Hi and welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Caroline Horn, and in this episode, we talk about how founders hire a VP of product management.

A lot of founders tell us that this can be the most emotional role to hire.

I often say it's like letting someone hold your baby for the first time.

So in this conversation, based on an event held last year, we talk about the challenges of what to consider and the process of hiring a VP of product management.

The conversation, moderated by A16Z general partner Martine Casado, included in the order in which you'll hear their voices.

Vijay Balasubaramanian, founder, CEO of Pindrop. Alan Schaff, founder and CEO of Imager.

Gokal Rajaram, product engineering lead at Square.

And Shashir Mahotra, founder and CEO at Koda.

I thought maybe what we'll start with is like your high-level philosophy is about product management.

One of the people that I talked to when I was

hiring my first VP of product was the VP of products at LinkedIn, Deep Nishart, and he said,

a good VP of product is someone who has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer,

and the tongue of a diplomat. And I think that's, you know, a pretty well-put thing. And if you actually deconstructed, it's actually very, very true, right?

You have so many different stakeholders.

You need to corral them all, but more importantly, you need to get shit done, right?

I'll add to that great VPs of product also build great teams, right?

So hiring is the other part of it.

But ultimately, you know, in terms of

scope, I almost view product as a support role to all of these functions, right? Sales, marketing,

customer success, your actual customers, engineering. And so it's a really, really important

role. There's different types of users.

There's the marketing team.

...