David Meyer: Why You Should Hire People Who Aren’t In Product Already | E1076

Harry Stebbings 0:00 Do you think product managers today are worse than they were years ago? (drum roll)

David Meyer 0:03 On average, yes. Because I don't like happy customers. Because the opportunity to shift reality in the meeting is low. If there's a customer coming in rip shit about something, or upset about the product, you have an opportunity to totally reframe the way they look at the world. (drum roll) If you're rocking it as a product manager, everybody thinks you suck. If sales loves you, engineering hates you because you're chasing deals and you're not thinking about the long-term future. If engineering loves you, sales hates you because you're just doing long-term stuff and you're never helping them close a deal. It's finding these impossible compromises.

Harry Stebbings 0:35 Why should people not go into product and product management?

David Meyer 0:37 It might sound goofy, but... (cymbals crashing)

Harry Stebbings 0:42 (laughs) David, I am so excited for this. So I spoke to Ali years ago, and I've heard many great things, so thank you so much for joining me today.

David Meyer 0:49 I'm, I'm really excited to be here.

Harry Stebbings 0:50 Well, I want to start, how did you make your way into the world of product? It's, it's an interesting world.

Harry Stebbings 0:55 What was your entry point?

David Meyer 0:56 You know, I'm a civil engineer by training, environmental/civil, and then I became a nuclear engineer. So it's not an obvious route. But I ended up, um, at this startup, Plumtree Software, and, uh, first running QA, then running engineering. This guy that ran product, Phil Sopher, he was, like, a very good friend of mine, and every day, I told him how he was doing his job wrong. I was the receiving end, building stuff, right? So I just told him this every day, and then one day, he decided to move on, to leave Plumtree, and he told the CEO I had run product.

Harry Stebbings 1:30 Huh.

David Meyer 1:31 To, like, get back at me, right? I did it. I didn't want to do it, you know? I was like, "My job's too important doing engineering, you know? I can't give that up." But once I got into it, it was incredible. Like... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:44 (laughs) I've g- I've got too many things to ask you. First, on the, uh, you know, uh, helpful feedback to your boss, uh, or to your colleague-

David Meyer 1:52 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:52 How did you do that in a productive way that wasn't, um...

David Meyer 1:55 I, I was pretty young. I wasn't that productive.

Harry Stebbings 1:57 (laughs)

David Meyer 1:57 Like, the, the thing is, you need to build things that matter, right? Like, I... The way I got into engineering is I was in QA and there was, uh, (laughs) there was this engineer and his stuff had so many bugs. So I went under the source control system and I started to figure out the bugs, right? Um, and he locked me out-

Harry Stebbings 2:18 (laughs)

David Meyer 2:18 ... of the source control system. I was like, "Wh- what the hell?" Right? So I went to the CEO, and I'm like, "I don't know what to do here. I want this code to work." So he fired the guy, and he told me to write it.

Harry Stebbings 2:30 Oh, wow. That's a, that's a way to respond, though.

David Meyer 2:32 And, but it wasn't, like, malicious. He was a very, like, bighearted guy, but he just didn't want that kind of attitude in the company, you know?

Harry Stebbings 2:40 (laughs) That is amazing. So why did you not wanna take up that product role? You felt that your job in engineering was too important. Anything else?

David Meyer 2:47 Again, like, I got into this world through, like, weird ways. So I didn't understand the job. I felt that the engineering part was more important. But (laughs) I couldn't work on things that didn't have, you know, clear customer value, weren't thought through, and the... And, like, Phil was amazing, amazing product manager. But it's easy to critique what you've never done.

Harry Stebbings 3:12 Sure.

David Meyer 3:13 Right? So everything coming over the wall, I was like, "These things don't make sense." And I was like, "You have to define these things upstream, or else we're gonna go down dead ends."

Harry Stebbings 3:22 It's interesting, you said about critiquing things you've never done. I'm constantly oscillating on the question of, is naivety good or bad? It depends to me. I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts.

David Meyer 3:31 Yeah, I, I think it's a super power, you know? I think the less you know... So I'm, again, I'm not a CS guy, but I ended up being, like, an architect at Plumtree Software, and, like, running engineering at a bunch of places. And it's because I don't know what I don't know. Code is not complicated, you know? I don't, I can't write it well, but I can understand it. You can look at it as just a logical system. I w- I'm a systems engineer initially, so it's not hubris. It's just curiosity.

Harry Stebbings 4:02 What do you think you didn't know that you did or didn't do that was of real benefit? So, like, how you... (laughs)

David Meyer 4:08 (laughs) Yeah, that's a, that, that's a puzzler right there.

Harry Stebbings 4:10 It is hard, but I didn't know actually that it would take years and years to build a following to the millions.

David Meyer 4:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 4:18 If I had've done... I might've quit earlier. I, I thought it would come much sooner. And actually, it was just fun, and so I went along with it.

David Meyer 4:25 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 4:25 But longevity of commitment required, I didn't anticipate.

David Meyer 4:28 You figure out a way to solve a problem, right? And everybody thinks you're crazy. But then you just don't really have time to absorb that, and you just show... Let's... There's a saying, some wise person said, "If something's impossible, don't stop the people doing it." You know?

Harry Stebbings 4:49 Yeah. (laughs)

David Meyer 4:50 Ah, it was said much better than that, though.

Harry Stebbings 4:52 Oh, I'm sure it was said with a wonderful quote image-

David Meyer 4:54 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 4:54 ... on Instagram.

David Meyer 4:56 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 4:56 No, I, I, I totally get you. You said there about kinda people thinking you're crazy when you solve a problem. One thing I n- (laughs) again, I'm glad that you said you didn't necessarily love getting the schedule before. Often, customers don't love new products 'cause it's a change from what they're used to, what they're expecting.

David Meyer 5:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 5:10 How do you deal with that as a product leader?

David Meyer 5:13 Yeah, so,

David Meyer 5:14 I mean...

Harry Stebbings 5:15 That's a really tough thing.

David Meyer 5:16 It's funny. I was... Uh, we're having this world tour, and I'm talking to a lot of customers, and I don't like happy customers, you know? Because the opportunity to shift reality in the meeting is low. They're like, "You're great." I'm like, "You're great. What do you talk about?" But if there's a customer coming in rip shit about something, or upset about the product, or has a real business problem that they're stuck on, then you can almost just do a lame layup and make progress in the meeting.

Harry Stebbings 5:44 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 5:44 But you also have an opportunity to totally reframe the way they look at the world. And that's what's really exciting about working with people. People come in with a point of view about your product or their business, and the, like... I use the same methodology for, like, everything I do. Go in knowing nothing, and then interrogate the person until you feel like you could do their job.... right? And so you really understand, like, if, if they say, "I did this, this, and this," but you can't figure out how they got from here to here, you know, keep asking questions until you figure it out.

Harry Stebbings 6:20 Yeah.

David Meyer 6:20 And then you get a picture of what they're trying to achieve. But then you're like, "Well, the why behind it..." Because a lo- they don't wanna do all these steps, they just wanna accomplish a job.

Harry Stebbings 6:32 Sure.

David Meyer 6:33 And then you say, "Okay. Well, they articulated a lot of pain in these steps," and you have a point of view that... totally different from what they said. And then you kind of, like, try to tease the, the best imaginable out of them, so they say what you want them to say.

Harry Stebbings 6:51 How do you... Uh, th- uh, that's really interesting. So they say what you want them to say. How do you actually do customer questioning well? I find a lot of people lead the witness.

David Meyer 7:01 I mean, look, I'm, I'm a human, so I'm terrible at customer questioning because it's impossible not to lead the witness.

Harry Stebbings 7:08 Oh.

David Meyer 7:08 It's really, really hard. So I, I oftentimes after... You know, I've been doing this for a long time. I, I like to have other people that I know on, on calls. And then I ask them for, like, notes. One of the, the, uh, you know, Ollie's cultural values, but I, I've kind of internalized it even, you know, pre-, pre-Databricks, is truth-seeking. Like, you wanna get at the truth. You don't wanna... You know, there's all the biases, confirmation bias, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The problem is, open-ended questions, oftentimes you can't get to where you wanna go, right? So then it's just, like, open-ish questions that are kind of leading, you know. "How would it feel if it happened this way instead?" Rather than, like, "Let me talk at you and show you a demo, and this is how it should be."

Harry Stebbings 7:56 When do you listen to customers versus when do you stick to product plan, product roadmap, and actually the idea and the vision that you had?

David Meyer 8:04 People like to talk about being customer-obsessed.

Harry Stebbings 8:06 Yeah.

David Meyer 8:06 But I think of, there's the customer and then there's the collective customer. So you have to be collective-customer-obsessed. So you never wanna overfit to a customer 'cause then there'll be a Tiny Tim, right?

Harry Stebbings 8:20 Yeah.

David Meyer 8:20 So the customer's... Well, I never listen to them in terms of how the feature should work. But what they need to accomplish, you need, you know, suss out if that's a common need from your collective customer. Because if you're serving one customer, if you're obsessing about one customer but it's overfitting, you're screwing over the collective customer.

Harry Stebbings 8:40 Totally agree with you. Can I ask, there's a lot of feedback that one gets from customers.

David Meyer 8:45 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 8:45 Um, when you map it out, it, it makes for an impossible job. How do you prioritize customer feedback and ideas, either that come from customer or come from team? How do you think about what to do next?

David Meyer 8:58 It's funny. It's like, uh, there are a lot of conflicting inputs.

Harry Stebbings 9:02 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 9:03 It's funny, because a lot of people come to you wanting to go into product, you know?

Harry Stebbings 9:06 We'll get into that. (laughs)

David Meyer 9:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And th- as you know, I try to dissuade them. But

David Meyer 9:11 basically, if you're rocking it as a product manager, everybody thinks you suck. Think about it. Okay, your stakeholders are, there's customers, there's field, there's engineering, there's business finance, right? If sales loves you, engineering hates you, because you're chasing deals and you're not thinking about the long-term future. If engineering loves you, sales hates you, because you're just doing long-term stuff and you're never helping them close a deal. Everybody around you... And because they haven't done the job. Like me, when I, I was talking to Phil Sopher, everybody thinks they can do their job better, your job better than you. Like, literally, people come to me and they're like, "I could do your job better than you." Like, from all functions, because they're so frustrated with the, the, the path you have to take in order to, to, you know, juggle all the different constraints.

Harry Stebbings 10:03 Why should people not go into product and product management?

David Meyer 10:07 I mean, it might sound goofy, but d'you... Have you ever read Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke?

Harry Stebbings 10:12 I haven't.

David Meyer 10:12 Okay. I read it when I was, like, much, much younger. The, the argument is, don't write unless you have to, because it's miserable, right? So, people often think, "I wanna be a product manager. I'm the CEO of the product. I'm the GM. I call the shots. I can tell people what to do. I can create something. I can be, you know, Janny Ives. I can create this beautiful thing and everybody will build it, and customers will love it." But that's not what the job is, right? It's finding these impossible compromises.

Harry Stebbings 10:45 What do you say the job of a product manager is, then? For people listening, going, "No, I d- I do wanna be a PM, actually." What i- what is the real job of a PM? 'Cause I hear it's the CEO of product, which sounds sexy.

David Meyer 10:55 (laughs) It's bullshit.

Harry Stebbings 10:56 Yeah. (laughs) Sexy, though, isn't it? Like, "Okay, cool."

David Meyer 10:58 It's, uh, it's finding a way to make baby steps towards the vision while staying alive, basically.

Harry Stebbings 11:09 So the biggest misconception is actually the glorification of being the CEO?

David Meyer 11:13 Yeah, and the fact that you have, like, unadulterated agency, you know? So, if I'm talking to someone that wants to move from another function into product, um, the main thing I try to figure out is, are they doing product now? If you're an engineer-

Harry Stebbings 11:27 Yeah.

David Meyer 11:27 ... and you're not involved in the PRDs and, and... Like, e- let's say you're in the field, right? You're a sales engineer. You're harping on engineering and product all the time to fix the shit your customers need until you see it working the way you want, and then you're doing product management, right? But if you can live as a sales engineer or an engineer without doing that, if you can take the spec and build it without fighting, you can never be a pr-... So, if, if, if you cannot not product manage, then you should be a product manager.

Harry Stebbings 12:00 (laughs) I, I totally agree. So, you like people who aren't product managers already. 'Cause I... You know, I speak to, and I, uh, sit on many boards. And everyone says, "Ah, we want someone who's been a PM for three to four years. They've probably worked at Google or Facebook or-

David Meyer 12:14 (laughs) For sure.

Harry Stebbings 12:14 ... uh, and been their success guy." So you like people who are fresh to product management?

David Meyer 12:18 They might not have had the title, but have they done it?

Harry Stebbings 12:22 How do you tease that out in an interview?

David Meyer 12:24 You ask them where their biggest impact was. Right?

Harry Stebbings 12:27 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 12:27 And if it has nothing to do with product, (laughs) you know, if it's like, uh, calming down an angry customer, but it has nothing to do with the value the com- you know, so you just tease it out and then interrogate from there.

Harry Stebbings 12:41 With interrogation you get data. Sometimes, uh, helpful, sometimes less helpful. Um, you said before about being a data-driven product manager.

David Meyer 12:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 12:49 Before we dr- dive into kind of whether it's good or bad, what does that actually mean, being a data-driven product manager? When I saw this, I was like, "Huh. What, what is that?"

David Meyer 12:57 So, you know, Databricks used to have this value called data-driven, um, where we wanted everybody to be data-driven. But it has a dark side, 'cause you can weaponize data. Right? You can argue any point of view with any set of data if you're clever enough with numbers.

Harry Stebbings 13:12 Sure.

David Meyer 13:12 Right? So we, we modified that to be truth-seeking, because the point of being data-driven was be truth-seeking, but truth-seeking defangs the dark side of data-driven.

Harry Stebbings 13:22 Sure.

David Meyer 13:23 Right? So let's say you're gonna build a product. You wanna, like, ship early, ship often, but how can you figure out the early signal, if it's not revenue-based, 'cause maybe you're not charging yet, of whether or not it's working? Right? And you come up with a KPI and you can set goals and stuff like that, and you track that. And we could talk about that for days, you know, like input metrics versus output metrics and things like that. As soon as you start, like, reporting on it, it becomes a thing, it becomes the goal. The data in your progress serves one purpose, one purpose only, which is to figure out your blind spots and where to ask questions. The goal is not hitting your target. The goal is seeing where you're varying or going way above your target, why? And then you can dig in and figure out if you need to course correct or not. A lot of times, the right thing to do is change the target. The target was wrong. Like you came up with a target when you had a point of view and hypotheses before you've shipped-

Harry Stebbings 14:15 No.

David Meyer 14:15 ... and then you disprove those and adjust the target.

Harry Stebbings 14:18 How often should you adjust the target?

David Meyer 14:20 Well, I mean, that's another funny thing.

Harry Stebbings 14:21 Like in, in a daily review of, like, "Is this even the right metric here," or h- how does that...?

David Meyer 14:26 If you're a startup of one, then continuously. Right? You're continuously doing the loop of hypothesis validation, "No, I'm wrong. I'm an idiot. Gotta change." When you are a company of 6,000 people, you gotta be very careful. Right? They ... you know, there's a lot of grumpiness to do it more frequently than annually, just because it's hard to... you know, a lot of people have built up flywheels that are organizationally complex to hit the goal. If it's existential, like why would you wait? Why would you do something stupid for six months 'cause you have annual goals?

Harry Stebbings 15:00 I, I, I totally agree. Is speed everything? Everyone say, "The only thing that matters is speed and velocity." You illustrated two very different, uh, types of movement there.

David Meyer 15:10 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:11 One being what? Is speed everything, or actually do people overemphasize the importance of speed?

David Meyer 15:15 I mean, speed of what? Like, speed of learning is everything. But that doesn't mean shipping. That doesn't mean... You know, people talk about one-way doors, two-way doors, type one, type two decisions and all this stuff. Like, the key is maximizing your learning curve, and there's so many clever ways to do that, and a lot of it feels slow. You wanna know why you are doing the next step, you know, before you do it. But then sometimes you can't figure it out that way and you just need to try, and that's when, you know, ship things that you might throw away and do it, you know, don't scale prematurely, don't over-architect it. Get the learning in.

Harry Stebbings 15:54 And s- so why is most data-driven product management done badly?

David Meyer 15:57 Because they get the... they let the data be the thing.

Harry Stebbings 16:00 Do you not think that, that they use data as a crutch to kind of lean on because they don't actually know? It, it, it's nice when you-

David Meyer 16:06 I, I think that's it, uh, because here's the thing. I'm just as bad at this as everyone else. Like, I have these dashboards. I build a lot of dashboards of a lot of metrics, and if there's something I don't understand, I, like, do data science until I figure it out. Um, and then I look at these all the time. Like, this morning I got up, I looked at some dashboards. Am I gonna do anything with that? No, it's a fucking waste of time, but it hits that... it's like infinite scroll.

Harry Stebbings 16:29 (laughs)

David Meyer 16:29 I wanna see if the next bar is green or not. I have, like, this dashboard where if it's a record day for any subsegment, like a record Tuesday, rec- 'cause, you know, there's obviously the big, the, the, the curve on the week, it's green, and I call it record book for all these different parts of our product. I look at it every day, I go, "It's green! It's green! We're rocking it!" But, like, I'm not gonna do anything with that. So it's a waste of time, and think about the time people spend. A lot of times you don't have a good telemetry in place, you don't have good BI systems. So there's humans spending time counting shit to put the number in to send out the email with all the numbers so that people see it, and is that adding value? That's the problem, the human energy waste that goes into data-driven product management when it's not becoming actionable.

Harry Stebbings 17:21 And so that's the difference. The difference between useful metric observation and unhelpful metric observation is actionable takeaways?

David Meyer 17:29 Yeah. Yeah. And making sure the thing you're measuring is not gameable and aligned to your vision.

Harry Stebbings 17:38 Can I ask, what would be your example then, 'cause I really struggle with this? You know, y- if you think about, you know, say, me as an investor, you know, with our team we can say, "Hey, number of companies met. It's about meeting as many companies as possible."

David Meyer 17:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:49 You could game that and just make 40-

David Meyer 17:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:51 ... shit companies.

David Meyer 17:51 No. Exactly. That's like top-of-funnel metrics.

Harry Stebbings 17:53 You get everything-

David Meyer 17:53 I can make the top of funnel as big as you want.

Harry Stebbings 17:55 But everything's gameable. Like, can you give me an example

Harry Stebbings 17:58 of something that I couldn't game?

David Meyer 17:59 Again, e- everything's gameable. No, I can't.

Harry Stebbings 18:03 (laughs)

David Meyer 18:04 But, but things like, uh, active users, like daily, weekly, et cetera, depending on, you know, enterprise or consumer, time is so precious. If people are spending time in your product, there's value there. Now, it might be never, uh, accreditable to revenue value. Right? You... It depends... that's a business model question. But you're building something that has value to someone if someone's using it.

