Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Making an impact through authenticity and curiosity | Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Boss, the CTO of META, said something about you. Working with Ami, she could have the most profound disagreement in the world, and she would respond, fascinating. You have to tell me more why you think that. I really enjoy being right. And then it turns out, in the working world, that did not serve me so great. I think the hard part is sublimating your ego a little bit and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right.

Starting point is 00:00:19 I love this very tactical piece of advice. When you're trying to come up with a metaphor or analogy, think about what you want your users to feel when you're using the product. We all agree that the feeling of something should be I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday, then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent. There's also this metaphor about the hill climb. For me, the hill climb is all about the difference from the local optimum and a global optimum.

Starting point is 00:00:42 You're standing on top of the hill, you're looking down, you can see rolling hills, the sheep, the grass, whatever. But then way off in the distance, you can see like a mountain. And the thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like. Today, my guest is Umi Vora. Ami is chief product officer at Fair, which connects independent retailers and brands around the world, and I believe is the most successful and biggest B2B marketplace startup out there. Prior to Fair, Ami was employee 150 at Facebook, where she launched the first Facebook developer platform and was later ahead of product for the $55 billion global Facebook ads business.

Starting point is 00:01:24 She also oversaw the introduction of ads on the Instagram platform, and most recently she led product in design for the largest message app in the world, WhatsApp. In our conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including building your strategy skills, how to disagree with people skillfully, being a successful woman in tech, using metaphors and imagery to rally your team and get your point across, setting up effective goals, plus a bunch of jokes in the lightning round that you don't want to miss. This was a really special and authentic conversation that I'm very excited to bring to you. With that, I bring you Ami Vora. Ami, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Oh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So when I asked you about your goal for our conversation today, you said the most amazing thing, which I love. You said that your goal is to be as authentic as possible and to show that people can be pretty messy and imperfect at times, yet still be very successful. I love that so much. Let's definitely try to do this. Is there anything else you want to add on that? Yeah, I mean, maybe I'll just say like a couple more words on that. actually. I feel like when I was kind of coming up, like when I looked at people who were successful, they seemed to have everything figured out, especially the women. They were all like super women where they like respond to every email in 10 seconds. It didn't seem to sleep. They like always wore

Starting point is 00:02:46 high heels. They were just like perfect. And I was just like, oh, I guess I'm never going to be successful. Like that is that is not me. I love to sleep. I like waste time doing absurd things all the time. And like, I'll tell you how glamorous my lifestyle is. I'm currently working out of my bathroom. Like, I'm talking to you from my bathroom, which is where I work from, because I love my house. This great house wasn't meant for work from home, three kids, two parents, remote work. And it was just the place with the most closing doors between me and my children when the pandemic started. And so it just like took me a while to realize that actually it's all fine. Like, no one's got it fully figured out. You never know how someone else is living.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Like, most of us are winging it and learning as we're going and, like, learning through trial and error. And, like, that's, it's all normal. It's all fine. And I can do it. And you can do it. I can do it. I so love hearing this. This is something people often want to hear more of on this podcast because there's all these stories of here's all these successes.

Starting point is 00:03:49 Here's all these things I did and everything just always seems to work out. And we try to have, we have this failure corner on the podcast where people share a story failure. So I love just setting that frame for this conversation. of just super being real and being clear that there's a lot of things that go wrong behind the scenes that people often don't hear about. I, for a long time, felt like I was held back because I, like, don't have a plan. But I realize that probably the most important thing is to just, like, acknowledge that that is true for me, that I'm not going to be a person with a plan.

Starting point is 00:04:21 And actually, the thing that has consistently served me is to, like, do the thing that feels right, go to the place that feels like home, work with the people who feel like my. friends, like just work where when I put on the code of the job, I feel like, oh, this is a place where I could really be lucky. I can be creative. I'm in the right spot. As opposed to like, you know, feeling like, oh, there's an end state that I know of and I'm just going to have to work my way to that end state. Whenever I get in that zone of like there's only one outcome and I just have to get there, I like, I'm not my best, not my best, you know? I'm not bringing the creativity and the luck and the excitement in the same way.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Let me tell you about a product called Sidebar. The best way to level up your career is to surround yourself with extraordinary peers. This gives you more than a leg up. It gives you a leap forward. This worked really well for me in my career, and this is the Sidebar ethos. When you have a trusted group of peers, you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This was a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this trusted group of peers.

Starting point is 00:05:34 Sidebar is a private, highly vetted leadership program where senior leaders are matched with peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback in every step of your career journey. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're already committed to growth. Sidebar is the missing piece to catalyze your career. 93% of members say Sidebar helped them achieve a significant positive change in their career. Why spent a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today?

Starting point is 00:06:10 Join thousands of top senior leaders who have taken the first step to career growth from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta by visiting sidebar.com slash Lenny. That's sidebar.com slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by Anvil. Their document SDK helps product teams build and launch software for documents fast. Companies like Carta and vouch insurance use Anvil to accelerate the development of their document workflows. Getting to market fast is a top priority for product teams. And the last thing that you or your developers want is to build document workflows from scratch.

Starting point is 00:06:49 It's time-consuming expensive and distracts from core work. You could stitch together multiple tools and manage the, those integrations, or you can use an all-in-one document SDK. Most product managers will tell you, paperwork sucks. Anvil's document SDK helps teams get to market fast, incorporate your brand style, and give you back time to focus on your company's core differentiated features. For your users, paperwork often starts with an AI-powered web form styled and embedded in your application.

Starting point is 00:07:20 From there, you can route data to your backend systems and to the correct fields in your PDFs via API. Complete the process with a white labeled e-signature. The best part about Anvil is the level of customization their SDK provides. Non-technical folks love Anvil's drag and drop builder, and developers love their flexible APIs and easy to understand documentation. Build documents software fast with Anvil. That's useanvill.com slash Lenny to learn more or start a free trial.

Starting point is 00:07:50 That's use anvil.com slash Lenny. Let's actually spend some more time here. I wasn't planning to go here yet, but this is really great and important advice. I've just basically you're saying that a lot of your successes come from following people that are awesome. Can you just talk more about that? Just like what it is you've followed and seen that has helped you land in places that have worked out so well, because clearly you've done incredibly well. I mean, I think a lot of us are just like you have a spreadsheet in your head of the axes.

Starting point is 00:08:20 And certainly when you're choosing between jobs, it feels, for me, it feels like, oh man, the rest of my career hangs in the balance of like making the exact right decision and getting the exact right job. And you work through all of this like spreadsheet mass of like, if I took this job, here's what it would do for me. Here's like where I'd be in five years, et cetera. And, you know, I have that engine in my head also. But what I try to do is like, you know, work through the spreadsheets and then tear it up. Because none of that stuff like is actually going to determine how good I am at the job. The thing that'll determine, the thing that in my track record, the thing that has determined

Starting point is 00:08:58 it is like when I walk through the doors, do I feel like I'm lucky to be there? So for me, it's like, it's actually a lot more emotional. Like, I try to just put on the coat of the job. Like, when I wake up in the morning, I'm like, what would it be like if I were doing this job? What would I think about on my commute? Who would I have lunch with? Do I like them?

Starting point is 00:09:19 like what problems am I going to solve today? And that gives me like an emotional response, which is just much more telling than like the spreadsheets of here's where I'm going to be in five years. And for me, the thing that that has led me to like the places where I do my best work is a feeling being at home, which is all about trust and trust with the people around me. Like can I walk through and feel like these people are going to have my back? They're going to let me take risks. I'm going to enjoy spending time with them.

Starting point is 00:09:47 and that's where I feel like I've always just been able to try more things and do better because that's a big on trust is a big unlock for me. I love this metaphor of putting on the coat of the job of just kind of feeling out what it would be to work there. I imagine that was something that you did before you joined fair, which I want to talk about. But let me transition a bit to talking about meta. And specifically, Boz, the CTO of Meta, was on this podcast a few months ago. And he said something about you that I want to read.

Starting point is 00:10:17 So kind. Okay, so you've heard what he said about you. Okay, cool. So let me read this and then I want to learn from you how to do it. So here's what he said. Working with, um, it was like watching an alien because she could have the most profound disagreement in the world with somebody.

Starting point is 00:10:32 And they would say something that she thought was not just wrong, but crazy wrong. And she would respond, fascinating. You have to tell me more why you think that. And she meant it from the core of her being. She saw this schism and rather than reacting as if it was a threat. She reacted with the most genuine. and profound curiosity. I just watched it absolutely tear down walls between points of view.

