Retracing 2024: Top product posts, pods, newsletters & more
Read this mega-compilation of top content I resonated with in 2024 + the content I produced which got the most engagement.
Ah yes. ‘Tis the time when creators worldwide publish their version of “Wrapped”.
I will shamelessly hop on this worn-out bandwagon but with a slight twist.
Instead of just highlighting my content, I’ll attempt to spotlight content posted by other creators that moved me this year.
Welcome to Retrace 2024 - the edition where we revisit some of the best product artifacts and tools across the creator-verse. Think of it as a celebration.
To be clear, the listings below aren’t ranked on any engagement parameter other than my preference. So, please don’t kill me if you don’t resonate with my picks.
Here is the list of categories we’ll be covering today:
We’ll start with some PM-focused content:
Printworthy PM LinkedIn Posts
PM Podcast Episodes That Hit a Chord
PM Newsletter Editions That Opened My Mind
AI-Related Product Pieces That Taught Us Something
PM Creators I Discovered This Year
Then, we’ll talk about some Product Marketing content
PMM Podcast Episodes That Ushered in Some Clarity
PMM LinkedIn Posts That Made Me Do a Double Take
PMM Newsletter Editions That Turned On Light Bulbs
PMM Creators I Discovered This Year
Then, we’ll discuss a few miscellaneous items:
Books That Made Some Waves
Visuals That Made Me Scratch My Chin
Memes That Gave Me Hiccups
SaaS Products That Solved a Problem For Me
AI-First Products I Actually Found Value In
Events That Hit It Out of the Park
And we’ll close with some of my stuff:
3 of my most popular LinkedIn posts
3 of the most popular posts from Behind Product Lines
This is a long post, so if you see this in your inbox, hop on to aatir.substack.com.
But before we do the honors, I have a small announcement to make:
Announcing the Product Marketing Corporate Workshop
I’m offering a corporate product marketing workshop starting in February 2025. This workshop is for companies looking to start or enhance their product marketing function. I’ll be packaging lessons over a decade into actionable steps to help teams launch better and re-think their approach to GTM.
Here’s the detailed workshop brief that lists the topics I’ll cover.
Interested companies can express interest using this form.
Alright then, here we go with Retrace 2024:
4 Printworthy PM LinkedIn posts
#4 10 signs you're wasting precious time with bullsh*t management
Are you wasting your company’s time with worthless management? Find out with David’s telling signs.
#3 Why most products are, in fact, projects
by Paweł Huryn
Many so-called companies are really just operating glorified project management gigs. Pawel whistleblows them with a few red flags.
#2 Story of Spotify: from a wireframe to a billion-dollar empire
by Aakash Gupta
I’ve always been a fan of wireframing early and iterating, despite getting pelted with criticism from the design community. This Spotify story gave me an excellent reference point.
#1 Why punishing missed deadlines makes your team slower
Many leaders think reprimanding a team for a missed deadline will make them move faster. This counter-intuitive piece reveals how that approach really kills motivation and innovation. The key is to balance accountability with aggressive goals.
5 PM Podcast Episodes That Hit a Chord
#5 Aligning Product Development with Business Objectives in Healthcare with BJ Boyle
The true test of great Product Management is when you have to operate in a web of constraints. There perhaps is no industry more regulated than healthcare. BJ Boyle unpacks some interesting insights with Melissa Perri on how he navigated those challenges. Great tips on executive relationships, tight regulations, and user research.
Watch it on the Product Thinking Podcast
#4 Moving to the Product Operating Model with Marty Cagan
It’s hard to talk about product management content without referencing the person who “inspired” many PM minds. Marty Cagan rolled out his 3rd book called “Transformed” this year, and in this pod with Pawel/Aakash, he talked about practical steps to change a product culture and operating model.
#3 Vertical AI Agents Could Be 10X Bigger Than SaaS
This might not be classic product management but I HAD to place this somewhere. It’s an eye-brow raising discussion on why specialized AI agents could replace traditional SaaS companies. Time will tell if these theories materialize, but the discourse on how AI can change the very DNA of the SaaS industry was fascinating.
