Tavel: Product Recommendation Documents Function as Philosophical Logic Proofs
Sarah Tavel · #113 Sarah Tavel: The Value of Intellectual Rigor · Jun 15, 2021 · at 3:16
Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel explains how her formal background in analytical philosophy directly informed her approach to product management at Pinterest.
0:00 / 0:37exact quote · 37.2s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Like when I was doing product at Pinterest, you know, a product document where you're making a recommendation on a product is actually very similar to a philosophy proof. Like you have hypotheses. You know, about how users behave, how they'll accept a different, you know, a new feature, what, you know, what their intent is on the product. And you underwrite that with, you know, user research, experiments analyzing the data that you already have. And it, and it's, you know, if all these hypotheses are true, then the conclusion is that you should ship the product. And that's, it's a philosophy proof, but for product.”
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 Sarah Tavel
Tavel: Ex-operator VCs act as harmful crutches by micromanaging functional roles
“And this is sometimes the weaknesses that ex-operators have when they transition into investing is thinking, oh, I can do this and I'm going to dig in on, in the company and get, you know, help them with growth or help them with whatever it may be. And it ends…”
Tavel: Mediocre 'seven' employees kill companies by blocking top talent
“And the thesis was is that sevens kill companies. And what that means is that, you know, when someone is a four, you just know they're not doing the job, they're not up for it, and let's, let's take them out of the system. But the problem with the seven Is tha…”
Tavel: Board observers matter because decisions rarely come to formal votes
“That's so, so wrong, because things rarely come to a vote. It's always about what's that conversation around the table. And someone who has a seat at the table is participating in whatever strategic conversation you're having can really change the direction of…”
Tavel: Benchmark deliberately limits itself to five equal GPs and no delegation
“At Benchmark, our model of investing is that we have decided that we're not going to scale our business. You know, we haven't grown our fund size, and it's just five general partners right now, and it's a kind of this rare structure of an equal partnership. An…”
Tavel: DoorDash beat Postmates by targeting uncontested suburbs instead of cities
“You know, I would say Postmates could be executing a 10 X DoorDash's execution, but because DoorDash had a strategy that let them just be, you know, so much better than any substitute because it's a lot better to be Better. It's a lot easier to be better than …”
Tavel: Startup org chart changes indicate company growth, not dysfunction
“I think people sometimes see org changes As a bug, you know, as a oh, something must not be going right with my company, the company that I'm at, because we had to change the org chart, and now I'm reporting to someone else, or, you know, they had to change th…”