Starting point is 00:10:52 Embracing curiosity in those moments of challenge has completely changed my life, and I owe that to Ami Vora. Oh, man, I love Bas. What a great guy, and so kind of him to say that. I will say that this did not come naturally to me. Like, I, you know, I really enjoy being right. I love to be right. I think most of us love being right.

Starting point is 00:11:14 And at least, like, in my childhood, part of my identity was, built on like being the person who was right and being the person who knew everything. And then it turns out that like in the working world, that did not answer to me so great. Like it wasn't great to walk into things and be like, all y'all are wrong. I are the only answer. Everyone, please listen to me and like stop talking. And what really happened was that someone pointed out to me that not only, one of my old managers pointed out to me, not only was I spending a lot of energy trying to think

Starting point is 00:11:47 through every possible thing by myself so I could be totally right, I was often not really coming to the right answer. Like, other people have a bunch of information that I do not have. And so I'm just ignoring that. Like, I was letting my ego overtake my desire to get to the best outcome, which is just like a, that's a silly tradeoff, right? And an unnecessary one. The thing that changed there is me just saying, it's more important for us to get. to the outcome. And I very selfishly just like to learn more things. And so by like deciding that I already knew everything, I was cutting myself off from like learning the things that other people were really good at. And it's so easy to just open the door instead and say like, hey, you seem to

Starting point is 00:12:35 know something that I don't know yet. Like, why not tell me about it? I'm going to get better. We'll probably come to the right outcome. Maybe you'll have a better time. Like, why not? And so it's a little bit, a little bit just accidental evolution in that direction. But it's made like work in life so much more interesting to just be like, hey, what does this person know that I don't know yet? Like it means that every meeting you walk into, you're probably not going to get bored, you know? And I get bored a lot.

Starting point is 00:13:02 But like, if you assume that every person there knows something that you don't know, then it's, it's not like just wait to get to the right answer. It's like, discover the thing that they know that you don't know. And it becomes like just a little bit of uncovering. For people that want to learn to be good at this the way you are, a couple things I take away from the historian the way you're talking about this is, one is there's like an enthusiasm of like, I disagree with you, but I want you to know I really care about what you think. So there's like an energy of like, please tell me what I'm missing. There's also this assumption that like a lot of disagreement is rooted in. We just have different information. So tell me what I'm missing. Can you talk a bit about just like how to what you've learned about actually do this well? Yeah, I mean, I think the hard part is just like sublimating your ego a little bit and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right. And I think like, you know, all of growth is a battle with yourself, but this is one of the hardest ones because we all want to be right. We all want to protect ourselves.

Starting point is 00:14:01 And it served us, many of us for so long to be right. I just try to think about the feedback loop of, I kind of think like all of life is feedback loops. So I just started to think about the feedback loop I'm creating of like, I was curious about something. I learned something new. We got for a better outcome. Probably the other person felt better as well as I felt better. Like it's all positive feedback.

Starting point is 00:14:25 And you do that a couple of times. And the positive feedback far outweighs the desire to be right. Because now we're like, we're more right. We're more right together. And so just building that as a practice of just noticing how much better things can get when you can be open to them has been really fun. What do you think of this phrase that he used that he remembers? Is that like a phrase that you find useful?

Starting point is 00:14:47 Just like fascinating. You have to tell me more how you think that. I do think that is a word that I say a lot. I do say that a lot because it is true. It's just like it's fascinating and sound look at the same movie that I was looking at and come away with a totally different understanding of the plot. You know, like I could sit in the same meeting as other people and they would leave with just a different retelling of what happened. And that's me is fascinating. You know, like, isn't that surprising

Starting point is 00:15:18 that we can all see the same, what we think are the same facts and walk away with a totally different narrative? And when you can, like, go deep into that, and you just understand how people see the world. And that is helpful. I just, I'm like curious about things. I like to know more things. And so that just helps me know more things. I feel like the hardest part of this for people is like, you hear someone say something. Like say, okay, so we're, Our mutual friend Dan Hockenmeyer, he's in a meeting and he just says something that you are just like, no, because, you know, he's got influence. He's a big deal at fair. Most people have this, like, visceral reaction of like, oh, no, I really don't think that's a good idea.

Starting point is 00:15:54 Is there something you've learned about a controlling that bodily reaction of like, oh, and then just being positive about it? Yeah, I do think it is just that feedback loop. Like, it's not like I don't have the visceral reaction. It's just that instead of interpreting it as this is a visceral reaction, I got to, like, shut something down, it's like, this is a visceral reaction. And it's a chance to learn more. Like, just reinterpreting some of the feelings in ways that are like more about opening than about closing stuff down. Got it. So it's kind of like a thinking you do of like, okay, hey, let me frame this and think about this. For me, the most important thing, you're just taking a pause. I think when you just

Starting point is 00:16:31 take a pause, your body calms down, your mind gets a chance to like breathe a little bit. And then your response is going to be better. But like you got to take the pause because the immediate visceral reaction, you know, is not always, it's going to be primal. It's going to be like protective. It's just when you take a pause, you're like, this is all fine. Like, let's just learn, you know. I feel like more people are going to start using this phrase fascinating when they hear

Starting point is 00:16:57 something. It's kind of like, there were a few years where we're like, I had to be careful about not saying it because whenever I said it, people would be like, she disagrees. I've had to use with the source and kind of expand my words I use. No, that's such a good word. Maybe we'll make that the title of this episode. Totally. What a great title that would be.

Starting point is 00:17:17 So we've been talking a bit about like the bodily reaction to stuff and the, our lizard brain almost reacting to things. It reminds me of this metaphor that you called the dinosaur brain. And how applies to product reviews? You can talk about what that is. Okay. So a lot of people on my team, you know, they're, they're coming in to do product reviews and they're worried about it.

Starting point is 00:17:36 They're life stressed out. They don't exactly know what to show. And the normal temptation is just to show as much information as possible because that way, like you come in and you think, hey, like the people in this room are super smart. I'll show them the information. They will come to the right conclusions. They'll probably make a better decision than I'm going to make. So like my job is to like catalog the information and present it.

Starting point is 00:17:59 And one of the first things that I talk to people about is like, okay, for the, for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to put myself in, like, the capitally executive bucket, because that makes what I'm about to say less offensive. Like, assume that, like, executives have, like, a little tiny dinosaur brain. Like, we all have, like, a little brontosaurus brain. And we can really only hold, like, three facts at the same time. We will never be able to go deep in the way that you are able to do on everything that crosses our desk. And so the best service you can do is actually do the work of making a recommendation. That's the way we're going to be complimentary, you know, like the breadth that I normally have to look across, like, means that I'm

Starting point is 00:18:46 going to be better at things like pattern matching or giving you more context or telling you stuff that's happening in the company or the industry. But what I'm not going to be better at is like looking at all the information that you looked at and coming up with a meaningful outcome. Like, that's what you're going to do. And my little dinosaur brain is going to be like, okay, that sounds like a very reasonable pattern. I've seen other patterns that look like this. Okay, that sounds like an

Starting point is 00:19:11 outcome. However it conflicts with this outcome over here, I can like tell you about that. That makes sense? Yeah. And I love that you put yourself in that bucket. Like, you have the dinosaur brain also. It's not. It's pretty bad, bad look. But it's really true. You know, like as you get more breadth, you were less and less

Starting point is 00:19:27 able to go deep on everything that deserves going deep. And you just end up doing a different service than the people on your teams. And recognizing that as complimentary has been really helpful. You have this phrase, my manager owns context. I own the recommendation kind of along the same lines. Exactly. Very similar. And I think like the thing that was helpful for me there is that really unlocked what I was looking for from my managers. Because otherwise I wanted them to be exactly like me. You know, if I assume that I need to bring them information and then they would come to the same conclusion that I would come to, that's very narrow. You

Starting point is 00:20:00 know, like they have to be able to look at the exact same information and process it in the same way and come out with the same idea. Whereas if what they're doing is like complimentary to me, then I can learn from everyone. You know, like they're going to just have a different view. They're going to have new information that I don't have. And it gives me a lot more space to take accountability. Is there any other advice you could share along these lines of just like product reviews? So kind of the big takeaway here is just keep it simple and have a recommendation. Keep one will have a recommendation. I also think that, like, I think we misuse product reviews sometimes as ways to get decisions. And actually, they should be ways to calibrate on principles. So, like, what you don't want is to come to a product review for, like, every single decision that you want to make. Instead, what you want is to come to a product review with one decision. But the goal of that decision is to walk out with principles about how to make these decisions in the future so that you don't have to come to product review, but you still have this, like, consistent and proherean product that you're building.

