The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart)

[00:00] There are only three reasons why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader. [00:04] And you can look at a person and you would say, either that person can't do [00:08] which is a capability issue [00:10] or they won't do. [00:11] which is a motivation or an alignment issue. [00:13] or they were not set up to do. [00:15] which is really your problem that you didn't set up the ways of working in design properly. So as a leader, do you have the right people [00:22] in terms of capability. [00:24] And if not, [00:26] is the right answer for us to coach them or to like really put them or mentor them and so on, or move them to some other place because maybe their capability is suited elsewhere. If they won't do, [00:36] Why Wounded? [00:38] Are they not aligned to you? Do they not agree with your vision? [00:41] Do they not have enough time? And so on and so forth. So you need to really go deeper there. Why won't they do? [00:56] because this podcast has a large audience in India. [00:59] And when I put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn asking people who I should have on, Anuj was the single most requested person. Anuj is Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Jupyter Money. [01:10] Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Revenue and Growth at Swiggy, where he spent 7 years. He was also VP of Product at Snapdeal, a Senior PM at Walmart Labs, and the very first Product Manager at Flipkart. [01:22] where you let the buyer experience team. [01:24] In our conversation, we dig into how product management is different in India, Anuj's lessons about building product experiences for new users, how he operationalized the working backwards process at the companies he's worked at, why he pushes his teams to explore three divergent directions before settling on a plan, why he thinks product managers and companies should be much more full stack than they are, also a bunch of frameworks and contrarian takes about building product

[01:54] and Nikhil Kulkarni for helping me navigate the product scene in India. Look for more amazing India-based product leaders to come. [02:01] With that, I bring you Anuj Rati after a short word from our sponsors. [02:06] This episode is brought to you by Sanity. Your website is the heart of your growth engine. For that engine to drive big results, you need to be able to move super fast, ship new content, experiment, learn, and iterate. But most content management systems just aren't built for this. Your content teams wrestle with rigid interfaces as they build new pages. You spend endless time copying and pasting across pages and recreating content for other channels and applications. [02:36] build them within the constraints of outdated tech. Forward-thinking companies like Figma, Amplitude, Loom, Riot Games, Linear, and more use Sanity to build content growth engines that scale, drive innovation, and accelerate customer acquisition. With Sanity, your team can dream bigger and move faster. As the most powerful headless CMS on the market, you can tailor editorial workflows to match your business. Reuse content seamlessly across any page or channel [03:06] for your whole team. It's fast for developers to build with, intuitive for content managers, and it integrates seamlessly with the rest of your tech stack. Get started with Sanity's generous free plan. And as a Lenny's podcast listener, you can get a boosted plan with double the monthly usage. Head over to sanity.io slash Lenny to get started for free. That's sanity.io slash Lenny.

[03:30] This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to [03:36] of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Com, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, [04:06] over 5 000 fast-growing companies use vanta to automate up to 90 of the work involved with sock 2 and these other frameworks for a limited time lenny's podcast listeners get one thousand dollars off vanta go to vanta.com slash lenny that's v-a-n-t-a.com slash lenny to learn more and claim your discounts get started today [04:30] Anuj, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. [04:34] Thank you so much Lenny. Thank you for having me. [04:37] It's my pleasure. I haven't told you this, but when I put a call out on... [04:41] Twitter and LinkedIn for people's favorite India-based product leaders. [04:46] You are the single most recommended person. [04:49] I just wanted to start with how does it feel to be the most loved India-based product leader, at least according to my Twitter followers and LinkedIn followers? [04:57] It feels really good and I really feel it's come together because I've been doing product management for the longest time. In 2010, when I started the product management journey with Flipkart, I think that was a time when there were not a lot of products being built for India.

[05:13] So I think [05:14] One part is just the tenure, and B is, I think, it's just a lot of people have known the work. [05:20] Awesome. You're very modest. I wanted to start with a question about product in India. [05:26] And I'm just curious, just how is product management [05:29] and product building in general, just most different. [05:32] Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question and I think about this all the time. Like when I look at product management in India and I do have like a lot of friends [05:41] comparing product management versus say in the US or even in Europe, versus even in China, Southeast Asia, etc. I think India has had like a very interesting journey of products in general and hence product management also. [05:53] I think till about 2010-ish, there were not really many products built for the Indian consumers in the first place. There were a lot of products being built, a lot of technology being built, but largely because it was a back office. So you had a lot of great engineers working in companies which would build products for the American customer or even for the European customer and so on. So once these startups started coming in, which were thinking about building for the Indian consumers, [06:23] You do not really have the talent which you could directly tap into. [06:26] who were trained into product building, forget product management as a field in the first place. There were no colleges which were teaching anything about this. There was no playbooks and so on and so forth. We would go to the internet and look at YouTube and look at SVPG and all of that. But what we would understand would not kind of, you could not port directly to the Indian startups. And the way that they shaped up, I think also shaped up the way product management field would evolve in India.

[06:56] and I think there are like two or three different waves that have come in. And we are way closer to how good product management should be done in India. We still have a little bit way to go compared to, say, U.S. And I also think of it along, like, for example, in U.S., the product building culture probably started in 1970s, modern software development. [07:15] product building culture. And you didn't only have product manager with the entire ecosystem. If you think about a company, [07:22] Who is the VP of business and who is the VP of supply and sales and ops and technology and all of that? That group knew how to work with each other to build software products. They understood how that would be built and what to expect. I think in India, when we were in 2010, etc., even those different people who needed to come together to build, like say, e-commerce, [07:44] They would come from say FMCG or they would come from manufacturing and so on. And what they would have seen in their journeys in terms of what we expect is [07:53] is a very request response kind of understanding, which is, here's machinery. If I give this X resources, I expect with a little bit of variability, why predictable output to come? And that mentality also kind of moved on to what I expect from product managers or product building journeys and so on. So I think over a period of time, a lot of those cycles have happened and a lot more other leaders in companies have [08:19] have now seen those cycles and kind of understood and, "All right. Now I understand software is not machinery." [08:26] uh...

[08:27] Consumers are not predictable as much as we thought. And that has led to now finally, I think, product management coming of age. [08:34] You said that in the, I guess, in the Bay Area, things started like 1970 or something like that. When would you say things started to really ramp up and [08:41] modern product thinking in India. [08:43] I think 2010 was kind of when it started because, look, there were a few products that were built before that also. And I think somebody said this clearly that usually when modern consumer internet starts coming in countries, it usually starts with travel. [08:57] So you do have like basically any country we would start with, which is the first travel company. So I think India started with some companies like MakeMyTrip and so on like way earlier. There were a few very interesting products being built in India, which were solving uniquely for the Indian consumers that were in the matrimony side, which is shadi.com and [09:17] BharatMetriMoney.com and so on. [09:19] Like what do you think about Tinder? Like India is famous for arranged marriages. So like a product that would really understand that, hey, if you're a parent, if you want to get your kid, [09:27] uh you know up for victory money how would you solve for them and that marketplace of matchmaking etc started so a few blips here and there which was following uniquely for india but in 2010 was a decade of time when i can like very clearly imagine that's where like a lot of people started building for india so i think and flipkart started that that kind of journey but in a couple of years then they were like say ola which was in a way similar to uber what they were doing elsewhere

