DELIVERED

Modern product thinking inside a 270-year-old brand with Sam McCarthy

Infinum Season 1 Episode 21

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0:00 | 34:48

Unlike most tech companies, Sotheby’s doesn’t ship fast and break things. The auction house has been selling rare art and luxury objects for almost 270 years, and their clients expect a white-glove experience at every touchpoint. When your buyer pool is small and consists of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, you can’t afford to lose their trust with a feature rollout that’s a little buggier than it should be. At Sotheby’s, trust took centuries to build.

So how do you run a product team inside a company like that? Join our conversation with Sam McCarthy, VP of Product at Sotheby’s, to find out. 

Key learnings:

  • Understand the challenges of building complex digital products inside a non-technical, legacy organization
  • Learn how Sotheby’s balances tradition with the speed of modern product development 
  • Discover how Sotheby’s leverages technology to improve client experience and stay ahead
  • Find out what’s most difficult to modernize in a legacy company: systems, processes, or mindset
  • Explore how Sotheby’s leverages AI and data to track artworks and verify provenance across decades

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About Infinum
Delivered is brought to you by a leading digital product agency, Infinum. We've been consulting, workshopping, and delivering advanced digital solutions since 2005.

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