20Product: How Linktree, Webflow and Airbnb Used Rituals and Product Principals to Guide Product Roadmap, Why All Product Teams Should Have a Scorecard and How to Use it & How to Run the Best "Product Jams" with JZ, CPO @ Linktree

24:35So we have this saying at LinkTree, which is like, we believe that, you know, creators are SMBs and SMBs are creators, meaning creators are trying to make money and SMBs in order for them to be to survive in the world today, they need to understand social media. They need to be much more digitally native. We believe those things to be true and as a result, we can actually figure out the needs across those user groups and prioritize that intersection. When I hear you speak, everything is very structured. We've got the KPI trees we have that can focus on, you know, product strategy, very intimately.

25:04But then you've said to me before about planning not existing and maybe planning should not exist. And I'm like, it seems in paradox. Can you talk to me about why planning should not exist? And does that not go against everything that we've just done with KPI trees, metrics, prioritization? How do you think about planning should not exist? I think that a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about planning and they talk about process. And those two things I would really turn on their heads. So what I believe in is if you could spend your time doing anything I spend 80 % or more of your time on your strategy and on your rituals Like those are the two things I really believe in so let me talk you through like what that means the strategy Where are you going?

25:46What's the world that you believe in and like how does that world become different because your product exists? Right your strategy has a couple of key pieces to it has that piece as a piece of like what makes you uniquely positioned to win. Like if you can't articulate that, like keep figuring that out. And then it also includes like what are you not doing? I talked to you about this concept of having these investment areas and also having this concept of like, okay, well if these are what we're investing in, these are not what we're gonna do. This is not in focus, right? You have to articulate all those things and you can call that a plan, but I really like to call it a strategy because I think so many times you go through planning cycles as a company whether big, medium or small and then literally by Q1 of the next year, where like fiscal year rolls around.

26:32Like everything goes out the door. You're like, oh, this took a lot longer to build than I thought. And oh my gosh, this new customer just came to the door and they are really important. They have all these needs, right? Like that happens so often. So I think that a lot of companies that really index on planning get really disappointed. They're disappointed by the amount of time they put in and the amount of value that they get back out of it. And so that's why I really push companies move away from this concept of planning. And I spend so much time on this concept of like strategy and strategy to make it really concrete for people is you should be able to articulate your strategy in a two page document where one person holds the pen and ideally that person is the CEO, but a lot of times I requires a partnership between the CEO and you know, say the CPO to really write it.

27:16Like so it's opinionated. It talks about what you're going to do, all the things I just mentioned. That is the basis of all the things that you do, right? So like if you spend most of your time on that document debating that document debating, Hey, this is what our advantage is. This is our alpha debating. These are the things that we're gonna invest in and these are the things that we're not gonna invest in. If you do that really, really well, you actually do the most valuable parts of quote -a -quote planning and you throw away all the non -valleable parts of planning that are really just like a show.

27:44And then, actually I'll pause for your questions, but I would love to talk about rituals, which is what I think is really important as opposed to processes. No, I was gonna exactly ask like, what is a ritual and how does that differ from a process? Yes. Yeah, again, you might just be like, Jay -Z, these are all semantics, but I think the words matter. They matter a lot, and I think that really great product people, they like sweat every word, because they realize that like communication is so much of the job, and what you say, and the words you pick matter. So a ritual is these things that you do on a habitual basis that really build muscle in the organization.

28:18I think that's why I like lean so heavily towards rituals. I always tell my team, I'm like, it's like we're going to the gym, and you know, today you're lifting weights for the first time. It's like really hard, but if you keep lifting the weights, it's gonna get easier and easier. What are the rituals that you instill to have a healthy product tool? Yes. I believe in three really important rituals, and it's because I believe in three principles. The first thing I believe a lot in is this idea of like transparency. If you don't know what's going on across the organization, it's really hard to get work done.

