7 Counterintuitive Product Lessons from Anthropic's Head of Product | Ami Vora

If you have a perfect strategy but poor execution, you don't win. What's even worse is like you don't even know why you didn't win. You ship a thing, every day you learn, you feed it back in, you ship the next thing, get a shot every day. Everyone is more tired than we think. Nobody wants to learn a new thing. What they want is like a sense of relief. Like they want a sanctuary where stuff just feels like it's working for them. I ask GPT for feedback all the time. So I was like, this is just going to tell me more of what I know. this is not going to be weird, it's going to be fine. And so it somehow broke through the maybe nice stuff that GPT had been telling me about myself. And it was basically like, — all right, welcome everyone. My guest today is Ammy, former chief product officer at Fair and product leader at WhatsApp. And you know, I think one of my favorite newsletters is Amy's the harder parts of growth. and uh she's written everything from how simplicity is a competitive advantage to why execution beat strategy and to how to protect your counter for deep work and these are all topics that I care deeply about. So yeah really excited to talk to Ammy about all this and also how she uses AI in her life. So welcome Amy. — Yeah I appreciate it. I'm so glad we're getting a chance to hang out. It's nice to see. Thanks for having me on. — Awesome. So you know this is like kind of like a AI focused podcast. So I always like start this question. Um, I'm sure you've been using all these AI tools. What What are some ways in which AI has helped you save time or brought some joy to your life and work? Yeah, — joy. I like the framing of joy. I because I think sometimes there's so much like stress and pressure to like have everything figured out that it's like not as joyful. I would say when I think about joy, like I really like using it to help my kids do random things. So, like one of my kids loves coloring and she has very specific things she wants to color. So, she'll be like, "I want like a half mermaid, half unicorn. " And I'm like, "You know what? I can do that. Like, I can generate that. " Or like when she asks for things, I like make sure that they're all like women. So, like it's like a lady firefighter and like a lady uh what butterfly lepodoptrist like a butterfly cat, you know, just like whatever random things she wants, I like subversively try to make them what I want to reinfor. — Yeah. I also like one of the um kind of stressful things for me is like meeting new people and talking to new people because I think I'm like I'm pretty well trained and part of my job for a long time has been talking to people but I'm still like a very heavy introvert and I feel super awkward especially when I'm talking to new people. Um, and so one thing that has helped is just like to do a quick AI what do I need to know in advance like to every person I'm going to meet and be like okay what do I know about this person like what topics are they likely to be interested in what do we have in common and just ask them for a little bit more of like a guide to that person so I feel like I know them before I start a meeting with them um I don't think I it actually changes too much of what we talk about, but it like makes me feel calmer. — Yeah. Like you know the person better. — I feel like the thing I struggle with is like I haven't been able to automate a bunch of those work. — Humans always want to be more lazy. So, you know. — Yes. And I love being lazy. Like I laziness is just another word for efficiency. And like — Exactly. — There's entire whole new seasons of Love Island that I like haven't seen. Well, like I could be doing that, I guess. That's funny. Yeah, for me that's like K dramas or something. But yeah, that's funny. Yeah. — Um, so uh I I don't know if you remember this like a few months ago I posted this prompt about like getting

chaty to share like uh honest feedback about yourself because you know it kind of remembers your past conversations. — Oh no, I remember that. — Yeah. So I'm so I'm curious uh if you wanted to share like what AI told you about yourself and I can also talk about myself too. — Yeah. Yeah. So, you posted this prompt that was like, "Here's how to get like the toughest feedback about yourself. " — Yeah. — And I asked for feedback. I asked Shad GPT for feedback all the time. So, I was like, "This is just going to tell me more of what I know. This is not going to be weird. It's going to be fine. " But the prompt was like very hard-hitting. It was like, "You're my advisor. You're my manager. I'm a founder. You're an investor. " It was like, "Go big, go hard. " And so it somehow broke through the maybe nice stuff that GPT had been telling me about myself. — And it was pretty hard. It was basically like you're wasting your life. It was — the summary of what it told me. — And I think the thesis was like I'm on I'm taking a sabbatical. So I'm just like I'm doing a lot of stuff. I like travel a lot. I like meet people. I write this newsletter. I'm trying to figure out what to do with that. I like got really into making pizza and I'm trying to figure out how to make this. So, I'm just like I'm doing a lot of super random stuff. — Yeah, that sounds like a good life to me. Yeah. I don't know why. — Yeah, it's I'm like this is great. This is what soatical is for, right? — Yeah. — Uh but GPT is like you're just wasting your time. You're like you're being a dilitant. You're not out there building. You're not hardcore. You're letting yourself off the hook. Like now is the time. Just like pick a thing and go hard. And I was like I was shocked because I was like on the one hand that is really true. Like It is an amazing time. It's a great time to be a builder. going hard. But also I thought I like intentionally was kind of not doing that. You know I was giving myself a thing and then I'm like questioning the whole thing. And finally I was signed with my best friend who like does not work in who lives on the east coast does not work in tech is like lives in a pretty different world. And I was like, "Oh man, like this robot on the internet like gave me some feedback and now I'm spiraling. " And she was like, "I mean, just like put down the internet. Like step away from your computer, go outside for a walk. Like remember that you're a human. Like don't get too