[00:00:00] Matt Duench: Welcome to today's episode where I'm joined with Carlos Marquez, who's head of product management at Mobilium. Carlos, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you here with us today.

[00:00:08] Carlos Marques: Thank you, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here and accepting your invitation.

[00:00:12] Matt Duench: Well, that's great. Maybe why don't you give our listeners some insight into what mobilium does and what your role as head of product management and of fraud and risk entails.

[00:00:20] Carlos Marques: So Mobilium is a software vendor that works on the telecom market. So we address specific solutions for telecoms. So Mobilium has been named at, uh, Was used by venture capital to acquire different companies that operate on different areas within the telecom. Uh, I came from, we do Technologies. That was one of the companies that was acquired in the past.

[00:00:45] And we within, we do technologies. Uh, I was working at that time at product marketing, so we do, was a company focused on revenue assurance and fraud. So we are talking about addressing, uh, risk management for telecom and from, uh, product manage, from product marketing. I've moved into product management and now here I am.

[00:01:09] Matt Duench: Here we are, head of product management of Mobilium. That's amazing. Um, thinking about some of those past experiences, Carlos, from We do, and even some of your, your other previous experiences, what, what stood out the most from each experience, would you say? 

[00:01:23] Carlos Marques: I started working on sales and I think if you want to go into product management, being on sales, You have to taste a bit of the pain in order to be able to express your opinion when developing the products. So I started working on sales, uh, from sales. I went into marching because this was what I studied in college. And from marching, I moved from programming in PowerPoint to go into the real programming languages and moving to engineering.

[00:01:53] Matt Duench: That's amazing. And when we think about Mobilium, could you help the listeners understand how Mobilium helps your customers reduce fraud and risk?

[00:02:01] Carlos Marques: Risk management it's one of the business units within Mobilium, as I told you before. Mobilium develops, uh, solutions for the telecom market. One of those solutions is risk products. And within the risk, uh, we have too many areas. One is revenue assurance. Essentially, we are protecting against revenue leakage by doing automated auditing.

[00:02:25] And the other one is fraud management. Fraud management is different from revenue assurance because, while on revenue assurance, you are losing money because you've committed some errors due to misconfiguration or any part of the process that you have might be missed. While in fraud, there is a deliberate attempt to explore the flaws in order to commit fraud and monetize it essentially.

[00:02:51] Matt Duench: Staying on that concept of risk management, just for a second, what are some of the factors that you would say are impacting risk management, overall market factors, customer factors, et cetera.

[00:03:00] Carlos Marques: Risks come from different sides and, um, the technology change for sure is one of the risks. So I'm going to give examples around the area that I know that is telecom. So for instance, when you change technology from 4G to five, uh, 5G for instance, um, now you have full IP networks that might be explored by Frosts.

[00:03:24] Okay. And, uh, other ones are, for instance, business models. Uh, We understand that marketing creativity for creating new business models, of course, is relevant and important for developing the business itself. But fraudsters also look at opportunities to explore. So a lot of times we are about scenarios where, uh, there was a service that was created and someone was able to explore it to get access. Let's say, uh, free of charge by exploring, uh, ports that are open and to access services without paying. So there are, there is a lot of creativity in the market. Marketing, uh, uh, marketing teams are creative in telcos to create new products, but fraudsters are also very creative.

[00:04:12] Matt Duench: Yeah, I, I would definitely agree. I think from, you know, just the threat landscape in general, what are some, what are your thoughts on how identity right should play into understanding some of those risks and managing risks? Uh, overall. I.

[00:04:27] Carlos Marques: We tend to mention that subscription fraud is an, is a door to commit a lot of frauds. So a lot of the fraud scenarios that, uh, we know in the telecom industry start by getting fake IDs. You use fake IDs, you buy sim cards. And from the sim cards you are able to make calls without paying.

[00:04:49] And if you want to monetize it really quickly, what you do is you buy the sim cards and you start making calls to commemorate numbers that you own and, uh, you monetize it immediately. So this is one of the scenarios in North America, there is another very well known scenario that is the credit moves where someone is able to, to buy, uh, devices with fake IDs, and then they resell it. So these are some of the examples that you need to take care. 

