🚀 Learn how storytelling can elevate your conversations and outcomes with customers, your teams, and your leadership. Real-life examples from earthquakes in Nepal, selling sneakers, and building world-class fintechs in Europe. What worked, what didn’t work, and more…
🌟 Ankur Sisodia is Head of Product at N26, a leading neobank serving 5m customers in 24 markets across Europe. Ankur leads product teams across consumer lending, savings, and customer servicing experience and platforms.
Before N26, Ankur held product and growth leadership roles at Capital One, Nike, Google, and venture-backed startups, including Welcome Tech, an immigrant neobank. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an engineering degree from Northwestern University. He lives in the Netherlands, where he has come to enjoy biking with his wife.
⏰ Schedule (CET)
17:00 – 17:05 Intros
17:05 – 18:00 Presentation and Q&A
✨ About the Organizers
We’re on a mission to help companies discover and deliver great products faster. We do this by empowering our community to share knowledge generously. Through our consulting engagements, we do all the hands-on and unglamorous work of a Product Manager on an Interim basis (3-12 months). We onboard fast, align teams, and deliver outcomes. 😉
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All right, we are live. Hello everyone and thank you for joining. Welcome to this product people events. This is one of our weekly series uh where we have a a Tuesday live stream where we’re all here um having a storytelling session listening to wonderful people talk to talk to us and tell us about their experiences and talk about their favorite topics. So um before starting please remember that you can watch the stream on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitch. And also just a reminder for everyone that this call uh will be recorded. So if you want to share it afterwards with your fellow PMs, with colleagues, with friends um you can just head to our YouTube channel uh where we you can find the link and you can share it with them. And uh we will also have a slido running uh for you to give us some insights and also asks questions directly to our speaker. And speaking of our speaker today, let me introduce to you who we have. So we have Ankur Codia. Uh he is the head of products at N26. Uh this is a leading uh neo bank serving 5 million customers in 24 markets across Europe. Uncoded leads the product teams across consumer lending, savings, uh customer service experiencing experience and platforms. And in today’s session, uh we’re going to talk about or rather we’re going to learn about how storytelling can elevate your conversations and outcomes with customers, your teams and your leadership. Um so we have uh yeah, essentially storytelling as a product manager. This is going to be the topic for today, a quite exciting one. Um really we’re really happy to get into it. Before that allow me to give a quick introduction of myself as well. So my name is Miraa. Um I come with about 5 years of experience in product management and product operations management. Uh bit of a mixed experience in B2B, B2C, B2B T2C as well. Um with a background in computer science and an MBA in project management as well. But before we dive deeper into further things, allow me to tell you what we do uh what we do at product people and how we give back to the community in our best ways as well. So this is also for those of us uh that are with us for the first time. Now our mission, product people’s mission is to help companies discover and deliver great products faster. We essentially do interim product management. We try to um empower the product management community to share knowledge uh generously while also managing hands-on work of a product manager, product owner, product operations or even a product leader on a fractional basis. We have our own in-house staff. Um all the PMs, all the consultants are all in-house and that’s essentially the services that we provide is how we make money. But how we give back to the community is free events uh talks and conversations and even live streams like this. Um we would also encourage everyone to join our uh communities online and it is currently 60,000 plus members across Europe across the world actually and one of the largest uh PM communities in Europe. So one of these sessions is also again how we give back to the community and would love to get into more details of the session as well. But there’s going to be one more thing before we do. We would love to get to know you and this is the host as well. The host would also love to get to know you a bit better. Uh our audience and these are a few questions coming in from the host themsself. Now um if you have uh slidoh on you can scan the code on your phone um you can visit the website the code is over over there as well and you can ask help us answer the question and this is for us to get to know you for us to understand our audience and perhaps I can also steer the conversation to try and help uh address you know some of the the personas if I may say that we have in the audience today. So, when communicating product ideas, what do you think makes people care the most? Um, a clear and logical argument, a powerful story that connects emotionally, a strong vision backed by data, or the credibility of the person sharing it. If you scan the code, the QR code, or if you visit slido.com and enter the code given, you can answer this question. We will be sharing that answer with you right now before we get into the conversation. Um but and whatever whatever answers we get, I’m sure we’re getting a few of them coming in already. We will share them with you and we will use that to understand where our audience actually sits. So I’ll just repeat the question one more time. When communicating product ideas, what do you think makes people care the most? a clear and logical argument, a powerful story, a strong vision backed by data, or the credibility of the person sharing it. [Music] All right, we have some answers coming in. Most of the people agree that uh a powerful story that connects emotionally is what makes people care the most. It’s a very nice a very interesting answer as well. All right. I believe that does mean that we are in the right uh stream here. We’re addressing the right audience. Awesome. Now, uh everyone watching, ladies