caught up in this. " Um, which was really helpful. And then kind of hilariously, I tried rerunning that prompt again. um pretty recently and it told me the exact same thing and uh and now I don't feel so bad about it. I was like actually I had a great summer. I like spent a bunch of time with my family. I like learned a bunch of I feel so it was it's funny how like my reaction has changed. — I mean it only has access to your past conversations. So maybe like you were just asking about work all the time and then like you know got biased. — I know everything about me though. I ask about everything. I ask it for like parenting advice. travel. Like you I'm it. That's why I thought it was so hard-hitting because it was so personal, you know, it like — it's it really the life co-pilot for me. — Yeah. And it's hard to get it to actually give you hard feedback because normally it wants to please you. So you have to prompt. — It turns out I liked that. I didn't even realize how much I liked that. — Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Composio. Most of the pain shipping AI features doesn't come from the model, but from the integrations. You're dealing with messy APIs, fragile tool calls, and hours lost to debugging and figuring out why something broke in Slack or Salesforce. Composio gives you one SDK to connect to 800 plus apps like Slack, GitHub, Gmail, Jira, and they built the Rube. app that plugs all of those apps straight into an AI chat. So, you can just ask pull me the latest metrics from Mix Panel and update linear. Now, instead of fighting with APIs, you can focus on actually shipping faster. Check it out at get rube. link. link/pater or the link in the video description. Now, back to the episode. — Yeah. So, for me, it told me that uh they told me that like I had this like scarcity mindset, which is very true cuz like, you know, like you know, my parents have a lot of money when we're growing up. So, I'm always thinking about like what could go wrong and like trying to like protect the downside and they told me like, hey, by doing this, you are limiting your up upside. So, — yeah. — So, yeah. So, I had to like, you know, go back and forth with it a little bit and like, you know, Yeah. It it's definitely good to check in with it like what once a while this stuff. — Yeah, I feel like it's hard to get like neutral third party advice, especially from something that like knows you that much. I like asked one of the bots that didn't that I wasn't using as much for I put the stain component there and it was just like I don't know, man. You've asked me about these like 10 things. That's not enough to build a picture to like tell me more about you and then I can give you a response which I thought was very responsible. — Yeah. Did you like what did you do to get through the feedback for you the scarcity mindset which is like a very common thing I think for a lot of us. — Um I mean it's it's true that like you know like for example I have a job and like trying to do this creator stuff and like do all this stuff at the same time. So I actually based on like I actually went off to make a pro project where I actually proactively gave it a bunch of information about myself like my life my like what gives me energy and now I check in with it like every quarter or whenever I have like a problem I just check in with it and then because I've given so much context it actually gives me some pretty good advice most of the time. So that's been really helpful. Yeah. So uh so yeah. So we'll put the prop in the show notes and stuff so other people can try it. — But be warned be warned. — Yeah. Be warned. be one. Yeah. So, I I love how you've made one of your main things uh about um simplicity as a competitive advantage and something that I like I it's just so believing too and it's like really hard to do, you know, do and maybe you can talk about like um like do you have any practical

tips to kind of like uh get people to do a simple thing first and not like overthink and over complicate thing things? For me, it always starts with like who are we building for and like what's the purpose of building something. — Yeah. — And I think like a fundamental assumption that I have about the world is just like everyone is more tired than we think, — you know, like everybody is like stretched. Everybody's like trying to make things work. Nobody wants to learn a new thing or and usually when you're building something it's like a tool so people can do other stuff, you know? It's not like they want to spend their lives learning your thing. Um, and so that always it always helps me to like center myself in the customer. And this was like clearest at WhatsApp where we had folks who were, you know, we started with this kind of fundamental assertion that if we could make a product that works for literally anyone in the world, it actually works better for everyone. And that was it was a weird time to be doing that because there was all this like amazing new high um like very powerful technology. And so it was really tempting to just be like oh but the people who have that super powerful technology they want more complexity they want more function they want more things. Um and really thinking wait a minute do they like or do they just want a thing that works? Like even for those people what they want is like a sense of relief. like they want a sanctuary where stuff just feels like it's working for them and they don't have to like do extra work. — Yeah. — Um so centering in like this core — what is the customer really trying to do? — Um and then more tactically just thinking like what are the downsides if you don't do some of the things on the list? — Like how bad is that really? Or what if you sequence them? What if you say I am going to do them but not until I'm all the way done with this thing? Like how can you run the experiments to be like maybe in some case that's like literally just road map sequencing. Maybe in some cases it's like if you hit a certain threshold then you do the other thing. Maybe in some cases it's like a portfolio where you say 80% of our time is going to be spent on this simple thing and the other 20% we'll do whatever we'll pick stuff off the top of the stack. — Yeah. — Um so I think like the tactics for how to build are kind of the same. It's just like thinking about the risks of overbuilding as much as you think about the risks of