Gregoire Markarian

Article

My AI-first method for validating a product that only exists in my head

Creating a product is easy. Creating a product that people actually want is another story. When an idea for a new product comes into my head, before writing a single line of code or designing a single screen, I run it through a simple method to confront an early-stage concept

Article

How putting users first reshaped an entire industrial group

This article is from my blog. If you're interested in how software is reshaping the industrial and hardware worlds through product thinking, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter! In 2017, after my first startup journey, I landed a job as a senior PM in a startup that

Article

The daily job of a product executive: unclogging bottlenecks, all day, every day

When people hear "product director", they imagine a grand strategist orchestrating a symphony of ideas. Reality check: most of the time, a CPO is just unclogging organizational bottlenecks all day. Seriously, the job is 90% making sure people talk to each other. From startup chaos to scalable structure

Article

From first (Lego) brick to final blow, the ruthless life of a hardware startup

It took me some time to write this mini post-mortem of my first startup, Kello. But here we are, 12 years after it all began and 6 years after it ended. It's September 21st, 2016. I remember refreshing our Kickstarter page every few seconds, my heart pounding. I

Article

What happens to your startup's product team after its acquisition (and how to drive it)

When a startup gets acquired by a large corporation, the product team faces a unique set of challenges. Having been through this myself as a CPO of a startup that was acquired by one of Europe's biggest companies, here's what you can expect and how to

Kello

Manufacturing Update 12: Mass Assembly Is Completed

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, Great news! Mass assembly has started last week and ended just today. And it went pretty well: we

Kello

Manufacturing Update 11: On Our Way to Mass Assembly

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, Flash update to keep you in sync with what’s going on at the factory. We’ve finished

Kello

Manufacturing Update 10: Mass Production is a GO!

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists,  We’re so excited! We’ve finally started the very first step of mass production (plastic injection), and

Kello

Manufacturing Update 9: Final Production Prototypes

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists,  As we’re entering the final stretch of Kello’s manufacturing, we’re more pumped than ever to

Kello

Manufacturing Update 8: The Importance of Durability

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, April was a very intense month. We’re moving forward on all aspects of the product but unfortunately

Kello

Manufacturing Update 7: Iterating on Tooling

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, Another week, another round of development, testing, prototypes and progress.  It’s the little things that matter  10

Kello

Manufacturing Update 6: Our First Injected Kello

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, Things are starting to get really exciting as we’re now getting our first pre-production samples. Check out

Kello

Manufacturing Update 5: Making of the Molds

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, We've moving forward in the mass manufacturing process and soon you'll be able to

Kello

Manufacturing Update 4: Design for Manufacturing is Finished

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, We’ve made big progress during the last 2 weeks on manufacturing preparation and electronics design. Here’s

Kello

Manufacturing Update 3: More Power for Kello

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, First things first, we wish you a very happy new year, filled with countless great nights of sleep!

Kello

Manufacturing Update 2: Design For Manufacturing Kick-off

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, Today, we’ll give you an overview of what we’ve done so far and what’s next.

Kello

Manufacturing Update 1: What's Next?

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Dear Kelloists, Our Kickstarter campaign is finished, it is now the beginning of a new phase: manufacturing preparation. Let us

Kello

We're 645% FUNDED on Kickstarter! Wow!

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! It's been quite a journey Our campaign is finished, and we're 645% funded. We couldn'

Kello

October 2016 Update – Only 13 more days to back Kello!

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Whew, these last two weeks have been a whirlwind here at Kello HQ! A quick update: * Kello was fully funded

Kello

Kello is now available for pre-order!

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Hey everyone! Today is a big day. Why? Because as of this morning at 8:00am EST, Kello is now

Kello

The Science Behind Kello

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Let’s take a step back from Kello’s launch September 20th to look at the science that is behind

Kello

Summer 2016 Update - Color choice, prototypes, pre-orders

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! What's up everyone? Summer is in full swing and Kello is getting ready to warm up those dark

Kello

This is how our ancestors used to get out of bed

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Have you ever wondered how people used to wake up? Sounds like a simple question, but the reality is that

Kello

May 2016 Update - A Colorful Name

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! Hey everyone! Curious to hear about what we’ve been up to this month? First things first... Why "Kello&

Kello

Prelaunch Program members: help us choose Kello's colors!

⏰2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog. You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes! August 2016 update: this poll is now closed as Kello's colors have been chosen. Thanks for participating! We