An inside look at how Miro builds product | Varun Parmar (CPO of Miro)

1. 0:00 – 4:08

   Varun’s background

   1. VPVarun Parmar0:00

      Every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and, and you're releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you're making the product worse, but the products never remain same. And so with every release that your competitor is making and every release that you're making, uh, you're either ma- you know, making chess points, moves against them, positive points, or, or, or you're going negative. And I think like that framework, it actually drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of what you're doing and what the impact is going to be.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:31

      (instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Varun Parmar. Varun is Chief Product Officer at Miro, and prior to Miro, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Box. As I share with Varun at the start of our chat, I've always been really curious about the product culture at Miro, partly because everyone I've ever met from Miro has been super interesting and super smart, and partly because they've been able to grow as a business and a product in an incredibly competitive market. In our conversation, we get really deep into the product values and principles at Miro, their product development process, how Varun approaches competitive threats, how a bimonthly company-wide product demo ritual led to saving months of engineering work on a feature, plus insights into how Miro got started, how they grow today, and what their product team has learned about working with a large sales org. Varun is amazing. I learned a lot, and I hope you find it as interesting as I did. With that, I bring you Varun Parmar after a short word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard that's designed specifically for teams like yours. I have a quick request. Head on over to my Miro board at miro.com/lenny and let me know which guests you'd want me to have on this year. I've already gotten a bunch of great suggestions, which you'll see when you go there, so just keep it coming. And while you're on the Miro board, I encourage you to play around with the tool. It's a great shared space to capture ideas, get feedback, and collaborate with your colleagues on anything that you're working on. For example, with Miro, you can plan out next quarter's entire product strategy. You can start by brainstorming, using sticky notes, live reactions, a voting tool, even an estimation app to scope out your team's sprints. Then your whole distributed team can come together around wire frames, draw ideas with the pen tool, and then put full mocks right into the Miro board. And with one of Miro's ready-made templates, you can go from discovery and research to product roadmaps, to customer journey flows, to final mocks, all in Miro. Head on over to miro.com/lenny to leave your suggestions. That's miro.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Braintrust, where the world's most innovative companies go to find talent fast, so that they can innovate faster. Let's be honest, it's a lot of work to build a company. And if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to be able to hire the right talent quickly and confidently. Braintrust is the first decentralized talent network, where you can find, hire and manage high-quality contractors in engineering, design, and product for a fraction of the cost of agencies. Braintrust charges a flat rate of only 10%, unlike agency fees of up to 70%, so you can make your budget go four times further. Plus, they're the only network that takes 0% of what the talent makes, so they're able to attract and retain the world's best tech talent. Take it from DoorDash, Airbnb, Plaid, and hundreds of other high growth startups that have shaved their hiring process from months to weeks, at less than a quarter of the cost by hiring through Braintrust's network of 20,000 high-quality vetted candidates ready to work. Whether you're looking to fill in gaps, upscale your staff, or build a team for that dream project that finally got funded, contact Braintrust and you'll get matched with three candidates in just 48 hours. Visit usebraintrust.com/lenny or find them in my show notes for today's episode. That's usebraintrust.com/lenny, for when you need talent yesterday.

2. 4:08 – 7:22

   How Miro operates as a cross-cultural product team

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:08

      Varun, welcome to the podcast.

   2. VPVarun Parmar4:10

      Thank you, Lenny. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:13

      I'm really excited to have you here. I've been looking forward to having a chance to dig into Miro's product culture and the way Miro works for a while. We've actually had a few guests, ex-Miro Mironeers, is that what you call yourselves?

   4. VPVarun Parmar4:25

      Yes, Mironeers, yes.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky4:26

      Okay, Mironeers. Uh, so we had El- Elena Verna on the podcast, who's amazing.

   6. VPVarun Parmar4:30

      Yeah.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky4:30

      And, uh, Barbara, who I think worked in marketing, and everyone I've always met from Miro has been just, like, really smart and really interesting. And it just feels like you guys have a really interesting product culture that I, I haven't felt like has been shared a lot. And so I have a bunch of stuff I want to dig into there. And one, one question I have off the bat. You guys have a really interesting history, and specifically, the way your company's structured, which is that you're co-located in Amsterdam and San Francisco. So first of all, is that, is that correct?

   8. VPVarun Parmar5:00

      The company is a global company, so we've got, uh, 12 different hubs. Uh, so we have-

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky5:04

      Mm-hmm.

   10. VPVarun Parmar5:04

       ... uh, multiple offices in US, uh, uh, you know, four different offices, and then, uh, multiple hubs, uh, in, uh, in Europe as well and, and presence in Asia-Pac as well. So I think, like, by now we have a, a global footprint. Uh, yeah.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky5:17

       Got it. So a question I wanted to ask off the bat is just how has that cross-cultural approach to product teams impacted the way that you guys built product and the way the company operates?

   12. VPVarun Parmar5:30

       The one thing, uh, that's really interesting, Lenny, around, uh, the way Miro is, uh, is set up is that, um, uh, you know, our product organization is actually, uh, based in Europe. And, uh, and our go-to-market organization is, uh, is worldwide. Uh, and, uh, you know, so our, you know, product management, uh, team, our designers, our engineers are located across, uh, three different hubs, uh, uh, in, in Europe. And what that sort of leads to is, uh, uh, you know, a couple of, like, uh, practices that we have as part of our culture, so the first one is, uh...... practicing, uh, empathy to gain insights. Um-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky6:04

       Mm-hmm.

   14. VPVarun Parmar6:04

       ... and it's not just practicing empathy in terms of customers and figuring out what customer pain points and problems we can solve. Uh, but given our distributed nature in terms of having a global footprint, uh, and a lot of our go-to-market teams, you know, folks in sales and, and marketing and customer success, uh, are in different continents or geographies. We have to make sure that we actually practice that internally. So when we are interacting with folks, let's say, in San Francisco and those folks are out there meeting some of our large customers and stuff. You know, how do we in the product organization understand their perspective and bring that perspective, you know, into how we design, prioritize and build products? So I think like that's, that's one thing, uh, that's unique. I would say the other thing, uh, that's less to do with the location, but I think is, is sort of the core, you know, cultural value or philosophy that, uh, that Andre who's the founder and CEO has instilled in all of us is practicing sort of teamwork. You know, how do we actually come together as a team and, uh, and bring down sort of the silos that might exist across functions, right? Uh, and I'll talk a little bit around how we are structured in the product organization, so that it's a cross functional perspective that we bring to everything that we're doing. Because we believe the best work happens when we bring different diverse perspectives to the problem and then, you know, co-create the outcome that the customer is looking for.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky7:20

       I want to pull on these threads actually

3. 7:22 – 11:51

   How applying empathy helped Miro build Miro Talktrack

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky7:22

      real quick. So you talked about this value of empathy and the importance of having empathy across, because you guys are located in different locations and have different cultures, and also this idea of, of teamwork. What's something that you've done that helps you do that, either build empathy and maintain empathy across teams or make sure that people work in, in teams and not like, "Hey, there's this other team over there doing something else?"

