Working on products targeting a market with language, expectations and culture different from your own is challenging. Ustream, a Silicon Valley video startup, faced this issue from the very beginning. With engineering and product management located in Budapest, Hungary, the company quickly needed to figure out the answers to these in order to remain competitive on a fast paced market. In this presentation I will talk about what solutions and framework Ustream came up with in order to succeed, despite these challenges

1. Mark Tolmacs, Ustream
How I stopped worrying
and started to love the
chaos

3. „Good product managers know the market, the
product, the product line and the competition
extremely well and operate from a strong basis of
knowledge and confidence. „
„A good product manager is the CEO
of the product.”
- Ben Horowitz

4. WHAT TO BUILD?

5. CREATIVE GENIUS

6. CUSTOMERS

7. TIMEZONE
DIFFERENCE

8. LANGUAGE
BARRIER

9. CULTURAL
DIFFERENCES

10. HOW TO MAKE IT
HAPPEN?

11. „A lot of people describe a product manager as a
CEO of the product or the “owner” of the spec, but I
think that over-ascribes influence and authority to
the product manager. The best teams operate in a
way where the team collectively feels ownership
over the spec and everyone has had input and been
able to suggest and promote ideas.”
- Josh Elman

12. FACILITATION

13. VISION

14. INFLUENCE

15. TRUST

16. UNDERSTANDING
TRUST

19. CO-OP
BLACKJACK

20. EGO

21. MICROMANAGING

23. MULTI-TABLE, CO-OP
BLACKJACK

24. EQUALLY SPLIT POT

25. MEET MANAGEMENT

26. CREEPS IN
CULTURE

27. DISCONNECTED
The dangers of becoming

28. „Don’t worry, we don’t
give them much money!”

29. COMMUNICATION

30. INITIATIVE

31. RESPONSIBILITY

33. Mark Tolmacs
@mtolmacs