OpenView Welcomes Portfolio Companies for Product Management Forum in New Studio Space
This week Boston based venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, hosted a two-day workshop on product management for its portfolio and prospect companies. The event was led by Marty Cagan, partner at Silicon Valley Product Group. Throughout the forum, Cagan discussed key best practices in product management and user experience for growing technology companies. Participants of the workshop included CEOs, CTOs, and Product Managers of OpenView’s portfolio and prospect companies.
“For expansion stage companies trying to break through the crowd, it’s all about the ensuring that you have created a product that your customers love. The OpenView portfolio companies are all working hard on creating category leading products,” said Cagan.
The workshop stressed several best practices from Cagan’s book Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love. The workshop emphasized product organization, planning, discovery, and optimization. Cagan’s latest techniques and best practices from agile/scrum, lean startups, customer development, user experience design, and design thinking were shared.
“I have really enjoyed that Marty has stressed the importance of user experience when it comes to product management. The heart of product management is discovering products that are valuable and that your customers will love to use. It is really nice to see that important tie in,” Steve Ballard, Director of User Experience Design at AtTask.
The Product Team Leaders Workshop marked the formal opening of OpenView Studios, a new space designed to organize forums and workshops for up to 100 people from OpenView’s portfolio companies and network. The new space also boasts a podcasting and video studio. The recording rooms are currently used to produce podcasts and videos for the firm’s content site, OpenView Labs, in addition to being available for OpenView’s portfolio companies.
“Zmags is really excited about the new OpenView studio space. It is a great resource for the portfolio companies. We have already taken advantage of the space by filming customer testimonials and a product launch video with our marketing team. We are looking forward to utilizing the space more in the future,” said Jens Karstoft, co-founder of Zmags.
About OpenView Venture Partners
OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion stage venture capital fund with a focus on high-growth software, internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, who collectively bring several decades of technology and management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies with quickly ramping up Product, Go-To-Market, and Organizational and Operational functions to best practice levels. The firm was founded in 2006 and has a total capital under management of approximately $240 million. OpenView Venture Partners is based in Boston and invests on a worldwide basis.