   2. VPVarun Parmar7:45

      Uh, one of the most powerful sort of, uh, things that I've seen work i- is, um, is the questions that you ask. Uh, the questions that you ask when, uh, you know, you're going through a product review or you're going to sit down and talk to, uh, someone and trying to understand why did they prioritize something over the other. And, uh, and was it something that, uh, was, uh, done through interactions they've had, uh, with folks internally or externally? So I think it's the questions, the set of questions to ask in terms of like how did they get to where they are today, and was it informed by, uh, understanding of, uh, the insights that collectively the organization has. Was it, uh, informed by their understanding of where the market is involving, uh, you know, where the competition is going? Was it informed through, uh, the series of insights they have either through inbound feedback that's coming through our different channels where customers are giving feedback or, you know, some outbound interactions that they've had? So I think sort of like trying to double click and getting to the details in terms of what insight led them to recommend certain things or, or make a left turn or a right turn is, is where I think is the most powerful way to, uh, to make sure that, um, you know, those things are informed through, uh, through practicing empathy internally and externally.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky8:59

      Got it. So there's this kind of cultural, uh, value of just assuming good intention and asking questions to understand where someone came from. I don't know if you'll have something off the top of your head, but is there a story or an example of that comes to mind where that was done well or not done well, I don't know, in something you, you recently were building?

   4. VPVarun Parmar9:16

      Maybe there are certain things, like for example, uh, any time we're trying to build a, a, a new experience, like one of the approach we want to take is like very quickly validate that our original hypothesis, uh, you know, is that sound or not? And, uh, we are big fans of the design sprint framework. You know, so what Jake Knapp, uh, has done I think is, is really amazing. In a short five-day window, you can get, uh, a small set of people to, uh, you know, quickly mock up a, a concept, uh, you know, convert it into some sort of a prototype, and then go out there and get some sort of a validation. So oftentimes, when we are working on some of these new things, we have our, our product teams that are focused on zero to one initiatives run this five-day initiative. And at the end of it we say, you know, "Oh, this is great." Like, uh, you know, "W- who did you sort of, uh, get insight from?" So there's a capability that we re- recently released, it's called Miro Talktrack, which essentially, uh, allows you to asynchronously do a, uh, you know, do asynchronous collaboration by recording audio video on top of, uh, a Miro board.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky10:16

      Hmm.

   6. VPVarun Parmar10:16

      And we had sort of two fundamental choices we could make. One, we could go down the path of what everyone's doing where you could do like a screen recording and then, you know, spit out a series of videos, like pixels being captured. Or what we did was we actually went down a different path, and the path that we went down was we basically synchronized the movement of a board. So let's say, you know, Lenny's presenting a board, you know, some template he's created in terms of best practices for PMs. But he wants to have, uh, you know, some sort of a talk track on top of it, an audi- audio video feed. And what we're doing is we're actually capturing the movement of the board that Lenny's going through along with the video talk track that's on top. And the reason why we did that was because we had an insight that came through some of our interviews where what, what our users want to do is they want to use Miro for collaboration. Uh, while communication is an important aspect of how teams come together, where we believe our sweet spot is that we want people to use Miro for collaboration. And by making sure that they could actually use a, a video recording, and while the video recording is playing, they could add in a sticky note, they could add in a comment, they could actually, you know, give a reaction. We were able to develop this insight by practicing empathy as part of the design sprint framework when we went and started to show our original concept. And we evolved and, and built on, on top of that.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky11:31

      That is a really cool story. And that came out of this sprint framework, this five-day sprint approach?

   8. VPVarun Parmar11:36

      Yes. That's right, yeah.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky11:37

      That is cool. I gotta have that guy on this podcast. Uh, Jake Knapp you said, right?

   10. VPVarun Parmar11:41

       Yes, yes, yes. I, I can text him right now and I can make the introductions, so, so yes.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky11:45

       Let's, uh, let's pull him right into this podcast live.

   12. VPVarun Parmar11:47

       (laughs) Exactly.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky11:48

       Tell us how the sprint process works. Uh, that is

4. 11:51 – 17:08

   What makes Miro stand out

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky11:51

      awesome. This connects a little bit to another question I wanted to ask around the top is, you guys are in a really competitive space, and it feels like Miro was very early in online collaborative whiteboarding space. And then I think during COVID, it just became a huge, you know, with the remote work exploding, it's like holy shit, everyone needs this immediately.And I, over the years, many companies have come into the space that you are all in, and it feels like Miro continues to do extremely well. Like, I remember when Figma launched FigJam, there was a lot of just like, "Miro's dead. Figma's getting to the space, they're a juggernaut, it's game over." Clearly, that's not been the case, and it just feels like... I don't know what it is internally that you all do that continues to allow you to compete and continue to innovate in the space. And I'm curious just like i- is there something to how Miro approaches com- competition, and also just, uh, I don't know, the way they approach these sorts of challenges that is unique or interesting that, uh, you can share?

   2. VPVarun Parmar12:45

      If you look at the mission, uh, for Miro, uh, you know, we, uh, empower teams to, uh, create the next big thing. And our focus, uh, is to, uh, enable, you know, teams that are, you know, innovating. And, and, and generally, innovation happens at the intersection of, uh, of a bunch of, you know, cross-functional, uh, folks coming together. You know, like we discussed, folks in product management or design or engineering or analytics or product marketing or, uh, research. And what we find, uh, Lenny, is that, uh, you know, there are a lot of tools out there, and those tools are generally sort of focused on a particular persona. And, you know, maybe they're trying to solve, uh, the needs of a designer and a designer has a workflow that they're trying to do, and they're using a specific tool, and they, they sit at the adjacency of extending that core use case. The fundamental value that Miro provides is that we enable teams. And, and I think like what's unique about our product, and, and we can talk about the capabilities and roadmaps and use cases that we are, uh, we are investing in, uh, and we already have as part of the product, is that we take a team-centric lens, right? So, we're not saying, "Hey, we're building a tool that just works for designers," or, "Hey, we're building a tool that just works for engineers." Because we fundamentally believe that innovation happens when cross-functional teams come together. And when you look at the problem through that lens, you realize that you have to actually architect your solution. You have to think about the use cases, and you have to go and prioritize certain experiences that are, are, are different, and our customers see, uh, value in that, right? And I think like that's probably one sort of big macro, uh, aspect of how we think about sort of our, our capabilities and, and products and why our customers think of us differently. So, that's it. I'd say, that's one point. I think the second thing is, uh, Miro is actually used, uh, you know, obviously by, by teams that are creating these, these, these innovative products and, and, uh, and we actually have broad applicability across industries and verticals. So, while, you know, some tools might be hyper-focused on sort of digital experiences and, and, and, and Miro's has a great set of offerings there in terms of core capabilities. You know, what we find is that Miro is used equally by companies in manufacturing, uh, by companies in healthcare, uh, you know, by, uh, companies, uh, you know, uh, in architecture and engineering and construction funct- functions. By companies, uh, you know, that, uh, are in aerospace, uh, you know, uh, you know, governmental agencies and medical a-agencies and so on and so forth. So, I think, uh, the platform is actually much more agnostic in terms of its capabilities and what we offer that actually makes it more accessible and appealing, uh, to organizations that wanna go beyond, you know, uh, just like, uh, you know, digital experiences. And then I would say, finally, uh, there are a set of capabilities that are available very, very uniquely through Miro that are valued, you know, by, uh, uh, by our users that, again, is a big reason people come to Miro. So, for example, if Lenny's trying to conduct a, you know, a big workshop, uh, for, with a bunch of, uh, product folks and he wants to facilitate that workshop and wants to, uh, you know, have, uh, you know, certain folks, uh, focus on one part of the board and while others focus on the other part, you know, then there are some advanced sort of, uh, uh, capabilities that enable certain use cases like workshops. Or, you know, if you want to use, uh, uh, you know, Miro for some team rituals or from so- some agile practices, there are sort of core set of capabilities, uh, you know, that you could use the product for that are missing in some of the other capabilities. So, I would say a combination of all of those three things, uh, you know, continue to sort of drive, um, uh, differentiation. And I would say on top of that, uh, you know, we are, uh, you know, we are a big fan of our community and we believe that, uh, community love is, is, is what drives, uh, uh, you know, us. You know, that's the fuel that sort of gives, uh, keeps us going every single day.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky16:31

