airfocus 2024 Year in Review

What a year it’s been! 2024 has been very kind to us at airfocus with new launches, amazing events, and even a protest. 

With 2025 just around the corner, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on everything this year had to offer. 

airfocus wrapped: our 2024 highlights

We couldn’t resist our own take on Spotify’s genius wrapped format, so here is our airfocus wrapped for 2024:

Over the past 12 months, airfocus has seen:

• $7.5 million in funding raised.

• 15 webinars and talks.

• 13 real-life events.

• 5 amazing angel investors.

• 6 exciting stand-out airfocus launches.

• 1 protest against spreadsheets on the streets of Hamburg.

But also:

• 7 new airfolks in 2024. (now we have airfolks in over 17 countries 🤯)

• 13 big life moments. (3 Babies, 2 engagements, 1 wedding, 5 new furry friends and 2 first days of school)

Webinars, talks, and conversations

This year, we have been so lucky to have an incredible selection of great minds give us their personal insights and tips on improving our product management skills.

Kicking off the year we got to explore the product journey of our angel investor, David Pereira as he taught us how to break free from the backlog trap. Through his experiences, we looked at how to understand the dynamic nature of product backlog, the significance of a mindful strategy for backlog management, and how to recognize the risk of falling into a “feature factory trap.” We also had the pleasure of David returning for a second chat in October to give us amazing tips to escape common roadmap traps and showcase the product roadmap template he created for airfocus.

February saw us host Jeff Gothelf and Tony Ulwick for two fantastic webinars covering outcome-driven innovation and OKRs. Our session with Jeff Gothelf gave us some fantastic insights and a walk through the most common mistakes teams make to help us improve OKR implementation while keeping your focus on the customer. Meanwhile, Tony Ulwick taught us that an 86% success rate with outcome-driven innovation is possible through the magic of the Jobs-to-be-Done theory and other game-changing strategies. 

Adam Greco, the Field CTO at Amplitude stopped by in March for a chat about the importance of data in modern product management. We discussed practical approaches to foster collaboration between product and data teams, the evolving landscape of product management, and ways to better understand how data-driven strategies can elevate your product management game. 

C. Todd Lombardo and Ramli John also joined us to discuss the importance of customer delight. We talked about why customer delight is a strategic imperative for success, the four main principles underpinning it, and firsthand accounts of teams that have transformed it from a concept into a reality.

In April, we had another OKR talk with Tim Herbig, who discussed the essential preparatory steps that product teams must take before defining the OKR. In this highly informative webinar, we examined some crucial points that many product teams overlook, including how to derive a lagging proxy metric and identify leading indicators driving lagging metrics.

You already know that we like to make things simple at airfocus. So, with many PMs struggling with roadmapping, we decided in May that it would be a good time to get roadmapping expert Roman Pichler in to talk about all things roadmaps. This great chat covered four qualities to create an effective roadmap, 10 mistakes you should avoid to fully leverage your roadmap, and much more to help you make the most out of your roadmaps.

In June, we were incredibly excited to sit down with the creator of the GIST framework and the Confidence Meter, Itamar Gilad. In this conversation, we discussed how evidence-guided development helps teams improve their decision-making and, most importantly, what evidence-based decision-making actually is. We also learned how to make real evidence-based decisions using the frameworks he developed.

Over the last year, the world has gone AI crazy, with product managers being told to incorporate AI into products without anyone really knowing how it works or why they need it. To clarify things for you, we brought in Dr. Bart Jaworski to help you determine whether your product really needs AI. We looked past all the hype to see AI’s actual benefits and how to navigate all the exaggerated claims.

P.S. You can also check out our report on the Impact of AI on Product Management.

In November, we talked about how to craft a product portfolio that balances comfort-zone projects with high-impact initiatives. Our friend and angel investor, Petra Wille joined us for this webinar, showcasing her Product Portfolio Excellence Template, which was designed for airfocus to empower product leaders with a comprehensive overview of their entire product portfolio. We also looked at how to know which new initiatives will move the needle and which comfort-zone projects are worth maintaining.

Last but not least, we were joined by Antonia Landi for our final Top PM Voices of the year to talk about a ProductOps Framework for Prioritization and roadmapping. We packed so much into this episode including tactics for creating a centralized workflow, best practices for setting up a prioritization and roadmap template, and actionable steps for capturing, prioritizing, and executing ideas that align with product strategy.

Events (meetups, conferences, breakfasts)

Our 2024 calendar was absolutely stacked with amazing events across the world. We’ve loved meeting so many new people and catching up with old friends. 

In January, we teamed up with the wonderful Product People for a Product Managers Breakfast in Hamburg, where I took to the stage alongside Lisa Mo Wagner and Robert Yung for a fascinating panel led by Jon Freeman, and we discussed the challenges and lessons of product discovery across various industries. We had such a great time that we decided to open up airfocus HQ for round two in July, with Jon Freeman returning to host a brilliant discussion on roadmapping with Viktoria Korzhova, Marcel Sandoval, and Milena Toporek. These events have given us a chance to really connect with the PM community in Hamburg and we look forward to hosting more in 2025.