underbuilding. — Yeah. It's like a natural pattern where you know you have like a product that has product market fit like WhatsApp like people use it for calling and sending me messages, right? And then you're like okay that part is done now. So let's go add some more features. Let's add like stories and let's add all this other stuff. But in reality like uh the core I guess the core job that people hire you for can always be improved, right? I mean it's like — Yeah. Exactly. Like you can make it work for more people, more reliably. Like I think you always want that foundation of like what is it for? And then you kind of earn the right to add some more things. I also think it's hard because like we're in this business because we like to build stuff. And so like our natural bias as like builders is always just to build more new stuff. Like that is always what you want. And you can see the like t like when you build and ship something, you see it move in the numbers. you can like point to like here's new stuff that people can do today that they didn't do yesterday, but you don't have any corresponding like what's the cost of that? Like does it make them more tired? confused? Does it make them less likely to open this app? Like you just you only see one half of that equation. And so just like remembering that there's another intangible, hard to measure like cost when you build stuff I think is has been just like a reminder. It's not like a magic way to think about this or make it work. It's just a reminder to think about it and then you can choose like then you can just be intentional. Do you have like a internal monologue that you have with yourself when like you're reviewing like a product design or you know someone's document and like okay is it simple enough or do you have like some checks that you kind of ask or even the team? It's going to sound so basic, but it really like can I understand from reading this like who exactly is this for? And like what one thing is it going to help them do? And that sounds so basic, but the number of times that I've like asked that question to a team and gotten different responses is fascinating because it just means like everybody projects onto a product their own personal ideas which is it makes sense. That's like a normal thing to do. And so like I should be like I think simplicity is all is usually the right idea but what I care even more about is clarity. And so I think the questions to ask are really about how clear are we about what we're trying to do and for whom because you can't have simplicity without clarity and like clarity so clarity is like the building block and sometimes you can choose you know like for WhatsApp simplicity was like clearly the right way to go for our audience for something like Facebook ads what our customers wanted was not necessarily like abstract away all the complexity what they wanted were like more powerful tools to like match people and their products. — Yeah. — Um and so there we just needed to be clear. Like we didn't need to air on the side of simplicity. We just needed to be clear like here's the trade-off we're making, here's why, here's where we land on it, here's what our customers say.

And so I think just focusing on like kind of the super basics of like can you within one page tell me like who is this for? What's it going to do? What's the timeline? What are the risks? Like kind of just the same basic things every time. It's often what I like tell folks who are newer to like product just like run that in your head over and even when it feels like it's remedial be like how's this going to work? What are the details? What are the pros? What are the cons? How's this going to work? What the deal? What you know just like — Yeah. — Just running that. Um I that's so that's where I always like step back and I'm like let me go back to basics. How do I think about this? — Yeah. And I remember uh in Lenny's podcast, you had this really good tip about communicating with insects about like um right like how is it lizard brain or dinosaur brain? I remember but like — Tori had this dinosaur brain which sounds so bad. Yeah. Oh, — it's not meant to be. Like I put myself in this bucket for sure, but like the general observation is like as you get more senior really anyone I think like humans can't hold that many things in their heads, but as you get more senior, you're just looking over this whole breadth of things. You can't go deep on any one of them. And so like I imagine myself just having like a tiny little dinosaur brain and I can really only hold like three or four things in it at any given time. And so what I need my team to do is actually just like break stuff down into a way where I can say, "Oh, like this looks like a pattern I've seen before. Here's like what I can tell you about that pattern. Oh, here's some context that you don't know about something that's happening over there for, you know, like kind of the highlevel zoomed out stuff where I can recognize like patterns or frameworks or context that might be missing. And it really changes. It means like it's actually the team's job to just go deep on stuff because they're going to be better at that when you're talking about any given thing in a portfolio. — Yeah. Because you're probably like, you know, in backtoback 30-minute meetings and like you know, like uh you don't want to read like five pages each time, right? you just want to get the half pager, the TRDR. — Well, it it's that and it's also that like I will never be as close. I think that sometimes, especially when you're earlier in your career, you think that your job is just to like get all the information and then like give it to somebody who like knows better. — Um, but when you do the process of like getting that information, you actually are the one who knows better. like you're the person who has the most information at that point. And so the best service you can do is like give your opinion as the person who has gone out to get all this stuff and like weighed the pros and cons and everything else cuz that's a way tell people engage. So it's not even just like here's a summary of the information. It's like here's the recommendation that I have built based on all of these reasons — and then let's argue about whether these are the right reasons. Like that's a way to engage. — Yeah. Exactly. You got to give a recommendation. It can just be like you know