Harry Stebbings 18:28 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 18:29 So those things are hard to game.

Harry Stebbings 18:30 Yeah. No, I totally agree with you there. Uh, uh-

David Meyer 18:32 Like if you knew... Like for this show, there's a number of subscribers. That's a little van- it's important. It shows us your attraction, but then like-

Harry Stebbings 18:42 No, no. There's a lot. If I could get percent of listeners that listen to more than 80% of the show, that would be much more usable and understanding.

David Meyer 18:48 Yeah, yeah. Or that then talk about it in a bar.

Harry Stebbings 18:50 Oh, yeah. Th- that would be fantastic.

David Meyer 18:51 Yeah, but then how do you get that? So that's, that's a trick, a strategy.

Harry Stebbings 18:53 I'm hoping Jeff Bezos comes out with a device that invades your, your bar as well as your home (laughs) .

David Meyer 18:59 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 18:59 Can I ask, what do you think of the state of product management today? As you said, it's become the hot job for everyone.

David Meyer 19:04 You know, it's funny. I have a kid, freshman in college now, and I just pay attention more to what's going on in college and like, there's... People hire consultancies because it's a top school of people in college, to advise their companies. It's like a racket. I mean, there's like a, a name which then employs a bunch of college kids to do the consulting, you know? But-

Harry Stebbings 19:28 You go to ChatGPT.

David Meyer 19:29 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 19:30 Fastest growing, uh, leisure activities. (laughs)

David Meyer 19:33 (laughs) Yeah, but it's like most people don't have like the hunger and the curiosity to keep going, 'cause it's a, it is a thankless job in a lot of ways. You think you're gonna be the rockstar, you're the roadie, you know? So you need a like, sticktuitiveness, whatever that weird word is, um, to be in product. But the people that have shown demonstrated impact, you know then that, well, if it was them, and that's a lot of the interrogation when you're, you know, hiring people, then they, they understand the mechanics of the job. If you were at Google during the aughts or, you know, you think it was because of you.

Harry Stebbings 20:07 Of course.

David Meyer 20:07 It wasn't because of you, you know? So how they accomplish extraordinary things at companies that aren't ramping.

Harry Stebbings 20:15 That's what I find this unbelievable, which is how many people are at great companies with insane product market fit, but actually they're really not very good.

David Meyer 20:21 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 20:22 And it's just like, "Well, you know, search at Google was kind of..."

David Meyer 20:24 It's too easy, because it's confirmation bias. Like you think, you're like, "You ship a feature and it grows." Well, 'cause the button's on the page and everybody's there, you know?

Harry Stebbings 20:32 But do you think product managers today are worse than they were years ago?

David Meyer 20:35 I have no idea. I have no idea. Like, I think that on average, yes, because there's so many of them. You know, when companies scale super fast, they have to build big teams fast. And it's just hard to sustain that, you know?

Harry Stebbings 20:52 Do you worry about that at Stay? You mentioned the 6,000 people, uh, amazing people wi- within Databricks, but do you worry that with the 6,000 you just can't move as fast and we have this incumbency challenge?

David Meyer 21:02 Absolutely. I mean, I think it's just a different challenge at every stage. And, uh, you know, you've talked to Oli a bunch. That's what keeps him awake at night, is the innovation factory. Now, objectively, we seem to be accelerating, which is a little, uh, you know, crazy to think about. I use the product constantly. Like, that's the only way I can understand it, you know? But I can't keep up with everything now. But again, we're, you know, 1,000 engineers and, you know, more than 100 people in product, so... But I think the... It's hard to do. It's a different game at every stage of company.

Harry Stebbings 21:33 And you mentioned you can't keep up with everything. I think one thing that was really interesting when I spoke to so many of your friends and colleagues was the optimism that you bring to every product and product release. How do you think about that balance between optimism and also hesitant cautiousness with new products? Some said it was a weakness, some said it was a strength. (laughs)

David Meyer 21:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know. It's... (laughs) Let's talk about, I mean, you know, venture, you know, startups, product. Um, why, why, why do something? Why do anything?

Harry Stebbings 22:05 For us, it's upside maximization. If, if it was, it could-

David Meyer 22:08 Yeah, but I'm saying the, the person, the, the founder.

Harry Stebbings 22:11 Yeah.

David Meyer 22:11 Why are they doing it? They're doing it probably 'cause they're the kind of person that, that has a problem with authority and can't have a boss. One of our customers, like Zipline, they, they, they, they use drone- they launch drones to deliver medical, like life-saving things to remote villages. That wasn't possible before. It's magic.

Harry Stebbings 22:31 Yeah.

David Meyer 22:32 You know, the first time you called an Uber, it was like...

Harry Stebbings 22:34 Pretty insane.

David Meyer 22:36 Pretty insane. You realize something could be made a ton easier, right? But then, but then you have to... Y- y- you're starting a company, you need to enroll someone in that vision and you need to bring them along, because you want a co-founder, you wanna hire the first engineer or something like that. So you need to get them to believe or else they're not gonna go through the shit show to try to get there. And I think, I think you will things into existence. I think we do impossible things all the time, because we just don't think they're impossible. But I think human ingenuity can like create impossible things, because you just really, really want it to exist and you find a way.

Harry Stebbings 23:21 No, I, uh, I, I totally agree with you and I think it goes back to the naivety element, which is you also don't know that they're impossible-

David Meyer 23:27 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:27 ... when you embark on them. We don't know it'll take that long.

David Meyer 23:30 Yeah. And so whether you're talking to engineers, engineers have to believe, right? Otherwise, they're just not gonna have the same velocity.

Harry Stebbings 23:37 Do engineers believe? Because often engineers are held as like the cynical ones, like, "Oh, they always say no to everything. Oh, cynical."

David Meyer 23:42 Yeah, but, but, but... So again, I call it brain massaging. It, it, it's really manipulation. Um... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 23:51 (laughs)

David Meyer 23:51 But, so you arrived at the conclusion you have to do this through logic, right? Through a set of assumptions and stuff. And it's because you've basically taken the other possibilities and you've disproved them. And so you take the engineer through the same thing. The engineer wants to do this thing, and you're like, "Okay, it's great that you wanna write your own API instead of using a standard. That's awesome. That sounds really... It would be like super efficient, super elegant. It'll be great. So how are we gonna get, you know, 10,000 developers to understand that? How are we gonna get the whole ecosystem to adopt it?" And you, all the things that you'd have to do if you don't u- you know, if you invent some new proprietary shit, and then they're like-... oh, that would suck, you know? And then they realize they don't wanna do all the work you'd ask them to do to build this whole community, and they're like, "We should u- we should use a standard. We should use a standard 'cause th- we don't have to do all that work, and I can work on fun stuff." You know? You need to take them down your mental travel, because you're not... Well, you might be stupid, but you probably have a point of view of why this is the right thing, and you n- you need them to discover that in their own framework.

Harry Stebbings 25:03 When you change your destination, or you realize it's actually what you thought it would be, it's no longer, how do you communicate that effectively without being, like, a flimsy leader? Do you know what I mean? It's like, "Hey, I know-"

David Meyer 25:13 (laughs) It's really hard.

Harry Stebbings 25:13 "... I said that we were doing this, but, like, I was wrong."

David Meyer 25:16 It's so ingrained in being a human.

Harry Stebbings 25:20 Yeah.

David Meyer 25:20 You know?

Harry Stebbings 25:20 Yeah.

David Meyer 25:21 So... And it ties to the thing about, like, willing something into existence. Like, I think... And this- this will sound completely bananas to you, but I think, like, things you build, things you create that you love and are passionate about, there's a bit of you in it. Like, there's a bit of your soul in the thing.

Harry Stebbings 25:39 Sure.

David Meyer 25:40 So, like, you have imbued this thing with you, with yourself, and then someone's telling you to toss it out the window. You gotta be kidding me. You know? And so- so th- I think that when you're gonna change target, and people have been working their ass off to build something meaningful to the old target, you just have to give it the mourning cycle. You know? You have to be empathetic and human, because you need them to come along with you on the ride.

Harry Stebbings 26:09 So it was... What does that mean? It means that, "David, I understand the time and work you put into this, but because of X and Y, I've decided that actually we need to change our goal in this way."

David Meyer 26:19 Yeah. Because of this world we're in, and these things we need to achieve, this- this creature you've created has an illness.

Harry Stebbings 26:28 (laughs)

David Meyer 26:28 We have to have a funeral for this thing, but w- but you mourn in a funeral. You know? Like, you give it the space to say, "Yeah, this really sucks." If you don't put words to that, if you think they'll figure that out for themselves, you're lost, and then you have a churn, like, later on 'cause they're like, "Management's bananas," you know?

Harry Stebbings 26:48 And should they care as much? And what I mean by that is, like, I've had people on the show before say, like, "Actually, the unemotional product manager, or the unemotional engineer is the best," 'cause actually they just think rationally. It's like, "Well, that didn't work. Okay, bin."

David Meyer 27:01 Th- yeah. I mean, that's great if you're doing something incremental. If you're like, "Let's grow revenue 10% (laughs) on a product that has product market fit," yeah, you can be... You can have no emotion then. A lot of the job is not about specing the product and building the product. A lot of the job is about enrolling customers you talk to into what's possible. How can you do that without emotion?