[09:57] So for example, in food delivery, when I was working at Swiggy, that came and said, [10:01] 2015, 2014, in that time frame. And now you see a whole bunch of startups which are trying to do not only things which are, what could an Uber for India look like or what could a DoorDash for India look like? Very different. And [10:17] also very innovative. So I think now is the time when you see a lot more product building around that area. [10:23] What are some numbers of just like... [10:26] companies in India, people in India, money spent in India. I don't know, things that would be like, wow, that is a [10:31] much bigger opportunity than I thought. [10:32] All right, this is a very wide question. So I'll tell you before the opportunity in India, I think I'll talk about the complexity in India, which is which is very which I think a lot of people don't understand. So India has what? [10:49] 1.4 billion people. [10:50] So there were three waves really that happened in India, but also in the globe. The first wave was from desktop to mobile. [10:58] and then even from mobile to smartphones. [11:01] And from smart phones, there was what we call the geo-revolution. There's an Indian company called Reliance Geo. [11:06] that basically got internet at the cheapest prices for smartphones. [11:10] So because of this, a whole population came onto the Internet [11:14] which was hungry for newer products, newer content, completely different ways of interacting with each other and using Internet for all sorts of different things. That was one of the ways. The other part is really what the Indian government really enabled, which is,

[11:28] especially in [11:31] in digitization of a bunch of absolute core fundamental, you know, citizen related machinery, which is either through digital payments, [11:40] which is a whole bunch of Indians now started having a bank account by default and something called UPI. So even if you do not have a bank account or that bank account is linked to your mobile phone number, [11:51] But now everybody would pay through that. [11:54] and that brought in a very different kind of revolution. So even if five rupees, that is basically like 10 cents or less than that, that would be paid through UPI, and people started moving away from cash and so on. And there's something called the India Stack that is like all of these things coming together, [12:09] which is social security, identity, [12:11] payments and so on, that a whole bunch of other apps can now use to build their own, you know, layers on top of that. So many interesting cases kind of started coming about. So that's kind of one, which is just a number and the infrastructure. Now, the other thing to look at is India is very diverse. [12:28] So the number of languages spoken here, even the official languages is so high. And they say there's this quote in India, like every 15 miles, the language will change and the people and their culture will change. And it's a huge country of so many people. So your traditional ways of thinking about products also that who am I building for? [12:47] is very different. Is I building for this person or that etc. So a bunch of frameworks kind of break down. [12:53] because it's not even that the same language will apply. [12:55] English is a language that is used by the people who have the money and the dollar to give to you. But you have to think way more widely. The other thing about India that is interesting is

[13:09] um [13:11] the price that people are willing to pay. So generally, it also looks at the per capita [13:17] you know, money that people have. [13:20] is very low. [13:21] two and a half thousand dollar range compared to US which is maybe for [13:26] 30 times more and so on. So while there's a lot of people who are going to give you [13:31] traffic and engagement and so on. But the craft of actually choosing the right kind of paying customer who will actually come and engage and give you money is [13:40] is at a premium. So a lot harder work needs to be done. If you're running e-commerce, who are the people who will pay me delivery fee? Who are the people who will actually buy this expensive stuff? And so a whole bunch of different ways of thinking has evolved in this country. And that's why it's so vibrant and so different than any other [14:00] global products. [14:01] Wow. [14:02] Fascinating. [14:03] I could keep going, but I want to talk product. [14:06] I've collected a bunch of questions from people that know you or people that have worked with you all about a bunch of different stuff. So I'm just going to kind of go a little bit all over the place. [14:14] and the first area i wanted to talk about is the new user experience apparently you have a [14:18] Interesting insight and kind of a different approach of thinking about [14:21] new users and new user experiences. One of the things that I realized once we started working about the products is that product managers and generally companies are too engrossed in thinking about, they're very close to the product, it's close to their heart and they're looking at it all the time. They're looking at a lot of minor nuances in terms of how this works and feels and almost inherent into this is a bias that everybody is thinking about this product all the day, all the time and so on so forth.

[14:47] Whereas the reality is, [14:48] Most consumers in the country are in your target market. [14:52] They don't care. [14:53] and they may have some time heard about your product. The word of mouth is not ever so strong, even if you are the strongest brand and so on and so forth. But that is the customer that you've got to bring in and then serve. So there's a very interesting insight that I heard from Scott Belsky. [15:10] from Adobe and then now he's doing like [15:13] very interesting stuff. And that kind of stayed with me, which was, you know, how to think about users [15:20] on modern internet consumers, [15:22] having three attributes. [15:23] So they are lazy. [15:24] the event [15:26] and they are selfish. [15:27] So lazy meaning I don't have time for this. [15:31] blow my mind away otherwise I am not going to pay attention. [15:34] when [15:35] which means [15:36] I have a habit. I'm solving this problem in a particular way. And here you come with your two-pack product and ask me to change my habit. Do you really expect me to do that? Second, that's their inherent attribute. And the third one is that they're selfishly. [15:50] Show me what's in it for me. And once you start thinking about users in that way, [15:57] And if these users are not even using your product, suddenly you realize, "Oh my God, it's quite difficult. How do I attract this kind of customer?" [16:05] And if my marketing team has done a good job at bringing this user [16:09] to my product. [16:11] How do I actually empathize with this lazy, selfish and main customer? [16:15] and build my product in a way so that I can make this, we are on your side, like this is the thing that you have to use. The way you write your copy, the way you build your onboarding, the way you do your first warm welcome, it's going to make

[16:29] the biggest amount of change in terms of your product success than your core product features that you're going to build for your loyal consumers. So that one insight and I've seen and applied that multiple times, not only the companies that I worked with, the companies I've consulted and spoken with, most neglected. [16:46] Well, they kind of get user onboarding is important, but just how important is that? [16:50] as one [16:51] and B, which is a craft of thinking like a user who is lazy, vain, and selfish. [16:56] and basically rejecting all your products. This does not work for this kind of customer. It's extremely hard. It's very hard. [17:02] But it's totally worth it if you put that lens on. [17:06] And is there an example of you're using this framework on a product you worked on where you're just like, here's the thing we really did. [17:13] I don't know, it had a big impact or really surprised everyone. [17:15] So I've used it in like two different areas. So one is, of course, products I worked on. So I worked in Swiggy for the last seven years and really when we started working towards this user, [17:26] Instead of thinking about everybody as, you know, this is what our onboarding experience looks like, and this is what our product is. So essentially, we used to basically say that it's [17:36] We are a food delivery app, we are a grocery delivery app, and we have these bunch of things. Instead of that, we just started reframing it from the point of view of [17:44] What would you want and how could you use us? And what is it in it for you? [17:49] and we started connecting all our marketing messages along with the onboarding. So even going out market and thinking, where did you actually find us? How did you know about us? It's a reasonably large brand. Why have you not already downloaded us and used us? Have you used us and rejected us in the past? So kind of building that entire mental model

[18:07] and looking at [18:10] Okay. [18:10] A user from the point of view, let's assume that you have heard about us 20 times. And what was that exact situation that brought you to download this app? [18:20] So right from the entire journey of you hearing us, what was the trigger, and what was the marketing message, and what was the promotion that we were running? [18:28] and how do we continue the journey on your onboarding from your splash, that 200 rupees of X rupees if you buy from us, continuing that entire journey in the language that they understand, [18:40] And with the user experience that is [18:43] continuation from the marketing to product, [18:45] are the things that we started focusing on a lot more, and it instantly started showing us results. But while I'm talking about just a very simple example and everybody should be doing it, that is true even for [18:56] when you haven't [18:57] have a particular app which has multiple products and many product lines. The same principle that applies there. [19:03] And that's where I think [19:05] the largest amount of delta that happens that people don't know really why are we not able to cross-pollinate or cross-sell and so on so forth right now i'm working with a company called jupiter which is a financial services app and it's a neo bank so we care for personal finance and it has a bunch of offerings like there's a personal account or savings account uh there's a credit card there's mutual funds there is investments in in say gold and fb and and so on so forth like [19:35] But when people think about why using us only for one service and just go away. And actually, the key is to recognize that this user has found value in it, and they're not interested in all the other things that you talked about. So be able to empathize.

