I’ve always enjoyed thinking about new feature releases or changes for products, both those that I found helpful and dreaming about what something could be (examples here, here, and here).
I also liked Alix Pasquet clip here about how hedge fund analysts should do field research (i.e., analyst did 20 pages of work on Tesla without stepping in the car, Google shareholders hadn’t run an ad campaign).
Another example: For all of the Twitter hedge fund accounts that talk about Match Group $MTCH, surely folks have downloaded the apps and seen what people actually pay for.
Of course some products you can’t readily use as a n=1 consumer (I can’t really learn how TriNet or SMB products work without having a business myself) but at least use the product, sounds like one of your early steps after reading about a business.
Came across some recent PM content and did some data collection: interviews with
- Janie Lee (current Loom, prior Rippling, Opendoor, Box)
- Alex Cohen (current new healthcare, prior Carbon Health)
- Nikunj Kothari (current Khosla Ventures, prior Meter, Opendoor, LinkedIn)
- Geoff Charles (current Ramp)
Common thread at first glance: people matter a ton. If people are talented and committed that is good odds to get where you want to go.
Janie Lee: Three Core Skills that Make the Best PMs
Podcast between Janie Lee (Loom (now part of Atlassian $TEAM), Rippling, Opendoor, Box) and Harry Stebbings (Founder of VC firm 20VC + podcast).
Takeaways:
- I liked this podcast as it gave some unique product ideas/incentives/insights I hadn’t thought about.
- Being able to crisply articulate customer problem and why it need be solved. Is it as low friction as possible? How does it make you feel?
- There are some cons to hypergrowth? (i.e., if you go from B2B to large enterprise too quickly and skip product offering for SMB or mid-market)
- Writing is infinitely helpful for clarity of thought. Send to team goals/agenda/desired outcomes day before a meeting. Know who you are writing to.
- Interviewing: more additive to hear how someone reasons or does a process vs. the outcome from a process.
- Three types of questions: need to know, good to know, and more cuiorisity-driven. Time spent grappling on questions should go from highest, lower, then lowest, respectively.
- GTM/story-telling/narrative is important
Notes:
- On Opendoor, getting details/basis points was big focus. Understand outliers on pricing algorithm. “1 mispriced home could wipe out profit margin on 20-40 homes”
- Advice for juniors: Join companies with high talent density; single biggest predictor of career acceleration.
- Role of senior: Create talent density; coach people from good to great. Let people go when feedback isn’t working in transparent and empathetic way.
- Parker at Rippling
- Understood the customer best. Used the software so knew the problems.
- Also great story-teller and sales person; need vision for nascent products.
- Contrarian of do-it-all approach vs. traditional advice of focus.
- Product from Rippling: How to create a good customer experience by integrating everywhere. Iterative cycle.
- “Sell a buyer who may not be the user and sell a product people don’t really get to use until after they purchase.”
- What is minimum level of usability/demo until purchase decision.
- If actual users post-sale don’t use product, you’ll be in trouble later.
- For problems, “Art in diagnosis and science in executing”; Identify what situation you are in and see what tool in toolkit to use to solve.
- Developing Taste
- Can I crisply articulate customer problem and why it has to be solved?
- Articulate how you would talk about it in the market.
- Value for customers. How would you sell it.
- Is this as simple and intuitive for user as possible.
- How does experience make me feel.
- What is extra 5-10% that isn’t in scope but could help this really land
- “It feels pedantic but every time you work with design partner, give at least five pieces of feedback.”
- Is simple better in product?
- In general, yes. Like progressive disclosure.
- Be as hyper-specific and personal. Simple, fast, easy.
- Make the value/ROI the user gets very explicit. Celebrate users explicitly (show them how they save time, better distribution)
- Helping Loom team internal focus switch from engagement metric (video views) to revenue growth was good. Making it explicit and encourage asking of question “if drive engagement…how play-through to revenue, long-term retention”
- “Value power users” – outsized impact on reach and views from this cohort. There will be some customers who will never pay for your product. How large/small do you want that group to be? Do you want them? Sometimes free users have outsized impact on top of funnel (i.e., they have large social reach)
- How to think about product going from B2C to B2B
- You need to change DNA of team on hiring/operating. Won’t be seeing immediate growth and numbers vs. core growth team.