[00:05:19] Matt Duench: Could you give some examples of how folks should be thinking about identity for continuous control monitoring and also understanding overall digital risk?

[00:05:28] Carlos Marques: Now the physical identities and the digital identities are merging. So if you think about, um, omnichannel experience, you might go into a store and, uh, someone asks you for your ID to buy a service. But if you are coming from a website, most probably you will not be able to do those kind of checks. And if you want to accelerate the experience itself, you might even use, uh, social media IDs in order to accelerate the easiness of experience and acquiring products. So the two are merging. And at one point you can start with one identity. Let's say you do a check on the physical identity and later you add an additional services, like for instance, uh, Spotify to your existing account just by linking the physical with the digital identity. So things are merging and that is one of the examples.

[00:06:27] And you want to put the controls wherever the, is the, the channel that you are acquiring the customer. And depending on the channel, you have different risks. You have different scoring that you have to do. So what you have to do is design all the scenarios and see how to address them because at even one point, you might move from one scenario to another.

[00:06:47] Let me give you another example. Um, nowadays, phones are becoming almost like the passport. They are becoming, let's say, your identity. So you have information on your phone that, uh, picks on some of your physical attributes. But, uh, in some countries, if you are acquiring a new SIM card, you will need to, to give, uh, physical proof of your identity and you attach the two.

[00:07:18] And that is what is going to allow you to enable really fast access to new services like banking services or other services that might require identity checks. And picking on the omnichannel, uh, that I was talking about. So you might start, let's say in Africa, they have mobile money where it works almost like peer-to-peer, where you are able to use your top-ups to transform, or let's say to change into money.

[00:07:45] And you might start on a peer-to-peer mobile money account. And later, let's say that the operator got the license to operate as a bank. You wanna move from one scenario to another. So the identity checks will be different for the bank. So you need to identify the risks. You need to identify the controls, and that's why we talk about continuous control monitoring. Depending on the part of the process that you are coming, you will need to put the right controls in place.

[00:08:13] Matt Duench: I always found that fascinating. With how different emerging markets can be with respect to just, you know, their technology adoption and where they are, even with identity as well. I think one of those things that you identified is looking at how, you know, Eastern African countries, for example, with Mpesa, you know, use that to pay for parking, to pay for everything.

[00:08:32] It's really their bank account. You know, airtime becomes their bank account. I've always found that really super interesting. Staying on that thought for a sec. 

[00:08:40] You probably have some really great insight into how telcos and mobile phone users can act as an identity passport as well to access some of those services. What are your thoughts, uh, what are your thoughts on that?

[00:08:50] Carlos Marques: I fully agree and I'm going to share some of my experiences. The first one that I'm going to to share was uh, once I was on vacations in Tanzania and I was surprised by the amount of Maasai that are using phones and social media. Uh, one of the things that they mentioned at, at, uh, that time was that they would've to travel for 10 kilometers to charge the battery battery of the smartphones.

[00:09:18] They didn't have the money to make the calls, but they were accessing Facebook all the time. So, um, most probably someone grant them, uh, access to Facebook free of charge and be able to collect some of the information for a certain part of the population. And, um, The other example that you, you just mentioned, uh, how you are able to subscribe to some of these services.

[00:09:41] I think it was in Indonesia, in Asia, where I wanted to subscribe to a service similar to Uber. And usually when I travel, Um, I use an app that allows you to download an m so every time that I'm traveling to a, a new country where I don't have roaming, so I download an M So it's a profile that, uh, gets on my phone.

[00:10:04] But what you've seen is that some of these issues don't provide a number, and that works as a blocker because, uh, you don't have a number. So you are not able to confirm your identity when, uh, you want to subscribe an application like Uber to receive, uh, that message that allows to prove that you are the person that you're saying you are.

[00:10:26] I was not that happy in the beginning when I saw that happening, but then I realized that for you to access some of these services, they will want the proof, the physical proof that you are that person for you to get the number. You need to do the physical proof that you are the person that you are stating you are to acquire that number.

