Becoming more strategic, navigating difficult colleagues, founder mode, more

Clear demonstrated impact from an end to end product cycle to me is probably one of the better indicators of readiness for someone to take on more. You basically want to give them more, because now they have a pattern of doing things properly.

Do people want to work with them? Do people at some point, as they go up and become more senior, do people want to work for them? Ultimately people make choices. And if you have a bunch of smart people and they're making smart choices and they're choosing this person to follow or to be with and work with them, there is a ton of value in that.

The PM is an enabler. Your job is to really make the team successful. The PM is the CEO of the product - that's one of the most incorrect things in the world.

Design for consumer products is such a critical part of how you build the right pull from consumers these days. Poorly designed products have no chance at this point. Your craftsmanship and the design capabilities have to be A plus.

Building consumer products is very hard. I think people think it's easy, because each of us is a consumer. We think of ourselves as a good user, we think of our friends as users, we think of our family as users. And we say, 'Well, if we just build it for ourselves and for our family and friends...' But man, it's hard. It takes a long time to get things right.

We had a choice to make between launching something which will take six months, versus launching something that we can launch in a very small-ish kind of way, but launch it in a month. And we chose the latter, because when we did that, I remember people were giving high five to each other, people were saying, 'Hey, you know what? This is great. We put something in front of customers.'

When people say, 'I want someone that's strategic,' what they're really saying is, 'I want someone that can come up with and articulate a compelling and simple why behind the decisions and the direction of the company and product.' So that's number one. And the second piece is, 'I want someone that's going to champion and be a change agent to do things that may be hard but actually best for the long-term interest of the product or company, even though those things are not going to be easy to execute on.'

In order to motivate the team, one of the best tricks that I came up with, and I learned this from a bunch of other people also, is you just give a team a win. Winning really, really drives a lot of energy.

I also try to frame things as this is how you're being perceived than you are doing X. Because I think even though it's hard to hear... then we can talk about, 'Well, what are ways that we can change the perception?'

Surround yourself with the best people you can find. If you create enough opportunities, especially early on in your career, around hanging around people who are doing interesting things and they're doing things which really are different, or they're doing things in a different manner and it's exciting, the right things will happen.

Play the long game. Once you find someone like that, stick to them. As long as they want to hang out with you, but just stick to them. Because you will go on to do multiple things over your career with the same set of people. And the shared trust and experience that you build with A plus people is just going to go a long way.

There's a question before that question, which is how do you find company product fit? A company essentially is a portfolio of products, and every large company, medium-sized company also has a portfolio. Every company has unique strengths and weaknesses. How does that product, assuming it's successful... does it actually serve the right place in a company's product portfolio?

When I summarize what other people are saying and especially multiple different stakeholders, then I can think about offline and not in the context of right in the meeting, sometimes in the meeting too I guess, is how do I make this idea one click better?

Build for the world from day one. Understand that there are going to be some nuances that you'll have to solve as you drive adoption in certain markets, but don't over index on building market specific solutions, because consumers have moved on from that kind of a model.

If I can convey, and I will say this very directly to people, I care so much about you and I'm giving you this feedback because I want you to be successful and I want you to be able to reach the pinnacle of what I know you can accomplish. And you do all of that setup and you don't just hope that they understand that, you actually explicitly say that.

Once you commit to a decision, you actually learn more post committing to that decision about what's going to work and not going to work, and you move out of the hypothetical. And as long as your decision is like 70% right, you can iterate on that 20, 30% in either direction, but if you don't commit, then you don't actually get any new information that is high fidelity and high quality.

Play the long game. Once you find someone like that, stick to them. As long as they want to hang out with you, but just stick to them. Because you will go on to do multiple things over your career with the same set of people. And the shared trust and experience that you build with A plus people is just going to go a long way.

Being able to manage my energy levels and figuring out how to schedule my time for my energy has really allowed me also to figure out how to have that abundant mindset in all situations.

I try to embody the mindset of feeling like and believing that I can work with anyone. I really try to understand what drives that person. What is it that they really care about? And then if I need something from them, what is it that I can do to motivate them to find what I need from them important?

Once you commit to a decision, you actually learn more post committing to that decision about what's going to work and not going to work, and you move out of the hypothetical. And as long as your decision is like 70% right, you can iterate on that 20, 30% in either direction, but if you don't commit, then you don't actually get any new information that is high fidelity and high quality.

What I need to learn to be successful is how to take very ambiguous situations and consistently drive more and more clarity over time.