here's two options and you know I'll make you pick one. — Yeah. No goes well. Yeah. — Another tip for simplicity is on the product design. You said uh design interfaces that are familiar, right? And let's talk about this in the context of AI like I feel like um like chat GPT and these uh chat products. I mean I feel like the reason they got so popular is because they're just like chat you're just chatting with somebody, right? — Yeah. Exactly. — Yeah. — Hopefully. But it's interesting because like a lot of people are like, "Oh, this is like, you know, this is like the early DOS area of AI, like we're going to have much better UX and like you know, we're going to move beyond chat. " Like what are your thoughts on this? Like do you think chat is not the — Yeah. — I mean, it's hard for me to believe that like five years from now the cutting edge of AI is me typing into a chatbot. — Yeah. — Like it's hard. I mean, there will probably always be um a place for that. Um, but I do think that one of the reasons Jedi really took off with chat is because it wrapped it in this interface that everyone felt comfortable with and that even though like the contents of that interface, like what you get back at any time are pretty unpredictable, the way you interact with it is very predictable. So I think there's like kind of rules around like oh the interaction pattern should be like straightforward but like what you get and the magic of it is going to be less predictable. I don't know what the interaction patterns. I like I watch my kids a lot because I feel like kids are so unfiltered and they like kind of lowest common denominator or anything. And they um they just like love voice stuff, you know? Like when they were little, they would just walk up to any screen. Like there was a generation that would walk up to screens and try to swipe them because they grew up on the iPad. My kids were like a little younger than that and they grew up just like talking to things. So they would be, you know, they could walk up to the screen and be like, "Alexa, play music or something and just not and be wondering like why any electronic device didn't respond to them. " Um, so I feel like there's going to be you're seeing the wearable stuff take off. I just my guess is that it's got to be something that's like less interruptive than like taking your phone out of your pocket and typing something in and waiting for a response and then going back to your conversation. Like I think it's got to be something that lives alongside that. Yeah, my kid doesn't even know how to type yet, but she knows how to use her voice to, you know, do stuff with the computer. — Totally. I mean, it's a pretty I mean, it's fun to watch them. I took one of my my youngest kid um for his like special vacation day wanted to just like ride trains and so I took him on like every public transit thing around the bay. Um and then I took him on a Whimo and I was like, "This is so cool. " Like, can you believe that they like there's no driver in this car? and he was he's four and he was like that's not that's just normal like of course like kids think every whatever they see is normal. So they like show you how people interact with stuff when they — don't have to learn it when it just feels like oh yeah of course that makes sense you know — you should be like there's like 10 years of reinforcement learning behind this work. — Yeah. — C is going to be the early adopter. — Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to think about AI interfaces cuz like it kind of breaks some of the rules that we have. Like for example, if you have a normal UX, like one rule that you follow is like what is the main task that this UX is trying to accomplish, right? But then if you have like a chat thing that you can type in anything you want like how do you know what the main task is? Yeah. — Yeah. It's a broad thing and then like the unpredictability of the response. I just think it's it like breaks a bunch of expectations or it like it res like maybe a hot take. I haven't really thought this through, but I feel like most the machines that we think about are so deterministic, right? You like you flip the light switch, it go the lights go on, you like turn a door handle, the door opens. And with any kind of LM, you like can say a thing. You can put in a query or a prompt and you get back something and you do the same thing again and you get back something totally different. And that like unpredictability is something I think like humans are not well evolved to deal with. Uh, and so at least like my version of this is like I stop thinking about it as a machine and I put it in the category of other things that are unpredictable which for me are like humans. And so I feel like the very unpredictability of it reinforces that like you're talk you're basically talking to a person and you treat it like a person you think of and there's so many signals that kind of point in the direction of like that's how this interaction model is going to go. Um, but I'm kind of curious. This is all just random bad pop psychology that I sort of think about in the middle of the night. I'm kind of curious if that very like unpredictability is part of what makes you interact with it that way. — Yeah. Like part of front is like seeing what's capable of or like you know trying different use cases and seeing what comes back. So yeah, — or even if you ask it like the exact same work question, it might give you two different answers, you know, back like even when you're not exploring, you're just like literally thinking of something you're trying to do. — I mean, yeah, I've gotten in a habit where like I just load like Gemini Chvt and Claude and I ask them all the same qu questions. — Yeah, totally. You're like constantly evaluating what's giving me the better answer like right now, you know? — Yeah. Let's move on to another one of your uh you know amazing you know I

