The Exchanges

Q I do want to kick off, though, with some context about you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and how did you come to found the game changer that is Product Board today?

A Yeah, so quick background. I got a master's in computer science in Prague, Czech Republic. I'm from there, and then made it through Four years of technology and strategy consulting at Accenture with clients around Central Eastern Europe. And then I got my MBA at Berkeley. And that was the entry to the US. And after that, I got sucked into the Valley. And, you know, I'm talking about the CS and MBA background because I see that as the foundation, the combination, the technology and business, you know, combined knowledge. That was the success later on. And after the MBA, I went through a couple startups, some successful than the others. And then ended up growing to be a VP of product management at an Andreessen funded BI company called Good Data. I discovered there the reality of product management at high growth startups in the valley and just here in the tech world. And I kind of learned that my idealized MBA educated and Accenture framework trained brain and approaches, you know, are slightly different from just like, let's see what sticks way of approaching building startups, you know, in many of the tech companies. That was an interesting moment. It's like, oh, wow, it's not as, it's not as thought out as it should be. And then, uh, so what happened was that, you know, at Good Data, it was startup, everything was crazy, and I remember sitting there one day looking at all the…

AI assessment note: “all the systems I've been using didn't have the customers and needs in it.”

Q I ask, in terms of, like you said there about kind of strategic milestones to get there, when you think about adding products, I always think about kind of the importance of knowing what your core is as a company, and when you add a second product, You're potentially moving away from core. So how do you think about when and why is the right time to add secondary products?

A Yeah, so this is the core product strategy thinking. Like, what you're asking about is, is that's the foundation of product strategy. If you think at how companies that we all know went to the market, you know, Tesla. First Roadster, then Sedan, then Mass Market Vehicle. Salesforce. Start with Sales Cloud, then add, you know, support, services, marketing, You know, now acquire Slack, right? Like, you know, you go deliberately to the market, not saying, like, I'm a system for everything, for everybody. Spotify. Music first, and then adding, you know, podcasts, and maybe video content, and so, like, it's, it's, it's deliberate. And so the key elements there, though, are who is the customer in terms of the persona? Is it, you know, is it somebody, and I'm in a B to B world, right? So it's like, I'm giving you B to B examples, but is it somebody who's in marketing versus sales versus customer success? And then what are the needs is the second dimension. And so the customers and the needs and the intersection is where your product is and where the competing products are. And so you need to think about, okay, I built the first version of the product for the first persona and for the first set of needs. What am I going to do now? Am I going to take that product and enlarge it, increase the breadth of it and add additional needs? Or am I going to go and add a new persona? It turns out …

AI assessment note: “Typically, it's easier to stay in the same persona and add needs.”

Q I do want to kick off, though, with some context about you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and how did you come to found the game changer that is Product Board today?

A Yeah, so quick background. I got a master's in computer science in Prague, Czech Republic. I'm from there, and then made it through Four years of technology and strategy consulting at Accenture with clients around Central Eastern Europe. And then I got my MBA at Berkeley. And that was the entry to the US. And after that, I got sucked into the Valley. And, you know, I'm talking about the CS and MBA background because I see that as the foundation, the combination, the technology and business, you know, combined knowledge. That was the success later on. And after the MBA, I went through a couple startups, some successful than the others. And then ended up growing to be a VP of product management at an Andreessen funded BI company called Good Data. I discovered there the reality of product management at high growth startups in the valley and just here in the tech world. And I kind of learned that my idealized MBA educated and Accenture framework trained brain and approaches, you know, are slightly different from just like, let's see what sticks way of approaching building startups, you know, in many of the tech companies. That was an interesting moment. It's like, oh, wow, it's not as, it's not as thought out as it should be. And then, uh, so what happened was that, you know, at Good Data, it was startup, everything was crazy, and I remember sitting there one day looking at all the…

AI assessment note: “I got a master's in computer science... got sucked into the Valley”

Q hindsight, because I do want to start today with kind of the founders themselves. I mean, today we're going to unpack a load of like conventional wisdom that everyone says in the industry, and maybe we have different slants. The first is like founder insights. And you've said before that Founder insight is overrated. Now, I love a statement like this. So, uh, tell me, what is founder insight overrated?

