🔑 Key Takeaways
- Understand when to pivot, identify key products, diversify growth channels, create space for innovation, and find challenging work within large organizations.
- Authenticity and focusing on passions can lead to success in tech and product management. Enjoy what you do and build relationships through collaboration.
- Advocating for what's best for your team and the organization, even if it means making difficult decisions, can lead to positive outcomes. Be honest, open about priorities, and adapt to new roles and opportunities.
- Identifying high-performing teams and individuals is crucial for career growth. Trusting your instincts and advocating for unconventional roles can lead to unexpected opportunities and better team success.
- In a marketplace, prioritizing customers first benefits both parties in the long run. Focusing on high-quality customers and a great customer experience attracts more pros (supply). Teams that remain motivated and resilient during projects with high ambiguity have a better chance of success.
- Experiencing both growth and decline is crucial for understanding how to prioritize and manage growth effectively
- Thumbtack improved customer experience, reduced friction, and created a fairer revenue distribution system by rebuilding the customer experience loop, changing the monetization model, and allowing pros to provide instant quotes.
- Companies should explore diversification before disruption, collaborate during challenging times, and transform products for instant experiences, especially in B2B markets via LinkedIn.
- Effective product strategy involves all departments, fosters unity and shared responsibility, and leads to valuable skills and long-term benefits.
- Allowing small, focused teams to experiment and learn directly from customers can lead to valuable insights, new opportunities, and organizational improvement in large companies.
- A unique approach to incentives, culture, and business model is required to create a successful startup within a larger organization.
- Focus on user experience, integrate into multiple apps, and maintain a scrappy mindset to succeed in AI-assisted communication
- Investing in new products, uses cases, and growth channels can help businesses thrive and diversify as they grow. Prioritizing growth and learning opportunities can lead to valuable experiences and personal development.
- Prioritize joyful activities, lean on strengths, read 'Build' for inspiration, find treasure in discomfort, and be cautious of overwhelming new experiences.
- Persisting through challenges can lead to valuable discoveries and growth, as emphasized by Noam Brown, CPO of Grammarly. He encourages doing what gives us energy and keeping at it, using his love for 'For All Mankind' and 'Arc' as examples. Noam values feedback and connecting with others.
- Podcasts offer valuable insights and lessons from experts, creating a community of continuous learning. Listeners can support the podcast through subscriptions, ratings, and reviews to expand its reach.
📝 Podcast Summary
Insights from Noam's career in tech
Throughout his career at YouTube, Facebook, Thumbtack, and Grammarly, Noam has faced various challenges and learned valuable lessons. He shares insights on identifying and focusing on key products, diversifying growth channels, and creating space for innovation within large organizations. Noam emphasizes the significance of understanding when to kill a project or ask to be layered in a company. He also highlights the importance of finding work that challenges and advances your career. In large companies, he suggests avoiding performance management processes that limit new ideas and instead encourages creating a separate team or environment to foster innovation. Throughout the episode, Noam shares practical advice on creating clarity, building shared understanding, and ensuring top-notch security practices. He also discusses his experiences at companies facing financial struggles and the importance of perseverance and adaptability in those situations. Overall, Noam's unique experiences and wisdom provide valuable insights for anyone looking to build, grow, and innovate within their organizations.
Authenticity and Focusing on Passions Leads to Success
Success in tech and as a product manager doesn't necessarily require constant online presence through tweeting, newsletters, or podcasts. Authenticity and focusing on what comes naturally to an individual can lead to great success. The speaker shares her experience of getting deeply involved in her work and building relationships through collaboration, which has served her well. She encourages people to follow their passions and enjoy what they do, as life is short and there are numerous opportunities in technology. The speaker's diverse career experiences, from working on zero to one projects at YouTube to Facebook, demonstrate this approach. It's essential to remember that everyone can chart their unique path and lean on their strengths for success.
Advocating for team and organizational priorities
Advocating for what's best for your team and the organization, even if it means making difficult decisions, can lead to positive outcomes, as demonstrated by the speaker's experiences at YouTube. The speaker joined YouTube through an acquisition of a company they started and initially worked on rebuilding the product. They advocated for the team's priorities, which led to the project being canceled but ultimately resulted in their leadership role in the creator focus area. Despite struggling in this new role, the speaker learned valuable lessons from their mentors and continued to advocate for what was best for the team and the organization. This approach led to a successful career journey, as shown by the speaker's experiences at Thumbtack and Grammarly. Additionally, the speaker emphasized the importance of being honest and open about priorities and being willing to adapt to new roles and opportunities within an organization.
