Lessons on building product sense, navigating AI, optimizing the first mile, and making it through the messy middle | Scott Belsky (Adobe, Behance)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brought to you by Braintrust—For when you needed talent, yesterday | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Rows—The spreadsheet where data comes to life

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Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and currently Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Design and Emerging Products. He founded Behance, an online platform for creative professionals to showcase and discover work, and served as CEO until its acquisition by Adobe. Scott is an early advisor and investor in several businesses at the intersection of technology and design, including Pinterest, Uber, Warby Parker, Airtable, and Flexport. He is also the author of two nationally bestselling books and founded 99U, a publication and conference focused on productivity in the creative world. In today’s episode, we discuss:

* How to strengthen your product sense

* Why you should only do half the things you want

* What it takes to build a successful consumer product

* Why you are probably underinvesting in onboarding

* The future of AI and how to prepare for it

* Advice for founders and PMs who are feeling stuck

* Why resourcefulness will take you further than resources

* Adobe’s current priorities and their exciting path ahead

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-on-building-product-sense-navigating-ai-optimizing-the-first-mile-and-making-it-through-the-messy-middle-scott-belsky-adobe-behance/#transcript

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Where to find Scott Belsky:

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

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

• Blog: https://www.implications.com/

• Website: www.scottbelsky.com/

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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) Scott’s background

(04:50) Why Scott shifted roles at Adobe

(08:29) Advice for PMs looking to build product sense

(10:43) The first mile

(13:18) How to develop more empathy

(16:33) How to build consumer products that work

(20:42) Scott’s philosophy that you should “only do half the things you want to do”

(26:15) Scott’s optimism about how the world will look in five years with AI

(29:44) How AI will impact product teams

(32:55) How the PM role will change as a result of AI

(35:09) How Adobe is leveraging AI tools

(36:59) What the term “golden gut” means

(38:15) Advice for PMs to stay ahead of the new AI trends

(41:02) How to start writing more

(41:49) The messy middle

(47:03) What Scott looks for as an angel investor

(50:16) Why resourcefulness will take you further than resources

(52:41) Adobe’s current priorities and the path ahead

(54:58) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/

• Behance: https://www.behance.net/

• Casey Winters on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/thinking-beyond-frameworks-casey-winters-pinterest-eventbrite-airbnb-tinder-canva-reddit-grubhub/

• Crafting The First Mile Of Product: https://medium.com/positiveslope/crafting-the-first-mile-of-product-7ed25e8f1027

• Shishir Mehrotra on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-rituals-of-great-teams-shishir-mehrotra-coda-youtube-microsoft/

• Scott’s tweet on only doing half the things you want to do: https://twitter.com/scottbelsky/status/1441469886975279109?s=20

• Matt Mochary on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-fire-people-with-grace-work-through-fear-and-nurture-innovation-matt-mochary-ceo-coach/

• Adobe Firefly: https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly

• Howie Liu (CEO at Airtable): https://www.linkedin.com/in/howieliu/

• ChatGPT: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt

• The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky: https://www.amazon.com/Messy-Middle-Finding-Through-Hardest/dp/0735218072

• Adobe Express: https://www.adobe.com/express

• Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Unorthodox-Guide-Making-Things/dp/0063046067

• Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey on Netflix: https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Cosmos-A-Spacetime-Odyssey/80004448

• Vinod Khosla’s prediction: https://futurism.com/80-of-it-jobs-can-be-replaced-by-automation-and-its-exciting

• Queue: https://www.queue.co/

• Tome: https://tome.app/

• Kevin Kelly on The Tim Ferriss Show: https://tim.blog/2014/08/29/kevin-kelly/

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

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Yeah, you know, I've had this conversation quite a few times over the years with founders and friends who were running a company going sideways or worse and have had this question. Should I continue or not?
0:11.0	I always have the same answer. I basically say how much conviction do you have in the solution you're building. I know in the beginning, before you knew all you know now, you had tons of of conviction that's what caused you to leave your job
0:24.6	now knowing all you know do you have more or less conviction in the problem and and the
0:30.0	solution you're building and I'll tell you like I get different answers. You know some people are like oh
0:34.3	Scott I mean I have more conviction like all that I've learned all the validation I've
0:38.7	received from customers we just haven't figured it out yet. It's driving me crazy. We've tried three times and it's still like each product fails, but I have more conviction than ever before and for those people I'm like you know what you're just in the messy middle stick with it. You know this is this is par for the course. But, you know, oftentimes I'll hear honestly if I knew now, would I, if I knew then what I know now, I would not have done this. Like, holy shit, I'm like, then quit quit like your life is short you have a great
1:04.9	team pivot do something completely different if you've lost conviction you should not
1:09.3	be doing what you're doing in the world of entrepreneurship.
1:12.8	Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts
1:19.8	to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products.
1:24.1	Today my guest is Scott Belsky. Scott is an absolute product legend. He's a former
1:30.0	founder starting a company called BeHants that he sold to Adobe where he worked up the
1:34.5	ranks to chief product officer and more recently to chief strategy officer and
1:38.9	executive vice president of design and Emerging Products.
1:42.8	He's also an author of the beloved book, The Messy Middle.
1:46.2	He's also an angel investor in companies like Pinterest, Uber,
1:49.4	Air Table, Flexport, Warby Parker, and many more. In our wide-ranging conversation, Scott shares his advice on how
1:56.7	to build product sense, why you should only build half the features that you want, what it takes
2:02.0	to build a successful consumer product, and we spend a lot of time on how AI is likely to change the world of product and the world broadly.
2:10.0	Scott is such an insightful and articulate thinker and I learned a lot from this
2:14.0	conversation. With that I bring you Scott Bellsky after a short word from our
2:18.6	sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Braintrust, where the world's most innovative companies go to find talent fast so that they innovate faster.
	...

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