and gentlemen, I will now hand over very soon to Ankur who’s going to talk about storytelling as a product manager. Ankur, we can have you off now. All right. Thank you, Mira. Thank you, Francisco. And thank you everyone joining here today. uh delighted to be here and especially with the product people team uh who have been wonderful partners for us um over at N26. My name is Encore Cissodia and today I have the pleasure and the privilege to speak uh to you about uh storytelling as a product manager. Uh I am currently head of product at N26 based in Amsterdam and uh I think you know maybe just to start it was interesting to get the survey results. I think we certainly are in the right stream. Although I wonder if it’s a correlation or a causation uh that we get the answer. But maybe we’ll find out. And and part of my role here today is to hope uh uh share hope to share some stories with you and um and a couple of practical tools and tips to help you. And certainly we’ll leave time at the end for Q&A. Very interested in hearing from you. So with that, I’ll do a quick introduction and then we’ll we’ll head right in. Um over to the next slide here. So again my name is Encore Codia. I’m currently based in Amsterdam and working at N26 as head of product. Maybe a couple things about me on the personal side. Right. So um I’m ambidextious. I use my left hand for uh playing certain sports like tennis or table tennis which is something I enjoy. Uh and I write with my right hand. Uh and I’ll cook a football or where I’m from originally in the US we call it soccer. Uh with my right foot. I enjoy storytelling uh traveling and sports and for me product is a field that I kind of ended up in. Uh it was a bit accidental but also a great passion and and kind of a blend of interest for me and I see it as a craft uh that offers endless learning and requires deliberate practice. uh and some of the companies that I’ve worked at. So again at N26 here which is a pan European bank and an and innovative neo bank focused on serving over 5 million customers in 24 markets um and really building this kind of empathetic and and bank that the the consumers love to use and prior to that worked at organizations such as Google Capital One um and and a couple others as well um and I studied over in the US at the Warden Business School as well as studied engineering at Northwestern. So that’s a little bit around me. Uh but again, one thing that I also like to do when I get to know folks is really understanding their story. So I hope through the conversation today, I can invite you into a bit of my own story uh both in product but also uh the journey of storytelling in the product management space uh and also sharing a framework. So with that um why storytelling as a product manager right so I find that storytelling has proven to me and and also through research to be a powerful way to build a culture of empathy within an organization uh both virtually and in person. Um you know we noticed uh you know prior to the pandemic folks getting together and and more organizations getting together with this concept of building stories uh especially during the pandemic virtually as a way to connect with each other and peers uh through some of the fun and also challenging times in our lives. Uh we found that storytelling builds customer empathy. Uh so really as we think about the concept of personas uh and user journeys and user flows it’s very integrated uh into the product kind of craft and and maybe you’ve read about through some of the uh the content from authors like Marty Kagan and others. Uh and we find that it drives product outcomes and and we’ll get into that in a moment. Storytelling can also build and and does drive buyin investment and momentum. So as you’re building your product vision and strategy across your organization getting that commitment uh that excitement both from the leadership your peers your teammates uh and also partners outside of your organization uh the emotional connection you can build through stories uh is a very powerful way we’ve seen um and I’ve seen personally uh to drive and create that vessel in the channel uh to unlock a lot of value for the business and for the customers. And then thirdly, uh storytelling drives a culture of diversity and inclusiveness. Uh we’ve seen that it’s increasingly important in recruiting and retaining talent. Um over 80% of CEOs believe that a company’s financial performance is directly tied and and contributed to by workplace empathy and specifically storytelling role in that is is so critical. And so these are just again a couple of different ways in which does create value and unlock value as a product manager. Uh and now I’d love to share more with you my own journey through a series of stories. So with that let’s kind of walk through the evolving journey of Enkor as a product storyteller. So this story starts um and often is the case I share this with my product managers and with teams that I work with uh with a little bit of my own personal story right. So as I think about early journey um you know for me I was actually born in the Netherlands uh our family moved uh when I was very young to the US uh to the east coast of the US and after just three or four years in the US. Um this is actually a photo of a goodbye or farewell card. Um and this card was from my classmates in in the first grade. Um and that was because our family had been asked uh uh to to to to move uh to to India where where my dad had gotten a new opportunity. Um and so that was a farewell card. A lot happened between that Friday when we had this farewell party and the Monday where we decided actually as a family or my parents decided uh to stay in the US. So that card was a great memory for me of kind of importance of adaptability u but also that story has really resonated with me um and it’s one that I actually share often as I’m working with new teams with new product managers and colleagues and building trust moments of vulnerability uh moments uh that were personal to me and ones that I can connect to with uh with my colleagues as a way of kind of inviting them into my life u and building that trust and credibility and that empathy in the workplace in order to then start talking about uh kind of uh strategic topics on the product and business side. So for me this is a bit of a a story and an artifact that