May 17, 2024 · 58m · news
Jiaona Zhang: Why All Product Teams Should Have a Scorecard & How to Use It | E1154 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this episode of 20VC, Linktree's Chief Product Officer Jiaona Zhang shares actionable frameworks on scaling product organizations, explaining how to replace rigid planning with dynamic team rituals and a structured KPI tree to drive alignment and speed.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 13.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.3 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 1.3 Harry pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:41 Correcting host on top-of-tree KPI metrics
Jiaona directly rejects Harry's premise when he asks if the top metrics on a KPI tree are purely product rather than business metrics, stating clearly that top-level metrics are company-wide business output metrics.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 22:51 Challenging guest's claim that planning should not existHarry directly confronts Jiaona on an apparent contradiction in her philosophy, contrasting her rigid KPI tree structures with her claim that planning shouldn't exist.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:41 Explaining output vs input metrics in the KPI TreeJiaona educates Harry on how business output metrics sit at the very top of an organization's metric hierarchy and how product metrics act as downstream input drivers.
Harry holds his own ▶ 48:43 Calling out Webflow usability and market positioningHarry uses his own experience as a user to push back on Webflow's high complexity and challenge its middle-ground positioning relative to simpler tools like Linktree.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jiaona's Journey into Product Management | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks a standard conversational kickoff question regarding Jiaona's transition into product management. Jiaona collaboratively outlines her non-traditional path from economics to mobile gaming. | |
| Advice for Aspiring Product Managers | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks if speed comes at the expense of quality. Jiaona breaks down the trade-off triangle between speed, quality, and scope, noting that trading off scope is necessary to maintain velocity and quality. | |
| Slower Feedback Cycles and the KPI Tree | 3 | 6 | 3 | 2 | Jiaona reframes Harry's assumption about slow data feedback by clarifying that qualitative inputs are data too. When Harry assumes top KPI tree metrics are purely product metrics rather than business metrics, Jiaona directly corrects him. | |
| Implementing the KPI Tree in Startups | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Harry asks how KPI tree implementation applies to early startups and whether metrics differ across departments. Jiaona advises against micro-optimizing numbers and stresses qualitative headlines alongside quantitative metrics. | |
| Proving Hypotheses Through Iterative Testing | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Harry asks about the timeframe for validating hypotheses. Jiaona explains how small iterative signals and landing page prototypes provide rapid directional data long before full output metrics converge. | |
| The Cross-Functional Nature of Product Leadership | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Harry describes Jiaona as a growth leader, prompting playful banter before Jiaona defines product leadership as a chameleon role that flexes into whatever functional hole needs filling. | |
| Prioritizing User Feedback at the Intersection | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks how to balance user feedback from mega-celebrities versus small businesses. Jiaona details Linktree's Venn diagram model where creators act as SMBs and SMBs act as creators. | |
| Why Strategy and Rituals Matter More Than Planning | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry highlights an apparent paradox between Jiaona's structured metrics and her assertion that planning shouldn't exist. Jiaona clarifies that 80% of effort should go into strategy and rituals rather than rigid planning documents. | |
| The Power of Rituals and the Project Scorecard | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Jiaona explains the Project Scorecard ritual to drive organizational transparency. Harry asks how to spot project risks early, and Jiaona attributes it to leadership judgment rather than purely automated data. | |
| Product Jams: Designing for Co-Creation | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jiaona breaks down Product Jams for co-creation, contrasting zero-to-one daily jamming with mature product cadence. Harry inquires about remote jamming friction, which Jiaona acknowledges but addresses with digital whiteboard tooling. | |
| Demo Power Hour: Fostering Pride and Accountability | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Jiaona outlines Demo Power Hour to foster engineering pride and accountability. Harry asks how founders can instill urgency, and Jiaona recommends connecting work directly to human user impact. | |
| When and How to Hire a Product Leader | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks when to hire a CPO versus a Head of Product. Jiaona warns founders against delegating product ownership too early and emphasizes hiring complementary product leaders rather than clones. | |
| The Power of Generalists in Product Management | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks if domain expertise is critical when hiring product leaders. Jiaona advocates for generalists who bring unvarnished learning mindsets and cross-industry mental models. | |
| Product Leadership in the Age of AI | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry questions if rapid AI shifts make product leadership harder and pushes back on Webflow's high complexity from a user perspective. Jiaona articulates how Webflow and Linktree address distinct ends of the website design spectrum. | |
| The Sequence to a $100 Billion Business for Linktree | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Harry asks if Linktree can reach a $100B valuation and suggests becoming TikTok-like. Jiaona pushes back on rushing into consumer destination features, laying out a crawl-walk-run sequence instead. |
Statements from this episode (36)
Zhang: The best product managers have spent time in gaming
“I think the best PMs actually have done some stint in gaming, right?”
