AMA with Mohammed Al Ogaily
Head of Product at Anghami, Mohammed Al Ogaily, takes us on his journey transitioning from feature factory to a product-led growth company.
“And once you're metrics-driven, you're doing growth. Even if you don't know it.”
🔑 Key Moments
- (10:57) Using proxy metrics to move your North Star Metric
- (16:26) Convincing a company to prioritize engagement over user acquisition
- (25:08) Stripping everything away to methodically test one thing at a time
- (35:52) The role of friction and surfacing high-intent users
- (39:37) Getting rid of annual roadmaps in favor of quarterly ones
- (49:59) Moving from feature factory to North Star Metric-driven
▶️ Session play-by-play
- (00:00) Ice breakers and intros!
- (05:22) More about the product
- (07:40) How the Product and Growth teams at structured at Anghami
- (10:57) How the team chose their North Star Metric and why
- (16:27) How the team pivoted from an acquisition to an engagement focus
- (20:07) How shifting to PLG changed how the Product team worked
- (25:08) The critical role of proxy metrics when using the North Star Framework
- (35:52) The value of friction to identify high-intent users
- (34:23) How to test whether your North Star Metric is predictive of business outcomes
- (39:37) What roadmapping looks like at Anghami
- (44:30) Why casual conversations feed strong collaboration
- (49:59) Making the shift from feature factory to North Star Metric-driven
The People
Mohammed is the VP of Product at Anghami. He joined the company eight years ago and started as a backend engineer when the company was a small, 40-person start up. He moved over into Product, and now heads both the Product and the Growth teams. You can still find Mohammed coding when he's not focused on driving their product-led growth strategy.
Franciska Dethlefsen is currently leading as Head of Growth Marketing at Amplitude, a leading digital analytics platform that helps companies build better products. She has been with the company since 2021 when she started as a Senior Product Manager working on the developer experience.
See you at our next AMA! 🎤
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