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Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

51.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sanchan Saxena is VP of Product at Coinbase. Before Coinbase, Sanchan was Head of Product and GM at Airbnb, founder and Head of Product of Instagram Shopping, Director of Product Management at Yahoo, and Lead PM at Microsoft.

Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Dovetail: https://dovetailapp.com/lenny

• Persona: https://withpersona.com/lenny

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

In this episode, you’ll learn:

[3:50] How Sanchan worked his way up to VP of Product at Coinbase

[6:15] Sanchan’s best advice to early-stage PMs

[9:41] What to look for in a company to join

[12:09] What Sanchan learned from Airbnb

[16:40] Behind the scenes of how Airbnb survived the Covid downturn when travel completely stopped

[21:49] How Airbnb tactically planned in two-week cycles

[25:00] How to keep morale up during a disaster

[29:00] What Sanchan learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom

[36:08] How to know when to trust your gut vs. A/B testing

[41:57] How Coinbase makes decisions

[46:30] How teams use the RAPID decision-making process

[47:00] How to operate in an ambiguous industry like web3

[49:00] How to know if you should get into web3

[51:46] How to hire and close amazing candidates

[54:40] What to look for in product leaders

[57:13] Lightning round

Where to find Sanchan:

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

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



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

I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to work with Sanchin while I was at Airbeam B.

0:06.6

He joined Airbeam B as the director of product and quickly moved up the ranks to head of product

0:11.1

for all of Airbeam B. Before Air. Before Airbnb he spent almost four years at

0:14.8

Instagram as head of product for Instagram ads and then he created and led the

0:18.8

Instagram shopping product in team. Before that he was director of product at Yahoo and a PM at Microsoft and and

0:23.4

before that he was director of product at Yahoo and a PM at Microsoft and today he's the vepar product at

0:26.9

coin days. I don't think I've worked with a harder working PM

0:29.9

particularly someone who's incredibly kind and nice and generous.

0:34.0

In my conversation with Sanchin, we cover what he's learned from working with

0:38.0

some of today's best CEOs, including Brineski,

0:41.0

Brian Armstrong, Zuck and Kevin Sistram.

0:43.7

But it was like Inside Airbeam Bue when COVID hit

0:45.8

and how they made it through travel completely stopping.

0:48.9

How to set up your product development process at a startup,

0:51.4

tips for hiring amazing product managers, when to hire your first PM,

0:55.7

when to A-B test and when not to, and so much more.

0:59.0

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

1:10.0

So many product managers are basically treated like project managers. You get hired thinking that you'll be deep in product strategy and vision and

1:13.9

getting to know your customers only to wind up organizing other people's work and

1:17.4

are finding backlogs and optimizing tiny tiny features. If this sounds

1:21.7

familiar you need dovetail, because Dovetail gets that the true

1:25.5

heart of product management is understanding what customers want, why they want it, and how to give it to them.

...

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