      Awesome. So, just to kind of summarize, and I was taking notes as you were chatting, just thinking about what allows y'all to continue to do well in the market considering all the competition constantly coming at you. One is, you mentioned just there's kind of like an innate multifunctional architecture, which is hard for someone to co-copy if they weren't built from that, with that at the start. So, it sounds like you are focusing on a much like a wide spectrum of personas and it's not just tech employees basically. Also, just there's like specific features that end up being really important that maybe people have, have a hard time building, and then, and then this last piece is the community. Awesome.

   4. VPVarun Parmar17:07

      That's right.

5. 17:08 – 22:57

   Miro’s AMPED structure

   1. VPVarun Parmar17:08

      Yep.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky17:09

      Let's dig into the product team a little bit and understand how y'all build product and structure your product team. How many PMs are there at Miro, and then just broadly how many employees just to give people a set of, a little bit of context?

   3. VPVarun Parmar17:20

      Give or take, about 1,800, uh, employees at Miro, uh, globally, uh, across all of the, uh, hubs. And, uh, specifically in terms of the number of product managers, we are, uh, there are over 450 PMs, uh, in the team.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky17:34

      And then how are the... How's the product team structured? Is it like outcome-oriented? Is it product area oriented? Is it user persona oriented? Is it something else? How do you, how do you think about the structure of the product team?

   5. VPVarun Parmar17:46

      Yeah. So, I would say it's, it's, it's maybe a hybrid, uh, uh, structure that we have, uh, but, uh, the sort of the foundation of the, uh, of the team setup is, uh, is around persona. So, uh, we have what we refer to as, uh, streams. You know, some companies refer to as domains. But, uh, essentially it's a set of individuals that are focused on solving the problems for a key persona. So, just to give you an example, we have a stream, uh, that's focused on enterprise and in enterprise, w-... we are looking at the IT admin persona, we're looking at the security persona, or the compliance persona. So, you know, there are a set of folks who are creating a roadmap and innovating in that, uh, you know, for that, uh, audience. (clears throat) There's another stream which is called Platform, where we are going after the developer, uh, you know, install base. Uh, you know, folks that want to use Miro as a platform and build apps that they can actually make available either on the marketplace for everyone to use or they could be developers that are inside of a large organization and they're trying to integrate Miro with their specific use cases and workflows, and business systems. Uh, so that's another sort of stream that's focused on that. And, and, and there are a couple of other streams like that. And then finally, there are some, some just like horizontal sort of, uh, streams if you will. Like, you know, we have a big focus given that we are a PLG led company around, uh, growth and self-serve business. Uh, we've got a stream that's actually focused on our core internal infrastructure. You know, we've got a stream that's actually focused on data science, that's doing all of the magic, uh, that we started to release in terms of Miro AI, et cetera, et cetera. So I would say it's a combination of those. At the heart of it is we are focused on personas, and we are sort of, uh, aligning people around, uh, you know, solving problems and creating value for that persona.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky19:24

      That is really interesting. One of the downsides of a persona-based approach, I imagine, is that products just... features keep getting added that solve that user's pain points. What have you learned about keeping the product consistent and s- having kind of a holistic perspective on the experience? How do you, how do you address those challenges?

   7. VPVarun Parmar19:43

      Architecturally, like sort of, there are, like, two sort of things that we have done that allow us to, uh, not sort of pigeonhole ourselves into that specific way of working. And, and, and I completely agree with you, like, uh, you know, i- like, you could lead to that. Uh, the first one is actually, uh, when we think about the product org, like, uh, we call our org, uh, it's called AMPED, A-M-P-E-D. And this is actually going back to our earlier point, Lenny, we had around, like, what's unique about the product culture, what's unique about Miro? And we talked about, like, teams coming together, you know, reduce, you know, removing barriers or silos cross-functionally. So AMPED stands for, like, analytics, marketing, product, engineering, and design. And, uh, everything that we do in the product org, when we say the product org, we actually don't mean product managers. We actually don't mean product managers, designers, and engineers. What we mean by product org in Miro is this AMPED function. And by having this cross-functional representation where product marketing team is deeply, deeply embedded inside of each of these streams, what we do is that we have, you know, different perspectives that come in where they say, "Oh, wait a second, you know, d- did you think about the end user experience?" And if you're thinking about the end user experience, you know, you have someone in the team that says, "Wait a second, did you actually think about the enterprise requirements or what's, what's needed in the largest corporation?" So I think, uh, uh, the unique setup of bringing these cross-functional folks allows us to sort of course correct. The second thing is, uh, sort of the, the ways of working that we have. Uh, you know, we have these, uh, product reviews that happen, so, you know, we generally classify anything that we are doing, uh, you know, uh, you know, in terms of its complexity around, like, you know, you know, small, medium or high complexity and anything that's, that's, uh, uh, being, uh, you know, worked on is actually, uh, being, uh, shared with the entire organization. If it's something that's small to medium, uh, it's actually, uh, you know, shared with the entire, you know, product org. In fact, like, if you are non-product, you can actually subscribe to that Slack channel as well. So everybody sees what the product org is working on, everybody sees, like, what the core hypothesis is, like, what are... what is the solution for that, like, what is the, uh, proposed, uh, design for it, like, what are... how are we thinking about the capabilities? And then anything that's big actually goes through a formal process, like a product review where there's a meeting and, like, a bunch of us are in there and, uh, and it's up to, uh, sort of us, including the product leaders, to basically make sure that we are connecting the dots in terms of having a much more holistic perspective. And I would say lastly, you know, as Miro has sort of scaled, like, the spectrum of companies, you know, all the way from, you know, a team that might have two or three people and might be taking out their credit card and using Miro for their own team, all the way to a large corporation that might have 50,000, 80,000 employees, all of them are using Miro. Uh, you know, we've, we've, uh, we've come to realize that at some point, like, you know, the deep enterprise requirements need to be encapsulated in a set of, uh, uh, you know, requirements or best practices, and we need to make sure that those get democratized across all of the feature teams. So when I'm thinking about building a new feature, I, you know, I have a checklist in front of me where I can say, "Here are the 10 things that I need to think of, that I need to incorporate early on in my thinking, in the architecture, in the definition of the process, so that it doesn't come downstream." I would say that's an area where we're still working on, and more recently, we put, like, more focus and energy and there's a product, uh, product manager who's now leading that particular

