How the Product Manager Role is Changing in 2025 | Jiaona Zhang (CPO Linktree)

I think so often people are stuck in that dayto day that you're not taking the time to even think about what makes me happy what gives me energy and again I think so often people are like I saw so and so do this or this seems like the right path like of course like this is like check check but then a lot of PMS by the way get really burnt out you're 10 years in and you're like I don't I think I might just want to take some pottery cloth and like I want to just check out of this and what I teach is how do you understand yourself the same way that you would understand a user of your product how do you define success and be very agile about it I believe that if you were doing things that sap away at your energy you were never going to be able to be the best version that you can be welcome everyone my guest today is Jay-Z Chief product officer at link tree prior to link tree JayZ lit product works at web flow Airbnb we work drop bloxs pocket gems a lot of great companies welcome JayZ thanks so much for having me Peter so you have some really awesome experiences being a product leader at different companies and the product management profession is changing a lot recently right there's a lot of there's layoffs happening there's people trying to I guess collapse the layers of the management chain and there's also AI what have been your observations on how product management role is evolving yeah great question so actually just this morning I was reading the news and of course you're reading about Amazon and how they're thinking about removing a ton of Managers from kind of their organization and I think that's probably the most striking piece that I've seen outside of the macroeconomic environment and just layoffs in general I think this idea of how many managers and what's kind of the ratio of the orgs that you need these days is changing pretty rapidly so I think there's a

almost a compression on the bottom meaning these are things that are potentially low-leverage tedious manual tasks those pieces of work those bodies of work are falling away because you have tools now you do have ai to take place of those things and then there's also this idea of that management layer okay how many people do you really need in that middle layer and I think that is probably less talked about as we talk about AI because it's more obvious that the lower leverage work is going away but it's interesting because it's like when the lower leverage work is going away each person is able to do so much more and when each person is doing so much more do you really need a layer of people kind of in the middle managing and by the way that job isn't that satisfying for a lot of people anyway a lot of times you talk to Middle talk to managers and they're like I'm stuck in the middle I've get all these things from my manager and then I have to like translate it down to my team and it's actually not that stimulating and so I think there's actually a very positive shift yes jobs are going away and that is not great but if you can think about where's the puck going and how do I skate to that how do I use the tools to take time off of my day so that the low leverage work is actually being done and then how do I actually not need that layer in between how do I go and flex into that layer and if that layer is really about getting context how do I go get that context and then with that context do more with the tools below yeah that's a very good point because that actually is a pretty radical shift because even as a PM myself for a long time my goal was to just become a manager because that was the only way to actually grow your career you got to become a manager you got the other PMs and it was also really hard right because it was a LW of numbers you're like oh no there are only so many PMS in a given organization and if there are only so many PMS like how many managers do you need so it became this law of numbers and actually probably led to org bloat yes it definitely left to or bloat because everyone's talking about growing head count and they had to fire people couple years after and but I'm really glad to see more and more organizations like even at ROBLOX we now have a IC PM career track that goes all the way up to theoretically goes all to VP see how happens but like where's the profile of a super I or like a super IPM your eyes yes so I think the

part about management I want to just go back to it because there's a very valuable piece to it which is the fact that you are coaching someone else and that you're creating leverage I think the whole thing today is how do you actually get that leverage and what's the most efficient way to coach so I do think that a big characteristic is the ability to go and Coach a bunch of people or again create leverage for yourself through tools but then also be able to get into the weats and I think that's a lot of what I think people are kind of and again just because it's in the Lexicon right so for example founder mode the whole point is really like how do you know the details how do you get into the weed that's really all that it is or at least the parts that I really think are relevant and so in that world if you the characteristic that I think is really important is how do you enable people to be able to fly at multiple altitudes and go between altitudes quickly so you're flying at the 30,000 foot view where you're really clear and understand the strategy you're able to go down a layer deeper and you're able to actually understand okay well what's this team doing and then you're able to go down a level deeper and be like well if I really had to look at the pixels tickets like I can do that and I'm not afraid to do that or I don't want to do that and so I think that's a big characteristic of this role of being able to fly across those altitudes really easily I think before it was hard I think sometimes you're like well it takes me so much time to get to the three-foot view of the tickets and the bugs because it just like I have to read through all these things and again if that becomes so much iier because you have tools that synthesize that for you if you are able to kind of go in play with something quickly even just the idea of like build environments right it was really hard to go like get a build in the past and with all the technological advances you're like wait I can actually like spin up the server I can go get a build really easily I can do the thing where I can actually get into the details I think it's all about giving people the ability to fly at all the different altitudes and that is like a very much an art right there's like no framework or like steps for you to follow to figure out like when you should be in the we and where you should be at the high level like I'm curious if you have any tactics yourself or like how do you balance this yourself as a chief product officer it is definitely hard balance but the biggest tip I give people is most of the time just given human nature you tend