Harry Stebbings 27:25 Do you have to do what you love? This was... I mean-

David Meyer 27:28 Oh,

David Meyer 27:29 that's funny. Um, no.

Harry Stebbings 27:30 I know it's a deep one, but I- I d- yeah.

David Meyer 27:32 No, but you have to love what you do. Well, I went to University of Pennsylvania, um, because they told me when I was applying that I could get a dual degree in fine art and engineering, and then I got there and they're like, "Who told you that?" (laughs) So I call up my dad, I'm like, "Dad, I have this deep decision to make. Do I go into fine art or engineering?" He's like, "It's not a decision. You go into engineering." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 27:56 (laughs)

David Meyer 27:57 So, there's a lot of things I've put on pause that I love, that I love. Now I... You know, product management, creativity, you- you bring these things in, yeah? There's beauty in solving problems for humans.

Harry Stebbings 28:11 Yeah.

David Meyer 28:12 And you... Like, if you're not inspired by what's possible in what you're doing, then you should, you know, take a hike.

Harry Stebbings 28:20 You mentioned that fine art and engineering, a wonderful balance between art and science, and I'm always conflicted on how much product is art or science. I've had guests out of Spotify say on the show, "99% science." Most people just, like, tentatively go 50/50, which always pisses me off.

David Meyer 28:37 Okay. So, like, it gets back to this data-driven thing. Like, I've known a lot of product managers that ship a product and don't observe how it's behaving in the wild through data. I think they're fucking insane. Like-

Harry Stebbings 28:49 (laughs)

David Meyer 28:49 ... you spent all this energy and willpower creating this thing, and you're not obsessively watching exactly how it interacts with the world. That's crazy, right? So-

Harry Stebbings 29:01 It's a little bit like content, which is the biggest problem with content, is people spend hours and hours and hours, e- especially at large companies, creating and making everything look beautiful. Distribution, just press publish.

David Meyer 29:11 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 29:12 Pfft. Oh, okay. (laughs)

David Meyer 29:13 Oh, I mean, we could, "Ah." Like, putting something on your website is not marketing.

Harry Stebbings 29:19 Yeah.

David Meyer 29:19 You gotta get in the mindshare of the person whose problem you're solving. They're never gonna look at your website.

Harry Stebbings 29:25 Yeah.

David Meyer 29:25 It's crazy.

Harry Stebbings 29:27 That- that drives me nuts.

David Meyer 29:28 It... Yeah. That- that-

Harry Stebbings 29:29 The amount of times I've put together these glossy reports.

David Meyer 29:31 This is where I- I've never- I've never run marketing, so I'm always telling them how they should do their job better, 'cause I've never... You know, it's the same thing as the flip as before.

Harry Stebbings 29:39 Do you worry they don't like you? Not in a bad way, but like-

David Meyer 29:43 Well, here's the thing. Like, and this is the- the core of being a humanist, having empathy. I think everybody's a genius. Maybe not at their job, but at something. Um, and they're trying to do the- they're trying to do the best they can. If you lead with that kind of empathy and understanding, and try to enroll them in why it should be different-

Harry Stebbings 30:04 I'm just going for it. Do you think they c- do you think they are?

David Meyer 30:07 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:07 Like, they're doing the best they can. I don't know, I work my fucking ass off.

David Meyer 30:11 Hold on. Uh, so- so, i- i- it's a good point. Doing the best you can. Like, okay, so I'm having, you know, relationship stress. I didn't sleep well, I have a migraine. I, uh, I just wanna get through the day. That might be the best you can.

Harry Stebbings 30:26 Sure.

David Meyer 30:26 You might be dialing it in at work because of some other meta.

Harry Stebbings 30:30 Sure, that's fine.

David Meyer 30:31 Right? So, people don't wanna suck, you know, but they're dealing... Like, everybody's world is infinite.... you know? So, eh, with that mindset, if you're, if you're talking to someone in marketing or sales or something, and y- y- you wanna see different behavior, it's the same as talking to an engineer. You need to enroll them in why you... The, the missing opportunity. And just understand, be inquisitive and be open as to, "Why don't we attack it this way? Wouldn't this be opening up a whole new thing?" And when I do that, I learn a lot. And a lot of times, it's like resource constraints and, you know, CEO, you know, needs this, all these things, sales. It's just like me, you know? People thinking product manager is a god role when it's a, you know, service role.

Harry Stebbings 31:15 If you were to put a number on product being art or science, what would it be? (laughs)

David Meyer 31:18 Well, this is, this is where it's unfair, because I presume that the only way to interact with the world is to fully understand the functioning system you're in, and then have intellectual rigor and observation of data behind it. So I just assume that that's how brains work. But not, but not everybody's brain works that way. So if you assume that that's just free, then it's 90% art. If that's not, uh, a natural inclination of people, then it's probably a lot more of that being done purposefully.

Harry Stebbings 31:52 Have you always felt like that? Often, I, what I see with product leaders is they tend to find that science leads the way in their early product leadership that's-

David Meyer 32:00 That, that... I was, I was just gonna go there. Like, I have created so many detailed frameworks, you know? And it's basically like I have mathematical proof that this is what we should do.

Harry Stebbings 32:13 Yeah.

David Meyer 32:14 I refer to things with the wrong names all the time 'cause of my, like, short-term memory. And the, there's something like the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, it's an economic theory, and the, the, the gist of it is the more detail you see, the more correct you think something is.

Harry Stebbings 32:29 Huh.

David Meyer 32:29 You can have this incredible financial model. Like, you know, people do financial models in spreadsheets all the time. You can have like a very simple model, or you can have one billions of pages, and you're like, "They put so much work into that. They're really good." But it's bullshit. A lot of it is using your collective experience, and there's a lot of science and math in that, to find holes in the strategy rather than, like... 'Cause humans are not, um, mathematically definable, and products are for humans. So over-rigor is just waste in the system, I think.

Harry Stebbings 33:08 How do you then imbue that in the team? How do you ensure that they don't put together, you know, a 50-sheet Wardance?

David Meyer 33:15 Like, uh, anybody listening to this-

Harry Stebbings 33:17 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 33:18 ... that's worked for me thinks I'm totally full of shit now.

Harry Stebbings 33:21 (laughs)

David Meyer 33:22 (laughs) Right? Because I ask, we ask people to do all, tons of shit, and they're like, "This is meaningless," you know? But-

Harry Stebbings 33:30 Do you justify it to them? Do you say, "Well, no, it is actually valuable, and it's valuable for these three reasons"? Or do you say, "Listen, I asked you to do it" (laughs) .

David Meyer 33:38 No, I, I always wanna get to the why. Like, let's talk about people on your team or people, you know, in a close adjacent team.

Harry Stebbings 33:45 Your team love you, despite what you just said. I mean...

David Meyer 33:48 Well, I think that's because of the human connection. I am maddening to work for. I'm maddening because, like I said, I need to understand the system, right? So if there's something that's done that I don't understand, I'm picking it apart and asking a million questions because until I get the system, I might give wrong advice, right? But that seems like, and oftentimes is, a little micromanagy. So I'm maddening. But I think I connect with people on a human level, so they respect the intent of my maddeningness.

Harry Stebbings 34:22 When you say, "Let's talk about the team," what have been your biggest lessons in terms of what it takes to build fucking

Harry Stebbings 34:27 amazing product teams?

David Meyer 34:28 (laughs) It's hard.

Harry Stebbings 34:30 It's really hard. One of my biggest lessons on, like, leadership and management is actually that it's my job to know how each person internalizes feedback. And actually, I was always-

David Meyer 34:41 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:41 ... like, truth-seeking, well, I'm gonna be direct.

David Meyer 34:44 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:44 And then some people actually need a little bit more handholding, a little bit more love and nurturing.

David Meyer 34:48 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:49 And actually, you have to tailor the leader that you are to the employees that you have.

David Meyer 34:53 Totally. Like, every one-on-one I have is fundamentally different.

Harry Stebbings 34:57 Yeah.

David Meyer 34:58 Fundamentally.

Harry Stebbings 34:58 But that's it, 'cause people are like, "Choose your style, and you stick with it."

David Meyer 35:00 Yeah, and that's, but that gets to, i- i- I mean, you have empathy, EQ, and human understanding, and, to enable you to do that. And that's really key in a leader. I think a lot of leaders are formulaic. And I think the r-... People follow people that see them. When I'm in a room and I'm frustrated, or if I feel like I'm not kind of in the core of the conversation, but I have a point of view that I think they need to hear, like, I just wanna feel seen. Because if I, if I'm not seen, I feel ignored.

Harry Stebbings 35:35 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 35:35 You know? When you give people feedback, you need to get their feedback on your feedback, because, y- you know, you might not give them any space to talk about the why or, you know, what they're going through. That doesn't mean not to be resolute on the feedback. Like, "I need you to do this." You know, if they look ashen and they, (laughs) you know, they're like stressed out, figure out why. It's your job to figure out why, because otherwise, you've lost them.

Harry Stebbings 36:04 Do you know when you've lost them?

David Meyer 36:06 I'm overly confident in this topic, so sometimes you do. Sometimes it's clear, right? But I, I generally have this, uh, unspoken or sometimes spoken contract with people that work for me. If you're gonna leave the company, I'm gonna help you find the best job imaginable. But first, I'm gonna figure out if you're running away or running towards. Like, if you're running away from the company 'cause something's broken, I wanna fix it. If you're running towards an unimaginable opportunity, I'm gonna guarantee you get it if I can. But then some people don't trust me.You know, a lot of people tell me six months, nine months before they're gonna leave and I help them get a kick-ass job. But some people don't trust me and tell me, "Oh, I've already accepted this offer from blah, blah, blah." I'm like, what did I do wrong?