28:47And Linktree is a remote culture. You know, our founders are in Australia. We have people on the west coast, but also people in London, we're people around the world. And so if you don't have transparency, it's very, very difficult to get people to do their jobs well. And so for transparency, I think I've done at Wefflow, I do the thing called scorecard. And scorecard is essentially like, these are the most important projects. It's not everything. I think like once you get to everything, you're like, we might as well just use like linear or tracker, right? But it's like, these are the 10 most important projects at a company that we all need to be rallying around, right?

29:21And again, if that number could be less than 10, that's great. Five, even better. But what are the most important projects that we need to be looking at and have transparency around because they're involved multiple teams getting their act together and working in Unison? So scorecard is really important. And I think the thing I want to teach going back to the gym concept, what I want to teach my teams is there are so many times where you do scorecard from the first time. Everyone's like, this is going great. Green, green, green. So you grade every single week. Like, are you on track? Green? Are you off track?

29:49yellow or you like really off track or like at risk yellow or you really off track red right and so we have like a whole like system there and you just you just see teams being like green green green green green green green and then the quarter is closing and they're like red with no chance of salving it that is bad meaning like there's not enough like understanding what the risks are and do you risking and unblocking yourselves like a good scorecard is you're like hey this is at risk everyone this is yellow this is red let's like I need these resources I need this to get de -risk I I need like go to market to do whatever.

30:21Like that's a good scorecard and a great scorecard is like, hey, I already spotted this was a problem. It's scorecard today, but two days ago, I already met with a go to market team. I already did ABCD things. And like even though it is at risk right now, I've taken the measures to get us back to green. Right, so you basically sort of train your team. First of all, you need the transparency. And then you train your team to get a lot better at being able to spot the fact that like something's gonna go wrong and then to go correct it before it becomes a real problem. So that's one ritual that I believe a lot in, this concept of scorecard that gives you that transparency.

30:56How do you support something going along? Is it just about analyzing data? No, I mean, honestly, I think that's actually, it's less about data and more about judgment. At any given point in time, you should be able to ask a product leader of the team, a design leader of that team, and also an engineering leader of the team. And you can be like, is this on track? And I think, first of all, the first thing the first thing to do is just articulate what success looks like. If that team does not know what success looks like, It's going to be really hard for them to report out that anything's off track.

31:22But if you know what success looks like, it's actually quite easy for you to go around and be like, hey, you three, you guys are the functional leaders of this area. Is this thing on track based on what you've outlined as your goals? Very easy, right? For the engineering leader to be like, I am really worried about this dependency on this other team, on this platform team. Not thinking we're going to make it. And again, you start to see like, you know, sometimes a product leader thinks it's on track. The engineering leader thinks it's off track. and the design leader doesn't know. And that's a whole other problem that you have to diagnose.

31:51You can be like, okay, everyone, we gotta get on the same page, right? And so like it's actually the judgment piece and the ability for each person in that trifecta to play their role actually contributes to like learning the predictability of what you're able to deliver and whether or not you can actually hit some of these deadlines. Just how many times we have transparency in school card. One is a ritual and one's a principle. There are three rituals that I do with my team. So the first ritual is scorecard and it really gets at transparency. The second ritual I do with my teams is what I call product jams.

32:21How do you do product jaming? Yeah. So again, there's some things that just have to be true, which is like if you guys are all not aligned on what success looks like, no amount of jamming and brainstorming is going to be productive. In fact, you're just going to go in circles. I do think that like a product review, you have to do a couple of things right, which is you need to be clear on what success looks like, qualitatively and quantitatively, you need to be able to define your biggest risks and assumptions and work through those things. But the difference between a review and a jam is I think a lot of times in a review culture, you're like, it's just this like waterfall process.

32:52So you're like, okay, I've gone through my review and now I'm going to design review. Now I'm going through exterior, you're kind of like just going through this phase. And the reason I believe in jams is you actually get the best brain power together and you actually create agility. So you're not like going from step to step to step and you're like, okay, like this is gonna be the next week of the step. you're trying to get, you're condensing all the steps together to be like, how do I create this like really fast cycle? Who do you invite to jams and how often do you do them? Yes, it depends.