I use to connect and and kind of the vulnerability that that we felt as a family um and that has kind of shaped a lot of my childhood um and so wanted to share that. Now I’ll fast forward to 2015 right so here you’re looking at a photo of Kathmandu Nepal in uh in the summer of 2015. So as you may recall earlier that year in the spring there was a 8.2 magnitude earthquake in in Kathmandu Nepal and I was sitting in San Francisco uh which is also known to be an area with with earthquakes from time to time. Um and and I had friends in Nepal and they had reached out and said we need help uh what can you do as I was working at Google in Silicon Valley at the time. Um and so you know working alongside my peers uh we decided to create a coalition a group and so there was 15 roughly Google employees that we were sent to Nepal to Kathmandu with the mission of help on the ground uh with a combination of product engineering design uh business marketing folks all on the ground here to help and so this story is really important uh as it relates to product and I’ll get to that in a second because when we got to the ground, you know, as as with my background and interest in product, um my focus was really to understand the needs on the ground. And we certainly had our ideas of what was needed uh from the folks there, right? We thought, okay, we’re a couple months uh from these major earthquakes there. We’re still seeing aftershocks. Um maybe they’re going to need supplies and resources and um and maybe we need to deliver all this value to them. So we came in with that kind of preconceived mindset uh that we understood our customers needs or in this case um the kind of community of Kathmandu and of Nepal and that we knew how to help. Well, let me tell you, we were certainly in for a surprise. We got there um we had this kind of mission, a few ideas of projects that we could work on over the over the course of the month that we would be there. Um, and as we started engaging with some of the local nonprofits and communities and government organizations, um, I started we started to get feedback. And in fact, someone pulled me aside just a few days in and said, “Hey, it’s really great that you’re here to help, but have you taken the time to listen to the needs of the community here or do you already have a plan?” I said, “Well, this is what we’re seeing. we we kind of you know we understand that uh you know you’re in a tough place right now and we’re here to help. And this is where we had the first insight that I think really resonated for me in my early product uh career which is the feedback I received from from from from that mentor in Nepal. He asked me go and spend a couple days in the rural parts of Nepal. go and spend some time with the students uh with the travel kind of or kind of the hotels and you may get a different picture. And so we did. So instead of going in and building tents or or kind of creating these communities, we went and we listened. We talked to students, we talked to children, we went all across uh the community to learn. And here’s what we learned. We learned that while the folks and the people and and the community in Nepal were looking for help, they were looking for help but with honor and dignity and with resilience, helping them learn how to fish rather than fishing for them. learning that half of their economy was impacted by the hotel industry and the travel industry basically going to zero after people from abroad were understanding that there were earthquakes happening and didn’t no longer want to travel there. We learned that remittance is the ability to send money from abroad back to Nepal for Nepalese people that have left that was contributing over 30% of their economy and that had also slowown during this time. When we listen and really actively listen to the users, our our our our customers in this case, the community of Nepal, what we realized and what we learned through that experience is that the hero of the story was not these 15 Googlers coming into the ground to save the day. It was actually them. They were the hero. And we our role needed to shift our mindset needed to shift in order for us to create products to create solutions to create value for these community. So what did we do after that? Next we we revisited we restructured and we really focused in on understanding where we could create value for the students. We created a hackathon so that we could help them uh especially the university students uh supporting and coaching them allowing them to build apps enabling them empowering them but providing that mentorship and support they were seeking for the travel organizations and the hotel and hospitality industry. We set up a Google Ads workshop uh and provided free credit so that they could learn how to use digital marketing to connect with their consumers from abroad from their potential customers and visitors and help reshape and rebuild the narrative of what it would look like and the safety and kind of the excitement of the opportunities to travel within Nepal ahead. We also talked to younger students um kind of in the elementary school. I brought in letters to them. But when I went there and understanding this new insight, we actually asked them to write letters back to the students of the US which was something that really made them feel valued and connected and being able to offer something in return that helped with resilience. So what you’re hearing from me here was this experience for me that was transformative in my own product career. So first as from childhood of kind of building a narrative and a story that could help me uh help us create empathy with my colleagues uh in any new organization or team. Second, understanding consumer um and users and their needs by actively listening to them first and building from there. So now we go over to 2020 or rather in the early uh kind of 2018 uh 17 to to 2020. So now I’ll share a little bit on a personal note. I started business school at Warden. I I mentioned earlier um in the fall of 2017. my first week at school, my father passed away. As you can imagine, this was a very difficult time uh for me. And when I get back to campus just a couple weeks later, I had a community of support. But someone introduced me to a club on campus called Storytellers. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Um in as a a different name like the Moth or kind of other live storytelling communities. We had one on campus to support our our students and to build relationships. I went to one of these story slams and it was so inspiring to hear the stories from our classmates uh things that have happened to them from their times in work but also in the personal life uh both funny but also serious um and and thoughtful and reflective. This community is one in which I learned that you have over 800 students and or you know over a thousand students across a couple years in a business school all invested and committed to learning about storytelling. They saw it as both uh something that was meaningful personally as it was the number one or the largest CA uh student club on campus, but it was also a tool and a skill set that these future business leaders um um kind of in the MBA program or aspirational business leaders desired and saw as a professional opportunity to grow as well. So over the next year I got very involved and and actually with my co-president Christine we we led a kind of transformation of this organization. We started to involve uh various organizations on campus. The the deans the faculty were also involved and saw the value of this uh in terms of building uh from a product and also a business perspective. And during the pandemic when everything was locked down, we all reconvened after graduation and we had a virtual slam which you can see here with over 200 folks out of a 800 person class joined virtually from all over the world uh seeing the value of connection and empathy um as we all shared stories from our time uh during the pandemic as well. So that brings me closer to today, which is as we’re kind of looking into 2025 and where I am at today, this kind of experience around storytelling and hearing from classmates and peers and the community and also my own experiences really has inspired over the last few years how can we bring storytelling into the product uh community and also into the business community and professional community. And over the last four or five years while I was at Capital One and then at Welcome Tech and now at N26, I’ve just really seen and unlocked and and you know, just seen other teammates really digging into storytelling as a craft and seeing how it’s created and accelerated opportunities for them. So here, you know, I’m currently at N26. I think my first week uh when I joined last year in February um I was in Barcelona in and we were kind of in a product leadership uh discussion and I had shared over dinner with my uh new manager at the time. Um I had shared a story about riding waves and how I was kind of looking at our products um and the opportunity as kind of a series of waves where at moments you have a big wave and you can see it and sometimes that wave is far away and you need to kind of paddle. You need to orient yourself in the right direction and then you need to kind of hop onto that wave. Sometimes you’re on the wave. the wave is already here and the only thing to do is paddle hard and intentionally and get on the wave and ride it as far as you can and build that momentum with your with with your teams. Um, and sometimes there is no wave and in those moments how do you conserve your energy, your your kind of road maps, your strategy and kind of build for another day but maybe also prioritizing and shifting your product priorities along the way. So I had shared this story over dinner and it seemed to resonate with with uh with my manager and so he had actually brought it up to the product leadership community the next day and we had a nice chat about it and this was one kind of example or an artifact in which we were able to leverage storytelling to illustrate a point around prioritization around kind of resource management, intentionality um and also timing of product. um which is so important but often not well understood in in in kind of business organizations and we had an opportunity to simplify that with the story and really create impact. So this is again one example I’ve continued to see um over my time here over the last couple years and also throughout my product career over over a decade um just the power and impact that uh we can have through storytelling like you’ve seen it with our uh leadership at N26 um where even just the story of the founders has been so inspiring um and and the innovation that the company has gone through over the last 10 years uh to create value um as we build a cross uh geography bank across Europe and and beyond. So that’s a little bit about storytelling and and kind of the value that it has brought to to myself and to the teams that we work with here um and and from previous experiences. So I wanted to share that with you as well. So with that I wanted to kind of put this in practice. So this is actually something I this is a um kind of a sheet of paper that I wrote back in in 2015. So you know when we say practice what we preach this is also one that I wanted to share with you. Um you know these were some of my notes from from that summer of kind of the why um you know and the who the what the how and the call to action. And for me this was the basis for then telling that story right. So we talked about kind of Nepal needs help but the actual hero of the story was it was not the team or at Google or myself. It was actually the humans of Nepal and really building the story around them. And so um you know as we kind of talk about the opportunity and and how we built this was a framework that that I used at that point period of time and to make that even more actionable and a framework that maybe could be helpful or interesting to you on the next slide I I put together a very uh quick three course meal you could say for product managers that are interested in telling the story right so we’ll go with the appetizer the the main course and then of course uh you know if you have a sweet tooth like myself. Um maybe dessert as well, right? So with the appetizer, it’s the why. Um it’s the emotional appeal towards your customer or your user or your stakeholders unnet meat. Now this customer could be your end customer, but it could also be uh an executive that you’re trying to to kind of um build influence and uh build alignment and support with. It could be with your team to create motivation as we’re working to deal deliver ship on um on