A Yeah, so look, it's important to have an insight, right? Because if you don't have an insight, if you don't uncover something new in the market, the new opportunity, the new need, then it's like, you know, you don't have a business. Like, you need to do that. And if you look at, you know, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Phil Knight at Nike, Oprah Winfrey, like Payal Kadakia at ClassPass, they represented the target audience. The early on, I joked that Mark Zuckerberg was a socially deprived college kid, you know, and that's why he, uh, the company he built, but it also look at how many startups pivot. And so in my mind, you know, while you might have the early insights, you actually don't know whether it is the insight that's gonna be the foundation of the large, big company that you will scale. And so to me, it's much more about the flexibility of the founder and not holding these insights too strongly. And there's many people who are very stubborn and who hold their opinions super strongly. You know, they have this reality distortion field around them and they persuade others. It's like, oh yeah, this is like the best thing. So that's one aspect of it. I feel like the self-awareness and, you know, being ready to pivot. I mean, if you look at Stuart Butterfield, right? From game to Slack, right? It's a very different flexibility. And then the second thing that I would highlight i…

AI assessment note: “while you might have the early insights, you actually don't know”

Q Like fundraising, M&A, big strategic moves, all incredibly distracting to organizations of any kind or size. I don't think it's helpful to be transparent on them. Am I right or am I wrong?

A Well, I think that transparency is not, it's not binary. It's not nothing or everything, right? It's a continuum. Look, there's some hard limits. Privacy regulations. Like, you just can't. You can't be transparent if you would be breaking law, and if you're breaking protection, or like, you know, rights of people to keep private medical information, or like, you know, obviously you're not sharing that, right? Yeah, right. And then the second, though, is the strategic bucket. Like, if you're in the middle of closing a big round, and you have investors competing for you, and you're trying to keep secrets, you know, from them, like, you don't want to tell the whole company, like, hey, you know, we have Sequoia, and Kleiner, and Andreessen, and Excel compete, and, you know, we're pitting them against each other, and trying to create the best outcome for us. Like, no, you're risking that it's going to leak, and, you know, it's a super sensitive time period, right? It's a very short time period, though. And so you need to be careful there, but that doesn't mean that after the fact, you shouldn't and couldn't share that. You can go and then say, like, look, like, you know, this happened, like, this is, you know, it's strategically important to keep information confidential for some period of time, but, like, let me tell you the stories and, you know, crazy stories that happen, and be …

AI assessment note: “it's strategically important to keep information confidential for some period of time”

Q and, um, you know, there's a lot of different opinions. You said before, it's so great to achieve it, but if you got there by accident, you might be in trouble. Why is that? Because people just think once you hit product market fit, you know, life's a breeze. So, don't laugh, but why could you be in trouble if you get there by accident, and what are the dangers?

A If you stumble into it, you just like, you know, you're throwing spaghetti on the wall, and you see what sticks, which by the way is, uh, A lot of the kind of lean startup thinking is actually just like iterate quickly, right? Like the agile just iterate quickly, quickly, quickly. There's not much about strategy. It's much about high volume, you know, of tests. So my point here is that the strategic aspect needs to be there. If you just go and you stumble into it by accident because you saw something or you tried it and you don't really have that system in place that allows you to consistently go forward and validate and test and iterate in, in a Smart strategic way. You're in trouble because what happens when you get to the product market fit is that the market at that point starts pulling you all these different directions on the little matrix that I described. You know, it starts, people start asking you, oh, can you do more use cases and kind of like, you know, more broader. And then other people who are not really the persona that the product is for see it and they like some aspect on the product of it. And it's like, oh, this is great. Can I also use this tool? You know, I know it's a sales tool, but I could use it for marketing or for us, like product management. Oh, it's great, but I would also like to, I would also like to use it for my personal task management, becaus…

AI assessment note: “if you don't have the muscle of thinking strategically and systematically about it, the risk”

Q hindsight, because I do want to start today with kind of the founders themselves. I mean, today we're going to unpack a load of like conventional wisdom that everyone says in the industry, and maybe we have different slants. The first is like founder insights. And you've said before that Founder insight is overrated. Now, I love a statement like this. So, uh, tell me, what is founder insight overrated?