I feel like you say a lot of what's on my mind. So like yeah like you also wrote this article about execution eating strategy for breakfast right and um and um — and you know it always bothered me that like uh execution is like this kind of like junior PM thing and and then like as you become more senior you're like this the strategist. Yeah. But like but what do you mean by um tell me more about this execution strategy by for breakfast. — Yeah. I mean this I spent a lot of time at Meta and this is a big like meta learning um which is if you have like a if you have a perfect strategy but poor execution you don't win you know and you what's even worse is like you don't even know why you didn't win. Was it because your strategy was not the right strategy or was it because your execution was not good? So you've like wasted time and you've learned nothing. Whereas like when you have an okay strategy and like great execution, you know that your execution was not at fault. And so all you have to do is take the learnings from that execution and like put them back in the strategy and keep improving the strategy and use the execution machine to actually get to the thing that it is going to work. Um, and so it I love it because it like I think sometimes when you're overfocused on strategy, you like have to think for years to get the exact right strategy and then you have one shot to build it and then at the end of it like you really you took one shot in like years. Whereas with execution, you can you get a shot every day, you know, like you ship a thing, every day, you learn, you feed it back in, you ship the next thing, and it just makes it much more accessible to try to build things because you don't have the pressure of it being like perfect. Like I've talked to companies that try to map out like what's going to be the second and third order effect of this in 3 years, and you're like, that's not a problem that we want to tackle right now. like let's be lucky enough to have this be successful today — and then we can like f focus on what's going to happen next, you know. — Um and so I find it very freeing. I just like liberating to focus on that. — Yeah. And to me like a strategy is just like a very high level like one pager. I guess like you know the Tesla master plan some other strategy documents flo floating around but like it's not like trying to lay out exactly what we're going to build like two years from now, right? — Yeah. I I'm all about like minimum viable strategy, you know? Like when I think about some of the big events that like actually impacted what we work on, they're not things you could think of in a strategy. Like I don't know when the iPhone launched which I'm old enough to remember working during but like any mobile strategy that you had in 2006 was obsolete as you know or like during the pandemic any like strategy you had at the end of 2019 was obsolete like there's so many things where like there's just an event and then it makes your strategy that you've worked so hard on and spent so much time it just makes it totally obsolute. leak cuz there's always going to be interesting left field stuff. And so I think what helps is just the basic like who's our customer, what are we going to build for them, why are we likely to win, what are the risks, like kind of just that basic which general direction are we heading and then we can refine like our compass direction as we get more information as the world changes. — Yeah. Just like the kernel of those answers and then you can always update it as — Yeah. Exactly. — Yeah. But how does that reflect because you worked at you know meta these large organizations and also at fair which I think is smaller right but still like um and like I just noticed like a lot of companies do like annual planning stuff and like you know takes like a whole month or longer and then they have all these reviews this document this like great document that they put together and this just sits on the shelf and people don't touch it anymore and um and you have another great point about like how the best strategy changes actually changes a team's day-to-day behavior you know so how do you like you know shortcut this planning thing or maybe like make sure that actually impacts the day dayto-day. — I think there's sometimes just like a kind of reflexive well we need to do an annual plan that takes six weeks and we need to like shut everything down and take six weeks and like really think about our annual plan. — Yeah. Think about — that every year no matter what. Or like we take a whole month every quarter and do a quarterly plan and we have to because that's how we know we're on the right track. I think I sometimes question like do we really need to like has something changed since the last time that we did this that we need to look at it with fresh eyes or are we on like a pretty good path? The stuff that we said was going to happen continues to happen. Should we postpone like a big I don't know like rethink the world until we have a trigger that suggests that you know and so even starting by asking that question like what do we expect to change as a result of this like you would never take an action you would never spend your time on something if you didn't think it would have an impact and so just like pulling that question up front and being like wait what do you think is going to change if we spend six weeks doing this? What do you think is not working today? what do you think we're missing? Maybe just being more surgical about that. Um or just keeping it as lightweight as possible and saying, "Okay, like these are our targets. These are the metrics we're going to focus on. I can't tell you right now exactly how we're going to do them. Like here's our top ideas. We're going to these will take like at least the next 3 months. We'll pursue these and then we'll come back to you because we'll have more information after these work. " I think just like stepping back from the expectation that everything has to be rigid is really helpful and just like starting to — Yeah. — rethink the assumption. — Yeah. And like kind of just be honest that you know like I have no idea what's going to happen a year from now. — Totally. Which is we're living in such an unpredictable time. — Yeah. — Like when I try to think about the future, it feels really foolish. Like we're grasping at straws. I don't like anything could happen. — Yeah. like I I feel like um like some of these um career ladders like you know are like you know if you're a VP then you know what's going to happen two years from now. I'm like come on like is this really true? — Yeah. — You know let's be honest here. Yeah. — So I think it's good to just acknowledge like I feel like a lot of what I try to do is just acknowledge how messy reality is and like how messy it is to build products. So none of this stuff is like 100% anyone knows what they're talking about. I certainly don't know what I'm talking about, you know, but these are just like the patterns that I've noticed is the more you can be like — I don't know. Here's like what we think are the three most likely outcomes. Here's the metric and customer we're going to focus on no matter what. Here's the things we think are no regret. Let's just go and we'll talk to you later. I think the more we can do that, the easier it is for everyone. — That makes sense. Yeah. And uh la

