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Otter Advisory Newsletter #7
September, 2021

Hello

This is the Seventh edition of the newsletter. September has been busy, both on the product advisory side and with M&A related work. 

I spend a lot of time reading stuff, and I’ve experimented with a variety of tools to track interesting posts and links, I'll post a few of these. This month's version has a bit about product management at scale, workplace health, AI and strategy. 

The newsletter is a miscellany of what I’ve read, written, watched or heard over the last little while. This may interest people who work in the world of HRTECH, SaaS, work tech etc, either as users, builders or investors. I’ll do this once a month or so at first, and see how it develops. Let me know what you would like to see here. Eventually I might even do some fancy formatting. Or not. 

I'll be speaking at the HR.com tech symposium next week. Details in this post. I'm also talking at  the EMEA Inspire ICIMS. 

Things I've written recently

• Writing mojo is threatening to return, but not there yet...

• My Haufe column (in German) – Asking questions is cool. Learning from Angela Merkel. New column should be out in the next couple of days.

• My Unleash column –How corporates should react when their vendor gets acquired. New colunn next week. 

• Continuous discovery  Kanagaroos and product management

• Product managment in large and small companies  A summary of a recent talk with Dave Kellogg.

Things I've read

• Saleforce on M&A. I found this image and twitter thread v interesting. Salesforce do an excellent job on M&A. Lots to ponder. 

•  The South African connection to AWS's early success. This was news to me. 

• Bessmer on scaling to 100m ARR. the quality of research coming out of top VCs is good.

• When start ups can disrupt core banking, nothing is safe from disruption. Via Oliver Bussman's excellent newsletter.

• The failure of the authorities to adequately enforce GDPR is undermining its effectiveness.

• Gibson Biddle on the first 90 days as a product leader. 

• UN calls for more stringent AI regulation.via Mairtin Cunneen

• More on product management processes. From Insight ventures.

• Major AI study from Stanford.

• The state of devops. Most influential report on devops.

•  Greylock on cloud computing. More good VC research.

Someone to follow on Twitter

• Work chronicles. A funny cartoon. Too real. 

A blog to subscribe to

Ian Brown. One of the leading academics on software and regulations.

A book to read

Anything by Edward Tufte. 

Something to listen to

The Lathums. This band makes me smile. 

Something to watch

• Withnail and I. my favourite movie.

•  I've been having a bit of fun on Twitter with something I call Enterprise Software Metaphors.  see this one. search on twitter for "Enterprise Software Metaphors"

Come and talk Enterprise Product Management

Dave Kellogg and I are taking a break from the SaaS product power breakfast, but we will be back soon with a new improved show. All our past episodes are  here. 

If you would like to get in touch, click here to schedule a call or drop me a note. If you were forwarded this, and would like to subscribe, you can do so via the website.