Over 42% of a product manager's time is spent delivering the product. They ensure that the product follows the customers' interests and the latest industry standards. But staying up-to-date with the latest strategies and practices is challenging. 🤷♂️
Fortunately, the internet is full of talented PMs who share their invaluable experience and discuss important trends. 🤓 Having a list of blogs you can head over to and stay updated saves you time and effort. And in this list of the best blogs for product managers, you'll find resources to help you catch up effortlessly with the industry. 😉
The resources in this article aren't collected randomly, though. 😎 They're curated by our PM, Jan Bílek, who consumes their content regularly and vouches for their value.
Read the interview with Jan to learn more about his product management experience as a PM at Localazy 🎙️
🧭 Leanstack Blog by Ash Maurya
If you've ever built a business model, during your search for tools and services to facilitate the process, you should have run into the "Lean Canvas" business modeling tool by Ash Maurya. 🖼️ On his blog, he publishes articles on Running Lean, Continuous Innovation, and Lean Canvas.
Source: Leanstack Blog HomepageAsh 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 blog, Leanstack, he shares his musing on applying lean startup principles, continuous innovation, finding scalable business models, his products, and much more. There's definitely something to take for you as a product manager. 📊🚀
📰 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. 🧑🏫 His content revolves around the belief that product teams should stay accountable for the consequences of their decisions. There's no such thing as "best practices" that can be applied to every business (unless you have an identical business) and yield the same results. ✨
Source: Tim Herbig's NewsletterBefore you decide to implement any of the suggested practices, calculate the possible consequences. 📟 Tim has over a decade of experience in product management, building SaaS applications for enterprises, among other sectors (professional networking, publishing, etc.) 📱
Besides the amazing content you'll find on his website, he sends a newsletter every week covering product discovery, product goals, and product strategy. 📜 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. 🎥
🎯 High-Impact Product Management by Itamar Gilad
When searching for product managers to learn from, you'd want to learn from the top industry players. 🥇 Itamar Gilad has worked with well-known companies like Microsoft and Google as a product manager during his professional experience for about two decades in this field. In his monthly newsletter, he regularly shares learnings and useful tools. ⚒️
Source: Itamar Gilad's bioHe 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. ✨ On his website, you can expect to find not only blog articles but other resources as well, including several eBooks such as OKRs Done Right and 15 Essential Product Frameworks, but also other tools such as the Product Idea Confidence Calculator and the GIST Board template. 📃
Publishing from Spain, Itamar Gilad structures his content around the audience's most concerning issues. It's pretty common to find articles that answer a question from a product person. 👤 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.
🔥 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. 🌟
Source: ReforgeReforge's blog is a must-check for product people. It can easily become a reliable source of product management articles for 2023, 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). 🦁
🗨️ 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. She is an experienced product discovery coach who has worked with major companies such as Tesco and Spotify. 🎧
As the creator of Product Talk Academy, after coaching over 8,500 product people, she has refined her teachings continuously and even compiled them into a book titled Continuous Discovery Habits. 📕 As hinted by the book, continuous discovery is an important element of her work. Whether you're a product manager, founder, or UX designer, you'll find valuable product discovery and leadership insights in her blog. 💻
Source: Product TalkBuilding products is complex, and her content is built with this attitude in mind. 👩🏫 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. 🦸♀️ She served as the CEO of Affinity Circles and kept the design and product roles at HighWire Press and Become.com. We all could learn from a successful entrepreneur and product manager like her.
💬 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 to customer support, sales, and breakdowns of their approaches and frameworks. But they don't shy away from other important topics like burnout or imposter syndrome either. 😪😄
Source: Intercom BlogIntercom is a prominent company in the communications industry. Not only do they have first-hand experience designing products that serve customers, but their teams also know how to communicate their lessons in clear and concise language. 📐 Also, for the busy, most articles have a podcast version you can digest on the go.
🙋♂️ Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky
How often do you rely on Airbnb to pick your next stay? The ease of use makes it such a great product. 🧳📲 Our next author on the list, Lenny Rachitsky, has worked as a product lead for over seven years (2016-2019) at Airbnb before focusing fully on his newsletter. Before that, he founded Localmind, which Airbnb later acquired. 💰
Even though the content is not published in a regular blog but via a newsletter, you can still read the already posted content on Substack, where his newsletter is based.📍 If you decide to become a paid subscriber, you'll receive weekly posts, but even if you don't, you'll still receive a monthly post. 🗓️
Source: Lenny RachitskyLenny 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 to your list of must-read blogs for product managers. 🧩
🧠 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. 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. 🔎
Source: Mind the ProductTheir content is delivered in various formats, including podcasts, videos, articles, and book recommendations. However, a good chunk of their articles is highly exclusive and put behind a paywall. 💳 Totally 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. 📊
👨💼 Roman Pichler
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. 👨💻
Source: Roman Pichler's BlogAs 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.
✏️ 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 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. 🧾
Source: Kyle Poyar' SubstackEvery other week you can expect a detailed post on his Substack about the strategies leveraged by PLG-driven startups and their progress. Recently, he's started a new collection of newsletters named The Gist. These newsletters are much shorter and focused on delivering one practical takeaway you can implement immediately. 😄
Meanwhile, Growth Unhinged has a more long-form and in-depth format. 📋 With over 15,000+ subscribers, the newsletter is growing fast and welcoming founders, operators, investors, and growth enthusiasts. 🤩
💡 The ProductLed Blog
Are you responsible for customer success, marketing, sales, engineering, development, or products? 🤔 The ProductLed 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 their promise. 😉
Source: ProductLed BlogProduct experiences are a core element of growth for a software business. At ProductLed, you'll find stories and lessons that will serve you well as a product manager when making decisions and enhancing customer experiences for your products. 😄 Founded by Wes Bush, ProductLed produces unique, well-structured content you'll love as a product manager. If you enjoy long-form pieces, their eBook is worth checking out. 📙
✔️ Closing Thoughts
We hope to have quenched your thirst for blogs on product management with this article and hopefully enriched your inbox and bookmarks. 🔖 These eleven websites aren't the only ones in the industry, but it's what we've found immensely helpful while building Localazy.
➡️ Make sure to follow our Product Manager Jan on Twitter.
Did you know that our features have helped multiple product managers ship multilingual products and launch features much faster? 🚀 Check it out here.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://localazy.com/blog/top-11-blogs-every-product-manager-must-follow