Product Tank April 2025: Storytelling & Matt LeMay Book Launch!

Join us for a special ProductTank PDX in April! We'll be featuring Matt LeMay coming back to Portland for a celebration of his new book, Impact-First Product Teams, and Ali Maaxa Unlocking the Science of Storytelling. As always, we will also have plenty of time to meet other product folks over drinks and lots of tasty snacks!

Unlock The Science of Storytelling
It’s one thing to tell the origin story of your startup, product, or feature: How did it come about? What can it do? How does it reflect your brand?
For data-driven product people, storytelling becomes a different beast altogether. It is a critical tool for understanding a customer’s journey: a North Star, a science drawn from the oldest form of data collection and communication humans have ever known.

The dividends of structuring a compelling product story are many: identify your customer’s core dilemma, get into their state of mind, and demonstrate the true impact of your product. It is a research tool you can use to walk customers through their experience to discover unknown unknowns. It is a bias buster that finds the narrative in your analytics, the meaning of your metrics. In this talk, you’ll learn to identify the core dilemma at the heart of the customer journey- it’s often different than what we expect!

Dr. Ali Maaxa is a behavioral scientist and principal product strategist. At MaaxaLabs, she partners with product leaders to discover product-market fit, unlock evidence-based decision-making, and produce data-driven roadmaps. She has led discovery efforts for product leaders and incubators at AWS AI, New Relic, Starbucks, and Disney as well as supporting startup design partner programs, UX strategy, and product-market fit research.

Impact-First Product Teams - Book Launch!
Join Matt LeMay, former Portlander and author of the beloved Product Management in Practice, as he talks through lessons and stories from his new book IMPACT-FIRST PRODUCT TEAMS. Matt has worked with companies like Spotify, Google, Mailchimp, and SumUp, and he'll be joining us all the way from London England to share stories from his book, answer our questions, and wonder why he ever moved away from a city with Hat Yai, Coava, and Mississippi Records. You'll hear first-hand examples of how product teams across industries and geographies have put business impact at the heart of their work without burning themselves out or losing sight of customer needs. Matt will also be giving away 20 signed copies of the book. Or you can pick up a copy in advance.

Matt LeMay is a product leader, consultant, and author. He empowers product managers, teams, and organizations to maximize their impact on business-critical revenue and growth goals by streamlining processes, simplifying strategies, and focusing on the work that matters most. Previously, Matt worked as Senior Product Manager at music startup Songza (acquired by Google), and Head of Consumer Product at Bitly. Matt is also a musician, recording engineer, and the author of a book about singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. He lives in London, England. See more about Matt at his website [MattLeMay.com](https://mattlemay.com/).