[00:10:46] So I, I tend to agree with that because nowadays you are able to, to stack services one to another and, um, you from the phone, you are able to attach other devices, other services. So you want to get identity right since day one because, uh, it could become a mess, uh, if you start to have problems there.

[00:11:08] Matt Duench: It's such a good point too. I think it really highlights the fact that companies need to think about how they're being flexible with the identifiers that they provide within their applications. Right? For a lot of folks, as you mentioned in Tanzania, other places, uh, you know, around the world, Old, not just unique to Tanzania.

[00:11:24] A lot of the times their first experience on the internet is Facebook. And they don't have a physical phone number, um, you know, or a username or password. So, you know, companies really need to think about from a login and a signup experience, how they can cater to some of those demo demographics by really providing those flexible, uh, identifiers and flexible insights.

[00:11:45] Carlos Marques: You have sales teams on one side saying, we want fast onboarding, we need to get sales. But on the other side, you have other teams that are looking at risks and saying, okay, you need to redesign the process better. Uh, you can open a bit the door in order to make it easy to get people on board, but you need to, to look at the risks.

[00:12:05] So, uh, a lot of times the problems that you have on telecom related to different fraud scenarios started by subscription fraud error. Okay? So it's an entry door, uh, in order for you to commit a lot of, uh, a lot of different types of fraud. 

[00:12:25] Matt Duench: Absolutely. Um, one of the things that you touched on there was this digit, this concept of digitization of credentials. Right. And I think, you know, in, in the industry, it's referred to as decentralized identity or verifiable credentials, et cetera, or passports or digital wallets, um, all part of that ecosystem.

[00:12:43] Could you give your thoughts on how, you know, our phones, uh, digitize our credentials and,how do verifiable credentials change that verification process? Us.

[00:12:54] Carlos Marques: When did you think about from the telecom perspective, you have the telecom services and you have the over the tops. So applications like Facebook, applications like WhatsApp, and they tend to correlate and each one of them have their own information that you want to correlate in order to make sense of an identity.

[00:13:17] So telcos, um, are requiring more and more physical identity for you to acquire sim. And then what you see is the sim is going to be the final check for, uh, to, to guarantee your identity. So it's a closed loop circle that you want to for sure complete. And one of the things that we also see in the market is that some of the industries and some of these over jobs, Trust on Telco to get the identity right because they are not able to confirm the entire information, so, A lot of people say, okay, telcos, uh, they are at the end, they are just going to be a dump pipe to provide communication, but they also have a level of trust that can be explored by other industries.

[00:14:12] Okay? Um, you have information about the subscribers, so when you connect the same. With the physical device you are creating almost like a token that can be used by other industries to verify identity because while you have the sim card, you are able to put also a password associated to that sim and the device at the same time is able to collect information, let's say, from your fingerprint and, uh, the two or even the more variables that you can add there all connected.

[00:14:47] Together with the information that you are collecting from social media, each one of them will be a different ingredient that you can mix and enrich to cook a meal in security.

[00:15:00] Matt Duench: And it's such a fascinating trend, right? Verifiable credentials for, for me, I, I think the adoption of that in your digital wallet is just such, such an incredible thing. I mean, I don't want to have to carry around a wallet if I don't have to with my driver's license and, you know, my, my bank cards and all of those things.

[00:15:17] I actually would really prefer it if it was in my phone. My phone is always with me. As it is, and those, those credentials being digitized, I think is a really interesting thing. It opens up so many use cases from, you know, verifying, uh, folks that you mentioned on telco networks. What if I could, you know, have a, uh, access to a verify viel credential around my driver's license and use that as a way to sign up, right.

[00:15:39] Um, or my birth certificate or whatever it happens to be. But I, I think it's really, we're just at sort of the beginning of, of where I think this technology with digital wallets and verifiable credentials is gonna go.

[00:15:50] Carlos Marques: I agree. Um, I have my driver's license in my phone, uh, also some governmental documents I have on my phone. I fully agree with you. The only thing that, uh, still remains as, let's say, a, a blocker for me is to change my primary sim for, uh, a software sim. So sometimes I get concerned, I'm travel abroad, so my phone dies, and, uh, I'm not able to change the sim to another phone, so I'm still a bit concerned there, still a bit reluctant there, but I fully agree with you.

