Tomer Cohen: Why LinkedIn Stories Failed; How LinkedIn's Feed Was Born; AI Startups | E1019

1. 0:00 – 1:18

   Intro

   1. TCTomer Cohen0:00

      Those models right now are very focused on existing knowledge. Right? So they learned all available public knowledge in the internet and they were able to produce a result for you that is going to predict what you're trying to answer. But then there is a question of, what about new knowledge? What happens when those models start to hypothesize? They can come up with new ideas, new scientific discoveries. You know, imagine AI coming up with answers to some of the biggest scientific mysteries in the world like, what is dark matter? What's dark energy? What causes Alzheimer's disease? What is quantum mechanics? What is oneself? And that for me is you're moving from a place of those models are amazing in rebuilding and restructuring existing knowledge to coming up with new knowledge. When you start to come up with new knowledge, you're really talking about a whole new frontier.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:58

      (instrumental music) Tomer, I am so excited for this. I've spoken to just so many of your friends before, so I know an incredible amount about you and I'm ready. So thank you so much for joining me today.

   3. TCTomer Cohen1:08

      I'm excited to be here. I'm- I'm a big fan of the show and I'm excited to be on it.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings1:12

      Well, that is very, very kind. But I'm fascinated, CPO at LinkedIn, one of my favorite products.

2. 1:18 – 5:10

   Tomer Cohen: From the IDF to LinkedIn

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:18

      How- how did you come to be CPO at LinkedIn, Tomer?

   2. TCTomer Cohen1:21

      Ah, that's a long journey. You know, I always think that product journeys are so idiosyncratic and they're so unique. For me, uh, ever since I was a kid I loved building. I love every aspect of building. I love the entire cycle. I love the problem-solving side, I love the design side, technology side. I love the feedback and it's my place of joy, it's where I'm in a state of flow. Uh, my first experience with cutting-edge technology was actually during my army service and I was blown away seeing what technology can do. But I started my career as an engineer actually working in semiconductors. Um, and if you ever worked on a semiconductor as a chief design engineer, it's like- it's like you're building- you're building a c- you know, a city on the size of a few millimeters. It's- it's incredible. And there's a lot of, uh, beauty in the complexity in how you build it right. And then I moved to embedded software systems, all the way to starting a company in the consumer space. My journey to LinkedIn was actually a very special one. So I became a LinkedIn fan long before I joined the company. I came to the Valley in 2008. I went to a lecture at a Stanford engineering school. It was about social networks. Now, this is 2008, social networks are a big deal, but, you know, they're not as big as they are today, uh, but they're hot. They're like the hot topic. And all the, you know, big founders of social networks that you can think about were there and it was all the rage. Uh, the hottest topic was Facebook time spent on the internet. Uh, onstage there was more of an older, uh, founder. His name was Reid Hoffman. This is where I got to meet Reid for the first time. And Reid was different. Reid talked about the power of online professional communities and how it can create economic opportunities. It's the first time I heard it and it deeply resonated with me. The idea that a professional community becomes a powerful growth engine for the economy just, uh, inspired me on a whole new level. And over time, Reid himself became a personal mentor of mine. And it was only several years later, I had a conversation with who back then was the CPO of LinkedIn, and this was early mobile days and I came from a startup. And if you came from a startup in the Valley, it was all about mobile and larger companies were still trying to deal with this, uh, mobile thing that was happening. And he asked me, he said, "How would you re- re- rebuild LinkedIn as a mobile product?" I was excited to share my thoughts. Um, and then he said, "Instead of talking about it, how about you come and build it?" And, uh, the rest is history. I joined the company in 2012 and in 2000- in 2020 I became the CPO myself. So it kind of- kind of felt- kind of came full circle since then.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings4:02

      Can I ask, you mentioned your relationship with Reid there. What would you say is the biggest lesson or takeaway that you've learned from Reid in that relationship?

   4. TCTomer Cohen4:10

      I love my one-on-ones with Reid. Usually I come with an agenda and we somehow find ourself going very deep on one topic, uh, that I haven't even thought about. I- I think of Reid as my... You know, I would come to Reid and I'll say, "Hey, there is option A and option B and help me think through those." And he'll give me option orange that I haven't even thought about before and it's highly philosophical, it's- it's really deep, it's really insightful. So most of the time, we- we kind of stay at this level of- of insights and, uh, profound understanding of needs and talking through those versus the details of- of the product itself. I- I come a lot for Reid when there's a really complex problem I'm trying to solve or trying to be inspired with a whole new way of thinking. Uh, and that's kind of my source of, uh- of product inspiration in many cases.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings5:01

      I love that. Always an outside-the-box thinker. I do- I do have to ask you, and, uh, I ask quite unfair questions because they're generic, but I- I'm fascinated on this one always,

3. 5:10 – 15:06

   Is Product an Art or a Science?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings5:10

      which is like when we think about product state, especially given your experience working kind of within semiconductors, within consumer, and then also kind of like incumbent LinkedIn style, like do you think product is more an art or a science? And if you were to put numbers on it, attach it to them, where would you put it, Tomer?

   2. TCTomer Cohen5:26

      So (laughs) I heard you ask this question on a previous podcast I listened to and I must say, it created some tension for me 'cause I- I- I think it's impossible to delineate science from art. I think they're interwoven, they play off each other. There's a lot of science in art, like my daughter, my 10-year-old daughter loves art, and now she's learning about scientific principles of geometry and color theory. And there's a lot of art in science. Some of the best scientists in the world are very imaginative. But, eh, after I kind of, um, thought about it more, I think when we talk about science in product...... I think there is this tendency to think about it more as the best practices of product, the skill set. How do you learn, you know, the know-how around design and data and experimentation and business? And that, for me, is a foundation of what it means to be good at this job. And honing that craft, the "scientific part of it," in quotes, can take you a long way. And it has to be applied learning, right? You- you can't sit in a classroom learning how to do product. You have to build. But I think what sets you apart in the craft of building product is your ability to bring vision and creativity and intuition, and the judgment, and the imagination. Talk about my interaction with Reid. I think that's what sets you apart from the group. It's where you listen to customers or users, or you just observe them, and some will just go and say, "Oh, this is what they want," and some will come, "I think this is what they need." It's that, like, uh, you know, uncovering profound needs that they haven't even talked about. It's being able to anticipate, uh, where technology is going, where the industry is growing, because you kind of see a few steps ahead and that- that takes a lot of intuition and imagination. And I think the further you grow in your career, there is an expectation that that's what you'll bring to the company. The best product people that I w- enjoy working with have this combination of knowledge and creativity. They can do vision, they can go all the way to execution. And when I think about the intersection of, uh, product people who are dreamers, who are doers, who are learners, you really get the holy grail of- of, uh, product craft and ability.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings7:40

      I have two questions I just have to ask off the top of that, which is that Shreyas Doshi actually says a brilliant thing, which is like, there's three types of profiles in product. There's the visionary, which would be like your Tony Fedele, big picture thinker, like just fucking vision beyond belief and inspiration mind, uh, then there's the craftsman, uh, and then there's the operator. The kind of craftsman is kind of the in between of the visionary and the, um, and the operator. And the operator is like your scaled CPO, where bluntly they instill processes. They're kind of the professional CPO that puts processes and infrastructure in place. Which would you say that you are of the three, and would you agree with those characterizations?

