Kayvon Beykpour: How to Structure and Manage the Best Product Reviews | 20VC #894

Kayvon Beykpour is one of the most prominent product leaders of the last decade. For the last 7 years, Kayvon has been at Twitter where he led all of the teams across Product, Engineering, Design, Research and Customer Service & Operations. Kayvon came to Twitter through Periscope, the live broadcasting app that raised from GV, Bessemer, Scott Belsky and was ultimately acquired by Twitter in 2015. If that was not enough, Kayvon is also an active angel investor today. ------------------------------------------- Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:24 How did you meet Scott Belsky? 03:01 What lessons from Scott impacted you? 05:08 What makes great storytelling? 07:12 What were biggest takeaways from Periscope? 12:11 Is product more art or science? 14:17 What does product management mean? 17:43 When to hire your first Product Manager? 19:42 How to structure the hiring process of PM? 20:36 Advice to startups on first PM hire 22:50 How to tell if a PM will be comfortable in the job? 24:17 What questions to ask in product interviews? 25:41 Where do founders go wrong in hiring? 27:20 How do you do product reviews? 31:23 What are the signs that a team isn’t working well? 34:03 How do you communicate as a leader? 36:36 How to priortize tasks? 41:05 When to listen to customer feedback? 44:06 What did you learn from a product mistake? 47:41 Which product leader do you most admire? 49:04 Piece of advice for product leaders today 49:49 Biggest takeaway from angel investing 51:15 What recent product strategy have you been most impressed by? ------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Kayvon Beykpour You Will Learn: 1.) Entry into Product: How did Kayvon make his way into the world of tech and come to be Head of Consumer Product @ Twitter? What were some of Kayvon’s biggest lessons from the journey with Periscope? What were some of Kayvon’s biggest takeaways from working closely with Scott Belsky? 2.) Building Your Product Team: How does Kayvon advise on your first product hires? Should it be Head of Product or more junior product team members? When is the right time for the founder to hand off some core product decisions to these hires? What are the core traits and characteristics of some of the best first product hires? 3.) Perfecting the Hiring Process for Product Teams: How does Kayvon approach the hiring process for all new product team members? What are the stages? What does he look to learn at each stage? What questions reveal the most in product candidates? How do the best respond? How does Kayvon use case studies and product demos in the process? 4.) Building Product: 101: How does Kayvon approach product reviews? Who is invited? Who sets the agenda? How often? What have been Kayvon’s biggest lessons about what leaders need to do to get the most from their product teams? How do they communicate? What has been one of Kayvon’s biggest product mistakes? What did he learn? How does Kayvon advise founders on when to give up on a new product vs when to iterate and persist? ------------------------------------------- #productmanagement #productmanager #productdevelopment #periscope #twitter #20VC #harrystebbings