Advocating for unconventional roles can lead to growth and success
Having a broad perspective of a company's strategy and understanding how different roles and teams contribute to it can lead to unexpected opportunities for growth and success. The speaker shares an experience where they advocated for reporting to a colleague instead of their direct manager, leading to better support, productivity, and overall team success. This decision went against the norm but was driven by the speaker's instinct for what would benefit the organization. Additionally, having the ability to identify high-functioning teams and talented individuals is crucial for career growth and confidence. A product leader or manager's role goes beyond focusing solely on the user or team goals; they must consider what is best for the business as a whole and make decisions accordingly.
Focusing on Customers First: Balancing Business and Customer Needs
As a product manager, prioritizing between what's best for the customer and what's best for the business can be challenging. However, establishing guiding principles can help navigate these conflicts. For instance, focusing on customers first, especially in a marketplace, can benefit both the customers and the business in the long run. It's essential to remember that what's good for the pros (supply) is more customers with high quality, and a great customer experience will attract them. Additionally, resilience and stamina are crucial when working on projects with high ambiguity. Teams that remain motivated and excited about their work have a better chance of success than those that lose steam. The ability to persevere through challenges and maintain faith in the project is often the difference between success and failure. When faced with a project that isn't going well, it's essential to assess the situation and consider whether a change of pace or perspective might be beneficial. Ultimately, the question of when to give up on a project often comes down to stamina, and teams that can maintain their energy and focus are more likely to succeed.
Relying too heavily on one growth channel can mask underlying issues
Relying too heavily on one channel of growth, such as SEO, can be risky. The Thumbtack story illustrates this well, as the company experienced explosive growth through SEO, but then faced significant challenges when Google cracked down on their category and the growth slowed. During this time, it was difficult for the team to identify and address underlying issues because the growth had masked them. It wasn't until the growth slowed and the team was forced to confront the problems that they were able to turn things around. This experience taught the speaker that growth can mask issues, and that it's important for businesses to go through periods of challenge in order to truly understand what's working and what's not. As a PM, the speaker believes that experiencing both growth and decline is crucial for career development, as it helps to build a deeper understanding of how to prioritize and manage growth effectively. While the "prettiest mile graph" moment is rare, the lessons learned from such experiences are invaluable.
Thumbtack's growth turnaround through focusing on multiple channels, team reform, and broader markets
For Thumbtack's growth turnaround, the team went back to basics by focusing on multiple growth channels, reforming the team, and targeting broader markets. They recognized that Thumbtack was a marketplace of many smaller marketplaces and optimized their efforts accordingly. The core issue was a high-friction customer experience with long wait times and unfair revenue distribution. To address this, they rebuilt the customer experience loop, changed the monetization model, and allowed pros to provide instant quotes. This shift improved the customer experience, reduced friction, and created a fairer revenue distribution system. Ultimately, these changes served as the catalyst for Thumbtack's growth engine.
Lessons from Thumbtack's growth diversification journey
Companies, especially those relying heavily on one growth channel, should proactively explore diversification before facing disruption. This lesson was learned during the speaker's experience at Thumbtack when Google's algorithm change significantly impacted their SEO-driven traffic. Another valuable lesson gained from this experience was the importance of collaboration among leadership teams during challenging times. When growth goes negative, the ability of the team reporting to the CEO to tackle hard projects together becomes crucial. The speaker also emphasized the complexity of transforming a product from a request-based model to an instant experience, especially when it involves both digital and physical components. Additionally, they highlighted the potential of LinkedIn for B2B businesses seeking to diversify their marketing channels and reach decision-makers effectively.
Collaboration is key to effective product strategy
Effective product strategy requires collaboration and involvement from all departments, not just those with "product" in their titles. This includes finance, human resources, engineering, sales, and marketing. During challenging times, it's essential for everyone to have a seat at the table and contribute their unique perspectives and expertise to the company's growth strategy. This collaboration fosters a sense of unity and shared responsibility, which is crucial for getting a whole team and company out of difficult situations. Moreover, the creation of new product experimentation teams, like the one built at Facebook, can lead to valuable outcomes beyond the discovery of the next big product or startup. These teams can help build essential skills, such as working at scale and creating community products, which can significantly benefit the organization in the long run. Therefore, it's crucial for product managers to act as connective tissue across all functions and for the entire leadership team to feel that connection. By fostering collaboration and open communication, everyone can contribute to the company's strategic vision and help drive its growth.