last question on this topic like um for for the individual contributor PMs or you know people who are just doing the work like um sometimes you have to wait a long time to get a VP's feedback like you have to schedule a meeting and like gota wait like a month and like I feel like you know in this AI era it's not really acceptable to like wait that long you know like you gota move faster. So how do you have any tips for like short circuiting this stuff or have PMs done that with you that have been effective? — Yeah. Um, I mean I hope that happens less and less. Um, I mean I think I would start with like is it possible to agree on like how you're going to operate? Like what do you actually need approval for? Is it possible to agree like whenever you do go for a review to be like hey is it cool if we don't come back for things that look like this and just like carry this decision forward or like hey these are the principles. if it touches less than x percent of the user base, we're just going to go for it and we'll give it like a weekl long time period and then we'll let you know if something else weird happens and we'll roll it back. Like you agree upfront on the kind of protocol that you'll use and then you don't even have to get approval. You just like can just go and like make decisions. I feel like that's way more empowering and also like you're more likely to be successful because you just move a lot faster and boom is happy because you don't have to like be a holding pattern one. Um, and then I think if you want to like try to change the org around that, I think like just pointing that out that it seems to be taking a while cuz sometimes people don't have visibility and how long it takes someone to be able to come and talk to them and instead being like, "Hey, could we switch to like office hours? Instead of having like stated reviews for everything, could you just hold like an hour every afternoon and anyone who wants to talk to you just comes and like talks to you then and then you get all the decisions done at without with a minimum of like or a maximum of 24 hours, you know, like being willing to just like highlight that something is holding you up or not working and then just suggesting a like casual simple solution. Um, I think, yeah, I think like most people are super happy to be casual. You could just ask them on Slack. You could just be like, "Hey, we're having this thing. Can we just do this and we'll roll it back if it doesn't work? " Yes or no. Otherwise, we'll come see you, but it seems like we can't see you for a month, so maybe is there any way we could just see you tomorrow if you really want to see, you know? I think sometimes people don't have visibility. — Yeah. Some Sometimes I actually get more annoyed if like, you know, someone waits like a month to come to me and then totally — they have like a super polished document that's completely wrong direct direction. That's actually worse. — Yeah, it kind of is. I do have like a weird internal reaction when um I feel like somebody has overbuilt the dock because I'm like, "Oh, you could have spent that time on the product, you know, like just like draw it on a whiteboard, take a picture of a whiteboard. " Like that's fine, you know? Um so I think just remembering that like everyone's incentives here are supposed to be aligned — to like get stuff to the customer faster. And if you feel like they're not aligned at some point, there just might be some something else happening in the system. There might be some friction in the or unnecessary like just question those, you know, — that makes sense. Yeah. I I love the point about giving stuff to the customer because um Yeah. I mean like you know all the internal artifacts customers don't see at all. So like — they don't care. They don't care about your strategy deck. review. They don't care. Like customers only care about the product that's in their hands. And so everything has to be built around what can we get into people's hands faster and better. And so anything that stands in the way of that whether it's like interpersonal stuff or intine stuff or like whatever like all that stuff is friction and everyone should be incentivized to reduce that friction. It's just not what comes up you know in your head first. And so whenever you see it you can do like a huge service by just like cutting it down calling it out saying hey this is not actually serving the customer. I love that. I love that. And also

um when it comes to managing your calendar, right? Like um uh I love that you actually make time to talk to customers. I think like every Friday or something, you try to make some time. — I try. Yeah, totally. — Yeah. Um and uh yeah, it's like so easy to just get wrapped up in like internal meetings and alignment and all that kind of stuff. — It's hard like there's so many distractions like you're really when you think when you like zoom all the way out, your job is to build stuff from the customer for the customer. And so like spending an hour every week on like I don't know reading customer support tickets or watching hot show recordings or like reading Reddit review like whatever it is that you do. Um it doesn't seem like a it seems like it's a totally reasonable investment to just like do that but then when you get to it you're like oh but there's all these people I could talk to there's all this urgent stuff like all these internal people I could talk to my team. There's urgent stuff. I should respond to my emails. And it's so fun to do those things cuz the feedback loop is so much faster. Like you send a slack and you get like a slack back or you see someone in the hall and they're like, "Thanks for that thing. " Um, and so it feels like it's more urgent and high ROI, but like when you step back, the customer stuff is like the highest ROI. Like that's how you know what to build. — Yeah. It's I think as a leader, you got to create the right