Harry Stebbings 36:55 Did you make that offer clear enough? Do you say to everyone, "Listen, if there is ever a time when you are tempted to leave, just let me know. We can talk about it. I won't dissuade you."

David Meyer 37:05 So I do that with my immediate staff.

Harry Stebbings 37:07 Yeah.

David Meyer 37:07 But often, you know, oftentimes there's layers in an organization and, you know, not everybody knows you that well.

Harry Stebbings 37:14 Yeah.

David Meyer 37:14 But I feel, 'cause I feel strong connections with people, I feel that they should know me that well. Like, don't you know me? Don't you get that I wouldn't, like, walk you out of the building in, in, like, anger?

Harry Stebbings 37:28 No, no, because most people actually are different to how they present.

David Meyer 37:32 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:32 Which is one thing. And then it's not what you say, it's not what you do, it's how you make people feel.

David Meyer 37:37 I know. Exactly, exactly. And so, like for example, um-

Harry Stebbings 37:40 And the challenge is if they're a manager removed from you, they may not be made to feel the way that you would want them to feel.

David Meyer 37:47 No, exactly. And when I come into meetings in my maddening way, you know, there's like, you know the term like seagull management?

Harry Stebbings 37:54 Yeah.

David Meyer 37:55 Like you swoop in and shit over everything, then fly away.

Harry Stebbings 37:57 I haven't heard of that name. (laughs)

David Meyer 38:00 (laughs) .

Harry Stebbings 38:00 I just heard of like the bird's eye overview that you just like peer down.

David Meyer 38:03 Oh, no, no, no.

Harry Stebbings 38:03 Are you sweeping shit?

David Meyer 38:04 This is like someone, like, categorized a bunch of animals and, like... So I ask people that know me like, was I too seagull in that meeting? And sometimes to my directs it's fine, but then a new product manager that doesn't know me is like, "Why is this SVP giving me shit about all this stuff?"

Harry Stebbings 38:22 Do you worry that you become a cynic over time? I worry about this 'cause I'm a little bit of a seagull. I, I, I have to be on top of like-

David Meyer 38:28 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 38:28 ... everything. But I do. Come down, (inhales) it's the fiftieth time I've seen kind of a BI tool for SMBs. Piece of shit. Next. And like, you can't lose the optimism in venture and you can't lose the optimism in product.

David Meyer 38:40 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 38:40 Do you worry about becoming cynical with time?

David Meyer 38:43 I kind of embrace becoming cynical with time because, I mean, we talked about one of my weaknesses is I'm too optimistic. Um, and I think that's unlocked incredible things in my life. Incredible things. But it gets back to if you haven't enrolled people in the vision, oftentimes you can't achieve the vision and then it falls apart. And then they're like, "Why were you such an idiot for being so optimistic?" I'm like, "Well, if you had believed, we would've gotten there." It's-

Harry Stebbings 39:23 And SMB. Suddenly you're going after the practitioner and the businessperson.

David Meyer 40:15 You try to be all things to all people and it's just way, way, way premature and then you're nothing to anyone. You could choose the wrong narrow focus and implode, you know? So th- that's the balance.

Harry Stebbings 40:28 I, I, I totally... I think the one thing that I also see is like slowly they open up the aperture of the available customer.

David Meyer 40:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:34 And so it used to be like BI analysts in SMBs.

David Meyer 40:38 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:38 And then it's like, well, BI analysts and then it's like zanalysts and then suddenly like a freemium tool for everyone.

David Meyer 40:44 Then it's a prosumer.

Harry Stebbings 40:46 Yeah. Because they get nervous as time goes on that traction won't happen, but you-

David Meyer 40:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:49 ... loosen your product marketing tightness-

David Meyer 40:52 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:53 ... with every expansion.

David Meyer 40:54 What's that new, like the diabetes drug that everybody's losing weight on?

Harry Stebbings 40:57 Ozempic.

David Meyer 40:58 Yeah. So I read this article and someone was concerned that it'll be the collapse of society. Okay. So th- these drugs not only-

Harry Stebbings 41:07 That's quite a jump. (laughs) .

David Meyer 41:08 ... curb appetite, they curb other addictive things. So they're good for people. And again, I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm just reading this article. Um, they're good for people that have a gambling problem, but then someone looked at the data and these power users are the, the thing that makes the revenue for all companies basically. Like there's people that, I don't know if you have Chipotle here, but say a fast food that eat it every meal. I go once a year. So the company makes a lot more revenue from these people. And if you take away the addictive tendencies of the super users, no one will make profits in any sector of any business anymore because the 80/20 rule means you're gonna lose 80%, which is kind of a ra- obviously that's, that's, that's crazy. But it gets to the-

Harry Stebbings 41:56 Same in gaming, obviously.

David Meyer 41:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, (laughs) yeah. So that the whole world's gonna collapse, but the, the... You need your fanatic users. If your product becomes everything to everyone, you lose the fanatics. But your fanatics are the ones that talk about it in bars, bring their friends in, have the viral coefficients and stuff, but they're also the ones that push you to do unimaginable things, to really break through barriers that can open up their, you know, power.

Harry Stebbings 42:26 I had Scott, f- uh, founder of Atlassian on the show and we talked-

David Meyer 42:28 Yeah, I watched, I watched that.

Harry Stebbings 42:29 Yeah. And we talked about Jira and like, you know, bluntly it can be quite hard for people to drop into. And my question to you is like, how do you build for fanatics to retain them, to inspire their love even further, but also not make it holy shit-

David Meyer 42:44 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:44 ... for someone to drop in on day one?

David Meyer 42:47 It's hard. It's hard. Like, you need to use your product every day, and you're not gonna always be the persona it's for, but you need to at least have an appreciation for what that persona goes through. Products become complicated over time. You add a feature for one person, it might be another click for another person. And so, you know, there's lots, you know, again, you could leverage data to make sure you're not destroying engagement or the, the, the time to complete a task isn't ballooning and stuff like that. But I think that's where the art is. Like, you really, it gets down to the human connection.

Harry Stebbings 43:22 Is simple always better in product?

David Meyer 43:25 (laughs) Simple is like the dumbest word, you know? It's like-

Harry Stebbings 43:30 Yeah, what a shit question, huh?

David Meyer 43:31 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 43:31 What a shit ..........................

David Meyer 43:32 I know, but like what the hell does it mean?

Harry Stebbings 43:34 Well, I mean, uh, fewer, so fewer options, fewer, uh, fewer buttons, um, fewer color schemes, l- simple. A- as- as small a option base as possible, I would say.

David Meyer 43:47 So, so I mean, clearly is it always better? No. (laughs) If it's possible to still give the superpowers to the person you're giving superpowers, but you can't dilute their superpowers. So when I came into, to Databricks, uh, I started using the product and I was like, "Good Lord," you know? Uh, I'm not-

Harry Stebbings 44:06 (laughs)

David Meyer 44:06 ... I'm not a developer. I mean, I've done it. I'm not good at it. Um-

Harry Stebbings 44:10 Good Lord. (laughs)

David Meyer 44:11 And I, uh, I was like, there were all these things that I saw as, you know, broken edges to the product, and I thought it was really important that we fix them. But most of the things I wanted to focus on didn't matter at all, didn't matter at all. It's like the speed of execution mattered, auto-completing in code mattered, consistent gutter width on the UI, nobody gave a shit. But it hurt my eyes to see it, you know? So because different things matter to the developer wanting to be in the flow of their work than the goofy product manager that joins a company that's like, "Uh, this UI is not pretty," you know? I didn't really think the gutter was for the most important thing. Uh, you know, I had a little more intuition than that. But it's not clear what simple means. You know, simple doesn't mean, for a developer, um, removing optionality, unless it does, and that's where it gets complicated. Like, you don't wanna give people five ways to do things. If you can give people one way to do things, that's great, if they can still do the thing that they need to do, that they're using the product for, which oftentimes... You know, like I remember, so I've been using Atlassian for a while. In fact, we, we, we talked to them, I was at this company, Plumtree, um, Jay who ended up... Jay Simons, I don't know if you've talked to him?

Harry Stebbings 45:31 Yeah, yeah, of course. I was messaging him last night actually about the show.

David Meyer 45:33 Oh, yeah?

Harry Stebbings 45:34 Yeah.

David Meyer 45:34 Yeah, yeah. He's, he's, he's an old friend. Uh-

Harry Stebbings 45:36 Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

David Meyer 45:37 Yeah. I should have, uh, sent you his name, but he, he has plenty of stories. Um, but we... I don't even know if this is, we're allowed to talk about this, but we tried to acquire Atlassian back in like '98 or something. We thought we should get them cheap. They're a little dinky company, but they had a plan, you know? And they were like, "#$%, there's no way." But we're like, "It's just in Jira." Then there's like this wiki confluence thing, you know? But then in, in, in that product early on you could do a lot with, uh, like markdown and stuff like that, you know? Uh, you can still do those things, but they moved a lot of those things to a, like, clickable text editor, and a lot of the stuff you could do when you, like, could script it all disappeared. And like I was furious. I was like, "These people are jokers 'cause like I wanna do all these things. Now all these things, there's no button for it and it's a lot harder." Now, that was the right choice because it radically opened up the TAM, right? There were a lot less people like me. You know, you need to go into that acknowledging that you're gonna get rid of some people. Are those people you're getting rid of key to your vision? For Databricks, the developers are, we, developers have to love us, right? 'Cause they're gonna be the ones influencing the decision that the CFO makes.