Starting point is 00:21:04 And so I think when you flip the frame of reviews to being less about, okay, I'm going to bring this information to an exec, my manager, whoever, and they're going to decide every piece. Like, you're not actually building that much more capacity in the system. You're, like, getting fast decision-making, but you're not, you're not changing who can make really good decisions. And, like, I think you always want to change the org to, like, constantly make better decisions. And a way to do that is when you bring these sorts of questions, what you talk about is like, why did you make this decision? Like, what are the tradeoffs you have in mind?

Starting point is 00:21:39 Who are you optimizing for? What timeline are you thinking about? What's the risk level we're willing to tolerate? And then you don't have to come back. Like, you just, you have enough information that you can take those principles and run with them. Is there kind of a framework or a process you use for product reviews that might be helpful for people to hear just like a agenda or a way of thinking about just. how to set up a product review for success, because a lot of people are trying to set these up at their companies, and they're like, I don't know if we're doing this optimally. Yeah, I think everyone's got,

Starting point is 00:22:06 I think there's so many, like, different takes on frameworks. I don't have, like, a single system. I mean, actually, I think Boz has written about a bunch of this, and I probably most agree with them where there's different kinds of product reviews. It's like, what are you trying to solve? What's the timeline on which you're thinking about for these? Is it like a philosophy? Is it a strategic shift, is it like a day-to-day product decision? And then keeping it extremely short and pointed, and then making sure you walk away with principles, not answers. I think there's like a lot of nuance and important there of what you just said, which is start with the problem you're solving, like, what are we trying to do here? And the timeline, I think that's also really useful and

Starting point is 00:22:44 important for people to hear. I think the temptation is always to err toward like writing more. And what I always really recommend people do is like, write whatever you need to write and then and cut out almost all of it. What you really want to bring to any form, whether it's like a product review or written in form or anything else, is like the minimal amount of information that you need to make a clean recommendation, because then you are forced to be opinionated.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Like, otherwise, the opinion can get lost in all of this information. You can hide behind, well, all of these analysis seem to suggest. And instead, you should probably just say, looked at all the data. There's three pieces, there's three analyses that suggest this. There's one that suggests that. We think that one is inaccurate

Starting point is 00:23:30 or worth taking the risk on, let's go. Any objections, let me know. Any new context, let me know. Like, that really forces you to, like, deeply understand and take an opinion on the material. Final question.

Starting point is 00:23:44 Who do you like to invite to these product reviews and your thoughts, rules, policy? Yeah, I mean, I do think that usually fewer people is better. it leads to a sense of being informal, and that is really useful because it lowers the bar on how complete or strong these conversations are,

Starting point is 00:24:04 and I'd rather have a less formal conversation faster than a formal conversation and lose three weeks in the process when we could have been building. I think it needs to be cross-functional. I think, like, one of the things you want is cross-functional accountability. So we want it cross-functional at the leadership level and cross-functional at the team presenting level. and I think those are normally the groups.

Starting point is 00:24:25 I think the thing that gets hard is you often cut out like the middle where like if it's a working team presenting to like the senior leaders on something important, it's really hard because like it means people's managers are not in the room and can't help the conversation or other things. And so in order to do that, you have to really have a bunch of implicit trust inside the team that everyone will get the context later, that everyone's going to be kind to everyone else and you don't need a ton of air cover

Starting point is 00:24:57 and the managers trust their team to present in the best possible way. That is always a stressful place for a manager to be where their success is kind of riding in that meeting and they're not there and they kind of... It's so stressful. It's so stressful. I think anything you need to make it less stressful is useful. And there have also been times in my career

Starting point is 00:25:14 where I would keep the room itself small but because we were all trying to calibrate on specific principles, I would like record or broadcast the reading to anyone who wanted to see it, just so they could all like see the principles by which we were decision making and get calibrated on that. So through your career, you've kind of transitioned from being the person pitching products and being reviewed to the person reviewing and being on the other side. Is there anything being on this side of it that you think is helpful for people earlier in their career to know about that experience of, you know, from your angle now.

Starting point is 00:25:53 I mean, I think for what it's worth, I think I still do a fair amount of product pitching in the past few years because there's always someone else to convince. It's true. Especially if you want to do something dramatically different. Really, I think the biggest, the biggest service for people who are starting out a little earlier

Starting point is 00:26:08 is that point around, like, bringing the recommendation, like really having the opinion and standing behind it with conviction and doing what they need to do to build that conviction for themselves. Awesome. You've done this a number of times already in this conversation,

Starting point is 00:26:25 and so I want to spend a little time here, which is using metaphors and imagery to make your point and get people to understand what you're trying to say. So you have this code of putting on the code of the job and this dinosaur brain. And so someone told me that this is just a skill you have where you use metaphor and imagery to rally a team, get your point across, get people to understand what you're trying to say.

Starting point is 00:26:45 There's also this metaphor. Someone told me, you ask you about the hill climb metaphor. Does that ring a bell? Yeah. Okay. What is what is that all about? For me,

Starting point is 00:26:55 the hill climb is all about like the difference from the local optimum and a global optimum. And so that sounds very abstract. But I think like a lot of the time when we're doing our job, when we're doing life stuff, whatever you're doing, like you try to just get better and better and you like optimize your current system

Starting point is 00:27:11 and then you feel really good about it. And that is great. You're standing on top of the hill. You're looking down. You can see, you know, the, I don't know, rolling hills, the sheep, the grass, whatever. But then way off in the distance, you can see like a mountain. You know, one that's even higher than you can't even see the top of it, right?

Starting point is 00:27:32 And you have to decide, like, are you going to take the risk of climbing down your hill, crossing like an unknown chasm, and then climbing back up just to get to the same level you started at with more climbing to do to get to that summit. And that is really hard. I'm thinking of things like, you know, maybe the first time I saw this was like a lot of companies were really good at desktop and you could see the mobile mountain like way out over there. But to get there, you had to really make a lot of tradeoffs in your core desktop business that you were not totally sure we're going to pay off when you made it to the mobile mountain. And you had to do a ton of work. You're going to fundamentally rewire a lot of what you're doing without a guarantee that you're

Starting point is 00:28:18 going to get there. I mean, you can see it in life when you think about new jobs or new moves or new relationships, like kind of anything that you think about. Like, you kind of are giving up something that is working pretty well without knowing whether you're going to make it to the top of that next mountain. And that's been really helpful to me just to kind of place where I am on different things where, you know, you can like, you get the inkling that there is a much better way to do this. There really is. Is it going to be worse? Going down into the valley, climbing up, keeping climbing. Is that going to be worth it? Most of the time the answer is yes, but it's helpful for me to know, boy, this feels like a slog.

Starting point is 00:28:59 It is supposed to because I'm still in the valley. And the thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like. When you're on top of it and you're like, this is great. It was absolutely worth it. My life is better in these ways. We're able to solve these problems in these ways. It was worth it. I love that.

Starting point is 00:29:19 It feels like a big value of this metaphor, which I love, is that to set expectations, it's going to be really hard for a little bit, or we will slow down what we're trying to do now. But the idea is there's a bigger hill and a bigger amount. It's a bigger hill and it's worth it. On this kind of broader idea of metaphors and imagery, is there something there that you've learned if just like, this works really well? I'm going to invest in becoming better at this.

Starting point is 00:29:41 Or is this something that's come natural to you? Anything you can share about that skill and approach? I think this one came from, I worked for a manager. His name was Eric Antenow. And he was just a master of the metaphor and analogies. And so whenever I bring him something, he would be like, how is this product going to make you feel?

Starting point is 00:30:02 And when is the last time that you felt this way? And you can say, oh, you know, I felt this way when I was hanging with my friends in Dolores Park. and be like, cool, tell me what it feels like why that's the analogy, like what ramifications come out of that. And one thing I like to do is try to build like an emulator for different people in my head because I've just had the good fortune of working with like an amazing number of very different leaders.

Starting point is 00:30:30 And so he's one of the people I tried to build an emulator for where I'd be like, okay, I see this thing. I don't know how to solve this problem. What would, how would Eric describe this? You know, like, I've tried to build one from Baws, which is all about, like, principal of decision-making and principal trade-offs. Like, there's a few other people where I'm like, I don't know how to solve this problem. Can I load this other person into my head and how would they approach it?

Starting point is 00:30:52 And that gives me, like, a fresh lens on it. And I really like metaphors and analogies because, like, I think especially as you scale a team, narrative becomes increasingly important. Like, narrative can carry so much weight and water where otherwise, it's kind of similar to like the product review point where either you can tell everybody exactly what to do at every point or you can create a story that we all agree on. And when we all agree on that story, people just know better what to do. Like if we all agree that the feeling of something should be, I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday, you know what the iconography,

Starting point is 00:31:32 like the designers know what iconography should look like. You know what the like the communication and join pattern should look like. You're not going to build something cold and corporate. You're not going to build something strobe lighter. You're not going to build something flashy. But you don't have to go and make all those individual decisions. You can kind of buy into the same story. And then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent.

