Jonas Van Poucke works from Ghent, in Flanders and the Netherlands, in Dutch and English, and helps product teams find out for themselves why customers switch, leave or do nothing.
If you are deciding whether to talk to Jonas, you probably want to know who you would be talking to. Here is how Jonas got here.
In 1994 Jonas studied chemistry at the University of Ghent and, like many nerds at the time, played games and collected European comics. When the Internet arrived Jonas wanted to look up more about those comics and found nothing, so Jonas built a website from scratch: scanning the books, learning HTML and putting the pages on the university's server.
Jonas loved it so much that it had to become a living, instead of mixing liquids in a lab. Next to a master's in chemistry, Jonas took a two-year course and became the only developer at a biotech company that made software for lab people.
Jonas was more hacker than developer, but spoke both code and chemistry. Jonas asked the few lab people what they wanted, built what Jonas understood they needed, showed the result and adapted it, all within a few days. That was working agile before the word became popular.
As a developer Jonas found out that anything that came to mind could be built, given enough time and effort. Technically everything had become possible, and one question kept bothering Jonas: how do you know that you are making something people want? Jonas had been cooking for three lab people and was now cooking for hundreds without knowing who was coming to dinner, and could no longer talk to each of them and ask what they needed.
Jonas figured there had to be a better way. The next boss gave Jonas a chance to lead a team of 7, and Jonas decided to study first, and not by halves. That brought a Scrum Master certificate, three Mastering Requirements courses and two Prince2 project management certificates, with some BPMN and Domain Driven Design as a dessert. None of it answered the question.
Jonas's customers were always happy with the work, because Jonas delivered on time and within scope, budget and quality. But most of those projects rested on what managers thought people needed, and that went about as well as you would expect. Jonas was once the business analyst on a project worth 4 million that failed to gain traction with real users, and then failed to do so a second time. By then Jonas was looking for a magic wand.
Jonas's sixth employer let Jonas go to a Mind the Product conference in London. There Jonas met 1,600 product managers who were building products instead of projects and serving customers instead of bosses, and knew this was the way.
Jeff Patton, Marty Cagan, Jeff Gothelf, Teresa Torres, Ash Maurya and many others became Jonas's guides through their courses and books. Jonas gathered a few colleagues from sales, development and leadership and together they created a new offering based on product management. It sold so fast that Jonas started to coach, mentor and teach clients and colleagues in this new craft.
That is still what Jonas loves doing today: hands-on product management, coaching and mentoring. Overall Jonas has trained and coached more than 30 people.
Jonas works through ProductMicrobe BV.
You can ask Jonas for advice on any of these, but Jonas won't spend time doing them:
If what you need is on that list, ask Jonas anyway and Jonas will refer you on. If it is about what your customers really want, there is plenty to talk about.
Send Jonas a message or pick a moment in Jonas's calendar. The first conversation is an introduction.