Zhang: Startups must trade scope for speed to survive
“I am most willing to trade off scope, and that's because I believe that it is very, very important to get speed. Speed for any company, any product is what gets you your learnings, and if your speed at learning is slow, you are going to die or you're going to …”
Zhang: Product teams can gather actionable user feedback within an hour
“The thing that you can learn and literally An hour is, hey, I have all these customers out there who've been wanting this very specific feature, and now, now I have an alpha version of it. I'm gonna go out to these people, these clients, these customers, and s…”
Zhang: Product owners must own business metrics, not just product metrics
“I think that there's this artificial separation sometimes of, like, product and business, and there are times where, like, the product owner doesn't own the business metrics, and I actually think that's very harmful, because at the end of the day, your product…”
Zhang: Startups should build a skeleton KPI tree from day one
“I think a company should always have The skeleton of the tree, and the reason for that is this is basically how your product works and how things flow through the business, right?”
Zhang: Crisp strategy explicitly defines what a company will not do
“When you're trying to get your company to march in one direction, the thing I believe in the most is having a really crisp strategy, and that is an articulation of your vision, your mission, what you're doing, your investment areas, like, these are the things …”
Zhang: Growth teams should pursue product step-functions, not micro-optimizations
“Growth teams have numbers, but they should not be micro optimizing those numbers. They should be really much changing the product in meaningful ways to get to that next. Like step function level of what we can, what can drive growth.”
Zhang: Metric-only targets without hypotheses result in local maximums
“I want to hear those, like, hypotheses back because those are the big ideas that we should be pushing towards, not just giving a team, like, here, go optimize this number because that's where you get very local maximum wins.”
Zhang: Landing page template tests suffice to validate early product demand
“The second signal would be like, you don't have to build out the entire flow. You can literally do a landing page that allows people to pick templates and you can see if people are picking some of them. Like, that in itself is data.”
Zhang: Product is the most chameleon role in tech organizations
“It actually encapsulates everything I believe about product, which is the product role is the most chameleon role out of all of the functions, which means at some point you're like, I need to lean into sales because Like that's actually how I can build the bes…”
Zhang: Artificially narrowing target ICPs restricts business growth
“My goal there is not to be like, let's artificially constrain, because I think that actually artificially constrains your business. That's when you draw that Venn diagram, and you say, hey, you know, for Linktree, it's, yes, it's SMBs, and yes, it's creators, …”
Zhang: Content creators are SMBs and SMBs must become creators
“We believe that, you know, creators are SMBs and SMBs are creators, meaning creators are trying to make money and SMBs in order for them to be, to survive in the world today, They need to understand social media. They need to be much more digitally native. We …”
Zhang: Teams should spend 80% or more time on strategy and rituals
“So what I believe in is if you could spend your time doing anything, I spend 80% or more of your time on your strategy and on your rituals. Like, those are the two things I really believe in.”
Zhang: Company strategy should fit on two pages written by the CEO
“And strategy, to make it really concrete for people, is you should be able to articulate your strategy in a two-page document, not six pages, not, you know, like, not, like, huge thing, but, like, A two-page concise document where one person holds the pen, and…”
Zhang: Great product managers sweat every word because communication is critical
“And I think that really great product people, they like sweat every word because they realize that like communication is so much of the job and what you say and the words you pick matter.”