33:21It does depend on the stage of the product. So if you are doing a zero to one product, I actually feel like a product jam should be happening almost daily. Like I think when you're doing a zero to one product, you either need to be in a synchronous like physical space or you approximate that as much as possible based on like getting that team working on it, including sometimes the founder or the header product, just in there. Because any small degree of misalignment is going to just cause a bunch of problems. And you're also learning at a pace that is really, hopefully, fast. You're like, I just tested this thing.

33:54I just put this in front of users. I just went and asked this question. You're learning all the time. So that's what I believe in a zero to one product. If you're a little bit more further along, I would say the jams are most important when you are at certain stages of the product where you have to go, like you go have to go figure something out. So maybe you want to jam at the beginning because you're like, we need a jam on what success actually looks like here. It's not enough for us to say like we want to beat the competitor. That's never a user, human -driven statement, right? Like I want to be ex -competitor.

34:26Instead, we got to jam on what's the real problem here? What is the thing that we're trying to solve for people? You might be jamming a little bit later where you're like, hey, we're in the solution space. the general part of the cycle. Meaning like, we know the problem is, we know how important this problem is, but we could go multiple different ways and it were to solve this problem. We could go this solution, that solution, this other solution, let's actually jam together through the divergence part of the general brainstorming process to make sure that we actually thought about all the ideas.

34:55And so I think that when you go from a zero to one product to something that's a little bit mature, you have to identify where you can benefit from the jams most often, and also like who you're jamming with. There are a lot of times the jams are with founders. There are other times when you're like, hey, maybe that jam should be with a sales team. So we are developing a lockstep. Our jams worse when they're done as in crimecy, or not as in crimecy, but not in person. They are harder for sure. You need to do more prep, but they're not impossible. Again, Linktree is a distributed team. So we have to figure it out.

35:27And they're raising through it out. There are tools out there, right? If you are doing a jam with something like a fig jam more or a mirror, you can actually get a lot of the people cursor wise, mind -based wise in the same space, putting a post -it notes, you know brainstorming together. Nothing quite beats a whiteboard, in my opinion, especially in the zero to one phase, but you can get there. Okay, so that's number two. What's number three in terms of the ritual? Yeah, so the last thing I care about, so the first one, again, transparency, which is why I have scorecard. The second one is this idea of like co -creation and like the best ideas out there and being able to really, really fast, which is why I have jams.

36:02The last principle for me, we're like, last thing I really try to get out of teams, is this idea of like pride of ownership and accountability of their work. And that's where I really believe in this concept called like demo power hour. I brought that, you know, to Webflow, brought that to Linktree, and this idea is like, you literally have an hour, and it's very free -flowing. It is like, people just showing you what's in progress. And I think that there are so many times where teams feel like things have to be so polished, designers have this fear of like showing something before it's like pixel perfect.

36:32Engineers have, you know, sometimes a sphere of like, I don't want to like show you the thing in my sandbox or before it's ready. And you know, it could break during demo power hour. And I really encourage this idea of like, let it break. Let us see the, you know, the work in progress because it shows, it actually reinforces this concept of velocity. If every demo power hour is packed to the gills with stuff that people are shipping, at all the different stages, you're able to see like across the organization everything that's going on and it brings this level of pride. Like, engineers are like, I'm so proud to have done two demos in demo power hour, three demos in demo power hour, right?

37:08And so you get this sense of like speed and ownership even when you're shifting the culture from that because it didn't exist before. I think there'll be a lot of founders who listen to this and go, shit, I don't feel like we're moving fast enough. and I don't feel like we have that urgency. What would you advise them to instill that sense of urgency in product, deployment, development? How can they inject their organization with urgency? I think humans respond the best when they're like, I am making an impact on other humans. Like humans in general feel very motivated when they can see the results of their work.

