Tara Seshan
14 statements across 1 episodes · 5 bullish · 2 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jun 22, 2023 by Tara Seshan · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Tara Seshan's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Everything said about Tara Seshan, oldest first
Jun 22, 2023
Seshan enforces strict 12-question product review starting with target user
“I have a set of 12 questions that I ask in every product review, and there's a very strict guidance of, like, you cannot move on to question two until you've sufficiently answered question one, and question one starts off, like, very basically, who is your tar…”
Jun 22, 2023 neutral
Seshan: High-potential hires fail most often from organizational mismatch
“Honestly, that's the most common failure mode with this kind of thing, where you hire someone who you do see glimmers of greatness in them, but they're just not great in the way the organization needs, and the organization, like, Oregon rejects them in some wa…”
Jun 22, 2023 positive
Seshan: Multi-product startups succeed more often by selling to existing buyers
“The angle I think is really fruitful within a company, is sell something else to your same buyer. And you kind of know that user and you know their needs. You're much more likely to succeed by giving them an additional product than trying to launch a product t…”
Jun 22, 2023 positive
Jun 22, 2023
Jun 22, 2023 positive
Seshan: Defining the target user is the most important product strategy choice
“Your target user is the most important question, full stop for your product area. Like that is the best strategy choice you can make. And so if you cannot clearly outline to me who your target user is and why, and therefore like You know, as you go through my …”
Jun 22, 2023 neutral
Seshan: Early software versions are inherently bad and require user context to evaluate
“Like, software is never done, and software is always bad in the first version of it, and so with the assumption that you are looking at a bad piece of software because it's the first version that someone's built, it is very hard to evaluate a bad piece of soft…”
Jun 22, 2023 negative
Jun 22, 2023 positive
Jun 22, 2023 positive
Seshan: Promotions in low-quality orgs signal diamond-in-the-rough talent
“Also, another, like, factor that can hide folks, like, make them really diamonds in the rough, is that they might do high-quality work in a low-quality org, so they might be doing a lot of great stuff in a place that just doesn't, that isn't great. When you lo…”
Jun 22, 2023
Seshan: Zero-to-one teams should have two to four engineers and zero dependencies
“Yeah, I think you want the team to be really self-sufficient. So you want the team to not have to reach outside of itself to borrow expertise from other parts of the organization. Like certainly within the organization, there are parts of the code base that th…”
Jun 22, 2023
Seshan: Judging new bets by core business yardsticks causes them to fail
“One of the most common reasons for this not working within companies is that people judge the net new bet by the same yardstick that the rest of the company is judged on. And that is not just an executive decision. It cascades all the way down.”
Jun 22, 2023
Seshan: Building the 'Best Product' Matters Less Than Target User Fit
“Everyone always, like, overestimates the impact of, like, specific features and being the best product. Like, being the best product is not an answer. You have to be, like, the right product for your target user. Being the best means nothing.”