A peer-led meetup for product people
Product Therapy brings together small groups of product people for honest, thoughtful conversations about the situations, decisions, questions, and tradeoffs that shape our day-to-day. No talks. No pitches. Just peers who understand the work, taking time to think things through together.
How it started
Product Therapy started in Montréal in 2018 with a simple idea: product people needed a different kind of meetup.
There were already plenty of good events for talks, panels, and networking. Those formats can be useful, but they often leave little space for the conversations people need to have: the ones that take context, nuance, and enough time to think.
Product work is full of situations that are hard to explain quickly. A new VP who has reset the direction. A roadmap that gets rewritten faster than you can build to it. A piece of technical work that is hard to justify with a number. A role that does not feel like the right fit, but might still be worth staying in.
So we tried a simpler format: a small group, no presentations, and enough time for each person to bring something real from their work.
What we found is that people don't need more content. They need peers who understand the work, ask good questions, and help them see their situation from a few different angles.
As one participant put it:"Listening to others and finding that I'm not alone… it's amazing."
How it grew
The format kept resonating. People came for a useful conversation, but many left with a sense that they had found people they could actually talk to about their work. Not just contacts. Not just advice. Peers who understood what the work is actually like and offered practical, meaningful advice.
As people who experienced that kind of space moved, they wanted to recreate it in their own city. With that, Product Therapy began growing beyond Montréal.
Regardless of the city, the format has stayed the same. The groups are still small. The conversations still come from real situations at work. And what is said in them stays between the people who said it.
We have turned down a lot to keep it that way (sponsors, bigger events, recordings, faster growth, etc.) Not out of principle, but because we have seen what protects the conversation and what does not.
We keep it small because that is what makes it work. We are growing carefully, one chapter at a time, so the experience can stay personal, useful, and grounded.
What we are building
Product Therapy is more than a meetup format. It exists because people need better spaces to think through their work with peers who understand it.
We are not trying to become a big professional network, a content platform, or another place to collect contacts. We are trying to make the kind of space people wish existed more often — one where the conversation is actually worth being in.
That is the only thing we are trying to get right. Not the scale. Not the cadence. The quality of what happens when people sit down together.
If it feels small, that is intentional.
Four things we keep coming back to.
Small on purpose
Conversation that works at six people, would not work at forty. All of our decisions come down to whether they protect the conversations, or slowly erode them.
Specifics are what matters
The most useful conversations are about the actual reorg, the actual stakeholder, the actual call you have been turning over for weeks; and how other people handled theirs.
It only works off the record
Nothing said in the conversation leaves it with a name attached. We say it out loud at the start of every session, and it changes what people will say — including the things they would not say anywhere else.
Everyone participates.
There is no audience. Everyone brings something, asks questions, and offers what they have actually done in similar situations. Working through someone else's situation is often where you start to see your own more clearly.
A handful of PMs, in their off hours.
Each chapter is run by 1–3 organizers. Below, the founding crew.