to gravitate towards one or the other is just based on your personality if you really like going into the details if you're very detail oriented or maybe you actually don't like going to the details so understanding who you are first and being like this is what is natural to me and then the next step is okay if I'm always in the details but not taking the time to kind of step back and think about the strategy then my tip would be okay first of all acknowledge that spend the time to do that and then actually force yourself to create an artifact I'm a big fan of artifacts because it actually gives you an ability to say I've done the thing a lot of times F will ask me what are the core competencies how do I know I'm doing well and I'm like hey the core competencies are execution and communication but instead of just telling them that and being like good luck I say hey for a strategy do you have a strategy document do you have an article fact around that for execution can you actually point to all the things you shipped in the past X period of time and quantify that for communication what's the last weekly update you sent out and so I love pointing to artifacts and so using artifacts you can actually evaluate yourself you can be like hey when was the last time I looked at wrote or circulated a strategy document about either something broad is like a whole product area or the company level if you're really senior or even if you're junior your product area like Who Are You targeting what does success look like what are you investing what are you not investing in that artifact is really useful and a great way to say hey this is pulling myself out of the weeds and then vice versa right if you're flying all the way up here that's a very easy litmus test you can say Well when was the last time I played with a product and dog foodedible yeah I think that's really good advice I tend to enjoy flying close to ground like testing the product before it launches and talking to users but sometimes I remind myself because there's always some urgent thing to do on the ground I to remind myself to actually take a step back and like hey when was the last time I updated my strategy document like it's been like six months maybe it's not as urgent but it's really important to know where we're going making time for the important work not just the Urgent work yeah that's pretty good advice so

another thing that PM struggle with obviously is like we're just stuck in beings all dayot lot of us have to do at work at night but like I think with the AI there's ways to streamline like you said a lot of the routine tasks so like from your experience what tasks are really great for streamline of AI and what tasks do you think still require a human touch that's a great question but I would actually even just remove the AI piece out of it for a second because I think that today we keep going towards Ai and there're just like basic things that we can do that don't require necessarily those tools I want to start with this concept of voice notes which is something I hold really dear to my heart I'm much faster speaking like here's a quick thing I need you to think about or do versus sitting there and kind of writing it out which by the way on the AI front of course there are tools to help you write things a lot faster right like a first draft has never been easier you just stick into gbt you go into notion AI like it's never been easier but I again just going back to basic Primitives voice leaving people a note and so at link tree we are incredibly distributed we have offices in Australia in the US in um the UK and then Global employees everywhere and so how do you keep a remote Workforce on the same page and how do you communicate and yes of course you can write things you can write slacks it takes time and sometimes people forget and so going back to voice notes I do a thing where you know whenever I come out of a meeting I think to myself well what's the tldr what was the decision that was made and I also have that as just meeting hygiene like why are we having this meeting you always need to come in with a very clear agenda and specifically like what do you need to have live discussed versus that could be done asynchronously through a loom or through some other tool and then going back to voice notes use voice notes something as simple as speech right to leave something for someone to say hey this was a decision that happened today or this is the thing I need you to run and take the ball forward on and again so important in a world where some people are going to sleep and other people are waking up to start their day so that context sharing is critical so even as something as simple as just leaving a voice note of what happened and like what I need you to do next and then I think again with AI and all just technology like I think again we keep talking about AI but technology in the past it was like sending emails and picking up the phone and today it's leaving a voice note on a slack and then having slack Auto transcript that so that if someone doesn't want to listen to something because they're more visual they can read it really quickly right and then there will be more tools where you're summarizing what happened um but I am a person I believe in very light process or process where needed and so I actually don't like a world where it's like I go through and I'm like AI this AI that it's like how do you find those little efficiencies and then some bigger tools where you say it's going to really push us the right direction yeah I totally agree with that I think like whenever you have these like little annoying things that you do like trying to summarize notes after a meeting they have to do like multiple times in a day or like a lot then they just start thinking about okay how can I make this easier for The Voice nose piece I already do that at work but like for my news letter writing like sometimes I would drop my kid off at school and I drive to work and then I would like rant about something to this app called super whisper like this yeah app and then it will just record my rant and then I will put that rant I send myself an email with that rant and then like put into cloud and as Cloud clean up and like that is kind of like the first draft of my post I love that I really love that yeah because if the another thing is like when you're speaking you kind of just kind of tend to get to the point right you kind of at your most natural so you don't like use a bunch of like bureaucratic or flowery language you just get to the point so in some ways it's actually more from the heart than like writing yeah I love that and you don't have that blank page writer block thing you're literally just talking what's top of mine and then with the tools around editing yeah GPT again all the different models out there they're so good for giving you a first draft when you put in the right parameters and they're so good in terms of tweaking but they never can get to the final I find they never get the final version right like there's