kind of accountable timelines. Um how do you kind of inspire and empower and and drive your team? Um obviously there’s certain a lot of tools to do so. One of those tools can be storytelling u and can help build attention, create awareness and also help create focus um for your teams, your peers, your leadership and of course your your customers uh which is very critical. So that’s the appetizer. Next, we’ll go into the main course. Uh, and so the main course and the meal here is the who, like who is the hero of this story that you want to tell. Is it um empowering maybe a uh a a VP of finance, for example, um with better forecasting and budgeting. And so we want to tell a product story to help um kind of make a hero um of an individual or a team. Maybe there’s a team like the engineering team for example that you work closely with uh and you want to elevate and create value and unlock kind of um more more value for them. So how do you tell that story? Or of course for your customers um and and really telling that story of what’s their expectation today, what’s their expectation tomorrow and how you’re working to to build that through product. The what the what is the the at the core of it is the insight. The signal is the insight that unlocks the value opportunity. So, as you’re trying to unlock that value of the why, the what is really that insight or a series of insights that can really help unlock that the value to build credibility uh with your leadership and your teams and it’s powered by data. Um, but it can also be powered by other things, past experience, which is maybe also data credibility and influence. Uh, these are all kind of aligning into the what and then the how. So what is that actual roadmap to solve the customer’s uh unmet need unmet need and what’s the value creation you’re going to create and here I would recommend a framework that uh one of my coaches Tammy has has shared with me which is a where to where from and where next framework. So really orienting around where do you want to head with this vision, where are you coming from, and then where next? And maybe a one way of visualizing or thinking from a story perspective is if you’ve ever used Google Maps or Apple Maps or or one of these kind of u mobile app um or navigation and and kind of mapping apps, uh which I would imagine most of you or all of you have. Um with Google Maps, the first thing you do is you put in your destination. Then it shows you where you’re oriented today. So your where to becomes your destination. Where you’re oriented today which is a where from and where next is then the series of instructions. Uh and that’s the direction that where to is where storytelling I think can be quite powerful. Um especially around vision setting and orienting around kind of um getting that emotional connection to where you want to head for the customer. visualizing maybe through AI tools or through um through AI tools uh creating images or video content um to or prototypes to help tell that story um on the where from that story is oriented around kind of building that narrative of where the team is today what’s been happening maybe some of the challenges and pain points that you’ve been facing and kind of being open there and then and being open there rather and then where where we’re where next is then this story at the road map, right? And so our road map then becomes an output or and helping to drive that outcome. But the story is beyond a road map, right? I think we sometimes often uh weight heavily on road maps. Um that’s certainly part of the equation, but thinking about the KPIs, thinking about connecting it back to the business strategy at the company level. What’s that Nordstar kind of is it customer lifetime value? Is it um is it around revenues and profits or or maybe it’s around uh costs um or or something along or operations? And so as you think about that story, there’s a story to tell in each of those areas, the where to, where from, where next. Uh and this kind of meal can help you do that. Okay. So, we’ve talked about the appetizer, we’ve talked about the meal, the main course, and now we talk about dessert. And here the dessert is the call to action. We tell tell a story especially as a product manager it’s with intention it’s with focus it’s with creating clarity uh for your audience and there the story is then the vessel the the mechanism to convey a value opportunity there needs to be a call to action at the end of that. So that call to action whether it’s to your customer that you want you’ve now shared a story within the product and you want them to um or communicated a value to the consumer and you want them to to maybe make a purchase or consider a new opportunity or participate in a new program um or even advance to the next screen um to make it even more tactical. Now that customer could also be as I mentioned your partners or your peers or stakeholders. So if it’s for the leadership, maybe it’s around a budgeting ask or or a resourcing ask or prioritization ask. If it’s with your peers, it might be around aligning and getting commitments from them in terms of how to invest. And then if it’s from your immediate team, um it could also be the call to action is to inspire them through story, create that emotional PO to then drive focus and and kind of a a one team approach as you move towards um your vision and and and kind of the team’s vision. I think that’s really critical. So here I wanted to provide a little bit of that view for you. Uh thank you so much for your time. Of course I’m here for questions. Would love to hear from you and and how um anything that’s on your mind we can certainly address. But again thank you so much for your time and the opportunity here. Uh back to you. All right. Awesome. Awesome Anchor. Thank you so much. That was actually a very very insightful conversation. I really enjoyed some of the anecdotes that you used and uh how you laid it all out in a three p in a three course meal. I think that was one of the best examples I’ve seen. Um all right. Um there there’s actually more that we could also get into some similarities between us about you being ambidextrous as well, but that may be for another time. All right. Now um ladies and gentlemen we will be moving on to a Q&A session um in a in a couple of minutes. For that please uh log into Slido uh or open up Slido. You