- In core product growth, you focus on engagement, usage, revenue. Usually see reflected in a quarter. In enterprise, there are some unsexy table stakes. Data residency or HIPPA/FINRA compliance. Not seeing feedback or dollars even if spend 6-9mo building. Long sales cycles. How celebrate top inputs or pipeline. “If build data residency, this is how much more oppy/customer base one unlocks.”
- Share core outcomes with sales. Build and unlock revenue, then see how much of it turns to pipeline. Long sales cycles. (More reliant on sales?)
- Transition
- Work way up until enterprise. If you see enterprise demand, that’s good.
- Figure out how to win all customers between PLG and enterprise. Loom skipped learning/building for SMB and mid-market before enterprise.
- Built features that had low usage as large demand dried up.
- Jump from PLG to enterprise is a big one.
- Big customers have large asks.
- Large customers don’t need data residency. They need xyz. Another customer needs a different permutation.
- Make commitment from staffing and R&D perspective.
- When to commit to build up?
- If small org, define revenue threshold for building feature
- If large org, big commitment comes from realization that “PLG won’t be enough”
- Decide at what point to double down/invest.
- Writing is forcing function to achieve clarity of thought.
- Understand well and able to explain.
- 1-2 pager such that they know what, why, how, what their role is, and has context for understanding problems.
- Tactics to be better writer:
- Write more
- Send out goals/agenda/desired outcomes of meeting the day before.
- Distill key takeaways and summary.
- Mistake: share writing before distillation. Mistake volume of writing vs. depth or clarity of thought.
- Know your audience: executive team vs. engineers.
- Asking Good Q’s
- Can I explain really simply what it is we are doing, why, and am I convinced it is worthwhile? Have to get to resolution. Otherwise solution is unclear.
- Second- or third- order: can you identify most important things to answer, or risks. Relative cost of not answering those Q’s or getting them wrong?
- Is there unique context I have that team doesn’t have?
- Hiring
- Fan of junior PMs. What to look for?
- High IQ / EQ
- High effort. Do more in same amount of time.
- Coachable. Humility to learn and adapt.
- Junior are cheapest on $ and large arbitrage oppy.
- Interview Q’s
- Track record of impact
- What is your background/biggest professional accomplishment
- Less good: “I shipped X which had Y impact”
- More good: “This is problem company had. This is why it was important to solve. This was my process to figure out what/how to solve. And this is how it landed. How did you bridge it from plan to reality.”
- How introspective are you?
- Hard skills?
- Take-home before superday.
- Assess whether they should meet whole team. Expensive use of team time.
- If they come, see how they work with people. Interact with critical questions: defensive or curious when probed?
- General: Can you add clarity of thought to ambiguous problem and clear structure that can convince people? Are you creative? Can you teach me something new or make me think about something in new way? High effort in preparation?
- Track record of impact
- Fan of junior PMs. What to look for?
- How to know if you hired a bad PM?
- Is team in healthier or unhealthier spot?
- Did you drive clarity into really ambiguous part of strategy?
- Bad hires spend 3mo still getting lay of the land. What is time from content absorption into behavior/impact. 3mo is plenty of time.
- Product Review
- Two types: exec review and casual product critique
- Exec review
- High stake/high cost/strategic/one-way door reviews.
- Execs pick or PMs self-nominate problems.
- If early on: problem definition/strategic. Identify business outcome and how make customer life better. If more mature: solutions. Exec reviews on solutions. Once built out: how to understand GTM and delivery of product.
- Rituals
- Before: PM leader sends Loom pre-watch 24hrs before. All have dropped in feedback/questions. Exec review shouldn’t answer all questions. Some questions though will be vital to answer to ensure right thing is being built. Some things good to know. Some are more curiosity questions.