culture because like internal stuff, I mean, the customers aren't writing your performance reviews. So I guess you have to you have to set the right culture of like you know like we actually care about what's shipping to customers like the as the — Yeah. And over I mean hopefully on a medium length time frame the customers are kind of writing a review like either your product works or it doesn't. — Yeah. — That should have an impact on your review. It just might there might be like one layer of abstraction but hopefully like not a lot more. — Yeah. Do you have any tips for like because like you know I see these meetings pop up on my calendar and then like I kind of feel bad saying no to people. Like do you have any tips to you know protect your time the right way? — Yeah. I think like it's what's tempting is to like look at everything that's coming in like one by one and be like, "Oh, could I say yes or no to this one thing? " And then you like you do this extremely hard work of looking at your week calendar and maybe you've declined two things and you feel guilty about them and then you haven't really retrieved any time like you're still jumping in between meetings. — Yeah. Um, what has helped me is to just figure out instead of what I'm saying no to, figure out like one or two big things I'm saying yes to, like what is the one thing I have to get done this week? And then just like really blocking space and clearing my calendar for that. And I um I found that people, as long as you give them a reason why you're not talking to them, people are much happier. So it's like I feel much less guilty and people are way happier when I respond. and I'm like, "Hey, I'm 100% focused on diving deep into this one area or I'm 100% focused on roadmap planning right now. Can we talk about this in a month if it's still relevant? Otherwise, like here's a document, you know? " And then most people are super happy to just be like, "Oh, okay, cool. I guess you have other stuff now. I know your priority. I I've realized you're not being mean to me personally. You're justing your priorities. " So, it just removes some of the like emotion and guilt. Um, and then I also like I try um every Monday to just like write out what I need to get done that week. And then I just like go through and block on my calendar when I'm going to do it. And that naturally pushes a bunch of other stuff off. And you have to be like, well, is that more important? Probably not. — Yeah. — And so you just you don't do that stuff. — Yeah. I mean, yeah. You have to make your account your to-do list otherwise people just fill in the slots for you. Yeah. — Yeah. only time you have like the only currency you have is time, you know, and so your calendar has to match your goals otherwise you have no chance to actually meet your goals. And so like when you think about it as starkly as like do I actually want to get any of the stuff done that I said I was going to get like if I want to get stuff done I have to be booking time for it because there's no other it's not otherwise it won't just won't happen and there are limits to space time. So sometimes that has to fall off. Like that's just a law of physics, right? — And I think as parents like uh the limits to our energy too like I need to do all my deep work in the morning cuz I become really dumb in the afternoon. Like — totally I used to be like earlier in my life I could like stay up late and be useful. And now like after I've like sung the same song to my to the little kids over and over a hundred times, I just like I can't I'm not going to be at my best. I like have to wake up early. And so just really noticing like when I'm going to be smartest and like planning around that has also been really helpful. — Yeah. I come home from work at like 5 or 6 and then my kids play like uh they're into K-pop demon hunters right now. So play that song like you know 10 times and then I'm like okay I'm done for a day. I can't take anymore. — Yeah. So if you were to take another uh like CPO job uh what kind of PMs

are going to be looking for? What kind of people are you going to be looking to hire in this new world? — Yeah, — I mean my observation is that like we're kind of going back to what I think the PM function looked like maybe 15 years ago. I think we went through this period of like specialization where um the functions got really specialized like engineering design and PM those like functions got hardened but then even inside PM you could like specialize a little bit and be like here's the thing I focus on here's the specific style that I like operate in and I just think a bunch of those boundaries will disappear and it'll just be like okay who is kind of a doit all do-it-yourself utility player like who's going to be like, I have an idea. I'm going to like run a prototype. quickly put together like a basic market analysis. I'm going to put I'm going to mock up like what a go to market would look like and I have all the tools I need to do it — to make happen. Yeah. — And then just go and see where you get stuck. Um, and I do think that's how that feels a lot like how the industry was a long time ago when I was earlier in my career. Um, just because we just didn't have we didn't have that many people. And so if you wanted to be successful, you just kind of had to like believe a thing and then like get it done and you didn't have to think too much about is this my job or someone else's job. Does this fit within my function requirements? Like I think the less we think about optimizing like what the PM job is and the more we think about what's going to get this product into someone's hands and what are what is anything that I need to do to get it done and let me just go do that. Um, that's who I think is just going to be more successful is the people who are just going to be like, "Yeah, I know. I have a hypothesis. I'm just going to go try everything to see if that hypothesis true and then we can productionize it. " — I mean, that that's kind of what happens at startups, right? I mean, they don't have enough people to — Well, you don't run enough people. You just turn into a jack of all trades, right? And that can be really fun, too. — Yeah. And it's interesting because like normally the jack of all trades that start like the first PM at a startup like they either grow at the startup or they have to like hire senior management or something. But maybe now