Latest news with #MorganBrown
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Gerard Butler looks in good spirits as he enjoys a bike ride with girlfriend Morgan Brown in NYC
Gerard Butler looked in good spirits as he went for a bike ride with his girlfriend Morgan Brown in New York City on Thursday. The 300 actor, 55, cut a casual figure in a light brown t-shirt, adidas trainers and a baseball cap, as he cruised around in the sunshine. Morgan, 54, also opted for neutral tones, twinning her beige short-sleeved shirt with a matching mini-skirt and tasseled cowboy boots. The Los Angeles-based real-estate investor nodded to her home county with a Le Café De La Plage cap, merch from the iconic Malibu brunch hotspot. The couple confirmed they were officially back together hitting the How To Train Your Dragon red carpet as a duo in LA. Gerard Butler looked in good spirits as he went for a bike ride with his girlfriend Morgan Brown in New York City on Thursday The lovebirds were on and off for a few years, having first got together more than a decade ago in 2014. Gerard was recently spotted posing with actress Nico Parker while attending day three of CinemaCon 2025 in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Nico, who is the daughter of Emmy winner Thandiwe Newton and director Ol Parker - paused for snaps alongside The Phantom Of The Opera actor, 55, at a special screening of How To Train Your Dragon at the event. The upcoming film is a live-action adaptation of the 2010 animated movie and is set to hit theaters later this year on June 13. Nico put on a stylish display wearing a white dress which was layered with a dazzling silver jacket. She slipped into a pair of closed-toed, black heels and allowed her brunette locks to flow down in light waves past her shoulders. Nico and Gerard were also joined by director Dean DeBlois as they addressed the crowd inside a theater at Caesar's Palace. Other stars that have been cast in the remake include Mason Thames, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison and Gabriel Howell. The premise is: 'As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together,' per IMDB. In January, Gerard revealed the reason why shooting the upcoming action thriller, Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera, was a 'nightmare.' He opened up about an injury he suffered shortly before filming began for the sequel. The movie - which also stars O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Evin Ahmad - hit theatres on Friday, January 10. While recently talking to Entertainment Weekly, 'This was a weird time for me at the beginning of this movie because I'd been through a pretty intense surgery.' 'And then I tore my ACL fully about a month later and then started this movie,' Butler continued. 'So I was not in the best shape, and it was a pretty physical movie, and I didn't have a chance to get the surgery on my ACL, so I made this movie with a freshly torn ACL, and it was pretty rough. 'I wanted to put a "but" in to make it sound positive, but it wasn't positive. It was a nightmare!' Gerard expressed, before humorously adding, 'And I was a whiny little b***h!'
Business Insider
17-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The No. 1 piece of advice a Dropbox exec has for job seekers looking to break into tech
Dropbox 's VP of product and growth, Morgan Brown, advises job seekers to put their work on display. Brown said anyone can build products with the amount of free tools and online courses now available. Brown took 20 years to finish his degree and worked his way up the career ladder by teaching himself. Morgan Brown told Business Insider that it's about showcasing your capabilities, rather than showing how you arrived at an answer. "Publish your stuff, publish your thinking," Brown said in an interview. "Build the apps, build the websites." Brown said he would give that advice at any time, but it's especially relevant in the age of AI. In a time where there's an abundance of free tools and online courses, Brown said there's nothing stopping job seekers from building products on their own. All candidates need to get started is a phone and internet access, Brown said. "There are so many opportunities to kind of, like, show what you have to offer right now without kind of any credential necessary other than just your work," Brown said. The Dropbox product exec said that when he suggests building a product, people sometimes say that they don't know enough or don't have good ideas. That shouldn't be a deterrent, Brown said. "First of all, no one's paying any attention," Brown said, adding that you can "learn by doing" and eventually create a body of work to point to that some people will end up noticing. Brown said his advice comes from the perspective of someone who isn't a "classically trained product manager." Despite spending years in product management at Facebook, Instagram, and Shopify, the now Dropbox VP didn't have a typical start to the realm of Big Tech. In fact, he didn't finish his college degree until a few years ago. "I was a biology major, you know, I failed out of college. It took me 20 years to get my degree," Brown said. After dropping out of school, Brown started his first job in data operations at a startup in the midst of the dot-com boom. It was a time before the rise of APIs, and the bulk of his work started with typing information from physical newspapers. He said search engine optimization had recently emerged, and he had to figure out how to get web traffic. "I basically was a self-taught digital marketer, fully based on like what kind of impact we could have," Brown said. "And then from there I went to digital marketing." In addition to learning how to generate traffic, Brown ended up teaching himself how to create a website and blog, and eventually how to build products. While Brown said he's grateful for the experience and where it led him, he said he learned what he knows now "at the school of hard knocks" and experienced "a lot of failure along the way." He went from publishing his thoughts online to co-authoring a published book called "Hacking Growth," a guide for driving growth. He said putting his work out there led people to find him and ultimately created opportunities.