- When ask a question, know which one it is, and it should correlate with amount of time you spend grappling with it. More time answering questions, diminishing returns. Early on: can be more creative. Then distill and focus down to what matters. Timing matters.
- After: people need to know what decision, why made, known risks in making decision.
- Casual product critique
- Story-telling at scale is important skill. Audience/reach changes at progressive parts of your career. This moment in time is distinctly different than few quarters ago.
- If you assume AI will be a better enabler sooner than later, take big risks now.
- Underestimate importance of GTM/story-telling
Alex Cohen Interview
Alex (prior founder of few startups, Carbon Health from early ‘21 through 2023) interview with Ben. Similar to podcast above, was more a general interview vs. very product specific.
Takeaways:
- “Build stuff, have accountability for it, be involved, craft narrative/story around it.”
- Probably is additive to think on what can be done internally, what should be done internally (because vendors are too $ or suck), and what really should be outsourced?
Notes:
- On Alex’s Twitter posting, twitter brands asked Alex to run account and compensate non-trivial amount.
- Best tweets (on engagement) are controversial down the middle but doesn’t get you canceled. Entertaining, exciting, original content.
- VS: His learning on Commanddot is sad, perfect time to do this business, just not a good founder fit, you can tell his frustration when he recalls it, and the problem isn’t solved yet?
- Re-built a bunch of internal tools at Carbon. Hired a bunch of ex-founders. Rebuild call center, Native apps, patient apps, hardware. Own EHR software, own integrations to labs/clearing houses, own native patient apps, acquired clinics. People made company what it was.
Nikunj Kothari Interview
This was from Ben Lang (community builder, prior Notion, AtSpoke (now Okta $OKTA)) interviewing Nikunj Kothari (Yahoo PM Intern —> LinkedIn —> Hall (acq. by TEAM) —> Shyp —> OPEN —>Meter —> Investor at Khosla).
I think the general podcast questions (why did you join X, how was it at X, what did you do at X, what did you think when pivoting from X to Y) are fine; though was personally looking for a bit more product-focused insights. Notes are shorter as trying to summarize product/culture takeaways specifically.
Takeaways:
- Funny how too large a group of strongly opinionated people can be a recipe for disaster too. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
- “Ability to talk about details/unit economics and big picture/vision is tough but helpful.”
- Before an interview, do some personal work on the company and prepare some thoughts. Sort of already gets at the solution for every recruiter’s main problem “Will this person provide value, yes or no, and for what cost” sooner than later. And by cost I include financial but more so cultural cost.
Notes:
- Talent at Opendoor $OPEN was special. Join at 200 people. 17-20 founders at company. At worse, learned a lot. At best, helped transform tech RE journey.
- Ramp also high talent density of founders….same at Rippling.
- Founders are ambitious and opinionated. Hard sometimes at OPEN b/c so many strongly opinionated people. Can be recipe for disaster too. Good though to have people come in and own a function.
- Before OPEN interview, spent a weekend writing a few pages on the company, thoughts, big opportunities, what one would do in first few months, send ahead of on-site interview.
- Navigating fast growth start-up?
- If offer seat on rocket ship, take it
- The world changes every 12-18 months. Be prepared and grab opportunities with both hands. Help get company in better place, then find next hardest problem.
- For high talent density, find good crafts people and keep thinking very long term.
- Ended up being 32 founders who left OPEN
- Got into angel investing with small $ but mostly just liking products, cold DM founder and offer some thoughts.
Head of Product, Geoff Charles Shares Product Playbook On How Ramp Raised $800m in 18 Months
Geoff has done a few podcasts on Ramp product but this presentation he did at this founder event has slides which I found helpful.
Takeaways:
- Easier said than done (probably) but just empowering people to be owners/principals and trusting them that if they have the context, and you have vetted their hard abilities, that if a goal is somewhat defined, they can make tangible progress toward it on their own. Product manager, not project manager.
- Have autonomous teams based on product offering; all-in-one to build something.
- Basically net positive to have people know what other people are doing, what they care about, and their incentives. Helps prioritize horizontally and get buy-in from people. Everyone knows everyone else’s condition.