[19:48] with that user and now thinking about the behavioral science aspects in terms of how do I convert this user from one to the other. [19:56] That, I think, is extremely important. [20:00] So a couple of things I'm hearing here. One is [20:02] The importance of focusing on not people... [20:05] currently using your product, but this idea of maybe the marginal user or the adjacent user, like the next state of users is who you should be. [20:12] thinking about when you're trying to optimize onboarding user experience. [20:17] And then two is something it sounds like you've had a lot of success with is [20:20] Picking one value prop, maybe one positioning. [20:23] statement and then following that through their entire journey versus like, "Here's all the things we do." Is that right? That's absolutely right. Let me give an example of this one. One of the reasons why I really feel product managers must [20:38] if not better but equally understand [20:41] category consumers which are not in market or which are not really looking or which are not buying your products just yet as good as the marketer or the brand expert in your team does because they really are tasked with what is that one message that I can say that will [20:59] Meet the user [21:00] take attention or get to like, "Oh, this is interesting," and direct attention towards your product. And if the product managers are able to do that, [21:09] Then they will choose that positioning and essentially understand what is my hope product and what is the hope that will at least get them [21:16] to try my app or any of those things. So if they understand it as well as a marketer,

[21:24] and then understand [21:26] Bye. [21:27] Over a period of time, what is the right time when I introduce them to this other one rather than being very greedy about letting the user try everything? So that's one. The other thing that I feel is a lot of product managers don't do right is, [21:41] Forget about everything. Here's my app, go figure, is how most of the products are designed, unfortunately. [21:49] automatically these things will happen without any intervention. I have created something which is so beautiful and once you tap that icon, everything will say that is my product that is so [21:58] working perfectly, but they don't really think about at what moment do I actually get this user here and why will they use it. [22:05] But this user is lazy, vain, and selfish. [22:09] That phrase reminds me of something I always think about. Mark Andreessen had this great quote that [22:13] Your user's time is already allocated. [22:15] They're not looking for more apps to download. They already have a plan for the day, basically. They have things to do. They're not like, what's another iPhone app I'm going to check out right now? [22:25] And so somehow you have to convince them this is worth your time and [22:28] I like this framework. Is there an example of a phrase you found really effective? [22:33] in either Swiggy or Jupyter or Flipkart or anything, just like here's a really quick example of something that had a big impact on [22:39] either simplifying the value prop [22:41] Or if you don't have an example on top of mind, what was the impact you saw from [22:46] implementing some of these ideas. [22:47] I'll talk about a phrase that I now use with product managers a lot to kind of simplify how they should be thinking. I think one thing is, and that's not only for the consumers, but even how we operate. We are product managers and we are in the business of influence.

[23:02] Users are doing something and now we want them to do something else. Our engineers are doing something and now we want to influence them into building something fast. Our leadership has some plans. [23:14] where you influence them [23:15] to essentially look at a plan and basically sign off and do something else. We are in the business of influence and you are doing this all the time internally. [23:24] Otherwise, you are not successful even in shipping. [23:27] Now we have to extend this to our users. [23:30] And really think about it from that point of view. [23:32] So you are a full stack influencer and not only an external influencer. So you've got to think more like sales, more like marketing, more like influencers. [23:41] One of the most important skills of a product manager is influencing people on their team. [23:46] I like the point that you're also trying to influence your user. That's interesting. Just more reason to get really good at influence. So... [23:52] I actually have a newsletter about how to get better influence. [23:55] based on Frodo Baggins and Lord of the Rings. We'll link to that in the show notes. [23:59] Okay, let's... [24:00] shift to a different topic. You have a really concrete way of actually implementing the working backwards process. We had one of the authors of the book Working Backwards on recently, and I'm excited to just hear what you've learned about how to actually put this into practice. It's easy to hear about, let's work backwards, but doing it as a different... [24:18] beast. And so I'd love to hear what you've learned there. [24:20] So I think the people who invented working backwards is clearly Amazon. I think they started this entire process, which is like, hey, why don't you write a press release? And with that press release, we'll work backwards from that one. And I thought that was a very cool idea. And I was trying to dig down into like, hey, why does it work?

[24:39] My insight, or at least the way that I thought about this one is, [24:44] It's not working backwards only from a customer value proposition. Will our customers love it and will they [24:49] pay for it and is it noteworthy and is it something that we should even be working? While that is one of the most important things that the working backwards framework teaches us, but essentially what you're working backwards from [25:01] is an entire machinery at a particular day that is working for [25:07] for the date of GTM, what do we need to do from here till that particular day? [25:13] so that the GTM is successful, but also what will be the machinery we would have created so that this product is successful. [25:20] Now because you are already talking about GTM, you are already thinking about [25:23] How will users love it? What is the money that we'll spend? What are the alternatives that we will, routes that we have explored that finally we have zeroed in on and all of those. So they're all going to be a part of a PR review. [25:34] if I have [25:36] take a slightly open stance on this one. What is a press release? A press release is you have a one pager which talks about what are we building, what is a particular date, what is the exact value proposition, what will consumers say, what will the business manager say, how will they respond, how will they use it. [25:55] The one thing that comes out from this framework is that you can use it for a whole bunch of other things. You can use it for negotiation, for example, because you start with a date. [26:04] And then you say, "This is the one page that I need to ship, and I want the engineers to say that." And you can use it to now go to VP Engineer and say,

[26:11] By this date, can we build all of this? Now, they do not have all the PRDs and everything, but they can give you a sense that this is too aggressive or this is not and so on. You can also use the quotes here to actually find alliances or find people who are going to actually derail this. So you actually use the customer quote, which is, I want my customers to say this. [26:31] from marketing and from my pricing team. Can we actually ship this so that consumers will say that? [26:37] And then from the business owners quote, you actually say, this is what we are shipping, but what are your goals? Can you say that within three months we would have achieved this much? And so using that to kind of build one entire picture [26:48] is one way that I found it really powerful. Because if you find disagreements here, then say, "I can't ship it," then you change the date and then you change the goals, because all of these things are changing together. [26:58] So instead of one, you find the other set of all the things that need to come together for the press release to go live is the real value. The other part that I found interesting here is that [27:10] I truly believe in the power of three. I actually ask my [27:15] themes to write pre-press releases, alternative and divergent. [27:19] Like, what if we... [27:20] So suppose you are launching a membership program. So instead of two tiers, let's do three tiers. Or for example, let's seek another one which says instead of, you know, [27:29] Building a membership, let's build a tiering pricing program with membership points. And instead of this segment, let's use another segment. Let's say within these three, and they all need to be fully thought through.

