Noah Weiss, Chief Product Officer at Slack, describes how Slack overhauled its self-service strategy after growth in non-technical cohorts began plateauing.
Opinion
Weiss: Microsoft built Teams defensively to protect Office against Slack
“I think, you know, the origin of Teams really was a defensive move for them to protect Office, because Office is an incredible, very profitable kind of monopoly in the productivity space. And so I think when they built Teams, it was more of a kind of covering …”
Insight
Weiss: Foursquare lost social to Instagram by anchoring to places, not moments
“In hindsight, we were a little bit mistaken to believe that the idea that the atomic unit would be a person talking about a place that they're at, and you have to have a physical place to tie it to, versus a person sharing a moment or an experience that they'r…”
Insight
Weiss: Founder-CEO product involvement works best as a U-curve
“I think when to involve the founder CEO in a project is really important. And the short version, I think that works the best is almost like a U curve where the X axis is time and the Y axis is level of involvement. I think you want to get the founders, you kno…”
Insight
Weiss: Adding user clicks can often improve non-transactional software UX
“There's a saying we also have, which is more clicks can often be okay. You know, you often have in, you know, optimization, you know, experimentation circles, like, oh, every click, remove it. But I actually think in a lot of software when it's not transaction…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Weiss: Fully automated AI 'chief of staff' for Slack won't arrive soon
“I don't think that's gonna quite be possible anytime soon, but I think like Spotify heading towards that north star, you end up developing, I hope a lot of really compelling projects for instance along the way.”
Opinion
Weiss: Teams evolved into a video conferencing tool competing with Zoom
“I think as Teams has evolved over time, it's become much more of a video conferencing product that competes with like Zoom and Google Meet, the people who use Teams use it completely different than Slack where you live and breathe and channels and work and kin…”