ProductCon by Product School has always been a great time for the airfocus team, and 2024 was no different. We were lucky enough to attend both London and New York ProductCons this year. We met so many amazing people from the product community to learn firsthand what really matters to them. We heard from so many people that they wanted flexibility in their product management software. They were excited and curious about our mission at airfocus: to build the best modular product management platform!

April saw the fantastic Marty Cagan visit Hamburg for a fantastic night organized by the amazing team at Product at Heart, along with ProductTank Hamburg , and proudly sponsored by airfocus. Marty took us through the “Product Operating Model" from his latest book, TRANSFORMED, and left us all inspired by his passion for meaningful change in product management. 

We hosted an incredible event in Barcelona in May, packed full of interesting discussions, networking opportunities, and great vibes all around. Special thanks once again to our amazing speakers, Antonia Landi​, ​Itamar Gilad​, ​Anna Puig Rademacher​, and ​Nacho Bassino, and our moderator, ​Victor Forest​, for giving us a fantastic panel on the topic, “From 0-1 and 1-100: How Product Evolves with Scale.” 

June also saw us visit the Product Academy Summit in Zurich. This was a wonderful opportunity to meet product leaders like Google and NZZ and have great conversations with so many passionate product professionals. 

With summer in full swing, we headed to Berlin for a rooftop get-together with some truly incredible people. Many thanks to UserTesting for helping us put this one together, and Antonia Landi for the incredibly kind words. 

September was an incredibly busy month for us. We hosted a product community meetup in Berlin with a fantastic panel featuring David Pereira and Erik Ferber, sponsored and attended the Product at Heart conference, hosted dinner at airfocus HQ, and met the product community in London at the Product Leaders' Roundtable at Aspire HQ.

To round off the year’s events, we teamed up once again with Product People to host two more awesome breakfast events in Vienna and Frankfurt. October’s event in Vienna centered around AI innovation within product development and we were extremely proud to have N26 working alongside us for this one. We then headed to Frankfurt in November to talk about the challenges in B2C vs. B2B product management. 

Milestones and launches

While it looks like we’ve been having lots of fun, we haven’t forgotten the reason we’re able to do these amazing talks and events: the airfocus platform. This year has been incredible for our platform, with new features, new angel investors, and, of course, our wonderful users new and old. 

Behind the scenes we’ve had an incredible run of support, raising $7.5 million in January to help us transform enterprise product management around the globe. This round of funding, led by Newion with the participation of XAnge, Nauta, Riverside Acceleration Capital, and Picea Capital, brings our total funding to nearly $15M, putting us in an amazing position to continue our mission. We also welcomed 5 amazing angel investors, David Pereira, Mario Lenz, Tamer El-Hawari, Petra Wille and Tim Herbig who have been an incredible, and insightful addition to our company.

Here’s a look at some of our top launches in 2024

• Team fields: A highly requested feature that keeps product organizations loosely coupled but closely aligned. Team Fields allow you to standardize fields, add them across workspaces, and sync content automatically.

• Cross-workspace dependencies: For better team and product alignment, we launched cross-workspace dependencies, giving users a clearer overview across multiple teams and products.

• API: In March, we made our API available, empowering users to create custom integrations and setups using airfocus functionality. It’s been amazing to see the innovative implementations from our community!

• Check-Ins app: Designed for product leaders to communicate status updates effectively with stakeholders, the Check-Ins app allows teams to assign confidence values (off track, at risk, on track) and provide detailed updates to product items.

• General view improvements: We made transformative improvements to usability, including sorting views, unlimited hierarchy levels, and timeline roadmap updates.

• Linear integration: We launched our Linear integration, letting users link airfocus product management workflows with development tasks in Linear, ensuring seamless data syncing between the two platforms.

• Expert templates: In September, we debuted templates designed by product experts like David Pereira, Itamar Gilad, and Petra Wille to help users jumpstart their work.

• The Great Product Ops Survey: Finally, we have just launched this amazing survey in cooperation with Antonia Landi, and we’d love it if you would share your experiences and help shape the future of ProductOps.

Special and unique moments 

• Of course, it wouldn’t be a year at airfocus without some truly standout moments. This year, we had so much fun launching a new Q&A video series where I tried to answer community-submitted questions about all things product management. We loved this chance to connect with the wider product community and give some direct advice, even though I don't love being on camera. We’re also super proud of this engaging visualization and explanation of beliefs in multi-product management that we created. And yes, we weren’t kidding in the intro, we did hold a protest against spreadsheets on the streets of Hamburg (yes, that’s me holding that sign!)

That's a wrap on 2024. Bring on 2025!

2024 far exceeded our expectations, with many great talks, great people, and amazing steps forward for our platform. 

We want to thank everyone who helped us with our events, our amazing partners, our panelists and speakers, our experts who contributed to our Expert Templates launch, and, of course, our amazing users who remind us why we work so hard.

Of course, a huge thank you also needs to go to the airfocus team. Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve any of the great things we did this year. 💙

We’re all looking forward to what 2025 has in store for us. 

As always, we will be updating the airfocus blog throughout the year with new developments, new trends, tips, tricks, and insights from product experts. So, make sure to come back next year. We can’t wait to see you then!

Malte Scholz.