Over 58% of a product manager's time is spent "putting out fires". We make sure to ship features that align with customers' needs and the latest industry standards, but we have a lot of unplanned work to deal with, so sometimes staying up-to-date with the latest strategies and practices can be challenging.
Fortunately, the internet is full of talented PMs who share their invaluable experience and discuss important trends. I've made it a habit to consume content regularly from creators that make me stop from the daily grind and reflect about my role. Here's a curated list with my favorites.
🎙️ Read this interview to learn more about my own product management experience as a PM at Localazy
1. Leanstack blog by Ash Maurya 🔗
If you've ever built a business model, chances are you've probably run into the Lean Canvas business modeling tool by Ash Maurya. Ash has first-hand experience as a founder, building, scaling, and selling businesses. He founded WiredReach in 2002 and served as its CEO until 2010, when he sold it.
On his website, Leanstack, he shares his musings on applying lean startup principles, continuous innovation, finding scalable business models, his products, and much more. You can also find more of his recent work on LeanFoundry, another one of his websites.
2. Product Thoughts newsletter by Tim Herbig 🔗
Tim Herbig is a course creator, consultant, and product management coach who focuses on guiding product teams toward making data-based decisions. He has over a decade of experience in product management, building SaaS applications for enterprises. His content revolves around the belief that product teams should stay accountable for the consequences of their decisions. According to Tim, there's no such thing as "best practices" that can be applied to every business and yield the same results.
Besides the amazing content you'll find on his website, he sends a newsletter every week covering product discovery, product goals, and product strategy. The topics are quite diverse and range from the initial steps to joining the industry to meeting times, product discovery, and product strategy. You will likely find most of his content in videos, newsletters, PDFs, or courses.
3. High-Impact Product Management by Itamar Gilad 🔗
Itamar Gilad is one of the top industry players — he's worked with well-known companies like Microsoft and Google as a product manager and has over 20 years of experience in the field. In his monthly newsletter, he regularly shares learnings and useful tools for PMs everywhere.
He often publishes on his blog as well. Even though the posts aren't frequent, it sticks to the premise that quality is better than quantity. Itamar structures his content around the audience's most concerning issues. It's pretty common, for instance, to find articles that answer a question from a product person's perspective. With many years of experience under his belt, not only does he answer the posed questions, but he goes really into detail with his answers.
Apart from his articles, I've found many of his resources super useful, including e-books such as OKRs Done Right and 15 Essential Product Frameworks, and tools like the Product Idea Confidence Calculator and the GIST Board template, which we actually used to implement GIST at Localazy.
🎧 Listen to Itamar and I talk about evidence-guided decision-making on this episode of the Bridging the Gap podcast
4. Reforge 🔗
Founded by Brian Balfour, who previously held the VP of Growth at Hubspot, Reforge has become a popular reference for product people. They are known for hosting cohort-based programs led and created by top executives from Facebook, Airtable, Hubspot, etc. You'll get access to these programs and other exclusive content by snatching their membership.
Reforge's blog is a must-check for product people. It's been a reliable source of product management articles for me for a while, and subscribing to their newsletter helps you stay updated with the latest posts as soon as they're published. The list of writers and contributors on the website includes big names from the companies we mentioned and more (such as Stripe, Tinder, and Google, among others).
5. Product Talk by Teresa Torres 🔗
Product Talk has gained massive momentum as its founder, Teresa Torres, kept publishing long-form high-quality content on product management. The articles are enriched with helpful links, infographics, screenshots, and practical examples that are easy to digest.
Teresa is an experienced product discovery coach who has worked with major companies such as Tesco and Spotify. After coaching over 8,500 product people, she has refined her teachings continuously and even compiled them into a book titled Continuous Discovery Habits, where she talks about her main expertise: continuous product improvement. Encouraging experimentation when it comes to product discovery, she spells out an essential truth for building viable products: testing ideas before investing in them paves the path to better products.
6. Intercom blog 🔗
The Intercom blog is part of a unique website breed that does more than regurgitate popular "how-to" posts. Their content spans from design and product to innovation, customer support, sales, and breakdowns of their approaches and frameworks. They don't shy away from other important topics like burnout or imposter syndrome either.
As a prominent company in the customer communications industry, it's always intriguing to hear what the Intercom team has to say about designing products that serve customers. For the busy, most articles have a podcast version you can digest on the go.
7. Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky 🔗
Lenny is one of the biggest names in product, period. He worked as a product lead for over seven years (2016-2019) at Airbnb before focusing fully on his newsletter; and before that, he founded Localmind, which Airbnb later acquired.
Lenny writes detailed pieces on career, product, and business growth, sprinkled with a uniquely personal perspective. The original content often includes interviews with prominent investors, entrepreneurs, and industry experts. You're guaranteed to leave with practical knowledge through screenshots, visuals, and other interactive elements. Totally worth adding it to your list, even if you don't become a paid subscriber.
8. Mind the Product 🔗
This is a space where all the product professionals can jump into and post their thoughts. Mind the Product has been a leader in organizing meetups and conferences and providing product career advice for a while. What started as a meetup of 25 product people has grown into a network of over 150k+ product professionals sharing advice on several points of the product journey, including KPIs, product strategy, and product discovery.
Their content is delivered in various formats, including podcasts, videos, articles, and book recommendations. However, a good pieces are highly exclusive and put behind a paywall. It's worth subscribing if you find the free content valuable. Also, for those used to a more interactive way of obtaining information, they have a Slack community with over 20k+ product people discussing product building.
9. Roman Pichler's blog 🔗
Roman Pichler has an impressive background that includes working with large companies like Intel as a programmer and Siemens as a Development Manager and consultant. Later, he served as an Agile Coach for Capital One and, around the same time (2006), founded Pichler Consulting, which turned into his main focus since then, with agility, leadership, and product strategy as his main areas.
As a product management expert, he has taught product people one-to-one and through his content (four books, training, talks, podcast, etc.) how to deliver better products for about two decades. During this time, he's worked on a series of tools, such as the GO Product Roadmap and the Product Vision Board, which have gained popularity in the industry. On his blog, you'll find comprehensive and up-to-date articles published at least once per month, along with their audio versions, to help you grow as a product manager.
10. Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar 🔗
At some point, behind any PLG-based company lies a team of confused product people pondering the next step. Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar offers useful long-form, in-depth content on a biweekly basis to help you, as a product manager and your team, make decisions faster.
Kyle has impressive industry experience, including serving as a Director of Market Strategy, VP, and finally, as an Operating Partner for OpenView, among others. Recently, he's started a new collection of much shorter newsletters named The Gist, which focus on practical advice you can implement immediately.
11. The ProductLed Blog 🔗
Are you responsible for customer success, marketing, sales, engineering, development, or products? This blog hosts content from multiple industry leaders practicing what they preach by working for well-known companies such as Buffer or Hubspot. Their tagline promises content 100% sourced from leaders on the front line, and they surely stand by that.
Founded by Wes Bush, the site produces unique, well-structured content you'll probably enjoy as a product manager. If you like long-form pieces, make sure to check out their e-book, too.
✔️ Closing thoughts 🔗
If you are a little lost on product management resources, I hope this selection has quenched your thirst (and hopefully enriched your inbox and bookmarks). These ten resources aren't the only ones in the industry, but it's what I found immensely helpful while building Localazy.
Did you know that our features have helped multiple product managers ship multilingual products and launch features much faster? 🚀 Check it out here, and if you're interested in hearing more about my experience, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Substack, and X.
