0:00

So pre-product market fit, the strong advice

0:02

to pick a number that represents customer

0:04

happiness. I recommend not using MPS. I

0:06

recommend using a metric that's specifically an

0:08

action in your product. So imagine any

0:10

time this user takes this action, they're

0:12

pressing a button that says, this product

0:14

is great, I love this product, or

0:16

I'm using this product. So it could

0:18

be an API call. It could be

0:20

a dashboard that's created. You are almost

0:22

always going to overestimate the amount that

0:24

you need to build to actually learn

0:26

the thing that you wanna learn. You are

0:28

listening to 20 product with me, Harry Stebbings.

0:30

Now 20 product is the monthly show where

0:32

we sit down with the best product leaders

0:34

in the world to discuss how they think

0:37

about building the best product teams. Today we

0:39

have Vicky Peng joining us in the hot

0:41

seed. Now Vicky is a product partner at

0:43

Sequoia and the co-creator of Arc, their

0:46

company building immersion program for pre-seed and

0:48

seed stage founders. Before Sequoia, Vicky was

0:50

a product manager at Polyvore, which was

0:52

acquired by Yahoo for $200 million. And

0:55

before that was at Instagram, where she grew

0:58

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1:01

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Products Hyphen podcast. You. her

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mouth arrived at your destination vicky i am so excited

3:52

for this i have to admit i'm not sure if

3:54

i'm an odd say that blues the under the day

3:56

here and i'm to silly little bit looser than i

3:59

normally do our for normally sends quite curt

4:01

emails. So he's a busy guy and

4:03

with you recommending topics, it was like

4:05

an essay of your brilliance which you

4:07

know I wish it'd say such nice

4:09

things about me. Thank you for joining

4:11

me today. Thank you so much for having me Harry,

4:13

I'm so excited to be here. Yeah I'm excited for

4:16

this and I want to kind of go

4:18

through the different stages of your career until

4:20

today and just extract some learning. So if

4:22

we start on trial pay much earlier in

4:24

your career, I heard you joined one of

4:26

the social gaming was considered a bit of

4:28

a distraction there and you turned it into

4:30

this massive revenue driver. What was the single

4:33

biggest product lesson from that experience with trial

4:35

pay? Oh yeah big question. So I've actually been

4:37

in product now for you know reflecting on it

4:39

for about 15 years which sounds like a very

4:41

long time when you say that out loud. I

4:45

was originally drawn I think to the career mostly

4:47

because I love pulling order out of chaos. You

4:49

know in the movie The Matrix where you see

4:51

like the lines of code floating in the air

4:53

or in a beautiful mind he sees math formulas.

4:56

I hear a big kind of like meaty question I

4:58

see bullet points or like

5:01

pillars or two by twos and I

5:03

just need to structure things sometimes people

5:05

would be in meetings with me and I just have to

5:07

open my laptop and start typing in a doc because I

5:09

just want to make bullet points. And

5:11

so product I think was an area that it's just

5:13

like the engine of being

5:15

able to kind of take these problems and break

5:18

them down and make them tractable and take action

5:20

on them. It's like the cycle of conviction and

5:22

action. Build conviction, take action, action helps you build

5:24

conviction. It's just a cycle over and over again. I

5:27

find it so exciting. So trial pay was the

5:29

first place that I was able to do that

5:31

and just like jump into a space where I

5:34

was able to build some sort of hypothesis and

5:36

then build an actual product that tested that hypothesis.

5:39

But as you said the product that I owned

5:41

was kind of like a side hustle for the

5:43

company. The company was already a growth stage company.

5:45

We had found product market fit in the you

5:47

know space of e-commerce and software and there was

5:49

this little nugget of a belief like hey could

5:52

we apply this business model to another space which

5:55

was social gaming which was on the rise at the time. I don't

5:57

know if you remember the times when everybody had their own farms.

6:00

or aquarium or whatever they were tending to

6:02

in between their productive life.

6:04

Could this be the product that we

6:06

sell in this kind of ad marketplace

6:08

instead? Would this work? And

6:10

so they kind of pulled together this ragtag group

6:13

of folks across the company that were previously working

6:15

on the main business and then kind of pulled

6:17

us into the side business and dropped me in

6:19

as a new person. A new to product, new

6:21

to the company. Hey, here's like this side gig.

6:23

Let's see if you can make it a thing.

6:25

The biggest lesson I learned there was of course

6:27

you build the product. You have to build a

6:29

product that delights customers, that actually delivers value. But

6:32

you also, your job is also to build

6:34

belief as a product leader. This belief in

6:36

the possibilities that are unlocked by that product.

6:38

And sometimes you're building belief for folks outside

6:40

the building like your customers and your investors.

6:42

But sometimes you're building belief inside the building

6:44

because like you said, there are folks that

6:46

were working on the core business. Like best

6:49

case scenario, this is an experiment that works.

6:51

Worst case scenario, this is a distraction and

6:53

we took things away from the core business

6:55

to try something new. And so why would

6:57

we be doing that? What do

6:59

you think is harder to build belief

7:01

internally or to build belief externally and

7:03

why? You know, I was actually

7:05

reflecting on my career prior to this conversation,

7:07

Harry. And I realized that I somehow ended

7:09

up in situations where I own the side

7:12

hustle. And like my whole challenge is actually

7:14

at Polymer that was the same, Instagram was

7:16

the same, at Sequoia it's been the same.

7:19

Where there's this like initial thesis that is unproven

7:21

and then therefore not only do I have to

7:23

build the product, but I have to build the

7:25

belief. And so for me, I would say building

7:28

the belief has actually been a through line in

7:30

my career more so than I think the average

7:32

product leader. Do you not ever want to be

7:34

somewhere where the belief just is from day one? I

7:38

do. Yeah, it's an interesting, to

7:40

your point, yes, I think you hit the ground

7:42

running easier and you say, hey, we all believe

7:44

in this, like let's go. But at the

7:46

same time, I think the act of seeing

7:48

the tide turn, the feeling of being kind

7:50

of like a rebel or a pirate or

7:52

a startup within a startup, and then slowly

7:54

you see traction and slowly you see customers

7:56

and slowly we start popping up in those

7:58

farm games and people or a technical thing,

8:00

wait a second, this is us, this is our

8:03

product, like this works here in this context. And

8:05

you see the wheels turning and people kind of

8:07

opening their eyes to, oh, I see, I believe

8:09

too. That is so rewarding. And I think during,

8:11

you know, obviously I'm at Sequoia now and I

8:13

work with a lot of our early stage founders

8:16

all the time. And for them, one

8:18

of the through lines that we talk them through

8:20

in Arc, our pre-seed and seed stage company building

8:22

immersion program is the importance of story. Like your

8:24

job as a founder is to build the thing,

8:27

but it's also to tell a compelling story to

8:29

all the people that need to hear

8:31

that story. And people underestimate the power

8:33

of the story and the building of

8:35

that story. What do you think they get

8:37

most wrong about the way that they tell stories? First

8:40

thing I would say is framing it

8:42

from their perspective rather than the customer's

8:44

perspective. Me versus the customer and then

8:46

solution versus problem. I think are the

8:48

two main kind of issues that

8:51

I see where it says, we do this, our

8:53

company is the best. Our company is the best

8:55

in the space because of this reason. We have

8:57

this, we have that feature, as opposed to, this

8:59

is how your life will change if you realize

9:01

the possibilities of my product. This is how your

9:03

life will be better. This is how your possibilities

9:05

are opened. And then I think the second thing

9:08

is solution over problem. We have

9:10

these features. This is what our thing does.