37:43So the first thing I'd recommend is founders should really bring that impact to life. If that impact is on the users out there, whether they're perspective because they're really early startup or they're existing, right? Because even more established user base, bring that to your company, you know, show people what that looks like. At Linktree, we have, we bring a user literally every, almost every single all hands, which happens every other week. We bring a link or two that all hands to show people how they use Linktree, the things that they're struggling with, the things that they love about Linktree.

38:13And that builds at user empathy where you're like, I just know that the thing I'm doing is gonna help that person. And when you're like, ah, man, the thing I'm doing is gonna help that person, you're motivated to do it faster, to do it really well. So I think that's the first thing, which is like bring your users closer because humans are driven by making an impact on other humans. I think the second thing is like, you wanna model that behavior, right? Like it's really unproductive to be like, everyone move with urgency and you're, you know, sitting there and you're not moving with the same urgency.

38:41I would actually encourage leaders to almost model like 1 .5x, whether they're hoping out of their teams. So if you're like, I want my team to move faster than you as a leadership team, you make faster decisions. You know, you can't be like, Oh, I want to like consider all the angles and I got to make this thing perfect and then not expect that to see through the culture. You'll see that like everything starts from the top. Whatever your leader does, it will always make its way through organization. So I push my founders really, really hard to model the behavior that they want at scale at the company.

39:12You said about pushing your founders there. I do want to ask about hiring and they go through a couple of different lenses because it's really hard but so many people said that you're incredible at it. So I do want to spend some time on it. First, when's the right time to hire a CPO and how do you think about hiring a CPO versus the head of product? Let's put aside the titles for a second. Let's talk about like when do you hire a product person? Let's talk about it at each scale. So I do think a classic like mistake is that you hire a product person too quickly and you delegate the responsibility away.

39:41You're like, I'm a founder. I need to skill myself and therefore you like bring in a product leader. I do not think you do that. I think that is very dangerous. You need to stay really, really close to your product for as long as possible. In fact, I do recommend a lot of early stage founders. I'm like, look, if you want leverage, look at your existing team and think about the people that can create that leverage for you. It might be the engineering manager. It might be the designer. It might be the customer support person who's really, really close to the user feedback and they can play that PN -like role to give yourself a little bit more leverage.

40:13So I think the first caveat is, do not hire too quickly and try to delegate a way that responsibility. Then if you're like, I am definitely not delegating a way that responsibility, we have product market fit. I'm really trying to scale this thing. I really cannot physically be in all these places and there's not enough internal people to really kind of lean in. Then I would say, okay, go hire a product leader. The biggest advice I usually give here is like understand yourself deeply because of all the functions out there The product leader is the most like complimentary to a CEO right so getting that relationship right is really really important You want your product leaders to bring out the best out of you.

40:51There's a classic on failure case there too We're like I'll give an example like I'm super super visionary And so when I go interview founder or go interview product leaders that visionary founder gravitates towards other really visionary product leaders And what often happens is they'll join the company and you have two competing visions and both people will not like Conceed right because you've been hard. There's like really senior product person They're like I have these strong convictions and so I think you got to really be like what's gonna Complement me as a founder to bring out the best out of myself and that could be like hey I have a really strong vision, but I really don't know how to sequence like I see the world I can see all these pieces but like how do I sequence this thing like that is a certain type of product leader you go after, right?

41:33Or it might be like, hey, I actually am great at sequencing, but I need to think about the next like four steps, like I product A, but if I want to create a portfolio products, what is product B, C, and D, then you might want to go out and you might actually want to look for someone with like more industry expertise. Hey, I've done this portfolio thing in this kind of like space. So it really depends. And I would say, you know, I say this about all product things, whether it's building the product, building the product organization, always start with a problem. What problem are you trying to solve?