6. 22:57 – 25:24

   The benefit of having product marketing as a part of the cross-functional team

   1. VPVarun Parmar22:57

      charter.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky22:57

      I love all these details. Uh, so this AMPED structure, I love that. So there's analytics, you said product marketing, AM is marketing, and, and then product engineering design. It's in... it's rare that you see marketing as a part of teams, as a leadership, kind of part of the leadership group. Do you have a sense of what impact adding that had on the team or where that came from? Like, or has that just historically been something Miro has prioritized, marketing and product marketing?

   3. VPVarun Parmar23:25

      So this was done, uh, you know, before I... I... I got here, and I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. (laughs)

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky23:31

      (laughs)

   5. VPVarun Parmar23:31

      And, uh... And I think this was, uh, you know, uh, the... the result of an observation, which is quite similar to, uh, what you're saying, which is, you know, while we might be developing a lot of the features and PMs are sort of thinking bottoms up in terms of what, uh, we are building, uh, we might find that what we have built might not be able to capture, uh, the imagination of what we originally thought it would. And a big part of that is, how are you gonna think about positioning? How are you gonna think about competitive differentiation? How are you going to package it up so that, you know, the sellers that are out there are able to position it in a way that the... the customer, uh, you know, in this case, the buyer, uh, might be an IT professional, you know, might be, uh, you know, a line of business leader, can basically see, uh, the... the... the... the full vision of where we are going?And I think by having product marketing as part of Amped, uh, you know, we now bring that unique perspective that may be missing in certain teams, where PMs are more acting as product owners or more focused on, like, core sort of problem and solution, but not thinking about positioning, because that's so important. Especially, uh, you know, when you're thinking about a market that we are increasingly in that, uh, that there is, uh, there is competition there. And that's one of the first things (laughs) we started off with, and that's top of mind for you as well, uh, is that everything that we are doing, you know, has to be looked through that lens. And, and one of the core philosophies that I have, Lenny, is that the success of a company is a direct relation of what the competition allows you to do.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky24:55

      Mm-hmm.

   7. VPVarun Parmar24:56

      And I feel like not many people sort of talk about that, but, uh, but in many cases in my professional career, and I've been at it for, you know, close to 24, 25 years, is that every single instance when I looked at a company accelerated their growth or, or there was a deceleration of growth, it was a direct relation, uh, to what the competition allowed you, uh, to do. And obviously, you know, you have to do everything that you, uh, that you should be doing, but competition is that, the biggest variable that, that, uh, allows you to figure that out.

7. 25:24 – 31:43

   How competition affects growth and product strategy

   1. VPVarun Parmar25:24

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky25:24

      I want to hear more about your core product philosophies. That was ... But, uh, let me dig into the one you just shared.

   3. VPVarun Parmar25:30

      Yes.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky25:30

      Uh, so there, what you find is that, uh, the way you grow or stop growing is often a direct result of your competition. Is there an example of that that comes to mind? Like, I'm guessing maybe Box versus Dropbox as an experience you had there? Or if not, what, what's an example of that that you've experienced to make it a little more concrete even?

   5. VPVarun Parmar25:50

      Uh, you know, for those of us who've been in the, in the collaboration space, and I've been doing collaboration and productivity apps for over 20 years, o- over two decades, you know, at some point, uh, uh, you know, uh, you have companies like Microsoft that get really attracted, (laughs) to, uh, to a space and, and you can see the trajectory of a business that's growing, uh, at a certain clip. And then all of a sudden, there's, there's a, there's a competitive product that enters-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky26:12

      Mm-hmm.

   7. VPVarun Parmar26:13

      ... that has the might of distribution and the might of, uh, of, of pricing. Uh, and that's just, like, a, a direct example. And I think, uh, I've seen that multiple times, uh, first at Adobe where I was part of the Document Cloud business, clearly saw that, uh, you know, at Box as well. And, uh, and I think, like, you can in general, like, sort of look at every single category and you can say, you know, there was a cate- there was a category leader and they were growing at a certain clip or a certain pace, and all of a sudden, there were a bunch of entrants that get in, and, and what happens to your growth rate? And it's all dependent on how strong is the competitor in terms of providing a good enough solution? That's one. And the second is, how strong is the com- competition in terms of their distribution outreach? And then the third thing is, how strong is the competition in terms of the pricing and packaging?

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky26:55

      I really like this discussion especially because often the advice is don't worry about the competition, just focus on the customer, it's going to be fine. Which, what you're saying is that's not right, and I agree. What do you do with that in mind? How does that impact the way you build product or strategy? Is there some you could share that maybe tactically someone could leverage in ... to how they're approaching their product strategy?

   9. VPVarun Parmar27:18

      It, uh, it depends on, like, who the competition is-

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky27:20

       Yeah.

   11. VPVarun Parmar27:20

       ... and what is their unfair advantage here. And, you know, we talked about one specific, uh, competitor, and I have a lot of respect for them, uh, by the way, and I learn a lot, uh, from them every single day in terms of how they make bets and how they enter markets and stuff. At some point, I'm going to write a book on them. Uh, I feel- (laughs)

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky27:36

       Ooh. We'll have to come back to talk about that.

   13. VPVarun Parmar27:38

       That's right. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, and I think, like, it's, it, it sort of comes down to, you know, uh, you know, how do you think about, uh, your unique place, uh, you know-

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky27:48

       Mm-hmm.

   15. VPVarun Parmar27:48

       ... relative to, uh, you know, all of these players. And, uh, and in, in, in, in your customer's mind, are they able to clearly, uh, understand what is the unique value that you deliver relative to everything else? And, uh, part of that is, is, is, uh, is the unique capabilities you provide. Part of that is how you're packaging those unique capabilities to them, uh, and, and making sure that they, in their mind, can see how you co-exist in this, uh, overall sort of tech ecosystem that they might be investing in to enable their employees or, you know, to enable them to, uh, to operate. Uh, and so I think it's, it's sort of, uh, looking at that from, uh, from that lens. Yeah.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky28:26

       Got it. So what I'm hearing is be very clear about your differentiator-

   17. VPVarun Parmar28:29

       Yeah.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky28:29

       ... and continue to invest there, and then make sure your positioning is clear around why you're ... Just identifying here's why we're different and we're not just like-

   19. VPVarun Parmar28:39

       Yes.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky28:39

       ... a better or worse version of this thing, or here's why we're different and making sure that's really clear.