#2 SaaS Pricing Masterclass with Kyle Poyar (Growth Unhinged)
Pricing is among the hardest things to get right and iterate on in SaaS. Kyle Poyar’s thoughts were spot on, and I highly recommend this to anyone starting their SaaS gig, especially if you’ve been thinking of applying usage-based pricing.
Watch on the Product Growth Podcast
#1 Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company with Mihika Kapoor (Figma)
I knew what vision meant, but I have seldom heard about how it’s effectively applied. This talk with Mihika Kapoor unpacked quite a bit. One point that stuck with me was their approach to vision setting: "If I and my team do our job correctly, what does the world look like?”. Simple question with big impact.
4 PM Newsletter Editions That Opened My Mind
#4 What Makes a Great Product Culture?
by Petra Wille
Product leaders often rush to implement solutions without addressing deeper cultural issues. Petra Wille dives into the key pillars of product culture. I particularly appreciated her “culture is like water to fish" analogy. It’s invisible but all-encompassing. That reminds product leaders why cultural decisions need to be intentional and thoughtful.
#3 Is Product Art or Science? by Marty Cagan
by Marty Cagan
Marty Cagan finds interesting parallels between tech product development and artistic creation. I particularly loved his observation that artists and product teams frame their work as "problems to solve". It shows how the creative process might be more universal than we think.
#2 The Roadmapping Miro Board
by John Cutler
John compiled all his thoughts on roadmaps in one neat, organized Miro board so readers could connect all the pieces of his intricate thought process. It’s given me a lot of food for thought lately, especially Frame 8, which talks about different intensities of specificity when formulating a roadmap item based on how far out it is.
#1 The 10 Questions of Strategy
Strategy is hard enough to explain, but communicating it is another ordeal. Bandan nailed down 10 key questions that help you define where you're going and how to get there. Skips all the confusing templates that don't work in real life.
Read it on Productify (by Bandan)
I separated some of the AI-heavy content into another category as I’ve seen everyone’s AI appetite varies:
4 AI-related Product Pieces That Taught Us Something
#4 Product Management Isn’t Dead and It’s Not AI That’s Going to Kill It
by One Knight in Product newsletter
I’m frankly tired of everyone dunking on Product Management predicting it’s imminent demise. Sure, AI will have an impact but PM is so much more than writing PRDs and making prioritization doodles. Jason delivers the message.
Read it on One Knight in Product
#3 How to become a supermanager with AI
This is a must-read for managers wondering how to wield AI to lead better. Tells you everything from building custom GPTs that can give your team instant feedback on their writing to running engaging debate sessions that help PMs get better at influencing executives.
#2 The Ultimate ChatGPT Prompts Library for PMs
by Paweł Huryn
Looking for battle-tested ChatGPT prompts to accelerate your product management life? Look no further with another masterful compendium by Pawel.
#3 How to become an AI Product Manager with No Experience
Aakash and Dr. Nancy Li dive deep into why AI Product Management is growing fast and how to break into it. The piece talks about reshaping your content diet and taking the right courses before building actual AI products.
Read it on the Product Growth Newsletter
Bonus Content on AI
I wanted to highlight this podcast on “My First Million” (a pod I’ve gotten addicted to this year). This one talks about AI agents and their potential in the future.
If you can’t see the whole thing, try to at least watch from 35:31 when Shaan builds a food-tracking app in minutes:
3 PM Creators I Discovered This Year
We’ve all heard of LinkedIn greats like John Cutler, Shyvee Shi, Lenny, Teresa Torres, Aakash Gupta, Melissa Perri, and all the other usual suspects.
I’m going to take this space to highlight some emerging creators that I found this year:
#3 Büşra Coşkuner, Product Coach
#2 Bosky Mukherjee, Founder of PMDojo
#1 Ed Biden, Chief Product Officer
Retrace 2024: Product Marketing Content
Now, let’s switch gears to Product Marketing content.
