Insight
Great product leaders identify the right answer 70% of the time
“Somebody with good judgment seven times out of 10 will probably pick up on the right answer with less data.”
Insight
Cieri: One-size-fits-all B2B software fails because industry workflows differ starkly
“This can't just be like a one size fits all thing anymore. Like the differences of jobs to be done across these industries are just too stark.”
Insight
Vertical SaaS at the bottom of the market faces high CAC
“The catch on that, and like one of the tricks is just, it's very, very difficult to be able to build awareness and be able to acquire, at least at the bottom of the market, be able to acquire at an affordable CAC if you don't have really great brand awareness,…”
Insight
Cieri: The SMB software challenge is prioritization, not finding viable product adjacencies
“To me, one of the best things about working in the small business arena is just there's so many areas that we can help that I'm sure if we put effort into would work because the customer pain is there and the market's there. It's just kind of deciding how many…”
Disclosure
Gusto embeds high-risk Horizon 3 product bets inside its core payroll product
“There are like, even horizons within a product. So you look at something like payroll, for example, our payroll product is our, is the backbone of gusto. There's a lot of things we're going to do that adds into what we already have. That is high rate of succes…”
Insight
Cieri: Most Horizon 3 product bets originate bottom-up rather than top-down
“I think that's one thing like for horizon three things is just a lot of it comes bottoms up. So most of it comes bottoms up and like making the space for that to happen then shows up in like an annual planning process where you're like, oh yeah, you know, that…”
Insight
Cieri: Back Ambiguous Product Bets When Leaders Articulate the Problem Well
“And a lot of times, if you find a leader that can convince you on the problem, that's where my, a lot of my like, okay, I trust the intuition on this because I can, they can reasonably articulate to me why they believe, we might not know this all yet, but like…”
Insight
Cieri: Horizon 3 product bets should begin with reasonable one-year adjacencies
“When you look at it over a three year view, you're like, okay, that's a Horizon three thing. But then when you break it down into what we're going to do in the next year, it's oftentimes a reasonable adjacency that is the first step towards that. And we can ki…”
Insight
Product judgment cannot be taught; it must be screened during hiring
“And good judgment is something that is best screened for at the point of interview.”
Insight
Struggling product managers merely present options instead of making definitive decisions
“I think the product people that I see struggle the most are the ones that just like, can't really make that like, well, here's all the options. And I'm like, well, it's your job to tell us what we're going to do. So what are we going to do?”
Insight
Cieri: The fastest product teams are self-contained and clear on purpose
“I think the ones that I've seen move the fastest are, one, they're clear on why they exist and what they're trying to get done. Two, they're clear on what they're trying to build. You know, there might be some nips and tucks on, you know, where's the button pl…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
In 2012, over 70% of Square's merchants were individual solopreneurs
“The majority of Square businesses are solopreneurs. They're individuals, individual sellers. And, you know, the last decade or so, I think the company's really made a successful march up market. So we've got a lot of larger businesses now, but, you know, back …”
Assertion Supported
Cieri: Square layered vertical solutions over its core POS to serve complex businesses
“At Square, what we did and what the company's still doing is, is came up with a vertical strategy where we had, okay, we've got our base square point of sale out of the box, you know, works for most industries with simple needs. And as you start to get more ad…”
Assertion Supported
Cieri: Gusto serves over 300,000 small businesses evenly across industries
“So if you break down our customer set and we have north of 300,000 small businesses on Gusto now, And you look at them sort of by traditional industry segmentation, it's very evenly distributed across a lot of industries.”
Insight
Cieri: Second products must leverage unique advantages created by the wedge
“If we're going to expand off the wedge, how does the wedge product, whatever the first one is, really help unlock the door to the second? What are the sort of unique insight, unique advantage or right to win? Does the first product open up for the second?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Square Capital succeeded by leveraging proprietary visibility into merchant revenue data
“That started off the unique insight that like, hey, we kind of have a pretty good view into the revenue of a business. We don't have a full view on the business. We have a unique view on the revenue coming into a business. And so that really puts us into a pos…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Square's strategic product planning deliberately focused strictly on one-year horizons
“We didn't do much of that at Square, a lot of it was kind of focused on what does the next year look like?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cieri: Opendoor maintained an annually refreshed five-year vision under Eric Wu
“Opendoor, where it was for a brief time between Square and Gusto, I thought did an excellent job of keeping it, they did it on a five-year window, but keeping like a vision of where we were headed over a five-year timeline and always refreshing that year over …”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Cieri: Square Invoices was Square's second biggest payment product at IPO
“Square Invoices grew to be our second biggest, I'm not sure where it is, Now, or if they disclose all this, but it grew to be at the point of the IPO, I think it was our second biggest payment product.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Square had 14 different shopping cart instances before unifying its platform
“So to give you an example, when Alyssa came into Square, I think we had 13 or 14 different instances of a shopping cart, of ways that people put items into some sort of cart object, and then ultimately checked out.”
Michael Cieri