still that human element at the very end being like this is how I want to sound you can do a lot of things by the way so for example we've even trained a GPT instance with link tre's tone of voice and brand guidance right so like when we write anything instead of it being like okay well everyone let's wait for the one copywriter who's really bottlenecked like everyone has the ability to contribute copy so I think there are definitely ways where the tools really do make a difference but it's like finding the right touch point so I loved your example of here's where voice is great here's where I don't want to do a bunch of tedious work and the tools do it for me and then here's like the final human touch at the end yeah like another example I like to and you probably have deal problem because you're probably context searching all the time like I really dislike it when someone text me in like a slack threat that's like 50 me messages deep and be like hey Peter what do you think and usually what's the context what even happen yeah like I don't want me reading all this stuff so I don't know if I should be a m in this but like usually I just like put the whole threat into Ai and be like okay can you summarize what's going on here and that saves me like a ton of time

yeah so what about like just real quick you talk about like having artifacts like strategy artifacts like prds I think it's important to have good artifacts but I also think like especially these big companies like people tend to over focus on artifacts right they're like I didn't make the strategy document perfect before I can show it to JZ and they spend like a ton of time trying to pop polish it so how do you find the right balance here or like you know what does your strategy look like is like a one pay pager or is like a 30 payer yeah yes the company's straty document we try to keep it to a two-pager I'm very aware that when you say one pager the chances of it the words fitting onto one page without changing all the margin width is very low but by the time you're getting past two pages you're like you could have been much more concise so company level we really try to keep it to tight two pages and if there's any overflow it's all things like here are the details here's the appendix you really want to read like all the detailed decision- making that went into this or the trade-offs that we went through that's later but try to keep the core meat what you're talking about I usually use a rule of thumb of two pages I actually have stripped out a lot of process and again I think you have to be really thoughtful about what's the big biggest problem that your organization is going through I do think when I first joined link tree we had a lot of process where it wasn't really clear what the point of the process was and so I went actually to an extreme and I really believe in this idea like going to different ends of the spectrum because actually pushes behavioral change more effectively than kind of being middle of the road and again you see this in design work you're like let me show you two extremes it's not like I'm going to ship either one but it's going to teach me a bunch and so going back to process I kind of went to more of the extreme where I stripped out the process and I looked at what fell apart and what I realized is given and this is very specific to link tree and specific to the way we like to work and even to our Founders Alex for example our CEO is incredibly visual I'm also very Visual and so when you write a bunch of documents it's actually not that effective because the chances that anyone's going to read that document internalize all of it and come out of it with something like my mental image versus anyone else's mental image it's going to deviate and so we've actually gone really heavy into having visual artifacts so for example in you know a fig Jam or in um igma actually even taking some of the main points and putting them next to the designs where at the very top we say these are the key problems the things that we're trying to solve go straight into the flows low Fidelity flows then to High Fidelity flows and then using that as the source of Truth and we found that actually works way better because you could write any length of page document and it just wouldn't stick yeah no nobody reads my prds I have to like put some notes in the fake MTH for people to actually know what was going on and so yeah in that world it's like why write the PRD again the thinking of a PD is really important but what are ways to do it in a really lightweight way so again we we're like no one's going to read that document so how do we actually incorporate into our scorecard so we have a thing where accountability is really important transparency see again information sharance is really important a scorecard is very lightweight it's literally here's what success looks like are you on track and hear some details on the progress the blockers and the asks that's good enough and so just again just really thinking about what is the thing that you need to get across so everyone is on the same page and so you can move forward yeah that makes a lot of sense so let's talk about a

little bit about PM careers and more I think you given talks about how in fact I think you teach a course right about how PM should treat their career like their most important product and like a great product obviously solves a user problem hopefully it's differentiate in some way maybe can you give us the high level on how PMs can think about their career the same way the first takea away from my course is even just taking the time to think about your career I think so often people are again stuck in that dayto day you're doing the Urgent and not the important that you're not taking the time to even think about what makes me happy what gives me energy and I think that the main thing I want to convey is there's no one way to do anyone's career I think it's about getting the data that you need how much can I make in different scenarios I think there's so much also around like information asymmetry it's almost like people who have information have power and people who don't and so again a big part of my course is getting that information out there so it's accessible to everyone but then taking those information those pieces of data and thinking really deeply about yourself as a user and so if you're building any product you have to understand who you're building for what do they want what are their deep pains what gives them like what gives them that dopamine hit how do you think about yourself as a user when you're thinking about your career and again I think so often people are like oh I saw so and so do this or this seems like the right path like of course like this is like check check but then a lot of PMS by the way get really burnt out yeah you're 10 years in and you're like I don't I think I might just want to take some pottery classes and like I want to just check out of this and so that's what I and again that's totally fine too like that there's nothing