Whatever her job, Yana Welinder has always had a passion for improving broken experiences. She did this as Product Lead at Wikimedia, she did this as Head of Product at If This Then That, and now she's here as CEO of her own IoT firm, Kraftful.
Here are some of Yana's insights on IoT & startups:
Usability in IoT is broken & someone needed to fix itYana was Head of Product at IFTTT & they have an important mission - to make IoT devices interoperable. Yana wanted to solve an even greater pain - how to make them work well at all. She started a company to do this
The IoT space is full of passionate early adopters & moving to the mainstream is hardEarly adopters have very technical needs & want more features. Mainstream users want good quality & ease of use. Early adopters are your biggest champions but you need a plan to scale past them
Fundraising for IoT was hard, even more so because she's a womanMany investors have been burned by hardware projects and people want to knock you down. Also, not everyone is Adam Neumann - underrepresented founders can barely raise off the back of successes, let alone failures.
It's important to have an eye on product misuseAirTags have been in the news for stalking, but Apple have at least made an effort to fix that. Not everyone has their resources, but it's important to at least keep an eye on digital rights groups and try to stay clean
The most important thing as a founder is to validate you have an actual problemDon't just throw yourself into something cool - make sure there's appetite for what you're building, go as lean as possible to start with and leverage No Code tools to help you get started quick
Listen to the episode for this and more!
Contact YanaYou can reach out to Yana on Twitter.
Navigating the World of Product Management (with George Nurijanian, Product Owner @ Xero & Founder @ prodmgmt.world)
Fighting Fires in B2B Product Management (with Rich Mironov, Product Consultant & author ”The Art of Product Management”)
Servitising Product Management & Setting Up Product Teams For Success (with Jas Shah, Product Consultant & Founder @ Bitsul)
Curing Product Diseases with a Radical Product Vision (with Radhika Dutt, author ”Radical Product Thinking”)
Driving Organisational Alignment with Survival Metrics (with Adam Thomas, founder @ Approaching One)
Product Leadership Principles for Tumultuous Times (with Giff Constable, former CPO @ Meetup & author ”Talking to Humans”)
Solve Customer Problems Quickly by Joining the No-Code Revolution (with Natalie Furness, founder @ Minimum Viable Stack)
How to Deploy Empathy to Truly Understand User Needs (with Michele Hansen, author ”Deploy Empathy”)
Chinese Startup Culture & Putting the Minimum into MVP (with Carlos Lastres, Creative & Marketing Director @ Kaiyan Medical)
Finding a PM Superpower and Using your Product Sense (with Peter Knudson & Braxton Bragg, co-authors "Product Sense")
Escaping VC Culture & Building Products that Focus on True Lifetime Value (with Rand Fishkin, author "Lost & Founder" & co-founder @ SparkToro)
Taking Data Science from Academia to the Heart of your Product (with Paul Meinshausen, co-founder @ Aampe)
All Aboard! Why You Need To Get Product Onboarding Right (with Ramli John, MD @ ProductLed)
Challenges & Opportunities for Africans Making Products for Africans (with Abisoye Falabi, Senior PM @ TradeDepot)
Getting into the Habit of Continuous Discovery (with Teresa Torres, author "Continuous Discovery Habits")
Platform Product Management & Getting Ready for Launch Day (with John Zilch, Director of PM @ Upland & founder @ Launch Day)
Putting Customers at the Heart of your Product Decisions (with Hubert Palan, founder & CEO @ Productboard)
Applying Agile Principles to Education & Measuring Learning (with Chris Hull, founder & CPO @ Otus)
Data-Driven Product Development & Ethics in AI (with Korbinian Spann, founder & MD @ Insaas)
Avoiding Bulls**t Product Advice & Focusing on the Essential (with Henry Latham, founder @ Prod MBA)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
NABOR® TALKS
U.S Property Podcast
Aligned Money Show
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money