When Felix Kruth joined Voyado as Chief Product Officer, he had zero experience in B2B SaaS. His background was in building software, but this new space? It was unfamiliar territory. To catch up, Felix dove into every resource he could find—books on agile frameworks, Scrum, and product design methodologies like double diamonds. But here’s what surprised him: the frameworks weren’t the biggest challenge.
Felix quickly realized that the real struggle wasn’t mastering these methodologies—it was collaboration. Time and again, he heard the same story from product leaders: they felt unheard, while the rest of the organization felt the same way about them. This disconnect became a critical insight that has shaped how he leads product at Voyado today.
Understanding the SaaS growth path
Product management in SaaS companies isn’t just about building features; it’s about knowing where your company is on its growth path and aligning product strategy with that stage. Felix believes this is where many companies go wrong—they don’t distinguish between different types of companies or their sales motions.
If you’re a Product-Led Growth company, your priorities are clear:
- User-centricity
- Rapid iterations and feedback loops
- Growth metrics like monthly active users and engagement.
However, for companies operating in Enterprise Sales Motions, the focus shifts:
- Long-term roadmap planning
- Strategic account focus
- Sales enablement and stakeholder management
PLG thrives on rapid growth and feedback, but ESM operates in a completely different world—long contracts, complex sales cycles, and deep stakeholder involvement. For a product leader, knowing which side of the fence you’re on is essential to guiding the product team effectively.
The emotional investment in roadmaps
One of the most important, and often misunderstood aspects of product management is the roadmap. It’s not just a list of features or a release plan; it’s a promise to your customers about the future of your product. At Voyado, this is particularly important due to their enterprise sales focus.
“Our customers aren’t just buying what the product is today—they’re investing in what it will become over the next several years,” Felix says. For enterprise companies, the roadmap carries significant emotional weight because it reflects future commitments. And without clear communication of those commitments, customers may hesitate to invest.
A new approach to product leadership
Felix has also redefined what it means to be a product leader. In many organizations, the CPO is viewed strictly as the person overseeing product management. But at Voyado, Felix believes the role is far broader. The decisions made by his team impact every employee, every customer, and every prospect. He emphasizes that a product leader’s responsibility goes beyond the product itself.
“You can’t just focus on managing product features,” Felix explains. “You have to sell the product better than your best sales rep. And you need to be able to get on stage and speak to the market with authority about where your product fits.”
In other words, product leaders aren’t just product managers—they’re strategic drivers of the entire company’s success.
How Voyado puts this into practice: 5 key lessons from Felix
1. Meeting customers & prospects regularly
Voyado places great importance on staying close to customers and prospects. Felix averages about 100–150 meetings a year. Why so many? It’s about prioritization. The more the product team understands the real-world needs of its users, the better positioned they are to make informed decisions. It’s also about building relationships. As Felix puts it, “You can’t make product decisions in isolation.”
2. Transparent roadmap planning
One of the key differentiators at Voyado is their commitment to transparency. The product roadmap is visible to everyone in the company, with quarterly updates to ensure that priorities are in sync with the business. The roadmap is collaborative, bringing all stakeholders into the process. This ensures that everyone—from product managers to account executives—understands not only what’s coming but also why decisions are made.
3. Prioritizing the soft product
At Voyado, it’s not just about the physical product features. Felix stresses the importance of the soft product—the tools, processes, and workflows surrounding the product. For example, their analytics team didn’t start by delivering new features; instead, they empowered Customer Success and Account Management with data, helping them better understand how customers were using the product. This, in turn, helped drive upsells and customer satisfaction faster than any new feature could.
4. Investing in operations
Great products don’t exist in a vacuum. For product managers to focus on solving customer problems, they need operational support. This means having clear processes and exceptional people around them to handle the day-to-day. “Operations are crucial,” Felix says, allowing product teams to focus on what matters: solving customer problems.
5. Becoming the expert
Finally, Felix encourages all product leaders to invest in becoming the go-to expert—not just in their product, but in their market. Understanding where the product fits in the competitive landscape, and being able to communicate that effectively, builds trust both internally and externally. “People will follow you if they know you have the answers,” Felix says.
Two hot takes on product leadership:
Felix’s philosophy boils down to two unconventional ideas:
1. A product leader should sell better than the best sales rep.
This means understanding the product so thoroughly that you can explain its value more clearly and convincingly than anyone else in the company.
2. A product leader should speak to the market with authority.
Whether it’s a conference or a sales meeting, a product leader must be able to stand up and communicate how the product solves real problems in the market.
Summary: Leadership that drives growth
Felix Kruth’s journey from a SaaS novice to Voyado’s CPO shows that product leadership is about more than just building features—it’s about collaboration, transparency, and expertise. By understanding the bigger picture and aligning the entire organization around the product vision, Felix has helped Voyado grow into a leading B2B SaaS company, achieving 600 MSEK in ARR and, most importantly, maintaining happy, growing customers.
Success in product management isn’t just about the product. It’s about how you lead, communicate, and collaborate across every layer of the company. “If you do these things,” he says, “people will follow—not just because you’re the CPO, but because they trust you to lead them into the future.”