Business Insider
17-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The No. 1 piece of advice a Dropbox exec has for job seekers looking to break into tech
Like many tech execs, Dropbox's VP of product and growth agrees that job seekers should still learn basic technical skills — but his No. 1 piece of advice is to "show your work." Morgan Brown told Business Insider that it's about showcasing your capabilities, rather than showing how you arrived at an answer. "Publish your stuff, publish your thinking," Brown said in an interview. "Build the apps, build the websites." Brown said he would give that advice at any time, but it's especially relevant in the age of AI. In a time where there's an abundance of free tools and online courses, Brown said there's nothing stopping job seekers from building products on their own. All candidates need to get started is a phone and internet access, Brown said. "There are so many opportunities to kind of, like, show what you have to offer right now without kind of any credential necessary other than just your work," Brown said. The Dropbox product exec said that when he suggests building a product, people sometimes say that they don't know enough or don't have good ideas. That shouldn't be a deterrent, Brown said. "First of all, no one's paying any attention," Brown said, adding that you can "learn by doing" and eventually create a body of work to point to that some people will end up noticing. Brown said his advice comes from the perspective of someone who isn't a "classically trained product manager." Despite spending years in product management at Facebook, Instagram, and Shopify, the now Dropbox VP didn't have a typical start to the realm of Big Tech. In fact, he didn't finish his college degree until a few years ago. "I was a biology major, you know, I failed out of college. It took me 20 years to get my degree," Brown said. After dropping out of school, Brown started his first job in data operations at a startup in the midst of the dot-com boom. It was a time before the rise of APIs, and the bulk of his work started with typing information from physical newspapers. He said search engine optimization had recently emerged, and he had to figure out how to get web traffic. "I basically was a self-taught digital marketer, fully based on like what kind of impact we could have," Brown said. "And then from there I went to digital marketing." In addition to learning how to generate traffic, Brown ended up teaching himself how to create a website and blog, and eventually how to build products. While Brown said he's grateful for the experience and where it led him, he said he learned what he knows now "at the school of hard knocks" and experienced "a lot of failure along the way." He went from publishing his thoughts online to co-authoring a published book called "Hacking Growth," a guide for driving growth. He said putting his work out there led people to find him and ultimately created opportunities. "There's nothing stopping anyone from publishing and showing their work," Brown said. "And I think more people that do that, that's where good stuff happens."
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
I'm a VP of AI product growth at Dropbox. This is my advice to product managers in the age of AI.
Morgan Brown has worked through multiple tech revolutions at Facebook, Instagram, and Shopify. The Dropbox VP of product and growth suggested that product managers understand technical basics. He also said product managers should spend time learning the new tools and adapt to a faster pace. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Morgan Brown, Dropbox's VP of product and growth for AI products. The following has been edited for length and clarity. We're sitting at a really interesting time. My first job was at a tech startup in 1999 during the dot-com boom, and the world was changing incredibly fast. I've lived through a couple of these iterations — the big mobile revolution with the iPhone, then web 2.0. The AI revolution seems like it's going to dwarf all of those, and it creates an opportunity for product managers to focus more on the unique attributes of creativity and innovation. I've worked in product management at Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, and now Dropbox. This is my advice for product managers to level up their careers in the AI age. I think all product managers and business leaders should be spending a lot of time with new tools, whether you call it vibe coding or vibe marketing. There's never been a better time for product managers to test new ideas. Rather than having to write a doc, you can build an app. You can prototype something really quickly to validate some assumptions and learn what may or may not work. Most product managers didn't previously have access to moving out of that conceptual realm into the physical reality of what these ideas actually look and feel like. Now, there's a new opportunity to accelerate how they think about developing their taste, developing their craft, and understanding what makes sense in physical products. I don't think the highest and best use of AI is using AI to do something for you. I think it's really about how AI can be a thought and collaboration partner. There are a bunch of different ways that it can just augment the human capability of innovation and creative ideas. I try to use it in a way that pushes my immediate thinking capacity in my daily life. For example, if we're looking at how we can make our product more differentiated, I might feed it some ways that we're thinking about it and ask it to think of five more ways. I also try to have a council of LLMs as opposed to one, whether it's Dropbox's Dash or Claude, or ChatGPT. I think of these tools as ways to unlock more of that, and I think that's really the most exciting opportunity. It's about how you make that deep work time more productive with a thought partner who can help you expand your thinking. It's really important to have a basic understanding of the domain you're operating in. Understanding how different components of a technical stack interoperate at a system level really helps you understand what's possible. And I