Coolset offers a SaaS solution which simplifies sustainability reporting, moving sustainability out of spreadsheets. Our mission is to provide a product that delivers a seamless user experience and intuitive configuration, making complex reporting straightforward and accessible. Danae, our product manager, tells us more about how she helps bring Coolset’s vision to life.

Please can you tell me about your role as the product manager at Coolset?

Danae: As the product manager at Coolset, I’m focused on driving the product’s focus and ensuring there’s seamless communication across our different teams. The whole team is incredibly capable, so essentially my role is to make sure the right insights and problems reach the engineering team, and help them keep a sharp focus on our actual priorities.

Throughout the day, I focus on gathering the insights from any touch points we have from prospective and current customers, as well as findings from our sustainability research team. As I gather insights, my job is to identify and prioritize the key problems we need to address in our product roadmap. This is a continuous process - we’re constantly adding insights to opportunities we have discovered. It’s always nice to see how they map or adjust our understanding on the problems people face.

How do you decide what priorities should come first?

Danae: We prioritize based on impact and scalability, to ensure that our product developments drive value for both our customers and our business, today and in the long run. In terms of understanding which priorities should come first, it gets easier when you create a strong communication line with every team. To keep alignment, I spend a lot of time shaping how our product should look like in the future, or what we refer to as the "North star". This means working closely with design prototypes to help the rest of the team understand and get on board with the direction we are heading towards. Seeing concrete representations of ideas is much easier to help everyone get on the same page.

You mentioned the North Star for Coolset. What does that look like currently, and how are you working towards it?

Danae: We say our customers are the center of change. For me, Coolset’s North Star is being the partner and tool for companies to actually see and quantify their positive sustainability impact in the world, while they grow to achieve their business goals. This means delivering accurate data and reliable methodologies for tracking measurements, so customers can trust the data they see. I couldn't stress this enough. What I’d like to see in a few years for Coolset is a wall of all the positive initiatives and their impact stories, that spurred from using our tool.

As a product manager, you interact with various teams. What do you find most challenging about communicating with all these different teams?

Danae: At Coolset, our culture is knowledge equity. We shape all our processes so that there’s a minimum barrier for anyone to share all their insights from customers, prospects, climate and compliance research or even things they read somewhere. Our entire product planning is built based on circulating insights, so we want to maximize how “wise” we are as a team, as efficiently as possible.

The biggest challenge is managing the bias that what you know as a subject matter expert, might not be clear for the rest of the team. So, it's important to setup an environment where everyone feels motivated to share their insights & ideas at the table. My favourite hack for this is that we have a custom command in Slack where every time somebody posts the keyword “insight”, it automatically saves the post into our product discovery pipeline. It’s such a small extra step and it really has helped us make sure we don’t lose valuable insights in the day-to-day shuffle.

Another thing that I’ve learned this year is not only to communicate what you are building, but also what you are not building. Being extra explicit goes a long way. I’ve noticed that communicating through designs and also having a simple disclaimer bullet list of what is not being built with this “X” new feature can really help align expectations. Besides this we have included 20 minute weekly check-ins with the sales, customer success and research teams to make sure we’re not losing something through bullet point posts.

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Could you tell us about your previous experience and how it has prepared you for your current role at Coolset?

Danae: Before I joined Coolset, I worked for 4 years in a product design and building studio as a product designer and product design lead. During that time, I collaborated with quite a few startups and enterprises, in very different stages. I feel very grateful because I had the chance to witness a lot of product development lifecycle structures, and got to work with very interesting teams. This experience has given a lot of confidence in starting from zero, or navigating uncertainty, which is very common in a startup. It also gave me the knowledge to tackle problems with a structured approach. Additionally, working with various teams sparked a hunger to contribute to a product that felt like my own, which is what I found at Coolset.

Is there a recent project you're particularly excited about or proud of?

Danae: Yes, we've recently made a big bet with a new project that essentially helps our research team build new products on their own, with zero or minimum time required from the development team. We’re a startup, and with that comes a lot of uncertainty or a feeling of running to catch up to the wave, so this was a bet to help us scale. To develop this we are focusing on 4 key values — empower users with the ability to a. track and measure, b. collaborate, c. accurately audit and d. automate their work. I’m very excited to see this progress with our research team.

How do you gather and incorporate customer feedback into product development, and do you ever find that innovation clashes with regulations?

Danae: We gather customer feedback through all touch points, including all direct interactions with our customer success, sales, research, and support teams. We have a system in place where team members can easily share customer insights via Slack, which ensures that valuable feedback is captured without needing me to be everywhere at once. Regarding innovation and regulations I’d say it’s quite the opposite. Upcoming regulations naturally create a problem space for businesses, and there’s so much room to provide solutions that focus on a very good user experience. We always want to stay ahead by being the ones who educate and support our customers. Our research team plays a crucial role in this, so that we ensure we're staying proactive in providing the necessary tools and solutions.

How do you work with the development team to design and release products?

Danae: My background is in computer science, so I like to keep up with the technical constraints, which is crucial when discussing feasibility with the development team. We collaborate closely, holding sprints to align on our North Star goals. There’s nothing authoritative about the design handoff, and I always like to take into account their product suggestions to ensure that what we build meets our standards. I also play a role in QA, so it’s a quite closed loop collaboration, which keeps it easy to ensure the final product aligns with the initial vision.

How do you foster a creative and innovative environment within your team?

Danae: Having a team that holds themselves to such a high standards sets the bar high for fostering creativity, as we are always pushing each other to do better. In the product and engineering team, we encourage everyone to share their day-to-day hacks and hold demos where team members can showcase how they solved specific problems. Across the whole team, at the end of each week, we have a session where anyone can present something they've worked on, whether it's related to the product or an operational improvement. This practice not only inspires creativity but also sets high standards for quality, pushing everyone to think critically and innovate beyond the bare minimum.

What initially attracted you to Coolset, and what makes it an exciting company to work for?

Danae: I was looking for a new job from Greece at the time, and I really wanted to find a dynamic team that shared the same passion with me, which I found in Coolset. You could really sense the direction and values from the start, but what sold me was how transparent the team was. Especially since I was the fifth person to join and coming from Greece, there was a lot of risk in the decision. I’m very happy that the team keeps proving me right and we are always open and pushing each other.

What do you most enjoy about working at Coolset?

Danae: It's cliché, but the team is really the highlight for me. I never dread coming to work. The team always brings the spirits up, and it’s great working and being surrounded by smart, ambitious people. We are also very honest with each other - we are a multicultural team, but we’ve picked up the Dutch directness - which is very refreshing. Besides that, I’m often surprised by the team, with a new approach they took, or something they launched, and it will be great! It really keeps the motivation high.

Outside of work, what hobbies or activities do you enjoy?

Danae: When I'm not working, I enjoy spending time with friends. Amsterdam has a great vibe, especially when the sun is out, and I enjoy biking around the city or swimming in the canals. It's a great way to relax and enjoy the city.

Do you have any favourite spots in Amsterdam?

Danae: I love the swimming dock at Houthavens. That’s actually where we went as a team for lunch break shortly after I joined. It was such a cool experience and really set the tone for what Coolset is about. I also enjoy biking around the West area of Amsterdam — I’m always thinking about stuff coming home from work and then I suddenly look around — the scenery can make you feel so energized.

Want to know more?

To learn more about Coolset’s latest projects and how we can support your sustainability efforts, visit Coolset’s website.

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