[27:42] And that kind of helps the leadership choose. So the two things that help that work here when you are in the [27:48] in the product discovery phase, you would have heard from a lot of folks. And finally, if you show them just one roadmap, it feels like, hey, this person didn't [27:59] They listened to my interesting point, which was valuable, but they didn't include it. But when you're doing these three PR/FAQs, I was saying to them, "I considered this [28:08] and this added up to a story that eventually is valuable. This alternative route, I considered your point of view, [28:14] And I created a story, but unfortunately, it is not adding up, so we rejected it. So now people can compare and contrast, and that's a very powerful leadership tool. [28:23] And that actually is a very powerful tool even for CXOs. [28:27] And this is... [28:28] Let's build this and say here are three ways we can build this. [28:32] And here's the reason why I'm not building what you said. [28:34] Because you will like these two more. [28:36] That's a really cool idea of just using the PRFAQ and working backwards process to [28:41] think very differently, partly to make sure you've explored all the options, partly to just like [28:46] think through things that are kind of in the back of people's minds and see if there's something there before committing to the One Direction. [28:51] So FAQs also are very important to kind of set processes in the system. For example, if now we are Jupiter, we are a financial services app. So every FAQ will mandatory have, how are we going to make sure that it is fully compliant? [29:03] Have you gotten sign-off from ABC people? Have you actually thought about legal aspects? And so on and so forth. So for example, you can use the FAQs very effectively here. Versus for example, when it was Swiggy and it's a three-way marketplace, you have consumers, delivery executives and restaurant partners.

[29:18] Now, any small change that you do on Google [29:21] on say delivery partners, for example, if you're working on optimizing their earnings per hour, which will lead to some changes in cost per delivery. But that may have a completely different impact on delivery fee. I'm just making this up. But now because of so many moving parts in your FAQs, you'll be explicitly asking, have you thought about what are the implications on restaurant partners? [29:42] have you thought about what are implications on delivery partners? And we, in fact, used to have that PR FAQ in terms of we write down the different segments of delivery partners. And sometimes it will have extremely weird correlations because the product managers on one side of the equation have started [29:57] thinking or at least consulting the other part of the marketplace, what could this mean for you? [30:03] and it gets everybody together to create very crisp products that work for all sides of the marketplace. [30:10] One thread I'm pulling out of a few of your stories so far is you often come back to this full stack. [30:15] approach to many models. So you talked about how PM is like an influencer, but also they're influencing users. That's a cool way of thinking about it. [30:23] with this working backwards process, you can use it to think about the full [30:26] stack of launch, not just what features you're going to build. I know you also have some strong opinions about product managers, and they should be much more full stack than most PMs. [30:35] Does that ring a bell? And if so, can you talk about that? Yes. No, I think it's the same thread that is connecting the first and the second. I think product managers have to be [30:47] have to own outcomes and not only features and parts of the problem. They will own some parts of the problem fully but

[30:56] if they need to work with everybody to make sure that eventual product that they launch is successful and not only successful from the point of view of hey we launched something that works for users etc that's not the definition of success did it work in the way that it really [31:12] change the behavior of the kind of user that we wanted to achieve a business outcome. They will build a capability that is important for us. All of those things combined will not happen if the product manager is only thinking about their part. So they have to think about external users. They have to think about competition. They have to think about other product managers and product leaders, about engineering, about marketing and so on. Because it's such a diverse field. Unless you really, and I'm not saying you need to be an authority of that, [31:42] or you have built partnerships and have run your ideas or product through those people and gotten weighted from them and finally made a decision around that part, I don't think you'll be very successful. So in my opinion, the full stack product managers are the ones who are going to be more successful rather than product managers who are [32:01] doing very good at one particular area only if so there's one book which is [32:06] range. I'm sure you may have heard about it. Even the first chapter, what they talk about, they take two examples. One is the example of Roger Federer. So with Roger Federer, for example, I think I'll just continue that. Till 18, he played like a bunch of racket sports. And this wasn't even tennis. But then you bring in

[32:28] ideas from one racket sport to the other, and second to the third, and so on and so forth. And now you have such a range of ideas that you can connect a lot more dots and actually ship it. I think that's a better playbook for being more successful in product. [32:42] I was just watching a documentary on, I think it was called Greatness, and they had Wayne Gretzky. [32:46] And he had exactly the same experience, actually. When he was young, he played [32:50] Hockey. [32:51] just during winter times and during summer he played other sports and hockey was just like [32:55] one sport he played and then eventually started to focus on it and they talked about how [33:00] People that played different sports in their childhood actually ended up being much better at that one sport they chose. So a lot of parallels. [33:07] I know you also have a lot of interesting ways of thinking about coming up with roadmap ideas and ideating [33:12] and building a roadmap backlog. So you already talked about this idea of going in very divergent directions and seeing if that leads anywhere. [33:19] There's a couple more someone shared. One is you have this idea of show, don't, [33:24] tell what is that actually show don't tell is is an idea which is an extension of what we were talking about is uh from working backwards [33:33] And when we're talking about working backwards, one is a PR FAQ, which is like a written documentation of what we're trying to achieve. Show, don't tell is essentially a way in which the product manager works. [33:44] starts ideating with the entire experience. [33:47] and they actually create all the collaterals together of a user journey to begin with. If you're working on a... [33:54] single player product, which is a single user product.

[33:59] you actually start bringing together your marketers and others and themselves. [34:03] what is literally the first screen and how is my user getting here? [34:08] It's not as simple as we... [34:10] Imagine somebody who will be doing this and reaching here. We try to recreate an exact situation. [34:16] There is a concept of person, not personas. So, we talk about personas, but we try to go to... All right, no, don't think about a general user. Let's say Lenny, 30 years old, doing ABCD things, earning this much, etc. etc. His relationship with this category of food delivery is X. These are the things that he has done in the last month. [34:35] In the last three days, there were the needs, desires, aspirations, fears, frustrations, etc. etc. [34:41] Okay, it's 11 o'clock. What's happened? Why is this user open or what triggered this particular app? And then what happened? So you literally start from there. [34:50] And I think 50% of my product reviews are on that part. And then when we say, all right, then this app got open, do we have the right kind of way forwards for Lenny to actually achieve what he came here for? And literally each pixel and each copy and each word is going to be in service of that part. So that's kind of showing the entire journey rather than just saying and assuming. So that is something that I've found really powerful with respect to even designing products or even thinking about... [35:19] Why are we building something? What it also helps is when we are building complex products especially in marketplaces. [35:25] Because once you are building this for the user, [35:28] Simultaneously, something is happening on the other part, if it is simultaneous, if it's a real-time marketplace or something like that. So you're building something for the user and saying, "Alright, this guy ordered. Now there's a 30 minutes time when a delivery executors will come to the user with food. What is happening? What's the emotional state of the user? And let's plot out the 30 minutes time and let's create various scenarios.

[35:51] It's like, hey, maybe he went to the restaurant and the food is delayed. Or the dude on a bike, his bike got punctured, etc. What is the consumer thinking at this time? So you show all of those things in real time. [36:03] And that cuts out a whole bunch of random ways in which the product could have looked like if you're creating even a chatbot. So just having that... [36:13] showcase of all journeys coming together. [36:16] helps a lot in building your products in the right way. [36:19] So essentially just getting very detailed and very concrete with the product experience that you're building. [36:25] Thinking about the user experience, [36:26] Sounds like a lot of work. [36:28] I can't imagine you do this often. Is the advice here to do this once a year or once and just kind of keep it updated? Sounds like you did this at Swiggy and that was a really impactful way of building the product. [36:40] Yeah, I think this is not only one way, actually. I think I recommend this every product manager to do a show, don't tell version of their current version. And at the same time, there's a new version all the time. So they can compare and contrast and very easily kind of explain everyone why they're doing something. In fact, that wall, it's called the wall. It also becomes one common place where you can get all the stakeholders in. [37:00] Because instead of just doing the elevator pitch, you can actually do detailed discussions on why I'm choosing this versus something else and so on and so forth. That's a product manager's version of doing this. There's also product leader's version of doing this, Lenny, which I call strategy on a page and a lot of people call it growth loops. Don't show a user's journey. Let's see.