[00:16:28] So this capability for you to go, uh, to go to have lunch and you forget your wallet and you pay with your phone and so you don't have your wallet and you, you get in front of policeman. This is my driving license. I love it. At the same time, you need to get some concerns because, um, you tend to attach some of these documents and some of your identities to other things. Let me pick on an example.

[00:16:59] You are able to unlock your car with your phone. Your car from there is able to attach with your garage. And the thing is, if you get it wrong at one point, what will be the snowball effect of all of these problems? So I think it's important to get the identity right, but if I want to kill the identity in some of the devices that I started to attach it, I also want to have that possibility and I want to have a 360 view, uh, of all the identities that were attached, you know?

[00:17:38] Matt Duench: Yeah. I feel like for me, just hearing you talk about that, that there's a, there's a real theme of convenience that kind of comes out from there, right? You don't want, you want a very convenient experience with your application, whether it's paying for a coffee at a cafe or groceries, or as you kind of mentioned, presenting your driver's license, et cetera, to a police officer should you get stopped.

[00:17:56] But I think, you know, one element that I, I'd really love to get your thoughts on is, you know, when you think about the customer experience, what are some things that make for a great customer experience with an application in your opinion?

[00:18:09] Carlos Marques: I want to get it right since day one., I don't want to get into a process that someone designed that I'm not able to understand or that I have to memorize a lot of passwords or be concerned that I'm reusing the password again. 

[00:18:24] So I want a seamless experience. I want something that is easy to do. I've seen this on banks more and more, so you are able to open a bank account without going to, uh, to, to the store. And I think they are making an amazing work here in, uh, now they're creating this, uh, this experience.

[00:18:47] Matt Duench: One of the things you kind of hit on too was this element of security as well, right? We obviously want to make things really convenient. We want to build incredible user experiences, but not at the expense of security. And for me, when you were talking, it really almost comes down to trust, right?

[00:19:01] It's how do we establish trust, uh, with customers so that they can trust our applications, they can trust using our services when it comes to that, what are some things you think that product managers can leverage from a, you know, from a fraud and risk knowledge perspective to build better customer experiences? How do you, how do you feel that sort of plays with build, delivering that customer experience?

[00:19:23] Carlos Marques: So you've talked about two things. One was security, the other one was fraud. Uh, we tend to think them as connected. We tend to think them as something that is able to make the correlation. It's not that easy, and you have a lot of people talking about security. You have people talking about fraud, and a lot of times people think they are the same. In security, you have someone that wants to explore a door. Uh, in frauds, there is a deliberate intention of making money. I tend to use an analogy. And to explain the differences between the two. One is security. You get into the airport and you have someone that is looking at, uh, devices that you are taking on the airport. All those things. And when you talk about fraud is you pass the airport and you now have to start to um, Looking at, uh, the different patterns that you are doing to see if you are going to, to commit any fraud. So while the first ones are concerned about a specific set that is, okay, are you taking a gun in the airport?

[00:20:34] Are you taking, uh, any other malicious device? Okay. Or crossing the border, uh, with, uh, any malicious device. After that, security doesn't care anymore. Looking at the patterns and how you are behaving when you enter a country, it's something that is more on the fraud and translating that into business. One thing is you exploit a network. You see that, uh, for instance, where people, uh, get identities. And after that, you see those being sold on the dark web and fraud is, okay, this information was stolen.

[00:21:11] Now I'm going to monetize it. So there is a different rational, and for you to address fraud, you need to understand the security, uh, uh, exploits that occur. But for you to understand fraud, you need to look at different patterns. That is, okay. Someone is using this credit card and it was listed on the target list that was previously I checked at the same time. You see this credit card is not associated with this email and this person is, uh, acquiring the most expensive service that we have. So these kind of correlations are different from security. Uh, security is more on the it fraud is more on the business side.

[00:21:57] Matt Duench: Yeah, I think that's a really important separation as well is, right? Like they're related as you mentioned, but they are very separate. Staying on that theme of security for a second, what security controls do you think companies should consider implementing in order to make their application and that experience more secure for their users?

