Pendo acquires Mind the Product to boost global product manager community

Last year product analytics and digital adoption platform Pendo pulled in $110 million investment from private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and that was not long after a $150 million tranche of funding. So the company — which allows companies like Okta, Salesforce and Zendesk to onboard new customers or get employees to adopt new software, as well as revealing analytics on that uptake — has been in a position to scale up its marketing for a while.

It’s now taking that to the next level with the acquisition of Mind the Product — a platform that many outside observers would call the key community of product managers — which dovetails nicely with Pendo’s mission. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Starting in 2010 from London as a global meetup-style community with ProductTank (launched, typically, in a pub), Mind the Product has morphed into a community that provides content, training and conferences that claims to touch more than 300,000 product managers, designers and developers via seminars, newsletters, a Slack community and ProductTank meetups in more than 200 global cities.

James Mayes, CEO and co-founder of Mind the Product, said: “This is a tremendous day for our community of product managers around the world. By joining Pendo, we can execute on today’s mission and think even bigger about how we will support, educate and train product teams in the future.”

The full-time team of nearly 20 people will now join Pendo but retain its branding to manage its conferences, content, events and meetups, and to continue its vendor-neutral workshops and training.

Todd Olson, CEO, and co-founder of Pendo said: “Pendo has always made it part of our mission to elevate the craft of product management and to help product managers be better at what they do. We’re really excited to join forces with some of our earliest influencers, and offer substantially more education and resources to the global product management community for years to come.”

Mind the Product is Pendo’s third international acquisition in five years, as it previously acquired Insert, a mobile app engagement solution based in Israel, and, in 2019, Receptive Software, a U.K.-based product demand intelligence platform.

In a phone call interview with TechCrunch, Olson said: “We’ve been around since 2013. We have always focused on building product and supporting the product management community. So that’s part of what led us to this arrangement — but we’ve been selling the product and working with product managers since our inception. I was a head of product at SAAS company as well. So I am personally been very passionate about the product community in my professional career.”

“Since the very beginning of Pendo, in order for us to really achieve our mission, we needed to help elevate the craft of product management. The more there are great product managers the more that will ultimately benefit Pendo — maybe not immediately, but certainly in the arc of our company. That’s why Mind The Product fits so well with us,” he said.

Mayes added: “We’ve known Pendo pretty much since inception, as one of the sponsors that we have worked with over that time. One of the things that was really exciting about this deal was that Pendo was insistent that they wanted Mind the Product, as a conference, to remain open to other vendors. So Pendo will continue to run the ‘Pandemonium’ event, which is essentially a user conference, whereas the Mind the Product will always welcome vendors of all stripes who have an interest in the product craft.”

Pendo now has over 160 people across the U.K., Israel, Japan and Australia.