Zhang: Company product scorecards should track at most 10 key projects
“I think like once you get to everything, you're like, we might as well just use like linear or a tracker, right? But it's like, these are the 10 most important projects at a company that we all need to be rallying around, right? And again, if that number could…”
Zhang: Detecting project risks relies on leader judgment, not data analysis
“No, I mean, honestly, I think that's actually, it's less about data and more about judgment. Like, you should be able to, at any given point in time, you should be able to ask a product leader of the team, a design leader of that team, and also an engineering …”
Zhang: Zero-to-one product development requires near-daily synchronous jams
“If you are doing a zero to one product, I actually feel like a product jam should be happening almost daily. Like I think when you're doing a zero to one product, you either need to be in a synchronous, like physical space, or you may approximate that as much …”
Zhang: Physical whiteboards outperform digital tools in early product development
“Nothing quite beats a whiteboard, in my opinion, especially in the zero to one phase”
Zhang: Showing unpolished work-in-progress product demos reinforces team velocity
“And I really encourage this idea of like, let it break. Let us see like the, you know, the work in progress because it shows, it actually reinforces this concept of velocity.”
Linktree brings a real creator to almost every bi-weekly all-hands meeting
“At Linktree, we have, we bring a user literally every, almost every single all hands, which happens every other week. We bring a linker to that all hands to show people how they use Linktree, the things that they're struggling with, the things that they love a…”
Jiaona Zhang: Leaders must model 1.5x the decision speed expected from teams
“I would actually encourage leaders to almost model like 1.5 X where they're hoping out of their team. So if you're like, I want my team to move faster than you as a leadership team need to make faster decisions.”
Zhang: Early-stage founders make a mistake hiring product leaders too early
“So I do think a classic mistake is that you hire a product person too quickly and you delegate the responsibility away. You're like, I'm a founder. I need to scale myself. And therefore you like bring in a product. Leader. I do not think you do that. I think t…”
Zhang: Visionary founders fail when hiring equally visionary product leaders
“I think that there's a classic failure case there too, where like founders are like, I am, I'll give an example. Like I'm super, super visionary. And so when I go interview founder or go, go interview product leaders, you know, that visionary founder gravitate…”
Zhang: Generalists excel in product roles by leveraging cross-domain mental models
“And I think that's really valuable, because you can have, like, you have a lack of bias. You have a lack of, like, pre-existing assumptions. I also think you can take like mental models from different places and apply them.”
Zhang: Domain experts in product leadership often suffer from tunnel vision
“So these, like, existing mental models for a generalist help you kind of, like, spot Opportunities. I think, like, sometimes, like, a domain expert get really tunnel vision on.”
Zhang: Product leaders need flexible strategies and rituals over rigid roadmaps
“So it's actually really easy to update your strategy and have that flow through versus if you have plans and processes and, you know, these rigid roadmaps and you're like, I think the world works in a certain way. It is much harder to be a product leader in th…”
Zhang: Software will replace engineering teams for company marketing websites
“When I think about marketing pages, like these, like, really important websites, your, even your main.com, I don't see a world where you need to be having your engineering teams do that anymore. I believe that that, that really will get solved by software.”
Stebbings: Webflow and Shopify are extremely hard for non-technical users
“Webflow is a bit like Shopify. They're like fucking hard. Like, I'm really sorry. I know I'm seeing your part, but Jesus, it's like not that easy.”
Zhang: Linktree pays Webflow $50k annually instead of custom engineering
“We decided on Webflow cause we're like, Hey, these are all the things that we need. We are not gonna spend, you know, millions of dollars because that's how much it costs. If you put like engineers on it, we're happy to spend like the 50 K with Webflow, not a …”
Zhang: Webflow struggles with expansion revenue after initial website creation
“Cause I think what with Webflow what was Trump was hard was that we would land very easily, but you wouldn't be able to expand. Cause they're like, oh, okay. Like I build the website. And then they're like, what else? And so you gotta get into the expansion mo…”
Zhang: Linktree has a shot at becoming a $100B business
“I think it has a shot to being a hundred billion dollar business.”
Zhang: A $100B Linktree Requires Becoming a Consumer-First Content Discovery Hub
“Because the a hundred billion dollar version of link tree is one that is very consumer first. And I think we are far away from that, right? Like being the place where you actually discover all of the content from your favorite people, that is the a hundred bil…”
Zhang: Jumped-to-solution mindset causes founders to miss product-market fit
“I would say it's because they jumped straight to the solution space and they skipped really understanding people's problems.”