Episode description

Vickie Peng is a Product Partner at Sequoia and the co-creator of Arc, their company-building immersion programme for pre-seed and seed stage founders. Prior to Sequoia, Vickie was a product manager at Polyvore (acquired by Yahoo for $200M) and Instagram, where she grew SMB advertising from $200M to $1BN.

In Today’s Episode with Vickie Peng We Discuss:

1. Lessons from 15 Years in Product

• How did Vickie make her way into the world of product?

• How did Vickie turn a small side business into a massive revenue machine at TrialPay?

• How did Vickie scale Instagram SMB ads to $1BN? What were her takeaways?

• What was Vickie’s business model at Polyvore that eventually led to the $200M acquisition by Yahoo?

1. Lessons from Scaling 100+ Companies in Sequoia

• What does Vickie believe are the biggest mistakes early stage founders make when telling stories?

• Which 2 components does Vickie believe every great product mission should include?

• How should pre-product-market fit founders set their north star metric?

1. Perfecting Product Strategy

• What was Vickie’s biggest product mistake? What were her lessons?

• Why does Vickie think the best product people build less product?

• What is Vickie’s advice to product leaders starting their first day on the job?

• What are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring product teams?

1. Product-Market Fit Masterclass

• Why does Vickie believe product-market fit is a journey not a destination?

• What are the biggest reasons founders fail to get product-market fit?

• What are the 3 types of product-market fit?

• How does Vickie advise founders to differentiate themselves in competitive markets?

• What is Vickie’s framework for competing against incumbents?