Most product content focuses on two stages: the early startup hustle and the mature enterprise machine. But there is a painful middle zone where a company has product-market fit, growing revenue, and a team that is outgrowing the processes that worked when everyone sat in the same room. At Gathering #6, Bert Holvoet, Product Manager at Showpad, spoke directly to this in-between stage.
Showpad is a Belgian-founded sales enablement platform that has grown from a small Ghent startup to a global scale-up with hundreds of employees. Bert has lived through the scaling pain firsthand and shared the concrete challenges that product teams face when they need to move beyond startup-era practices without drowning in corporate process.
Original Presentation Slides
Download the slides from this talk as presented at the gathering.
When Communication Breaks Down
The first challenge Bert highlighted was communication. In a five-person team, everyone knows what everyone else is working on. By the time you have three product teams across two time zones, information gaps become the default. Decisions are made without context, dependencies are discovered late, and teams duplicate effort without realizing it.
