About Me

Creating products that solve customer needs remains my passion. I have been doing this in the software industry for the last 15 years. I am currently a Senior Product Manager at OnForce.  (DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are purely my personal opinions. I own this blog and the content published here is not read or approved in advance by OnForce and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of OnForce). Prior to OnForce, I worked in product management roles at Salary.com, RSA and also spend 11 years at SolidWorks Corporation the leading manufacturer of 3D mechanical CAD software used by over 635,000 users in 80,000 companies. Product Management, Market research, requirements analysis, product positioning and pricing and Social Media are topics of great interest to me.

Interfacing with customers to understand their needs and delivering innovative solutions that solve their unmet needs is what gets me going. I have had the pleasure interfacing and working with a diverse set of customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small-to-medium businesses in more than 10 countries. Over these years, I have also had the fortune of working with some of the brightest development talent in the software industry.

Some of my key strengths are

1) Listening to customers and discovering their unmet needs which if solved will end up in products that customers would happily buy

2) Communicating the discovered customer needs to internal stakeholders via business cases and justifying product development investments

3) Leading cross functional or direct report teams in successfully delivering products that solve these needs

4) Communicating the benefits of the products in user vocabulary as opposed to marketing jargon (that scalable, robust three tier reliable architecture that uses web service oriented architecture – you know what I mean)

While not having fun thinking about solving customer problems, I enjoy spending time with my family and of course watching the beloved Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots play. Go Sox and Patriots!!

18 Responses

  1. Becky Carroll, on July 26th, 2007 at 12:22 am Said:

    Great to meet you, Gopal! I love your key strengths; they are very close to mine as well. :-) Keep up the focus on the customer!

    Reply
  2. Shaji S, on October 8th, 2007 at 8:30 pm Said:

    Shenoy..you are such wonderful person with great knowledge and talent. Keep going..even sky is not a limit for you.. I got an oppertunity to talk to you during one of the solidworks world conferences.

    Reply
  3. Sridhar Oruganti, on April 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 am Said:

    hi Shenoy,
    I chanced across your blog and feel great after reading “about me” section.The reason being our somewhat similar profiles.I am also in a Products Unit of a company specializing in MCAD,PLM and services as a QA Engineer.My aim is to graduate into a Prod Manager.Your blogs are apt and insightful for guys like me.
    Once again thanks.
    —Sri

    Reply
  4. Russel, on July 30th, 2008 at 5:21 am Said:

    Hi Gopal
    Nice to know about you. I have been through your blogs on product management and were indeed very useful. Keep writing; its interesting to know from you.
    Cheers

    RRL.

    Reply
  5. Apurva, on August 5th, 2008 at 5:03 pm Said:

    Hello -

    I have been following your blog for some time and have found it very informative will plenty of great advice. I work on the front lines dealing with clients and now am moving towards becoming a product manager. I was wondering if you can tell me the best way to mock of software specs. Currently we use Visio, however I wanted to see if there is a better, faster, and simpler way. As a startup, luckily we have the flexibility to use any application that gets the job done.

    Thanks in advance!

    Regards,

    Apurva

    Reply
  6. gopalshenoy, on August 5th, 2008 at 10:58 pm Said:

    @Apurva – Happy to note that you have found the blog helpful. I use Photoshop Elements to create mockups. You can also try using Paint Shop Pro. I was lucky that I had the benefit of someone who knew how to use these tools give me a quick crash course on how to get started. Once I crossed the hurdle, I was able to get most of my dirty mockups done to evaluate product concepts. But if you need something really good, I would strongly encourage having a UI interaction designer in your team.

    Reply
  7. Clate Mask, on August 14th, 2008 at 6:32 pm Said:

    Hi Gopal,

    I just want to thank you for your “criticism” a few weeks ago about our opt-in and follow-up marketing practices. Your post resulted in a meeting between me and our marketing director. We have already changed a couple of things in order to be more transparent to folks who opt in to my eBook and various white papers. And we are revising some other things we are doing–toning down the frequency of communications, etc. As our company has grown, I think we have gone a little overboard with the amount and frequency of email communications we send.