3 PMM podcasts That Ushered in Some Clarity
#3 Practical insights on product launches (by Jackie Palmer, Pendo)
We all hear about the theory of “rolling thunder” launches. Jackie goes into the process of building one with real examples from her experience at Pendo.
Listen on the Product Marketing Experts Show
#2 Single-product vs Multi-product Positioning (by April Dunford)
I’ve personally been confused about how to adapt positioning when adding a new product. April uses some interesting examples from IBM and Salesforce to explain how to position when you’ve got multiple segments at play without butchering your message.
Watch on The Positioning Show
I’m going to cheat a little for this one as this is technically a webinar, but this one’s a winner. Anthony Pierri shares so many nuggets on value propositions, accompanied with some memorable graphics:
#1 How to create compelling value propositions for your startup (by Anthony Pierri)
Watch on Wynter’s Youtube channel
3 PMM LinkedIn Posts That Made Me Do a Double Take
#3 Product Marketers are not Marketers
by Yi Lin Pei
Some marketing leader gets super ticked off whenever I say this on LinkedIn. But it’s time people accept that many marketing teams aren’t doing product marketing. I love how Yi nailed the point home.
#2 Mistake: Having different teams own messaging across the customer journey
This post challenges the effectiveness of messaging sheets that get never get read. But what makes it to the marketing website (and customer-facing collateral, for that matter) IS your messaging. Could that be our alignment artifact?
#1 GTM Strategy is not a launch strategy
I’ll hand Madison the crown this year. This post argues you can’t have a GTM strategy unless product-market fit has been achieved and a growth direction has been chosen. Marketing can’t fix a product that isn’t sticky to begin with.
3 PMM Newsletter Editions That Turned On Light Bulbs
#1 How to Build Your GTM Strategy from Scratch
by Kyle Poyar and Maja Voje
If you’re an early-stage company architecting your GTM from scratch, this one is for you. It shares some handy frameworks to start thinking about how to reach the right audiences within the budget you have available.
#2 The “No Differentiation” Illusion
This one opened my eyes. The key takeaway is that a true lack of differentiation is actually very rare in successful B2B products. Usually, the problem is better articulating existing differentiation by bringing together perspectives from leadership, product, marketing, sales, and customer success.
#1 How to create a more effective homepage
by Emily Kramer
Emily gives a highly reusable template for devising a home page bound to win. If I could tell you how many times I’ve opened this page in the last year…
3 PMM Creators I Discovered This Year
#3 Rebecca Shaddix - Head of PMM, Garner Health
Rebecca Shaddix’s content sheds some much-needed light on Product Marketing Metrics. Her post on how PMMs can avoid looking at vanity metrics had some amazing insights.
#2 Madison Leonard - GTM Consultant, SaaS Secrets
Madison Leonard highlights refreshing truths about product launches, why GTM depends on Product-Market-fit, and the importance of the PM-PMM alliance (yay!).
#1 - Yi Lin Pei - Product Marketing Coach
If you’re just starting out a product marketing manager, you must follow Yi Lin Pei to get your compass in order. Great tactical tips that are easy to digest.
Top 3 Newsletter Editions on Behind Product Lines
Alright, finally, some self-promotion. Woohoo!
Here are the top 3 posts on my newsletter based on engagement and reactions.
Top 3 LinkedIn Posts from my account
Gosh, more self-promotion. The nerve, right?
Well, while I have you, here are some of my posts that racked up some solid numbers on LinkedIn:
#1 Product Marketing ≠ "Marketing".
In this post, I highlighted how the specific tactics the two roles perform in each stage of the customer journey are different. I also ruffled a few feathers by saying this.
#2 B2B SaaS Products are like an onion
This one has a neat graphic to depict all the product, marketing, and GTM layers that make up a typical B2B SaaS product.
#1 Meme: Your product team isn’t chaotic.