   4. TCTomer Cohen8:24

      I think those attributes of what's expected in the role, uh, in the role are correct. Um, and I think it's hard to find somebody who is locked immediately at the center. Uh, this is one where I would send you to my team and people who work with me and say I would, you know, curious as to what they say. You know, talking about myself, I... You know, if I go back to why I love building, I love all three attributes. So, I can tell you what I love doing, but I'll let-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings8:50

      Sure.

   6. TCTomer Cohen8:50

      ... others tell you what I'm good at. Um, I love the imaginary side. I love the vision side. I love getting excited about what the change we can create in the world if we build something pretty unique. But then I love taking it all the way to how we actually execute on it. I love the grind of the work itself. So, I don't stick around with just a, you know, a great whiteboard session. I love seeing it in action. I love feedback. I love seeing how- how you can take something that... You know, most launches are never zero to one, they're like 0 to .6.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings9:25

      Yeah.

   8. TCTomer Cohen9:25

      They're never great. And like moving it from .6 gradually to really finding product market fit, that's an incredible feeling. When I had my startup, knowing that somebody is using something you built from scratch and something you invented is an incredible experience. It's- it's one that I can tell you, I can see if you love product or not, if you get excited by it.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings9:47

      Uh-

   10. TCTomer Cohen9:47

       For me, it's less about, uh... You know, you have a lot of people who are coming to product to make decisions. I- I don't think to think of those as the right product people. I think it's inherently in the love of building and trying to create change. It could be change on a small scale or a bigger scale, but it's the love of building for it.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings10:05

       You said about that, like, loving seeing people engage with your product. How do you... And you mentioned earlier about kind of, bluntly, that ability to think ahead of your customers in some ways. How do you think about when to listen to your customers versus when to pursue your own roadmap and think ahead of them? What- what does that decision-making look like?

   12. TCTomer Cohen10:26

       Yeah. I- ideally, your roadmap is- is always inspired by what you... I'm gonna say intuitively learn from customers or listen to customers. Uh, I- I'm a big believer in the notion of the job to be done, and a lot of it is how do you build strong conviction and belief without having evidence yet, without having data yet? Um, and I think it goes back to the idea that if you want to innovate, uh, it has to be rooted in some deep insight. And that insight can come from-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings11:00

       How- how- h- how do you- how do you do that?

   14. TCTomer Cohen11:01

       (laughs) Uh, so, it- there is a craft to that as well. There's a science and there's an art. Uh, but, um, if you go back and you really believe that, like in- in order to develop innovative products, you have to have a profound understanding of an unmet need you're trying to do. The job to be done way is just a way to contextualize it. So for example, at LinkedIn, we have many audiences. We have people who come to LinkedIn to, uh, to partner, to find a job, to hire, to, uh, get input on knowledge, to share their knowledge, to market, to sell, to start a company. Like, there's so many jobs to be done that can be done on Link-... That was the kind of, of- this- the profound insight that Reid had was, if I help people build their community in a professional way, there's so much value they can derive from it. It's really depends on what they're trying to achieve. So, we used to focus on the audiences at LinkedIn, and that was helpful in segmentation, but it wasn't helpful for innovation. And then we moved a few years ago to really trying to humanize the need. Asking, for example, uh, what are members truly looking for, not just functionally, but also emotionally? And I'll give you an example.... um, uh, B2B buying, buying B2B products. You can think of it as a very boring, you know, uh, uh, gray job. "I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna look at a few products. I'm gonna compare their pricing, implementation. I'm gonna compare the scalability of them, the criteria of them." It sounds in a way, um, very functional, almost like a spreadsheet kind of task. But when you buy a B2B product, it's actually a highly emotional, stressful job. Because if you're gonna buy a, a widget for a company, for your company that's gonna cost $50,000, $100,000, a million dollars, and it's gonna take months to implement, you better know what you're doing. You better do a good job. It co- you know, it could be a career-ending decision for you.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings12:58

       (laughs)

   16. TCTomer Cohen12:58

       So what happens with buying B2B product is that they usually... All they want is consensus. They want people to agree with them that this is the right product to buy. Uh, it's a highly emotional job. It's a really stressful job. You're trying to get people to agree with you and the company. It's almost like a committee, unofficial committee you assemble, of people who agree with you that this is the right product to buy. So it's not about the features. It's really about getting your peers to align with you. It's a social job that, uh, you can actually get this done. Another example is people who create on LinkedIn. A- and you and I just talked about it, like, before the session a little bit. But, you know, creation on LinkedIn is very different than creation on other platforms. If you come to LinkedIn expecting the same dopamine rush you get from Facebook or the Twitter because of the likes and views, then I don't think you're thinking about the LinkedIn platform correctly. The job to be done for creating on LinkedIn is really driving opportunity for you. It's the quality of the views. It's the audience you're reaching. It's the ability for you to build a pipeline for your venture or, uh, your gig. People are interested in your insights and want to invite you in. And actually what we hear, we have programs that we work, uh, closely with creators, and we had a creator that actually started with some early creators, and we found that 50% of them, in the span of a month after creating on LinkedIn, were getting reached out by people saying, "Hey, maybe you can do a session with my team, do a workshop on your craft, on the things you're talking about." You can do... They're basically getting economic opportunity as a result of creating on LinkedIn. That's very different than other platforms. We don't do rev share. Your opportunity of LinkedIn is your voice. It's what you create. It's your reputation. It's your brand. The job to be done is inherently very different. So, you know, going all the way back to the notion of understanding what is it that people are trying to do is, like, understanding well beyond the functional role, but also the social and emotional s- role are extremely important to the context of your product.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings15:02

       You mentioned there that the buying decision and actually kind of the influence that one

4. 15:06 – 17:30

   Founder-led Product Teams

   1. HSHarry Stebbings15:06

      has, I'm too interested. I had Glen Coates on the show, who's, uh, who is VP of product at Shopify, and he said that the day that the founder is no longer the CPO is the day the company stops innovating. Is that fair?

   2. TCTomer Cohen15:20

      I think the context of the company matters a ton. It really depends on the stage. And, you know, founders, in my opinion, I, I love founders. Uh, they're a critical part of every life cycle of the company, because they in- intimately carry the original vision. They have that birthing insight that made the company, and that's invaluable. Uh, now, some of the best companies in the world, that their founders do not play an operating role, like Microsoft or Intuit or Netflix right now, or Amazon, uh, the founders are still playing a guiding role. So they're still there for... You know, Bill Gates at Microsoft, Scott Cook at Intuit, uh, Bezos at Amazon. And those are very successful companies. Uh, you know, Apple still has the spirit of Steve Jobs, but obviously he's no longer there. So, uh, I think it really depends on the stage of the company. Personally, you know, working... When I joined LinkedIn, Reid no longer had an operating role. He was our chairman of the board, but I spent a lot of one-on-one time with him. Um, so I think it's having the founder as part of the company and always laddering up to that, uh, that founding insight. I like to think that companies have founding moments, and it's more than one. If the company is successful, LinkedIn is gonna be 20 year o- 20 years old in a month from now. Uh, actually, a couple of weeks from now, we're gonna be 20 years old. And I think the company went through multiple founding moments. Now, if you take it all the way back to a startup or a young company, then yes, I will be very worried if the founder is not intimately involved in the product, either as the head of product or playing a key role in shaping the product. Because ultimately, it was that founding insight that played into it, and it better be shepherded by the founder. But if you, if you think of a company evolving with multiple founding moments that are still shaped by their original vision, then you have a more expansive way to think about the role of a founder. And I think it becomes a lot more in spirit, in guiding, than in operations.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings17:21

      Toma, we chatted before about content creation on the platform and how much I loved it. I think the shows are also successful because I'm also quite honest, more so now than

5. 17:30 – 26:00

   Is LinkedIn’s UI outdated?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings17:30

      I have been before. Can I ask a blunt question, which is when you look at the desktop site and you look at the mobile app, do you not feel that it feels outdated from a UI perspective?