[37:21] the entire strategy of the company together on one page. All right, this is what the market looks like, and why will we get what kind of users, and what is our activation budget, and how many of them are we going to get to this next stage and get them to use it? How will we get them to cross-polinate into different sections? Do we need a membership program? Are there any different levers which we'll press more or less and so on? [37:44] So that also is like a show don't tell. [37:46] Usually, I like to create three of them as well. [37:50] Like, [37:51] Why would we choose a strategy versus the other? [37:54] And that, for example, is a very good way for product leaders [37:57] to kind of get [37:58] 2-1 strategy that their CXOs [38:01] Align with? [38:03] and something that they can essentially tell the entire product and other teams, this is what we're going to follow. [38:17] But do you have the tools to bring your ambitious vision to life? Let me tell you about Wix Studio, the new platform that lets agencies deliver exceptional client sites with maximum efficiency. How? First, let's talk about advanced design capabilities. With Wix Studio, you can build unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience and watch as elements scale proportionally by default. No-code animations add sparks of delight while adding custom CSS gives total design control. [38:47] of business solutions, from e-commerce to events, bookings, and more, and extend the capabilities even further with hundreds of APIs and integrations. You know what else? The workflows just make sense. There's the built-in AI tools, the on-canvas collaborating, a centralized workspace, the reuse of assets across sites, the seamless client handover, and that's not all.

[39:09] Find out more at wix.com/studio. [39:13] What kind of impact have you seen from implementing something like this? Or is there an example of something that came out of this that was a big unlock? [39:20] Again, it's probably a lot of work for someone to put together a whole board, keep it updated, screenshots, marketing, funnels of where people are coming from. [39:28] What sort of impact do you see from doing this, either on [39:31] growth or what people think? I think the largest impact that happens here is on alignment. So how CXOs are thinking, if that is not very clear, and that can be a document and so on and so forth. But [39:45] For a lot of people, it's not very clear on, I can see one part of the funnel. I can understand the marketing team and understand the best why we are acquiring those users. But they don't kind of fully see the picture of if I attract this kind of users, why will some these users become loyal? And what does that entire thing look like? Or say some other team which is building a part of the product. Where do I come in? [40:08] So I think the largest impact that [40:11] the show don't tell has is on basically getting the entire company together on the same page, and them being able to understand why I'm doing which part of the entire picture I'm working on, and why others are working on so that I can actually work with them to solve that part. That's one. The other thing that it helps, Lenny, [40:33] It also helps in choosing directions. Like I said, it's [40:36] because we are not doing one but three of them. Why I'm choosing one alternative versus the other?

[40:42] And sometimes these strategic discussions, they can get going like all sorts of different ways. And maybe you will talk about one particular unique point and go deeper. And I will look at the entire picture together and say, this is good because of [40:55] all of these five points that we presented in page one versus the other one. [41:00] I think the other benefit just like one of the benefits of working backwards and Amazon's whole written down memo approach is it forces you to crystallize ideas and not. [41:09] Stay superficial because there's so many good ideas in theory, but then when you have to get really concrete, that's actually a terrible idea. [41:15] Basically, it's the same benefit in a lot of ways of, like, [41:18] Get very concrete. What are you actually going to do? And that'll help you identify, okay, this isn't going to work. What are we even thinking? And so I like that. Awesome. Okay. [41:28] Another framework that you have is something that you call the 4BB framework. [41:32] for a product strategy. Can you talk about what that's all about? We essentially saw that, you know, if a startup actually usually wants to do like a bunch of, [41:42] of things across the board. There's always like, "Hey, I should be investing in tech debt or like building core platforms that will really help my product in the long term." And that's super important. [41:54] And that's my engineering managers and largely people asking for that bandwidth. And then there is the product manager themselves, who is basically saying, I want to do feature enhancement, bug fixes, my version tools, you know, a few areas, experiments, and so on and so forth. [42:10] a regular product backlog that would work on sprint by sprint. Then there's this leadership which will say, "You know what? Now we have a suite of products. Now I want to take a large delta bet that may work. It may not work, but we need to make sure that it works. But I need work done across teams." And it's not only one person that needs to do it. I need contribution from four or five of you that come together and deliver that.

[42:35] Or there are places where a company is just reimagining their identity or they are pivoting. It's just like, "All right, we were doing X. Now we are doing X plus Y. That's how we want to be known." Or, "We were doing X. Now we want to do very little of X because current consumers, okay, we will take care of them." But now we want to [42:53] pivot into OI. So it usually is in four of these buckets. [42:58] What really happens is [43:01] It gets down to product managers eventually prioritizing between these four. [43:05] So I don't think it's a tactical prioritization product manager call. It really is a product strategy call. And the conversation that needs to happen is between, say, the head of product and the CEO or even like the leadership. If I gave you 100 focus points, [43:22] How much will you put in each of these buckets? And what are those four buckets? Those are the four BB buckets. So what are the ones? We call them first BBs, Brilliant Basics. [43:31] At the real time, we call it brilliant basic. You cannot brand it as spec debt, so it feels like very off because these are brilliant, these are important. That's what the company is built on and the company needs to invest in that. So that's one. [43:46] The second one is bread and butter. That's your backlog. If the product managers had no big ideas and they just were left on their own, [43:54] What would they come up with? [43:56] And in terms of just improving that line of business that they're given. And there are big bets. [44:02] And now that's where you're... [44:04] larger ideas that have come together. But how many big bets should we take? Or is this big bet even a big one? That's where you're working backwards or PR/FAQs start becoming even more important. Because those are the kind of bets that cannot be taken without everybody basically signing up, working backwards and saying, "We will all make this successful." And Breaking Bad essentially is a different world altogether. That's where you want to redefine your company. You were doing, for example, in Swiggy, we were doing

[44:34] food delivery. Now we wanted to grocery delivery as well. It's like a, these are two companies working together or from a food delivery company, we wanted to become a convenience company. So that's almost breaking bad. Again, like I said, we got cheesy. But the good thing that happens is now what you can do is along with your leadership, take stock. [44:52] And the head of product essentially can say, "You know what? [44:57] In the next year, I can invest a lot less on my Brilliant Basics. [45:02] And we should as a company focus a lot on this breaking back because that is existential. But then we should not look back and say, [45:09] why were tech systems a little bit broken this time? Why were we had a little bit more down times? And you can basically [45:18] blow it out and almost showcase what to expect. For example, if you are just working on a whole bunch of bread and butters, so you start seeing a lot fewer bugs, customers will be a little happier. You worked a lot more drilling basics, tech systems are nice, but you didn't create any differentiators. Well, none of your bets went out and your competitors are catching up. [45:38] so does that sound like a better future these are hard questions and these prioritization questions i don't think up product management questions so much as product strategy questions but in a lot of cases executors don't know what they're trading [45:51] of against. So if you are able to [45:55] Let's create the conversation around which buckets do we want to put in and create three alternatives. I have kind of tried to do that a bunch of times.