A Yeah, so look, it's important to have an insight, right? Because if you don't have an insight, if you don't uncover something new in the market, the new opportunity, the new need, then it's like, you know, you don't have a business. Like, you need to do that. And if you look at, you know, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Phil Knight at Nike, Oprah Winfrey, like Payal Kadakia at ClassPass, they represented the target audience. The early on, I joked that Mark Zuckerberg was a socially deprived college kid, you know, and that's why he, uh, the company he built, but it also look at how many startups pivot. And so in my mind, you know, while you might have the early insights, you actually don't know whether it is the insight that's gonna be the foundation of the large, big company that you will scale. And so to me, it's much more about the flexibility of the founder and not holding these insights too strongly. And there's many people who are very stubborn and who hold their opinions super strongly. You know, they have this reality distortion field around them and they persuade others. It's like, oh yeah, this is like the best thing. So that's one aspect of it. I feel like the self-awareness and, you know, being ready to pivot. I mean, if you look at Stuart Butterfield, right? From game to Slack, right? It's a very different flexibility. And then the second thing that I would highlight i…

AI assessment note: “it's much more about the flexibility of the founder and not holding these insights”

Q to touch on one final point, though, and it's kind of cool to the product vision with that product board, and as you mentioned, obviously, the kind of Key essence of sharing. And it makes me think of transparency, because again, we've spoken before, and you said it's necessary, but hard. So I guess the thing that I wanted to ask is like, why do you feel it's necessary first?

A Look, like, what are you doing as a startup founder? You're trying to hire super smart people to help to get you to your vision, and not only want to build trust with them by being transparent and honest, because that's what people appreciate and, you know, expect, hopefully. But also because you want their help in solving the hardest problem. And so if you're not sharing things that are not working, if you're not transparent about the performance, if you don't talk about the inconvenient information that you just lost a big customer, or that, you know, the churn is high, or just in general, the friction in the business is the big problems. But what are you doing? So you, you spend all the effort on hiring these great people, and then you completely waste their curiosity and creativity in helping you solve The best difficult problems that you have in the business. And to me, that's, that's kind of, that's a crime. Just like you're wasting, you know, people's abilities and skills. So that's the core for me. I can tell you why it's difficult, but this is why transparency is important.

AI assessment note: “you completely waste their curiosity and creativity in helping you solve The best difficult problems”

Q I do have to ask, you mentioned kind of sitting there and mapping out the product vision. In terms of kind of product visions, you said before the big and bold product visions are great, but they can be dangerous. I'm interested, what are the downsides to big and bold product visions? Considering they're traditionally held in this kind of heroic sense.

A Yeah, we need to think big and bold, because if you don't think big and bold, you're not gonna make anything big and bold. The thing, though, is that, like, I can ask you, how many times have you heard a founder telling you something like, oh, we're a solution for everyone, or anybody can be a customer? It's great that you have that bold vision, but the, the danger about it and the tough thing is that if somebody shows up and says, like, I'm building a flying car so that Anyone could fly to work. Is that, that's not how you go about building the company, and that's not how you, like, you know, from getting, the vision can be big and long-term, but how you get there needs to be a thought-out, deliberate set of small steps. And if you don't think hard about what is the right set of steps to get there, and if you just, like, start building the bold vision, you know, it's like starting to build a city, and instead of first building a church, and a, you know, school, and a hotel, and a pub... Like, you would build from Metropolis, like, one little, you know, the stone from each of the buildings, and then, you know, you build half of the first story, and you run out of funding, because nobody can move in anywhere, and so that's the thing, like, you have to have a bold vision, but the bold vision, you need to have the insight that what is it that you're gonna be in five years is not w…

AI assessment note: “if you just, like, start building the bold vision... you run out of funding”

Q and, um, you know, there's a lot of different opinions. You said before, it's so great to achieve it, but if you got there by accident, you might be in trouble. Why is that? Because people just think once you hit product market fit, you know, life's a breeze. So, don't laugh, but why could you be in trouble if you get there by accident, and what are the dangers?

A If you stumble into it, you just like, you know, you're throwing spaghetti on the wall, and you see what sticks, which by the way is, uh, A lot of the kind of lean startup thinking is actually just like iterate quickly, right? Like the agile just iterate quickly, quickly, quickly. There's not much about strategy. It's much about high volume, you know, of tests. So my point here is that the strategic aspect needs to be there. If you just go and you stumble into it by accident because you saw something or you tried it and you don't really have that system in place that allows you to consistently go forward and validate and test and iterate in, in a Smart strategic way. You're in trouble because what happens when you get to the product market fit is that the market at that point starts pulling you all these different directions on the little matrix that I described. You know, it starts, people start asking you, oh, can you do more use cases and kind of like, you know, more broader. And then other people who are not really the persona that the product is for see it and they like some aspect on the product of it. And it's like, oh, this is great. Can I also use this tool? You know, I know it's a sales tool, but I could use it for marketing or for us, like product management. Oh, it's great, but I would also like to, I would also like to use it for my personal task management, becaus…

AI assessment note: “if you don't have the muscle of thinking strategically and systematically about it, the risk is”

Q Like fundraising, M&A, big strategic moves, all incredibly distracting to organizations of any kind or size. I don't think it's helpful to be transparent on them. Am I right or am I wrong?