Starting point is 00:31:55 This is such a powerful and important skill. Is there an example that comes to mind where you did this really well, say it WhatsApp or Facebook, of kind of the story that carried a lot of water for you and the team? Yeah. I mean, I think the product metaphor we kind of arrived at for WhatsApp was face-to-face communication. You know, our goal there was to make it so that every person in the world could feel connected to the people they cared most about, even when they were separate, even when they were distant geographically for whatever reason. You know, we were always going to be apart from the people you cared out.

Starting point is 00:32:34 And we really had to build something that would work for literally everyone in the world. people who are carrying these high-end devices in Western markets who are very tech, comfortable, and savvy, and people in the low-end markets who were carrying these low-end devices, they weren't that familiar with technology. It was maybe their first time online. We had to build them that worked for everyone. And the most universal form of communication is face-to-face. Like, when you talk someone face-to-face, you're not thinking, like, how do I present, like, what tool do I have to learn? You just kind of open your mouth and words come out. And that's the feeling that we wanted to create. And that involved a lot of like the app stepping back from

Starting point is 00:33:15 communication, creating spaces that felt really intimate. So people wouldn't have to think to themselves what kind of space am I in? They could immediately map where they were in the app to the kind of the, okay, I'm sitting around in my kitchen table and people are joining and leaving calls, you know, just like they're walking in and out of my living room. But it is a family space and the family is there. or in like, you know, one-on-one disappearing messages. You're like, cool, this is my close friend. We don't need to keep track of everything that we're saying. We're here for a little bit of banter, a little bit of relationship,

Starting point is 00:33:48 a little bit of like quick, what's your Wi-Fi password and stuff. And whatever's really important, that's what we'll hold on to. And the rest is just like day-to-day normal intensity. That is super interesting. Like, WhatsApp, the whole, one of the main differentiators and benefits is super fast. And I see completely how it connects this idea of yours, like, ideas we want you to feel like you're talking to someone. And it's all a really small thing. It's like a typing indicator is like someone who's about to take a breath, give them something to talk,

Starting point is 00:34:15 you know, like the two checker marks lighting up or like someone's face lining up when they hear you. You know, it's just a recognition of being heard. These are all super small things, but I think they add up to a feeling of being there. That is super interesting. So I love this very tactical piece of advice you just shared of just when you're trying to come up with a metaphor or analogy, think about what you want your users to feel when you're using the product, and when else have they felt that same feeling? So interesting. And then this other point you made of making this emulator of a person in your head. It sounds a little loud now that I think about it. It makes total sense. It's another way, I get very bored a lot. It's another way to

Starting point is 00:34:57 make sure meetings are really interesting where like, okay, let me see what that person is going to say next. Like, let me put myself in their shoes. Let me think about. what they're reacting to and why they're going to think that and how they're going to see the world. And again, it just gives me more toolkits because it means when I'm stumped on something, I'd be like, what would Rob Goldman say? He'd say, look at the dashboard. Have I looked at the dashboard? No. Okay, let me go look at the dashboard. You know, like you can kind of load up these different skill sets that people, you know, have been so generous with sharing with me. What would be the AMI emulator? What are people thinking when they loaded a chastened?

Starting point is 00:35:33 I think. Probably the number one. No joke. Is there an emulator you most often come back to that you find most useful in your day-to-day who's like the person that, like, oh yeah? I think those are the three. I think it is like, Antenos like story, story and metaphor, analogy, creation. I think it's like bosses. If we played this out, what principles are we using? And if we kept on using those principles, what would happen? And it is Rob Goldman who's an amazing kind of metrics growth product leader, being like, look at the dashboard.

Starting point is 00:36:10 I mean, look at the dashboard, which is like a great, like, central rooting part of my life. This is so fascinating. Fascinating. It revs up. I love this topic of just metaphors and stories and visions and things like that. It's something a lot of people want to get better at. Is there another example per chance that you could share of maybe using a metaphor

Starting point is 00:36:31 to rally to you? and get things done. I mean, I think taking like a subpart of WhatsApp or when we talk about like video calling. And I really want the metaphors was like sitting around in your family room when you think about how to make calls work where when you're sitting in a family room, you're not scheduling it. You're not like, I don't know, having this like cold corporate feeling the way you do with like a conference call or there's like kind of heavyweight interactions. And instead there's just you can join and leave, you know, like it feels.

Starting point is 00:37:03 lightweight, it feels like the space exists even when you're not there. And so just creating things like joinable calls, like that feeling of people kind of popping in and just paying attention to whoever's there and letting them leave that the call can flow on without a super heavyweight action that everyone needs to take. I think that was another one where we were just able to kind of agree on the feeling. And then you kind of know what to build. I was just using WhatsApp to do a video call with my mom. They were traveling tidal. And so I experienced it. Yeah. It felt. Great. Let me go in a slightly different direction. One of my favorite post of yours is called Execution beats strategy every time. And I think another way you phrase it is execution eat strategy

Starting point is 00:37:45 for breakfast. I think you put that somewhere. I'd love to hear about this because I completely agree. I think a lot of people obsess with strategy and vision and got to get this right and forget that most of the work is execution. So yeah, I'd love to hear just your take and insight here. Yeah. I don't know if I coined execution and Eat Strategy for Breakfast. I think a lot of things other things for breakfast, but I'm a believer. Like, I do think I was using strategy for breakfast. And that's something we used to say a lot at Meta. Like, that was, it was just the most important part.

Starting point is 00:38:13 And I was well trained in that. That was, like, one of the key lessons that I learned there. And it's because when you have, look, strategy is super fun. You get to, like, think about all this pie in the sky stuff. You get to think about if the world operated in rational patterns and you could predict the future, what is going to be the second and third order of fact. Like, you get to use your.

Starting point is 00:38:33 brain in a really fun philosophical way. But like customers don't care. Like customers don't care about your fancy strategies and like your five-year plan. They care about the product that's in their hands. And so anything that distracts you from thinking about the product in your hands, I think, or maybe worse, takes you away from solving customers' problems today, I think, is a distraction. And I think one of the things that you learn is like, if you have great strategy, perfect strategy, but poor execution, you don't win because your strategy never makes it to the market. And what's even worse is that you have learned nothing. You don't know whether it was your strategy that was wrong or whether it was your execution

Starting point is 00:39:20 that was wrong. All you know is you didn't win. Whereas when you have like a pretty good strategy, a good enough strategy, you're in the right direction and you have perfect execution. You still don't win immediately. but you know your execution was great. So then you learn what do you need to do to improve your strategy. You got the execution machine.

Starting point is 00:39:39 You go back, you update your strategy, you relaunch. And you keep on doing it until your strategy is perfect. And then you do it. And that's kind of the lesson I repeatedly learned. And is this advice kind of a reaction to what you said, where people, PMs, let's say, are just like, I want to work on strategy. We've got to spend all this time to get the strategy nailed. And it's just like, okay, we also need to execute.

Starting point is 00:40:01 and that's maybe even more important. Yeah, I do think it's like, it's very glamorous to work on strategy. It's so fun, like, you want, it's so fun to have the word strategy in your, it's, I don't know, we've, like, built a mythology around strategy being the most important thing. An institution is not glamorous. It is not, like, whiteboarding by yourself, you know, and pointing to things and, like, coming out with the grand vision. It is, like, the nuts and bolts and, like, sometimes kind of boring.

Starting point is 00:40:31 sometimes kind of like grind it out work of like, you got to bring the donuts, you got to look at the dashboards, you got to rewrite the spec, you got to just do a bunch of the grinding. But that is what leads to the customer's outcomes. You know, that is what the customer is eventually going to feel. They're never going to see the whiteboard. They're going to see that someone took the time to fix this bug. This episode is brought to you by user testing.

Starting point is 00:40:57 Transform how you build products and experiences with user testing. Get fast feedback throughout the development process so that you can build the right thing the first time. Make better decisions that lead to better business outcomes. Companies are being asked to do more with less. They need to move quickly to build experiences that meet changing customer expectations and do so faster than ever, all while minimizing risk and costly rework. With user testing, you have a trusted partner in experience research. They empower user research, product, and design teams to make higher confidence,

Starting point is 00:41:31 decisions with human insights. Learn more today at usertesting.com slash Lenny. Is this advice you give to your PMs on your teams? Like, is this a kind of, I guess how do you think about this when they're trying to, you know, move up the ranks, become better product managers? This is just like a common thing that you often share. Like, yeah, strategy is going to be amazing. Important.