   2. TCTomer Cohen17:45

      I think there's a lot that we can do there to improve, and there's a lot actually we're working on right now to really innovate within the constraints of what we've done. In fact, once you start playing with the app itself, there's a lot of innovation in between the feed, and we can go deep on the feed and the role it's playing today, and within the messaging experience, within the search experience. In fact, the use case of LinkedIn dramatically evolved over the last few years. But I do feel like in many ways, the current experience does f- it constrains us, and there's a lot we can do.... to improve it. And, and, and to rethink it. And that's what's happening right now. In a world of generative AI right now, there is a lot of complexity you can potentially unwound, uh, by building a simpler experience, but playing AI into it. If you play the last six years for us at LinkedIn, as a company, there's been tremendous evolution in the product that led to some pretty remarkable results. Revenue for LinkedIn more than tripled, our member base more than doubled, our engagement is hitting record levels, and I mentioned we're about to hit 20 years old, uh, company in a couple of weeks. We're growing the fastest we ever grew right now, which is pretty remarkable for a 20-year-old company.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings19:02

      What do you put that down to?

   4. TCTomer Cohen19:05

      Yeah. I, I think there has been a lot of work back to the vision. I think we've been very centered around what we're trying to do at LinkedIn and how it connects to our vision to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. That's always been our true north. I think in the last couple of years, I credited a big part of it, not all of it, but a big part of it to our focus to leading with clarity, to principles and conviction. Uh, personally, I love to tell my team that we might be wrong but we're not confused. I, I see a notion of clarity of thought and clarity of execution as being critical for creating a culture of innovation and operational excellence, and it goes all the way from having a, a deep understanding of, of the problem you're trying to solve for-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings19:50

      I think that's-

   6. TCTomer Cohen19:50

      ... and if you understand that really, really well... Yeah?

   7. HSHarry Stebbings19:53

      If we g- if we go deeper though, clarity of vision, you know, you might, you, you might be wrong but you're not confused. Let's go deeper. What is driving the growth? Is it the feed? Is it the newsletters? Is it messaging? Where, where is the clarity that is driving growth?

   8. TCTomer Cohen20:11

      So I think if you look at LinkedIn, ultimately it comes down to, when I open the app, I'm able to, uh, mark progress as my job to be done. And it could be that I'm coming in and I see Harry Styles is on my feed and I learn a new insight and I wanna follow what he says and I wanna follow the people he talks to so I can learn more about my craft and be better at it, but at the same time, it could also be that we know whenever I need to go to LinkedIn because I'm about to meet somebody, I can get the insights I need to have that interaction but be more deeper, be more meaningful. And we all meet people on a regular basis. So ultimately, the feed, the messaging, those are just constructs to help you accomplish your job to be done, but I think it starts with that clarity on what is it that you're trying to get done. So we know that people come to LinkedIn, they come to the LinkedIn feed, they're trying to find ideas, advice, inspiration. They're trying to see what their network is up to so they can start, continue to build relationship, and those all ladder up to a job to be done they have. So it's not a specific area of the product. It's the experience that allows you to fulfill your needs.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings21:19

      Can I ask you an interesting one which is like, I think, you know, both TikTok and Facebook have realized kind of the decaying utility value of social graphs for them and moving to kind of content recommendation engines. You mentioned that advice, inspiration, motivation of posts. To what extent do you think you're moving too to the content recommendation engine over the social graph component?

   10. TCTomer Cohen21:41

       I think the social graph for us has been a phenomenal construct for you to be able to almost, like, you know, tell us who are the people that you find most valuable in your network, in your career, and again, your network is how you get things done in your professional life. That's the founding insight of LinkedIn. So, that will never go away. Being able to say those are the people that matter to me, those are my colleagues, my customers, my clients, they're people in the industry I wanna learn from, that's a, a really key part of, of gonna be a LinkedIn, let's call it, you know, conversational experience, not just the feed experience because the feed could be v- uh, constraining as a, as a mental structure. But having said that, uh, I think the idea of being able to go more t- topical recommendations and being able to find people who are outside of the people you know but they matter tremendously to your craft is extremely important. So I could be an AI engineer in the field of agriculture right now and say, "Who are the best AI engineers working on crop development, uh, systems?" And I might not know them personally so they're not part of my network, but being able to follow them, to learn from them, could actually change the trajectory of my career. I can do-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings22:57

       Absolutely.

   12. TCTomer Cohen22:57

       ... a much better job. I ca- and...

   13. HSHarry Stebbings23:00

       How do you think about utility value of connections? You mentioned that, "I might not know them, but I can follow them." I probably get 200 connection requests a day from people I don't know. How do you think about, like, how much value a connection actually means today given that awareness?

   14. TCTomer Cohen23:17

       So it's a great point because I think that's one that it took us, uh, quite a while to solve for members. We started with just connect as a construct because it was about people you knew that were part of your network with the idea that you could reach out for help and, uh, they're willing... there's a kind of a bidirectional desire to help each other. Um, and then we introduced the idea of following people quite later in the role and we n- we never did a great job clarifying the role of those, and I think we are right now, but, um, I think that led to people building networks of people they don't necessarily know really well, but they love to learn from, which would be a follow relationship. So for example, now when you go to the product, uh, we would suggest that you follow people who are not necessarily, um, c- we don't necessarily think you have a relationship with. Like, if you went to the same school together, same year, you work at the same company the same years, we might suggest you connect, but if not, we'll suggest you follow people. And, and that's something we're continuously working. Actually, follows right now is one of the most impressive growth trajectories at LinkedIn. It's growing at 200% year over year. There was

   15. NANarrator24:23

       (laughs)

   16. TCTomer Cohen24:24

       ... an offer of a billion follows a while back or so. It's been growing a lot since then. But it's really honing down that there is...... two kind of modalities of relationships on LinkedIn. There is the network that you're willing to help and get help from, and there is the, uh, following modality, which is, "I would love to learn from you. You share incredible insights."

   17. HSHarry Stebbings24:44

       Do you think we need a refresh, though? 'Cause like I have 5,000 connections. I'm not that connected, Tomer, despite my desires. Do we need a refresh of connection utility value?