A Well, I think that transparency is not, it's not binary. It's not nothing or everything, right? It's a continuum. Look, there's some hard limits. Privacy regulations. Like, you just can't. You can't be transparent if you would be breaking law, and if you're breaking protection, or like, you know, rights of people to keep private medical information, or like, you know, obviously you're not sharing that, right? Yeah, right. And then the second, though, is the strategic bucket. Like, if you're in the middle of closing a big round, and you have investors competing for you, and you're trying to keep secrets, you know, from them, like, you don't want to tell the whole company, like, hey, you know, we have Sequoia, and Kleiner, and Andreessen, and Excel compete, and, you know, we're pitting them against each other, and trying to create the best outcome for us. Like, no, you're risking that it's going to leak, and, you know, it's a super sensitive time period, right? It's a very short time period, though. And so you need to be careful there, but that doesn't mean that after the fact, you shouldn't and couldn't share that. You can go and then say, like, look, like, you know, this happened, like, this is, you know, it's strategically important to keep information confidential for some period of time, but, like, let me tell you the stories and, you know, crazy stories that happen, and be …

AI assessment note: “transparency is not, it's not binary. It's not nothing or everything, right? It's a continuum.”

Q I'm too interested to you, and then we will get into a quick fire. You're such a happy, jolly, nice guy. No, seriously, it's so lovely, it's infectious, but like, when times are hard for you, how do you deal with it? What was the Hubert like then?

A Oh yeah. Look like I've been, I'm 42, I think. But I've been working on this. I've been super stressed, and in the early days of Product Board, you know, it's been hard. And I had a little founder's mood meter I put into a spreadsheet how I feel, and I plotted it, because I'm an analytical guy. It was a complete, you know, ups and downs. I meditate, I, you know, I talk to my wife, I surround myself, You know, with mentors, and I kind of spread the burden. But I kind of got to the moment where I realized that, number one, don't stress about things that are outside of your control, because it's completely counterproductive. And number two, any kind of stress is counterproductive if it limits your ability to think clearly. And so I'm just, like, doing everything I can to just, you know, be balanced and approach things from a positive. We can figure things out. But it's, I had to learn that. It wasn't natural.

AI assessment note: “I meditate, I, you know, I talk to my wife, I surround myself”

Q to touch on one final point, though, and it's kind of cool to the product vision with that product board, and as you mentioned, obviously, the kind of Key essence of sharing. And it makes me think of transparency, because again, we've spoken before, and you said it's necessary, but hard. So I guess the thing that I wanted to ask is like, why do you feel it's necessary first?

A Look, like, what are you doing as a startup founder? You're trying to hire super smart people to help to get you to your vision, and not only want to build trust with them by being transparent and honest, because that's what people appreciate and, you know, expect, hopefully. But also because you want their help in solving the hardest problem. And so if you're not sharing things that are not working, if you're not transparent about the performance, if you don't talk about the inconvenient information that you just lost a big customer, or that, you know, the churn is high, or just in general, the friction in the business is the big problems. But what are you doing? So you, you spend all the effort on hiring these great people, and then you completely waste their curiosity and creativity in helping you solve The best difficult problems that you have in the business. And to me, that's, that's kind of, that's a crime. Just like you're wasting, you know, people's abilities and skills. So that's the core for me. I can tell you why it's difficult, but this is why transparency is important.

AI assessment note: “because you want their help in solving the hardest problem.”

Q is a great recent example, but, like, you know, it's one of many. I think we're going to see this wave of consolidation as the first wave of mega incumbents in SaaS now start to acquire the second gen and really start to bundle what has been quite an unbundled ecosystem. Do you agree with me, and how do you think about the consolidatory period and the bundling versus unbundling?