[46:05] look at strategy A and see how to be divergent. Suppose we were putting a lot fewer, you know, [46:11] focus points in Brilliant Basics and a lot more on, for example, [46:16] Big bets. Then there will be a risk that they will be like, we won't have any experiments or very less experiments. We won't have your bugs will stay bugs. We will get a shot at like changing the game. [46:29] Is there a future that is [46:31] That sounds better. [46:32] or something else, which is like, [46:34] because you're pained also by a lot of bugs and constant downtimes, which is more secure, but we won't build something amazing, which sounds better. [46:42] Because you are able to drive that, now the clarity to the product managers is way clearer. [46:47] in terms of what they will do. And also they would know that if they have been signed up for a big bet, then they will need to contribute to the PR/FAQ, they will need to contribute to the actual working of that, irrespective of what their product was. [47:00] but now they are part of something bigger. [47:02] Thank you. [47:03] Awesome. I love it. Okay, so just to summarize so people can... [47:06] have just a very short definition of this framework. Brilliant basics is essentially tech debt and things that you just have to do to hygiene almost. [47:15] Bread and butter is essentially optimizing [47:18] the product, existing product, [47:20] Big bets are big bets. [47:21] And Breaking Bad are just like [47:24] future. [47:25] big rocket like moonshots just like transform the way the business works. [47:29] That's it. [47:30] I love it. It's also interesting, another thread that comes up again and again in your advice is

[47:35] exploring all the options before committing to one. I think it sounds like you always try to recommend three. [47:41] I guess let me say what I always find is important there is I think it's important for the product manager to recommend one along with that. It's not just like, here's three, you tell me which one you do. [47:49] It's like, here's three, here's my recommendation why. [47:52] Is that your advice too or do you see something? -100%, 100%. So when you have explored the three, [47:58] You essentially have done the work on that I have covered all bases and also crystallized them into a concrete option. And now, [48:06] I am choosing one on the company's behalf. [48:09] on the basis of whatever I know about the market, [48:12] about the company, about our strategy, and about how we will make it successful. Now, if I miss something, it's also a time where you can actually work with leadership and other product managers to essentially [48:23] Get that knowledge complete. [48:26] or if you're 80% right, you can actually use [48:30] elements of strategy 2 and strategy 3 to bring into one. So that's always the way that you're thinking that one very concrete option [48:39] But because you have these other two, so that you're not missing and bringing it together. But ultimately, you're the one who is going to champion this. [48:46] That's where the other, you know, [48:48] leadership element of Amazon comes in which is [48:50] disagree and commit. But once we have aligned on this one, we'll all commit to launching this, and then the leadership should not go back and forth on that part. [48:59] Awesome. [49:00] I want to go in a completely different direction. It feels like you have a lot of contrarian opinions about how to build product and how to build teams and build companies and things like that.

[49:09] So I just want to start broad. [49:11] What are some things you have contrarian opinions about, things you believe that a lot of other people maybe don't believe or see differently? [49:20] Excellence and speed. There's always a question around that. Hey, would you rather ship faster? [49:25] or would you rather ship better? In my opinion, when you have to make a choice, [49:31] Think mode. [49:32] and she better. Most experiments should be thought experiments. They should not even be tried out because they're obviously going to fail. [49:40] which is contrary to, let's write out, [49:43] and then let's see. I think that wastes a lot of company time. If you had [49:47] If you had smart people who could do meta-thinking, a lot of experiments would just not even be like [49:54] It's not a rule, but it's a preference. I think a speed and [49:58] Excellence are two different axes. Ideally, you should be better at both, but if you have to choose one, choose excellence. [50:04] There's another contrarian opinion. [50:09] which is I think most product managers [50:13] And again, I'm probably talking a little bit of the kind of people that I've worked with and have interacted with in product. Most product managers should not even be product managers. They should think a little bit more around whether this is actually the right field for them. Because I think [50:30] A lot of people from other areas have entered the field without fully realizing what it takes [50:35] So there is definitely a way in which you can coach yourself and, and, and, [50:39] I'm going to work your way upwards of that one, but it's

[50:42] Yes. [50:43] it can make you quite miserable if you're not kind of [50:47] if it's not right for you. [50:48] Is there something folks should look for there that'll tell them you probably shouldn't be a product manager, either motivation or skill set or background or anything? No, I don't think about particular domains that you come from. I have, again, a simple [51:01] framework of three. I think the first thing is essentially raw sharps and that can manifest itself into problem identification and problem solving. [51:11] That's one. [51:11] and also higher order thinking and all of that. I think that is super important. The second one is what I call drive or grit because I think with that comes a whole bunch of qualities around [51:21] curiosity, learnability, never giving up, [51:24] consumer backward thinking [51:26] I really want to solve this and all of that that comes with that. [51:30] The third difference we talked about is influence. [51:33] You are in the business of influence. And if you can kind of see yourself that I'm [51:38] I'm built this way or I want to really get better at these. [51:42] That's when I think this field is going to serve you well. [51:45] I love that everything is 3. How handy. [51:47] Only the BDs are four. I wish I could compress in three. [51:51] Yeah. [51:53] There's too many things to do there. Essentially, these are maybe your perspective on the most important PM skills. Is that a good way of thinking about it? Influence, grid, and [52:00] just being smart. [52:02] Mm-hmm. [52:03] And I think what you said here is not like you have to be amazing at these to get into product and do well. You need to be excited about getting better. [52:10] Yes. And the skillset. [52:11] That's right. Because I think it's not as if that everybody is born with a lot of influence. Of course, you can get better rated, but just a prospect of that, "Hey, I will need to be influential to succeed at this job," that should excite you and not scare you away. You should not think that, "Hey,

[52:28] You know what, I can get away from this and still be a very successful product manager because most likely you will not. [52:34] Maybe spending a little more time here so smart, you're probably not going to be able to do a lot about. [52:38] In terms of grit or influence, is there anything you can share about what you've seen most helps people develop at these skills? [52:46] other than just doing the job for a while and then starting to get better at this. Yeah, I think even smartness. I think 80% of that smartness, I think, is something that's... [52:56] that's very achievable you don't need to be outstanding on that domain knowledge for example is something just like an average smart person with no domain knowledge versus you with armed with a lot of knowledge around domain and so on can already take you there but you can take better decisions i think first one is more about decision making problem identification problem solving and all of that so i think that really can be developed at least to a level where you are very effective drive i think is is [53:21] Probably the hardest to coach. I have not seen people with less drive actually eventually turning out with a lot of drive, etc. [53:32] but they can be inspired. [53:34] you need to be a person who can think about it that way. But the third one influences, I think, [53:41] There's no negotiation. You need to [53:43] really think that I have to be good at this one. There's another framework that Lenny, I want to talk about. And when I look at product leadership in general, how do you think about different people and so on? When is it a product manager problem or your problem or the company problem? There are only three reasons, again, why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader. And you can look at a person and you would say, either that person can't do it,

[54:11] which is a capability issue [54:12] or they won't do, [54:14] which is a motivation or an alignment issue. [54:17] or they were not set up to do. [54:18] which is really your problem that you didn't set up the ways of working in our design properly, or your OKR structure sucks and so on and so forth. So as a leader, it's almost the opposite of what [54:29] like what we talked about, grit influence and raw shops. [54:34] If the... do you have the right people? [54:37] in terms of capability. [54:39] And if not, [54:40] is the right answer for us to coach them or to like really put them or mentor them and so on, or move them to some other place because maybe their capability suited elsewhere. [54:50] If they won't do, why won't they? [54:52] Are they not aligned to you? Do they not agree with your vision? [54:57] Do they not... [54:58] does have enough time and so on and so forth. So you need to really go deeper there. Why won't they do? And there are different answers for that. But if it's a setup issue, and at least I have realized that [55:09] Apart from what product managers can do, [55:12] Almost 70-80% of problems why things don't happen are a setup issue. [55:18] Product leaders or other leaders have not thought through what OKRs are doing [55:23] to my company, not really fully thought through around org design. If you have read the book called "Team Topologies", that's like one interesting book, which starts with Conway's Law and essentially saying, "Show me an engineering architecture and I will actually tell you what the [55:39] org design of of this company is but that also manifests itself in products that you can basically look at a product.