   21. VPVarun Parmar28:43

       Exactly. And I think the on- the other thing I would say, like, there's a- there's another core philosophy I have which is products either get better over a period of time or they get worse. Products never remain the same. And I think you can take that philosophy to a bunch of things in life. Uh, but I'm going to take the lens of products, which is, uh, my core philosophy is like every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and, and you're releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you're making the product worse, but the products never remain the same. And, and the lens for this, Lenny, is actually from a customer's perspective, from the end user perspective. And, and the thing is that, you know, if you are a player where there's no one else in the market, that's, that's one thing, right? So that- that's great. Like, you know, kudos to you for actually identifying a, a Blue Ocean strategy and, and sort of executing to that. But most markets, most products actually have, uh, you know, either direct o- or indirect competitors that are available. So from the customer's mind, you know, you're doing something, the competitor is doing something. So in their mind, they're looking at these products and they're looking at these companies and they're saying, you know, which is better versus not? And so with every release that your competitor is making and every release that you're making, you're either ma- you know, making chess points, moves against them, positive points, or, or, or you're going negative. And I think, like, that framework, if you have in mind, uh, you know, it actually drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of, uh, you know, what you're doing and what the impact is going to be. Because every single move that you're making, the customer has that sort of in their mind, if not explicitly, implicitly that they are actually comparing these things.... and I think it brings a level of focus in terms of where you need to invest, and why you need to invest, and why this is going to make those decisions. And so, I think it, it allows at least for product leaders to make some high quality decisions around the bets that they're making, and how they're going to play out, in terms of, like, eventual, uh, you know, once the dust settles, you know, and, and the market at large is going to say, "I'm going to standardize on something, and now I feel I need to go get it for everyone." Or, or, "This is the tool that I want to use for this particular use case." That all of these decisions that they're making ladder up to that final sort of play that you have to do in terms of, uh, the market consolidation that eventually happens.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky30:58

       This is so interesting. Essentially, what you're saying is that you find that being very close to u- and understanding the competition really well is, is really essential. Versus, like, this is kind of the other end of the spectrum almost from just, like, don't worry about the competition, don't pay attention. I like these, like, this point metaphor of just, like, are we moving ahead or further behind? Is there a way you operationalize that to kind of track that? And then also, just like how do you not over obsess with, "Let's just catch up, get more features," that kind of thing. Like, how do you find that balance?

   23. VPVarun Parmar31:27

       Uh, I'll be honest, like, I, I don't think we've, uh, figured, uh, it out. We haven't cracked a nut in terms-

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky31:32

       Hmm.

   25. VPVarun Parmar31:32

       ... of how to, uh, operationalize this. But, uh, uh, I, I know you are way smarter than me on, on, on some of these things, so, so maybe we can-

   26. LRLenny Rachitsky31:39

       Unlikely.

   27. VPVarun Parmar31:39

       ... partner on this, and (laughs) e- and come up with something. (laughs)

8. 31:43 – 34:21

   Why speed is so important and how to improve it

   1. VPVarun Parmar31:43

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky31:43

      All right. That'll be a, that'll be something we work on.

   3. VPVarun Parmar31:45

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky31:45

      Um, any other product philosophies that, uh, you wanna share? That was awesome.

   5. VPVarun Parmar31:51

      This is all, like, sort of related to it. It's like, uh, a string of pearls. I think, like, there's maybe, like, one more pearl we can actually thread into the needle right here.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky31:59

      Let's do it.

   7. VPVarun Parmar31:59

      Um, which is, um, uh, you know, we, we, we, uh, we talked about sort of how do you ladder this up and stuff, and, and then the question is, okay, how do you know, like, you know, that, uh, uh, you know, everything that you're doing is that, uh, in the right direction or not? And, like, you know, should you move slow and be much more mindful about the things that you're doing, or, or should you move fast and, like, make certain bets and then decide certain things and stuff? Uh, and, and I think, like, there are two sort of, uh, views that are out there. You know, my, my personal sort of, uh, um, you know, perspective on this is that what you wanna do is that you wanna be the first one to hit the brick wall. And, uh, you know, this is particularly true when you are in a market that is, uh, that is, uh, competitive. Um, and the reason for that is that, uh, you know, if you consider yourself as an innovation, uh, centric company, and, and, and you believe that, uh, uh, you know, you are building experiences that fundamentally don't exist, uh, uh, anywhere else, and you're sort of paving the way for the rest of the folks to basically get inspired with how you, uh, are building these experiences, speed, uh, is, is the single biggest determinant in terms of, uh, in my experience, in terms of, uh, you know, who ends up being more successful versus not. And I think, like this, uh, the, the, the, I don't know, maybe this is a little bit controversial where, you know, people say, like, you know, go slow to actually go fast, and I think, uh, I have a lot of respect for that and there's certain areas you should do that. But when, uh, when you're trying to, you know, figure out, like, sort of new experiences and stuff, you know, and you don't know, you know, if it's going to resonate or not, like, uh, you know, speed is something that you should accelerate for, uh, for the organization. You know, I, I think, like, Frank Slootman, uh, uh, you know, talks about this, uh, you know, a lot in his book and, you know, you know, how can you accelerate? And I think the, for me from a product perspective, like, the fundamental concept is, like, can you be the first one to hit the brick wall where you have this, where you have the learning faster than anyone else in the market so that you can decide, "Oh my God, the path that I was going was not the right path. I need to do 10 degrees, uh, you know, west or I need to do 30 degrees, um, uh, east." And I think as long as you're like one or two or three steps ahead of everyone else in terms of uncovering or, you know, discovering those, uh, those insights, then, uh, then I think, you know, you can continue to be ahead of the pack in terms of, uh, you know, building, building your product and business.

9. 34:21 – 37:19

   How Miro ensures that their products meet quality standards

   1. VPVarun Parmar34:21

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky34:21

      You're talking about urgency. I've never met a founder or product leader who doesn't want their team to move faster. They're always encouraging their team, "How do we move faster?" I'm curious if there's something you've learned tactically about helping your team move more quickly. You mentioned Frank Slootman's book, Amp It Up is what it's called, by the way, in case-

   3. VPVarun Parmar34:38

      Yep.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky34:38

      ... folks wanna check it out, and he's big on just, like, creating a sense of urgency, constant urgency, and we'll link to that in show notes. But yeah, what have you found helps create urgency and generally helps your teams move faster other than just, like, move faster everyone?

   5. VPVarun Parmar34:52

      My fundamental sort of, uh, uh, belief here, Lenny, is that, uh, every product manager, I can talk to product managers because, uh, uh, you know, uh, there, there is reason certain one s- someone wants to be a product manager, 'cause like it, in my view, it's like one of the most thankless jobs. Like, you get to do all-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky35:09

      Uh, agreed.

   7. VPVarun Parmar35:10

      ... of the stuff 100%.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky35:10

      (laughs)

   9. VPVarun Parmar35:11

      (laughs) And it's like why, why, why, why do you have to do this?

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky35:14

       Yeah.