[00:22:15] Carlos Marques: That is a very good question since I'm not an expert on security, but I've seen, creativity sometimes is one of the most discarded topics to address. You see people putting controls so that you cannot send an email, you cannot send confidential information, and then someone picks on the phone and they take, they take a picture of the screen. Uh, so I think you need to analyze all the scenarios. Uh, almost like creating, uh, security, uh, risk metrics in order to understand where the problems might arrive. And from there you start, uh, plug the holes in order to, uh, avoid any security breaches.

[00:23:02] Matt Duench: Yeah, I think that's a really good point as well, is just, it's a layered approach, right? There's no single, no single method or silver bullet as they say to really preventing breaches, as you kind of mentioned, or account takeovers. It's really about having that layered approach, I think, to security. Shifting gears a little bit to innovation and, and just really want to touch on your product management experience as well.

[00:23:23] When you think about innovation, do you have any stories of your greatest product innovation?, 

[00:23:29] Carlos Marques: One of the things that we were doing as part of our fraud product was talking with the fraud managers and understanding what they wanted to achieve. So a lot of times they wanted a platform, they wanted flexibility on top of that platform, but at the same time, they wanted the scenarios already designed there.

[00:23:49] And that's what we have been doing for the last, uh, 20 years. And, one of the things that I started to learn was the entire internal chain and seeing for fraudsters are reporting to an auditing department that is reporting to a cfo, and you start to to see that there was a gap in terms of the end-to-end cycle of the product itself.

[00:24:20] And what you start to also learn is that there are people that understand very well it and where to get the information. While there are, uh, other teams that know very well how to create risk metrics and if you are able to connect the, the two teams, because sometimes we are talking about applications that break the silos in connecting data.

[00:24:44] But at the same time, how do the teams work? They still keep the silos there. Each one of them use their tools, and that is one of the most interesting projects that we are currently doing. That is bringing different teams to talk their own language and start, uh, mixing each of the language that they speak in order to bring the outcomes to detect fraud.

[00:25:07] Matt Duench: I think that collaboration that you mentioned between departments is so critical when you're building applications, uh, as well, and even just building really great products and building those experiences. In your opinion, thinking about either a successful product that you've launched in your previous product marketing experience or your current, um, product experience as well, what do you think it takes to build a successful like B2B product? 

[00:25:32] Carlos Marques: That's the 5 million question. So one of the things that I've learned is you, you want to study really well the market. Uh, you can start designing a great product, but, uh, if in the end you have a lot of barriers that you have to cross, Uh, maybe you should have done your own work much better in order to understand. I don't want to go that path because too many barriers and there will be blockers. Nothing against barriers, but uh, uh, as I said before, for you to put a product in the market, you need to get, uh, the snowball effect that when you start small and you have different teams that you have to work, put collaborating So, It's good to have, let's say, very good understanding in the market.

[00:26:24] I've seen teams developing products or trying to develop products for, uh, something that they consider a blue ocean, wherein in fact it was a red ocean and because they were living on a silo, so they have fooled themselves so, I don't want to get into that path again. That is someone saying, we have a great idea.

[00:26:48] I'm totally outside of the real market, but I think it's a great idea. Let's do it. And I think it's also important to have different, uh, team members with different skills working together in the same path. You can have a great in engineering and then sales don't understand the product and they will not be able to sell it.

[00:27:11] You might be, you might have, uh, killer sales guy in the team that, uh, in the end will sell everything. But engineering is not able to, to develop, or there is no alignment with product management. So in the end, it's not about getting the best product manager, the best engineering, getting the best marketing, getting the best sales is how you balance those things in order to address the market, at least from my side.

[00:27:42] Matt Duench: One of the things I was gonna ask and kind of a follow up question to this as well, is, How can you be sure if you're building the right thing from a product perspective? 

[00:27:50] Carlos Marques: At this point, um, and based on my experience, Uh, I wouldn't developing, I wouldn't develop anything without testing it before. Nowadays you have amazing tools where you can do prototyping, where you can test some of the concepts. So starting developing a product with testing doesn't make sense anymore.

[00:28:14] And even sometimes using tools like Figma and you do the prototyping, people think that you are using the real product. So you can collect a lot of information by doing this prototyping. So makes no sense for you to start developing a product with no fit.