think the people who understand those the most deeply find the most interesting opportunities to bring new value and new product ideas to market. I also think being able to speak the language and having an understanding of the system will always be important. If we take everything as a black box, then we lack the understanding of what's possible if we had a deeper insight into how it actually works. Another thing product managers should do is realize how fast things are changing. At tech companies, most people operate in six-month performance cycles, quarterly roadmaps, and bi-weekly status updates. Today, that's just not tenable. So I think product managers need to really understand the speed at which things are moving. Then, they need to think about how to create learning opportunities, systems, and behaviors to keep up with that. I think that's how you augment your skills, whether it's through AI, reworking how your team works, or reworking how a road map three months from now will be totally obsolete with some startup that launches tomorrow. When you talk to a product manager team and they say 40% of their time is spent on project management, that's not where you want them. You want them focused on the "deep work," which they can do more of if they automate the busy work. You can't really think about how something might work as a product in between Slack pings. You really need to sit down for a couple of hours, map some stuff out, and play with the problem space. Creating that distraction-free time to do that expansive thinking and then converging on a few ideas is the type of work that most companies would die to have more of. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
I'm a VP of AI product growth at Dropbox. This is my advice to product managers in the age of AI.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Morgan Brown, Dropbox's VP of product and growth for AI products. The following has been edited for length and clarity. We're sitting at a really interesting time. My first job was at a tech startup in 1999 during the dot-com boom, and the world was changing incredibly fast. I've lived through a couple of these iterations — the big mobile revolution with the iPhone, then web 2.0. The AI revolution seems like it's going to dwarf all of those, and it creates an opportunity for product managers to focus more on the unique attributes of creativity and innovation. I've worked in product management at Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, and now Dropbox. This is my advice for product managers to level up their careers in the AI age. Spend time with the new tools I think all product managers and business leaders should be spending a lot of time with new tools, whether you call it vibe coding or vibe marketing. There's never been a better time for product managers to test new ideas. Rather than having to write a doc, you can build an app. You can prototype something really quickly to validate some assumptions and learn what may or may not work. Most product managers didn't previously have access to moving out of that conceptual realm into the physical reality of what these ideas actually look and feel like. Now, there's a new opportunity to accelerate how they think about developing their taste, developing their craft, and understanding what makes sense in physical products. Use AI as a thought partner I don't think the highest and best use of AI is using AI to do something for you. I think it's really about how AI can be a thought and collaboration partner. There are a bunch of different ways that it can just augment the human capability of innovation and creative ideas. I try to use it in a way that pushes my immediate thinking capacity in my daily life. For example, if we're looking at how we can make our product more differentiated, I might feed it some ways that we're thinking about it and ask it to think of five more ways. I also try to have a council of LLMs as opposed to one, whether it's Dropbox's Dash or Claude, or ChatGPT. I think of these tools as ways to unlock more of that, and I think that's really the most exciting opportunity. It's about how you make that deep work time more productive with a thought partner who can help you expand your thinking. Understand the basics It's really important to have a basic understanding of the domain you're operating in. Understanding how different components of a technical stack interoperate at a system level really helps you understand what's possible. And I think the people who understand those the most deeply find the most interesting opportunities to bring new value and new product ideas to market. I also think being able to speak the language and having an understanding of the system will always be important. If we take everything as a black box, then we lack the understanding of what's possible if we had a deeper insight into how it actually works. Adapt to the pace Another thing product managers should do is realize how fast things are changing. At tech companies, most people operate in six-month performance cycles, quarterly roadmaps, and bi-weekly status updates. Today, that's just not tenable. So I think product managers need to really understand the speed at which things are moving. Then, they need to think about how to create learning opportunities, systems, and behaviors to keep up with that. I think that's how you augment your skills, whether it's through AI, reworking how your team works, or reworking how a road map three months from now will be totally obsolete with some startup that launches tomorrow. Make time for the "deep work" When you talk to a product manager team and they say 40% of their time is spent on project management, that's not where you want them. You want them focused on the "deep work," which they can do more of if they automate the busy work. You can't really think about how something might work as a product in between Slack pings. You really need to sit down for a couple of hours, map some stuff out, and play with the problem space. Creating that distraction-free time to do that expansive thinking and then converging on a few ideas is the type of work that most companies would die to have more of.