have the code in front of you or you could scan the QR code as well and uh there you feel free to ask your questions. An uncur is here with us. That is going to be our Q&A session. any questions you ask uh we will try our best to answer them today in the session as we are um I do want to give a couple of uh shoutouts or appreciation we see comments coming in as well on LinkedIn uh Roman thank you so much for your comments uh Roman says great stuff such an important reminder that we need to make sure the customer voice is consistently incorporated into what we’re building it’s a very fair point and uh we have more coming in now we will get to the detailed Q&A. I’d just like to take a couple of minutes and explain um what we do, what product people does. Uh again for those of uh the viewers that are new with us here today and uh some of those use cases in which uh product people can be engaged, some of those use cases in which you know we would love to have a conversation. So product people we provide three major I would say we can club them into perhaps uh three three major categories. Number one being interim or fractional product management or product or even product leadership. So we essentially cover permanent positions um you know while an organization is hiring which can often take up to 3 to 9 months. Um product people can come in and fill that gap for that time period. with also parents and leaves. Um we can come in and cover that and also if there are any important or urgent initiatives that the organization needs to drive and needs that bit of expertise, the subject matter expertise, the industry expertise uh and needs those specialists to come in and execute uh with that as well program management and product operations. Uh we can upskill the the existing product management team. we come in with our senior leadership and they can also assist with upskilling the teams and also realign or create streamline processes or programs um 0 to1 scenarios. Um there is also transformation excellence we can shift if there is an organization that likes to shift from a tech led or a salesled organization to a productled organization that shift is also something that we can take up and even configuring product strategy or team structures. um some of the clients that we have worked with in the past um these are some selected B2C clients I’m sure um most of us would have heard about most of them um eBay free now Blinkist back market some of our B2C clients and we’ve also been in the B2B space with uh probably notably the World Health Organization remote uh eternal clients these have also been our clients in the past now Some quick stats. Um we have about supported 690 plus uh cross functional teams across 100 clients uh ranging from series A startups even to public listed companies. Um we have about 40 product leaders and product managers inhouse to deliver highquality services all to our clients. And something that is quite um close to my heart as well that we take pride in having 59% women um in the team with 60% of the leadership team comprising of women as well. So there is we have a bias to look at skills before the resume. Um and that is how we are able to attract and retain the highest talent in the industry. All right. Now we come back to the actual in the official Q&A session. I do see that we have a couple of questions coming in already. I Ankur I would like to read that the first question to you. Um we have a question coming in. I really like this the lesson you shared from your experience in Nepal. If we try to unpack it a bit, do you think being physically present with your customers makes it easier to truly listen to them compared to PMs who mainly interact with digital users? That’s a great question and an important one, insightful question especially in the world that we live in today. Um I think here I think the dynamics of how you interact with the customer changes when it’s a digital interface um and when it’s physical right so I think in the case of Nepal we did certainly have an opportunity to spend time with them in person um really like close and personal and you know spending time in the villages um in the school centers and so forth um and that builds certainly adds to the element of building empathy for the customer and so forth. I will say across my range and time working in product um I do believe that you there are many many ways to get to that kind of level of empathy and certainly that can happen uh through through different methods. Um I think if you you know if I think about N26 for example or even kind of where like a lot of our digital products oftentimes consumers may use it in bit multiple ways one digital and and also physical like we do at N26. you have a physical card, you’re making transactions in a store, you’re also using it in a digital capacity in the mobile app. And so I think here what’s important is it’s actually important to understand the customer end to end, right? And the closer you can get to them like reducing that distance signal, meaning the closer you can get to the customer, the better. Now that form factor could be a survey that you do for consumer in the app, but closer to the interaction that it’s happening will be more insightful than one that’s farther away. If you think about like when maybe just to give a couple other examples, if you think about like a survey that you fill a month later after you have an interaction with that customer, that’s going to be a very different experience from one that you have in the moment. And so I think whether it’s location, whether it’s time, whether it’s in terms of context, it’s about reducing distance where you can uh to serve the customer. Another way to interact with the customer in a more attention to way is just spending time. If you have a call center, for example, go to the call center and spend time with them in person. I did that when I was at Capital One and also at Welcome Tech and certainly doing a lot of shadowing of uh customer service calls here as well um at in 26. Those opportunities are quite valuable just to listen in. If you can do a 100 calls, 200 calls uh and really understanding and really feeling that customer. The last thing I’ll share is that if you have an opportunity to be a customer of your product, certainly that’s not the case in all industries or B2B and and so forth. But uh in my you