Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork & Airbnb, and thriving as a PM

Being really thoughtful around how do we not over-hire? How are we really clear about, again, these milestones of we got to get through these gates, we got to be able to show these types of results, and then we unlock hiring in X, Y, Z ways?

Just because laying off half your team is a terrible feeling. Literally having hired people and then having to let them go, it's not something you want to do.

Your job is not to decide what gets built. Your job is to understand here are the opportunities, and then you're kind of pulling together all the different possibilities and you're really editing.

You actually have very little true authority because you don't actually manage anyone. A lot of it is all through influence.

Really what we should have done is taken a step back and be like, 'What's the real problem? The real problem is people want to know what they're getting themselves into. We need to represent the homes a lot better.'

What, as a company is your strategic strength and what's in your wheelhouse? If you don't have that muscle and then you're asking the company, the teams to essentially build it from the ground up, that's really, really difficult.

Really understanding why people love you and not forgetting to invest deeply in that core concept and then building everything around that.

What is your alpha? Why do people come to you? People come to Dropbox for simplicity, for how delightful it is, how easy it is to use.

When you invest in a new product, really go back to, what's the core of our advantage and how can that be something we leverage in delivering a really great product experience?

One of the biggest things I see, not just in my course but also just as a PM and some of the mistakes that you make as a PM is the idea of you get really attached to a solution.

We are not going to think at all about the thing that you want to build, but instead we're going to be focused on users and people in the real world and their problems.

I think it's really important to become really good at and also known for something. You could be known for shepherding like the most complex launches because you're just so good at quarterbacking. Find something that you can be really, really good at.

People tend to flock and give responsibility to the people that are known for being excellent at something.

Your job is to dream big and also have a plan to go tackle it. Here are the five milestones that it's going to take me to do quarter over quarter to achieve this really, really ambitious thing.

It's better to do five things instead of the 15 things in a really, really great way with a high degree of polish with a, 'Oh, this really meets my need,' versus trying to do everything and just doing a little bit of everything.

Minimal lovable products is the new MVP. The new minimal viable product.

In a world where there are so many different options, it's hard to just feel like, 'Hey, use this thing. It barely meets a quality bar.'

If you don't ask for help, there's so many times where you're just going to be sitting there with your problems. Whatever you have in your mind is just not the global best thing and you have to go ask for help.

You're telling a story. So what I want from you is I want themes, I want a story. Why are these things the biggest things to invest in these levers, the biggest ones to pull?

What people, what humans really crave is like, 'Why am I doing this body of work?' And I think it's also really, really important to have that really crisply articulated in your own head.