there's like a longer I don't know for lack of a better word shelf life for the jack of all trades. Like I do think that like the skills that we're going to value are shifting. I think we will value IC's more and more. Like we'll just need less management because I think teams will be smaller. Um, and I think we're going to need more doers who recognize that like the playbooks, like there's going to be very few, I think, copy and paste playbooks that work. And so, you don't need like a domain expert. You don't need a professional who's done this and can just like plug in the thing that they did at the last job. Like, it's every like three or six months is a whole new world. It's like a whole new chapter. And so you kind of have to like maybe have some experience but also really be willing to think from first principles about like the way things work right now. And so I think in many ways it like levels the playing field and it's really — it's scary. It's and it's especially scary for like you know I've built my expertise in a particular dimension and now I don't like I don't know if that is still going to be as valued. I think that's true for a lot of people. You gota like, you know, even old people like me, I need to keep learning like — Yeah. So, you just got to keep learning. — Yeah. And uh it's interesting. I'm I'm curious what's going to happen to like the really big companies like a meta like um because I I think the startups these days are probably not going to get want to get as big as uh in the past. But, you know, even at Meta like you know, Zach has like this super intelligence team now that has like what 50p people or something. So even even at big companies they want these small high talent density teams, right? That's kind of what people want. — I think it's going to be really interesting. I think again I think it's like a very unpredictable time and unpredictability is so scary especially when you're talking about like this is everyone's job. This is like what we have built an identity around. This is like I mean it has real impact. Um and I think that's some of what you feel is just like people being unsettled. — Wow. I always believe that you should not build your identity only around a job. You know this — it's true. I mean ob that is it's so true and yet it's hard. It's like it's hard. — It's really hard. — Um and last question. Do you have

any uh like how old are your kids? — I'm six and four. — Okay. So they're like right in the middle of this whole thing, right? And like I think that by the time they go to college or if there's even a college like the world will be very different. Yeah. — It will be really different. like what kind of principles are you trying to teach them to kind of get comfortable with this ambiguity, you know? — Um I don't know, you know, — like I think about I mean I treat the AI stuff the way I treat other technology, which is like they use it at school. Um they're allowed to use some of it under supervision. So, like we were just traveling and my nine-year-old um like was in charge of researching all the places that we should go and stuff like that um using GPT and other things. And so, he would just sit next to me and like I would kind of get to see what he's doing out of the corner of my eye. Um, and I think like I guess the things I'm worried about are where they don't have a chance to like be resilient cuz everything is like so easy and the agents are so nice to them. Cuz like I fall into that trap as we were talking about with the feedback like I fall into the trap of the agents are so nice to me and I don't even notice and I think it's like true, you know, like they're even more susceptible to that. Um, and so just like trying to also continue to put them in like real world situations that are a little bit challenging, you know, like go walk to that place by yourself, go talk to this kid and invite them, you know, like — just reminding them of like how to be a human kid. — Um, and then honestly, some of it is just like going easy on myself, which Chad GBT tells me I shouldn't do. That's part of how that's part of you back is I go too easy on myself. But like we don't know, you know, like I know the experience I had growing up. It's going to be very different. I'm going to I had different problems. My kids are going to have totally different problems. They're technologies. They're not going to have zero problems and I'm not going to be 100% right. And so just like knowing that and giving myself like they're all going to have some problems. I can try to like be a good model. help them the best way I know how, but I can't a like I can't optimize for I'm 100% right about what they should do in this very unpredictable time. Um, we have to see how things go. — Yeah. This is probably just like for me, I want to teach them like, you know, curiosity. to be resilient. — Yeah. — Uh to kind of like follow their own Yeah. follow their own, you know, p passions trying to figure out what they want to do. And that's pretty much all we can do, you know. Yeah. We can try to keep planting those seeds, but like who knows? — And that's okay. That's like — that's how we live. — Yeah. — Cool. You're going to keep writing, right? So, where can people find your newsletter? — Uh, I'm at omivor. substack. com. I wrote a newsletter called the hard parts of growth. Um, you know, about kind of how normal it is for growth and product and leadership and trying new things. How normal it is for that to be hard. — Yeah. And I I love the illustrations that you do. Uh maybe you can outsource that to your kids, but you know, it's great. Yeah. — I people always ask me like if my kids do those illustrations — and actually it's just me. It's me and I've had years of practice and I'm still that uh — organic. I'm still that organic. How about that? — I'm not going to use any words of judgment. — Yeah. No, it's a it's still very human. It's not like — human/ terrible. Even my kids think they're terrible. When they see me like doodling one of those, they're like, "What are you do? Like, do you want me to help you? " You know? Oh, really? — It's all fine. — Yeah. Can I add some unicorns to this? Sorry. You know. — Yeah. Cool. Well, I'm so glad we're able to connect and Yeah. Hopefully people get a ton of value from this episode. — Thank you so much. It was nice to see you as always. Take care. — Cool. Am I? Yeah. Take care. Right.