wrong with that but I don't want people to do that because they are burnt out I that is ultimately what they're very passionate about and so much of what I believe in and one what I teach is how do you understand yourself the same way that you would understand a user of your product how do you define success and be very agile about it right when you're building a product I will pull PMS for this but the number of times they like in Phase One definition of success was this and in B to the then when I learned this new thing the definition of success changed to this other thing like that is a natural thing that happens and so being able to do that for yourself for your own career to be like what's happening in the industry going back to your very first point yes if we are giving rise to call it like a super IC and there is a up tovp path for the IC and that's honestly what you enjoy because you enjoy deep work you enjoy working cross functionally on very complex projects but you don't necessarily want to manage anyone and write their each cycle reviews performance reviews don't do that because anything I believe that if you are doing things that sap away at your energy you are never going to be able to be the best version that you can be and so that's really the core of it how do you understand who you are what motivates you also understand what are the basic things that are required to be excellent because I think a lot of people are like I want to get promoted you're like no the first thing you do is to be good at what you do and sometimes the overlap of the two is not quite there for people and that's okay I'd rather have them Discover it sooner is much later right like if you're like hey actually to be a really great PM you have to operate in ambiguity and love it and Thrive and you have to just like proactiveness grit tenacity that's so important but if you're like I actually really do enjoy structure to some degree I enjoy maker time you get so little maker time as a PM like you said this earlier you're like in meetings all day at the end of the day you're finally in front of your computer like doing deep work if that's not what you enjoy if you want your days to be doing maker time like maybe there's something else that is better for you and that you're going to thrive at more yeah I love that I think basically the message is like there are many different paths to success as a PM or even maybe you don't want to be a PM right and like I think early in my career it was very like oh like if I don't make a like to CPO like JayZ that failed in my career but yeah I think I've become more honest with myself like actually I do enjoy just like sitting in a room with engineer designers trying to figure out how to build a product and maybe there actually is a viable whole career path just doing that yeah yes totally I mean that's what Founders do at the end of the day right they kind of try to build a product that way yeah and then actually a lot of Founders actually don't enjoy their jobs when it's more about company scaling and or scaling as opposed to building and so then for them even finding like the right fit in the company so that they can do what gives them energy because ultimately that's going to make the company more successful and how about like because there's been like a lot of downsizing extent do you think it's still okay to be a PM generalist or do you think folks should specialize in a certain area or skill yeah a really great question it's interesting because I would say if you look at my career I am very much a journalist I've worked on everything from gaming to productivity to marketplaces and then even within some of the places I worked at I've worked on deep infrastructure and developer apis all the way to very consumer-based products it's always interesting everyone's like are you consumer are you Enterprise I was like I've done it all and I actually think the beauty is where you find patterns from one to apply to the other because there are lots of ways where you're like hey these are the things that are happening consumer these are the trends that make sense and when you apply that to a B2B business that's really interesting there are also times where you're like hey the business model of this consumer business doesn't quite make sense and if you think about the things that happen in B2B much more reliable called like SAS revenue streams like that actually can make this like consumer business really viable so and I think it's again deeply personal it's just what happened in my career journey and also just as a person I really enjoy kind of working across things I'm a person that likes to go Broad and understand a bunch of different things and apply them to each other as opposed to necessarily go super deep in one thing and I learned that about myself when I was like hey if I have a career that's the same thing for the next 40 years and the same subject area I personally would be really bored and so it's deeply personal again going back to this theme of like there's no right way to do anyone's career it's very personal to what gives you energy but what I do

think as a general trend is especially if you're trying to move into product I think that this idea of a generalist it's harder and harder these days because there are so many people who are potentially interested in the role and in many ways the number of roles are I don't know dwindling but I definitely think evolving and so if you have that deep expertise payments expertise if you do have that ml expertise right like you're able to go in and add impact and I do see hiring managers today feeling like here are the very specific areas that I don't have expertise in I'm going to go out and look for that and even in my hiring experience recently we were doing a really big Commerce play I'm going out and looking for people with deep Commerce experience I'm not necessarily looking for generalists as much yeah that makes sense yeah and expertise can be like by vertical or maybe like by scale like MML or like maybe even by type of product right like are you good at growing skill products or are you better at building zero to one to a certain extent yeah and just to wrap