   18. TCTomer Cohen24:56

       Well, 5,000 is well-connected. Um, but I think in many ways, I think when it comes to rebuilding the network, I think, yes, a lot of people are actually going and they're, in a way, clinging it back to the people that they are, uh, they know in terms of the network. But ultimately, it's hard to do. It's not something that most members would enjoy doing and going and cleaning your network. So what we're trying to do is emphasize the ones that we know there's a strong connection strength with.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings25:22

       Hmm.

   20. TCTomer Cohen25:22

       Uh, people you interact with on a regular basis, people that when they reach out to you, you know, you respond. Um, there's a bi-directional relationship. That's the idea of connect.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings25:33

       Yeah.

   22. TCTomer Cohen25:33

       Uh, so we're trying to do that in the product itself through relevance.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings25:37

       Can I ask you, you mentioned that... I loved the comment you said, which is, "You know, I may be wrong, but I'm not confused." Like, when I invested in Pakistan, uh, and lost a lot of money, I was wrong, but I wasn't confused about making the investment, which maybe I should have been. Um, what is something, when you think about products, you've been wrong on but not confused on, and what did you learn from that?

   24. TCTomer Cohen25:59

       Yeah,

6. 26:00 – 28:59

   “Wrong, but not confused.”

   1. TCTomer Cohen26:00

      so taking a step back on being wrong but not confused is... M- my notion is if you're confused, then only luck will save you, right? It's like there is, there is very little chances you'll be successful. But you have conviction and you kind of rally around that conviction. Yes, you might not be successful, you might be wrong, but ultimately you have clarity and focus, and that, for me, are critical, critical for execution. Um, so it starts with clarity of thought about the problem you're trying to solve and goes all the way to the clarity and the solution with some strong principles. But ultimately, if you get those done really well, even in your, you know, example of Pakistan, there's clear learnings from it because you had a very specific hypothesis to why you were trying to do it and interact with it. I think for us, I'll give you an example of one that we were not confused about, but we were wrong and we... and actually it was not put in the job to be done, so we can actually show how those come together. You know, stories at LinkedIn, we launched Stories, uh, a while back and it was a short, uh, test in many ways. But we launched Stories because we beli- we, we thought that we can basically unlock more creation on LinkedIn by allowing for ephemerality to play a role. So we would sometimes hear from people that they're, you know, not... they think that it's sometimes risky to share on LinkedIn because their boss is on LinkedIn, their colleagues are on LinkedIn, their customers are on LinkedIn. And we thought ephemerality might alleviate that concern. And we launched it and we saw some, you know, pretty, I would say, mediocre performance. Uh, it was far from, uh, the unleashing of sharing that the team thought, uh, they would get. When we did follow-up sessions with members and we were clear about what we were trying to achieve, we found ephemerality specifically would unleash more sharing because it would alleviate the concern around sharing on LinkedIn. When we did follow-up sessions with members after that, it was clear that we completely misunderstood the job to be done for creators on LinkedIn. It wasn't about wanting things to disappear. It was almost like the opposite. People wanted things to last on LinkedIn. When people share on LinkedIn, they want it to be seen. In fact, they want to attach it to their professional identity. They want to feature it on their profile. It's that strong. And that was kind of a complete... honestly, it was a really big, uh, ground-breaking insight for us because we started doubling down on the role of creation as part of your identity. We also learned that when they share on LinkedIn, yes, everybody enjoys their likes and views, it's part of the chemical response you get in your brain, but what they appreciate most about LinkedIn versus other platforms is the reputational part, it's the opportunity, it's being able to showcase my values. That's very different than any other social platform.

7. 28:59 – 33:56

   How important is it to be first to market?

   1. TCTomer Cohen28:59

   2. HSHarry Stebbings28:59

      How important is being the first? I had Alex Schultz on from Meta, uh, the... her- uh, CM at Meta, and I asked him this question, but how important is being the first? You mentioned Stories. You know, Facebook obviously followed Snap and Snap followed Kakao, and there's always like who did first, but how important is being first in product release?

   3. TCTomer Cohen29:21

      I don't think it's first to launch. I think first to launch is not the right concept. I think there's a halo effect of who's launching first right now, you know, at s- sometimes and sometimes you would see product managers, you know, getting really excited about the launches that they've made. But for me, that's, that's not interesting, the launches. I think it's first product-market fit that is amazing. If you're first to product-market fit, you, you build an amazing, uh, leg up in terms of both insights and momentum and speed.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings29:50

      So when we look at Stories, we've got Snap, f- like product-market fit first. And like LinkedIn were very far behind in, like race to product-market fit on Stories. Do you think that was a cool component as well?

   5. TCTomer Cohen30:04

      Um, I don't think it's the same dimension because we were not trying to compete with Snap. We were s- trying to see if that format of stories, uh, would allow for better creation and better way to express yourself on LinkedIn. I think what we saw with Stories that there was a construct that people built around... you know, people were really excited about expression. That worked really well on Instagram, in Snapchat, uh, works really well with Shorts. Um-... as well, and it, um, you know, that kind, you know, the evolution from there to TikTok and so on. And, uh, for us at LinkedIn is, the question is, is that format conducive for professional knowledge sharing? So that was like a test we were trying to, to do, but it, I don't think it was the notion of being first to the market that made it special, at least not for us.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings30:56

      You mentioned like the data not being amazingly exciting, and I just wanted to ask, how do you know how much data is enough to make a decision post a launch? You know, is it two weeks of data where you're like, "Okay, we see the writing on the wall"? Sometimes it just takes longer, like we said before the show about consistency of content creation. How do you know post-product launch when enough data tells you the answer versus when you need more?

   7. TCTomer Cohen31:22

      Yeah, I, I always like to start with before you launch, before you even start building, what is success? Like, like, you know, once you launch it, what should be going up and to the right that I should be excited about? Um, don't tell me in retrospect because, you know, then you're just trying to fit the data into what you're trying to do but tell me ahead of time. And it's okay to, again, you might be wrong but not confused, just have a strong opinion around it so we can see if we're building towards the intuition we have. Uh, I think for me, it's, it's, there, there isn't a notion of enough data. It is that the hypothesis you have isn't being validated. Like ultimately, you have success with a product when you have real adoption and retention. People actually find product-market fit. They're coming back to the product to engage with it. That's when you know you really have something. Uh, and adoption by itself, you know, if you have large enough base, could also be, uh, in a way, uh, gamed in a while because discovery is really strong and you can always get people to try out something. But will they stick around? Will they come back to use it? That, that is your real test. We do a lot of processing around the notion of evidence versus conviction. You can build something with strong evidence that you had before, or you can build it with conviction with a hypothesis of showing evidence at a certain amount of time, and ideally, over time, you start showing evidence to what you have. But some of our biggest, uh, bets we've made, for example, investing in skills as a way to connect the talent marketplace, uh, started with some big bold bets around, um, idea of conviction. We believe, for example, in the case of skills, that we can close the skills gap that happens in the economy by investing a lot more in helping people showcase and demonstrate their skills and create better matches for companies. And if you look at the talent marketplace, talent marketplace has been built on pedigree and experience and not necessarily on the skill set you have because that was not easy to measure and, uh, there's heuristics to how you connect the marketplace. So, and then over time, we started measuring, are we doing, uh, a good enough job there? Are we seeing enough validation for the early hypothesis to invest more and more and more? So it's, it's really a gradual incremental process that starts with conviction when you don't have enough data but ideally you come back with data to showcase the responses again.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings33:49

      And speaking of that conviction and data, I do want your advice. Product reviews are so core to all product teams and to all companies.