A Yeah, I mean, totally this is happening. I agree with you on that. I think that is natural. I don't think this is anything specific to technology. It's just that, you know, in this particular, like, SaaS world, for example, in this example, right, it's getting to, the whole industry is getting to the maturity where the big players have the funds, and also to your question, like, when is the right time to branch out? Like, you need to have, actually, defensible business in the thing that you did in the first place, right? Because if you start expanding too soon, uh, Then you start competing with multiple people at the same time. And I mean, you see it, for example, in support, right? Zendesk, Intercom, Drift. The competition is increasing along the different use cases, and like, you know, competing with everybody at the same time, it's a difficult challenge for Intercom, right? Like, how do you take on Zendesk, and then at the same time, protect yourself from the entrance at the bottom, like Drift. But this consolidation, in my mind, so it's like, okay, are there players who can Add it into their suite of products, like the acquisition to their suite of products so that it strategically all makes sense and so that there's a more combined value created for a customer if they then use the whole platform. And then in terms of the companies that are being acquired, it also requires …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, totally this is happening. I agree with you on that.”

Q that you said about the team itself, and kind of the depth of the team beneath the leader. For investors, you and I both know that the majority of the communications is between the lead on the investor side and the CEO. How do you think, or if you were an investor, how would you engage with the team to determine that depth within the startup when making a decision?

A Communication. And also, look, it depends on the stage of the company, right? But if I look at our, even the early round series A, like Ilya Fushman showed up at our office, you know, for people here at, uh, WeWork, but like he wanted to see the other people. He wanted to talk to people. So like, you know, he did a very good diligence and then back channel, talk to people who interacted with the company and see how people communicate, like what they stand for. It's just, it's a team sport. My point is that it's how the founding people Work and collaborate with the others. What is that relationship? Is it very dictatorial? Or is it kind of meritocracy, egalitarian? Is it, you know, respecting each other's opinions?

AI assessment note: “he wanted to see the other people. He wanted to talk to people.”

Q that is, is often through customer success or through sales teams providing that feedback to them. My question to you is like, given that product board is obviously so rooted in product teams, How did you think about pricing? Because the per seat pricing model wouldn't take advantage of all the value that you'd be creating. So how do you think about pricing? What was the thoughts there for you?

A It's the sequence. So we are going to the market where we're starting with the needs of the core product people. And so we are now charging by seed because it makes the most sense because the core, and that's not just product managers, by the way, you know, there's, you'd be surprised for how, you know, for every product manager, there's like Three other people who are part of the product process. I mean, designers, engineers, but even product marketers, and there's other stakeholders, and there's, you know, the customer success, head of customer success, and sales, they all want to be involved because product is so central to the success of the company, and also to the success of their individual teams, right? If you have better product, it sells better. If you have better product, customer success is an easier job, and, you know, support, and so on. And then how you get the insights into the other teams, you need to be organized around that. You know, it's not just the product people, but it's next for us. And so the, all the use cases that are around how customer success can leverage the information in product board and then present roadmap directly to the customers and sales teams and so on. So right now we have all these seats free and we are not monetizing them, but it doesn't mean that once we have the like super strong foothold in the product organization and all the pr…

AI assessment note: “we are now charging by seed because it makes the most sense”

Q is a great recent example, but, like, you know, it's one of many. I think we're going to see this wave of consolidation as the first wave of mega incumbents in SaaS now start to acquire the second gen and really start to bundle what has been quite an unbundled ecosystem. Do you agree with me, and how do you think about the consolidatory period and the bundling versus unbundling?

A Yeah, I mean, totally this is happening. I agree with you on that. I think that is natural. I don't think this is anything specific to technology. It's just that, you know, in this particular, like, SaaS world, for example, in this example, right, it's getting to, the whole industry is getting to the maturity where the big players have the funds, and also to your question, like, when is the right time to branch out? Like, you need to have, actually, defensible business in the thing that you did in the first place, right? Because if you start expanding too soon, uh, Then you start competing with multiple people at the same time. And I mean, you see it, for example, in support, right? Zendesk, Intercom, Drift. The competition is increasing along the different use cases, and like, you know, competing with everybody at the same time, it's a difficult challenge for Intercom, right? Like, how do you take on Zendesk, and then at the same time, protect yourself from the entrance at the bottom, like Drift. But this consolidation, in my mind, so it's like, okay, are there players who can Add it into their suite of products, like the acquisition to their suite of products so that it strategically all makes sense and so that there's a more combined value created for a customer if they then use the whole platform. And then in terms of the companies that are being acquired, it also requires …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, totally this is happening. I agree with you on that.”

Q Why is hiring product managers so fucking hard?