Harry Stebbings 46:53 I'm fascinated. You said there about kind of different types of feedback that different segments of customers will give you.

David Meyer 46:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 46:58 Product reviews, you know, I'm not in product, obviously. They're kind of hailed as this kind of black box. How often do you do product reviews? Who's invited? Who sets the agenda?

David Meyer 47:08 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 47:08 Can you just walk

Harry Stebbings 47:09 me through it? Like, I've got-

David Meyer 47:10 Well, like, okay. So it's very different from like a brand new thing, so a n- a brand new feature, brand new product. In short, there's like, it's like fractal. So I use the product all the time. I'm reviewing the product when I'm using it, like continuously. And so getting into like the preview, we have this dog food system and stuff like that, that's kind of like, uh, uh, you know, asynchronous product review. But then, you know, in the classic Scrum sprint methodology, you, you demo every Friday, you know? The, you want the core group to be seeing things as it's being built because you can't waste time. And if it's going the wrong direction, you need to know soon.

Harry Stebbings 47:50 Yep.

David Meyer 47:50 Right? But then you should have like continuous product reviews for the core team and then, you know, monthly or quarterly for management. But the danger, the danger is, like the seagull management, like everybody-

Harry Stebbings 48:06 How do you bring them along enough in the vision in real time?

David Meyer 48:08 Yeah. And so like let's take Databricks. So when I got there, there's a lot of founders. They're all ridiculously smart. They're all operating in the company. And, uh, you wanna include them in your early thinking because they have so much context, so much wisdom, so much context. But then there's also the danger, you know, if you have a handful of founders, uh, they might not all have the same opinion about the button placement. And so that can be very wasteful to like do cycles on exactly how something should look with a lot of people. The intent and the context they bring to it is, is, is super critical. For example, you know, developers need things fast, you know, they should have few clicks. Everything should be keyboard driven and stuff like that. So the, the danger is, the more people in the room-... the worse it is. In a bigger company, y- you know, people in the management chain all feel like they need to be in the room, and there might be multiple levels there, and then it's just a ceremony. Like, more than six people? What do you think? If you're gonna try to make a decision, how many people would you have in the room? Like, it's gotta be less than 10, probably more than four.

Harry Stebbings 49:14 I- I- I say four to six. It's like venture partnerships ...

David Meyer 49:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:17 ... but four to six is really where you get the ultimate decision-making, I think.

David Meyer 49:19 But then if you have 20 people ... it's a ceremony.

Harry Stebbings 49:22 Okay. I totally agree. Does remote or work from home change that in some way, where people can be on mute, people can listen in, you don't feel their presence? Does that open up the aperture or change anything?

David Meyer 49:34 Yeah, because you dilute the clarity and the intensity of what you say the more people are in the room. You know? Like, even simple as, like, being glib, you know, using curse words and things like that, you feel uncomfortable, 'cause like you wanna get to the truth.

Harry Stebbings 49:54 Which actually can be quite important. It can emphasize pain, it can emphasize-

David Meyer 49:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:57 ... you know, if I say, "Actually, it's frustrating," versus, "It's a fucking nightmare."

David Meyer 50:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 50:02 It's a big difference.

David Meyer 50:03 'Cause that- that takes maybe four seconds. To say it politely takes 10 seconds.

Harry Stebbings 50:08 Yeah.

David Meyer 50:09 Like if we work together a lot, we use th- we- we have the same lexicon, right? We can be efficient, high bandwidth. If you get 10 people in the room, they'll oftentimes, it'll be, it'll be like damaging. We'll say something, we'll understand each other, they'll interpret it differently, and they'll report the news to other people that's wrong.

Harry Stebbings 50:28 I- I totally agree with you in terms of the news reporting. How do you deal with that in terms of documentation of decisions made, action items-

David Meyer 50:35 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 50:35 ... to ensure that that communication downstream is efficient?

David Meyer 50:39 God, it's so important, and everybody's terr- I'm terrible at it. Um, I like to be partnered with a kind of a, you know, a, a program management type person, because I'm just useless. I'm not fastidious, you know? So I'll take notes. I want notes to be sent out. And oftentimes, I'll just like, if I join a meeting and there's no document link to take notes for the meeting, I go apoplectic. And then I'll create one and I'll write really bad notes and then I'll forget to send them out, but I'll invite other people to and then they'll send them out. So like, I really believe in the importance of that. I'm kind of shit at it personally, but it's so important because like, you know, at any company of any size, any venture of any size, you know, people do stupid shit, right?

Harry Stebbings 51:27 Sure.

David Meyer 51:27 Um, but if we get back to they're doing the best they can, so why would they do stupid shit? Well, if someone does stupid shit on my team, it's I didn't give them the context, 'cause they're smart people. I hire smart people. So if they're doing something dumbass, it's because I failed to give them the context and the framework to understand why it's dumbass.

Harry Stebbings 51:51 When you review that, why have you in the past failed to give them the context? You're too busy? You haven't done it effectively?

David Meyer 51:56 Too bus- Well, the other thing is like, I need to understand the system of something before I give advice on it, so I like dig in hard. I assume everybody's brain works like mine. I know they don't, you know, and like every one-on-one is different, but, um, my, I have a, a foible of- of- of thinking people think like me. So I assume a lot is self-evident, you know? I assume the things that I find self-evident you find self-evident 'cause it's self-evident. But that's the luxury of me being in a bunch of meetings you're not in.

Harry Stebbings 52:26 Sure.

David Meyer 52:26 So it's self-evident. So I-

Harry Stebbings 52:28 And the background that you have, the education you have.

David Meyer 52:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, it's not clear to me what is in someone else's brain, and I- I misread that a lot.

Harry Stebbings 52:38 You mentioned that you hire obviously very smart people. I think the hiring process is a very challenging one-

David Meyer 52:43 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 52:44 ... always. Um, how do you structure the hiring process for new additions to your product teams in terms of the structure? Is there a process?

David Meyer 52:52 So the first, the first conversation I have with someone, it's the same as a customer interview or- or talking to someone in another function and moving to product. So I wanna understand impact you've had, and then you'll say something, and until I think I could do it, I keep asking questions. But you do that until you find someone's floor, right? So I have an engineering background, or at least a civil engineering background. I can decompose systems, you know? Um, and a lot of product managers don't know how their shit works out, you know? 'Cause Databricks are very tech. I- in some consumer companies that might be okay, but in enterprise software, you gotta know how this shit works, because otherwise you'll give, make bad decisions 'cause you won't understand the dependencies, right? We talked about how, you know, someone that was at Google during the aughts, whatever they did, the numbers went up, you know? Um, but was it causal, is the question. So trying to understand how they dealt with a difficult situation. Is it other people's fault? Do they take responsibility? How did they get out of it? Were other people damaged in the way they got out of it? You know?

Harry Stebbings 53:58 Is that in the first conversation? Is that in the first meeting?

David Meyer 54:01 Yeah. I like, I- I try to connect as a human, um, in the first meeting, 'cause first of all, what's my main goal of the first meeting? I wanna fa- you know, fast fail if they wouldn't be a fit, and I want them to wanna talk to us again. Oftentimes, it's easy to forget the second part. Being deeply, deeply curious about what someone's done, they feel seen. And if you feel seen, you feel a connection and you'll wanna talk again. That's my hypothesis. Or at least people for whom that doesn't work, I just lose in the process.

Harry Stebbings 54:32 Okay. So we find actually that there's someone really interesting and we wanna do a second meeting or a third meeting. How do we dig deeper on their technical skills? Is there case studies? Is there ... How do we understand ability grade?

David Meyer 54:43 So I think that, um, the ... It's great to find a low stakes way to do work together. The best way to figure out if someone's good to work with is to work with them.

Harry Stebbings 54:54 Yeah.

David Meyer 54:54 And oftentimes that can just be, but then if you say, "I..."... you know, give me advice on my product. That's a big lift for them-

Harry Stebbings 55:02 Yeah.

David Meyer 55:02 ... you know?

Harry Stebbings 55:03 And also they didn't have the context. If I just-

David Meyer 55:05 Right, right.

Harry Stebbings 55:05 ... dropped in your products, you'd say, "Uh-"

David Meyer 55:06 And they could say something stupid, and I haven't given 'em the context and I judged them for that. So if we take a problem from their domain and workshop, like change, change, uh, change part of the context, change a constraint, and see how they deal with it and talk through it, you're working with them. It makes sense.

Harry Stebbings 55:24 You gotta, well the thing I find hard there though is that you then don't have the context, and they've been working on it for three years. And so whatever they say you'll be like, "Wow, that's smart." And it's like, well no, you just know nothing, and they've been working on it for three years.

David Meyer 55:34 Eh, I, that's true. That's definitely a failure mode. But, um, you know, it's powerful to know nothing 'cause you ask questions that seem dumb, but it can kind of throw people off 'cause they're not the questions they're expecting. And you see the internal consistency of what they're talking about, and again, how they're talking about it. If they're just taking credit for shit without the how, like, it's really the meta. It could be anything. It could be talking about how, you know, civilizations on Mars operate. They don't exist, but it, you know, it's like a great world-building fiction book feels real, but it's all made up. But there's a lot of intellectual, you know, coherence in what they're talking about. So I think you can, you can smell bullshit pretty easily, even in a domain you've never seen before if you're just intellectually curious and you keep kind of digging until you understand it.

Harry Stebbings 56:34 It's like Twitter's five whys. Oh, why did you do that? Oh, why, why did you do that?