    Again, thanks for the nudge in a better direction.

    Clate

    Reply
  8. Mayukh, on September 5th, 2008 at 2:59 pm Said:

    Hey Gopal,
    Wonderful blog, keep up the good work ! As an aspiring product manager, I have found your insights really helpful. Maybe I can buy you a coffee (or a beer) the next time I visit Boston.
    Do you have a public email address? Would like to conduct an informational interview with you, if you have the time.

    Thanks
    - Mayukh
    CT

    Reply
  9. Blog update « Lead on Purpose, on September 12th, 2008 at 1:39 am Said:

    [...] I want to call out a few of the bloggers’ biographies from which I picked up ideas: Jeff Lash, Art Petty, Peter Ganza, Kirk Weisler, Dr. Paul Jenkins, Steve Johnson, Ivan Challif, David Meerman Scott, Stewart Rogers and Gopal Shenoy. [...]

    Reply
  10. Audience GPS Monkey- Presentation Tips from Gopal Shenoy | chrisbrogan.com, on October 23rd, 2008 at 10:11 am Said:

    [...] the New Marketing Summit, I got a chance to speak to Gopal Shenoy about many things, but one thing we got into was about presentations. Out of nowhere, Gopal says [...]

    Reply
  11. Audience GPS Monkey- Presentation Tips from Gopal Shenoy - Social Media | Core, on October 23rd, 2008 at 11:05 am Said:

    [...] the New Marketing Summit, I got a chance to speak to Gopal Shenoy about many things, but one thing we got into was about presentations. Out of nowhere, Gopal says [...]

    Reply
  12. uthamkumar, on October 31st, 2008 at 5:37 am Said:

    Hi Gopal,

    Excellent blog !
    Nice ideas. Lucid style of writing .
    Your suggestions for good presentations are very useful .
    Keep writing .

    Regards,

    utham

    Reply
  13. MShenoy, on January 26th, 2009 at 8:39 pm Said:

    Hi Gopal,

    Thanks for creating this website. I found this one only today and already liked some of the tips.

    I am a business analyst now in product management team and my boss identified me as a candidate for Product management. I am excited about the opportunity, but don’t want to accept something just t0 fail. Can you please answer the below for me?

    1. Challenges in PM
    2. What interests you in PM?
    3. What are the risks in this profession?
    4. Do you think Business analysis has more opportunities than PM? (I live near LA if that counts).

    Thank you for your time,
    Mshenoy

    Reply
  14. gopalshenoy, on February 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm Said:

    @MShenoy – Great questions – was a good fodder for my latest blog post – http://productmanagementtips.com/2009/02/04/product-manager-qualifications/

    Reply
  15. John Minett, on February 5th, 2009 at 7:57 am Said:

    Very interesting stuff. Love the “claiming victory” insight

    Reply
  16. Subrata Majumdar, on March 1st, 2009 at 1:20 am Said:

    Hi Gopal,

    I have been reading your blog with great interest. I run a product management centric blog in India (url above). I was looking for a way to connect with you for having you to write a post for the blog. If you drop me a mail at subrata.majumdar@gmail.com I can elaborate and possible carry on from there.

    Sincerely
    Subrata

    Reply
  17. Ganeshkumar, on May 6th, 2009 at 2:55 am Said:

    Hey Mr.Shenoy! am reckon you or your roots from be somewhere in Karnataka in India! :)

    Just wanted to drop a HI and say THANKS for all the ideas that you’ve shared and things you have said! lets me know that apart from being a good Product Manager, you are a NICE HUMAN :) People working under you must be REALLY LUCKY I must say!

    Well. am a Senior Product Analyst in a company called CALIBRAINZ in Bangalore – India…who dreams of becoming a Good Product Manager..just like you are!

    I do not know if you’d have time to reply back to me, but would surely want to talk to you sometime!

    Nice to know you!
    Cheers, Smiles
    Ganeshkumar :) :) :)

    Reply
  18. mark, on May 9th, 2009 at 9:18 am Said:

    Hi,Thanks for this blog.I like it very much.Keep up googd work.
    wish u all the best

    Reply

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