[55:46] In most cases, you will be able to say what was the org design that led to this kind of product. [55:51] I've heard that book mentioned a couple times recently. I've got to check it out. [55:55] Just the three you just shared, which is another three. I love it. [55:58] Can do, won't do. What was the third one again? Didn't do? [56:01] not setup to do. [56:03] Not set up to do. That one's a long one. I think what's cool about these are, they're essentially ways to measure performance, maybe of a product manager, like performance reviews. [56:12] Did you have the skills to do this? Did you have the motivation to do this? Or did something not... [56:17] set up for you. You weren't set up for success, basically. [56:21] Okay, let's go to AI corner, something I'm trying to do with every guest. Is there anything you've learned about working with AI that you think might be helpful to listeners? Yeah, I think a couple of things. I think working with AI... [56:34] Many, many, many teams and companies get too excited about AI and the possibilities and so on. And it's almost like a solution ready to find a problem within their companies, which also is fine because now you're thinking about possibilities on what this particular technology can do for my company. So it's a good way to start. But many people don't. [56:54] actually [56:56] use it in the best way possible and force fit it. [57:00] Instead of that, you can think about how do I get AI to work with H.I. And again, it's connecting back with, and this is something that Swiggy CEO Harsha invented this term called H.I. just to make sure that everybody understands. [57:13] Artificial intelligence is important as much as human intelligence. And if you are not humanly intelligent,

[57:20] you're not going to be artificially intelligent or yeah really help your company a lot so literally any product that you're building even when it is technologically you know quite interesting and exciting and so on it needs to be balanced out and work together along with a great ux along with behavioral science and the [57:39] and the combination of those two [57:42] will actually make sure that you're getting the best outcome of that, unless you are building something which is completely vacant with no human intervention, consumer products largely. [57:51] You've helped build some of the most successful marketplaces in [57:55] In the end, [57:56] in the world. [57:57] I'm curious just what may be a lesson or two about building a successful marketplace. One thing that I would definitely want to talk about is when you're thinking marketplaces, [58:07] It's not as a 1+1=2, it multiplies. When you think about three-way marketplaces, you almost need to think like, [58:14] It's a two-dimensional plane going into three-dimensional. It becomes that amount of complexity and your regular product management and leadership principles start failing. So a bunch of usual suspects will not work. [58:29] Let me give an example. OKRs will not work. [58:32] Why not? [58:34] So [58:35] Fundamentally, OKRs are a way to think about objectives and key results, but the fundamental assumption here is that it is solving for a kind of user. [58:44] And that kind of user you can divide and conquer, and of course there will be like a little bit of a tussle between different teams, but you can get them to work with each other. But if it is working for three different kind of users, then all the goals will all the time be in conflict with each other.

[59:00] And what are examples of the three users? There's like the delivery person, the restaurant. [59:04] So if you have an example of, on the consumer side, we need to collect more delivery fee. [59:13] What does that really mean for those other two? And on the restaurant side, hey, we need to get more commissions. Profitability is the goal. And on the delivery partner side, it means pay them less or optimize a little bit more. But once you start moving one lever, those two are already stretched towards the other direction. They are not independent levers in the first place. And the way to even model them out, how will it work out if we choose X versus Ys will change, Y and Z, Z will change. [59:41] It's almost impossible to do that. [59:43] So [59:45] I've seen OKS field multiple times when you're running [59:48] this kind of a marketplace big bets work much better [59:51] That's when you say hey, we want to take this bet, but it's all going to be it's all going to come together as if we pull this lever then something else will change. So this is the entire story of let's go make this profitable. [1:00:03] by making [1:00:05] Delivery fee higher but maybe not touching earnings per hour or restaurant commissions. [1:00:11] things like that. So I've at least found that's a better way to, you know, choose strategically which direction we have to go. The other thing is, [1:00:20] managing multiple empathies together. That's not straightforward. So again, Swiggy being like a real-time hyper-local marketplace, and we discuss about that, right? As soon as the order comes, what happens between when user does this and when delivery executive is doing something else, and what are the absolute different kind of scenarios that are going to be faced by the delivery executive? And at the same time, how will I really work with the user to manage their

[1:00:50] together. [1:00:51] And product management here, you cannot have the delivery executive product manager only care about that side. [1:00:58] They also need to be a champion on the consumer side. [1:01:01] and vice versa. [1:01:02] Yeah, I find with marketplaces, Uber went through this, Lyft went through this for the [1:01:06] The supply often just gets squeezed because they need to deliver for the customer. So drivers end up getting hosed. [1:01:13] Airbnb hosts get pushed to do things they may not want to do. Imagine delivery people, same thing. Now that you mentioned Uber, for example, one of the things that [1:01:22] companies which were running you know taxi businesses if you have just one limited pool of money [1:01:28] for example, and you want to [1:01:30] get the marketplace humming with respect to number of orders per day. How do you decide? Should I incentivize my users? [1:01:38] for example, for the first ride, first ten rides and so on, or [1:01:43] Put zero money in there but incentivize my [1:01:45] Drivers. [1:01:46] that [1:01:47] You need to come here. So you have to think about liquidity also in very different ways. And sometimes you need to pull the lever completely towards the other side. So the experiments, the A/B experiments also don't work. And that's a very unique thing about marketplaces. Not work the way that you would expect them to work because there are network effects all over. [1:02:08] So if you have to run A/B experiments on your driver's side, if you put half drivers on A versus half on B, but there is a network effect between the both of them. [1:02:19] When you're trying to decide which side of the marketplace to focus on and prioritize, do you have any kind of...

[1:02:24] lessons or rules of thumb of just focus on the customer and index towards their happiness versus the supply versus the delivery person? There's one thing that I think marketplaces need to realize is that you need to be operating in a stable marketplace. So all sides need to be stable enough so that they're not going to go away. [1:02:42] So I think that's the starting point. And that's an important point. Once we have established that, then after stable marketplace, then we say that which is the kind of customer that we are in the service of, which are the customers that we will really focus on. For example, Amazon is very, very clearly a customer-centric company. [1:02:59] and [1:03:01] And if they have to make a choice, they won't because they need to have a stable marketplace. So sellers also are very as important, but slightly more important than the customer. For example, if you looked at say Taobao or Alibaba, their way of thinking is their aim in life is to create life changing experience for 10 million Chinese sellers. [1:03:21] Bye. [1:03:22] And they will create a marketplace from the point of view of sellers, which can actually sell. Again, they will have the same consumer app and a seller work and so on. They are in the service of sellers. So you really need to derive from the company's vision. I think the way we had thought about it at Sviggy. [1:03:40] We had to clarify in our values that the first value is, initially it used to be customer comes first. But that was very confusing because everybody is a customer. Even a restaurant is a selling customer. We had to clarify that consumer comes first.

