Product Love Podcast: Brendon Stead, SVP of Product Development and Engineering at Sound United

This week on Product Love, I sat down with Brendon Stead, the SVP of Product and Engineering at Sound United. Brendon has spent his career delighting consumers by delivering world-class, audio-visual components in product management and development roles.

Over time, Brendon has launched JBL, Harman Kardon, Infinity, Mark Levinson, Altec Lansing, Denon, Marantz, and HEOS branded products that include floor standing speakers, powered speakers, embedded audio, audio-video receivers, Bluetooth speakers, headphones, DVD & Blu-ray players, wireless multi-room players, and media servers.

Brendon started his career in engineering, but after spending some time with consumers, he started to drift into the product management direction. These days, Brendon manages 400 product developers around the globe, which includes all kinds of product and UX people who work in hardware or software.

On this episode, we discussed alignment, and what qualities make a strong product manager.

Since Brendon’s team is global, it’s natural that alignment is a challenge. The team relies on having a good annual operating calendar where specific activities occur to support their overarching business plans. It’s a cadence that keeps them together. Brendon shares that they’re a well-oiled machine with a detailed product development process.

Brendon also believes that product managers don’t need a technical background, but it’s helpful. Instead, product managers should work on their communication and business acumen skills. The ability to tell a story and convince key stakeholders to make major investments in product will always be skills that reign over

Brendon dives deep into the product development process at Sound United below. Check it out!