I never expected this meme to go viral, but it certainly made some waves. It depicts the intricate balance product teams have to exhibit while building a product sprint-by-sprint :)
3 SaaS Products That Solved a Problem For Me
#3 - RB2B (de-anonymizes web traffic to reveal LinkedIn profile URL)
This might be a controversial pick, given how much flak it’s been getting lately. However, I have seen some solid leads materialize through the channel. With Adam’s (CEO) promise to address many gaps, I’m sure it’ll get only better.
#2 - Supademo (AI Interactive Product Demos)
The vFairs team generated 300+ how-to videos using Supademo by recording flows through an extension. We were able to finish what looked like a 3-month project in days.
#1 - Clay (Data Enrichment Platform)
Clay helped us enhance our outbound marketing motion by quickly identifying ICP-fit prospects, enriching them with data points like industry, jobs, recent LinkedIn posts, etc., and threading personalized copy into an email dispatch tool. Clay is a movement.
5 AI-First Products I *Actually* Found Value In
In this section, I’m skipping the usual LLMs everyone is using, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini.
#5 - NotebookLM (AI research tool with the ability to create a 2-guest podcast)
I used NotebookLM to create funky audio podcasts that made consuming boring product and sales collateral more (palatable and) memorable. Check ideas here.
#4 - Trickle (build web apps in seconds)
I built a productivity app using Trickle that’s saving me time. Check it out here.
#3 - Miro AI (digital canvas with AI superpowers)
I loved using Miro’s new AI features for my personal and team brainstorming sessions this year. Watch this.
#2 - Chatbase (build personalized chatbots trained on your data)
I configured a sales enablement bot for my sales team. They use it every day, and that says quite a lot.
#1 - Visily (UI design software with AI power-ups)
The screenshot-to-wireframe feature alone halved my communication and documentation turnover time.
3 Visuals That Made Me Scratch My Chin
The Role of a Product Manager
by Sid Arora
2024 SaaS growth cheat sheet
by Kyle Poyar
Your Target Audience Drives Your Positioning
by Rob Kaminski
4 Memes That Gave Me Hiccups
#4 When you struggle to say No
by Bart Jaworski
#3 Product Marketing Life
by Richard King
#2 Many data-driven folks are actually Revenue-led
by Elena Verna
#1 Tech company adding AI to its product
by Enzo Avigo
You have to watch the video to get this one:
3 Books That Made Some Waves
#3 Make it Punchy
Finally, a book that teaches businesses how to drop the jargon and speak clearly. Treat your customers like human beings.
Get it here
#2 Evidence-Guided
by Itamar Gilad
We used to hear about the importance of “evidence” but Itamar codifies it into usable frameworks. My personal favorite was the “Confidence Meter” which helps you prioritize ideas and make informed decisions by judging the strength of supporting evidence.
#1 The Product Momentum Gap
by andrea saez and Dave Martin
This is my jam. This book teaches a systematic framework that aligns product, marketing, and sales teams around customer value creation. It spotlights the common disconnect between product strategy and market execution. It resonated a lot with me because I’ve been advocating lately a lot about creating alignment across key roles like product and product marketing.
3 Events That Hit It Out of the Park
#3 Lenny & Friends Summit
Although I wasn’t there, a close friend of mine went, and he described it as “the best product minds in the world bunched up in one square, sharing experiences never heard before.”
Brilliant.
#2 Drive by Exit Five
Exit Five’s event in September further confirmed what I’ve been hearing in the world of events: smaller is better. The testimonial below says it all.
#1 Hubspot Inbound 2024
Before walking through the doors, I thought this would be another corporate borefest. However, I was proven wrong. I loved how practical the sessions were. From product launch tips to LinkedIn ads breakdowns to GTM frameworks, Inbound brought top talent with actionable content.
Boom. That was my time.
Hope this piece helped.
I wish everyone a fantastic 2025.
See you on the other side.
Till next time,
Aatir
Amazing retracing Aatir, and it shed some light on popular names, new names and many learning opportunities and experiences here. I am sure this article will be saved for long :=) - thank you
Que compilado maravilhoso. Obrigado por isso 💙. Sugira você fazer uma mensal dessa, rs