42:01I think that founders really need to be able to understand that for themselves. What problem I try to solve in this hire and being able to be honest about it and go look for it. Do you care if they've had to main expertise in the domain that you're building for? In general, I've personally found that there's a lot of benefit. There's like great power in being a journalist. As a journalist, I think that like I always go into a situation without that expertise. It's like I don't I assume I know it. I'm going in, eyes wide open, really uncomfortable because I'm like, I don't understand the space, right?

42:31So the rate of learning that I push myself to have in any given role is really, really high. I think that's really valuable because you have a lack of bias, you have a lack of pre -existing assumptions. I also think you can take mental models from different places and apply them. So the number of times I've been like, hey, I built a marketplace and that's really interesting. What if at Webflow, yes, we have a SaaS business, PLG, But like if you actually put a marketplace here so you can connect companies that need these beautiful websites built with freelancers and design agencies that can do it like that unleashes a new vector of growth, right?

43:08And like same thing like coming into a link tree and being like, hey again I have built marketplaces and I see a really interesting thing where you have the the supply you have all the creators You can easily get the demand you can get all the brands that want this data that want access to these creators You have the supply and the demand and like you can build this really interesting marketplace in a way that nobody else can at the scale that we can So that these like existing mental models for a generalist help you kind of like spot opportunities I think like sometimes like a domain expert get really tall vision on and then lastly like the world is changing at a rate that we've never Like we're just treating it a really fast rate.

43:42I wouldn't say that we've never seen before because I do think there's these like ways of Innovation but in that world you're like what I believe true to be today versus you know in a month versus the next time that OpenAI releases something, it's just going to vastly different. So being able to throw all those things away and start from first principles is really, really important. It's harder to be a product leader to stay than ever before, given in a month OpenAI, I can not always open AI, but most of the time OpenAI can release a feature and it just completely changes everything again. I think it's the most exciting time to be a product leader.

44:13There's so much innovation happening. If you're someone who's really excited about, what does that mean for real users and real people for the problems that they have, that gets really, really exciting. Because I think before you're like, I can do this thing for a really long time. I hope it works. And you're like, I can just prototype. I can prototype this tomorrow, see if it works, get learnings, and move on. What is hard today? I think that if you are rigid, your life is going to be harder. Right? So I do think you're probably going to get different answers based on who you talk to. I think for some people, they're like, yeah, it is really hard.

44:42It's hard to plan. It literally means you shift from things like what I was saying about planning and process and these things feel very rigid to like, what's your strategy and what are your rituals? Because at that level, you can be like, you know what, new information just came out. We are actually going to update our strategy. We just learned XYZ. We believe that now this is something that we didn't think we had an advantage on before, but we do today. So it's actually really easy to update your strategy and have that flow through versus if you have plans and processes and you know, these rigid road maps and you're like, I think the world works in a certain way.

45:13It is much harder to be a product leader in that world because you're like, the ground is changing underneath me all the time. But if you're not like that, if you're like, I really have sweat of the details of my strategy, I know what new information coming in would make me change aspects of the strategy. And I have enough of a system in place with my rituals, but they're not so rigid as to like, this is the exact like step -by -step process that something needs to flow through. That gives you the agility with enough structure to not be like complete chaos. Right, it gives you enough of the combination of agility and structure so that you can catch these waves and catch the new things coming out.

45:49I worry in the end that a lot of businesses will just converge in the same center point, whether that's your Squarespace and your Wix and your Webflow kind of converging with actually Link Tree in terms of creating amazing websites for restaurants, the landing pages for restaurants and everything in between. Also with Squared doing the same and maybe a toast doing the same. And then actually people being able to just create that in OpenAI with one simple command. Do you worry about this kind of convergence of where everyone ends up? The first thing I'll say is like actually really great businesses are built in crowded spaces.

