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Shreyas Doshi: The 6 Product Metrics You Need To Know; The 3 Types of Product Leader | E913

Shreyas Doshi is an investor, advisor, and all-around product OG. Most recently Shreyas spent over 5 years at Stripe where he was Stripe’s first PM Manager and helped define and grow the Product Management function (from ~5 to more than 50 people). Before Stripe, Shreyas was a Director of Product Management @ Twitter and prior to Twitter spent over 6 years as a Group Product Manager @ Google. Today Shreyas has invested and advises some of the best including advising Airtable, Kalshi, Lendflow, to name a few. ------------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:28 How did you make your way into the world of product? 02:48 How do you define “Product Management”? 05:00 What metrics to follow for user adoption? 08:57 What are “Health Metrics”? 11:00 What is the most misunderstood metric category? 14:40 Who should be in charge of choosing the North Star Metric? 16:32 What are the three different personas of product leaders? 20:00 When do you need The Operator? 24:47 What is The Craftsperson persona? 28:57 What are signs of breaks in a scaling product team? 32:40 What is The Visionary persona? 38:49 How to weigh customer feedback? 43:10 Shreya’s new framework for product decisions 47:40 How has angel investing changed your product mindset? 49:46 What product persona do The Collison brothers (of Stripe) fit? 52:06 How important is time to value in a customer experience? 57:31 What in the realm of product have you changed your mind on? 58:40 Advice for new product leaders starting today 59:21 Biggest strength and biggest weakness 59:50 Most impressed by this company’s product strategy ------------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Shreyas Doshi: 1.) Entry into Product: How did Shreyas make his way into the world of product and product management? Why did Shreyas decide not to do business school when it was the conventional route for everyone going into product management? What were some of Shreyas’ biggest takeaways from his time at Stripe and Google? How did they impact his product mind today? 2.) Product Management 101: How does Shreyas define product management today? How do many confuse it? How does Shreyas define product success today? What is the single biggest mistake Shreyas sees founders make when determining the success/PMF of their product? Does Shreyas believe that great product management is science or art? Data or intuition? When should you listen to customers? When should you not? 3.) Metrics 101 & How To Use Them: What is the single biggest mistake Shreyas sees founders make when it comes to selecting their North Star metric? How should founders think about input vs output metrics? What is the difference between the two? What are the 6 types of metrics that all founders and product teams need to focus on? How does their importance change over time? How should the responsibility for these metrics be split between different people and teams? 4.) Three Types of Product Leader: What are the three different types of product leaders? The Craftsperson: What is their core strength? What is their core weakness? How do they interact with the rest of the team and company? The Operator: What is their core strength? What is their core weakness? How do they interact with the rest of the team and company? The Visionary: What is their core strength? What is their core weakness? How do they interact with the rest of the team and company? ------------------------------------------------- #productmanager #productdevelopment #productleadership #ShreyasDoshi #HarryStebbings #ProductApp

Shreyas DoshiguestHarry Stebbingshost
Aug 2, 20221h 1mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Shreyas Doshi Reveals Core Product Metrics And Leader Archetypes

  1. Shreyas Doshi explains his definition of product management and frames product success through three lenses: user adoption, customer satisfaction, and business impact.
  2. He introduces six key categories of product metrics, clarifies the limits of a single North Star Metric, and stresses the importance of pairing quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback.
  3. Doshi outlines three archetypes of product leaders—operator, craftsperson, and visionary—explaining when each is needed, common hiring mistakes, and how founders should think about their own role versus a CPO.
  4. He also discusses strategy-led product decisions (including when to ignore customer requests), the importance of segment focus and differentiation, and how motivation and alternatives shape acceptable time-to-value.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Measure multiple metric categories, not just a single North Star.

Doshi breaks metrics into six categories—health, usage, adoption, satisfaction, ecosystem, and outcome—and argues that focusing on just one number (like a North Star Metric) obscures the input metrics that actually drive outcomes.

Adoption is an output; optimize the inputs instead.

Teams often obsess over adoption or active users, but Doshi recommends tracking and improving usage and health metrics (e.g., task creation, latency, error rates) that causally drive user adoption and retention.

Avoid over-engineering your North Star Metric, especially early-stage.

Founders should choose a reasonable, measurable North Star quickly, then spend time shipping product and learning, instead of endlessly refining the perfect but hard-to-measure metric.

Founders must stay deeply involved in top-level product metrics.

Even if they delegate details to a CPO or head of product, founders cannot outsource responsibility for defining and understanding the company’s key product metrics and must be competent or actively develop competence here.

Match the product leader archetype to your stage and strengths.

Pre- or just-post-PMF companies usually need a craftsperson (strong product insight and translating ambiguity into winning products), while later-stage, cross-functional complexity calls for an operator; visionaries are rare and often best paired with craftspeople and operators.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Product management is the art, science, and practice of making successful products and making products successful.

Shreyas Doshi

Adoption is an end result of something else you do… you’re better off measuring those other things.

Shreyas Doshi

The North Star metric is not a panacea… you end up spending time working on a metric instead of shipping product.

Shreyas Doshi

A competent visionary is extremely rare… they’re just more right about where the world is headed.

Shreyas Doshi

You will find pockets of customers that are highly dissatisfied… and that’s where I like companies that create highly differentiated experiences for them.

Shreyas Doshi

Definition and core goals of product managementSix categories of product metrics and choosing adoption metricsNorth Star Metrics: benefits, pitfalls, and qualitative feedbackThree product leader archetypes: operator, craftsperson, visionaryWhen and how to hire your first senior product leaderBalancing customer feedback with product strategy (BTD framework)Customer motivation, alternatives, and time-to-value in product design

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