Patrick Sauerwein

The Product Trio Is Blurring. Everyone Thinks They Can Do Your Job. They’re Not Wrong. Now What? I’ve been spending a lot of time on the road lately. And like many people, I’ve turned long drives and business trips into listening sessions. Lenny’s Podcast has been my constant…

The Product Trio is blurring. Everyone thinks they can do your job. They're not wrong. Now what?

AI dissolves the walls between PM, design, and engineering. But tools commoditize. The moat is judgment and Product Sense.

Don't be fungible.

virtualpatrick.com/2026/03/07/t...

#productmanagement

The Future Is Now: (gen)AI today ... and tomorrow, Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 6:30 PM | Meetup **Gude, Product People! 👋** **2026 is our AI year and we're starting with the fundamentals.** AI is everywhere, but do we truly understand the opportunities it creates f

🎯 2026 = Our AI Year
🚀 Finally kicking off! #ProductTank
Arno shares insights from their 900+ AI Pioneers initiative. Real use cases, human-centric transformation.
Thanks Netlight for hosting! 🎉
📅 March 19 | 6:30 PM | #Frankfurt
meetup.com/producttank-frankfurt/events/313239179
#productmanagement

Roku is a nice opportunity, thank you for highlighting, I wasn’t aware of their solution yet. Checked for Germany too & seems to be an interesting option.

See what is happening, not what is supposed to happen The stories we are telling around user research and LLMs have locked us into a doomed framing. Reject the very notion that it is "better than nothing."

Thanks to @spavel.bsky.social , at productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/the-incred... , I saw an intriguing claim:

"the more someone uses AI, the lower quality their outputs become"

I am super interested in metacognition so I was hoping it was a metacognition paper and it is! So I read it

Yes, since the split of having everything in one app, I thought it‘ll get better because of smaller chunks and focused delivery without too many dependencies. 🤷‍♂️
Wondering about Apple TV as a hardware and performance too, any insights?

True that, too lazy to buy something different. What would you recommend?

Which platform? Mac OS? On a Fire TV Stick it is creepy. 🙈

Welcome to the Feature Factory with no problem-solution fit.
#productmanagement

Welcome to the Feature Factory.

Great read, highly recommend! Watch out the cross references too! #productmanagement

Setting Intentions for 2026: Lessons Learned from YearCompass In early 2026, I dedicated 10.5 hours over three days to YearCompass for reflection and planning. Previously dissatisfied with the tool, I found renewed value this year, gaining insights about mana…

10.5 hours with #YearCompass taught me I constantly overcommit and overplan.

2026: Stand up!
More gratitude.
More grounded.
More writing.

What's your word for this year?

virtualpatrick.com/2026/01/18/s...

#Reflection #PersonalGrowth

Self-Awareness: The Product Skill Nobody Teaches Happy New Year! 🎉🥳🍀 I’d like to reflect about a post by Shreyas from last year for 2026 that got my attention: You can keep chasing 100s of frameworks, mental models, tactics, playbooks, succ…

Happy New Year! 🎉

Chased frameworks for years. The breakthrough? Understanding myself first, then how people think.

Self-awareness beats another playbook every time.

Read more: virtualpatrick.com/2026/01/06/self-awareness-the-product-skill-nobody-teaches/

What's your take?

#productmanagement

Eben dein Video auf LinkedIn gesehen und dachte mir, dann folge ich @gerhardkuehne.bsky.social hier auch mal. Bin gespannt. Frohes neues Jahr noch auf diesem Wege! 🎆🎊🥂

Ganz starker Podcast, ich habe so viel gelernt, dass ich ihn jetzt das zweite Mal höre. Danke, @claudmajor.bsky.social und @neudenken-podcast.bsky.social für diesen Beitrag! 🙏❤️

Finding Ground: Identity and Values in 2025 2025 was another year of intense learning. It challenged how I view collaboration, my European and German identity, and the fragile foundation upon which our digital society is built. The Culture M…

My 2025: reconnecting with my German roots 🇩🇪
Culture Map insight led me to digital sovereignty questions:
→ USA: 75% AI | EU: 5%
→ $109B vs $8B investment
→ EU OS: 0%
Local action via ProductTank Frankfurt.
Full story 👇
virtualpatrick.com/2025/12/30/f...
#reflection #productmanagement

I feel you, same, same, but different. A lot of it still is fear driven too. Working on it day by day.