46:22Because one, I think that usually when there's a crowded space, you're like there's something here. There's user demand, there's user pain, there's user need. And you know, I'll just go with the example that you gave given Linktree, Webflow, a couple of places I worked at. The need for a a digital representation of self -entity, business, whatever it is, that is only increased. And that will continue to increase. That is a trend that is going up. So I really believe in that, call it whatever you want, the term, the trend, the future. I believe in that. Then the question is, within that trend, what do you actually believe will be true?

46:55Do you believe that? In the future, you're going to be like, I would like a website that looks like blah, blah, blah, blah. And boom, just gets creative for you. Do you believe that? What do you actually believe? And also, like, at what pace do you think the market is really going to change? I believe, personally, that like, I think there's going to be two, two things, which actually benefit both Linktree and Webflow. And part of the reason why I went to Linktree after Webflow, I don't think I'm destroying value in any sense. I think that there is companies out there that, you know, for the past 10 years plus, they've been spending very expensive engineering dollars, development dollars on building their website.

47:30There are real engineering teams for the many past years I've been at like an Airbnb where it's like you are building their website. But when I think about marketing pages like these like really important websites, you're even your main .com. I don't see a world where you need to be having your engineering teams do that anymore. That really will get solved by software. But I do believe that those companies have a very strong desire to have like pixel perfect websites. Their website is their brand in many ways again like based on the trend that I just talked about before. So in that world you actually want tools, technology that enable that like deep brand, like affinity and building an Apple .com, like you can do that on Loveflow.

48:11You can't do that with any other tool really on the market, right? And so like I believe that that is going to continue like every single company is going to have a marketing website. They are going to want that what marketing website to look really beautiful, really perfect. And they want a lot of control and they are definitely not going to be spending engineering hours on it. They're going to outsource that because that's way cheaper. So like I believe in that trend at the same time I also believe that for most people who are not you know Amazon Nike, you know app like all those companies Like I believe that for everyone else including you know you and me But more you than me because I'm pushing myself to be a creator when I'm actually not really creator That's why I'm teaching so much to like get that empathy, but like for you You're like I have a real I've like a fun, but I also have like you know all the podcasts like I think that for creators and for SMBs, basically what I talked about before, I think this idea of needing a digital presence, but not wanting a web flow.

49:02Like that web flow is not for these people, like not wanting to get... I thought it was a really hard product. Sorry, I'm not. Like web flow is a bit like Shopify. They're like fucking hard. I'm really sorry, I know I'm seeing a problem, but Jesus is like not that easy. No, I totally agree, and that's something I wrestled with a lot when I was at web flow. I was like the trade off between power and simplicity, right? Yeah, who do you solve for? Like the power users who love it and who need that depth? Versus me who's like, oh my god, this was more challenging than I thought. I think the power users and like, why?

49:34Because for Harry, the right solution is a luxury. And it's not a web flow. But I would then say the web flow sits in the messy middle. People who really want like advanced features, but not bad advanced that they're like on the most pro tools. Do you see what I mean? I know what you mean and it is something I wrestle with, but here's what I actually believe. I think you're right. It is in the middle, but you're competing against. So I think that the ultimate question is how much up the stack can you get for Webflow, right? So the reason we bought in telemise recently is because at the end of the day, you build a website, that's what Webflow is really great at.

50:06But there's all this other stuff you do, and there are all these companies out there. There's like optimizely, there's like all this other stuff. If you can actually build that full website development stack, like I'm at Linktree and I am actually like now a customer and I am not even pushing Webflow. I'm like, hey, Sifrinas, hey team, you guys decide, but you go do the research. I think they're doing the research. I'm looking at one, putting my own engineers on it, no go. So expensive, not a good use of time. Two, they look at software -esque tools, like a versatile, and they're like, oh, that's still going to require a non -trivial amount of engineering work.

50:39That's also not going to happen. And so ultimately, you're kind of like, okay, well, how do I get the brand flexibility and the pixel perfectness that I want? So, ultimately, we decided on Webflow because we're like, hey, these are all the things that we need. We are not gonna spend millions of dollars because that's how much it costs to be put like engineers on it We're happy to spend like the 50k with webflow not a big deal And then once webflow goes and gets the other parts of the stack This is where like every marketer is like I'm trying to test the craft out of my landing page header button layout Like that's where I think the the repeat usage actually is because I think what would webflow?