8. 33:56 – 42:52

   How to do Product Reviews

   1. HSHarry Stebbings33:56

      How do you do product reviews? How often do you do them? Who's invited?

   2. TCTomer Cohen34:01

      Yeah, so we do multiple product reviews every week. It starts, um, each quarter we actually kind of review all of our big rocks, our big investment areas across the product and the business, and then, uh, we determine what do you wanna see as a product team coming in? And for that, uh, I decide what's the products I wanna re- you know, cover for review. By the way, for context, I don't call them product reviews. Uh, I call them product jams and there was a very specific reason for it. Uh, e- we used to call them product reviews and people used to see it as a, a way to get almost like, um, you know, uh, um, a, you know, a pat on the back for whether it was a good product review or if you got feedback, it was a bad product review, and it really, uh, took away from building a great product. So, uh, in a growth mindset notion, for me, those, uh, sessions are all about feedback so I changed it to be product jams, and what I tell the team is, "You've put your best thinking forward. You know, you worked hard on the product. You worked hard on the thinking. You worked hard on the design. Now you're putting it to the team, and our goal as a team in this meeting is to make that thinking better, is to make that product better." So the only currency really is feedback, and what's nice about this team is you really have kind of this 360. You have the team presenting. They provide that local expertise. They're the one who are recommending a solution and they're highlighting a problem. You have my team which is the product executive team which is, uh, they cover the whole business so it's multiple, uh, areas of the business coming together. It's, uh, very broad. Uh, you have cross-functional leaders who can provide other perspective. So by the time the meeting is done, they're getting some pretty diverse deep feedback from multiple areas, uh, of, of the product, and that allows for that deep thinking to really come f- uh, to come to it.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings35:55

      Do you see a difference in product review discussion quality and feedback quality when comparing remote and online versus in-person and whiteboarded?

   4. TCTomer Cohen36:08

      I do. I actually do my product jams in person. I, I feel there is an energy of creativity and discussion that you get in the room in person. It's, you can do it remote as well. It's, there's no, it's not that remote does not work but I think there is an edge to doing it on a whiteboard, discussing, opening, pointing, having freeform conversations that allow for that creativity and discussion to be a lot more natural. So I move my product jam sessions to be in person.... uh, and with COVID we moved them to be obviously remote because there was no other way. But once we came back from, uh, from, uh, COVID, uh, we moved it to be in-person. And across the room, people will tell you the energy levels are just higher. The creativity, the ideation, the velocity of discussion just, uh, is elevated to a whole new level.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings37:05

      Who sets the agenda and who's invited?

   6. TCTomer Cohen37:08

      So I set the agenda for the quarter in terms of what I would like to see as the product areas being covered, and we have a structure for the, for the, for the session itself. So you start with a problem definition, ideally as articulate and nuanced as possible. You share your job to be done, what is that insight that leads your work, and then you share your principles. If those are there, that's already a great session. And then ideally, we spend most of the time on the demo. We go over the product itself.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings37:37

      What are your principles? So if the job to be done is, um, lower amount of spam, say, on site, what are the principles? Uh, what, uh, what would that be?

   8. TCTomer Cohen37:48

      Well, the principles are basically your opinionated approach for how you would solve the problem. They ideally have TIF, they have trade-offs. If your goal is to alleviate the amount of, uh, spam or bad activity on the platform, at the cost of what? So for example, uh, usually there is a, there is a, a trade-off between trust and growth.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings38:11

      Hmm.

   10. TCTomer Cohen38:12

       Right? Because you want to allow for a lot more growth in the system, you wanna reduce friction. When you reduce friction, you also allowed- allow usually for bad activity to engage as well, and the more friction you have to alleviate bad activity, you also sometimes allevi- you know, you also take down good activity. So there is kind of always that. There's usually a trade-off between the notion of engagement and growth we trust, and when a- an idea for lily, you find a great way to build an efficient frontier where you have high growth and high trust going together. For me, the principles is that, uh, the product leader for that area comes with an opinionated approach of how they will solve it, and there's TIF to it, right? They're basically making an opinion about how they solved it and what's the trade-off they're gonna make to actually solve it in a great way. So once you have that, you can actually react to something really, really well. An- another example is, you know, when we look at the business side of the product, like for example, if you think about our marketing solutions product, our advertising product, uh, one of the strong opinions which was, we solve for ROI, we don't solve for revenue. So when we optimize the system, we optimize the system to double down on ROI in the marketplace, ROI for advertisers, being able to see the value versus LinkedIn trying to monetize. And the belief was if we show ROI for customers, they'll naturally come back and spend more money.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings39:38

       Hmm.

   12. TCTomer Cohen39:39

       And that was like one example of a principle that really changed how the product worked.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings39:43

       When you have, you know, bluntly this structure and you have a lot of ideas thrown around, you also have to make decisions and you have to prioritize. When you come out of a product review-

   14. TCTomer Cohen39:52

       Mm-hmm.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings39:52

       ... how do you prioritize what to do, what not to do, and what's a luxury but next quarter?

   16. TCTomer Cohen39:59

       So if we just finish the create product jam, um, then what happens is there's tremendous amount of feedback being shared. As I mentioned, the only currency for those from here is feedback. Usually the way I end the meeting is I summarize the areas that, uh, we covered and where I would like to see progress on. I try to make sure it's between one to three, so it's not the whole list. Uh, and then the working team, we have a, uh, a new process we started, uh, a- a while back which is called brief back. The team itself which presented, they send a summary of the session with the feedback and all the key action items they have and the ETAs for the key areas they're gonna work on. So it's really up to the team presenting to take that feedback and act on it, and we literally have those sessions, and that's really allows for clarity and execution. Back to the point we talked about before, we don't leave a product jam without clarity on what's the next steps and what's the changes you will make as a result of it. But it's really up to the team leading it to go and do it and follow up on it.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings41:03

       How, sorry, um, j- mentioning that, how do you think about effective accountability? I always worry that when it's spread across multiple people, the accountability mechanism weakens. How do you instill that accountability across multiple parties?

   18. TCTomer Cohen41:17

       Well, we have a clear definition of roles and responsibilities. I think to the point around we might be wrong but not confused, when you have clarity of execution, you also have clarities on roles and responsibilities. So we have a process of, for example, who plays the role of the recommender, and that's like the expertise, the team with the most expertise. Who, uh, is potentially has, we call this the A, the approver, who can approve a specific decision or needs to approve a specific decision. Um, that could be everything from our trust team to teams that have, you know, an objective which could potentially come in conflict with the other team. And then there is a person who is the D, who has the decision. So whenever there is an escalation or disagreement, we try to solve it really quickly with one person. It's a person on the team, it's always a person, that has the decision on, um, how to resolve the situation. So ideally for every situation, there's a lot of clarity about what role did everybody play. And when you think about product teams in general, there's a product manager, there's a designer, there's an engineer, so we have clarity of roles and responsibilities there as well. I'll have to get to a point where everybody owns the product because ultimately that's the value the company delivers, but there is clear delineation between when it comes to make a decision who plays what role, and I think that's what we have here, uh, with a great, uh, clarity on LinkedIn.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings42:48

       Tomer, what's the most controversial product decision you've made?