David Meyer 56:36 Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's a five whys process-

Harry Stebbings 56:38 Yeah.

David Meyer 56:39 ... but deal with humans.

Harry Stebbings 56:40 What's the biggest mistake you've made in hiring processes?

David Meyer 56:43 People can be incredible, incredible in one company, and a total failure in another company. I've worked with people who were, like, brilliant game changers. Um, oftentimes they didn't show up first that that was obvious, but then they, like, accomplished amazing things. And then I brought them to interview at another company, convinced they'd be a game changer at the other company. Um, and then the panel was like, "This person isn't a fit at all." And they re- they give me, you know, a bunch of reasons that are true, and it's just because different companies have different cultures and different needs. And like, like let's say you know someone would be great, you know they would. Um, but there's people that doubt in the process. If someone comes in and there's non-believers, confirmation bias is very real. So if you can't enroll the hiring committee to believe that this person's great, they're gonna fail.

Harry Stebbings 57:52 How do you start your hiring committee?

David Meyer 57:54 Not too big. (laughs) But make, making sure that you have, you have to have people whose job it is to prove that the person's a bad hire. If I have people that work for me as the only people on the hiring committee, and they know I really like a person, it'll color their view, right? So you have to have antagonists in the system, a small number. It should be cross-functional. You need to have someone technical. Well, in enterprise software you need to have someone, you know, product, someone technical, and some naysayer, as like the core three, and all three of them have to be deeply, deeply respected in the org.

Harry Stebbings 58:33 Hmm.

David Meyer 58:34 And that's the hard part.

Harry Stebbings 58:35 What are the-

David Meyer 58:36 You need their signal to matter.

Harry Stebbings 58:37 What are the first things to break down in scaling product talks? We have these hiring processes. We hire many people. You've been in very fast scaling product talks before.

David Meyer 58:45 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:45 What are the first things to break?

David Meyer 58:47 Losing touch with the day-to-day of the individual contributor. Um, it's often t- like I don't know what people spend their time on intrinsically. There's things I assume. I ask for something to be done by everybody in the org, and in my mind it's just a tiny, tiny extra effort every week. But these things can pile up and be meaningless to the point where, you know, they're just running the machine and they're not doing the art, you know?

Harry Stebbings 59:20 They're doing the work, not the art.

David Meyer 59:21 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:21 Yeah.

David Meyer 59:22 They're not, they're not deeply truth seeking what really matters for the customer. They're filling out, you know, checklists.

Harry Stebbings 59:29 How do you retain that at scale?

David Meyer 59:31 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 59:31 Integrate them into customer support once a month? (laughs)

David Meyer 59:34 I hate to measure what people do, but, um, make sure they're talking to customers all the time. Like, a third of their time should be talking to customers, a third of their time should be using the product and working with engineering, and a third of their time should be thinking probably, you know? But it never works out that way 'cause usually 60% of their time is filling out bullshit.

Harry Stebbings 59:54 What is the most fictitious functions? I know that's a weird question, but like is it engineering and sales, where sales sell ahead of time and then say to engineering, "I need this feature." Is it between product and engineering? Is it between product and sales?

David Meyer 1:00:04 It's engineering and sales.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:05 Engineering and sales.

David Meyer 1:00:06 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:06 Why?

David Meyer 1:00:07 When I came into, to Databricks, um, it was bimodal, right? Engineers thought sales ran the company and were destroying it, and sales thought engineering ran the company and were destroying it, and not everybody loved each other. But the, the point was there, there was no real product muscle. I mean, Oli ran product, but then he became CEO and there was a gap. Engineers and sales have-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:30 Direction, values?

David Meyer 1:00:30 ... opposite, opposite-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:31 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:00:31 ... is a good word-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:32 Sure.

David Meyer 1:00:32 ... um, motivations, short-term, long-term. And so they're always gonna think the company would be better if the other had less influence. A salesperson, like there's a customer that wants to give me $5 million. Are you on crack? Like, why aren't we building this feature to get the $5 million? Engineer's like, "It g- it would destroy the company 'cause nobody else wants what that company..." You know, it's the, the, the trade-off.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:56 You wanna work on this security thing over this new product that's gonna get us guaranteed revenue? Seriously?

David Meyer 1:01:02 Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:02 Do you mediate that then as the product

David Meyer 1:01:04 I'm like the fixer or the mediator-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:06 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:01:06 ... for a lot of these things. So, um, like I always try to find a third way. The, people always, uh, present options-... that are myopic, you know. Like, we don't do this and we lose the revenue. Or, or, we, you know, we do it and it delays our strategy. I'm like, "No. I don't like either of those options." So you talk to the customer, and you find out they don't even need the feature. Like, i- it happens all the time. You're like, "We could do this for you. We could do this for you. But wouldn't it be better if we did this for you?" And, "No, no, I really need this." But then you just tease it out. I'm like, "But if we did this, this whole scope of work you have to do first half of next year would disappear." You know? Like, so again, you talk to the customer, you diffuse the situation, you enroll them into what you really wanna do, and then you make the, you know, salesperson realize you never needed the feature. Now, you don't, it doesn't always happen, and because I'm too optimistic, sometimes I, like, come up with a crazy third way that is just s- it's possible, if everybody was inside my brain, but then coordinating all the pieces to do weird shit sometimes doesn't scale either.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:21 Possible if everyone was inside my brain. It's like r- rea- um, reality distortion fields. What's the difference between good reality distortion and bad reality distortion?

David Meyer 1:02:29 Every great leader in startups, um, like, you're, you're bending reality, you know? You're, you're, you're creating things that seem impossible, so you have to enroll people in that, and once they're enrolled... If you think something's impossible, but you convince three friends, then the four of you think something's impossible, but the world, reality, thinks it's impossible. That's reality distortion.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:55 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 1:02:56 But you enroll people in it so they can hunker down and prove everybody wrong and accomplish it. As organizations grow and, you know, leaders have ego, um, you can believe yourself and not be truth-seeking, and then you can do your company a lot of damage, and you can do people a lot of... Think about how many people that have been traumatized by startups, you know? It was kind of like, we wanna accomplish this by any means necessary because it's the right thing to do, and you start to see less and less what you're compromising to do that. And so if you get caught up in your own reality distortion field, like, it might be impossible. So you've convinced all these people that something impossible is possible, and they're gonna waste a lot of, you know, their career chasing you on it 'cause you're so convincing. That's when it gets, gets, you know, a dark side.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:49 What's the best relationship between a head of product or a CPO and a CEO?

David Meyer 1:03:53 E- after every product role I do, when I'm seeking my next role, I want it to be anything but product.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:01 (laughs)

David Meyer 1:04:03 And then-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:03 And everyone's like, "Product."

David Meyer 1:04:05 And then you meet someone like, you know, Ali, p- you know, pulls back this curtain and you're like, "Holy shit, I wanna be part of this. Let me do some product stuff." But the CEO is the CPO, right? So it gets back to are you a rockstar or are you a roadie? You're a roadie. It gets complicated because you want to do, you want to exercise your craft and do something that you know is the right thing to do. The CEO is driving the vision of the company and knows the right thing to do, and you can't be in their brain and they can't be in your brain, and you're both working really hard and really busy and probably don't talk that much. There's always this conflict between you're hearing that we need to do things that you don't understand the full context of, and it's frictive with what you know you need to do. But you don't have the bandwidth or the time to articulate what's in your brain to the CEO.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:02 How do you have great communication, then?

David Meyer 1:05:04 Again, it gets back to hiring, but high bandwidth and truth-seeking, taking ego out of it, you know? How often do you speak to Ali, uh, to Ali?

Harry Stebbings 1:05:13 Very seldom. But it's generally, you know, messaging-

David Meyer 1:05:17 Yep.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:18 ... and, uh, calls late at night, you know, random times of the week, um, day to day, because the key is, um, to be simpatico enough. Like, for example, for the second half of the year, I listed all the main objectives I had and the tide of the vision and what outcomes they drive. I get his buy-in on that, and I just relentlessly, you know, go after those. 'Cause oftentimes, I, I send a lot to him that I don't necessarily get responses on unless he disagrees. Yep.

David Meyer 1:05:52 You know? So, like, there's a lot of delicate shit that goes on, and so I send to him probably, you know, a couple other leaders, founders, Adam or whoever, um, and then if I hear nothing, I just execute like mad.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:06 Final one before we do a quick fire. When you, like, review yourself as a product leader, what would you say you most need to improve on?

David Meyer 1:06:13 Because I form this human connection with people, um, I underestimate the negative impact my words can have.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:23 What does that mean in reality, that you hurt people more than you think?

David Meyer 1:06:26 Yeah. I might be despondent about something unrelated to the topic at hand, and my body language conveys that, and that's interpreted as disappointment in the topic at hand.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:39 How would you change that? (laughs)

David Meyer 1:06:42 (laughs) Move on. Like, being cognizant of it minimizes it and takes the edge off it, but it's just, you know, moving fast, trying to get things done.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:51 Or is it communicating to them that actually this is just how I am, and don't be disheartened or alarmed if X or Y happens?

David Meyer 1:06:57 Yeah, I think that gets to, like, just being honest, and you talked about how everyone I'm on is different, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:07:02 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:07:03 Like, just be direct and honest. Be vulnerable and share, you know, what's going on, and then they'll assume best intent with how you communicate.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:16 Do you think leaders are vulnerable today?

David Meyer 1:07:19 I think, I think all the great ones are.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:22 Yeah. I agree. And then you get to a level where you're a politician. I see it with the shows, where you get to, won't name names, but certain heights, and you suddenly then have to embrace being a politician.