9:12

Here's a full demo. Here's all the long

9:14

list of super power advanced user features that

9:16

we have, as opposed to what problem are

9:18

we trying to solve? And do you resonate

9:20

with that problem? Are you deeply affected by

9:22

that problem? How does solving

9:24

that problem change your life? I

9:26

think we need more purple cows as well.

9:28

I don't know if you know the purple

9:30

cow theory, like the South Dakotans, just being

9:32

different is better in a lot of cases.

9:35

And there are so many data lake products

9:37

that I have no idea what they frickin'

9:39

do. But they all sound the same. And

9:41

I just think that we need more difference

9:43

to the way that we tell stories. Absolutely.

9:45

But I think differentiation in the customer's voice.

9:47

It's one thing for you to be able

9:49

to say why your data lake is better

9:51

than the others. But if your customer can't

9:53

parent that back to you in one sentence,

9:55

then you haven't done your job yet. Before we

9:57

dive into that, we could jump around. did

10:00

incredibly well. It turned the fashion community

10:03

into this incredibly monetized bludgy by banner

10:05

ads, a 200 million acquisition by Yahoo.

10:07

What was the biggest product lesson from

10:10

that and the experience with Polyvore? Build

10:13

only what you have to, I think is one of

10:15

the lessons I learned. At that time, there was lots

10:17

of performance marketing. I mean, Google existed, product listing ads

10:19

existed. So there is a way to build a really,

10:21

really sophisticated ad engine that we could have just taken

10:24

a look at and paid it out of their book

10:26

and really started there. We started with a spreadsheet. So

10:29

we ran our entire performance marketing engine

10:31

off of a Google spreadsheet for, I

10:33

think it was a

10:36

full year that we ran it on a

10:38

spreadsheet. And all the bids from all the

10:40

advertisers, like you have Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman

10:42

Marcus, you know, these people are coming to us saying, hey,

10:45

like they have to email their account manager to change their

10:47

bids. So they would say, hey, can I

10:49

change, but my bids for dresses up from 250 to

10:51

275 and the account manager would let us go

10:54

and then we jump in the spreadsheet and change it from 250 to 275. And

10:56

I think the lesson I

10:58

learned was just, it's so surprising how far

11:00

you can get, like building so little. Do

11:03

you think you will always be embarrassed by

11:05

your V1? It's a common statement. Some people

11:07

agree, some don't. How do you feel? In

11:10

general, I agree with the premise of that, that

11:12

you are almost always going to overestimate the amount

11:14

that you need to build to actually learn the

11:16

thing that you want to learn. I think the

11:18

goal of building, like I said, this kind of

11:20

cycle of conviction and action, the goal of building

11:23

is to either move an impact metric that you

11:25

care about or to learn something about how to

11:27

move the thing that you care about. And both

11:30

of those things require way less product

11:32

than people think. Like my job as

11:34

a product leader is almost to scope

11:36

down the product that I've built,

11:38

to build less product I consider successful.

11:41

Do you agree with the other statement that to scale

11:43

you have to do things that don't scale? I think

11:45

it's PG that commonly said that at YC. I

11:47

think so. I think, or at least open your

11:50

mind to the possibility. We actually do have this

11:52

developing MVP framework that we teach during ARK that

11:54

I teach during product week. And it talks about

11:56

there's three columns, of course, there's three pillars, that

11:59

we've get into and the first is what does

12:01

the product actually need to do and the second is

12:04

what can you fake and that's when people say

12:06

unscalable things we're talking about things you could fake operationally

12:08

wizard of Oz behind the curtain what are the

12:10

things you can do that maybe someday your product can

12:12

do but it doesn't have to do it today

12:14

for you to learn the thing that you need to

12:16

learn that's a great way to phrase

12:18

it and of course there's three so I feel

12:21

like McKinsey could also been a sponsor for this

12:23

show but I want to

12:25

move to the final segment really being Instagram

12:27

in terms the operating career is

12:29

gaming SMB ads from 200 million

12:31

to a billion what

12:33

was the biggest takeaway from that once

12:36

again this continuing this parade of

12:38

building belief you know most of the vast

12:40

majority of the ads business was focused on

12:42

obviously make sense more concentrated larger deeper pocket

12:44

advertisers and if you had any experience with

12:47

Facebook or Instagram's ad platform it is complicated

12:49

it's very sophisticated there are lots of lot

12:51

you know knobs and dials and levers that

12:53

you can pull and when you apply that

12:55

to the SMB space you know if you

12:58

were saying hey this is a long tail

13:00

they're a secondary audience like let's leave them

13:02

by the wayside and maybe kind of just

13:04

retrofit or dilute what we have and ship

13:06

it to them and it'll work and so

13:08

I think it was always a little bit

13:11

of a second-order customer and I inherited this

13:13

team that basically was saying you know our

13:15

goal is to grow because this is the

13:17

long tail we make up for price with

13:19

volume like they're not gonna have the budgets

13:21

but there's millions of them so let's go

13:23

get a million of them right so the

13:25

problem statement is acquisition its growth our metric

13:27

is monthly active advertisers and you just want

13:29

that number to go up into the right

13:31

and I think the thing that I most

13:33

learned there is the power of asking the

13:35

question what problem are you trying to solve at Instagram

13:38

the problem-saving being framed as acquisition when

13:40

I spent some time digging into the

13:42

numbers behind the numbers we had an

13:45

awful awful awful retention problem for

13:47

every 10 customers that tried the product

13:49

six of them the next month would

13:51

go away even though even despite that

13:53

the number of monthly active advertisers would

13:55

keep going up because we're just pouring

13:57

new advertisers in the funnel I

14:00

had to like evangelize the idea that the

14:02

problem is not acquisition, it is retention. And

14:04

if we don't fix this retention problem, we

14:06

are going to be at a serious cliff.