   11. VPVarun Parmar35:14

       And there's, like, uh, uh, uh, but, like, there, it, it, it attracts a certain personality and that personality is driven by challenge and that personality wants to prove that they, they can solve this challenge and, and, and, and, and, and do something amazing. So I think fundamentally, you know, uh, the product persona actually wants to move fast. I think, uh, the reason why in some cases, uh, we are not able to move fast is because of, uh, uh, roadblocks that we run into. And, uh, those roadblocks can manifest themselves into technical challenges, they can, uh, manifest them in, in selves of, uh, organizational challenges. They could be priority challenges and so on and so forth. So my fundamental sort of approach to solving that is to, uh, ensure that, uh, the product leads who are working on these capabilities, uh, can, can instantly raise their hand a- and, and call out that there are challenges that they are running into, and then the job of the leadership team, uh, the, the, the product management team is to essentially go and quickly resolve those issues, right? And I think, like, if you're able to resolve those issues then what it does is it actually starts a virtuous cycle where you can actually start to see those wins. And once you see those wins, you actually create that courage to do more things...... and, and maybe because you've seen how that specific roadblock was solved, and you have a pattern matching that you've developed now, you can solve a lot of those things on your own. And it's the next level of challenge that you're now going to raise, uh, your hand. And what that does is it then starts to build this organizational competency in terms of how you can figure out, you know, what to build. And you know, we all find these people in our organizations where they, there's someone that somehow is able to do certain things in one-tenth the, the time that it would take a normal person. It's not that they are, like, 10 times faster. It's just that, in my observation, that they've figured out which part of the code base they should build in versus not, who should be part of their team and who should not be, how they need to define that from a school perspective, what does success look like. And it's the architecture of bringing all of these things together that actually brings that magic, uh, formula in terms of, like, "Hey, we are able to deliver faster."

10. 37:19 – 47:22

    How to remove blockers

    1. VPVarun Parmar37:19

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky37:19

       I really like this topic. What I'm hearing is one of the biggest roots of slowing, slowdown in a company and product development is, is blockers not being unblocked. And I always feel the same thing.Like, I feel like a PM's job, like, number one job is to unblock their team, because, like, their job is basically make the most out of their team that they're marshaling towards some outcome. And the way you do that is just figure out what's slowing them down. You just talked about this, like, idea of a PM raises their hand to leadership, "Hey, we're blocked by this thing." Is there, like, a process you've come up with there that helps you do that? It's, like, connected to...

    3. VPVarun Parmar37:50

       Yeah. I, I would say, like, we are, we are trying to sort of systematically, like, ingrain this in the culture of, uh, of the organization. So we, we have a motto in the, in the product org. It's very simple, a single sentence. Deliver customer value faster with high quality. That's it. And everything that we do, and when I say everything, everything, Lenny, like from, like, you know, performance, and reward system, and measurements, everything is based on this one single statement, and it has three attributes. The first one is deliver customer value, and we believe customer value is only delivered when customers use it. So anytime as a PM at Mural when you ship something, we're looking at, well, what was the metric you are going to move and how much did it move? And we have some original targets that we can go back to. So that's the first aspect of what we're doing, deliver customer value. The second one is move faster, and there are certain cycle times that we are measuring across the organization, okay? You know, from the time you came up with the idea, to the time that you actually pitched a solution, to the time you actually shipped it, to the time we actually moved the metric. It's information that has been collected and is being made available to the organization and you can say, "Hey, if it was a small, medium, or large, you know, what's the average? What's the median? What's the variance?" And you can say, "Hey, like, looking at this data, what can be improved?" So that's on the faster aspect of it. And then the last one, uh, is around high quality, which is, you know, we wanna build best in class, uh, you know, collaboration experiences. So we are always, always getting inspired by what we find, uh, you know, in, in applications and experiences that we, uh, see around us. And we are saying, "Hey, when it comes to, uh, you know, designing sharing flows, you know, we believe that these are the three, you know, uh, apps that have the best in class sharing flows. When it comes to, you know, designing some synchronous capabilities, like, these, these are the best, uh, in class apps that we should look at." So we are always trying to make sure that we are benchmarking ourselves against that, and we have a design team on a regular basis. Like, when we ship stuff on a monthly basis, our design leadership team does a triage of everything that got shipped into, like, high quality or not high quality. It's just like a binary function, and we're doing that, and we're saying, "Hey, the reason why we believe it's not high quality is because A, B, C, D, E." And we're, uh, making it available to other designers so they can actually start to build sort of that, that, that telemetry in terms of, like, some things are more subjective. But you can start to see some pattern matching and say, like, "Hey, you know, this is what, this is what great looks like."

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky40:06

       (instrumental music) This episode is brought to you by Linear. Let's be honest, the issue tracker that you're using today isn't very helpful. Why is that it always seems to be working against you instead of working for you? Why does it feel like such a chore to use? Well, Linear is different. It's incredibly fast, beautifully designed, and it comes with powerful workflows that streamline your entire product development process, from issue tracking all the way to managing product roadmaps. Linear is designed for the way modern software teams work. What users love about Linear are the powerful keyboard shortcuts, efficient GitHub integrations, cycles that actually create progress, and built-in project updates that keep everyone in sync. In short, it just works. Linear is the default tool of choice among startups, and it powers a wide range of large established companies such as Vercel, Retool, and Cash App. See for yourself why product teams describe using Linear as magical. Visit linear.app/lenny to try Out Linear for free with your team and get 25% off when you upgrade. That's linear.app/lenny. Okay, so every month or so, the design team looks at everything that's shipped and puts things into a bucket. Either this is... It's like a binary thing, high quality or not high quality.

    5. VPVarun Parmar41:24

       Yes.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky41:24

       Wow, that is so cool. And then, one, what do they do with that? Do they send it out to the product team? And then two, is this just, like, FYI, or is it, like, "We need to fix all these low-quality things go- going back," or is it more just like, "For the future, please be aware these are not high quality?"

    7. VPVarun Parmar41:39

       Yeah. So it's actually both. Uh, so generally what happens is that the design leadership team is, is doing this, and there's one particular design leader who's the, the designated, uh, person to make sure that this is happening on, on a regular basis. And, and right now the way we're using it is that we are actually using it to, to calibrate and align around the design leadership around what we mean by high quality. Because it's one of those things, right? It's like, uh, uh, you know, if you've never seen colors and I ask you, "Lenny, describe pink and, and, and compare that to red." And, like, if you haven't seen, like, colors, like, how do you describe colors? You can't. But, like, if I show you, and I say, "Lenny, these are three examples of what pink is, and these are three examples of red is." Then you're like, "Oh, I get pink and I get red." So there are certain things that you just, like, when you write it, it's very, very hard to describe it, but if you show specific examples, it's very clear, "Oh, I get it. I, I get why, how pink is different than red." But if I try to describe it, it's gonna be very hard.So we got into these endless conversations at some point about a year ago, where we were saying, "We need high quality, we need high quality," and people are like, "Let's just go and define this thing." And we had, like, a bunch of our leaders go and, like, write, like, you know, documents, like, really long documents in terms of, like, what are the attributes? And ho- how do we define those attributes? And how do we measure those attributes? And how do we enable people to do that? And it felt like it's- it's a good thing because we are trying to codify it, but it also felt like, you know, it was a very heavy way of solving that problem. And then, you know, we just came up with this approach which is, like, what's great versus not great? And just start classifying it. And as you know, it's like modern AI systems are like classification systems and we