this up like you have a really great career I think I found this on online you have this career Odyssey framework I think it's like a fake jam and we'll link to it in description but it's really great about thinking about your career and like kind of having a role map for your career and I think the part I really love about it is like these like provocative questions that you kind of ask yourself like do you remember some of them like can you share some of them to kind of help you think bigger than just like what the next thing is yes let me give you let me give everyone a little bit of context on what this is so for anyone who's heard of designing your life this is something that really inspired me I was like okay wow if I apply a designer's mindset I personally love design to my life and the way I want to like who like what I want to do what gives me energy that will make me so much more intentional about what it is I choose to do and what I don't when I did that I applied a few different principles to what is now the career Odyssey framework which is at the end of the day if you're doing any design Sprint right you push yourself to think about the Blue Sky version if you didn't have as many constraints as you had today what would that look like and then if you were to have constraints great like how do you work within those constraints but applying that to I think your life and your career is very interesting because I think that a lot of times when people are told actually give me your blue sky version of what your life could look like if you could really dream what would you be doing with your time what would your finances look like what would all these things look like that it's really freeing because a lot of times when you do the Blue Sky version you're actually like whoa wait a second if I could step away from the current path that I'm on would I even want to be on this path so I think that is one of the reasons why in the career Arsy I asked people to really do that blue sky version and then there are a few areas I think this is maybe what you're referencing to which it's like very pointed questions and this is very specific to just a career framework I

ask people to really evaluate for themselves like how much do they actually need financially cuz I think a lot of times when we think about a career the reality of it is tied to your earnings and so this idea of like how much do you really need versus always just thinking like more how much does a title matter to you and like what is the value of a title and this in my course I actually break down a lot more because at the end of the day a title is just a title you could go tomorrow and be the CPO of a five person company you can found a company and you can be the CEO like you can do all those things it's really about what actually motivates you if you're like I'm motivated by thinking about where the future could go and stitching together a lot of functions and getting there like that is one path right like you're like I'm really motivated by building great things and getting into the weeds of building those great things like that's a slightly different path and so it's really understanding kind of again what motivates you and so I ask people to kind of reflect on those questions and then when they're able to do both their Blue Sky version a version of their life of like if I made no changes what would that roughly look like because again people don't play that out and then thinking about some of these prooptic questions you end up with just this really interesting thought exercise and to take you two hours like less that just gives you so much more clarity in terms of what is great for you and what's meaningful for you yeah maybe I need to take a course but I think that's a really good point because you don't really reflect when you're in the game on if you should be playing this game in the first place right and like if you take a step back then maybe you're like oh maybe like if I win this game I'm actually going to lose because I don't actually want to play this game but what about like and you have like in that framework you have plans to make like a 5year plan stuff like that but even with building a product we know how new information comes up all the time and like plans change right so like so how useful is that fiveyear plan of like the next year you find out something new about yourself or like I could just keep it updated just like a product or yeah I don't because again even this idea of this even going back to like real product work road maps right like I like road maps to be living breathing things and again if you're in an Enterprise business you have a client facing road map but I think so many times people confuse all these things you're like they're all one and the same and everything has to be updated and you're like no actually what you really want especially Enterprise is to be like these are things I'm guaranteeing is going to happen you don't want a world where your sales team is like where is this thing so I think it's so interesting CU I think we all always have this human nature is to be one where you're thinking I need to plan this whole thing out but with every single plan and this is so ironic because we're about to for most companies it's annual planning time the number of times you do a plan and you spend a lot of time on your plan and you throw out your plan because you have new information q1 is really high but the act of planning is what's important to me so it's never about the actual plan in itself it's about the act of planning and the principles and the strategy and the decisions that come out of that active planning so for example if you do again I'll talk about link Tre we're in a very Dynamic space in the Creator space in a space where it's part consumer part SAS it's incredibly Dynamic new technolog is coming out every day creators are very Scrappy they're finding you know this well new ways to do things all the time and so there's no world that I could possibly come up with a 5-year plan a three-year plan or even a one-year plan but what I can come up with is a very clear strategy where I can articulate our principles you know our principles are we will always put creators first right like we are Switzerland as link tree we're here to help a Creator to help an SMB and that means that like that is our positioning and that's how we think about the product decisions we make we will think about ways where creators are feeling like they're getting squeezed and how do we actually help them we're going to find ways where creators are sinking a lot of time and instead of each one every single Creator out there in the world figuring out a new workflow we will be the ones who will help you deliver like understand the tools and the workflows that make your life easier so that is important in terms of our strategy in terms of quote unquote planning those things don't change and those things by the way guide our decisionmaking and what we choose to invest in and also when something new occurs something disruptive happens it reminds us like this is our stance we'll always be creative first right like in a world of AI where people are NE not necessarily always owning their likeness what we will always do is enable people to be able to have ownership on what it is they create and so it's just it's that I push a lot on for my teams and specifically for planning and again just pulling that all the way back to personal career planning it's those principles right like if you understand what it is that gives you energy again no one knows what's going to happen you can't necessarily plan out three years but you can always tell yourself what I really enjoy is craft or being able to work really cross functionally and those principles don't change or if they do like something has happened and like you should examine those but there's no point in having necessarily a plan to the tea as much as understanding those principles about yourself yeah I totally agree like just for my personal experience like in my product or I think the vision the strategy the role map those are all important artifacts but I think really underrated artifact is like how you want to operate as a team like what are your principles as a team because those things like if you want to put customers first or like you really care about craft those principles actually inform everyday decisions perhaps even more than like those other artifacts yeah so having defin is key yeah absolutely so let's talk about