A It's a complex role. It's a, it's a combination of customer empathy, design, business, technology. I'd say it's getting better because I feel like there's more and more people who understand technology more. You know, we kind of came from the world where You had, like, the traditional brand manager is basically a product manager. You know, at Procter & Gamble, if you have diapers as a brand, like that, you know, you know that. But it's easier to understand the needs of the customers there than it is in the tech world. But I feel like as the new generations are coming in, and they kind of understand more how technology works and how it is used by people, the easier it is to find people who understand both the needs and technology. But in the early days, you would have to be a super techie and almost You know, because of that, you wouldn't have the empathy. And so it shows then the Frankenstein products got bailed. It was like super technical, super difficult to use because they were built and designed by engineers. And just, it's changed in the last 20 years.

AI assessment note: “It's a combination of customer empathy, design, business, technology.”

Q She's gonna, she's gonna love it. Yeah, just, Just don't play into it. Just skip this section. Anyway, I do want to finish on the most exciting of all day, Hubert, which is the next five years for you. So what are the next five years for you and for product board? And I guess just how big could this be?

A Well, I think of it as becoming the sales force of product management, becoming the central product brain. Like, you know, Salesforce is the CRM and is the business brain of the company, but we need a brain that is focused on understanding the markets and their needs for the product side. For the R&D organization. Well, everything that we talked about, who are the customers? What do they need? Who are the competitors? And how do you translate all of it into the product decision making? And we don't have that. That doesn't exist. Like, where can you go and ask, oh, what are the top needs of a specific customer segment? Or what are, you know, if I built this particular feature functionality, who's going to benefit from that the most? You know, it's mind boggling. It's just crazy. And so another analogy is like, think of it as, You know, in Star Trek, the command bridge, and so I want to be product more like that, that place where all the information from the market are coming in, and all the exploration, you know, the units, it's like bringing in, and then you disseminate, you analyze it, you see the big picture, and then you, you know, communicate back, like, hey, this is what we should do, and so that's, that's kind of just like a, you know, fun way to think about it.

AI assessment note: “becoming the sales force of product management, becoming the central product brain”

Q I do have to ask, you mentioned kind of sitting there and mapping out the product vision. In terms of kind of product visions, you said before the big and bold product visions are great, but they can be dangerous. I'm interested, what are the downsides to big and bold product visions? Considering they're traditionally held in this kind of heroic sense.

A Yeah, we need to think big and bold, because if you don't think big and bold, you're not gonna make anything big and bold. The thing, though, is that, like, I can ask you, how many times have you heard a founder telling you something like, oh, we're a solution for everyone, or anybody can be a customer? It's great that you have that bold vision, but the, the danger about it and the tough thing is that if somebody shows up and says, like, I'm building a flying car so that Anyone could fly to work. Is that, that's not how you go about building the company, and that's not how you, like, you know, from getting, the vision can be big and long-term, but how you get there needs to be a thought-out, deliberate set of small steps. And if you don't think hard about what is the right set of steps to get there, and if you just, like, start building the bold vision, you know, it's like starting to build a city, and instead of first building a church, and a, you know, school, and a hotel, and a pub... Like, you would build from Metropolis, like, one little, you know, the stone from each of the buildings, and then, you know, you build half of the first story, and you run out of funding, because nobody can move in anywhere, and so that's the thing, like, you have to have a bold vision, but the bold vision, you need to have the insight that what is it that you're gonna be in five years is not w…

AI assessment note: “you build half of the first story, and you run out of funding”

Q What relationship do you go for? Because you've got different styles of leadership. They've all worked, and then there's all that haven't worked. Which do you prefer and why?

A I want to be a dictator. No, no, no. No, I go for the look like the whole premise of Product Board as a system. Is based on the idea that the information should be shared with all the people that are involved in product decision making. It's similar, like, you know, CRM system, like you centralize all the data about customers in order to disseminate it across the company. So that sales see it, marketing sees it, you know, customer support success. Like you have fullest picture of the customers possible, and this is missing on the product side. And so my point is that you need to create an environment where this is shared and where everybody's on the same page. And that's my way of leadership. Like, I still don't have the magical recipe, but I'm trying to, like, write down my insights that I've learned for the past six years, and draw diagrams, and have everybody read it, and then I, you know, write down my roadmap that I have in my head for features for the next 24 months. But it's not like a, this is the roadmap. It's like, hey, this is, I'm seeding the conversation with this, because I've been thinking about it for six years, and then let's talk about it. You can change it. It's not set in stone. You know, it's just like, I want you to not reinvent the wheel because if you just join the company, there's six years of knowledge and learning about the market and somehow you need…

AI assessment note: “you need to create an environment where this is shared... that's my way of leadership.”

