Product Leader

“Product leaders will increasingly get paid and be asked to drive judgment and then be the tip of the sphere on trying to essentially obsolete everything else through software, through AI, through agents.”

“So I'm like really bullish that product leaders are going to be like, you know, like those like dandelion, whatever you call it seeds when you blow it and they just go everywhere.”

“I found that product, product leaders, engineers, designers some of the more tend to be more introverted and thoughtful types negotiate more poorly than the obnoxious marketers and revenue leaders and the more extroverted types.”

“I think we like, Lean to things like time and productivity when we don't know what the value is, what the true value is.”

“And it's also a mistake that actually the really good product leaders do is because they're so focused on prioritization, they never touch the P twos. P two stack up and you can get a lot of them that just completely erode the product experience. And if you're…”

“Founders that are on top of Gen AI technology, thus, you know tech oriented product leaders, I think are much more likely to succeed than someone that maybe is more business oriented, more business savvy, but it's not, doesn't have a good feel for where AI is …”

“And now I fundamentally disagree with this. I think speed of execution is everything, and actually I think dictatorial product leaders generally work best.”

“On the flip side, I've seen founders bring in amazing seasoned product leaders and they, three months later, they're no longer there because the founder was not in a place nor should they be in a place To give up that product vision to someone else.”

“I think this is a great example of probably the job of a founder or product leader, which is to clearly articulate to the entire team and to the world What this product is for and how you're supposed to use it.”

“We are going to be expected to manage people who code. I'm a CPTO, basically. It's already happening. I'm seeing more and more of us that are bringing these functions together.”

“I think about this a lot because I think it's one of the big areas that most product leaders do not have good commercial sensibility.”

“Like, any product leaders who love philosophizing, for me, it's a big red flag, right? Like, I love people who are action-oriented, who know how important it is to make decisions fast. The faster you make a decision, the better it is, because you unblock your …”

“When you become an AI first kind of leader is that there's a realization that you don't control the experience anymore. You control the ingredients.”

“When I was actually hiring product leaders and there's some product leaders would do Lots of different engagements outside of the company, whether it's investing, advising, speaking, attending conference, all those things. And they were huge red flags to me be…”

“I think perfectionism is a curse we place on ourselves. And it's a very dangerous thing, particularly for product leaders, because product managers, you know, things are gonna go wrong. That's literally part of your job. And yet when we have perfectionism, it …”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“And I think I really learned the biggest lesson I learned there was There's of course you build the product. You have to build a product that delights customers that actually delivers value, but you also, your job is also to build belief as a product leader an…”

“Not being clear about the level of agency they'll have. Meaning, a founder CEO is gonna be in the details of all the shit, and that's good. And some people expect, you know, complete agency calling the shots as a product leader, and they will fail.”

“And so there's a lot of research around progress begetting progress and how progress is a source of motivation. And so as product leaders, we have to merchandise progress. We have to be the steward of this narrative.”

“If you spend five minutes telling me and I've zoned out and I don't understand what you said anyway, which by the way is three quarters of most answers, then you're not going to have the clarity to lead a team to something that's truly breakthrough.”

“One of the patterns is the three types of product leaders, and they are the operator, the craftsperson, and the visionary.”

“The number one failure mode when people hire product leaders is they over index on previous scale. How big of a team have you previously managed or tenure?”

“I often encourage Product leaders to think about their process of becoming more senior, not as a matter of getting more and more high level, but of increasing their dynamic range. So a CPO, it's not that a CPO never thinks about tactical issues. It's that they…”

“Pushing back effectively. This is an art and a skill, but I think your ability to do this is pretty correlated with your ability to grow and succeed as a leader, because if you say yes to everything, you're gonna go nowhere.”

“There's platform product leaders or folks that are kind of more indexed on the infrastructure components. There's folks that are typically focused on like core product or consumer product if it's on the consumer side of things. And then you'll have folks that …”

“If you built something within the organization that you're proud of, but no one knows about it, then that's more difficult to have. As your stamp of approval for what you were able to accomplish there. But if you did something that cross-functional leaders wer…”

“There's a way to be an impactful product leader and disagree and make change. And maybe your engineering leader and design leader and marketing leader completely disagree with the direction in which you're going, but because you have all of the data to support…”

“I would say like the number one failure mode when people hire product leaders is they over index on Either like previous scale, like how many, how big of a team have you previously managed? Or tenure, like how long have you been doing this? What experience do …”

“It happens, like, literally all the time. I watch it happen, and once you hire that B player to be your lead, like, bye-bye. Your team is gone. Like, the best people on your team are not gonna wanna work with that person.”

“Great managers, I think, especially the best product leaders understand how to put the coach hat on and when it's appropriate to put the coach hat on. And are explicit about that are sort of like, okay, let me take off my manager hat now and put the coach hat …”

“Suggest that they ask everyone on their team. What's just like bugging you? What's something that we should improve? What's a process that's annoying? What's something that we can fix? And then go fix something. Go fix a thing that is bugging people and create…”

“What a lot of product leaders make a mistake of, as well as growth leaders, is they think it's their show. They get to create the vision. They get to create the strategy. And it's like, not really. You're there to execute on the vision and strategy of the foun…”

“I think the product leader's job is to try to direct the effort, and instead of prevent developers from, like, having to interact with customers, is facilitating the understanding of the customer for the rest of the team.”

“The number one job of that person is to take ambiguous spaces. And turn them clear.”