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky43:11

       Yeah, I was just gonna say, sounds like reinforcement learning approach to defining quality. (laughs)

    9. VPVarun Parmar43:16

       Exactly. That's right. That's right. And, uh, and I think it's worked, uh, uh, uh, worked decently well. I would say, like, with most things, like, uh, you know, we need to operationalize it and we need to make sure that now we are democratizing it and everybody has access to it and so on and so forth, but I think it's- it's- it's been a- it's been a good start. And now, you know, we are- we are sharing this more openly with, uh, with others in the- in the org.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky43:37

        When I said that I imagined you, uh, from the outside you have a very unique culture and approach to your product. That's a great example of that. I've never heard of a process like this. So what I'm hearing is essentially you're trying to build the muscle within the organization of what is quality. It's like this continued heuristic of like, okay, I get it. And so PMs on the team start to, like, understand in their head what that means.

    11. VPVarun Parmar43:56

        Right.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky43:57

        Super cool. You also talked about the middle part of that sentence, like moving faster and that you track and measure that somehow. Can you talk more about that? 'Cause that's something every product team is always trying to understand, like how do we know if we're going faster, if we're going as fast as we could? How do you actually do that? How do you measure these things?

    13. VPVarun Parmar44:13

        The core philosophy th- there is like, uh, you know, velocity, uh, is more like the game of golf, uh, uh, where you're just playing against yourself. Like it's- it's not like if Lenny and Verona are out at the golf course, like it doesn't matter. Like, you know, I'm not competing against you. I'm just competing against myself 'cause that's the only... (laughs) I- I'm gonna just hit the ball. So it's like how better, uh, how much better can we get? So I think our core philosophy is around that. And what we're trying to do is that, you know, on, uh, on all the product teams, the feature teams that we have, we're just collecting all the information and we are making it available, uh, to everyone so that they can actually see what the cycle times are. And what we are interested in is from the time that you have an insight, from the time you believe, "I can do something unique for my user, for my persona," uh, you know, how long does it take for you to actually deliver that value? And, you know, we have a, you know, have a, we have a product, uh, process that we, we follow, which starts with a, with a P-STRAT, which is a strategy, and then we go into P0, which is a, you know, definition of the problem. Then we go into P1, which is definition of the solution, and then we go into P2, which is once the solution is shipped, you know, are we hitting the metrics that we originally had, uh, uh, defined upfront before we, uh, we decided to work on this. And, uh, you know, you have all of these stage gates, and then we, we basically classify everything that we are doing in small, medium, large, you know, uh, and- and you can go in and you can say, "Hey, I thought this was a small thing," and, you know, small thing is like something you can get it done in less than a month and so on and so forth. And, you know, there are like 50 other product teams that are sh- shipping these features and what's the average? What's the variance? You know? Uh, what's the median? And, oh, wait a second, actually it seems like I took way mo- more time in the problem definition stage. Let me actually try to go talk to this other, uh, product team that actually did it much faster, or, oh, you know, I actually did it really, really fast and the reason why I did it fast was because of this. Let me go share this out, uh, with the- with the broader team. And, uh, and usually like the product ops, uh, function, uh, we- we call it product excellence internal, like sort of product excellence function, uh, is- uh, is recording some of these things. Uh, I- I would say, uh, you know, getting reliable data and then because we have some things that are going through meetings, and there's some things that are going through Slack, like, you know, we could, uh, we could do better on- on some of those, uh, dimensions, but, uh, all of this data is available and, uh, we, uh- we provide it, uh, openly, and, uh, folks can benchmark themselves against that.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky46:34

        So cool. Okay. So you have this P-STRAT, you called it, document, which is kind of like an initial concept, and then it's interesting you use the P0, P1, which is often for bugs, but it's cool that you use it for defining your products. (laughs)

    15. VPVarun Parmar46:46

        Product features.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky46:46

        So P-STRAT is just like a- an idea pitch. P0 is a spec basically, like a one-pager for the product, and then P1 and P2 are basically getting to like here's the actual product we're building, and you basically track time per step and map it to here's how large this project should be, and over time you track per person it sounds like, just like are you matching the benchmarks of like how long a small project should take across each step?

    17. VPVarun Parmar47:13

        Yeah. Exactly.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky47:14

        Wow. That is extremely cool. Uh, whatever templates you can share of these things that we can include in the show notes would be awesome-

    19. VPVarun Parmar47:21

        Yes.

11. 47:22 – 53:34

    Miro’s product development process

    1. VPVarun Parmar47:22

       Totally.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky47:22

       ... because people are always looking for just like, ah, I want to do some of this stuff, and if you just plug and play, the- the more the merrier.

    3. VPVarun Parmar47:28

       Yes.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky47:29

       Shifting a little bit, it sounds like you guys are doing Scrum in some form.

    5. VPVarun Parmar47:32

       Yeah.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky47:32

       Can you just talk about just broadly the product development process? Like how long do you are your sprints? How long do you plan for in the future in detail specifically just like high level how does the product development process work?