know in this particular case working in a fintech I use the product so I’m also dog fooding our own product my family and friends are uh every Uber andyft driver when if I’m in transit I’m asking them if they’ve used the app if they’re willing to and asking for feedback. um just finding and being creative in the way that you reach out and ask for feedback uh and not seeing location as a like virtual versus physical as a blocker but just within the context that you have how do you reduce that distance is key I hope that helps answer that question for you awesome awesome aner thank you so much that was actually a very another uh very good example I think it’s a very massive privilege and I mean some product managers are pretty lucky if they have the opportunity to also test their products as a user. Uh I think that’s a critical critical element uh in helping us shape the products and providing that valuable feedback and also being able to implement that as well. We have a question coming straight from LinkedIn that I would like to quote now coming in from Daria who asks do you have an example when it didn’t work when the I believe she’s referring to the three course meal uh framework uh if it didn’t work in any in any use cases. Absolutely. storytelling and and the kind of craft of storytelling as part of uh telling a a vision and a product strategy is certainly an opportunity and a part of the equation. Um storytelling without data uh can also be one in which you won’t get all the way right. So I think early on especially when I think about kind of earlier experiences uh in my career as well um I think as an example I worked at Nike or interned at Nike on the sneakers app and I think you know as I first came in uh one of the opportunities and projects that I had was working on um our sneakers app so like limited release sneakers um and how do we kind of create more fairness for the consumer and so you I had a story I’d gone to see the various uh kind of shoe store like sneaker head stores across Brooklyn and New York. I had a lot of data and had pitched a story. Um the story wasn’t enough in that case, right? So being able to tell that story was enough. So I went back to the drawing board um and try to understand why and the answer was well we had a leader that was also interested in understanding the data aspect around it. How do we do we have data to quantify the impact here and that was something that was needed to build a credibility uh to get all the way. So kind of taking story in one hand in your other hand bringing in the data the strategic kind of insights um went back to the drawing board we kind of came up with a metric uh that was helpful to identify um how we could become more fair with how we distributed our product or limited sneakers uh to more consumers. So we came up with this metric we’re able to quantify it working with data data science and the business team and we came back to the drawing board now not with just the story but the story with with with the the data and the insights here together and we were able to make progress and and then ultimately uh that that yielded in a successful product feature launch. All right. Awesome. Awesome. I do hope that answers the question as well. We have another one. I’m going to try and fit as many as we can looking at the time as well. But and this question is a very a very interesting one as well. We got this from straight from our questions on Slido. Um storytelling often relies on emotion. How do you incorporate emotion into fintech topics that can feel very technical or dry? Interesting. Um I like the question. So the way I look at is the following. a consumer of fintech or let’s say a neo bank or a bank is a consumer and I think the faster that that you know this is one of the insights uh that I’ve had coming into this space u or observe rather with with the team and and our team has really been thinking a lot about this our consumer goes from using our neo bankank app to then going onto Google going into Gemini spending time or chachi spending time uh buying clothing maybe on shopping app like Zolando uh and buying a you know a plane ticket or or a train ticket or a bus ticket or using a public train um app. My point is this is a consumer throughout the course of their day. Uh we are one interaction. They’re not context switching in the sense that their expectations have changed because we’re a fintech or more technical product. Uh their expectation is similar. They’re looking for a great consumer experience and that expectation is changing faster than ever before. For us as a neo bank, the more or fintech, the more we are another consumer product, uh ones that they enjoy working with, the ones that feel delightful and less of a bank per se, the more effective we are in engaging with their customers. So I’d say here uh certainly emotional connection like for brands you may think of like even Nike and Adidas for example on kind of the sporting retail side or or um just to kind of come up with other other kind of key brands. That’s so important and that doesn’t change when you’re in fintech. In fact I think that’s what the market and the consumers are asking for. uh and you’re seeing success with brands that are effective at doing that as well and that are successful there. Yep. An actually I would like to also uh maybe follow up on that. Yeah. So we’re talking about trying to create or connect emotions and user needs uh which is what we’re using to create that uh emotional link uh to try and satisfy those needs. That’s if I were to say that is in a B2C concept or a B2C B2C context. Does it do the priorities change uh when we switch over to a B2B context? Does emotion and storytelling have the same impact or effect? Yes, in a different way. Uh when I was at Google, I worked with large B2B clients. So consumers and and or other businesses that were serving businesses as well as customers B2B TOC as well. And what I would say here is uh certainly the narrative could change from a end customer. You’re now thinking of who’s that decision maker or influence maker within the organization that might be making a buying decision or or a a retention decision or renewal decision and what’s the story they’re trying to tell. Right? So, when I go back to who’s the hero of the story, well, if you’re trying to sell, I don’t know, Google Ads or YouTube to