51:13What was hard was that we would land very easily? But you wouldn't be able to expand because they're like oh, okay like I build the website and then they're like what else? And so you got to get into the expansion motion and that's where I think a lot of the money is. And so what flow needs really needs to nail that. Do you think Linktree is a hundred billion dollar business? I think it has a shot to being a hundred billion dollar business, but I think that the most important thing that we got to do is we got to sequence it right. Because the a hundred billion dollar version of Linktree is one that is very consumer first, and I think we are very far away from that.

51:43Being the place where you actually discover all of the content from your favorite people, That is the $100 billion dollar play. You got to really crawl then walk then run and we got to do that in sequence I'm constantly telling out is we just need to be that take talk I think that if you go too hard there you're gonna be underwhelming and people are just gonna be like, no thanks Again going back to the crawl to walk to run. This is where I think like if Linktree today You're like hey, we do have just a lot of people using Linktree We have some semblance of like this is like people's most important stuff if we get to a world It's like, hey, there is repeat usage.

52:19Like creators are actively, like there's no more like, go from your Instagram to your link tree to your LTK or to your shop, my. Like if you just like cut that layer out, that's where I think it gets really interesting. That's the crawl, right? So you're like, okay, like we are gonna be like the, we're gonna get closer to being a destination than being just a train station or the very least we're gonna cut out one stop in the multiple stops of the train station. I think that's the crawl phase. And then I think like you get to run and the run phase is like, oh my gosh, like we have all the data with all these brands coming, because we have brands coming, creators will go to the place where brands are, because they offer partnerships, that's the walk, and then over time you earn your right to run.

52:57Listen, I wanna do a quick fire round. So I say a short statement, and you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? That's great. So what's the most common reason founders don't get product market fed in your mind? I would say it's because they jumped straight to the solution space, and they skip really understanding people's problems. What was your biggest advice to PMs who want to get promoted today? Be useful. Be very, very useful. Stop thinking about the promotion, just do really great work on an area that has high impact. And then lastly, I would also say like be known for something.

53:30So be incredibly good at one thing that you develop a brand around it. And so you're constantly picked because of that brand. Well, it's the most recent wow moment you've had with a consumer product. And what was it about it that made it so special. I'll give you two actually. I think that one obviously is like ChatGPT, like with every version you're like, oh my gosh, like yesterday's announcement, you're like, oh, we are in the world of her and this is really amazing, multi -modal, like being able to take all these inputs, video, audio, super cool. But I would also say, you know, Quest has actually come a really long way.

54:02I think that when Zuck first bought Oculus, I was like, huh, like what? And then I actually give Zuck a lot of credit for like really seen like the long -term view. And using the most latest version of the quests, like Oculus, Oculus Quest, you know, quest on, so forth. Like I'm pretty blown away about how far it's come because before the earlier version that I tried is like Amy Sik, it had to like had all these sensors that really plugged in and being able to just like put the thing on and do a workout, it's been amazing. What function has the most tension with product? Every function should have tension with product.

54:36I typically would say it comes in the form of like sales and engineering and the sense that they're always asking for, they're trying to push on prioritization probably as much as product is, but I really believe in the best orgs, there's always tension across all the functions, but then the product person is able to dissipate that tension and turn into something really productive. What would you most like to change about the world of product today? Going back to what we were talking about before, it's a chicken and egg thing. To get a great product job, you have to have better product management before.

55:04So how do you break that cycle? I think taking bets on younger people. I teach a course, I hire for my course. I really believe that we should be hiring designers especially from the younger generations who just, you know, there's so many people where you like, they like you something like snap and they're like, I don't get it versus like Gen Z. They're like, oh, I get it. This is how we grew up and this is like, I'm okay with the idea like there's more flexibility, personalization. I actually love that. they're able to see some of those trends in a way that I think that like not all older folks, myself included, are able to see.

