20Product: Sequoia's Product-Market Fit Framework | Why the Best Product People Actually Build Less Product | Metrics 101, Good vs Great Product Strategy and more with Vickie Peng, Product Partner @ Sequoia Capital
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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:
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Lessons from 15 Years in Product
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How did Vickie make her way into the world of product?
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How did Vickie turn a small side business into a massive revenue machine at TrialPay?
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How did Vickie scale Instagram SMB ads to $1BN? What were her takeaways?
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What was Vickie’s business model at Polyvore that eventually led to the $200M acquisition by Yahoo?
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Lessons from Scaling 100+ Companies in Sequoia
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What does Vickie believe are the biggest mistakes early stage founders make when telling stories?
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Which 2 components does Vickie believe every great product mission should include?
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How should pre-product-market fit founders set their north star metric?
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Perfecting Product Strategy
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What was Vickie’s biggest product mistake? What were her lessons?
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Why does Vickie think the best product people build less product?
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What is Vickie’s advice to product leaders starting their first day on the job?
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What are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring product teams?
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Product-Market Fit Masterclass
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Why does Vickie believe product-market fit is a journey not a destination?
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What are the biggest reasons founders fail to get product-market fit?
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What are the 3 types of product-market fit?
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How does Vickie advise founders to differentiate themselves in competitive markets?
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What is Vickie’s framework for competing against incumbents?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So pre-product market fit, the strong advice to pick a number that represents customer happiness. |
| 0:05.0 | I recommend not using MPS. I recommend using a metric that's specifically an action in your product. |
| 0:10.7 | So imagine any time this user takes an ad this action, they're pressing a button that says, |
| 0:15.2 | this product is great. I love this product. Or I'm using this product. So it could be an API call. |
| 0:19.5 | It could be a dashboard that's created. |
| 0:21.7 | You are almost always going to overestimate the amount that you need to build to actually learn the |
| 0:27.0 | thing that you want to learn. You are listening to 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, 20 Product is the |
| 0:31.8 | monthly show where we sit down with the best product leaders in the world to discuss how they think |
| 0:36.4 | about building the best product teams. Today we have Vicky they think about building the best product teams. |
| 0:38.8 | Today we have Vicky Peng joining us in the Hot Seed. |
| 0:41.8 | Now, Vicky is a product partner at Sequoia and the co-creator of ARC, their company building |
| 0:46.7 | immersion program for pre-seed and seed stage founders. |
| 0:50.0 | Before Sequoia, Vicki was a product manager at Polyvore, which was acquired by Yahoo for $200 million. |
| 0:55.0 | And before that was at Instagram, where she grew SMB advertising from $200 million to a billion. |
| 1:02.0 | But before we dive into the show today, we're all trying to grow our businesses here. |
| 1:06.0 | So let's be real for a second. |
| 1:08.0 | We all know that your website shouldn't be this static asset. It should |
| 1:11.6 | be a dynamic part of your strategy that really drives conversions. That's marketing 101. But |
| 1:17.5 | here's a number for you. 54% of leaders say web updates take too long. That's over half of you |
| 1:24.2 | listening right now. And that's where WebFlow comes in. Their visual first |
| 1:28.0 | platform allows you to build, launch and manage web experiences fast. That means you can set |
| 1:33.5 | ambitious marketing goals, and your site can rise to the challenge. Plus, Webflow allows |
... |
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