What differentiates the top 1% of Product Leaders? What makes the Product Management function successful in some organizations, and not the others? The answer to these questions lies in the minds of operators and executives that run the world’s top companies. This is the CPO Mastery Podcast, where Moe Ali will connect with the world’s top product leaders, thinkers and visionaries to bring you their hard-earned insights. Join us each month to hear from CPOs and Product Leaders running companies like Uber, Google, Facebook, Shopify and others.
CPO at Slack on Becoming product-centric, strategy, and AI
Tamar, former CPO at Slack and a Venture Partner at IVP, has a rich history of leading and delivering innovative products on a massive scale. Previously, as the Chief Product Officer at Slack, she guided the product, design, and research sectors, witnessing a 10x revenue surge, the company's public listing, and its eventual acquisition by Salesforce. Prior to Slack, Tamar served as Vice President at Google, where she held pivotal product and engineering leadership roles, significantly contributing to flagship products like Search, Identity, and Privacy. In addition to her remarkable career, Tamar sits on the board of several public and private companies.
In today's episode, we discuss:
- Tamar’s fascinating journey through tech
- What worked and what didn’t work at Google, Amazon and Slack
- Why should we prioritize customer-centricity
- Tactics to stay ahead of the trends
- How to create a believable and compelling product strategy
- How to keep your team motivated
- How to manage alignment
- The potential of foundational product management in driving growth
- Diverse processes that can fit different organizational structures
- The best OKRs
- Impact of AI
Where to find Tamar Yehoshua:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamar-yeh...
Substack: https://substack.com/@tamaryehoshua
Where to find Moe Ali:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productfa...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/productfaculty
ProductFaculty: https://www.productfaculty.com/
10/26/2023 • 29 minutes, 38 seconds
Optimizing your product, career, and decision-making | Ami Vora (Faire, WhatsApp, Facebook)
Ami Vora is the Chief Product Officer at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace last valued at $12.59b. She has a wide array of experience in tech, having been an early employee at Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. She has also held a variety of roles, spanning product, marketing, and even operating Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund). Alongside her impressive career, Ami writes insightful blog posts about scaling tech products, teams, and cultures, and we unpack some of those posts in this conversation.
In today's episode, we discuss:
Ami’s fascinating journey through tech
Tactical advice for forming a product vision and strategy
What product simplicity means, and how to achieve it
Some of Ami’s most popular career and product frameworks
Advice for operating amidst uncertainty
How to optimize your career like a product
Where to find Ami Vora:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amvora/
Substack: https://substack.com/@amivora
Where to find Moe Ali:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productfaculty
Twitter: https://twitter.com/productfaculty
ProductFaculty: https://www.productfaculty.com/
Referenced: Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund) that Ami operated: https://medium.com/swlh/fbfund-the-investment-fund-youve-never-heard-of-that-helped-start-lyft-bc57ee661162
Faire: https://www.faire.com/
“If I can see a problem, it’s mine to solve” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/if-i-can-see-a-problem-its-mine-to
“It’s not prioritization until it hurts” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/its-not-prioritization-until-it-hurts
“Listen, Document, Decide” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/learning-to-make-decisions-in-a-new
Timestamps:
[00:00:59] Ami's background
[00:02:48] The mentality of leaving Microsoft for a temp role at FB
[00:05:06] Advice for forming a product vision and strategy
[00:09:12] What it means for a product experience to be "simple”
[00:10:24] How to create simple product experiences
[00:10:52] The "Listen, Decide, Document" framework
[00:12:23] Ami's attitude to prioritising amidst uncertainty
[00:13:37] Getting comfortable with making wrong decisions
[00:15:48] It's not prioritization until it hurts
[00:16:36] How to optimize your career like a product
[00:18:52] How to make time for career development
[00:20:53] If you see a problem, it's yours to solve
[00:23:03] Leadership and career hack: Upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0
[00:25:30] How to solicit valuable feedback
[00:27:35] The future of PM and how to stay ahead of it
8/28/2023 • 29 minutes, 17 seconds
VP of Product at Shopify on Decision Making and Mental Models
In this episode, we speak with Brandon Chu (former VP of Product at Shopify) about why product managers need to make high-conviction decisions to propel their product and career success. We discuss why the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) mindset is still critical for launching successful products. Additionally, we explore the mental models PMs need to expedite their product success.