creators in more detail now so like I'm both a PM and a Creator and I think the promise I think the reason I love the Creator economy is that theoretically okay it's supposed to bypass The Gatekeepers like you don't need to have all these titles and credentials you can just find your audience online and make a living on online or wherever else you want to make a living but I think the reality is actually more difficult so I have my own thoughts but like I'm curious what have been your observations as lri CPO yeah I do think I have very similar views which is why I'm very drawn to the space and serving these users in the sense that they are some of the scrappiest most entrepreneurial people on earth right you're like these people they will do anything and they'll learn whatever new tool like they're just Hustlers and I love that spirit I think that I do agree it's really interesting I think it happens with any industry it's almost like something happens There's an opportunity and then you get all of the people who flock there first or do it really well at the beginning and then it's harder and harder for other people to go like do the thing and I think that's happened with creators you're like wow like Mr Beast like there're all these people who are like you have super made it in the Creator space and they do serve as these beacons I think for other creators but I want to create a world where it is possible for everyone like I really deeply care about this idea of like democratizing something so again when I was at web flow I was like democratizing the internet like everyone should be able to like produce and beautiful designs right and then at link Tre it's this idea of like really democratizing all the tools all the ways to make money and I believe a few things one which is very powerful for creators for example so the first thing I really believe is the future of retail is very much in the hands of creators you don't sell things anymore through Billboards tv ads or even the mall that those are very like high operational cost things and that's not Al that's not where the attention is right like in today's world in the attention economy that we're in a lot of what act like the reason you buy something is because you're like I have affinity for this person or I really like this thing about them or I really admire and when they say that this thing is actually great this product is actually great that gives me trust that gives me confidence and so I think that is where the whole future of retail is Shifting which by the way is a ton of money if you think about the world in terms of dollars like literally selling physical Goods is a huge part of how money moves and I think that's great for creators because if that's true it means that creators have a huge kind of opportunity ahead of them to really do Commerce and what's really interesting is this whole art of curation right you don't necessarily even have to produce uce a physical or digital good you can curate the courses that you want to recommend you can curate the podcasts you like you can curate the products that you like and that idea of that is where retail is Shifting and that's an opportunity for creators and really this opportunity in curation I think is massive so that's really exciting got it yeah because I think that would be very interesting because another thing that creators struggle with is I think they have even more ambiguity than PMS like PM you have ambiguity and like we're going to build next but creators have ambiguity on their livelihood right cuz the Alo can like take their traffic away or a lot of them rely on like brand sponsors and that industry is like very Hit or Miss I don't know there's any ways to give care a more stable income maybe it's through this retail thing but yeah I think so I think there what I what we want to do at link Tre is we want to take the best practices that have enabled some of these like Titans in the Creator space to rise and democratize them and enable all creators to have access to them and by the way not just all creators I really want to make this point which is link Tre is used by so many different people and quote unquote verticals so we serve a musician the same way we serve like a pizza shop owner and there's a lot of value that people take from a link Tre and also where we want to take the product and I think there's a lot of similarities meaning I really believe that in today's world you know smbs need to be creators to thrive they need to know how to Market themselves and also every Creator out there is really an SMB like they are a business and going back to this idea of making money you're not doing like a lot of people do it for passion but over time they realize they can make money and that's where it gets really interesting so if every creator has the opportunity to become an SMB and be their own boss right like that's like the true Spirit of Entrepreneurship how do we support that to happen how do we give smbs the tools to be effective creators and how do we give creators the tools to be able to really earn and monetize and I do think you look at the world going back to this idea of like these Titans have done these things they kind of had to run through broken glass to do it how do we democratize what they've done there are a lot of people who they curate products and they make money through Affiliates there are a lot of people who create courses and content and make money through that there are a lot of people who actually create a community I think Community by the way is a very untapped future just like value Creator like I think we we've been in the world of like tools like SAS tooling I think that in the future especially when I think consumer there's something really around like the power of communities and even going back to distribution and marketing dollars which is a huge portion of any company's budget this idea of if I can tap into a really activated community that is how I get my product really sold versus trying to one by one get everyone at every eyeball and then get people to subconsciously want to buy the thing and ultimately make that decision and so all of those things even just creating a community you see creators using substack these days not because it's perfectly built for them but it's a general tool that allows them to capture and retain an audience and communicate with that audience and so what are all the things that