** (3:31)
I played piano.

**Brian Bell** (3:33)
Wow, okay. Yeah, everybody needs a keyboardist in the band, right? It is.

**Jeff Gothelf** (3:37)
It's one of those things that if you need one, it's hard to find one. Not all the rock bands in the world are looking for one, but if you're looking for one, it's good to be one.

**Brian Bell** (3:45)
Yeah, that's the hardest to fill sometimes. After the drummer, the drummer is kind of core too, right?

**Jeff Gothelf** (3:52)
The drummers are hard, yeah, for sure. I know what's interesting is I recently got, I got conscripted into a Grateful Dead cover band, which not 100 percent my bag, it's not percent my bag, it's like 57 percent my bag, I guess. But I really enjoyed the gig. It's a really cool band with a bunch of guys from a variety of different places and we did some shows, and the shows did really well. Then all of a sudden, to your point, people are like, I have a band that does Grateful Dead songs over here, and we need a keyboard player.