7/11/2023 • 1 hour, 19 minutes, 17 seconds
Shreyas Doshi on Successful Teams, Product and Careers
This podcast with Shreyas Doshi, the most followed product leader in the world, we cover a range of topics on Successful Product Teams, Products and Careers. Listen in to hear: Why the most successful product companies still launch failed products. Why you need courage to be able to build products that are going to be successful. How AI is going to impact your Product Management career.
5/4/2023 • 1 hour, 32 minutes, 46 seconds
CPO of Thumbtack on Structuring Product Teams
In this podcast, you'll hear from P.J. Linarducci, the CPO of Thumbtack, on structuring product teams. It turns out that organizational structures are all flawed, and it's a myth that there is one "perfect" solution. Learn about the four-step process to ensure that you have the best structure to meet your needs, and discover when it makes sense to adapt it.
4/6/2023 • 31 minutes, 21 seconds
VP of Product at Google on Being a Great 0 to 1 Product Leader
In this podcast, you’ll hear from Bradley Horowitz, a VP of Product at Google on what sets apart the best 0 to 1 PMs from the rest. We’ll also touch on how PMs can develop their long-term thinking skills by developing the ability to “write science fiction”. Imagining the future by moving beyond the edges and constraints that we are used to.
10/7/2021 • 32 minutes, 47 seconds
CPO of Coinbase on Enabling Disruptive Technologies
In this podcast, you’ll hear from Surojit Chatterjee, the Chief Product Officer of Coinbase. Our conversation today will focus on three themes: the role of product in enabling disruptive technologies, the core PM skill set, and navigating your product career. Let’s dig right in.
10/7/2021 • 21 minutes, 8 seconds
CPO of Adobe on the Messy Middle of Products, Companies and Careers
In this podcast, you’ll hear from Scott Belsky, the Chief Product Officer of Adobe. Scott strongly believes that as product leaders, we must develop the muscle of becoming resourceful over valuing resources. We’ll also look into one of the most successful transitions in corporate history that Adobe went through, while switching to a subscription model. Finally we’ll discuss tips around avoiding some common traps while navigating through the messy middle of product discovery.
10/7/2021 • 20 minutes, 15 seconds
CEO of Coda on Rituals of Great Product Teams
In this podcast, you’ll hear from Shishir Mehrotra, the CEO of Coda. Shishir was an early employee and VP at YouTube, where he ran product, design and engineering teams. At YouTube, Shishir set an audacious goal of getting to 1 billion hours of watchtime, which was 2X the total bits on the entire internet. In 4 years,Youtube was able to achieve that goal. In this podcast we’ll go behind the scenes and learn about the power of Rituals during this time of Hyper Growth.
10/6/2021 • 39 minutes, 22 seconds
VP of Product at Facebook on the Product Craft
In this podcast, you'll hear from Nikhyl Singhal who is the VP of product at Facebook talk about a broad range of topics, including innovation at scale, product strategy and general career advice for product leaders. Nikhyl will touch on how the best product leaders are those that can see around corners. They're able to anticipate the future based on key trends and take advantage of those trends for their product.
6/22/2021 • 20 minutes, 23 seconds
Chief Product Officer at Etsy on Diversity and Inclusion
It’s no secret that diverse teams deliver better outcomes. At Etsy, Diversity isn’t just an initiative it’s a core value and it’s this focus on D&I that has led the company to have some of the best stats in the tech world. In this podcast, you’ll hear from Kruti Patel Goyal the CPO at Etsy on a range of D&I initiatives Etsy is doing from tactical things to systematically remove bias from their hiring process to tackling retention and growth of a diverse workforce once they are onboarded.
6/22/2021 • 15 minutes, 15 seconds
Marty Cagan on Product Strategy, Discovery & Empowered Teams
In this podcast, you'll hear from Marty Cagan on a broad range of topics from product strategy, product discovery, and empowered product teams. Marty will also break down a common myth that empowered product teams only work where you have the calibre of folks at companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon.
It's not the calibre of people that make great empower teams. It's strong coaching that product managers get at these companies that make them empowered. Empowered product teams don't need less management. They need. Better management let's dig in.
6/22/2021 • 25 minutes, 57 seconds
Chief Product Officer at Uber (fmr) on Innovation at Scale
In this podcast, you'll hear from Manik Gupta, the former Chief Product Officer of Uber about what it takes to be a great product manager, why product leaders must adopt a Platform-thinking mindset if they want to be successful in capturing key trends and the importance of understanding product growth, even if you're not in that function.