9. 42:52 – 52:10

   How LinkedIn’s Feed Was Born

   1. HSHarry Stebbings42:52

   2. TCTomer Cohen42:52

      If I go back, the feed at LinkedIn, um, you know, now in hindsight doesn't seem controversial, but at the time it was very controversial. So, uh, just to give some context and maybe to take a step back, there's a lot of discussions usually about zero to one product and ... about the launching and how to scale product. There aren't many conversations about minus one to one product, products that were not doing really well and there was a turnaround story, and for me, the LinkedIn feed is a good example of that. Uh, LinkedIn was actually one of the first social platforms to ever have a feed but it was more of an activity feed. It was a connections feed, the jobs, uh, updates feed, the profile views feed. In 2015, for the first time, we assembled a feed team at LinkedIn and we focused on creating an experience which is all about professional conversations. Now again, that sounds, you know, clear in hindsight, but back then that was not a thing at LinkedIn. Uh, the feed was really a promotional feed for teams to showcase their products so, you know, the growth team would show people who should c- you know, who you should connect with and the jobs team would show jobs you might be interested in. And everybody was using the feed as a promotional way to show members, um, recommendations about- that they could do across LinkedIn, but there was no opinion that the feed was about professional conversations. And, uh, the first change I- I made there was that the feed was first and foremost about people that mattered to you talking about things you care about. The feed belongs to the member. It's not o- it's not an organizational chart. It's we start from the member's job to be done. And I can tell you internally that was a controversial decision because the feed was already used by multiple teams, uh, as a way of discovery. Many teams relied on the feed as a way for them to drive discovery for the product. That was a pretty big pivot internally and externally and it was actually-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings44:53

      Is that an, is that an innovator's dilemma question?

   4. TCTomer Cohen44:54

      ... Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings44:54

      Is it where you've got to cannibalize your existing product with a new product? That's- would you agree with that?

   6. TCTomer Cohen45:02

      100% inter- yeah, because internally it was- it- the feed was a, a massive discovery engine for so many products at LinkedIn and it was a revenue engine for so many products at LinkedIn. And in a way, for- actually for many companies, it was their main discovery channel. So then comes this, you know, um, uh, not confused by, you know, not confused but might be wrong product leader and he says, "I'm going to change it. I'm going to change the core of how this works." And, you know, there was high conviction there and I had to show evidence along the way, but that was a highly controversial, uh, decision early on. And gradually as we showed evidence, you really got to a point where you raised all boats. You get people to start using the feed, see it as a place they can actually have professional conversations, and over time all of those products benefited. But at the beginning, it was a little bit of, um, I- to create space for growth I have to start trading off some of how we used to be doing things in the past so I can change it to how we do things in the future. Um, and, but, uh, the feed is a great example because there are so many inflection points, you know. Wha- when we started doing that one of the things we saw was also we drove... After we started orienting our professional conversations we start seeing virality take off and we saw strong engagement and virality, but we also saw some shallow engagement and, you know, bad actors starting to use the feed as a way to drive clickbaits and, and spam and memes and stuff like that was coming into the feed. And we made... That was not controversial at LinkedIn but it's controversial from a product standpoint. We made a core decision to curtail growth even at the expense of, uh, engagement that we've never seen at LinkedIn growing at such record levels to make sure we go back to the drawing board and we focus on trust and quality. I'm saying it was controversial at LinkedIn because we always make trade-offs to make sure we build with quality, uh, over, uh, shallow growth but this was one where the product was just taking off. When the product is taking off really well people tend to get intoxicated by it, you know. They get to be really attracted to the notion of numbers and metrics going up and to the right so the decision to stop it at its kind of, you know, hockey stick level and say, "Let's go back to the drawing board and we're gonna build this differently so it's professional conversation and it's quality conversation," I can think about it as a... Usually it's a controversial decision outside of LinkedIn but inside of LinkedIn that was actually very straightforward to do.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings47:38

      Uh, I, I think we should do an internal review, me and you, here where I say a feature or product and you can give me a rating out of 10 on how you've done, okay? So if we start on feed, what would you give your rating out of 10?

   8. TCTomer Cohen47:56

      You know, for me it's always an evolution, right? So I- I- and I would always, uh, I would always, uh, score myself harshly. I think we still have a long way to go. I think we're far from building the product that we know we can which is all about knowledge exchange and the ability for you to find every session for you would be remarkable. We do know... I c- I can give you an example for what an incredible experience looks like and what I want to build for every member. An incredible experience looks like when you come to the feed and you find an insight that could help you in your day and we know because we get it from members who actually have this experience, um, and they engage with the feed in a remarkable, remarkable way and they are able to find insight that goes through their work. They're able to connect with people they haven't seen in the past. Uh, they're able to really use the feed as a source of wisdom that they use in their daily jobs. And on the flip side, as a creator...... you really build your business for the LinkedIn feed. You build your reputation, your brand, you build opportunity. So this is happening for millions of members. Wanna make sure it happens to all hundreds of millions of members of LinkedIn, so we still have a ways to go there.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings49:07

      Toma, I- I- I love you. Are you ever asked the founder what their revenue is and they go, "Ba, ba, ba, ba; ba, ba, ba," and you're like, "Nope, it's a number."

   10. TCTomer Cohen49:17

       (laughs)

   11. HSHarry Stebbings49:17

       "It's a number, baby." (laughs) What- what would you give the out of 10 then, the feed? Do you agree that you've done very well? Be like, a eight out of 10, a 10 out of 10, a- a four out of 10? What do we feel?

   12. TCTomer Cohen49:31

       Of a give, it's of a qualitative- a qualitative ranking. Unlike, uh, revenue, which has a number, uh-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings49:38

       Okay. Well now, that-

   14. TCTomer Cohen49:38

       ... this is more of a qualitative journey.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings49:40

       That's a really interesting one, which is that you mentioned revenue there. How do you, as a CPO, think about products which generate revenue today, which is very important, um, but also versus the challenge of investing in innovative products for the future with unknown upside and intangible value creation? How do you balance those two?

   16. TCTomer Cohen50:01

       Yeah. So ideally, you know, everything we do starts from how it ladders up to our vision. And this is something that I cannot emphasize enough. Like, it's- it's an incredible part of how we think at LinkedIn. We literally start our sessions and our planning process for what's the vision for the company. But then that translates usually to a strategic plan that spans between one to three years. And that plan usually has very specific goals for where do we wanna drive revenue generating, you know, in the... from an annual perspective, like let's call it the short-term annual perspective, and what's the long-term innovative products we're trying to build? And that plan usually encompasses of both. Um, so for us, like, it's the combination of both the annual plan that used to... it- it basically has a revenue target on it, all the way to the long-term innovative products that we basically have there. Now, that said, we operate in a very competitive, fast pacing environment so it's not like we have a three-year plan, quarterly plan, then we go and execute. We do continuous planning. Like, we do...