14:09

In some amount of time, I don't know if it's six

14:11

months, 12 months, but eventually we are going to run out

14:13

of advertisers to pour in the top of the funnel and

14:15

we will have nothing. Just

14:17

reframing the problem and really understanding

14:19

what problem it is you're trying to

14:21

solve is probably my biggest lesson. You

14:23

mentioned that kind of the core metric

14:25

of like actually focusing on retention, not

14:27

on activation or acquisition. We often hear

14:29

about product missions. So what is it

14:31

good versus a great product mission? Yeah,

14:34

that's a great question. So this is actually

14:36

taking from a framework that I do teach

14:38

during ARK. And so this framework aims to

14:40

basically demystify and break down the act of

14:43

product management into a framework. And so it's

14:45

a four-part framework. It has, as you suggested,

14:47

mission is kind of like the top of

14:49

the framework and all of the remaining factors

14:51

kind of like cascade down from mission. So

14:54

first you have a mission, which is a qualitative

14:56

statement of what success looks like. So we usually

14:58

use an image of a mountain and it's like

15:00

the flag at the top of the mountain. What

15:02

does it look like to achieve, you know, to

15:04

scale this mountain? What would an

15:07

example of that be? Would that be like

15:09

the number one CRM provider for SMBs? Oh,

15:11

that's a perfect yes. Okay, so there's two

15:13

core things I think that make a great

15:16

product mission. One is that it's customer-centric. It

15:18

should describe what it changes for the customer

15:20

and their world, how it changes the customer's

15:22

world. Two is that it is

15:24

a thing that you can imagine working against

15:26

or working towards for the next decade, not

15:29

the next quarter. So one problem statement that

15:31

a lot of early stage founders have is

15:33

that they're so hyper-focused on what's right in

15:35

front of them. This week, this inbox, this

15:37

meeting, this feature, this ship date. And it's

15:39

really, really hard to think way bigger than

15:41

that. And when we see way bigger, we don't mean

15:43

before your series, we mean the next decade or two.

15:46

The one great example I use, because, you know,

15:48

most of us are customers of this company, is

15:50

Airbnb. Their mission is belong

15:52

anywhere. That just immediately kind of

15:54

like grounds the idea of, okay, for you as

15:56

a customer, they're hoping that they can produce experiences

15:59

and play the game. for you to stay that

16:01

help you feel like you belong wherever you go,

16:03

wherever you travel in the world. It is a

16:05

customer-focused statement and it is pretty massive in terms

16:08

of, I can imagine 10 years from now, maybe

16:10

Airbnb doesn't feel like that box has been checked,

16:12

right? It's something that you kind of almost work

16:14

towards but never achieve. Is it

16:16

measurable? Is there any, you could look

16:18

at customer and PS, but different customers

16:21

like different things that may not

16:23

actually suggest home from home. How do you think

16:25

about the importance of whether it's measurable in a

16:27

mission statement? What a great segue, Harry. The

16:29

next part of this framework,

16:31

the four-part framework is actually the metric. The

16:34

whole point of the mission is inspiration, aspiration,

16:36

also clarity around what it is that you

16:38

want your team to achieve. The metric is

16:41

the quantification of that aspiration. At any given

16:43

point, there is one number that is the

16:45

best determinant and if you're talking about the

16:47

mountain analogy, the best compass to tell you

16:50

what is up the mountain and what is

16:52

down the mountain. That thing can change over

16:54

time. Pre-product market fit, for example, we give

16:56

our Arc founders the strong advice to

16:59

pick a number that represents customer happiness.

17:01

You mentioned MPS. I recommend not using

17:03

MPS. I recommend using for this purpose.

17:05

I recommend using a metric that's specifically

17:07

an action in your product. Imagine any

17:09

time this user takes this action, they're

17:11

pressing a button that says, this product

17:13

is great. I love this product or

17:15

I'm using this product. It could be

17:17

an API call. It could be a

17:19

dashboard that's created. It could be a

17:21

query. It could be image that's created.

17:23

There's something that they're doing in your

17:25

product that is the core action of

17:27

your product that suggests that they're finding value

17:29

out of it. That is the saying. That is

17:31

the quantification of their happiness at this current stage.

17:34

I so agree with you because I get so

17:36

pissed off when I shouldn't be as vocal as

17:38

this, but I am

17:40

anyway, so fuck it. When

17:43

people are like, our metric is M-R-R.

17:45

I'm like, there's 10 different input metrics

17:47

that lead to that as the output

17:49

metric. It means nothing. If

17:51

you're talking early stage pre-product market fit,

17:53

the farther you are from customer happiness,

17:56

and I literally imagine them pushing a

17:58

button or raising their hands. every

18:00

time this thing happens, they are happy or

18:02

they're getting value. And there's, like

18:04

you said, so many output metrics and downstream metrics that

18:06

you can measure. Great, measure them

18:08

all you want, but goal on the thing that

18:11

makes your customer happy. And one example from a

18:13

recent ARCS company that I worked with was a

18:15

robotics company. The whole point is that the robots

18:17

are set up in your lab and helping you

18:19

kind of automate what otherwise would be done by

18:21

human work. And

18:23

so they have a long sales cycle, they have

18:26

a long implementation cycle, and you can goal on

18:28

any number of those things, you know, time to

18:30

implementation, robots live, contracts, you know, signed,

18:32

things like that. But really what you

18:34

should be going on is robot hours

18:36

life. How many hours, how many actions,

18:38

how many things are the robots actually

18:41

doing in the lab environment that are

18:43

driving value? All those other things

18:45

are either upstream or downstream of like the moment

18:47

of value delivery for the customer. We

18:50

have the mission, we have the

18:52

metric. Okay, product strategy wise, what's

18:54

the first step in defining a

18:56

good product strategy? Yes, okay. So

18:58

it follows from the mission and the metric. The

19:00

product strategy piece is the most mystical

19:03

black box thing. Like people either think you

19:05

have product intuition or you don't, or you

19:07

can't follow a formula because every product is

19:09

different. So you just kind of wing it.

19:11

From my perspective, you can break it down

19:13

into its component parts. The first component is

19:15

to have the mission. The second is to

19:17

have the metric. And the third is to

19:19

understand the metric. So basically let's say we

19:21

have repeat monthly advertisers or maybe it's retention.

19:24

Pick a number. You basically

19:26

analyze your metric and determine why and

19:28

what the gap is between what the level

19:30

is today and what the optimal or ceiling

19:32

of that number is. So if you know

19:34

your monthly retention is 20% and

19:37

you know that amazing world class monthly

19:39

retention is 60 or 70%, there's

19:41

a huge difference there. And so you have to

19:44

either break down the gap and understand or have

19:46

a hypothesis as to why there's a gap. And

19:48

the key there is that there's a user facing

19:50

hypothesis. So this is users are not coming back.

19:52

They're voting with their feet and their behavior that

19:54

this project is not sticky and they don't want

19:57

to return. What are the top three reasons

19:59

why that is true? How do you find them out?

20:01

How do you find out the hypotheses? Good question. I

20:04

think it's through the feedback loop into your business. So

20:06

it's the data, it's their actual data. Where are they

20:08

retaining? Where are they not? What types of users are

20:10

retaining? What types of users aren't? It could

20:12

be by geo, it could be by platform, it could be

20:14

by flow. Step of the flow. So

20:16

data is a really good tool here. And then

20:19

secondly, actual qualitative feedback. When you talk to users,

20:21

they will tell you why they're

20:23

not coming back. What was the biggest product

20:25

mistake that you made? And what was your

20:27

biggest lesson from it? If we think about

20:29

tactics, hypotheses, I'm just intrigued. I think we

20:31

learn a lot from things that don't work

20:33

out. Yeah. I think I actually

20:35

fell into the trap early on when I

20:38

was at Instagram adopting the mindset of, I

20:40

kind of like failed one of the first

20:42

tests I would say, which is to build

20:44

the product for the customer, don't build the

20:46

product and then find a customer for it.

20:49

We really did just take this big massive

20:51

ad platform and try to water it down

20:53

for SMBs. And you're imagining you have big

20:55

deep pocketed advertisers that have millions of dollars,

20:58

agencies, whole teams that are working on their

21:00

ad platform. But your whole job title is

21:02

to work on Facebook ads on

21:04

behalf of this advertiser. And we're taking this platform

21:06

and then we're shoving it into the hands of

21:09

a baker who is running a

21:11

local bakery and they're baking cakes and queen

21:14

amons. And then they're trying to

21:16

figure out this ad platform during the day. In what world

21:18

do we actually think that that would work? I think this

21:20

was kind of before the awakening or the

21:22

realization that, hey, like diluting this product for this

21:24

person is not going to work. Even if that's the

21:26

most efficient path, it is not the most effective path.

21:28

And I think it took a few cycles to actually

21:31

break out of the growth mindset and then break out

21:33

of the, hey, let's take what we have off the

21:35

shelf and see what we can do with this. That's

21:37

what I find so funny about product market

21:40

fit in the way that I think it's

21:42

such a challenge statement because product market fit

21:44

changes with every segment, with every product that

21:46

you release, with every pricing customer. Absolutely. You

21:49

know, for you going to SMB with the

21:51

Instagram products, you had to refine the product

21:53

market fit in a new segment. And

21:56

I think product market fit, I mean, this is going to sound very

21:58

meta, you know, it's a journey, not a death. I

22:00

mean, I truly believe that even growth stage

22:02

companies you're either finding product market fit in

22:04

a new area You're trying to you're struggling

22:06

and you're fighting to keep it because of

22:08

what's changing in the competitive environment Or

22:11

you have you're trying to expand it to

22:13

different places And so nobody ever actually gets

22:15

and keeps product market fit It is an

22:17

ongoing battle or an ongoing journey that nobody

22:19

ever really just conquers and says, okay, I'm

22:21

done I've done that did you really

22:23

just say it's a journey and not a destination I

22:25

really did I really did That's also part

22:28

of yes, you know, I'm the one I

22:30

don't know why we'll put that as the title.

22:32

Yeah, it'll be great Yeah, really? Oh, yes, this

22:34

is you can do a mountaintop Illustration

22:37

as well. Perfect. Okay, I want

22:39

to move into the actual kind

22:41

of archetypes themselves Yeah, because we've

22:43

hunted if you can believe it

22:45

three So what are the three different types

22:47

of PMF a lot of PMF? Content

22:49

talks about your product as if it existed in

22:51

a vacuum It's like how do you get your

22:54

product in front of the right customer? How do

22:56

you get your product used? How do you get

22:58

your product to the retention number? How do you

23:00

get your product to hit this benchmark? But what

23:03

about the market and specifically what about the customer

23:05

mindset? so that's really what this whole framework is

23:07

anchored on is the product that you build has

23:09

to follow from the Mindset that your customer and

23:11

the relationship that your customer has with the problem

23:14

that you're solving and how they how actively or

23:16

either Actively they're trying to solve it

23:18

urgently They're trying to solve it or how

23:20

even aware of the problem they are Really

23:22

factors into how you build the right product

23:24

and how you get to PMF So that's

23:27

kind of the core insight of the framework

23:29

And so there are three basically archetypes of

23:31

customer mindset. So the three archetypes that we'll

23:33

start with the first one Which is hair on fire. I think

23:35

that's pretty self-explanatory in terms of a

23:37

name But this customer obviously is in the

23:40

mindset of help me now help me yesterday.

23:42

I am urgently trying to solve this problem

23:44

I'm out there actively comparing my solutions that

23:46

are available. I'm you know doing feature comparisons

23:48

I'm also probably inundated you mentioned earlier. There's

23:51

millions of data lakes I am inundated with

23:53

messaging that all sounds the same, but I

23:55

need to solve this problem So what do

23:57

I do the hurdle to overcome here?

23:59

mainly is it's a crowded marketplace. You're not

24:02

the only person that has discovered this customer

24:04

has a burning need. Somebody else is tackling

24:06

and maybe multiple people are tackling this problem

24:08

as well. And so the key hurdle is

24:10

really differentiation and overcoming noise. And we come

24:12

full circle. I know we touched on that earlier

24:14

in our conversation, but the nuance here

24:16

is not just differentiation in the product, which

24:19

means that you're actually solving their problem

24:21

in a way that is compelling, but also

24:23

that they get the difference because like we

24:25

said, there's a million other people trying to

24:27

sell them something that sounds the same. I

24:30

think the true test of this is whether

24:32

the customer can say in one sentence,

24:34

clearly, what is the point of differentiation

24:36

and whether it is compelling? Because if you still have

24:38

a gap to that, I think there's still a lot

24:40

of work to do in a market like

24:42

this and here on fire. Do you not

24:44

find that every founder overemphasizes their customers pain

24:47

to the problem that they think they have?

24:49

Every founder I know is like, Oh, my

24:51

customers are dying of this pain. And then

24:53

you speak to customers and they're like, eh,

24:55

like top 10, but not massive. Do they

24:57

not always overestimate it? Yes. And I think

24:59

that's one of the things that we teach also

25:02

in ARC is ask the terrifying question you

25:04

want to believe, right? We've talked about having

25:06

a room of believers that is all kind

25:08

of, you know, moving and rowing in the

25:10

direction of bringing that belief to reality. Sometimes

25:12

you got to have somebody that's sanity checking

25:14

you, right? There's always at least one terrifying

25:16

question. What sort of thing is a terrifying question?

25:18

Is this problem actually that bad? If you got

25:21

the real answer to exactly what you just

25:23

said, that happens over and over and over

25:25

again, like this problem statement of this is

25:27

a huge problem. It is a big deal

25:29

is the most urgent number one problem budgets

25:31

are there. And you hear the customer literally

25:33

tell you the exact opposite, maybe top 10.

25:35

It's not that big of a deal. I

25:37

think the terrifying question is, does this problem

25:39

actually matter in many cases? I think when

25:41

you face the terrifying question, you get answers

25:43

very quickly. And I think on the hair

25:46

on fire in the hair on fire path,

25:48

it is specifically the differentiation point around

25:50

does this problem matter and are you solving

25:52

in a compelling way? My job is

25:54

like you said before, is your

25:56

customer compelled by your difference as

25:58

a clarifying statement. around that. Again,

26:00

the difference is the really hard part

26:03

product marketing, I think, I think is

26:05

actually done really poorly today. Again, I'm

26:07

in trouble for this. How do you

26:09

think about advising founders on standing out

26:11

in supremely competitive markets? And what works

26:13

and what doesn't? I think I

26:15

would go back to using their words, not

26:17

your words. The number of times that I

26:19

have seen a founder, you know, describe this

26:21

is what my product does. This is what

26:24

it is. This is the category we're in.

26:26

This is the feature set we have. And

26:28

then you go and ask the customer and

26:30

say, how would you describe this product? And

26:32

it is completely orthogonal to the way that

26:34

the founder either describes it or thinks it

26:36

exists in the world. For me,

26:38

it fits here. For me, it is this

26:41

useful. For me, this is the biggest benefit.

26:43

And the words just don't align.

26:45

Question for you. What do you do when

26:48

you've got horizontal products? I look at your

26:50

notions, I look at your air tables. They're

26:52

not vertically applied to problem statements. And so

26:54

it's like very difficult to come up with

26:57

compelling, casual statements that you can

26:59

put on a billboard. How do you think

27:01

are effective horizontal product marketing? I

27:03

would actually I would challenge that in that

27:05

at least every truly engaged and evangelist customer

27:07

has a way that they describe notion and

27:09

why they think notion is head and shoulders

27:11

above the rest. Basically, what you have with

27:14

a horizontal product is you have to collect

27:16

that data point across a lot of different

27:18

customer profiles and use cases and pull together

27:20

a thread of similarity across those. But you

27:22

still have to do the work of understanding

27:24

how a customer uses that product. Same thing

27:27

with I always use Excel as the example,

27:29

because Excel is, you know, there's so many different ways that

27:31

you can use Excel. But it didn't start as

27:33

a, hey, here's a spreadsheet, use it for

27:35

whatever you want, right? There was somebody that

27:37

was like a more compelling and deeper use

27:39

case for that, whether that was you know,

27:42

financial analysts or people that really need to

27:44

manipulate data to do their day day to

27:46

day job, you have to actually pull the

27:48

true value prop and the evangelism out of

27:50

people that actually see that value prop

27:53

clearly challenge accepted.

27:55

I'm challenging on

27:59

my own. I didn't realize it was a challenge,

28:01

it was a duel. How wonderful. I

28:04

wanna go to the second, which is

28:06

a hard fact. What's a hard fact,

28:08

Vicky? Yeah, a hard fact, I think

28:10

I would do, I love that this comes right

28:12

after hair on fire because these people are, you

28:14

know, please help me now. Hard fact, customer mindset,

28:17

is literally we use the phrase, it is what

28:19

it is. It's just resignation. It's

28:21

not the best. Yes, it's a problem statement,

28:23

but I hacked together something, I'm using something

28:25

that existed for 20 years. There's no better

28:27

way to do it. I've got what I've

28:30

got, it is what it is. This is

28:32

a hurdle of not noise and crowded and

28:34

competition, but this is a hurdle of habit.

28:36

It's a hurdle of inertia. It's a hurdle

28:38

of people who have just lived their lives

28:41

this way and they're not. This is, I

28:43

think, the most eye-opening path, I think, for

28:45

many of the founders that we walk through

28:47

this framework with, that there is any other

28:49

path outside hair on fire. Because I think the

28:51

conventional wisdom is build something people want, and so that

28:54

means you go out and build a thing that people

28:56

urgently are saying that they need, which is not what

28:58

hard fact is. Somebody

29:00

has accepted that this is just a hard fact, a hard

29:02

truth of their life, and you're trying to get them to

29:04

accept that, no, this is a hard problem that I have

29:06

now solved for you. What do you think

29:09

is an example of that? It is what it is. Yeah,

29:11

oh, for me, I have so many. So we

29:13

work with a lot of great

29:15

marketplace companies. I think marketplaces actually fall into

29:18

this mindset very clearly in that I need

29:20

a cab, and if there's no yellow cab

29:22

on the street, I'm standing out here for five minutes, can't find

29:24

a cab, guess I have to take the subway or walk. And

29:26

it's just like, it is what it is. That's just how it

29:28

works, right? And you have something like

29:30

Uber come along and say, actually, there's a completely different

29:32

source of supply that you have not thought of for

29:35

getting you from point A to point B, and that

29:37

kind of jars you out of, I

29:39

actually started my career in investment banking, and

29:42

I used to work in downtown San Francisco, and so

29:44

I would get out of the office at two or

29:46

three a.m. I would call up a cab company, and

29:48

I lived, not in the city, but I lived across

29:51

the bridge in Berkeley, and these cabs would come and

29:53

show up to the office, and then they would see

29:55

that I'm going over the bridge, and they're like, I don't wanna go

29:57

over the bridge, and they would just leave me, and I'd have

29:59

to call. off sometimes two, three, four cabs at

30:01

two or three in the morning to get one

30:03

to agree to take me across the bridge. And

30:05

that's how I live my life. And I think

30:07

that's one of these things about hard fat companies

30:09

is why was I living my life that way?

30:12

Are they not inherently so hard

30:14

because you have to fundamentally

30:17

reprogram human brains around habits?

30:19

Yes. And it may sound almost like I

30:21

think as a founder, oh, wow, there's not

30:24

a bunch of competition to elbow out of

30:26

the space. That sounds great. But no, I

30:28

mean, I think breaking people's habits could in

30:30

many cases be way harder than kind of

30:32

standing out amongst competition. Well, and I

30:34

think there's like the inherently entrenched incumbents,

30:36

which is eating to which is drinking

30:38

traditionally was always on phone contract is

30:41

like, you know, AT&T it

30:43

is what it is. They're paying

30:45

the customer service sucks, but what

30:47

but AT&T the infrastructure requirements, the

30:49

brand, I mean, it's just so

30:51

entrenched. Yes, it's a hard fact, remember, not just

30:53

for the customer, but also for potential competitors. And

30:55

so it's a hard fact for everybody. Everybody has

30:57

just accepted it both as not a problem they

30:59

want to solve and also not as a habit

31:01

that they want to change. And your job is

31:03

to shake them loose of that belief. It has

31:05

its challenges for sure. And I think the two

31:07

ingredients to really overcoming this habit, one, once again,

31:09

pick a problem that people care about. If I

31:11

have a habit in a space that, you know,

31:13

sure, it's not the best, but I'm not trying

31:15

to bend over backwards to change my life over

31:17

this behavior. If you pick a problem that

31:20

is actually a, you know, a soft fact, I guess using

31:22

a hard fact analogy, right? If it's a soft fact and

31:24

not really a problem, then you're, you

31:26

know, dead on arrival. And I think the

31:28

second one is to actually have a compelling

31:30

or novel enough solution to shake them out

31:33

of their habit. Another example I

31:35

often use is Instacart prior to COVID. I have

31:37

two young kids. At that time, my son was

31:39

one year old and I said before COVID, I

31:41

would like schlep him to the grocery store. I

31:43

was like a first nervous first time mom. So

31:45

I would use the shopping cart cover and I

31:47

have to bring all the toys and the snacks

31:49

and prepare. It was like a whole journey just

31:52

to get our groceries for the week. And

31:54

then because of COVID, I tried Instacart. I

31:56

think I have now, I don't know, 350

31:58

orders on Instacart Lifetime. And it's truly a,

32:00

why was I living my life that way? They

32:03

broke this habit that wasn't even, it wasn't great.

32:05

I didn't enjoy schlepping him to the grocery store

32:07

and schlepping all the stuff back, but I thought

32:09

it was just the way that I had to

32:11

live life. And Instacart broke me out of that

32:13

habit. That, but I think also bloody

32:15

COVID also broke a lot of the round

32:17

consumer patterns. Which is a really interesting for

32:19

an investor, like the why now we always

32:21

have to ask. And it's like an external

32:24

event can cause a hard fact to become

32:26

shakeable. Exactly, yes. In often cases that

32:28

is actually exactly what happens. A hard

32:30

thing is to understand whether it's enduring.

32:33

Like you've seen a lot of e-commerce

32:35

which has not been enduring. That's definitely

32:37

true. That's the challenge. I want to

32:39

move to the third, which is again,

32:41

kind of completely different one. Yes. Future

32:43

vision. What is future vision and how

32:45

does that compare? Yes, future vision is for

32:47

all the dreamers out there. So future vision

32:49

is a place where you have some deep

32:52

expertise in some area that causes you to

32:54

see a world that not everybody else sees

32:56

yet. Think Elon Musk, think Jensen Huang, you

32:58

know. Think, yeah, these are the types of

33:01

folks that not only see a product that

33:03

can change people's lives but a paradigm that

33:05

can change people's lives. The thing, you know,

33:07

we said in the first path, the hurdle

33:10

to overcome was competition. In the second, the

33:12

hurdle overcome is habit. In the third, it's

33:14

actually disbelief. It's sure, I'd love

33:16

flying cars. I'd love teleportation. I'd love

33:18

all kinds of things. Great, yeah, but

33:21

I'll believe it when I see it.

33:23

And I think your job as a

33:25

founder in this path is mostly validation

33:27

to prove the validity of your vision

33:29

of the future, a like almost literal

33:31

technical validity. And then secondly, applying that

33:33

and finding the right stepping stones to

33:35

your ultimate vision. I like to

33:38

use OpenAI as an example here. Their ultimate

33:40

vision of the future is that AGI exists.

33:42

And so it's crazy to think that chat

33:44

GPT and all their GPT models were

33:46

a stepping stone to realizing the vision of

33:49

AGI. They found a commercial

33:51

application that solved problems that people were

33:53

compelled by to adopt for

33:55

one use case or another on their way

33:57

to the actual ultimate future vision, hasn't

34:00

come to fruition yet. And this is something

34:02

that, you know, Future Vision founders, there's one

34:04

thing about going into a cave for 10

34:06

years and emerging and then everybody wants the

34:08

thing that you have. But there's another thing

34:11

to actually prove the hypothesis in bite sizes

34:13

and in milestones and in stepping stones and

34:15

finding the right stepping stones. I would say 90%

34:18

of the companies that I see as

34:20

an investor are in the first category,

34:22

which is obviously the Heron Fair. Is

34:24

that true for you? And is that

34:26

reminiscent of how the art portfolio looks?

34:29

Oh, that's interesting. When we actually looked

34:31

through our portfolio, I would say it

34:33

was actually pretty representative across the different

34:36

paths, surprisingly enough. Hard fact is really

34:38

comes through a lot, I would say actually, surprisingly

34:41

so. A lot of founders find that's why I

34:43

think a lot of founders found it so illuminating

34:45

because they realized, wait a second, so all this

34:47

struggle I have with skepticism and kind of waking

34:49

people up to like, you doesn't have to be

34:51

this way. It's because I am actually not on

34:53

the Heron Fire path. And so I think that

34:56

was the biggest aha moment I saw from founders

34:58

that actually were on the hard fact path,

35:00

not realizing that that path existed. So the

35:02

portfolio is actually pretty representative, I would say,

35:04

across the path. One interesting thing I would

35:07

add is that I would say both kind

35:09

of from a founder perspective and also from

35:11

an investor perspective, certain investors kind of like

35:13

really gravitate towards certain paths. Oh,

35:15

yeah. Heron Fire, I think is an inherently shit

35:18

one to be part of. Why

35:20

do you say that? Why? You require

35:22

a lot of marketing spend to actually

35:24

differentiate. That's if you even have great

35:26

product marketing, which I think is very

35:29

rare, you have incredibly competitive markets and

35:31

so your retention is generally lower and

35:33

it's harder to keep them. Also, people

35:35

forget about the marginal cost of software

35:37

dev and if there's hugely competitive markets,

35:39

they will expect continuous, incredible improvements very

35:42

frequently versus a much more stale market

35:44

where there's not many alternatives. So

35:46

actually, your margin really changes because

35:48

you have to have continuous, amazing

35:51

software updates, amazing CS. They're

35:53

inherently worse businesses. And

35:56

then also, you've got no pricing. Sorry, I'm really getting

35:58

on a high horse. Your pricing power is... your energy

36:00

around this hair. Yeah, you think, the monetization

36:02

is real. But don't forget, though, that the

36:05

demand is given. There's pros and cons to

36:07

each. It's kind of like, oh, another thing

36:09

that I go really deep on the rabbit

36:11

hole on is personality tests and frameworks. But

36:14

there's not, you say in those that there's not a

36:16

good one or a bad one, right? There's just pros

36:18

and cons to each. And the pros here, like you

36:20

said, you've run into so many founders that say they're

36:23

solving a problem that's number 10 on people's lists. In

36:25

hair on fire, in theory, the demand is clearer, which

36:27

is why it is hair on fire. And then usually

36:29

in that space that there is actual budget, there's

36:31

actual spend, there's people ready to write text,

36:34

which the other two paths may not necessarily

36:36

see such a clear line towards. I get

36:38

you, but I also have a very clear

36:40

playbook for the deals that we do, which

36:43

is that I love huge markets with fuck-all

36:45

competition, no competition. What are examples of those?

36:48

Okay, I led a series A for

36:50

Business that does commodities pricing. It prices

36:52

the world. To the full circle of

36:54

the commodities. But there's one big

36:56

player in the world. No

36:59

engineer's out of stripe-like commodities. We're going

37:01

to do commodities, none. And so I

37:03

look for large markets with no competition.

37:05

Huge markets. So to me, that reads very

37:08

hard facts, but how do those customers actually view

37:10

those problems? Like where would you put them on

37:12

the frame of the area? It's kind of a

37:14

combination of hair on fire in terms

37:16

of recognition of problem, but hard fact as

37:18

well. So it is kind of, because they

37:20

hate it and they are very aware of

37:23

the need for change. But they're like, but

37:25

no one is. But it is what it

37:27

is. Because no one's building

37:29

for us. I almost like to build for the

37:31

unheard. What the software engineer's not. Bluntly,

37:34

in this I'm getting in trouble here.

37:36

Dev tools, what a shit market. Devs

37:38

like to build their own tools. They

37:40

don't believe anything you tell them. And

37:42

so they just are inherently skeptical.

37:45

They expect insane product. They're

37:47

very cynical. The margins

37:49

are generally quite crap. The CS

37:51

is required high. Ugh. Yes,

37:55

crap. And so that's how I feel. But

37:57

I would say that it kind of falls

37:59

in those. But the importance are

38:01

additions the incumbents in these markets They

38:03

need to have terrible soft yeah, terrible

38:05

talent brands, and they need to be

38:07

built on terrible infrastructure Yes, so many

38:10

founders that we see are going off

38:12

to like Shopify I mean or stripe

38:14

in some way and I'm like unbundling

38:16

stripe and going up against the colosseins

38:18

seems like a really stupid idea Would

38:21

you believe that we have a framework for this we've

38:23

taught you know? Is there

38:26

three no strangely it's a

38:28

number four okay? Delta for

38:30

it's really simple. I mean one of our partners

38:32

internally just started calling you know coined this term

38:34

But basically out of a ten point you know

38:36

scale are you at least four points better? And

38:39

I think to your point about the unbundling and

38:41

taking taking on the colosseins if they're an eight

38:43

or a nine are you a 13? Is

38:46

a very different question than if you are the

38:48

port? Operating system of 20

38:50

years ago is a three out of ten and

38:52

you can be a seven those are those are very

38:54

different kind of Beasts to tackle

38:57

okay. I've got a one another why that I

38:59

didn't even matter If your product is better anymore

39:01

whoa hot take Harry distribution trumps

39:04

all we see so many products

39:06

today Where it's like I've seen

39:08

so many unbundled open AI solutions.

39:10

Yep. I mean during any enduring

39:13

It's because they were hyped you know now and

39:15

everybody know they are better products than a

39:17

medical transcription as a mark I

39:19

say there are ten different medical

39:21

transcription products for the better than

39:24

Microsoft's But bundled into Microsoft's product

39:26

suite selling to large incumbents and

39:28

enterprises There's no way that they're

39:30

gonna go with some niche provider,

39:32

which is five percent better I would

39:34

argue that's exactly the Delta for test of

39:36

like to your point It's at five percent

39:38

better is at 5x better because these unbundled

39:40

ones are not 5x better and therefore there's

39:42

no reason for me to take on the

39:44

cost of unbundling that suite managing all the

39:46

different types of disparate technology when I could

39:48

just have all in one here same thing

39:50

with like Google sheets and Google Docs versus

39:53

office You know originally it is definitely not

39:55

Google spreadsheets are not better than Microsoft Excel

39:57

like period from a person I used to

39:59

come from finance I

40:02

know what the power tool is and people

40:04

still in this building still use PC so

40:06

that they can access Microsoft Excel. That's

40:08

how hardcore they are about it. But it was good enough

40:10

for most of us, right? We didn't need a 5x better

40:12

spreadsheet. We just needed to do a

40:14

little quick math, you know? And so how much better does it need

40:17

to be? I believe you. I think we agree, actually. Yeah,

40:20

I totally agree. There's a magnitude of product

40:22

difference there, completely. How

40:24

many products do you actually believe

40:26

are 5x better, honestly? It's a

40:28

good question. And how much – and to the

40:30

point of do they need to be 5x better

40:33

to shake either – what are you breaking through?

40:35

You're breaking through the competition, you're breaking through habit,

40:37

you're breaking through disbelief. How much does it

40:39

take for the product to be better in order

40:41

to break out of one of those kind

40:43

of shake- I think it probably depends on

40:45

enterprise buying cycles versus consumer adoption and probably

40:48

two different – Absolutely. – use

40:50

of product matter. Working on these frameworks, it's

40:52

just like a scaffolding to have these conversations, I

40:54

think, and to think through all the different nuances.

40:56

Because not – everybody knows the product market. There's

40:58

no one path and there's no one formula. But

41:01

the way that we talk about it, I think,

41:03

is a little bit one-size-fits-all sometimes.

41:05

So it's kind of nice to be able

41:07

to identify patterns but allow for nuance, I

41:10

think. And then you're bringing up some really

41:12

great examples. There's one I love about investing,

41:14

I mean, there's like no right way to invest.

41:16

Exactly. Okay, I want to do a

41:18

quick fire-around. So I say a short statement and you

41:20

give me your immediate thoughts. Now I have no friends

41:22

and I've probably lost every founder that's building in DevTools

41:24

for the rest of my career. You can

41:26

edit that out. It's fine, right? No, I never

41:29

wanted to meet them anyway. It's fine. Literally,

41:32

my team's listened to this and

41:34

like, oh, Harry. Not again. Not

41:36

again. Okay, first one. What's the

41:38

most common reason you think founders

41:40

don't get product market fit? Like,

41:42

one reason. You're

41:45

not solving a problem that matters with a solution that's compelling

41:47

enough. You fail in part A, you fail in

41:49

part B, or you fail in both. I think

41:51

it's as simple as that, actually. Funny, I sat

41:53

down at the start of the year and I said to the team,

41:55

I want to have a smaller audience. I want us to deliberately get

41:57

smaller as a media company because I want to have a smaller audience.

42:00

to mean more to fewer people. What's the

42:02

biggest product marketing mistake you see founders make?

42:04

I'll go back to say it again, say it in

42:06

their words, not yours. Your words, the way that you

42:08

see your product, you are too close to this thing.

42:10

It is not actually how they experience it. And in

42:12

some cases, like in these markets that you're talking about,

42:15

like DevTools, you know, where you believe that you are

42:17

your own customer because you are also an engineer. Like

42:19

I think we just have to break ourselves from that.

42:21

Like you've got to hear it in their voice. What

42:24

would you say is the biggest mistake founders

42:26

make when hiring product teams? The

42:28

thing that I actually warn both founders and

42:30

product operators against is joining as a product

42:32

leader too early in a company. And what

42:34

I mean by that is there's kind of

42:37

three layers of product. There's product vision, there's

42:39

product strategy, and there's product execution. And when

42:41

you are very, very early on in a

42:43

company, I would hope that at least the

42:46

first two come from the founding team. Some

42:48

is anchored on the founding team. And if

42:50

you're joining to provide one or more of

42:52

those things, there's often some tension basically between

42:54

what swim lanes people live in. And I've

42:57

seen that happen where the founder thinks that

42:59

they're ready to give up product vision or product

43:01

strategy. And it turns out that that's not actually

43:03

the case. It's a difficult conversation to have once

43:05

you find yourself there. Tell me, what

43:07

other function does product have the

43:10

most tension with? Oh, these are

43:12

spicy questions. I think it really depends on the

43:14

context. And it really depends on how willing the

43:16

other functions are to step out of their own

43:18

function. I believe in a cross-functional team, sure. My

43:20

job is to do product strategy. I kind of

43:23

set the stage for why we're solving this problem

43:25

and what the problem is. And then maybe an

43:27

engineer's job is to figure out what we're actually

43:29

going to do to solve the problem and how

43:31

we're going to implement that. But we all have

43:33

a say in all of those voices and rooms.

43:35

And so I think that the tension usually comes

43:38

from, that's your lane, this is my lane, stay

43:40

in your lane, here's the wall. And I

43:42

think that's even a bigger macrocosm when you

43:45

think about product development versus sales or marketing

43:47

or some of the more business functions. You

43:49

stay in your lane, I'll stay in my

43:51

lane. I think many of the tensions arise

43:53

there and are easily, maybe not easily, but

43:56

they are definitely surmountable. So if

43:58

Frank cools you up, yeah. and they've got

44:00

their first day as a new product leader

44:03

at this new job tomorrow. What

44:05

advice do you give them going to day one

44:07

as a new product leader? I would go

44:09

back to conviction and action. The first thing you should

44:11

do is build conviction in your problem and your customers.

44:13

So probably meet a bunch of customers, figure out how

44:16

to get in front of the customer, absorb

44:18

all the user resources and done. What are we

44:20

doing here? What does success look like? Who is

44:22

this person? What do they care about? And then

44:24

the action side. So that's outside the building. I

44:26

think action is more inside the building. How do

44:28

things get done here? How do we make decision?

44:30

Who has influence? How does the process work? How

44:32

do I fit into this thing to actually make

44:34

things happen? And I think that is probably the

44:36

more challenging job for somebody just dropping

44:39

into a role for the first time.

44:41

Final one, which product strategy recently have

44:43

you been most impressed by? Linear is

44:45

a really interesting one because they took

44:47

this thing that is normally mostly used

44:50

by issue tracking, mostly used by PMs

44:52

and managers, EMs, and they targeted the

44:54

engineer instead because those people hate this

44:57

thing. And I've worked with

44:59

so many teams. The more senior I've gotten

45:01

my product career, the more senior engineers around

45:03

me have gotten and the more jaded, specifically

45:05

around process and stand up and issue tracking

45:07

tickets and things like this, they're like, they

45:09

want none of it. And I was in

45:11

this position where we adopted linear here at

45:13

Sequoia with my team. And we actually

45:15

had another issue tracking tool that we also had

45:17

licenses for. Some teams use this, some teams do

45:19

that. But EPD solely use linear. And we were

45:22

being, there was a threat of us consolidating. You

45:24

know what, there's more seats open here. Why don't

45:26

we just take everybody from linear and move them

45:28

over here? My team Revolt, they

45:30

wrote a four page manifesto on why you

45:32

cannot take linear from them. And like literally

45:34

it was a memo. We actually ended up

45:37

sharing it with the linear team. They

45:39

cared about this so much. They'd been through

45:41

the trend. These are jaded big tech survivor

45:43

type engineer. Like I've seen every issue tracking tool

45:46

and like I've never actually not hated one except

45:48

for this one. And what's really fascinating is I

45:50

think from a product strategy standpoint, most of these

45:52

issue tracking tools go for PMs first, right? It's

45:54

like, you're the manager, you're the planner, you're planning

45:56

the development, the roadmap, the cycle, all this kind

45:58

of stuff, that's the target customer. And

46:00

the fact that they kind of flipped that a

46:02

little bit and like went for engineers and now

46:04

they're actually now able to expand up and down

46:06

the stack up and down the development process. They

46:08

are building products from PM's they are building products

46:10

from managers now, but they did it

46:13

now from this core of like love from

46:15

engineers rather than hate. I

46:17

find that super fascinating. I

46:19

love that and I also love Carrie and so

46:21

I totally agree with you in that respect. Vicky,

46:24

I love this. It's been a really fun here.

46:26

He's always so much fun to have. So thank

46:28

you so much for putting up with me and

46:30

you've been incredible. Thank you so much. Thank

46:32

you for having me here. This is great. I

46:35

have to say I really so enjoy doing these

46:37

vertical ad episodes on 20 product, 20 growth and

46:40

20 sales. I think there's so many tangible lessons

46:42

to founders and scaling their businesses there. If

46:44

you want to see more, you can check

46:46

us out on YouTube and watch the full

46:49

video interview by searching for 20 VC. But

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the founder of Freshworks, one of

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