55:39So I really want to give more young people that opportunity to build. When you think about other companies' product strategy, which one have you been most impressed by recently? So the first one is OpenAI. I think just the way they've been able to execute them going after search, I think that is very obvious value add. What is search experience in a world where we can actually have AI, right? Like I think they've really executed really well there. So if you can just imagine a world where you take some of the components of like arc browser organization, you merge it with chat GPT, kind of like the power of it.

56:12They just hired the search leader from Google. Like they are going to go after that space, which is like the most lucrative space and also a space that should be innovated on. Like that's very impressive. I think another one I talked about is Zuck. I just feel like, you know, what he's seen with like something like the RAR, but also even something as simple as messaging. But just the way he thought about the world of like, here's Facebook, here's WhatsApp, here's an endiagram of people who use the two things. And in the future where we want to reach everyone and like getting in touch with people, like that, whether it's customers or friends, like that is the most valuable thing, being able to bet on something like a WhatsApp that has the market penetration it does, and also really relies on the fact that the rest of the world, like very data.

56:55Sorry, data meaning telecom data, right? Like very data driven. Like it's just super, super smart. And I do think what's up is doing crazy amount of business. And like just being able to see those chest moves is really fascinating. And maybe the last one I just say is like, because I have kids. And so I've been suckered into paying for that subscription. But like Disney Plus is also really fascinating because I feel like what Disney saw at the end of the day, very quickly. Well, actually, maybe they could have seen it even faster, but this idea of like at the end of the day, like streaming platforms are all the same.

57:24Content is king. Like who has the content? Disney has the content, right? So like, just like, I'm just been really impressed by some of these companies seeing some of these like bigger moves and going for it, like taking that big bet. I totally agree with you on Disney Plus and I think that the Zuck is probably consistently the most underrated CEO. I'm like the biggest buyer of Matterstore that could be. So I'm totally aligned to you. And this has been so much fun, right? You saw the schedule of each time for 100. Didn't really stick to it, so I'm glad that I sent it so late. But thank you so much for being so brilliant and also for such a great discussion.

57:56Of course, it was super fun. Now, it was such an incredible show with Jay -Z and I really started these verdict -clies shows because I really wanted to share the wisdom of these incredible functional leaders as granular and detailed as possible with founders starting out. If you wanna see more behind the scenes, you can of course watch the show on YouTube by searching for 20BC, But before we leave you today, we're all trying to grow our businesses here. So let's be real for a second. We all know that your website shouldn't be this static asset. It should be a dynamic part of your strategy that really drives conversions.

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59:40In fact, one global financial services company cut its time to market for new features by half. Maximize your team's impact too with AirTable. Give it a try for free today at airtable .com slash podcast. That's airtable .com slash podcast to get started. And finally, we need to talk about Pendo. A really simple way to describe Pendo's value is to simply say, get your users to do what you want them to do. What is Pendo? The only all -in -one product experience platform for any type of application. What are the features that make Pendo so awesome? Pendo's differentiation is in its platform. Every capability from analytics to in -app guidance, to session replay, mobile feedback management and road mapping are all purpose -built to work together.

1:00:23What is the social validity? 10 ,000 companies use Pendo and we also manage mind the product, the world's largest community of product management professionals. Where do we want to drive people? Give it a try and visit pendo .io. also. Slash 20 product hyphen podcast to learn how your team can use Pendo to start building better digital experiences. There you can also check out Pendo's lineup of free certification courses 12 hours of in depth training for your product management teams on topics from AI to product analytics to product led growth to check it out simply head over to Pendo .io for slash 20 product hyphen podcast.

1:01:00That's two zero product hyphen podcast as always. I So appreciate the support and stay tuned for an incredible episode this coming Monday with Nikeshara or CEO at Palo Alto Networks.