Starting point is 00:41:53 You got to get good at it, but also make sure this is going great. Yeah, I do think, I think about it a little bit in terms of like proportion of time. you should expect to spend. So, I mean, there's no point to be on a bad strategy. You can't have a bad strategy. So you should spend some time. Maybe it's like 20% of your time. But the bulk of your time should be like confirming that strategy actually makes sense for

Starting point is 00:42:15 the customers, getting it out there, building the machine to constantly make it better, as opposed to like a perfect strategy. You go away, you build it for a year, you ship it. The market has changed, you know? Customers have changed. Their needs have changed. Competition. Like just the whole landscape has changed.

Starting point is 00:42:31 changed. And you probably could have solved those problems more easily had you headed in the right direction, but done it with more ongoing. In terms of this proportion, I imagine what you see is as you get more senior, more your time to spend on strategy, less time on execution, right? I don't 100% know that that's true. I think, again, like, even at high levels, maybe the strategic directions become more important to get, like, mostly right. But I think still most of your time is making sure they can make it to market. I think you should still be spending your time, understanding what's slowing people down and unblocking it,

Starting point is 00:43:10 understanding like how is the market changing, understanding what the broad customer feedback is, just constantly improving the system that you are building. I think that's, I mean, how, how, how much time can you spend thinking about the future as opposed to like actually trying to create it. That is a really interesting advice because I think most people imagine as you get more senior, I'm going to have more time to think about vision and strategy and not have to be in the weeds building things. And I love this point you're making. Even as a senior exec, you're still like, it's executing in a different way, but it's still execution. Yeah. You're focusing on the execution of the system a little bit more. But you know, you got to stay connected,

Starting point is 00:43:51 I think, to the customer and to what you're bringing to them. I love that. Obviously, strategy is also very important. You have this great question. that I'm going to read here. For strategy to be useful, it actually has to change our behavior as a team to create better customer outcomes. Can you talk about that? Yeah. I mean, I think, again, like some of the joy of strategy is like the philosophy and

Starting point is 00:44:13 excitement of thinking about all the long-term stuff that will happen. But I try to like always come back to what's going to change for the customer. If we had all of these conversations and we come out with this shiny five-year plan, but then we change nothing about the products that we're building or how we are building. What was the point of that exercise? It made us feel good. And there's something to making us feel good. That is good.

Starting point is 00:44:37 It's important for teams to feel good and connected. And this is like a good exercise for that. But it's so much more powerful when it's an exercise that translates into us doing something differently, whether that's prioritizing different products, whether that's changing our portfolio allocation, like moving people to the things we think are most important now, versus things that are going to be less important right now. Like, what's the change? Or, like, coming out with a strategy that'll align people

Starting point is 00:45:03 because we have the story, we have the narrative, we have the sequence. What's going to change for our customers as a result of this strategy exercise? Many people want to get better at strategy. Often their performance feedback is become our strategic, think better about strategy. What does help you become a better, a better strategic thinker? Is it just doing it? Is it a person that influenced you heavily? Is it a book?

Starting point is 00:45:25 what has helped you and what do you often recommend to people to get better at the skill? I think I got that same feedback quite a lot, actually, of needing to kind of think bigger and be more visionary, et cetera. And I still do, frankly, actually.

Starting point is 00:45:40 There's moments where I retrench way too far into like execution and like worry a little less about long-term strategy. So it's definitely like my bias still. The biggest thing that held me back from talking about strategy was I didn't feel confident that I knew enough to, like, declare a strategy.

Starting point is 00:45:58 It was actually, like, almost like a self-confidence imposter syndrome thing. Where there are people who could just say, I know how the world is going to develop in the next five years. And let me tell you, here's where we're going to be. Like, this is the dot on the map. And I was always like, how could you know? Like, anything could happen. Like, who would I be to say, I know how the world's going to develop? And here's where we're heading.

Starting point is 00:46:21 And so for me, a lot of it was actually. learning the things that made me feel confident in my own opinion. And there's like a bunch of things that do make me feel confident in my opinion. When I talk to specific customers and I feel like I can build an emulator for them, like a customer on my shoulder where I can say, oh, I talk to this person working in this job, here's what they would say if I show them this product or this strategy, you know. So I think talking to customers is a big unlock for me and like feeling like I have unique knowledge of the customer.

Starting point is 00:46:50 I think working through different product iterations of if we thought this was the right outcome, what would it really look like from a product perspective or a product portfolio in three to five years and which of those like seems right or rational or like it will go the way I think the world goes. I think asking for other opinions, like sometimes I run like surveys to the leadership team where I'm just like, how do you think, you know, what percentage of our. revenue is going to come from small businesses versus big businesses in three years, you know. And if we all agree on that topic, we should just take it as the truth and we should just fill it. If we disagree,

Starting point is 00:47:30 then we should talk about it. We should talk about the strategic ramifications if we chose one path or the other path. So for me, it was getting more comfortable having an opinion, honestly, about how the world was going to go and also feeling comfortable that we would be able to change it when we learned that like maybe that wasn't exactly right. Like we would have the machine, the execution machine behind it to try it out and then change and iterate and improve with customer feedback. At which point in your career was this kind of overcoming this fear and uncertainty? Was it some time within Facebook?

Starting point is 00:48:07 It was sometime within Facebook. It was really when I was stepping into like the bigger ads jobs, like getting to be a head of product for Facebook ads. I got feedback. I got a lot of feedback over the course of my career. And some of the stacking of feedback was basically like, you could be the smartest person in the room, but it doesn't matter if people don't like you. Which I don't, which is very complicated feedback. And I don't, I wouldn't give that feedback to anyone else. But I took it very seriously. It was coming from so many different places. It was coming from people I'm really trying. And so I kind of went out of my way to be more likable, which for me ended up being like, like,

Starting point is 00:48:55 shrinking myself a little bit and not being so aggressive, not being so opinionated, kind of being more unobjectionable. And the weird part is that it kind of worked for a long time. Like, people who were more likely to work with me, they were more likely to say a nice thing. I mean, I took this to extremes. I wore earth tones for like two years because I was just like, I got to fade back a little bit. And then, you know, at some point, I actually had to do a leadership job. And my team was like, well, what do you think?

Starting point is 00:49:29 Like, what's your opinion? And I was like, you've been telling me not to have an opinion for so long. And so it took a little bit of work to get back to, oh, yeah, like, I can have, I have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of thoughts. It is okay for me to express. It is needed. My team needs me to have these opinions and thoughts and be a leader who can like take ownership and be visible. Thanks for sharing that.

Starting point is 00:49:54 Do you think that was the right approach going kind of indexing far to the other end and then kind of realizing that maybe that's too far? Or do you think you would have done things differently looking back? Yeah. It's kind of one of my Roman empires. Like I think about this every so often, like way too much, I think. especially because I talked to other senior women who received similar feedback and chose not to act on it or did act on it and like, you know, what happened to their paths were different. I think where I landed is like I wouldn't give that feedback to someone else. And the way I do give that feedback actually, because I think there is a lot of really useful information in that.

Starting point is 00:50:35 The way I do give that feedback is you do need to be able to work with a broader range of people. and the way to do that is to expand your tool sets. You're not going to make yourself smaller. You're not going to be any less of who you are, but you are going to build new tools so that you can, you know, new keys to unlock new different kinds of doors. And that is only going to make you bigger

Starting point is 00:50:59 and more powerful and more expansive. But the end outcome is the same is that you can work with more different styles of people, more different styles of problems. I love that framing. there's an episode that's going to come out before this episode with us professor from Stanford, Jeffrey Pfeffer, who teaches a class called The Path to Power, which is like how to become powerful in the world.

Starting point is 00:51:20 And he actually has a big lesson that many people hate hearing, which is you don't actually, you don't need to be authentic in the workplace that what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to achieve stuff and you can do what you need to use tools that you need to use to achieve the thing you want to achieve. So sometimes, you know, don't be exactly who you are and actually. in a slightly different way, which is basically what you're describing. More tools. I think that's like a theme that's coming up.

Starting point is 00:51:45 It's just like I'm all about like more lenses, more keys, more tools in general. Because why not? Like why not have access to more different styles of things? Something you're kind of like talking about subtly is that being a woman in tech and being a female leader. I imagine you've gone through some stuff that isn't what something men would have gone through. Is there anything there that you want to share or anything you've, learned about just being really successful as a woman in tech? I think we've talked through some of them.

