Mind the Product joins Pendo

At Mind the Product we’re no stranger to announcements. Today we have an announcement about something that’s even new to us. Something big. Something exciting — and we’re telling you first.

We’re joining Pendo! Here we’re going to tell you why.

We’re ready to do more

If you’re a fan or follower of Mind the Product you might already know our story. Humble beginnings in a London pub — and a journey from just 30 product people to a global community of product managers spanning over 200 cities around the world, engaged in a full calendar of meetups, conferences, and training, all backed by content, and membership.

Throughout this, we’ve been self-funded and fully distributed with a small but incredible team of people. But we have big goals (you should see our backlog folks!), and we’re well aware that we need support to realise them.

A perfect match

With that in mind, we spent the final months of 2021 looking at different models, partners, and futures that would allow us to invest significantly more in our mission.

After countless conversations with VCs, software firms, training providers and more, we decided that the very best fit for our team and our community is Pendo — the world’s leading platform for product-led companies.

Where Mind the Product exists to make product people more successful, Pendo’s mission is to elevate the world’s experience with software. For many years we’ve worked together as partners and over the last six months, the strength of our alignment has been increasingly clear.

Why Pendo?

One of the challenges we face at Mind the Product is the diverse range of services we provide to further our mission — Pendo has been one of the few to really understand the value of this diverse approach, and to respect the autonomy we need to really represent our industry.

Our alignment on mission is compelling and our cultures have strong shared values which we believe both teams will appreciate. For our team especially, joining around 900 Pendozers also presents opportunities for us to learn and grow.

We’re staying true to who we are

At Mind the Product, our community has and always will come first. It’s therefore crucial to us that Pendo is keen to support us not only as we exist today, but in the development of our mission — to continue raising awareness of the product craft and supporting the skills development that product managers need. To support you.

Pendo gets it. The plan is to invest in us continuing our work on community, content, events, and training.

What happens now?

Our team will continue to operate largely as it does today, retaining our independent curation, methodology, and tool neutral product training.

What stays the same?

• We will keep control of our stage, podcast, and editorial decisions
• We’ll ensure our workshop and online training materials remain vendor neutral
• We will continue to run our conferences and welcome everyone interested in great product management through our conference doors
• Keep enabling our global network of ProductTank meetups to be lead by local organisers, with considerable autonomy over the programme their local communities need

At the same time, Pendo, which already invests heavily in content, will continue to offer its own customer education programme and customer conferences (Pendomonium).

What’s going to change?

• Mind the Product will gain access to investment and the wealth of resources a fast-growth firm like Pendo has to offer — from engineering to design, marketing, and operations
• Our local ProductTank communities will see greater investment and support to help them evolve and grow

It’s time to get started

In the coming weeks, many people on our team will join Pendo in North Carolina for the 2022 Company Kickoff and work through many of the details of this deal. We’re sure you have questions and we’d love to hear them. Please do get in touch and we’ll do our best to provide you with the answers (you can also check out our FAQ page). And, for even more detail, see Pendo’s announcement, and today’s TechCrunch article!

Ultimately, our goal — ours and Pendo’s — is to continue supporting the community and to make as big a difference to the world of Product in the next decade as we did in the previous one.