[00:28:31] Matt Duench: Yeah, I think it's that feedback loop, right? The continuous feedback loop of iterating. Getting feedback from the marketing customers, building on that feedback. It's, you know, it's not just a build the product, ship the product, it's really a continuous life cycle of how you build in that innovation. I think as well.

[00:28:46] Carlos Marques: I don't believe that you will be able to work with the customer and, uh, develop a product. You can bring different customers, of course, and collecting their information and their insights. Uh, looking at the market, you can also look at the trends. Um, I tend to think almost like, uh, making a, a great meal where you get different ingredients because if you just get the insights from the customer, they will tend to look at their reality. If you work with just one customer, it will never do a product for you because it will look at his reality and I want is that's not a product. It's a solution that addresses specific problem for them. If you work with different customers, you might have people that are biased by the things that they are doing today, and they might miss the vision. Where things are going, and if you are a customer, you expect your provider or uh, the supplier to give you some guidance where things are going. You need to think in advance compared with what customers are currently feeling. 

[00:29:57] Matt Duench: I think Henry Ford once said that if I would've listened to what my customers wanted, I would've just built a faster horse. Right. And that's why I think it's important to your point of having a lot of ingredients. You need, you know, the feedback from multiple empirical evidence from multiple customers.

[00:30:11] You need to see where the market is. You need to balance that with the priorities of the company and your vision of where you're headed. And I think all of that, for me anyway, is really how folks can approach building great products that customers love. Cuz I think that's, That's the way is you need that feedback in order to make improvements and make tweaks to, you know, if you, if there's something that is out of balance in the market with customers and their experience, obviously you need to take that into consideration too.

[00:30:36] But it needs to come from multiple sources. I would definitely agree with you there.

[00:30:39] Carlos Marques: Even sometimes collecting just information, how they work and what are their regular activities, I think it's not enough. Even that you are talking about it products, I think it's important to understand which are their motivations, uh, what they do outside of the work. Because sometimes you might want to develop a product that will empower them in their own organization by picking some of the tasks that they don't tend to mention related to that product. Or if I would develop a product nowadays for someone, I would develop a product that would fit their current functions, but at the same time, that allowed them to go sooner to their home while delivering the results that their bosses expect.

[00:31:30] Matt Duench: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense as well. Uh, I was thinking about something when you're talking, we were, when we were talking about how, you know you're building the right thing and for me, one of those things that we tend to think about in the software as a service industry is this concept of build it versus buy, right?

[00:31:47] A lot of SaaS companies, when they start, if they're starting small, they want to build everything, right? And so this concept of how do you know you're building the right thing? Well, if it's not your core competency, it's probably not the right thing. So I'd love your thoughts if you have any stories on this concept of building versus buying in sort of the product development cycle.

[00:32:06] Carlos Marques: In my industry it's common on telecom for internal teams to develop their own applications. We've seen that for ages, but I think the market itself is changing because if you look at, um, Uh, the market, how the market changed during the pandemic. A lot of people just change jobs every three months to get the salary increase, and a lot of times when you develop, uh, these solutions internally, every time that someone leaves the company, you lose all of that knowledge and there is nobody to support it.

[00:32:39] That's one of the scenarios. Another scenario that I would like to alight is, sometimes for you to translate something into a product, you have different teams, you have processes that need to be designed, and that is very difficult for someone that are developing their own solutions to be able to connect with the different teams and getting the inputs without being biased because they are working, uh, as part of a specific team within the organization.

[00:33:10] Software as a service. And now it's designed, lot of times more than just delivering a solution, it also puts a methodology in place. Uh, that sometimes people don't like and that's why they develop their own solutions. But, um, that is also a blocker for them to evolve from what has been developed with best of breed by listening to different customers, how the solution translates.

[00:33:38] Also, our process should be designed and I think there are a lot of learnings there. Of course, everybody will say, okay, there is the price. We have this team. We don't know what to do it, what to do with them. And depending on the region of the world, you might have some problems fighting these different teams.