[1:03:55] in consumer, which is actually eating food because we're a convenience company. [1:04:00] that delivers to the end consumer. And when you're thinking about restaurants or delivery partners, we work with them because we both are [1:04:10] When you're talking with a delivery partner, Swiggy and the delivery partner, we both are in the service of the customer. So you'll build that app also from that perspective. And even the restaurant side also from that perspective that we both are together in the service of the end customer. [1:04:24] I feel like you have probably a hundred more frameworks and processes and [1:04:27] acronyms we can talk about, but [1:04:30] I know you've got to go. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on or is there anything else you want to leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round? [1:04:38] Just last few words that I want to revise. Work backwards from an amazing future. So first thing is creatively imagine a future and then work backwards from that and essentially think what will make that successful. [1:04:51] and be paranoid about that everything is going to go wrong, and hence I need to just make sure that it all comes together. [1:04:58] Only the paranoid survive. Great advice to leave people with. [1:05:02] We've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions for you. Are you ready? [1:05:06] Yeah. [1:05:08] What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? [1:05:12] One book is "Working Backwards", we covered that. The other one that has shaped my beliefs a lot is called "How Brands Grow" by a professor called Baron Sharpe. There are two parts to it, "How Brands Grow", one and two. That's both very good. The other book which I really love is, and recently Kunal Shah, who is the founder of Cred and Indian Startup, he suggested it is "Luxury Strategy".

[1:05:34] And the reason why I love that book is because it gets into the depth of [1:05:39] of the human psychology behind hierarchies and how lords and kings and, you know, those kind of social hierarchies have shaped how people think about aspirational products and so on. [1:05:50] Highly recommend it. [1:05:52] What's a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed? I really like to do reruns of The Office. So I was trying to think about this. What is the recent movie that I watched? I keep on going back to The Office and some other episode and try to drive a lot of stories from Michael Scott. [1:06:13] And the US one, not the British one, or do you watch both? No, I watch both, but the US one has a lot more seasons. [1:06:21] Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates when you're interviewing product managers specifically? [1:06:26] which are the products where you decide speed is more important versus which are the products where you decide excellence is more important. And I think that gives me... [1:06:35] like a good understanding of their frameworks and why they are designing what and then [1:06:39] We go back into concrete examples where they chose one versus the other. [1:06:44] and then take it from there. [1:06:45] And then what do you look for in a good answer to that question? [1:06:48] I look for essentially their assessment of risk, their assessment of [1:06:55] How important or how well have they assessed the market? [1:06:59] and the competition or the competitive products in that market. And if their answer is, "Let's ship something and we'll find out," and so on, that also gives me basically a point of view that they really don't understand that this product, what they're talking about, which they ship will speed

[1:07:16] is not the "V" part of the MVP, it's not viable or [1:07:21] I don't know how do you call the MLP or whatever, but it's not differentiated enough. [1:07:26] that it can be marketed, it is not worth enough where we can take it to user, it's not going to work for a lazy, selfish user, and maybe that's not the answer towards [1:07:36] speed versus excellence. Versus, for example, there are some products which are very clear, competitive differentiation that we can find. There was a clear market gap. I wanted to launch something even if it is half-baked. No problem. I want to go take it out, get user feedback, iterate and so on. So, [1:07:53] Understanding of the market A, but B also understanding of their core orientation. [1:08:00] Comes back to your ongoing advice of being full stack in a lot of ways, and in this case, being a full stack PM, thinking about marketing, launch and adoption, all those things. [1:08:10] Next question, what is a favorite product you recently discovered that you really like? [1:08:15] The very recent product that I like is called Rise. [1:08:20] It's a sleep tracking app and because I am kind of a half insomniac and for the longest time I was thinking about how can I track this, what am I doing and how can I actually get better at this. [1:08:34] I really like the way that they actually help [1:08:37] It's been a week since I started using it. [1:08:40] What would I recommend it? [1:08:41] Has that helped your sleep yet or too soon to say? It's helped me track my sleep. And now it's getting into the zone where it is actionable, but I like it. Okay, we'll see.

[1:08:53] Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, like to share with people, kind of think about in either work or life? I would call it a life motto as much, but one of the things that I keep telling people [1:09:05] Like, you know, my... [1:09:07] people who work with me, alongside me and so on. Stop externalizing, that's one, which also means [1:09:15] The more artistic way to say that is, you are the reason for your own misery. So that's something that I keep using a lot more in a fun way. But if things go wrong, if that leadership meeting didn't happen that way, if my product bombed and so on, go back and let's ask ourselves, [1:09:31] what could we have done better, what I could have done better and so on. And of course, because I'm also a poker player, so in a way, I understand there is half luck involved and half skill. [1:09:40] But over a long period of time, if it's only luck and you're failing and failing and failing, you have to go and look back at your skill. [1:09:46] So, [1:09:48] You are the reason for your own misery. [1:09:50] I love that advice. Be very empowering and be responsible. [1:09:54] Final question. I was stalking your LinkedIn. You host an event called the Secret [1:09:59] Secret Soiree [1:10:00] It's not that secret because you post about it, but I'm curious, what is that all about? And what got you to do these sorts of events? So we just started, like me and an ex-cilleur of Mind Shivangi. [1:10:13] We essentially wanted to meet cool people around. So that's how it started. Like interesting people without Agenda who can come together and discuss... [1:10:22] interesting stuff about entrepreneurship, about startups, about products, about connections, and so on and so forth. So it just started like that. And now we are on to many, many more interesting things that we are bringing in in terms of cohorts.

[1:10:36] and which will be team-based. So it could be around product management, around marketing, around growth, and so on. We are strictly giving it not-for-profit for at least the next year. [1:10:48] but but long way to go. [1:10:51] Amazing. And so for listeners, is this something they could join? Who should look into this? Who is this for? [1:10:56] Absolutely. At that time, probably we'll not call it the secret, sorry, once they have expanded. No longer secret. [1:11:03] Okay, cool. And then I guess they just follow you on LinkedIn, right? That's how they can keep up to date with these sorts of events. Okay, cool. Yes. On LinkedIn as well as on Twitter. [1:11:12] Awesome. Anuj, we've gone through so many topics. We've talked about [1:11:17] Breaking Bad and [1:11:19] full stack product management, full stack thinking, working backwards, [1:11:23] bread and butter, rule of threes, I don't know, so many things. [1:11:26] Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and follow up on anything we've talked about? And how can listeners be useful to you? [1:11:33] Yes, so I'm on Twitter. So on [1:11:36] Twitter.com/anujrati. [1:11:38] LinkedIn, you can just search my name. I'm pretty active on both of them. I do a bunch of [1:11:45] not podcasts all the time like you host Lenny, but a bunch of other events as well as docs. [1:11:53] Keep on posting on Twitter. We can find you there. [1:11:55] Thank you. [1:11:55] Amazing. Anuj, thank you so much for being here. [1:11:59] Thank you so much Lenny for hosting. [1:12:01] It's my pleasure. Bye, everyone.