About me
Who are you?
I’m Kai Hansen, a builder, leader, and bridge creator between technology and business.
I’ve driven organizational transformation, led cross-functional teams, and built products for more than 2 decades. My passion lies in connecting business and technology teams to create seamless, high-quality experiences that make a positive contribution to people's lives; the best products emerge when strategy, execution, and collaboration are in perfect sync.
I had the privilege to spend my early career at Google, growing up in one of the most innovative work environments of its time, leading and collaborating across operations, product, engineering, and data science teams in Ads, Customer Support, Maps and Shopping. I tried to apply what I learned across my later career, be it as a CEO of a renewable energy startup, as a senior advisor and interim product executive at a VC-backed InsurTech scale-up or in my work as a product and transformation consultant today.
I believe that great product management is equivalent to business development; deep business acumen is just as critical as talking to users and writing code. A strong product team needs to focus not just on how to build, but why to build, and how to align technology with business objectives to drive meaningful outcomes. Throughout my career, I’ve worked at this intersection, bringing people together to solve complex challenges and drive real, lasting impact.
What do you do for a living?
I am a partner, product coach and executive advisor at Thiga, where my mission and passion is to help European companies become better product organisations and build products that deliver sustainable value and can compete on the global stage.
What are you going to talk about at FlowCon?
I will address some of the myths and legends behind working at BigTech, specifically at Google. Yes, the food was great. No, budgets were not unlimited. And most importantly, people, culture and focus made the true difference.
What are you the proudest of?
Personally: Parenting. Hardest job in the world. Professionally: After missing a critical funding round 2 weeks before the COVID lockdown hit, we managed to wind down the team and the business in 9 months during lockdown in a responsible way for the team and clients.
What speaker and/or topic would you like to see at FlowCon?
I am very passionate about the misguided believe that "more is better". More than two thirds of product features don't add business value - the key to building better products is not to build faster and cram more features in, but focus on truly meaningful functionality and do that really, really well.
If you were an art piece, which one would it be?
I love big, audacious goals, so maybe something like Cristo's "Wrapping the Reichstag" from 1995. I particularly like that he bootstrapped this and had no external investment.
What's your favorite band, artist or song?
The saxophone intro to "Your Latest Trick" by Dire Straits gives me goosebumps. But I also like Grunge, Country and Deep House, so you go figure it out...
Sum up your session or workshop in only 1 sentence
The real difference of how Big Tech works is the people and their culture of trust, communication, collaboration and execution.
What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
There is not one "Big Tech" playbook, you must find your own.
People are key to everything; principles and incentives align people.
Ideas are cheap. Prioritization and execution make the difference.