   17. HSHarry Stebbings51:06

       Who are your competitors?

   18. TCTomer Cohen51:07

       As soon as strategies evolve, we basically run a-

   19. HSHarry Stebbings51:09

       Who are your competitors?

   20. TCTomer Cohen51:13

       Well, you take every one of our job to be done and we can walk through it. So if you come to LinkedIn... You can think of LinkedIn as a productivity tool, really, ultimately, and it really helps you progress on the professional jobs to be done you're trying to make for your career. So if you're trying to find a job, there's many sites out there that can show you a job. If you're trying to, uh, passively be recruited, then LinkedIn is a pretty unique product, right? When- when some- when somebody's reaching out to you. But this is more about, uh, recruiters reaching out than you actually engaging with it. If you're trying to market to someone, then there's multiple marketing tools you can do. Yeah. There's multiple advertising tools you can use. If you're trying to build a brand, uh, there's multiple tools you can use to build a brand. LinkedIn has that tendency to have professional aspect of it, but you can still build, uh, your brand in multiple ways. So it really depends on your job to be done, but as a professional community, LinkedIn is very unique.

10. 52:10 – 54:39

    Will Product Marketing Die?

    1. TCTomer Cohen52:10

    2. HSHarry Stebbings52:10

       Do you worry about product marketing? And what I mean by that is, when you are everything to everyone, it's a challenge, and you can be nothing to no one (laughs) uh, when you are that broad. And like- and sometimes also you have a grandiose vision, like Stripe increasing the GDP of the internet. Sounds great, but guess what? It means fuck all to that SMB who just needs to make 10% more money so they can buy that coffee machine. The GDP of the internet? Intellectual. Too much. Like, do you worry sometimes that LinkedIn, at the scale and incumbent size you are, you almost lose product messaging touch with, "Fuck, I actually just need another client as a freelancer"?

    3. TCTomer Cohen52:50

       It's- it's a wonderful point, and one that, uh, kinda touches on why in product jams we emphasize the job to be done you're trying to hire for, you're trying to do for. So for example, even if you're solving, you're saying... Even if, for example, you selected the job to be done for a job seeker, there's so many jobs to be done for a job seeker. You could be building, you know, a- a job seeking experience for people who are looking for hourly work. You're trying to find a job for people who are, you know, playing more in- in degrees, you know, they're more, uh, professional hires in the market itself. You're trying to find jobs for, uh, what we call first line hires, or people out of school we're trying to find for the s- for the same job. So for me, being able to talk specifically not just on the audience and the overall arching, um, value proposition you're trying to deliver for them, but going very narrow to the problem you're trying to solve is key. When you have that, then you're not trying to solve for everybody. You have very specific jobs to be done you're solving for, for people, for very specific audiences you're solving for people. Now, it all adds up to the vision so after a while, once you think you've done a good job with that job to be done, you can move to the next level. So for example, at LinkedIn, one of our fastest growing segments are gen Zs and entry level professionals. So knowing that gen Zs is gonna be the future of the workforce, being able to think of what does gen Zs care about when it comes to selecting a job? How do I do a great match for a gen Z when they think about their first job out of school? That becomes very specific.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings54:34

       It totally does. I'm just thinking it through. Uh, and I- what I- what I also think through when

11. 54:39 – 1:27:10

    ChatGPT & AI

    1. HSHarry Stebbings54:39

       I think of that is, shit, AI fundamentally fucking changes how we build products. Do you, as a product leader, need to fundamentally change how you lead product teams and product organizations with AI moving faster than ever, as we touched on when we chatted before?

    2. TCTomer Cohen54:56

       Yeah, this is something which is very near to my heart because I've been working, uh, on AI with AI for many, many years and, uh, same as we had the mobile revolution happening, um, kind of 15 years ago and how we changed dramatically how we build and how we use products. AI is going to be much larger. In fact, I think every tech revolution has dramatically changed the way we build and how we think about products, you know, from the PCs in the '70s, the internet in the '90s. You had mobile in the first decade of the 21st century, and AI is gonna be the biggest one we ever experience. Uh, and if you're building product today, I have this analogy that when you have a river rafting boat, you have the guide on the boat sitting on the back and that guide usually has two big pedals and those pedals pretty much navigate the boat. They pretty much dictate success or failure for your product. And those pedals for me are AI and that guide better be you as the product leader. So if you lead products in your company, you'd have to have the knowledge and skill set to know how to use AI, how to use those pedals to navigate your team and your company towards success. So it's a critical fundamental change right now.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings56:12

       What do you do then if you don't? Because I think honestly 90% do not. And I'm not blaming them. It- it hasn't been part of the call. So what do you do if you're not then?

    4. TCTomer Cohen56:24

       Uh, so I think it's been part of the core, but in the background. So AI has been a matchmaker of so many products. In fact, a lot of what you see on LinkedIn is powered by AI. When you open a bank account, it's powered by AI. Your pizza delivery to an extent is powered by AI. You just don't see it. But it is moving to the front and that makes it a lot more visible, a lot more powerful. Uh, so the most important thing is learn. Learn about this technology. Learn how to adapt it. Learn how to use it. Learn its limitations. It has a lot of limitations. Learn how to implement it. It has to start from the business leader, from the product leaders modeling how to use this technology and how to interact with it. We were talking about the LinkedIn feed before and, you know, the early parts of LinkedIn, uh, we assembled the feed team for the first time and I noticed that the AI team was not part of the Link- the, the feed team 'cause the AI team was a horizontal team at LinkedIn. And for me, you know, the most important part about the feed is what gets ranked. That's ultimately, you know, the core of the experience is how you rank, uh, the, the updates for, for the member. Uh, so for me it was I lead the feed team, but it's almost like I- I mean, sort of responsible of building a car but the engine is being built by somebody else and I don't have any say into the engine. So the first thing we did was to build one team that encompasses of all parts of the experience, from AI to the user interface and that made a massive difference and then I spent the vast majority of my time going very deep, going deep about the algorithm's objectives and how we refine it to be higher quality, uh, going deep cleaning data. I spent weeks of my lifes, in my life cleaning data, data samples to showcase AI, how to train well because if you train AI on garbage, it will produce garbage out. There's a saying in AI, "Garbage in, garbage out." But if you train on quality, it will produce high quality results and that's, that's in my opinion the responsibility of the product leader. So, uh, the idea of really learning but kind of rolling up your sleeves and going deep and interacting with this technology and understanding all the nuances of it are really critical right now and there's- there's no way around it. You just have to learn it.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings58:44

       What do you need to unlearn? What are the bad habits that you need to forget as we embrace it?