[00:33:56] You know? Um, I tend to see that on Europe and US, they prefer software in Asia. Sometimes they have huge teams that are allocated to platforms that will say, okay, we will pick on this and we will develop ourselves. They will always be the ones that are paying more attention. Every time that you are doing a demo,

[00:34:23] Matt Duench: Exactly. Yeah, I think that's such a good point. Um, something you talked about earlier was testing. Uh, I'd love to love to get into kind of how you approach testing and experimentation. I believe that experiments are really critical in driving key customer learnings and understanding.

[00:34:41] You know, if you are building the right thing or headed down the right path, or do you need to build versus actually procure, uh, a solution. But in terms of experience, what's one of the most impactful experiments that you've ever run? 

[00:34:54] Carlos Marques: Picking back on the product that we are currently developing, so traditionally there was a department that we have not been talking that was, uh, the auditing department and auditing departments have specific tools, for doing the risk assessment. Risk assessment is a very important step in order for you to address revenue assurance and fraud. And, um, they typically don't work on it, so, Because for the last 20 years I've been developing a product for it. I had to get into these kind of conversations with these teams, and the first challenge that I had is where I'm going to find these, these people to start to understand how they work and what kind of.

[00:35:42] Conversations they had. So an interesting point that we did here was, okay, let's join some of these associations where these people meet. And we don't have anything to discuss there, but we want to listen to see how they discuss it and to see, uh, How they want to take it further from the IT side because we come from it and um, we are going to listen to them, see what they are requesting from data analytics and see how they work.

[00:36:11] So we try to translate that. Once again, as I said, I love Figma and the capability to do prototyping. Sometimes people don't even understand they are working on prototypes. And developing a script where people can execute a specific, um, action based on the things that we have defined. And it was a really good experience to understand that these teams were saying, okay, this was what we were missing.

[00:36:42] This is taking a step further in what we were thinking about. And, uh, Sometimes we have to change emails and making calls to understand how to deploy these controls using data analytics. And now you have brought all the process under one single tool so that we can close the loop as you previously mentioned. So that was rewarding and I think, uh, it was, uh, an excellent, uh, project to run.

[00:37:08] Matt Duench: This concept of testing messaging, right? You, you mentioned getting some time with the IT department and those like that, that audience. I think in addition to building really great products, it's also important to understand the language that your customers are speaking in order to understand how you can package it, position it, and even just message it, right. Uh, in order for them to find your system in the first place. So I think that element for me of what you just said is I think a really important part of that process, of that product creation process, um, and product management process is the, the, the messaging and the marketing and understanding how your customers think about solving that problem in the first place. I thought that was a really great point.

[00:37:47] Carlos Marques: I tend to agree with you. Uh, that communication is an important factor, but I think it works both way. If you start communicating with different teams, you are able to see all of them, uh, throwing their expectations and, uh, from all the, the noise that you will hear. But at the same time, the good idea is you are able to assemble something that connects the dots. That is amazing, and it's a recipe for success.

[00:38:17] Matt Duench: I was thinking a little around even your experience from product marketing to, to product management, uh, where obviously you are now. In thinking about your product and management, uh, experience and building great products, i. How would you describe the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows of creating a product? You know, what's great about that process? What do you think still is being improved?

[00:38:38] Carlos Marques: The most painful one for sure will be to deal with sales. They always have the missing requirement that, uh, you don't have in the product, and it will be the one that for sure will bring a lot of customers. Um, but you need to balance, sometimes you get some, some good ideas there if you are able. To combine the different teams and, uh, extract all the positive points from the different teams, sales, marketing, uh, engineering.

[00:39:11] Because every time that you say, okay, we have a new requirement, you will see guys from engineering, we are already overloaded. What you want to discard. So you need to balance, you need to balance between, uh, sales, uh, engineering, all the great ideas that you will have on top of your mind. So I think the artist's decision is for you to say no, but the even artist one is when you don't say no, when you should have said it.

[00:39:41] Okay? Because, um, you might have a decision that you have taken in the past that will take you for, uh, for years in terms of negative impact. So you need to think in advance, uh, if you are taking a decision. Will it have a long term impact or, uh, it will be something. Okay, it's painful now, but we need to do it.

