Behind the Craft

My guest today is Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of Design and Emerging Products. Scott has also advised 100s of startups and writes a popular newsletter called Implications. I spoke to Scott about: Why the talent stack is collapsing and what you can do about it How to improve the first-mile experience of your product The 4P framework for building generat...

My guest today is Ethan Evans, former VP at Amazon. Ethan rose to VP at Amazon over 15 years and then retired to make $700,000 teaching product leaders while only working 20 hours a week. Ethan and I talked about: The magic loop to level up at any company and how to get unstuck How to systematically build trust with leadership How to build a $700K+ business while working part time Ethan is an incr...

My guest today is Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer of Intercom. When ChatGPT launched, Paul and the Intercom team blew up their roadmap to go all in on AI. Since then, they’ve built an AI-first customer service suite that can provide accurate answers to customers 24/7. Paul and I spoke about: 1. How PMs and designers can skill up on AI and get hired to work on AI products 2. Why you may not want...

My guest today is Alex Cornell, Director of Design at Meta AI. Alex is one of the best product designers I’ve ever worked with. He helped design Facebook, Substack, Linear, and an app for family and friends called Cocoon. We talked about: - Lessons from designing at Meta, Substack, and Linear - How interface design will change with generative AI - How anyone can start learning design right now Thi...

My guest today is Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer of Figma. Yuhki and I talked about how Figma: - Created a culture where employees love their craft - Builds AI products to solve real user problems - Plans to make design accessible to everyone Yuhki is a great storyteller and shares an inside look at how Figma’s amazing product culture works. If you enjoy our conversation, please like and s...

My guest today is Dan Siroker, CEO of Limitless. In just 24 hours after launch, Dan and team sold over 10,000 AI pendants to help people augment their memory with what they’ve seen, said, and heard - making Limitless arguably the fastest growing AI wearable in the market. In this short interview, Dan and I talked about: - His journey to create the world’s most wearable AI - How the team ships fast...

My guest today is Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven, a very popular online course platform. Wes and I talked about how to create, market, and teach an online course and make $20,000 or more per cohort. I especially love Wes’ frameworks about how to: Build a spiky point of view to stand out with real examples And use the state change method to keep people interested Timestamps: 00:00 Spiky point of view...

My guest today is Brian Balfour, CEO of Reforge. Brian and I did a deep dive into how 4 of the best AI products grew so fast. We spoke about: Why ChatGPT is investing in custom GPTs How Midjourney grew to $200M ARR despite an interface that relies on Discord How Perplexity is competing with Google Search How LinkedIn collaborative articles combine AI and user growth loops Brian is one of the best...

My guest today is Jackie Bavaro, author of Cracking the PM Career and Cracking the PM Interview, two of the most popular books on product management out there. Jackie was also head of PM at Asana. I spoke to Jackie about: 1. How to be more strategic 2. How to define a great vision and strategy for your team 3. How to communicate your strategy to the rest of the company There are so many misconcept...

My guests today are Sanchan (ex-general manager at Airbnb), Nickey (Product Director at Duolingo) and John (Senior Director at Toast). We talked about: 1. How the PM role is changing 2. Our favorite PM use cases for AI 3. How to avoid PM title envy to pick your own path Over 200 people tuned into this conversation live so I think you’ll love it too. Chapter Timestamps [00:00] Less internal shenani...

Elena Verna is a solopreneur who has served as head of growth at Dropbox, Amplitude, Miro, and more. Elena and I talked about: 1. Why she left a full-time role to work for herself 2. The five laws of growth and how they can be applied to careers 3. Her advice for people who want to explore solopreneurship Elena is incredibly inspiring and I think you’ll love our conversation. Brought to you by: •...

Kaz Neyatian is the Chief Operating Officer of Shopify. Kaz and I spoke about about: 1. Why traditional career ladders are broken 2. Why strategy is the least important part of building products 3. Why Shopify canceled all recurring meetings. I think this interview will feel like therapy if you’ve worked at big tech companies. Brought to you by: • Figma–My favorite design suite for creators and te...

Fareed Mosavat is a growth veteran who has worked at Reforge, Slack, Instacart, Pixar, and other top companies. We had some real talk about how to: 1. Cross the chasm from product manager to product leader 2. Not confuse the work behind the work with the actual work 3. Look beyond traditional job titles to chart your own career path Fareed is one of my favorite product leaders and I think you’ll l...

Claire Vo is the Chief Product Officer of LaunchDarkly and ex-CPO of Color and Optimizely. Claire believes that it’s never been a better time to be a strong IC PM and has built a career ladder where the best individual contributors report directly to the C-suite. We spoke about: 1. Why PM performance theater needs to end 2. How to pursue the super IC PM career path 3. How IC PMs can use AI to exce...