Weiss: Launching Slack Connect earlier would have driven massive network adoption
Noah Weiss · Noah Weiss: How to Master Product-Led Growth; Scaling PLG to Enterprise at Google & Slack | E1026 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 16, 2023 · at 29:59
Noah Weiss is the Chief Product Officer of Slack. He reflects on Slack's decision to keep Slack Connect in beta for two years instead of rushing it to market.
0:00 / 0:29exact quote · 29.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And I think frankly, especially given the competitive backdrop there, I think if we had not rushed it, but expedited into market back before there were more products that, you know, people were starting to use or get for free as defaults. And back when I think kind of the ubiquity of Slack was something that felt like maybe inevitable. This could have created enough gravitational pull where our existing customers who love it just forced the rest of the world to come use it with them.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Noah Weiss
Weiss: Small-scale product acquisitions do not accelerate time to market
“When they were trying to actually buy a product, I think you're right. I think often the thing we've learned is that it doesn't actually decrease time to market. You might bring in expertise and that's a good reason to do it, but that's at least what we've lea…”
Weiss: Speed is the most important feature for any product
“The most important feature by far for any product is actually speed.”
Weiss: Big tech employees rarely learn to manufacture distribution from scratch
“I think this is a knock on, I think sometimes folks have only worked at large companies is you have so much tailwind, you have so much momentum, you're so much distribution. You don't learn how to manufacture that from scratch, or you don't know how to turn th…”
Weiss: Product-market fit is dynamic and must be continually renewed
“But I think the thing I took away was that product market fit. People talk about it like it's a binary thing. You unlock it, and then you have it forever. And I actually think a much more accurate model is that you unlock product market fit, you get to maintai…”
Weiss: Slack uses manual spreadsheets to track executive quarterly priorities
“We wind up solving this like most people do at the end of the day, you use spreadsheets. So we have a Monday meeting, PD Monday meeting, as we call it, where like literally we just review in a spreadsheet, super manual process, but the top priorities for the q…”