20Product: Slack CPO Noah Weiss on How to Master Product-Led-Growth, The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling Into Enterprise & What Needs to Change with your Product, Team and Processes when Scaling From PLG to Enterprise

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Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Noah Weiss is the Chief Product Officer of Slack, overseeing the product team’s strategy and development. Over his seven years at Slack, Noah has led various parts of the product organization, including the self-service SMB business and product-led growth; the Virtual HQ team that launched huddles and clips; and the search and machine learning teams. Prior to Slack, Noah served as SVP of Product and Analytics at Foursquare. He started his career at Google leading the structured data search team and working on display ads.

In Today's Episode with Noah Weiss We Discuss:

1.) Entry into Product and Road to Slack CPO:

How did Noah make his first foray into the world of product with Google?
What are 1-2 of his single biggest takeaways from his time with Google and Foursquare?
What model did Noah learn at Google that he applies to product today?

2.) Product 101: The Foundations:

Is product more art or science? If Noah were to put a number on it what would it be?
What are product principles? What makes good vs bad product principles?
What are the biggest mistakes that founders make when instilling product principles?
Does Noah believe with Gustav Soderstrom, "talk is cheap and so we should do more of it"?

3.) How to Master Product-Led-Growth:

What are some of Noah's biggest lessons on how to master PLG?
What are the biggest mistakes Noah sees early stage founders make today when going for the PLG approach? How does he advise them?
When is the right time to move into enterprise? What needs to change?
How do you change who you build product for? The buyer or the user?
Why does Noah believe product speed will always be the most important thing in product?

4.) The Internals of Slack:

How does Slack do post-mortems today? Who comes? Who sets the agenda? How has this changed in a world of remote? What does it take to do them well?
How do Slack do product testing pre-launch of new products? Do they know when something is going to be a hit? What did they think would be a massive hit that turned into a flop?
What does Noah believe is the biggest near death product experience for Slack? What happened? How did they get through it?
Why do Slack buy other companies? How do they think through the decision of buy vs build?
When do acquisitions work? When do they not work?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The most important feature by far for any product is actually speed. Above all else,
0:05.7	that's like the oxygen for a good product experience. I think we're good at talent integration.
0:11.3	I think we struggle at product and technical integration. This is 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:16.2	Now 20 Product is the monthly show where we sit down with the best CPO's in the world to hear how they start, scale and manage the best product teams in the world.
0:24.6	And we have the incredible NOAA Vice, CPU at Slack in the Hot Seat today.
0:28.6	Now over his seven years at Slack, NOAA has led various parts of the product talk, including the self-service SMB business and the PLG growth engine,
0:36.6	the Virtual HQ team that launched huddles and
0:39.1	clips and the search and machine learning teams. And prior to Slack, Noah served as SVP of product
0:44.4	and analytics at Foursquare, and he started his career at Google, leading the structured
0:48.9	data search team and working on display ads. But before we dive into the show today, this episode
0:54.0	is brought to you by Linear.
0:55.4	Let's be honest, the issue tracker you are using today, it's not very helpful.
0:59.4	Well, Linear is different.
1:00.6	It's incredibly fast, beautifully designed, and it comes with powerful workflows that streamline
1:05.3	your entire product development process.
1:07.5	From issue tracking, all the way to managing product roadmaps.
1:10.8	Linear is designed for the way
1:11.9	modern software teams work. It's powerful workflows that you customize and automate processes
1:16.9	to fit your team's unique needs, and they have integrations with your favorite tools like
1:21.7	GitHub, Slack, and it takes just minutes to set up. Linear is the default tool of choice for
1:27.3	high- performance teams,
1:28.6	from startups to a wide range of large established companies like Vasell, Retool and Cash app.
	...

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