Product Hero #11 — Efrem Filho

Here we are again :)

Here we are again :)

If you want to take a look at more than 40 interviews with product heroes, click here.

And the new Product Hero issss:

Efrem Filho!

I never have an opportunity to meet Efrem in person, but in the last three years, we always have good discussions about product management, mobile, innovation and participated in some things together.

Fun facts first: failed 4 products; broke 1,5 startup; left a Brazilian “unicorn” in the wrong moment; raised some seed money, twice. Nowadays I’m partner at Oncase, advisor at Wecare , Head at NITE-CEUMA and co-founder of Produto.io

1. How do you explain your job to ‘normal’ people? (like your grandmother..)

Not even my friends get it, I wouldn’t dare to explain to my grandmother, but let’s try. I’m a product guy — not necessarily a PM — so I focus on delivery the best experience as possible for customers. Sometimes I have to balance between a product, and “consulting” — mostly B2B has, although everybody denies it. Besides bring (highly risky) products to market, I try to teach undergrad students to do the same, helping them to do some quick and dirty products.

2. What is your morning routine at work as Product Manager?

As I said, I don’t have any PM title anymore (PM is sooooo last season LOL), but I focus on bring products to market. Currently: Oncase we are trying to build a product that explores the NZN’s interest graph (mainly on Brazilians’ interests). It involves (a lot!) of waiting for data to load and a little of analysis (yes, this is a regular process of analytical products); Wecare help the founders build a coherent product launch strategy (we’re in our third approach) and develop a good pricing strategy; and NITE-CEUMA we created two “educational products” focus on transforming our students and alumni in (digital) product savvy guys and girls.

3. Where do you get your inspiration?

A lot of podcasts, youtube videos and feedback from beta users (I love to show a terrible product to someone!). I tried to inspire others (remember, I’m an academic guy by heart) with my texts on medium(https://medium.com/@efremfilho), NITE-CEUMA’s repositories on github (https://github.com/nite-ceuma/) and NITE-CEUMA’s wiki (http://nite.ceuma.br/wiki/).

4. What is your type of Product Manager?

I focus on start new products — you could call MVPs. So, I’ll — and I do — fail a lot! I don’t have the interest to work in products with millions of users. It’s a different kind of challenge, for a different kind of person.

5. What was your big mistake/failure? And what did you learn?

I’m a terrible manager, and that cause my biggest mistake. During 2015 we developed a product called Slackmetrics […]