- Have a bunch of data vendors to keep getting feedback and iterating.
- Eventually make things clear and somewhat pedantic: clearly defined processes so people can have their uncertainty be in how to do something, not how it fits into the bigger equation. Reduce the uncertainty someone has when they come in as much as possible. Need buy-in/commitment for daily accountability to work.
- Think a lot about what to build before building. Prototype and flush out thesis. Imagine future then build back to present (motivating and helpful to think long term).
Notes/Slides:
Geoff joined Ramp 01/2020
Most impressive: built this with 35 engineers on average; high speed development velocity
Develop quickly – Empowered teams, feedback, fast cadence
Empower product teams by having a vision, define goals to reach that vision, define metrics (KPI, revenue, growth, customers, retention), to hit metrics you have different hypothesis, define projects/tasks, and then once release projects you get results
PMs think PM is at project level. Assign teams goals, not projects. Hold them accountable. Product vs. project management. Can’t have different divisions. Create single-thread, fully auto, product teams.
Tasks aren’t set by managers, but they are set by teams themselves. Managers become coaches, provide feedback, and help them with resources.
6 teams at Ramp. Team has business objective. They own user experience. Have roadmap. All roadmaps tie into single product strategy.
Software can flag when expense out of policy or give companies full visibility on where everyone is.
Bi-directional feedback.
Have a tiering system that team aligns on for product releases.
Product tiering, landing pages, sales collateral, press releases, life cycle marketing, social media, newsletters, paid ads. (Funny enough, Montgomery Street BART in SF is covered in Ramp ads).
Product <> marketing <> sales calendar. Equal empowerment and leadership.
Feedback is chaotic.
Examples:
Support team: everyone complains about this thing
Sales team: this whale customer wants this feature
Account management: need one small widget built to retain account etc.
Define lead in each customer facing team that is accountable for voice of customer on that product. Embedded in single product-led team.
Product management team has empower to say no.
Product team equal empathy with sales, understand that customer needs X. Sales need to understand product team. Saying no b/c we are working on 16 more important things.
Vendor usage:
Typeform: survey; Gong: sales call; Zendesk: support; Pendo: in-app analytics; Salesforce: (hinted at very real need of new competitor)
Data piped into data warehouse. Can pull a report that everything is blocked, all needed features, and correlation of features to target segments.
Slack: All feedback is posted on slack, busy chats but there is visibility from broader team.
Code by product and sub-product type. Nice to have, must to have, or blocker. Weighted average pipeline on features/problems
Ask why. Use Figma to build entire product without code. Build devs in early. Bring engineer to customer. Small teams. Launch early/optimize for feedback.
Define as goal/key result what you want. Spring planning every 2 weeks. What did we do, what impact did it have, what do we do now, why is it important, who is doing what. Operational and high leverage. Then daily scrums: what did you do yesterday, what are you doing today, what do you need help on. Clear dashboards tied to OKRs.
No project managers. Empower teams that are accountable. Team holds you accountable, not project manager.
Dual-Track Delivery
- When you decide to do something, before building anything, spent a ton of time understanding what to build. Two tracks: one is discovery/research/ideas/prototyping and one is execution. Can get far with first one and 10 customer calls. Once define good idea, bring to delivery track, then get it out ASAP. Clarify what stage the project is in.
- If you build the wrong thing your velocity will go down.
- To build right in B2B, ask why. Instead of just listening blindly to customer, help customer think through their problem. Build what they need, not what they want. Deeply understand customer. Sit down with them and do their job.
Before build MVP, know where you are going. Start with 10x experience. Then walk backwards. You know what you are building toward long term. Super motivating to build toward 10x goal.
Speed is everything. Founder makes team believe, happy, passionate. Then grinding isn’t so bad.
There’s a lot here but I think there are some good ideas here on optimizing processes on getting things done in teams, what you should always remind yourself of (i.e., solving customer problems), and personally I enjoy more of the pedantic/actual things you do to reduce friction and make life easier than it was yesterday.
More to come on Product…
-VS