we are seeing in the world in terms of how can we help these creators make money and tools for them to be able to really juice their income and grow their business and provide it for them and do you have any thoughts on because most people see link tree as kind of a Linkin bio tool or maybe like the home The Hub of a lot of creators or Brands but I think it might be challenging to serve like individual creators and Brands and all these different SBS so I'm just curious if what is your high level approach to expanding link tre's product is it kind of like being a really great horizontal tool for the community thing or still working out yeah so the first thing about link tree is that it is a lot for a lot of people it's where you start and it's because at some point you need to create that digital presence there actually a lot of our creators have told us this it's like they almost didn't like the act of creating a website or creating a link LinkedIn bio a link tree was like I'm legitimate I have people coming in through Tik Tok and Instagram or even just again going back to the restaurant owner I'm legitimate here here's my really quick I don't have time to go build this in Squarespace or some other like really fancy website builder but like I can throw a few like my menu my delivery options and like that is what I want to put out there right so link tree has the beauty of Link tree is that it is so simple to use it has such broad reach and you can use it for so many things and so many verticals what's next is okay if we were the starting point for so many people how do we help them along that Journey so that it's not just a link in BIO and they're done and I also want to talk about how we want to do this because I think this is a call out for companies and people who are interested in partnering with us I'm we are a very small company and I want to keep us really lean so I'm not here to go build all the different functionality that can exist on other platforms but what we can really do well and the best for our users as link tree is if you are starting with us you're starting your journey here how do we teach you help you guide you and nudge you towards the other things that you can use so we're happy to partner with the best in class for courses Community Creation The Best In Class for whatever it is because at the end of the day we are user first meaning we want to always deliver for our users the absolute best tool and I'm not going to be here the first I'm not be the person to say like that's going to be built by link tree it could very much be built by something else but we what we do think deeply about is how is that person going to be able to learn how to do these things going back to the democratization story and for us to be able to say like here's the 101 version and here's how you can learn how to do it and get almost like your training legs under you and then when you get really comfortable and believe that this is the thing that you want to double down in because I think for a lot of people they're still exploring they're like I don't know do I do a newsletter podcast like do I do a course like what is it that I actually want to do we want to be able to allow you to like experiment quickly with some of these things and see what works for you and then over time if you need a very fancy robust version of something we are more than happy to really like take you to that product and encourage you to use it so that's really our philosophy which is like yes 100% we are way more than a linkoln bio and I think actually a lot of users are surprised by how much we do offer we do have mailing list Integrations we do have the ability literally we just launch the ability to be able to automatically respond to when someone pings you on Instagram like all these tools that save you time we're really trying to support our creators and our smbs in their journey of marketing themselves but again if you want something really Niche if you want to create this incredibly complex thing because you've decided that's for you we want to support you in that but ultimately this is really important where you Market yourself all of these products come back to the equivalent of a website light which for many people is their link tree and so that is why we think it we have the positioning to do this really well but also the trust of our users yeah I think it's a really powerful advantage to have like we say link B it's really like a home that the Creator actually owns and can customize to whatever they want because if I if my home is on YouTube or Twitter like they can just change the algo or like changed how high I show stuff anytime right and another thing really annoying as a Creator like you kind of like you said you kind of forc to be present on multiple platforms and even as a fan it's like really annoying to follow you follow Creer on different platforms so whatever makes the end to-end Journey easier like for example I know you guys bought a recent post scheduling toour or something yeah whatever makes that easier because I don't want to have to like open five different tabs on my browser to post the same thing so absolutely I want to give a huge plug for plan because I honestly I hate posting on LinkedIn and I need to do it and so this IDE idea of how do you make that Ted again the tedious work go away five browsers doing it all the time putting it into your calendar and be like remind yourself like if I can't Auto if I can't schedule a post on this platform because not all platforms allow that right you're just in this logistical hell and plan is just this beautiful simple product where you're like great I can connect all my platforms I can actually plan my month at a glance if you're very serious and I it will Autos schedule wherever possible for me and even beyond that I think the beauty of this whole there's so much that creators can teach smbs and so much tooling that smbs have to really just run businesses that are actually really relevant for creators so this like overlap is what I think is so beautiful creators have a lot have learned a lot in terms of creating content that's engaging and we take that and we literally productize it within plan and we actually help if you're brand new to all of this if you don't know even where to even start when it comes to Instagram we give you the inspiration we give you a hey if you are a hair stylist and you're trying to start to create a brand that's not just people happening to come by and booking an appointment with your salon how do you do that and that again that's where marketing is going that is how people are getting their leads we're not in a world of you walk by and it just it's like leads come from foot traffic and therefore where you're located matters a lot we're in this like remote hybrid environment where like anyone anywhere can make money and that like the digital presence piece of it and even knowing like we offer an analytics sueet on link Trey where we say hey what what's actually even happening are people coming to probably the most high intent place by the way like if someone's really interested in you they will click on your link and bio but where are they coming from Tik Tok Instagram are you actually missing a platform completely and you should probably go do that like that is I think the beauty of being Switzerland because we can give you the information that is a crossplatform and I just fundamentally believe that the world is getting more fragmented there are more places to post things there more places to yell either into the void or into an Engaged audience whatever you're able to do and ideally we want you all to be yelling to an engage audience and so like how do we give you the tools to be able to do that really effectively and what is the website for plan just so people can follow along yeah so very soon if you sign up for link tree you'll be able to have access to plan actually that is rolling out right now but if literally today Google plan PL an you'll be able to sign up for an account okay a awesome