David Meyer 1:07:33 It's so funny, like-

Harry Stebbings 1:07:33 Do you see what I mean?

David Meyer 1:07:34 ... like, you know, uh, we both know Jay Simons well, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:07:37 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:07:37 And he just talked about like there's a stage you get when an elevator ride is like heightened and consequential for how you interact with everybody in the elevator because of your role. And people want things from you, people wanna feel seen by you, and it just... It like gets, it gets crazy. The-

Harry Stebbings 1:08:02 The weight of words is hard.

David Meyer 1:08:02 Sometimes you can have... Yeah. Yeah. And you can have a very brief interaction that's very asymmetric in how much it meant.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:09 Well, I think that is, that's probably one of the hardest things, which is like, and it sounds awful, but if people, if you're a Scott at Atlassian or you're a Mark at, um, Salesforce, that is the, and this sounds... I didn't mean to dick you down, but that's the highlight of someone's day meeting you if you're in tech.

David Meyer 1:08:26 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:26 Like, for sure. You're one of their heroes, I'm sure. If you're a bit tired, haven't had-

David Meyer 1:08:30 Oh.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:30 ... your coffee in the morning, your wife's just had a go at you, your husband's just had a go at you, you're not like, "Oh, hi, David. Hi." It, it, it can actually not be the best ever experience.

David Meyer 1:08:40 Yeah. No, and that's, that's hard.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:42 That's really fucking hard.

David Meyer 1:08:43 And that's why sometimes at like... So we're doing this conference, you know, so I gave a couple keynotes yesterday, customer meetings for five hours, and then I go to dinner with like 50 customers. Are you kidding me? Like, it's so loud, you can't hear people, bizarre accents, you know? Like-

Harry Stebbings 1:08:59 Bizarre. Yeah.

David Meyer 1:09:00 I mean, American accents are bizarre, but like you have to really focus, and like you're just done. You're like spent, you know? And like you just need quiet time.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:11 Yeah. Okay, we're gonna do a quick fire.

David Meyer 1:09:14 All right.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:14 So what should you focus on if you want to get promoted

Harry Stebbings 1:09:17 as a PM?

David Meyer 1:09:18 Really, really know the customer, and really, really know the product. Know exactly how the product works, and know exactly what the customers need in aggregate.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:29 What's your all-time favorite font? (laughs)

David Meyer 1:09:33 Uh, DM Sans, 'cause my initials.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:35 (laughs) Tell me, what would you say is the biggest mistake founders make when hiring product teams?

David Meyer 1:09:41 Not being clear about the level of agency they'll have.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:46 Hmm. What does that mean?

David Meyer 1:09:48 Meaning, a founder CEO is gonna be in the details of all the shit, and that's good. And some people expect, you know, complete agency, calling the shots as a product leader, and they will fail.

Harry Stebbings 1:10:02 I think you've only worked with good founders.

David Meyer 1:10:04 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:10:05 What I mean by that is quite often what I hear is like, "Oh, my God. I mean, that's so far removed. Like, th- they just kinda left me to all of my own abilities."

David Meyer 1:10:13 Okay. Okay. Okay. So the... I was talking about good founders. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:10:17 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:10:17 Um, so I've, you know, I've worked with a lot of people that were basically like, "The right thing for me to say was, 'I've got it.'" And I tried that for the first six months at Databricks, and that's not what Ali wanted to hear. He didn't want me to go off and do something and then show him how awesome it was, you know? He wanted to be deeply involved and have the founders deeply involved in the sausage-making because they had so much more context and I wouldn't go through, you know, wasted time that way.

Harry Stebbings 1:10:42 No, I totally get you. What one piece of advice would you give to someone starting a new role as a CPO or product leader?

David Meyer 1:10:49 There's a failure mode where you feel like you have to put together comprim- comprehensive frameworks that sales is, you know, given confidence by and... Like, just give yourself time. Do as little, like, changing the world of how the company works as possible in the first 90 days.

Harry Stebbings 1:11:09 Should you look for early easy wins?

David Meyer 1:11:12 Um, yeah, but they shouldn't be vanity wins, you know? If the early wins are human more than technical, you'll, uh, build the followership you need.

Harry Stebbings 1:11:24 No, I, I, I, I agree with that for sure. I see too many coming into that, "I'm gonna change everything."

David Meyer 1:11:28 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:11:28 And then it's like, "Whoa. No, no, no." Uh, what are some most important skills to build early, early in your career in product?

David Meyer 1:11:35 So when I was at Plumtree and, you know, Phil Seifer left and told John Kunz to make me run product, I met with John Kunz, and he, he was at Adobe in the great days, you know, in product. He ran product for a lot of Creative Suite stuff. And I was like, "John, I'll do this. I'll do this if you want me to do this, but I need you to be my mentor. I need you to teach me how to do product 'cause I, I don't know what to do." And he's like, "You can't teach it." (laughs) That's all he said.

Harry Stebbings 1:12:02 Thanks, John. That's, that's super helpful, isn't it?

David Meyer 1:12:04 (laughs) But-

Harry Stebbings 1:12:05 Uh, throw me into the deep end. Cheers, brother. Yeah, yeah, you should do it. And, uh, you can't teach it. No. No. Okay, okay. Uh, you also... I think it's very difficult to teach parenting.

David Meyer 1:12:15 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:12:16 If you could call yourself up the night before you had your first child, what would you say to yourself?

David Meyer 1:12:22 Like, "Hold on to the wonder."

Harry Stebbings 1:12:24 What does that mean? I appreciate-

David Meyer 1:12:25 It's so easy. Like, so the first kid we had, urgency for them to, like, roll over. Urgent... Like, "They're gonna walk. When are they gonna walk? When are they gonna..." Like, second kid, you wanna delay walking as much as possible 'cause then you have to chase them, you know? Just watching them. Like, you watch videos of them as babies now, and you're just like, "It's just amazing." Every little thing they do is amazing. Like, stop trying to shape them. Just, you know, get a front row seat.

Harry Stebbings 1:12:55 I love that. It's so true. So you're always like, "Ah," and then, "And then they're going to school soon," and then, uh, and then suddenly it's like, "Oh, my God."

David Meyer 1:13:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:13:01 "They're gone."

David Meyer 1:13:02 Ours just... First one went to college, you know?

Harry Stebbings 1:13:04 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:13:05 It's crazy.

Harry Stebbings 1:13:06 Yeah. Does it get easier?

David Meyer 1:13:08 Wait, parenting or product management?

Harry Stebbings 1:13:11 Yeah. Give a shit about product management.

David Meyer 1:13:11 Um, my wife says, "Bigger kids, bigger problems." You know? So it gets different. Um, in a lot of ways, the... So, um, it's interesting. It, it ties into career, right? 'Cause these things are a balance. I used to think...... when I left work to go home, I was being selfish until I had kids. And then I thought, "When I stay at work and don't go home, I'm being selfish." The clarity is easiest when they're young, you know? Because it's clear what you w- what... like spending time is good, and, and what to do. How to navigate as they get older, how much do you try to, try to direct, shape how much you try to kind of respect and learn. I'm bad. I'm a bad disciplinarian, you know? It's like, in sales and engineering, I try to find the third way. Like, the kid is obstinate, and, you know, the rules are this. I try to find a compromise. Compromise isn't always good for kids. You know, you need to set boundaries. I don't know.

Harry Stebbings 1:14:15 Isn't that why you have a partner? (laughs)

David Meyer 1:14:17 (laughs) Yeah, it's a very important-

Harry Stebbings 1:14:18 Go there. (laughs)

David Meyer 1:14:19 You gotta bal- Yeah, that's, that's-

Harry Stebbings 1:14:21 Listen, I agree with you-

David Meyer 1:14:22 ... very useful.

Harry Stebbings 1:14:22 ... darling, but you should go and see your mother. (laughs) That's amazing. What recent company, final one, what recent company product strategy are you most impressed by? So I'd say, like two for me, which is, like Notion and Canva, when you look at what they've done in terms of opening up the aperture of templates, um, ah.

David Meyer 1:14:39 Why didn't that happen 20 years earlier though? That's what I can't figure out. It seems so self-evident, you know, now. When you asked the question, I was thinking more about business model, you know?

Harry Stebbings 1:14:48 Mm-hmm.

David Meyer 1:14:49 'Cause I think that's where, you know, disintermediating things, and... Like, there's a, there's a h-

Harry Stebbings 1:14:57 Business model innovation is where true capital creation happens.

David Meyer 1:14:59 That's where I get most excited about, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:15:01 Yeah.

David Meyer 1:15:01 Not on the craft or the product. I really respect the craft or the product. But the companies that I find most intriguing are ones that, uh, you know, have a very unusual insight into business model. Like the early days of a company like Opower, you know? They were using data to drive efficiency at power plants in the US because the power plants got paid by the government for reducing the demand of the energy. You know, so it's, like multiple way- It's very complicated to pull things off like that. But, like f- like figuring out t- to the, the big problems of environmental transformation, um, energy efficiency, uh, you know, social and economic equity, you have to come up with really creative business models to, to tackle those things. And I think those, those are the fun ones to think about.

Harry Stebbings 1:15:57 David, listen, I've loved doing this. I'm so glad that you, uh, didn't really read the schedule or spend much time on it-

David Meyer 1:16:02 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:16:02 ... because we didn't really stick to it at all. But this has been such a joy.

David Meyer 1:16:04 No, it was really fun. Yeah.