Ebi Atawodi
Director of Product, YouTube. On 1 show, 1 appearance, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveoperatorinvestorauthor@ebiatawodi ↗LinkedIn ↗capitalt.vc ↗
Ebi Atawodi is Director of Product for YouTube Studio at Google, having previously held senior product and general management roles at Netflix and Uber. She is also an Operating Partner at CapitalT and serves on the board of directors at The LEGO Group.
1shows
1appearances
34statements
2resolved
1supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Ebi Atawodi said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Atawodi: PMs fail if AI can write their PRDs from research alone
“If I could put all the research into BARD or ChatGPT, and it could spit out a PRD, Then you haven't done your job.”
Atawodi: Leaders should optimize for being loved rather than liked
“I don't optimize for being liked to be very, and it sounds very harsh. I do not believe in being liked. That's AB. I believe in being loved. Right. And that's a very, very different thing.”
Atawodi: Creating a product vision takes only three days
“You only need three days and a bunch of passionate people.”
Atawodi: Standard user stories are terrible; jobs-to-be-done is vastly superior
“I really hate user stories. Like, as a user tells me nothing about the context, the emotions, the feeling, the goals of the user. I love jobs to be done, because it tells me exactly what they're trying to do, where they are, what the goal is, and you understan…”
Atawodi: Pure storytelling resonates far more than blending metrics with stories
“One of the most powerful skills Of a product manager storytelling, right? Because you look at generation after generation after generation, what people pass on is stories. They're not numbers. They're not stats. It's stories. And actually when you blend storie…”
Atawodi: Travis Kalanick opposed cash on Uber but allowed it after testing
“And I talk all the time about the story of cash, where Travis Kalanick was like, against cash. By the way, I think up until he left Uber, he was against cash. But he was, he believed in data, and he believed in principle confrontation. He was like, go test it …”
Atawodi: Uber scaled ride-sharing uniquely by combining core culture with regional adaptation
“No other company has been able to create ride sharing at that kind of scale. It's very region by region. And I think it's because of that.”
Atawodi: Assuming you have the answers is a new leader's biggest mistake
“When I join any company, I sort of say to myself, as any leader, as any person of influence, you don't have the answers. In fact, thinking you do is the biggest mistake. So what I do is I go through this journey of conversations, and that leads to comprehensio…”
Atawodi: Strategy means saying no to great ideas, not bad ones
“Strategy is literally saying no to a bunch of things that are great ideas. It's never actually saying no to, you know, bad ideas. Like, you already weed those out.”
Constraining a product vision by current technological limitations defeats its purpose
“The moment you start to think about the technologies of today, or you start to sort of whittle it down to something very simple, you actually lost the purpose of a lofty vision.”
Naming mainstream apps during PM discovery interviews is an instant failure
“One of my favorite interview questions is to ask, tell me about a product that you recently discovered that you were super passionate about. You say, I worked for Google, but it's an instant failure. You say Google Maps or Gmail or Facebook. It just tells me y…”
Atawodi: Product visions should roadshow through three concentric circles
“And again, there are these three concentric circles. You first tell the team and get all the feedback from your team. Then you go to the stakeholders who are going to help you bring this thing to life. And then you go to leadership, and you have this sort of c…”
Atawodi: Every PM Needs a Vision Regardless of Seniority
“You absolutely need to have one to start by saying that regardless of what level you are in the company. So if people say, oh, I'm just a junior pian or, you know, Whatever level there is some micro macro vision that you need to have”
Atawodi: Craft Product Vision Without Today's Operational Limitations
“It needs to kind of be In a vacuum from the limitations of today, because the whole point of going to the future and saying, I time traveled five years out is to say, okay, I've come back to tell you what we need to fix in order to get there.”
Atawodi: Strong product visions require four specific, non-technical attributes
“So four things. So it has to be lofty, has to be realistic. It has to be devoid of the any tech or limitations of today, and it has to be grounded in a very clear and potent problem. User problem.”
Atawodi: Platform PMs must be an order of magnitude stronger at vision setting
“I always say platform PMs, you have to be An order of magnitude, even more like stronger , I think at like vision setting, because you have to build the foundations of stuff you don't even know is coming.”
Atawodi: Product strategy sessions require three days for creative white space
“I usually have strategy sessions of three days. I've tried to do it in two days. That is the absolute limit. Cause I think you need to create white space for just the magic to happen.”
Atawodi: Share vision documents with comment access to invite constructive friction
“And that will be a living document. Comments. Open for comments, right? No edit. Not view only. Comments. Because you want anyone to leave comments out there and just feel they have a say. You don't have to respond to all of them. You don't have to resolve all…”
Atawodi: PMs should make visions maximally ambitious until leadership pulls them back
“So go as big as possible. Like, go big. Like, let people tell you to pull back. Let your manager use a lasso and pull you back. Like, go as much as possible.”
Atawodi: A good product vision is evergreen and lasts at least three years
“I think if you have to repeat the vision every year, you have not created a good, you haven't done the work. So, you know, I'll give you an example of the one at Uber. What we kept doing was we would bring more fidelity to actually parts of the vision. Right? …”
Atawodi: Technical debt is product debt that product managers must own
“Infrastructure is the product. Period. Like, I, people are like, oh, tech debt. I'm like, yeah, it's the product debt. I cannot build a skyscraper on a shaky foundation. So it is your problem, too. It's not for the engineer to, like, be barging on the door abo…”
Atawodi: Product clarity requires concise two-page narrative documents over slide decks
“Clarity comes when you write. And so I made them write two page documents. I will let you go up to four maybe, but like two page documents with insights. Your strategy, or I use the word approach sometimes, and then the big rocks.”
Atawodi: Product teams should maintain evergreen strategy docs with consistent links
“I'm a big fan of evergreen documents because you create this mental thing where everybody just knows, you know, link, whatever the short link is, whatever you use in your company, They remember it, and that's the link, and that's where I go. Or they know what …”
The other half of the tape: Ebi Atawodi's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ebi's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Director of Product, YouTube | 1 +1 | 34 | 50% 1/2 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |