JM Nickels is a Senior Director of Product Management at Uber. Previously, he was Head of Product for Commercialization at Waymo and led product teams at DoorDash. JM is also a coach and advisor focused on conscious leadership. In our conversation, we discuss: • How to sharpen your vision and strategy skills • What “conscious leadership” means and how to practice it • Practical techniques for managing stress • The power of soft skills and emotional intelligence in product leadership • Lessons fr...
Oct 06, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Komoroske is a strategic leader who merges the practice, theory, and mindset necessary to tackle complex problems. He spent 13 years at Google, where he worked on Search and DoubleClick and led Chrome’s Open Web Platform. He also spearheaded Augmented Reality in Google Maps and developed toolkits to align companywide strategy from the ground up. After serving as Head of Corporate Strategy at Stripe, he is now co-founding a startup aimed at reimagining the web for the AI era. Alex created th...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Benjamin Lauzier has been building and scaling marketplaces for almost 15 years. He was the VP of product and growth at Thumbtack, where he rebuilt the product team and Thumbtack’s growth levers, re-architected their revenue model, and helped double the company’s growth within three years. Prior to Thumbtack, Ben was at Lyft for six years, where he led the supply side of the product organization to a point where 1% of U.S. workers were driving for Lyft every month. Currently, he advises marketpl...
Sep 29, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tamar Yehoshua is the president of product and technology at Glean. Prior to joining Glean, Tamar was chief product officer at Slack, where she led product, design, and research as the company scaled, including a 10x increase in revenue, its public listing, and an acquisition by Salesforce. She also led product and engineering teams at Google, working on search, identity, and privacy, and at A9.com, an Amazon company. Tamar has served on the board of directors for RetailMeNot, ServiceNow, Snyk, ...
Sep 26, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tal Raviv is a product manager at Riverside, where he joined as its first PM. Over his 12-year career as an individual contributor, Tal has been an early PM at Patreon, AppsFlyer, and Wix, working in consumer growth, developer API platforms, and pricing. He started his career by co-founding a profitable SaaS company and also volunteers as a surf instructor for people with disabilities. In our conversation, Tal shares: • Why he has chosen to stay an individual contributor rather than moving into ...
Sep 22, 2024•2 hr 31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eli Schwartz is a leading SEO consultant and the author of Product-Led SEO. He has worked with industry giants like Zapier, Tinder, Coinbase, Quora, LinkedIn, and WordPress to build and execute global SEO strategies that significantly enhanced their organic visibility at scale. In our conversation, Eli shares: • How AI and LLMs are reshaping the SEO landscape • Why you should be focused on mid-funnel SEO strategies • How to determine if SEO is the right approach for your business • Why SEO shoul...
Sep 19, 2024•2 hr 55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Camille Fournier is the author of The Manager’s Path, which many consider the definitive guide for navigating one’s career path in tech. Camille was previously the CTO of Rent the Runway, VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs, Head of Platform Engineering at Two Sigma, and Global Head of Engineering and Architecture at JPMorgan Chase. She is about to release new newest book, Platform Engineering: A Guide for Technical, Product, and People Leaders . In our conversation, we discuss: • What product man...
Sep 15, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Phyl Terry is the author of Never Search Alone, which I’ve seen so many people reference as the most impactful guide they read for finding a job. Phyl was on the founding team of the first company Amazon acquired back in the ’90s and then was CEO of pioneering product consulting firm Creative Good, with companies like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft as customers. Today, Phyl is the founder and CEO of Collaborative Gain, which 20 years ago pioneered bringing councils to senior product leaders and ...
Sep 12, 2024•2 hr 51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tomer Cohen is the chief product officer at LinkedIn, responsible for setting the company’s product strategy, leading product development, user experience design, business development, content creation, and customer operations. He also hosts the Building One podcast, where he interviews exceptional builders across various disciplines. In our conversation, we discuss: • How LinkedIn transformed its feed into an engaging content and social platform • Tomer’s famous “We might be wrong, but we are n...
Sep 08, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sean Ellis is one of the earliest and most influential thinkers and operators in growth. He coined the term “growth hacking,” invented the ICE prioritization framework, was one of the earliest people to use freemium as a growth lever, and, most famously, developed the Sean Ellis Test for product-market fit (which a large percentage of founders use today to track if they’ve found PMF). Over the course of his career, Sean was head of growth at Dropbox and Eventbrite; helped companies like Microsof...
Sep 05, 2024•2 hr 44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Vlad Loktev spent 10 years at Airbnb, where he started as an IC PM and quickly advanced to lead the core Airbnb marketplace business and then GM the entire homes business, managing over 1,000 people and reporting directly to CEO Brian Chesky. He recently left Airbnb and joined Index Ventures as their newest partner. Vlad was my manager at Airbnb for many years, and is the person I credit most for teaching me how to be a great product manager. Prior to Airbnb, Vlad spent a year at Zynga, where he...
Sep 01, 2024•2 hr 37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nikita Bier is one of the most in-demand consumer, social, and growth experts in the world. He’s the co-founder of TBH (sold to Meta for more than $30 million) and Gas (sold to Discord for millions more) and has helped more consumer apps that have hit #1 in the app stores than any other person I’ve come across. He currently spends his time advising founders on growth, product, and design and is an investor and advisor to some of the best consumer tech companies, including Flo, Locket, Eight Slee...
Aug 25, 2024•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Deb Liu is the CEO of Ancestry and former longtime VP of Product at Facebook. At Facebook, Deb led the creation of Facebook Marketplace, developed the first mobile ad product for apps, built the company’s games business, and launched Facebook Pay. She’s also held leadership roles at PayPal and eBay, serves on the board of Intuit, and is the author of Take Back Your Power . In our conversation, we discuss: • Why you should PM your career like you PM your product • Strategies for incubating new pr...
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Yien leads product for merchant experiences at Stripe. Before that, he meandered his way from being a technical designer to a product manager, built the restaurants business and ecosystem team at Square, and most recently was head of product and design at Mutiny. He also makes ice cream and teaches for fun. In our conversation, we discuss: • Why aspiring PMs should start in engineering, design, or sales • The importance of writing skills, and how to become a better writer • How to automate...
Aug 18, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Evan LaPointe is the founder of CORE Sciences, which teaches companies and individuals how our brains work and how that translates to improved collaboration, better products, faster decision-making, and more growth. Previously, Evan was the co-founder of Satellite, the fourth-largest analytics product on the internet today (it mostly runs behind the scenes, and pretty much everyone listening will have used it today without knowing it), which was acquired by Adobe, where he later ran product stra...
Aug 11, 2024•2 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Joe Hudson is one of the most sought-after executive coaches in Silicon Valley. He is the founder of Art of Accomplishment, a transformational coaching program that has helped tens of thousands of people, including many tech executives and founders from companies like Apple, OpenAI, and Google. His unique method of transformation comes from over 25 years of exploring neurological, psychological, and spiritual traditions, tested against real-world challenges. In our conversation, Joe shares: • Wh...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Brian Tolkin is the Head of Product at Opendoor. Previously, he was one of the early employees at Uber, where he was instrumental in launching and growing UberPool, UberHop, and UberExpress and started one of the first product operations teams in tech. In our conversation, we dive into: • How to enable product and ops to work well together • How to run great product reviews • How to make good decisions with limited data • How he uses the jobs-to-be-done framework at Opendoor • How to stay calm u...
Aug 04, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Timothy Davis has led performance marketing for all of Shopify for the past 2.5 years, and as a consultant has helped companies like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Redfin, and Eventbrite kickstart and scale their performance marketing teams. In every one of those cases, he got them so performant at paid growth that they significantly scale spend and investment in these channels. In our conversation, we cover: • When and how to start investing in performance marketing • Common mistakes companies make with ...
Jul 28, 2024•2 hr 42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Roger Martin is one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and the author of Playing to Win , one of the most beloved books on strategy. He’s written extensively for the Harvard Business Review ; consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including P&G, Lego, and Ford; and written 11 other books. In our conversation, we discuss: • The five key questions you need to answer to develop an effective strategy • Why most companies get strategy wrong • How to avoid “playing to play” instead of ...
Jul 25, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rory Sutherland is widely regarded as one of the most influential (and most entertaining) thinkers in marketing and behavioral science. He’s the vice chairman of Ogilvy UK, the author of Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life , and the founder of Nudgestock, the world’s biggest festival of behavioral science and creativity. He champions thinking from first principles and using human psychology—what he calls “thinking psycho-logically”—over mere ...
Jul 21, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jessica Lachs is the global head of analytics and data science at DoorDash, where she’s built one of the largest and most respected data organizations in tech. In her more than 10 years at DoorDash, she has served as the first general manager, responsible for launching new markets; the head of business ops and analytics; and the VP of analytics and data science. Previously, Jessica founded GiftSimple, a social gifting startup, and started her career at Lehman Brothers as an investment banking an...
Jul 14, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeff Weinstein is a product lead at Stripe, where he helped grow their payment APIs to hundreds of billions in volume and transformed the way founders start companies into a few simple clicks with Atlas. Prior to Stripe, Jeff led several startups and sold companies to Groupon and Box. He’s known for his customer obsession, craft, quality, and building beloved products businesses rely on. In our conversation, we discuss: • The power of customer obsession and how to operationalize it in the produc...
Jul 11, 2024•3 hr 35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mike Maples, Jr. is a legendary early-stage startup investor and a co-founder and partner at Floodgate. He’s made early bets on transformative companies like Twitter, Lyft, Twitch, Okta, Rappi, and Applied Intuition and is one of the pioneers of seed-stage investing as a category. He’s been on the Forbes Midas List eight times and enjoys sharing the lessons he’s learned from his years studying iconic companies. In his new book, Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future , co-authored...
Jul 07, 2024•2 hr 49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma, the collaborative design platform that has revolutionized how product teams work. In my first-ever live podcast, recorded at Figma Config, Dylan and I dig into: • How intuition and product taste drive Dylan’s decision-making • The challenge of keeping things simple • Dylan’s thoughts on the future of product management • Lessons from Figma’s early days • How Figma built their initial user base • Dylan’s journey from intern to CEO of a 1,000+-person...
Jun 30, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jessica Livingston is a co-founder of Y Combinator, the first and most successful startup accelerator. Y Combinator has funded over 5,000 companies, 200 of which are now unicorns, including Airbnb, Dropbox, DoorDash, Stripe, Coinbase, and Reddit. Jessica played a crucial role in YC’s early success, when she was nicknamed the “social radar” because of her uncanny ability to quickly evaluate people—an essential skill when investing in early-stage startups. She’s also the host of the popular podcas...
Jun 27, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ami Vora is the Chief Product Officer of Faire, which connects independent retailers and brands around the world. Before Faire, Ami spent over 15 years at Meta, including as VP of Product and Design for WhatsApp (2B+ users), VP of Product for Facebook’s ads system (now $130B of annual revenue), and director at Instagram. She began her career working on developer tools at Microsoft. In our conversation, we discuss: • Why execution eats strategy for breakfast • Using metaphor to rally teams around...
Jun 23, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tanguy Crusson is the product lead for Jira Product Discovery at Atlassian. In his more than 10 years at the company, he has been instrumental in taking several new products from zero to one, including HipChat, Statuspage, and Jira Product Discovery. In this episode, we dive deep into the struggles of innovating and building new products inside a large company. Tanguy shares candid stories about what worked, what didn’t, and his many hard-won lessons learned about how to successfully build 0 to ...
Jun 16, 2024•2 hr 54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeffrey Pfeffer teaches the single most popular (and somewhat controversial) class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business: The Paths to Power. He’s also the author of 16 books, including 7 Rules of Power: Surprising—But True—Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career . He has taught at Harvard, the London Business School, and IESE and has written for publications like Fortune and the Washington Post . Recognized by the Academy of Management and listed in the Thinkers50 Hall of F...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Uri Levine is the co-founder of Waze, the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google for over $1 billion. He’s also founded nine other companies, been on the board of 20 companies, and advised more than 50 companies. He’s most recently the author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs , hailed by Steve Wozniak as the “Bible for entrepreneurs.” Uri is dedicated to creating impactful startups that solve real-world proble...
Jun 09, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cameron Adams is the co-founder and chief product officer of Canva. Canva is one of the world’s most valuable private software companies, used by 95% of Fortune 500 companies. Since its launch in 2013, Canva has grown to over 150 million monthly users in more than 190 countries, generating $2.3 billion in annual revenue. Prior to Canva, Cameron ran a design consultancy, worked at Google on Google Wave, and founded the email startup Fluent. He is also an author of five web design books and a regu...
Jun 02, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