Learning from small, focused teams in large organizations
Creating a small, targeted team with the freedom to experiment and learn directly from customers, without the usual organizational constraints, can bring significant benefits to a large company. This was the approach taken by Facebook's NPE team, which was set up to build new, radical products. The team's inability to scale from the start was a challenge, but it also allowed them to focus on understanding customer needs in a way that would have been impossible at Facebook's scale. This not only helped the team discover new opportunities but also served as a mirror for the organization, highlighting areas where improvement was needed. Additionally, the team acted as a recruiting tool, attracting talented individuals who were drawn to the opportunity to work on innovative projects. While the team did not discover the next Instagram, it did contribute valuable insights and features to other products. Overall, the NPE team's experience demonstrates the importance of allowing small, focused teams to explore new ideas and learn directly from customers, even in a large organization.
Creating a successful startup within a larger organization
Creating a successful startup within a larger organization requires careful consideration of the incentive system to avoid adverse selection and gaming behaviors. Mike Shreeves, a leader in Facebook's "new product experimentation team," shared his experience in creating a culture of innovation within the company by removing constraints and providing incentives that aligned with the long-term goals of the startup. He emphasized the importance of having a different operating model, recruiting a unique type of person, and offering an outsized incentive that mirrors the risk and reward of starting a company. Nike's incubation lab was cited as an example of an effective incentive system, allowing startups to operate independently before integrating with the larger organization. Additionally, Grammarly, a successful B2C subscription business, has continued to grow by focusing on user experience, offering a freemium model, and expanding into B2B markets. The key takeaway is that creating a successful startup within a larger organization requires a unique approach to incentives, culture, and business model.
User-friendly experience, integration across apps, and scrappy beginnings led to Grammarly's success
Grammarly's success can be attributed to its user-friendly experience, prevalence across various applications, and the company's scrappy beginnings. Grammarly's ease of use sets it apart, allowing users to extract value with minimal effort. The product's integration into various text boxes makes it an essential tool for communication, providing real value across numerous applications throughout the day. Additionally, Grammarly's founders' focus on profitability from the start and the company's origins in Ukraine, where raising external funds was not an option, instilled a scrappy mindset that has contributed to its success. These factors combined have enabled Grammarly to navigate the industry's evolving landscape and maintain its position as a leader in AI-assisted communication. For those building in the space, focusing on a user-friendly experience, leveraging AI to provide value across various applications, and maintaining a scrappy mindset can serve as valuable lessons.
Balancing short-term profitability and team culture
Focusing on short-term profitability while maintaining a strong team and culture can help a business grow and sustain in the early stages. However, as the business grows, it's important to invest in new products, use cases, and channels of growth to diversify and continue to thrive. The team at Grammarly, even amidst challenging circumstances like war, demonstrates resilience and a strong commitment to the business. Career success can be difficult to predict, but prioritizing growth and learning opportunities can lead to valuable experiences and personal development.
Focus on joy and strengths for balance and growth
Focusing on areas of work that bring you joy and fulfillment, while also identifying and leaning on your strengths, can help balance the discomfort and challenges of new experiences. This approach allows for growth and learning, while also maintaining a healthy and balanced perspective. A recommended book on this topic is "Build" by Tony Fadell, which shares inspiring stories of perseverance and innovation despite numerous failures. Remember, life is short, so it's essential to prioritize energy-giving activities and minimize time spent on tasks that drain you. When faced with discomfort or pain, try to find the treasure hidden within, as the things we fear can often lead to our greatest growth. Additionally, be cautious of situations that are too new and unfamiliar, as these can be overwhelming without a solid foundation of strengths to lean on.
Embracing struggles for personal growth
Persistence and experiencing struggles can lead to valuable discoveries and personal growth, as shared by Noam Brown, the Chief Product Officer at Grammarly. He emphasized the importance of doing what gives us energy and keeping at it, using his love for the TV show "For All Mankind" and his long-term appreciation for the product Arc as examples. In interviews, Noam prefers working on product problems together with candidates to assess their skills and fit. He also recommended the podcast episode where he discussed leadership recruiting. Noam's favorite life motto is "we are meant to struggle," and he encourages embracing challenges for personal growth. As a user of various Grammarly products, he invited listeners to use the platform and provide feedback, and he is open to connecting and being helpful in any way he can. You can find Noam on Twitter with an open DM, and he values feedback and building connections.
Learning from experts through podcasts
The podcast guests shared valuable insights and lessons learned from their personal and professional journeys. By making the podcast publicly available, the hosts are extending an invitation to listeners to learn from these experts. This not only benefits the individual listener but also helps to create a community of continuous learning. Moreover, the podcast's success relies on listener support through subscriptions, ratings, and reviews. These actions help to expand the reach of the podcast and allow more people to benefit from the knowledge shared. Overall, the podcast serves as a reminder of the power of sharing and learning from each other, and the importance of actively seeking out new information and perspectives.