An inside look at how Miro builds product: Lessons on outmaneuvering competitors, team structure, product quality, and moving fast | Varun Parmar (CPO of Miro)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brought to you by Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life | Braintrust—For when you needed talent, yesterday | Linear—The new standard for modern software development

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Varun Parmar is the Chief Product Officer of Miro and has over two decades of experience in the tech industry. Prior to joining Miro, Varun held executive positions as Chief Product Officer at Box and Syncplicity (acquired by Dell EMC) and spent six years in product management at Adobe. He also co-founded Doculus, which was later acquired by Box. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• The importance of empathy and how to foster it

• The “AMPED” structure for cross-functional product teams

• How to move fast and stay ahead of the competition

• Powerful product and design rituals

• How Miro acquired their first 1,000 users

• How Miro successfully added a sales motion

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/an-inside-look-at-how-miro-builds-product-lessons-on-outmaneuvering-competitors-team-structure-product-quality-and-moving-fast-varun-parmar-cpo-of-miro/#transcript

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Where to find Varun Parmar:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vparmar230

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vparmar/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Varun’s background

(04:08) How Miro operates as a cross-cultural product team

(07:22) How applying empathy helped Miro build Miro Talktrack

(11:51) What makes Miro stand out

(17:08) Miro’s AMPED structure

(22:57) The benefit of having product marketing as a part of the cross-functional team

(25:24) How competition affects growth and product strategy

(31:43) Why speed is so important and how to improve it

(34:21) How Miro ensures that their products meet quality standards

(37:19) How to remove blockers

(47:22) Miro’s product development process

(53:34) How OKRs work at Miro

(55:55) The product stack at Miro

(1:01:20) Big bets vs. maintenance and bug fixes at Miro

(1:03:44) The “three horizons” framework

(1:04:30) The importance of accountability

(1:10:46) How Miro got their first 1,000 users

(1:12:33) Other growth levers at Miro

(1:15:53) Adding a sales motion

(1:18:08) Miro AI, and new updates and enhancements coming soon

(1:20:12) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Miro: https://miro.com/

• Miro Talktrack: https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/7825622973330-Miro-Talktrack-board-recordings-BETA-

• The design sprint: https://www.thesprintbook.com/the-design-sprint

• Jake Knapp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-knapp/

• Miroverse: https://miro.com/miroverse/

• Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity: https://www.amazon.com/Amp-Unlocking-Hypergrowth-Expectations-Intensity/dp/1119836115

• Reinforcement learning: https://towardsdatascience.com/reinforcement-learning-101-e24b50e1d292

• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

• Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

• Coda: https://coda.io/

• Looker: https://www.looker.com/google-cloud/

• Productboard: https://www.productboard.com/

• Three horizons framework: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-three-horizons-of-growth

• Capterra: https://www.capterra.com/

• Elena Verna on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/elena-verna-on-how-b2b-growth-is-changing-product-led-growth-product-led-sales-why-you-should-go-freemium-not-trial-what-features-to-make-free-and-much-more/

• Barbra Gago on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/category-creation-and-brand-building-barbra-gago-pando-miro-greenhouse-culture-amp/

• FIFA World Cup template: https://miro.com/miroverse/fifa-world-cup-2022-editable-bracket-diagrams/

• When Breath Becomes Air: https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X/

• Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone: https://www.amazon.com/Hit-Refresh-Rediscover-Microsofts-Everyone/dp/0062652508/

• Ted Lasso on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/ted-lasso/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and you're
0:05.3	releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you're making the product worse,
0:10.9	but the products never remain same and so with every
0:13.3	release that your competitor is making and every release that you're making you
0:18.0	know making chess points moves against them positive points or are you going
0:21.9	negative and I think like that framework it actually
0:24.9	drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of what you're doing and what the impact is going
0:30.0	to be. Welcome to Lenny's podcast. and
0:37.0	and growth experts to learn from their hard-win experiences building and growing
0:40.3	today's most successful products.
0:42.0	Today my guest is Varun
0:43.2	Parma. Varun is chief product officer at Miro and prior to Miro he was senior
0:47.8	vice president and chief product officer at Box. As I share with Varun at the
0:52.1	start of our chat I've always been really curious about the product culture at Miro,
0:56.0	partly because everyone I've ever met for Miro has been super interesting and super smart,
1:00.0	and partly because they've been able to grow as a business and a product in an incredibly
1:05.4	competitive market. In our conversation we get really deep into the product values and principles
1:10.8	at Miro, their product development process, how Varun approaches competitive threats,
1:15.9	how a bi-monthly company-wide product demo ritual led to saving months of engineering work on
1:21.2	a feature, plus insights into how Murro got started, how they grow today,
1:26.4	and what their product team has learned about working with a large sales org.
1:29.7	Varun is amazing, I learned a lot, and I hope you find it as interesting as I did. With that, I bring you
	...

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