Zhang: WeWork overhired on tech because customers primarily cared about booking
Jiaona Zhang · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork & Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang · Jul 2, 2023 · at 38:57
Jiaona Zhang (Jay-Z), former Senior Director of Product Management at WeWork, critiques the company's tech hiring strategy during 2019.
0:00 / 0:21exact quote · 21.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We, again, we hired beyond our skis on the tech side. It's like, we don't need a team of this size to go do the things that are needed for the product to feel really great. At the end of the day, it's about booking. And yes, there are definitely technology, there's technology that would accelerate that, but do we need it to be super platform aware? Do we need it to be like super futuristic? Like that's actually not what people care about.”
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 Jiaona Zhang
Airbnb Plus unit economics never would have worked out, says Jiaona Zhang
“And so I, yeah, I personally don't believe the unit economics ever would have really worked out. I think we should have known that we should have dug into that more at the very beginning”
Zhang: Airbnb Plus unit economics never would have worked out
“And so I, yeah, I personally don't believe the unit economics ever would have really worked out. I think we should have known that we should have dug into that more at the very beginning and then to get very tailored instead of like one blunt instrument to sol…”
Zhang: Airbnb should have ignored Plus and doubled down on core homes
“So I think that that same lesson would apply to Airbnb would have in my head, like change the way we invested. I think we would have gotten more returns as opposed to spreading ourselves and then like having things that like sort of work, but then didn't quite…”
Zhang: Minimum lovable products must replace MVPs in crowded software markets
“The reason I care so much about minimal level product is because I do think in a world where there are so many different options, it's hard to just be like, Hey, use this thing. It barely meets a quality bar. And so I think this idea of like actually deeply un…”
Zhang: Roadmaps should tell strategic stories instead of filling out RICE spreadsheets
“So for road mapping, my biggest thing that I tell my teams is you're telling a story. So what I want from you is I want themes. I want a story like, why are these things like things, the biggest things to invest in these levers, the biggest ones to pull. And w…”
Product teams shouldn't rely on magical thinking to fix unit economics later
“There are things where I think you have like magical thinking around unit economics. You're like, well, when we get to the scale of X, it's all going to work out. We can make these things happen. I think you actually need to really make sure the unit economics…”