Starting point is 00:52:14 I think, like, one, you get a different style of feedback. And a lot of the ways to interpret that feedback, I think to this day, I get feedback that is about walking a very narrow tightrope where not only do you have to change a bunch of things and do a bunch of things that are important, you have to make people feel a certain way about how you do them. And the ways that they want you make you feel are like diametrically opposite. Some people are going to be like, be more directive. So that way everyone knows your thing.

Starting point is 00:52:44 Some people are going to say be less directive. So people can come to their own conclusions, you know. Some people are going to say, like, move faster because there's always more you. Some people are going to say move less fast because otherwise you're going to end up stearling people. And a lot of it is kind of personal. Like there's a bunch of research about how women get a lot more personal feedback that is less about the content of their role and more about their style.

Starting point is 00:53:05 I think that is still true. And there's often a kernel of truth in it. You know, for me, this is forever work. Like, I do have biases to hard execution and being directive and things like that. But I think learning how to interpret and respond to feedback has been a really important point for me. And making my choices of just because I'm getting feedback doesn't mean I immediately need to respond, like, respond to all of it. there's a step in between where I can choose is this feedback I want to take action on in this exact way. Am I going to look for more themes, take action a different way?

Starting point is 00:53:47 Or I'm going to say, this is who I am. And I understand the tradeoffs. I'm going to do a better job of giving people context on the decisions I'm making and why I'm choosing these tradeoffs. But actually, this is like part of how I want to operate and I'm going to keep on. And then I think we just like give women weird about, like, here's a hot take. I think we tell women things like you need to find a mentor and you need to find a sponsor. And that's just another set of hoops that we have, that we tell women to jump through that I don't think we tell other parts of the population to jump through. Like, I think we tell women, you know, to unlock your

Starting point is 00:54:25 future success. You've got to find somebody who has made all the same life decisions you have and who you look up to and relate to, but also had an hour every month to, like, be an oracle to tell you all the things you do in your life. And it feels like yet another burden where you're like, I don't know how to do that. Like, I had the extreme generosity of so many wonderful leaders who helped me on my way. But I didn't feel like I had this mentor. And for a while, it was just like, oh, man, if I only had a mentor, I would know how to do all of this stuff. And it felt like another weight than I needed to carry, which I didn't. I had everything I needed. People were so kind and generous, but I didn't recognize it that way because we talk about it differently.

Starting point is 00:55:09 Thank you for sharing all that. I wasn't planning going in this direction, but this is such important advice. For, say, young women that are just getting started in the same product, is there any advice you'd want to share to help them get to be the next ami? Oh, I mean, number one, no next army. They're going to be their next themselves, you know, like that is maybe the most important thing. is like, everyone will only tell you their own story. Like, that's all, that's all anyone can do. But the thing that I tell people is like, don't dampen who you are in your strengths. Just continue expanding.

Starting point is 00:55:44 Whenever you run into a problem, just add more to the things that you can do, the tools that you have, the way you can express yourself. Just keep on adding and growing and don't, like, shrink yourself ever. I love that. I want to move to a different topic. few things. I definitely wanted to touch on while we had our time together. One is that I hear, now this is going to be a total tangent, but I think it's really important and I'm excited to talk about it. I hear you really good at setting goals and aligning incentives really well for teams. One of your colleagues told me, you're best in class at building product orgs and figuring out how

Starting point is 00:56:17 product orgs can best work with other teams. I'm curious if there's any tricks or lessons you can share here about what you've learned about how to do this well. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing is to try to decouple all the things we're trying to do. Sometimes when you give people direction, you're like, okay, everybody just go get revenue or everybody just go get GMV. And it seems obvious because that's the thing you have to do, right, as a company. But there's only a few places where you are guaranteed to get that and it's measurable and, like, you can do it. And that leads to, like, what I call toddler soccer, you know,

Starting point is 00:56:57 where everybody just runs to the same surface. or the same customer set or the same, like, exact product, where you can do this and it's measurable. And you end up, like, everyone's tripping on each other. Everyone's trying, like, nobody really gets contact on the ball. There's no, like, coordination, you know? I have three kids. I've watched a lot of toddlers play soccer.

Starting point is 00:57:16 Very good. It's a very fresh, very fresh metaphor. And instead, like, one of the things I like to do is just detangle, okay, as a company, let's think about our customers. Let's think about, like, all the things they're going to need. in their journey. Let's think about like how we will know, how we will match our own metrics to customer success. Let's play the entire feel. Like what would it look like if we could detangle it so that every team we had internally had a different goal that ladders into like a goal framework

Starting point is 00:57:48 that's actually the thing that we need to do to solve the full customer impact? And then you don't have the same swim lanes problem. You have like plenty of room for people to like make progress on their links. They all know how they fit into the bigger picture. And it just opens up a lot more growth for every team. And it makes sure that we're solving like the customer problem end to end. Is there an example that you could share to make this even more concrete from say, WhatsApp or Facebook or Instagram or anything like that where you can share some of these goals that you've like, oh, this worked out really well? I know it's probably private information partly. It might be trickier. I mean, maybe going back to like the GMV example, like,

Starting point is 00:58:30 Like, maybe instead of motivating everyone on GMV, you motivate them on GMV per surface and you divide up the surfaces. Or maybe you motivate them on like actually different goals that underlie. Like when you think about GMV, what are all the various engagements, customer engagements that lead to GMV? Can you goal on number of people who visit, number of people who convert, number of people who reorder, you know, et cetera, rather than going strictly on the output? So the core advice here is each team should have different goals that are kind of part of this metrics treat the latter up to revenue, Jim V, some like that. Whatever. Yeah. The thing that best matches kind of the overall customer outcome that mirrors the company outcome as well.

Starting point is 00:59:14 Got it. And there's always this balance between it's like actually the best metric versus like it's something they can move and understand and it's easy to watch and it's movable and things like, right? Yeah. And you have to have faith that it is actually connected to that output. metric. Like, you don't want to create a metric that's disconnected just to make a team feel good. It really does need to solve the customer problem, and that's reflected in company's performance. But you can usually break it down into smaller pieces, and I think that breaking down into smaller pieces and assigning those out to teams, that's really helpful.

Starting point is 00:59:46 Is there anything else along these lines of things you've learned about helping teams work together and not play toddler soccer beyond having different goals that kind of all that are up to the one that really matters? I think there's value in also acknowledging that teams are going to have different incentives. Even inside a team, like cross-functional teams on the same pod or whatever are going to have different incentives. They're going to come in with different information. They're going to have disagreements. And certainly, like, different teams inside a company or different pillars inside a company, different products.

Starting point is 01:00:21 They're all going to have different incentives. And I think sometimes that feels like something is going wrong when people disqualify. disagree. But actually, that's just a sign of, like, healthy tension and knowledge. I think the thing that makes tension healthy is, like, one, when you can acknowledge it and say, yeah, of course there's tension. You're bringing different information than I'm bringing when we should be disagreeing. Like, that's not, no one's a bad person. No one is, like, coming in with poor intent. Like, everyone's doing the thing they are supposed to do, and that is, like, a useful thing to do. And then you have to agree on an outcome that you're aiming for. Like, if you disagree on, like, if you disagree on, like, what the company outcome is or what the customer outcome is. Then you've got some structural stuff. You need to work out. Normally you just have to escalate it. But if you agree on like, we're all trying to move this metric by changing this

Starting point is 01:01:09 customer experience, then all you're doing is like having a conversation about the best way to do that using the different information that everyone is bringing. And I think that's super important to just have as a rational, open, explicit discussion as opposed to like trying to hide it or like pocket vetoing. or something else, because you assume that like when someone disagrees with you, that I don't know, there's something emotional or wrong about it. But it's fascinating. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:01:41 There's a piece of advice I once heard from the head of product at Airbnb once, where we were trying to find the reorg the business and try to figure out the best org. And his advice, and something you realize is like, there's never the best org. There's just the best idea we have at the time with the, here's the things we know are not going to be optimal about it and let's build processes. around that. I think that's my take on, like, leadership in general. Like, especially as you get more senior, you can only make bad decisions, you know, like, at some point, someone can bring you a problem, you can recognize a problem, and you can, like, solve it. And there's, like, oh, so much happiness

Starting point is 01:02:15 in solving that and, like, tying a bow around it. But as you get senior, the only problems you'll see are ones that are fundamentally unsolvable, because otherwise someone would have solved it before they got to you, right? And so all you're doing is like choosing which branch of suboptimal you're going to put your name on and like describing like the principles you're using and the context and the fact that you know it's suboptimal, but it's still the best thing. I think that's a really hard thing is just to recognize and acknowledge that like increasingly people only see you do very make suboptimal decisions. And from a distance, they're just like, why is that person only making bad decisions. It's because those are your only options. All you can do is choose the least