the CMO of a brand like u like a like a GoDaddy, for example, an international brand. How do you find what they care about as that decision maker, that CMO, and how do you help them tell their story? And so, for me, it’s rather less about the story of you. It’s again the story about your your your end consumer, your end user. Uh and maybe they’re under a lot of pressure. Maybe you know because of board expectations and management expectations are high. Maybe their customer base is changing. Maybe there’s an ask for international expansion. And so then the question is how do you help empower them to tell that great story? And so again, the more you can kind of connect and understand their needs, crossing over the bridge, meeting them kind of where they are. I often use this phrase uh that I’ve learned from a mentor, which is it’s not about um you know, treating people the way that you want to be treated. It’s actually treating people the way they want to be treated. And in this case, in a B2B environment, if you can understand and really understand their needs and what will be them make them successful, that’s an approach you can take. And that goes the same for any relationship, whether it’s a manager or whether it’s a teammate or a peer or a B2B buyer in this case as well. Awesome. Awesome. Beautiful. All right. Um I think we’re just going to take one more question here and I feel like this is a good uh question that brings it all together as well. Um storytelling is an innate ability or can it be built and how can PMs improve in that area? Fantastic. Couple comments here. It is certainly with with with conviction I can say this as someone that started off as a non-storyteller and um and and kind of looked up to others uh and family members uh to to where I am today, which is it’s a journey. It can certainly be built. It is built. In fact, I’d say um it’s important uh to to know that and to have conviction around it. um with like anything else uh you can learn and and with intentional practice get there. What I can recommend for product folks that are interested in storytelling um are a couple resources. So one is um attending a live storytelling event. Uh this doesn’t have to be around product per se, but they’re across all different cities and geographies. Uh if you can’t find one, let me know and on LinkedIn and happy to connect there. Uh but I would say just starting there. Uh building that story. I think the second is finding trusted folks where maybe you have that comfort and vulnerability with. It could be a friend, a colleague, a spouse, um or or or someone that you really trust and can open up and be vulnerable and sharing a story and then evolving from there. That’s the journey that I went on myself. Um you know, I mentioned kind of in 2019 when I was coming back into my business school environment. Uh and it’s one that I’ve continued to iterate and evolve on like anything else. I think product is all about iteration uh and experimentation and it’s certainly no different with storytelling. Uh try sharing a story in one audience. Uh and then maybe do an AB test and tell a different story in another audience and asking for feedback, asking for that kind of feedback loop is so important. Um I’m constantly iterating. I’ll that wave story that I mentioned or narrative. I’ve iterated on that several several dozens of times. Um, and I also think it’s important to understand as product managers and product leaders, we fly at different altitudes in the organization and how do you shape that narrative? So, while this story might be interesting here, maybe there’s elements that are interesting, but we want to make it more succinct, more concise, and maybe with a different meaning for one leader and maybe another leader or teammate as well. So, that’s something to keep in mind. But I would say if you’re thinking about it, uh if you’re here today, it show to me that shows and and you’re answering the survey question like I see here. You’re already showing that there’s interest. Um I think it’s activation around the interest and taking small steps, iterating, practicing, experimenting, and then you’re just on your way. And I’m excited to hear your stories uh on LinkedIn or kind of in future forums. Um really really excited for that as well. All right. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. So I believe that is where we will have to conclude the Q&A session. Um for the audience that has further questions that they would love to ask Ankur, I would recommend everyone to feel free to comment down into the video posts. Um we will have Anker answer those questions. We’ll try our best and you can keep submitting them on Slido as well. Um not for long though, but uh do do submit them in and we will also share them with the speaker today. Now just wrapping up to our slides. Um here is a little bit of insider uh updates on uh product people that we are currently hiring. So uh if you would like to be part of our recruitment pipeline, you can scan the QR code on the left and uh we have positions open for associate product managers and product managers. Uh we’d love to get to meet you and if you you this would be a wonderful fit for you. Please do scan that QR code and become part of our recruitment pipeline. And also I would actually encourage this one quite personally as well. Do subscribe to our newsletter. Uh it’s a weekly newsletter come straight to your inbox. I believe this is one of the some of the best reads that I’ve personally have done and uh I believe this would be a good investment of your time as well. Now just uh giving a bit of a precursor for for next week. Next week we will be having a new speaker uh talking about productionizing enterprisegrade LLM agents um with drivers challenges and learnings and we will be speaking to Sumnat Biswas he’s the head of product of conversations at total jobs and I believe that is the end of our conversation today Ankur I thank you again thank you so much for your time thank you for being here with us I thank the audience for their questions very lovely questions this uh this week and uh we will see you all next week. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the time everyone joining and uh looking forward to hearing and learning more stories from you as well. Thank you Mira. Thank you product people. All right. Thank you. Goodbye everyone. Bye.