# I'm Hubert Palan, Co-founder and CEO of Productboard. AMA! 👋

**URL:** <https://gorelay.co/t/im-hubert-palan-co-founder-and-ceo-of-productboard-ama/621>\
**Category:** AMAs\
**Tags:** past-guests, customer-centricity, fundraising, pmf, founders-self, product\
**Created:** [August 31, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://gorelay.co/t/im-hubert-palan-co-founder-and-ceo-of-productboard-ama/621 "2021-08-31T19:33:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![hubert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/gorelay.co/hubert/32/484_2.png) [@hubert](https://gorelay.co/u/hubert)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 7:09pm UTC](https://gorelay.co/t/im-hubert-palan-co-founder-and-ceo-of-productboard-ama/621/15 "2021-09-09T19:09:59Z")

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> [@jamesgill](#):
>
> In terms of taking funding and growing to your current size – how deliberate were those decisions? I can see how ProductBoard could have been a lovely bootstrapped, profitable business perhaps with a smaller team, but you chose the VC backed route. I guess there are many pros and also risks to that approach. Would you be able to share what led you to this route? Was it a decision from day one? Or did it come once you felt you had product-market-fit? Or later?

Hi James, so great to hear you are a fan! Thanks for the compliment on the Product Gravity concept - I really want to work it out into a deeper framework as I find it a super useful analogy.

Re funding - I always had this big vision (which wasn’t fully formed in the early days obviously) that there is a better way to approach Product management - don’t start with features, but put customers at the center and collaborate across the entire company in a much more productive way. And given the nature of this vision I knew that if I want to impact the product world in a meaningful way and win over other competitors that will inevitably enter the space, I need to build a massive company faster than others. The confidence in the opportunity gave me the confidence to raise VC funding, rather than bootstrap. I also really believe that having a boss is a good thing and while it creates stress it also drives focus and productivity and so I searched for the best bosses (VCs) I could to drive me and the company hard. Do I have more great hair because of it? yes. But I really believe we are making a bigger impact because of that and that to me is worth it.

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