How to build trust and grow as a product leader | Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack, Instacart, Zynga, Pixar)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2022

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fareed Mosavat is Chief Development Officer at Reforge, where he leads production, content, and new-product experiences. Previously, he led growth and product teams at Slack and Instacart, was a GM at Zynga, and also served as VP of Product at RunKeeper. Before all of that, Fareed’s fascinating career began in engineering for Pixar, where he learned the art of storytelling and collaboration. In today’s episode, we talk about how his time at Pixar influenced the way he thinks about product, why it’s so difficult to become a better PM, and how to avoid the “manager death spiral.” Fareed shares important insights on how to earn the trust of your manager and coworkers, the four types of product work—and why you need to understand all four. He also provides solid examples of how to generalize your learnings and explains why this will expand your options, make you a better PM, and boost your chances of moving into a leadership role.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/how-to-build-trust-and-grow-as-a-product-leader-fareed-mosavat-reforge-slack-instacart-zynga-pixar/#transcript

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Where to find Fareed Mosavat:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/far33d

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

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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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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Coda: http://coda.io/lenny

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny

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Referenced:

• Naval Ravikant’s Twitter thread about specific knowledge: https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002104865919664128

• Merci Grace on Lenny’s podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/merci-grace-ex-head-of-growth-at-slack-on-plg-interviewing-storytelling-building-a-diverse-team-hiring-salespeople-building-a-growth-team-and-much-more/

• “Crossing the Canyon: Product Manager to Product Leader,” by Fareed Mosavat and Casey Winters: https://www.reforge.com/blog/crossing-the-canyon-product-manager-to-product-leader

• Casey Winters on Lenny’s podcast: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/how-to-sell-your-ideas-and-rise-within-your-company-casey-winters-eventbrite/

• Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:38) Fareed’s background

(03:55) Lessons from Pixar

(09:07) What Fareed does at Reforge

(11:57) The scale of Reforge at this time

(13:51) Why it’s so difficult to become a better PM

(18:03) A PM pie chart—execution, generalizing your solutions, communication, and scaling

(23:00) How creating trust helped Fareed’s career grow

(26:24) How to gain trust by leveraging your curiosity and communication skills

(33:50) How to move from PM to Product Lead

(36:43) The manager death spiral and how to avoid it

(40:43) The four types of product work

(44:13) Moving from IC to product manager

(47:15) How to ask for the proper resources

(50:00) The trend of senior PMs diversifying into advising, teaching, and angel investing

(57:20) The downsides of being your own boss

(01:00:45) Advice for breaking into advising

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You can't do homework, you can't do exercises, you can't do fake stuff.
0:04.8	You have to work on real products at real companies,
0:08.4	with real customers, with real data to get better at product management. And so any kind of like training, mentorship, reading, etc that you do is just the layer on top of that. The real acceleration happens from doing it and getting more reps.
0:24.0	There are ways that I think great PMs use to go faster on this loop,
0:29.7	but you still have to do the work.
0:32.1	At the core is, you have to actually execute and deliver great products.
0:35.6	You have to do it over and over and over again.
0:38.0	For Reed, Mosavot is the chief development officer at Reforge where he's been for over two and half years.
0:46.0	Before that he's spent three and a half years at Slack, leading a lot of their growth efforts.
0:50.0	About a year at Instacart, leading a number of their key growth analytics and product efforts.
0:55.0	He was a GM at Zinga, his VPF product at Runkeeper, and something that I only learned during her
1:00.5	chat is that he spent six years at Pixar doing character simulation,
1:04.0	rigging, and building 3D animation tools. In our conversation, we focus on the
1:09.2	journey of becoming a great PM, including crossing the canyon from IC to manager, the importance of expanding
1:16.0	our scope, and how to create opportunities where you get more responsibility as a PM.
1:21.6	Fareed is such an 8-plus human full of so much insight and I'm really excited for you to learn from.
1:28.0	With that I bring you Farid, most of us.
1:30.0	This episode is brought to you by Koda.
1:34.0	Koda is an all-in-one doc that combines the best of documents,
1:38.0	spreadsheets, and apps in one place.
1:40.0	I actually use Koda every single day.
1:42.0	It's my home base for organizing my newsletter writing.
	...

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