Opinion
Mosavat: Advising beats VC for operators wanting to stay connected to operations
“This is why I actually think this is a better path than what used to happen, which is all the great operators turned into VCs, but to capitalists, right? And there you're like pretty disconnected from the ops. I think this advisory type path, I'll leave the cr…”
Insight
Mosavat: Product management lacks standardized pre-training or baseline credentials
“One of the trickiest bits about it is that there's no clear, obvious pre-training you can do that gives you like a baseline set of understanding that you can use to be a product manager.”
Insight
Mosavat: Product managers only improve by working on real products, not exercises
“You can't do homework. You can't do exercises. You can't do fake stuff. You have to work on real products at real companies with real customers, with real data to get better at product management.”
Insight
Mosavat: High-activation products often benefit from added onboarding friction
“Oh, for products that have a high bar to activation, sometimes more setup and higher friction, good friction can actually help those customers be successful. There are other kinds of products that are high intent where they know what they need to do to have si…”
Insight
Mosavat: Earning sponsorship requires understanding two organizational levels up and down
“I think to be in the seat where people want to sponsor you, I think you have to show a handle on not just what you're doing, but how that relates to all of the things around you. So I call this like going two stack levels up, two stack levels down in terms of …”
Insight
Mosavat: New managers must shift mindset from doer to editor
“You have to shift from doer to editor is the way I think about it. You have to shift from my job is to do the work to my job is to make the work better. My job is to plus the work, to review the work, to help other people solve problems.”
Insight
Mosavat: Leaders must propose needed resources rather than accept constraints
“I think one of the bigger mistakes that new ICs make on teams is they still treat problems the same way they did as ICs, which normally when you run a pod, basically your job is how do I deliver the most value with the resources I have? When you're a leader, i…”
Insight
Mosavat: Product-market fit expansion takes only two forms
“And there are two forms of product market fit expansion. There's either taking the same product. And finding a new audience, things like internationalization or vertical, like I'm going to sell the same product to a different vertical because we're a verticali…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mosavat: Most Reforge EIRs now pursue fractional or portfolio careers
“Of our executives in residence, I would say most
Now we're exploring this kind of like advisory, fractional, or otherwise portfolio-based approach to their futures.
Whereas most of them came from full-time roles beforehand.”
Insight
Mosavat: Deep expertise in narrow topics enables independent consulting careers
“I think it's opened up this space where you can be like the best in the world at a relatively narrow topic and make a real meaningful living out of it.”
What-if
Mosavat: Closer marketing partnership would have increased Slack impact
“What I think is I look at What could have moved the needle more and what could have made me a more sex successful leader at that company, it would have been partnering more closely with marketing, for instance, to figure out how we could be working on things t…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mosavat: Slack's Lifecycle team drove self-service from onboarding to monetization
“We were responsible for the self-service business at Slack, all the way from first sign out, first team creation, through to the first invites, activation, expansion. Monetization, and even connecting the dots with our SMB sales team to help nurture some of th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Reforge employs around 150 full-time staff
“I believe we are at just around a 150 total employees across the whole company right now. That doesn't include our executives and residents, subject matter experts, and the partners we work with. That's full-time employees working on the business.”