Q where I said to you ahead of time, we do go off schedule. I had recently Vlad Tenev from Robinhood on the show, and he spoke about kind of his growing up in Eastern Europe and how it impacted his mindset. How do you think growing up in Czech Republic and then making the move to How did that impact your mindset, do you think, as a founder and operator?

A I think that you kind of idealize it from, you know, externally, and you think that everything is thought out, and then when you realize that it isn't, when you kind of get thrown into it, and you ask, you know, people that you respect, and that you thought was like, oh my god, this is a god, and they just have the formula, and they have the recipe to build the companies. It just makes you, like, you basically go, and you're more bold, I feel like. You know, you're just like, okay, even these people don't know, so it's up to me, and I just need to work Extra hard, and I need to, like, put extra effort. And then also, because you have this, you're super frugal. You know, you're coming from a world where you had to do everything. You need to figure out everything. You're like, you didn't have the funds. And so the early days, and it's kind of a double-edged sword, but, you know, the early days, it's kind of like, okay, I'm just gonna rough it on ramen, but just, like, that's how I grew up. It's like, you know, it's like, oh, it's so hard. I mean, it is hard, right? But it's like, you're more resilient, I feel like, you know.

AI assessment note: “you're super frugal. You know, you're coming from a world where you had to do everything.”

Q Speaking of kind of, I'm gonna rough it on ramen, and, like, the frugality that's instilled within you there, I'd Because of the background. Is it difficult, then, when you raise a big Series B from Sequoia, and suddenly you have to transition mentally from frugality to aggressive spending?

A Look, number one, it's not just raising, right? It's like you raise the round, but really what matters is whether you have the signals in the business that show you that you should be scaling. So just careful with, you know, raise money and start spending. But the, even though hopefully you raise the money because you saw the signals, right? But, I mean, for me, it's been a challenge. Like, how to realize that maybe you can spend more and move faster, rather than be frugal and just, you know, try things slowly. And that's one of the things I would probably change looking back. But, you know, the, the good thing is that if you have it in you, and as we all heard, you know, the culture comes from the top, like, you kind of project it to the company. And so, I mean, look, running an efficient business, talk to any investor, like, you know, ok, what's the ratios, sales and marketing's Spend towards the revenue that you bring in. It's a critical factor, right? So it's, it's actually very, very valuable to have that mindset. And that's the story of Jeff Bezos and, you know, one pizza team, just like, you know, be frugal.

AI assessment note: “for me, it's been a challenge. Like, how to realize that maybe you can spend more”

Q What relationship do you go for? Because you've got different styles of leadership. They've all worked, and then there's all that haven't worked. Which do you prefer and why?

A I want to be a dictator. No, no, no. No, I go for the look like the whole premise of Product Board as a system. Is based on the idea that the information should be shared with all the people that are involved in product decision making. It's similar, like, you know, CRM system, like you centralize all the data about customers in order to disseminate it across the company. So that sales see it, marketing sees it, you know, customer support success. Like you have fullest picture of the customers possible, and this is missing on the product side. And so my point is that you need to create an environment where this is shared and where everybody's on the same page. And that's my way of leadership. Like, I still don't have the magical recipe, but I'm trying to, like, write down my insights that I've learned for the past six years, and draw diagrams, and have everybody read it, and then I, you know, write down my roadmap that I have in my head for features for the next 24 months. But it's not like a, this is the roadmap. It's like, hey, this is, I'm seeding the conversation with this, because I've been thinking about it for six years, and then let's talk about it. You can change it. It's not set in stone. You know, it's just like, I want you to not reinvent the wheel because if you just join the company, there's six years of knowledge and learning about the market and somehow you need…

AI assessment note: “you need to create an environment where this is shared... And that's my way of leadership.”

Q where I said to you ahead of time, we do go off schedule. I had recently Vlad Tenev from Robinhood on the show, and he spoke about kind of his growing up in Eastern Europe and how it impacted his mindset. How do you think growing up in Czech Republic and then making the move to How did that impact your mindset, do you think, as a founder and operator?