[00:40:06] And, uh, later we will go into another path.

[00:40:09] Matt Duench: I think that's great advice. What about aspiring product managers looking to get into product management? What advice would you impart on them, uh, if they're trying to get into the tech industry?

[00:40:20] Carlos Marques: Understanding the different stakeholders within the organization is the first step because they will have to communicate with all of them. I don't believe in someone that says, okay, I, I want to be a techie and I will just be a techie. Um, you might need to interact with management. You might need to interact with sales. And you should be, uh, be, uh, an excellent guy at communication internally and externally. But, uh, at the same time, You need to have a vision, and you need to start thinking from the vision for you to start, uh, drilling down into each of the requirements of the product because the vision will be the argument that you will use every time that you say no, or every time that you say, I'm going to, I'm going into that path because in two, three years I see this thing happening.

[00:41:18] Matt Duench: Something you said earlier that really resonated with me in terms of underrated product management skills is this ability and knowing when to say no. Right. What are some other underrated product management skills you feel that really great product managers have?

[00:41:33] Carlos Marques: Storytelling .

[00:41:34] Matt Duench: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah It's such a good one.

[00:41:36] Carlos Marques: Product manager, you know how to tell how to be a storyteller. You need to do storytelling for the ones that are going to sponsor your product. I'm talking about the management or your manager. You need to be an inspiring person to do storytelling into the engineers so that they all get in the same mood. And if you want to test it in front of the customers, you might also want to do some storytelling in order to to sell it.

[00:42:05] Matt Duench: Only have a couple minutes left. I think we'll get into some, some quick hits, uh, you know, get to know you a little more. What is the, your favorite thing that you're either reading or watching right now?

[00:42:15] Carlos Marques: So I'm not a techie guy. Currently I'm watching a TV show. Uh, that is Dave. 

[00:42:21] I was a big fan of Kir Your Enthusiasm. I don't know if you know it. And Dave gets into the same mood. And so I'm currently following Dave, and I think it's an excellent show, uh, totally outside of the techy world. 

[00:42:37] Matt Duench: Oh, that's excellent. I'll have to check that one out for sure. Uh, you've obviously traveled to quite a few places, you know, around the world. Where is one place that you would live if you had to live?

[00:42:45] Carlos Marques: I love to live in Portugal because it's my base and uh, I have the beach, I have the country, I have the, the great food. So let me do it the other way around. I will tell you one of the amazing places there I've been that I loved. So, um, I did backpacking to Peru and stayed living with the, the Indians in Lake Taka for one weekend, and it was an amazing experience living in the middle of the lake with the Indian.

[00:43:15] Matt Duench: that does sound actually pretty incredible. last question for me is, what is the best piece of tech advice that you've ever gotten?

[00:43:22] Carlos Marques: Get outside of techie when you get outside of the office. So understand all the cultures, uh, whether it's someone that loves art. Whether it's a bank, rocker or, uh, something, someone that is conservative, because a lot of the times these are the profiles of your customers, and while you have the opportunity to be a techie in the office, you want to get diversity outside of the office in order to make amazing products.

[00:43:51] Matt Duench: I think that's a really good point. You actually led me to think about one last question, I swear. Um, what is the tech advancement that you're most excited about?

[00:44:00] Carlos Marques: Extending the human body with technology to make, uh, better humans, at least, uh, to start replacing the human organs with some techies.

[00:44:12] Matt Duench: That's an, that's an interesting one. And now with Neurolink it's becoming increasingly possible. Right.

[00:44:17] Carlos Marques: Yeah,

[00:44:17] Matt Duench: Well, Carlos, maybe give us some insight. Where can folks find you online? How did they get in touch with you outside of the podcast?

[00:44:23] Carlos Marques: If you come to Portugal, feel free to contact me on LinkedIn for sure. And yeah, of course you can contact me on LinkedIn. Carlos Marques at Mobili 

[00:44:32] Matt Duench: um. 

[00:44:32] Amazing. Well, Carlos, thank you so much for taking the time with us today on the Mistaken Identity Podcast. Really enjoyed having you as a guest. Uh, thank you again.

[00:44:39] Carlos Marques: My pleasure.