20 Product: Scott Belsky on How to Hire Your Product Leader and Team, 3 Questions All Great Product Leaders Ask, How To Structure and Run Effective Product Reviews & Is Product More Art or Science?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and currently serves as Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. Scott oversees all of product and engineering for Creative Cloud, as well as design for Adobe. In 2006, Scott founded Behance, the leading online platform for the creative industry, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Behance now has over 25M members. Scott is also an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, Sweetgreen, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and several others. Finally, if that was not enough, Scott is the author of two national bestselling books - Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle.
In Today’s Episode with Scott Belsky You Will Learn:
1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality:
- What does Scott believe is the core challenge in product?
- What was the single biggest product challenge Scott faced at Behance? How did they overcome it?
- When should product teams listen to customer feedback vs ignore it?
- What are the core questions product teams should ask user groups to extract the most feedback and value?
2.) The Importance of the First Mile:
- What does Scott believe makes a great first mile when it comes to the product experience?
- Where do so many companies go wrong in creating the first mile user experience?
- Which company at scale has retained this simplicity of the first mile? How did they do it?
- What does Scott mean when he says, "the devil is in the defaults"? What can product teams learn from this?
3.) The Makings of a Great Product Leader:
- What are the 3 core questions every great product leader should ask on every screen?
- How do the best product leaders structure product reviews?
- Who is invited to product reviews? How often are they? Who sets the agenda? When is it sent?
- What do the best product leaders do to retain direction and productivity in reviews when there are many people and many ideas? How do they stay on track?
4.) The Hirings of a Great Product Team:
- How can founders know whether to hire the product leader or retain the role? When is the right time?
- What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first product hires?
- How should founders structure the hiring process for product hires? What should they look to gain from each interview?
- What are the must ask questions in those interviews? How do the best respond?
- What case studies or physical tests can be done to determine the quality of a candidate?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I have said it before, but in seven years of running 20 VC, I've never been more excited to do what I do. |
| 0:05.0 | It started with 20 growth, then we expanded to 20 sales, and today our first 20 product. |
| 0:10.5 | Taking you inside the minds of some of the world's best product leaders. |
| 0:14.1 | 20, the media company, is eating the operational stack of company building, |
| 0:18.2 | teaching you how to build great organizations from functional leaders |
| 0:21.8 | that have done it before. There is literally no one that I wanted more for our first 20 product |
| 0:25.9 | episode, a longtime friend, co-investor, and so thrilled to welcome Scott Belski to the hot seat. |
| 0:31.1 | Scott is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and currently serves as Adobe's chief product officer, |
| 0:36.1 | an executive vice president of the creative cloud. |
| 0:38.7 | There, Scott oversees all of product and engineering for the creative cloud, as well as design for Adobe. |
| 0:44.0 | In 2006, Scott founded Behance, the leading online platform for the creative industry, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. |
| 0:52.9 | Today, Behance has over 25 million members. Scots also an early |
| 0:56.9 | advisor and incredible investor in companies like Pinterest, Uber, Sweet Green Carter, Flexport, Airtable. |
| 1:03.8 | I mean, what an incredible portfolio. And if that wasn't enough, Scots also the author of two |
| 1:07.8 | national bestselling books, making ideas happen, and one of my |
| 1:10.9 | absolute favourites, the messy middle. I do also want to say a huge thank you to both Tony Fidel and |
| 1:16.0 | Lenny Rajitsky. Some amazing question suggestions today. They really did make such a difference. |
| 1:20.8 | But before we dive into the show today, 20 product is obviously all about product, and product managers |
| 1:26.8 | love product board, and product managers love product board and product leaders |
| 1:28.9 | trust product board to help them create products that matter from startups to industry titans over |
| 1:34.4 | 5,000 companies including Microsoft Zoom, UIPath and GameSight rely on product board to get the right |
| 1:40.9 | products to market faster product board can help you create a scalable, transparent and standardized process so your |
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