Most product management talks start from the assumption that a product team already exists. Karel Callens took a different approach at PR_D_CT DAY 2024. As Founder and CEO of Luzmo (formerly Cumul.io), he walked the audience through the full timeline of building a SaaS company from 2015 to 2024, charting exactly when and how product management entered the picture, and what happened in the years before it did.
Luzmo provides embedded analytics for SaaS companies, enabling data-driven decision-making with the shortest time to insight. The company grew from four bootstrapped founders to over fifty employees, raised venture capital, and navigated multiple product pivots along the way. Through it all, formal product management did not arrive until 2022, seven years after founding.
Karel's talk was a candid retrospective on what worked, what did not, and what he would do differently. For founders and product leaders navigating the messy transition from founder-led product decisions to structured PM processes, the lessons were immediately applicable.