Starting point is 01:03:01 bad, the best possible for the time, for the problem that's consistent, that makes sense with the framework. And that's been like a tough thing to learn to. You said somewhere that as you get more senior, you get worse at everything because the problems get harder. It's a kind of dark view of leadership, you know, where you do like, yeah, you can't fully solve problems. You have to say no a lot. people are unhappy with you. I thought, you know, as you get more senior, everyone listens to you and they like you and you can just say a thing and then it happens. And it's, that is not at all accurate. You know, it really is most of the decisions you make are, are not, uh, are not going to be perfect. And I think I'm all about just normalizing and acknowledging those hard truths because otherwise,

Starting point is 01:03:48 I feel like I'm failing. And if I just know that something is normal, that it's part of the job, then it's not me. It's just like, okay, this is a fact of the job that I have to get accustomed to if I want to have this kind of impact. And there's something about having the impact, like being able to serve the customer, being able to be part of this team. There's something about it that is so worthwhile that it's kind of worth being terrible at everything and being visibly terrible at everything, because that is the best way that I have to have that kind of impact in the world. I think this is really important for early ICPMs to hear because they see their CPU and founders making all these decisions. They're like, what the hell? That's a terrible idea. Why are they doing this? And, you know, what you're saying is just like, it's the best. There's options are limited.

Starting point is 01:04:37 Yeah. And nothing's going to be optimal. Yeah. Like, no org is optimal. It's definitely, you can optimize for the people you have. You can optimize for the products you have. You can optimize for the customers you have. You can optimize the technology you have.

Starting point is 01:04:48 Those are like the options that you have. Right. And in every one of those, you trade off everything else. And so you're just like, you just have to know. There's not going to be a perfect where all of it works. And that's okay. Like that is part of the fun of it. That's part of getting to do this work is like continuing to improve.

Starting point is 01:05:05 But it's hard. It's hard when people, it's hard. Especially when you want everyone to think you're so great at everything. This idea you mentioned of as a senior person solving people's problems feeling really good. Reminds me, we'll link to this. There's this Harvard Business Review article from like the 17. or 80s or something about monkeys on your back. Have you read this or heard of this? Oh yeah, yeah. I did. Or it's basically like as a manager.

Starting point is 01:05:28 You're trying to get you off of your back on people's backs. Right. Right. Like people come to you. I mean, here's my monkey. Please take it for me and feed it for me and take care of it. And your job as a leader is to keep the monkeys on people's backs and help them figure out how to feed this monkey themselves. It's a weird one. Very visceral. I want to talk about fair and your current role as a final section of our chat. First of all, what was it like starting something completely new after 15 years at Meta, the various properties of Meta? Yeah, I mean, I was so lucky. I had such an amazing, an amazing run at Meta. I got to work with amazing leaders, truly great products. And I came to fair for the same reason that I've been anywhere because I believe in the people and I believe in

Starting point is 01:06:15 the mission. A lot of my family in India is in wholesale and local retail. So like, which what fair does. And so it was also a very personal thing for me to do. I felt like I knew those customers. I'm a huge fan of small businesses. I got to work with a bunch of them in previous jobs as well. I would say it like coming to fair. I mean, one of the things I always think about is that when, especially as you are more senior, ramping on anywhere feels terrible because you expect to be as good at your new job as you were when you left your last job. But you forget that like at your last job, you were there for years. You had years to build up like the vocabulary and the cultural context and the network and the product knowledge. And then you're stepping in somewhere

Starting point is 01:06:59 where you know none of that, but you have the same expectations of yourself of being able to have an impact and improve things and help your team. And so I always just try to like remind myself, it's going to take time. And what's most important is not for me to like try to come in and change everything immediately, but to learn enough to be able. able to change things, like 60 or 90 or 120 days in the future. And so that breathing helps a little bit. It was also really interesting because, like, Farr was entirely new to me. It was like a new business model. It was a whole new set of people. It was a whole new set of customer problems. And so, like, every interaction, I just, like, had to learn so much. I had to learn, like, who is this

Starting point is 01:07:43 person? How do they see the world? What's the problem they're talking to me about? What's the customer impact, I think. So it was just like a dramatic like learning curve, which I always really love. Maybe the last thing I'd say is like, again, I was super lucky at meta. I think I always had this maybe like deep-seated insecurity that I, maybe I was only good at meta. Like maybe there was something about that network of people and how great they were and how well I knew those products. and maybe I wouldn't be that successful somewhere without that scaffolding. And so leaving and being able to go somewhere else and lead through change and a new place, a new customer set, a new business model, that's also been really, really affirming for me,

Starting point is 01:08:32 honestly. Well, we have a lot of fans at Fair from the people I know there. And so clearly things are going well, at least as far as I can tell. something that I think is fair definitely has and a lot of companies have is a very product-minded visionary founder and CPO's classically last like a year or two and then they're like, oh, this sucks,

Starting point is 01:08:53 the founder just tells me what to do and what's the point of this role and it's so frustrating. I'm curious just what you've learned about, at least so far, about working with someone like that as a CPO and not just being this middle person between what the founder wants to deal with the team is building. Yeah, I mean, this is going to sound so naive, but I literally didn't know how important it was for me to have such a great relationship with the CEO. Like, because I always had great relationship.

Starting point is 01:09:21 You know, I was lucky I had great relationships with a lot of people at my previous jobs. I was like, oh, of course. Like, it's going to be fine. Everyone's going to let me do what I want, whatever. And I think I just got really lucky because Max is an amazing CEO who's also super growth mindset and super open to like talking over. ideas, even when they involve a lot of change. So, like, you know, when I was onboarding, one of the things I always like to do is write, like, a list of observations. I go out and talk to, I have one-on-ones with, like, a lot of people, and I write, like, here's the themes that I'm

Starting point is 01:09:52 hearing. You're just going well. Here's just not going well. And that's, like, a way for me to both share what I'm seeing and, like, build some credibility and trust that way, but also people to give me feedback and be like, oh, you're wrong about this, just so I can kind of correct my starting, like, point of knowledge. And with Max, I also wrote like a parallel document of hot tapes. So like once a quarter or so for the first year, I write a document that was just like, hey, for sake of provocation, if we wanted to fundamentally change a few things, here's ideas on what we could fundamentally change.

Starting point is 01:10:28 And Max, you know, very, very well could have just been like, hey, like, can you please just run product? Like that's kind of huge. Can you please do that? And instead he and the entire rest of the executive team were like, yeah, like let's step through these. Let's talk about which of these we should try. Let's talk about maybe context you don't have for why these don't make sense or why we don't do these. And that was such a gift, you know, because I was able to build like such a great relationship, like a trusting and complementary relationship with Max and the rest of the exact team. and also that he took seriously.

Starting point is 01:11:08 Things that he really didn't have to, that, you know, I have so much respect for that. And I think I got really lucky in just, like, finding a great CEO and exec team. Is there anything you learn about this vetting process? Say you're a founder looking for a head of product, a CPO. Any advice for how they might vet this person to make sure they are a good fit and will last?

Starting point is 01:11:31 What I'd say to everyone else is, like, make sure you just have a mind mel with a CEO. before you decide to take the job, like spend a day together, like understand how they think and how they operate and whether you're going to work together in a way that feels a really high fidelity and like high trust and you're going to have room. I mean, I'm not a founder like by any stretch. And so when founders ask me, like, what should I look for in a head of product or CPU, I see something a little bit different, which is make sure that you really need the level of seniority that you are hiring. I think that a lot of founders think, I need a CPO, I need a VP product, I need someone who's really senior, when often, like, the founder has a bunch of the vision and knowledge. And what they really need is somebody to build the product. They don't need somebody who's going to, like, scale the team or, like, build systems.

Starting point is 01:12:25 Like, they've got enough of that. And so that, to me, is part of building that complementary relationship where the founder and CEO know what they need. and on the CPO side, they know that they can mind meld enough with the CEO to actually have an impact. Last question. You started as an intern in the PR department, I think, at Meta. Oh, I started with a temp, actually.

Starting point is 01:12:49 A temp, okay. Yeah. Amazing. And then you ended up leading Facebook ads and then WhatsApp and many other things. Can you show that story of just how you joined and how that happened? Well, I had quit my last job.

Starting point is 01:13:00 I knew that I had, I knew that what I wanted to do was like be involved in all the wild stuff happening in Silicon Valley in the mid-2000s. So I'd quit my last job. I was kind of traveling around the world a little bit. I was living in New York an extremely blissful lifestyle. I was unemployed. I was doing whatever I wanted. It was some of the best time I've had in my life.