A I think that you kind of idealize it from, you know, externally, and you think that everything is thought out, and then when you realize that it isn't, when you kind of get thrown into it, and you ask, you know, people that you respect, and that you thought was like, oh my god, this is a god, and they just have the formula, and they have the recipe to build the companies. It just makes you, like, you basically go, and you're more bold, I feel like. You know, you're just like, okay, even these people don't know, so it's up to me, and I just need to work Extra hard, and I need to, like, put extra effort. And then also, because you have this, you're super frugal. You know, you're coming from a world where you had to do everything. You need to figure out everything. You're like, you didn't have the funds. And so the early days, and it's kind of a double-edged sword, but, you know, the early days, it's kind of like, okay, I'm just gonna rough it on ramen, but just, like, that's how I grew up. It's like, you know, it's like, oh, it's so hard. I mean, it is hard, right? But it's like, you're more resilient, I feel like, you know.

AI assessment note: “you're super frugal. You know, you're coming from a world where you had to”

Q So I have to unpack a couple of elements that you said about the mental plasticity there to kind of be flexible to move. The question is, we hear about the reality distortion field and how founders have to be persistent above everything and Keep going. How do you balance between being realistic when something's not working, but then also having a vision and sticking to that vision?

A Great question. I think that you need to have a framework around it. You need to know why you have that conviction, because if the conviction is just because, you know, you woke up one day and you thought like, yeah, this is the thing, or you found out that you as an individual have a need and you have an insight how to solve it, or like the inside was the combination of the need and the solution, but then you need to go and you need to Find out whether there's more people like you. So you need to have a way how to kind of validate that and validate just like, is it a need that's big enough, that's like painful enough, right? Is there enough people out there that have the similar need? And do I have really a superior way how to solve it? And then the conviction can be coming from, well, I am constantly kind of validating that, yes, the need is there. Maybe I don't have the solution yet, but I see that the need is there. Yes, I see the market. There's more people. Maybe I don't have the solution or vice versa. You know, you might be convinced, convinced about great technology, but then you need to go and find the market for it. But it needs to be, you know, it needs to be in my mind, and I, you know, I'm a computer scientist, you know, like I'm a very analytical person, right? But in my mind, you need to have a systematic approach, how to think about it. And the conviction shoul…

AI assessment note: “conviction shouldn't be just like a uninformed gut feeling. It needs to be very much informed”

Q I had Elad on the show when he released it, so yeah, love it, know it. What would you most like to change about the Silicon Valley tech scene?

A One that actually I've been thinking about recently given the election. I feel like we all in technology, we are pulling society towards innovation, and we have a responsibility not to forget about the people who are not on the front lines of innovation, and so I think that I actually have, like, I'm on the side, I'm working on starting a little non-profit or a little group of what can we do to get People on the bandwagon of using technology and being more flexible in how they work and what work they can get done. Because, you know, it's like, there's this group of people that are running faster because they are more informed, they have, you know, the cars dealt their way, they have the skills and the knowledge, and we're just running faster and faster and faster. There's this, like, gigantic group of society that doesn't have the information, doesn't have the skill, and we can't just, like, run too far away. Because it's gonna create a very strong tension, and the rate of change is increasing, the innovation, the speed of innovation is increasing, and we need to do something to kind of keep everybody together, because otherwise, you know, I mean, you see the polarization in the political system. I think it is because of the much faster rate of change.

AI assessment note: “we have a responsibility not to forget about the people who are not on the front lines”

Q So I have to unpack a couple of elements that you said about the mental plasticity there to kind of be flexible to move. The question is, we hear about the reality distortion field and how founders have to be persistent above everything and Keep going. How do you balance between being realistic when something's not working, but then also having a vision and sticking to that vision?

A Great question. I think that you need to have a framework around it. You need to know why you have that conviction, because if the conviction is just because, you know, you woke up one day and you thought like, yeah, this is the thing, or you found out that you as an individual have a need and you have an insight how to solve it, or like the inside was the combination of the need and the solution, but then you need to go and you need to Find out whether there's more people like you. So you need to have a way how to kind of validate that and validate just like, is it a need that's big enough, that's like painful enough, right? Is there enough people out there that have the similar need? And do I have really a superior way how to solve it? And then the conviction can be coming from, well, I am constantly kind of validating that, yes, the need is there. Maybe I don't have the solution yet, but I see that the need is there. Yes, I see the market. There's more people. Maybe I don't have the solution or vice versa. You know, you might be convinced, convinced about great technology, but then you need to go and find the market for it. But it needs to be, you know, it needs to be in my mind, and I, you know, I'm a computer scientist, you know, like I'm a very analytical person, right? But in my mind, you need to have a systematic approach, how to think about it. And the conviction shoul…

AI assessment note: “you need to have a framework around it. You need to know why you have that conviction”