    6. TCTomer Cohen58:50

       Oh, I love that question, uh, 'cause I remember when we had the mobile revolution, uh, it was really hard for product leaders because they had a desktop first mindset.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings59:01

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TCTomer Cohen59:01

       You know, desktop first mindset had a lot of you were trying to hedge with different modules and, uh, it was above the fold, below the fold, the top right section and stuff like that and mobile really forces you to say there's only one thing that you can show on the screen. What is it? Uh, you have access to the camera, you have access to location. What do you... how do you rethink that in a mobile first way? And you had to unlearn. I think every tech revolution requires you to unlearn so you can learn again with that kind of beginner's mindset. There's a lot of things when it comes to AI where you have to, need to unlearn, uh, and relearn again. You know, the... For me, one of the biggest ones, and this is where I usually see the hardest mindset shift for product people is that with AI you don't control the experience. AI is not deterministic. If you ever had interaction with ChatGPT, it's, you know, you're... Most of the time you're trying to, e- hard to anticipate how it would respond. And I give the analogy of a chef in a restaurant, where before imagine as the product leader you were the chef in the restaurant, you dictated every part of the experience, from the music, the ambiance, the ingredients, how the plating is done, the- the flavors, uh, the amount of salt and now with AI it's as if you're giving the ingredients, you're giving the guidelines, the philosophy, the principles but the AI really learns on itself how to build a great ex-... You can always refine and help it understand, but it learns on itself so you kind of have to forego some of that control, trusting you can build a much better experience with AI in how you do it.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:43

       We spoke about enterprise buying beforehand. I think enterprises are inherently ignorant and lazier than we give them credit for, um, a- and they like simple solutions, especially in Europe. Um, so when we think about that, I think we enter a world of bundled AI products, especially for the next three to five years. It may be seven out of ten but it comes in a nice OpenAI wrapper. We know OpenAI. That's a famous brand, right? And it all comes under one umbrella.... versus a world of unbundled, many models, a bit more customization, probably better products, but more tailoring and tinkering needed. Do you think we are entering a world of enterprise bundled preferences on AI products?

    10. TCTomer Cohen1:01:25

        You know, there's a great saying in technology that if you look back, you'll see technology as an evolution of bundling and unbundling and I do think we are-

    11. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:32

        Yeah.

    12. TCTomer Cohen1:01:32

        ... potentially seeing the next bundling, uh, transformational wave. For me, it's- really comes down to the role that AI can play in taking a lot of what was drudgery, um (smacks lips) tasks, automating them, and you being able to combine roles together. So if you needed multiple products, multiple roles before to create certain experiences, and a lot of it was just, you know, roles that could be automated. They were drudgery. They were... It's the, you know, the work you do that you would rather give a machine. You would rather have a machine do-

    13. HSHarry Stebbings1:02:11

        Mm-hmm.

    14. TCTomer Cohen1:02:11

        ... so you can focus on the creative work, the more managerial work of it. With AI you can do that today. You can have that master brain working across multiple interfaces, multiple products with the same objective you have in mind. So y- we are, in my opinion, going into a transformation of bundling when you'll see better, uh, more efficient experiences done by one centralized brain, which is the AI model itself. And in fact, right now already, um, OpenAI showed how by adding multiple services that OpenAI connects with, you can go all the way from "I wanna have a..." you know, I'll give you a consumer experience. "I wanna, uh, do a dinner party with my friends and I, you know, thinking about recipes, give me a great recipe, but take it all the way to run it through my Instacart and make the order and ship the ingredients to me." Like, the whole flow is being done by AI, and what used to be five, six distinct sub-tasks is now one request, one prompt that is being automated by AI. In enterprise there's so many workflows and a lot of it- a lot of them can be automated. In fact, some of the most complex experiences can be automated right now because you have this intelligent brain working on top of all of them.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:31

        Toma, do you and the team use Copilot?

    16. TCTomer Cohen1:03:35

        We do.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:36

        How- how are-

    18. TCTomer Cohen1:03:37

        I- I've been using this technology all the time. It's incredible.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:41

        Yeah. I had dinner last night with two of our founders and they said they're now 50% more productive. And my question to you is, if we think about now GitHub Publish, 41% of new code created is AI- AI code creation. What is that in five years?

    20. TCTomer Cohen1:03:57

        Wow. Um, five years is a long time in the pa- we're- we're in a pace right now where we are-

    21. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:03

        Have we ever seen pace like this? Ever? No.

    22. TCTomer Cohen1:04:07

        (sighs) Uh, not in my lifetime.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:09

        No.

    24. TCTomer Cohen1:04:09

        Um, I- I think we're accelerating to... I can give you an example. I've been teaching how to build with AI first mindset for many years, and I've been teaching about- talking about OpenAI and transformer technology and I was talking about how it's coming and I- and I-

    25. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:26

        And now- now it's- now it's sexy, Toma. It's sexy now, baby. (laughs)

    26. TCTomer Cohen1:04:29

        Yeah. Th- now people listen. Uh, but I- it was- it surprised me how fast, and in fact when you think about what's coming, I think we're all gonna be shocked by how more and more invest, more and more capable, uh, because you are setting new baselines that allow for a lot more innovation. You know, if you got all the constraints of AI today, algorithms investment, computing power, allowing for more information to flow in and out in the- in the form of tokens, those will all be alleviated. And when those are all alleviated, you can build faster and better and more accurate, you can allow for more creativity. So that five-year horizon is- is almost, like, far too long. Uh, I'd rather like focus on- on the next year horizon.

    27. HSHarry Stebbings1:05:14

        Man, do you know-

    28. TCTomer Cohen1:05:14

        But I think we're gonna see massive amount of productivity coming out.

    29. HSHarry Stebbings1:05:18

        And do you know what's ver- uh, there's a brilliant quote. We've mentioned some great quotes. The big quote that I always think about is, "Will the incumbent acquire innovation before the startup acquires distribution?" Brilliant quote. The really interesting thing now is, I think incumbents are innovating so well with AI. You look at Microsoft, you look at Adobe and how Adobe are integrating into core products and product suites. I think for the first time they're really... And so my question is, where do you think value accrues in the next wave of AI? Do you think it is actually incumbents or do you think it's startups? Where is that?

    30. TCTomer Cohen1:05:52

        Yeah. It's- it's- it's a great point, and I think we're- we're- we'll see very soon how it shapes up. Uh, and it's gonna be continuous evolution in my opinion because to our- to put it differently, this is gonna be accelerated pace. So every tech revolution brings with it new winners and new losers. This one is no different. In fact, I think this one opens, uh, uh, the window for many, uh, startups to actually start playing with ingenuity and innovation. Uh, to your point, I'm sure many incumbents today have learned the mistakes of the past and they're racing to innovate with this technology. However, they do tend to be locked to their way of thinking, and I think that's an opportunity for startups. So let's start with the classic, you know, dimensions that usually incumbents, um, uh, have a, you know, a leg up with. They have access to resources. This requires compute, this requires capital, this requires infrastructure, requires talent. So if you're an incumbent and you already have the infrastructure for AI, the talent for AI, you- you already have a leg up in this race and you should be using that. Incumbents have existing market share, they have already an existing customer base, uh, and that customer is expecting them to start leading with AI so they're potentially racing to that. They usually have a data advantage. They have some proprietary data that is unique to them so they can build with that.... but, and that's a big but, because I do think this is the biggest unique advantage of startups is, startups can be extremely innovative right now. I think you take every problem that existed before, every job to be done, and you can go back to the drawing board and rethink it. And Harry, this is not just in tech. Like, right, this could be healthcare, retail, fashion, entertainment, supply chain, education.

Episode duration: 1:36:24