Starting point is 01:13:28 And eventually I needed a job, you know, like you do. but it was 2007, and the only place I wanted to work was Facebook. Like, you could hear the way people talked about these products. You know, people would say Facebook is more important to me than my car. It's like how I connect with the world, right? Like, it was such a magical product, and you could hear that. And I knew some people at the company, and I convinced one of them to introduce me to everyone to the odds.

Starting point is 01:13:59 I made a trade. I said, I'll buy you fancy coffee at Coupe Cafe in downtown Palo Alto. And in exchange, like, just introduced me to everyone, everyone you know, taking around the office. And so everyone I met, I said, hey, I'm on me. I really want to work here. I'll do whatever you need. And the only call I got back was from the head of PR, Brandy Barker, who said, look, we can't hire you. Like, we didn't interview you.

Starting point is 01:14:22 We don't have head cal. You're not really qualified. It was just like 10 reasons. I was like, okay, thank you for calling me. And she said, but we need a temp to review our press releases. So if you want to come join a temp agency, we'll like tell me to send you here. And that's what I did. I moved out to California and I slept on people's couches.

Starting point is 01:14:44 And eventually they hired me full time. And I didn't look back. And now you're on Lenny's podcast. It's interesting. This reminds me of another path to power rule from the Jeffrey Pfeffer podcast of networking as one of the best ways to acquire power in the world. So it's interesting that now that seed is planted in my head anyway, just to plug for that other episode also.

Starting point is 01:15:06 Ami, is there anything else that you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to a very exciting lightning round? Sometimes people ask me who are working in product. Like, what's the one thing they should do to, like, be successful at product? And maybe the thing I would say is, like, especially as an org scales or a company scales, there's just a lot of distractions that get between you and the customer. And so the one thing that I would just advise everyone to do is just like, think about the customer. Like talk to the customer, be an advocate for them.

Starting point is 01:15:39 It's such a shortcut to everything else you need to do in order to be successful. But it's so easy for that to get like lost when you're thinking about, okay, how do I get alignment on my team? How do I figure out my roadmap? How do I like convince people to join the company? There's all these different things. But fundamentally, we're here to, like, create value for the customer. And the closer you can get to that, I always found myself the happiest because I'm building that feedback group with the customer, but also more successful.

Starting point is 01:16:08 Well, let me actually follow up on this because this is really important and interesting. There's a PM part of my brain of like, okay, but we also got to move some metrics. And sometimes that metric isn't going to be moved by we need to do something specifically for the customer, but it's something that will help the business. Is there anything there of just that balance of like, we need a. move over this conversion metric versus like let's focus fully on what does the customer want and need. Any thoughts there? Yeah, I think you often like make things adversarial that are not actually adversarial. Like it is very rare for customer value to be different than company

Starting point is 01:16:43 value on a long enough time horizon. Like there might be short term divergences, but really like to solve, to create value for the customer, you got to be around as a business. You know, like, Otherwise, you are creating zero value for the customer. And so I think really just starting with the like, what are the end goals and where, where does stuff diverge in the very short term versus the medium term versus in the long term? It shouldn't. And really thinking about where you are in the journey and how to place that, that always helps me because our metrics should absolutely be about long-term customer impact.

Starting point is 01:17:21 It's very rare if those aren't and then you're still able to be successful. It comes back to our chat about metrics and how to do those well. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Here we go. First question. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhymes. I almost never read nonfiction.

Starting point is 01:17:44 I love Shonda Rhymes. Made an exception for this one. It was very, it was, it's about just saying yes to things and finding your voice when you do feel like you're sometimes the first or the only or the different. and what that feels like. And it was very life-changing for me, actually. That's an awesome pick. No one's recommended that one yet.

Starting point is 01:18:02 Reminds me of an episode of Matthew Dix, who has a TED talk about saying yes to everything. He just says, he tries to say yes to everything, and his life is incredibly interesting as a result. Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed? I watch a lot of, like,

Starting point is 01:18:19 witty workplace comedies from the mid-2000s. So I watch a lot of, like, The Office or 30 Rock reruns. Things are just very comfortable that I already know everything. There's no surprises. I'm not great with new stuff right now. I hear they're bringing back the office. There's like a reboot happening. Oh, really? Let's see. Let's see. Yeah, exactly. Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you love either digital, physical, anything? Maybe a physical product that I really like. I like, I drink a lot of like coffee and tea through the day and it's just like a, I don't know, like a calming. ritual. And so I have like a fellow's electric kettle. That was my big work from home upgrade. So I have this electric kettle. I have like a pourover kit. I have these like lovely like colorful mugs that I like. That is actually just made my day to day a lot better. It's just a little feeling of luxury. I love that. I think we have that same kettle. I also drink tea during every episode. Oh yeah. We know. So we're on the same page. Next question. Do you have a favorite life motto?

Starting point is 01:19:25 that you often think about, come back to share with friends or family and work or in life? It is definitely not a motto. I feel like I know people have mottoes and I'm so impressed. I'm like, you know, you know what you are, you know what you need. I am not that person. But I have a piece of advice that someone gave me very early in my career. Actually, it was Chamath. He said, you can either have more energy or less ambition.

Starting point is 01:19:49 And I was like, who, that's a little harsh, but also like really true. And I think about that. It's another of my Roman empires. I think about it all the time where I'm like, okay, if I want to have this kind of impact, I'm going to have to do the work. I'm going to have to try new things. I have to feel uncomfortable. And, you know, sometimes I don't want to do those things.

Starting point is 01:20:08 I don't want to do all that work. And then I can't be mad if I'm not having the impact. Like those two just have to go together. I also have to get lucky in all these different ways. But like the two have to go together. And that's been just like a good governor a little bit. of how I think about what I'm putting in. I love that quote, by the way.

Starting point is 01:20:27 If people don't know what you're talking about when you talk about the Roman empires, there's a meme on TikTok where somebody said that every man thinks about the Roman Empire at least once a week. Right? And it's made me think about what are all the things I think about repeatedly without really having trigger or reason? And there's still a lot. I don't think about the Roman Empire, though.

Starting point is 01:20:48 That is not one of them. I also don't think about the Roman Empire. Some things are wrong with me. Okay. final question. You can blame your colleague Barr for this question. He tells me that you are very good at jokes. You tell very good jokes. Do you have a joke that you want to share by any chance? I love jokes. There was a year at Facebook where I like, I kind of posted a joke of the leak to the company and they're all terrible. Yeah, exactly. All right. Here's my favorite joke. great. Why don't shark see clowns? Why?

Starting point is 01:21:27 Because they taste funny. I'll tell you one more, and you can choose which one. No, we're not cutting anything. What do zero say to the eight? What did the zero say to the eight? Something like us. Okay, no, I don't know. Nice belt.

Starting point is 01:21:44 Nice what? Belt. Belt. Oh, I got it. What is zero? I get it. I get it. I'm going to tell you a joke. I just heard a stand up stand up share. How do you turn an egg into a vegetable? I feel like if you put a letter on it, it'll turn into a vegetable name, but I can't think of the letter. I love that you're like really trying to analyze it and get there because I don't know if it's ever possible to like actually get the answer. Okay. So how does a how do you turn an egg into a vegetable? Squash.

Starting point is 01:22:17 That is definitely my level of joke. Definitely. They're like, this is for your kids. go home and do this joke. Ami, this was everything I hope it would be. I'm going to read again the goal you had for this podcast. I 100% think we achieved it. To be as authentic as possible and show that people can be pretty messy and imperfect at times yet still be very successful. I think exactly with this podcast and that it being. Thank you so much for being here.

Starting point is 01:22:40 Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and learn more? And how can listeners be useful to you? Oh, thank you, Lenny. It's been such a pleasure. I write a blog on Substack at amiBore.com. It's called the hard parts of growth. It's just about how even when you're working in great places with great people at great

Starting point is 01:23:00 companies, sometimes things are hard and that's normal. And so you can find me there. I do the same. I cross post to LinkedIn. So you can find me there. And how can people be helpful to me? I don't know, just by being great, by being kind and nice and making the world slightly better. Yeah, I think that's what we can all do.

Starting point is 01:23:17 I love that. and I will link to your substack in the show notes so for people want to check it out and I'll recommend it. I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to recommend it for my substack. Thank you, Lenny, so much. It's such a fun conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Starting point is 01:23:29 I loved it. Ami, thank you so much for being here. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Starting point is 01:23:42 Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Making an impact through authenticity and curiosity | Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.