okay so let's kind of bring our two topics together right like advancing your product career and I guess gol B you have both but I'd like to kind of bring back to this cuz as a Creator you're trying to put yourself out there you're trying to be authentically you I think as a product leader you kind of also have like a brand in your company or like in the in industry but that's hopefully like we discuss authentic to what gives you energy so like I don't know if I have a question on this but like I guess one my point I want to make is like a lot of people just like blindly apply to a bunch of jobs or like blindly put stuff out there about all kinds of random things let's close on this but I think you already got this how do you build a brand both at a company and maybe internally that's authentically you that actually gives you energy that you don't get trapped in a place that you don't actually want to be that's kind of a large question but yeah it's a great question maybe I'll first talk about one point which is can you be a Creator and can you especially since we talked so much about like product careers like have that at the same time and I think like absolutely you're like a perfect example of that and I do think that when you build expertise in a certain area and you're able to actually talk about it and share it with the world you get more and more opportunities just to do that which I think is really exciting I do think there are times where you do have to find that line but what I usually find for many people is unless you're teaching about like something completely different you're like here I am being a Ceramics instructor and here I am with like a very specific like product career and data platform like those are it's like pretty hard to find a match there in that world you just have to time manage and then this goes back to Career Odyssey like which one do you actually want to do and which one is primary which one is secondary like I think like people need to figure that out but a lot of cases I actually see the it being very complimentary meaning Peter with what you've done like you were so interesting for companies that really want that skill set and want that following like sure we can go hire someone who doesn't have any kind of like reach or we can go hire someone who does which is really meaningful and so I think that I do think it is Nuance because not as much as we're not telling everyone to go be a Creator per se but I think this idea like if there are things that truly give you energy and it feels very symbiotic to kind of what you're doing every single day and I I'll go back to my personal life I teach because I truly love it but also because it makes me a better product leader the number of times I've taught every year a winter quarter I teach at Stamford and I also teach cohorts at refor and I'm always reminded when I teach a Stanford I'm like I need to start with the problem space and there are times where even today I'm like oh I jump too far ahead or we as a team jumped too far ahead because we got too excited about the opportunity technology and it's just such a grounding moment to be like wait a second step back and like how do we der risk this project and actually set it up for success and then when I speak up reforge a lot of the reasons I do it is because again I fundamentally enjoy connecting with students but I also get the privilege to speak to your amazing guest speakers that we bring in that I get to learn from and so I think that for me what I found is when you're really doing work that you enjoy a lot of times it's very interconnected and together they create momentum and like one accelerates the other I do think there are times where people are truly feeling torn between the two and this is where I would push you to be like what actually gives you energy and could you out there whoever is doing this out there could you do one way better if you focus on it if they don't actually feel naturally related yeah I think that's a really good point and also like the point about building flywheels that help each other that to help accelate like I think is a good point like my example would be like doing this podcast talking to people like yourself like if I randomly pin you on LinkedIn be like hey can I pick your brain for 10 minutes maybe you agree but probably not but I think this podcast I've got to talk to a lot of really great leaders like yourself Yuki other folks that I've learned from and kind of reapply to my job so I think that's awesome yeah I love that yeah and I love that you're just spreading that to everyone right you're not like I'm not hoarding the knowledge I'm actually you know disseminating it which is great yeah we gotta extract the insights from J's brand share everyone but uh where can people find you online or can be able to take your course go to my link tree it has everything and this is again what I think is the beauty of Link tree like usually at the end of every podcast you hear people like this is where you can find me on X and LinkedIn and this and they like run through a bunch of things and sometimes the username is taken and so it's like impossible to remember you can literally find me at link tree it's link tree JayZ and it has everything I do it has all my rearch courses it has all of Peter when you send me the link to the podcast I'll stick it on my link tree it has all the different things and so again just this representation of your yourself that you don't have to keep updating in a thousand places to get out of date but one unified place that's really what link tree is so go find me on my link tree all right link tree. JZ yeah because most people say like oh go find me on like here five different platforms but yeah Link tree. Link tree JZ and at some point there'll be actually you know what I'll give you a QR code if you want to put that anywhere in your substack people can scan that QR code awesome well thanks so much this was a really insightful conversation and I had a lot of fun thank you for having me this was really fun too