Impact-first Product Teams, Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup **🎯 Is your Product Team putting Impact First in the New Year?** As we close out the year, it’s the perfect moment to reflect on the impact our product teams create — and

⏰ Monday! Matt LeMay online, Dec 15, 7-8pm CET. Learn how to build impact-first product teams from someone who visited 18 ProductTanks this year. Don’t miss it! 🎯
RSVP: meetup.com/producttank-frankfurt-rhein-main/events/312312909
#ProductManagement #ProductTank

Impact-first Product Teams, Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup **🎯 Is your Product Team putting Impact First in the New Year?** As we close out the year, it’s the perfect moment to reflect on the impact our product teams create — and

🎯 Last chance to catch Matt LeMay this year! Join us online Dec 15, 7-8pm CET for insights on building impact-first product teams. Matt visited 18 ProductTanks across Europe - don’t miss this exclusive session! ✨
RSVP: meetup.com/producttank-frankfurt-rhein-main/events/312312909
#ProductManagement

Here's my new podcast episode with Tim Herbig, product management coach and author of "Real Progress". Tim thinks too many product teams are making "Alibi Progress" and wants to help teams make real progress by helping them identify where they're getting blocked up.

The more I‘m listening to Give and Take by Adam Grant the more I fall in love with it.

Found myself as a giver and learn more about myself and how to make use out of it. Super helpful for me as a long time IC in Product Management.

More here: adamgrant.net/book/give-an...

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxie… In this fascinating book, Alan Watts explores man's que…

Or better this link? www.goodreads.com/book/show/55...

Ordered yet another book: amzn.eu/d/dIVOR9E

Curious now about the content.

Amazon's layoffs are driven by something even stupider than AI Andy Jassy wants you to think that velocity can make up for lack of strategy. But "build, measure, learn" only works if you're willing to learn.

Recommended read by @spavel.bsky.social productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/amazon-s-l...
So much this:
Managing deliverables rather than outcomes — trying to chase certainty of the design process, rather than finding certainty through the design process — will always fail to achieve real impact.

Making “Real Progress” with Tim Herbig, Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 6:30 PM | Meetup Gude, Product People! 👋 Many teams experience it every day: they’re busy, but not truly effective. Customer interviews, OKRs, roadmaps – on paper everything looks like pr

Alibi Progress vs. Real Progress 🎯

Tim Herbig brings "Real Progress" to Frankfurt Nov 20!

Learn how Strategy, OKRs & Discovery work as a system.

📚 Signed books + pizza & drinks
⚠️ Limited spots!

→ meetup.com/producttank-frankfurt-rhein-main/events/311422024

#ProductManagement #ProductStrategy

a cartoon drawing of a helmet and the words stronger below it ALT: a cartoon drawing of a helmet and the words stronger below it

Sending some Daft Punk vibes: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger 🎶

Just learned that #Anthropic’s #Claude will use user data for training unless you opt out by September 28, 2025.
Wondering if that’s now the new default for AI?

I opted out. You might want to check your privacy settings too!

#AI #Privacy #DataProtection #Claude #Anthropic

The AI age is the "age of no consent" "Inevitability" means design decisions are no longer informed by user needs; now they are unilaterally imposed. The users are the ones being designed.

Ah, I feel reminded of @spavel.bsky.social post: productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/the-ai-age...

Thank you for sharing, nice read. I thought about Zombie Agile or Scrum too, because of a talk from the past by www.zombiescrum.org.

Words matter, thank you for sharing!

Anyone in #ProductManagement or #Agile have good articles on writing/using #PRDs today?

Curious about the current state of the practice:
- Do you still use PRDs?
- When was the last time?
- What’s your take?

Open to different contexts and perspectives. #ProductDesign #Lean #AgileProductManagement

Made me smile today. Seems like I‘m in the software industry too long and seen this too often.
Root causes could be different. Tech debt is real.
Even best engineering skills fail if problem-solution fit is not accomplished.
What do you think about that?
#productmanagement #prodmgmt