    7. VPVarun Parmar47:44

       So the- there are certain things that, uh, you know, I learned at Box and, um, you know, that inspired, uh, some things that we, uh, we do, uh, at- at- at Miro and there are certain things that we've, uh, we've evolved. So like one of the things that, uh, we've instituted is sort of, you know, our- our roadmap pr- process, right? So that's sort of the- the first thing around, uh, how, uh, the different teams, uh, are- are looking at, you know, the, uh, the things that they're gonna work on. So we have a rolling six-month roadmap. Um, uh, seems large, but, uh, we've got, like I mentioned, uh, a number of enterprise customers and the... if- if I've learned one thing that large enterprises like, uh, is- uh, is asking for a roadmap review. So (laughs) that tends to be, uh, my favorite meeting of, uh, sitting down with the enterprise leaders, uh, and walking through what we are working on. So what we've done is we've tried to architect something which actually allows our customers to get what they're looking for, but at the same time does not remove the agility that is so important for us to- to deliver value faster.And so what we do is we have a rolling six-month roadmap that gets updated every three months. And the first three months of that, of that roadmap, we have an 80% precision level, which means that, uh, 80% of the things that we claim to be on the roadmap will get done. That's, that's the target. And for the, for the next three months, because it's six months, so the first three months is 80%, the next three months is 50%. So we have a much lower level of resolution in, in the next, you know, three months after that. And what that allows the product teams to do is actually have flexibility, which is based on what the customers are asking for and based on what the competitive moves are, based on some technology breakthroughs that happen around large language models. They can pivot and they can pivot and move towards that, and they won't get penalized either by the customer or internally in terms of doing that. So that's, that's what we do, and that's all at, uh, on the backdrop of an annual strategy that we, uh, publish. So, uh, every year, uh, you know, we, uh, publish a, a strategy white paper, uh, that it gets published internally, uh, available to every single Mironaire, you know, across all functions that clearly articulates, you know, the key bets that we wanna make. Why do we wanna make those bets? What is the expected outcome and how d- how does that ladder up into the overall business outcomes that we are trying to drive from an OKR perspective, as well as the overall business strategy that we have? So people take that, that product strategy, you know, white paper or artifact and then against that they're building their roadmaps, which get updated every three months. And then, uh, inside, uh, of, uh, uh, of the teams we, uh, you know, enable teams to be quite autonomous in terms of, uh, uh, some of the rituals that they're doing. We want them, uh, you know, to, uh, obviously embrace best practices. We've got a team of Agile coaches, uh, that, uh, you know, share best practices or, you know, are available, you know, to, to help if there's certain specific, uh, uh, you know, uh, needs, uh, that, that teams have. And then I, I think like on top of that, there are certain key, like I would say rituals that we do that maybe are unique. Um, uh, so for example, we have something called as Miro Connect, you know, which happens every other Friday. And, uh, and, uh, you know, uh, every other Friday you, uh, you know, for example, in our Amsterdam office, you can go in there and at four o'clock, uh, in the afternoon, you know, four to seven or eight, and sometimes it goes, uh, really late, you've got a bunch of product teams, uh, you know, sitting around tables and it feels like, oh, it's like a trade show or something, and you just, people are coming in, they're having a good time, you've got a drink in your hand. There's maybe some light music playing in the background and you're going from table to table and you have teams that are actually showing all the amazing work that they're doing. And it, it, you know, if done right, like it happens once in a while, but like if done right, it's magical in terms of the outcomes that you can get. So I, I, I'll tell you, there was a team that actually was presenting at our Berlin, uh, hub and, uh, they, they were saying, "We're working on this feature." Uh, you know, and there's an, you know, there's an engineer, um, uh, you know, who walks over to that desk and says, "What are you working on?" And the, and the team describes it, "Oh, we are trying to do, uh, you know, something like this." And, uh, and this engineer had actually worked on that particular problem in their, in their prior life. Like literally they had implemented this. So he says, "So, so how are you gonna implement this?" And the team, the engineer that's sitting there says like, "This is the approach, um, I'm gonna take and it's gonna take me three months." And he's like, "Oh, would you mind if I go and help you with this?" And they're like, "Sure. More the merrier. Go ahead." So this person, you know, uh, you know, puts down their beer and says, "Okay, I'm having a good time. Let me just head back to, uh, uh, to my home." And in the next three or four hours goes and codes the entire thing, makes a pull request, and next day in the morning, one of the engineers from the score team that was exhibiting at, at Miro Connect, you know, looks at the pull request, you know, reviews the code and says, "Yes." Something that would've taken, uh, you know, three months for the score team because they didn't have the expertise, literally got, got done in, in, in three hours because there was another engineer that ran into them and said, "I, I know how this is done. I can actually help you here," and, and went ahead, uh, and, and did the right thing. And so we are trying to create these magic moments. It happens once, uh, once in a while, but we have one success story (laughs) and, uh, I like to tell that in every opportunity that I get. Uh, but that's another sort of, sort of unique thing that we've done in terms of, uh, uh, bookending things, uh, around how, how we operate here.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky52:50

       That story is like a, a dream for any PM (laughs) . Just imagine-

    9. VPVarun Parmar52:54

       Indeed.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky52:55

        ... saving months of work with one conversation. I imagine people were like, "How do we replicate this on often?" I love that. With the, uh, these meetings, just to understand, if their team is in Berlin, let's say, there's a screen there, like in front of a table and they're like talking through a screen like a video conference?

    11. VPVarun Parmar53:12

        Yeah, I mean, the v- th- like right now what we've figured out is that, uh, it is really hard to do these events, uh, you know, over, uh, you know, uh, audio video conferencing and stuff. So generally what happens is that you have an audio video bridge that's playing, but mostly it's people walking up to the, the respective teams and then having like a live conversation. Like that's, uh, that's usually how, uh, these things are operated.

12. 53:34 – 55:55

    How OKRs work at Miro

    1. VPVarun Parmar53:34

       Yeah.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky53:34

       Got it. Okay. So you have six-month rolling roadmaps, you have a yearly vision strategy for the company, two-week sprints. Is there also a quarterly OKR sort of process or is it those-

    3. VPVarun Parmar53:48

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky53:48

       ... or not? There is, okay.

    5. VPVarun Parmar53:49

       There is. Yeah.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky53:49

       Can you just talk a little bit about how that works?

    7. VPVarun Parmar53:51

       Yes, yes, yes. At Miro, we, uh, we practice OKRs and, um, you know, it starts off at the company level, um, and then, um, you know, those company level OKRs are taken by the amped organization, right? We describe it's the amped organization, and then we break it up. Um, and, uh, you know, I would say like we have refined it, uh, over the period of time, the two years that I've been, uh, at, at Miro and, and, uh, uh, early on, uh, we were doing, uh, OKRs, uh, uh, on a, uh, on a quarterly basis, and I would say more recently we've actually evolved to six-month KRs.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky54:23

       Mm-hmm.

    9. VPVarun Parmar54:23

       Uh, and what we found was that, um, you know, six-month was the right cadence in terms of giving enough time for teams to basically push forward, uh, in, in executing these KRs, uh, and minimizing, uh, the quote unquote, um, overhead of, uh, of, uh, uh, of, of doing re-plan, uh, every single quarter. Um, and, uh, and we found that it was much more effective and efficient for the entire organization to do it on a, on a six-month, uh, basis. However-We are doing traction on a monthly basis. So every four weeks, as Ampt, uh, you know, we are looking at our KR for the Ampt organization on a monthly basis doing traction. However, the planning, uh, the targets, uh, are- are- are done on a- on a six-month basis.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky55:06

        I love how OKRs could just be anything. Like, could be-

    11. VPVarun Parmar55:09

        (laughs)

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky55:10

        ... every six months, could have objectives, could have key results. Like, it's just such a term that just applies to anything that people do with goals, basically.

    13. VPVarun Parmar55:17

        That's true.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky55:18

        And it works, it's great.

    15. VPVarun Parmar55:19

        That is so true. (laughs)

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky55:20

        Um, and again, if there's any templates that your team could share of the way you do that stuff, that would be amazing, I'm gonna include that in the show notes.

    17. VPVarun Parmar55:27

        Yeah, absolutely. Uh, because I think, like, as you would expect, like, we run Miro on Miro, uh, so, uh, so there's, like, a lot of, uh, uh, things that we could, uh, share, uh, as templates in terms of how we are running things on- on Miro. Not just as OKRs but in terms of product reviews and, you know, we have a- a ways of how we are doing asynchronous reviews combined with synchronous reviews and there's these blended experiences that we have and so we can- we can definitely, uh, share, uh, out in the community how we- how we do some of these things.

13. 55:55 – 1:01:20

    The product stack at Miro

    1. VPVarun Parmar55:55

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky55:55

       Awesome, and that's a great segue to another question I was gonna ask, is just what are tools ... what's in the stack of the product teams, uh, workflow? So Miro, obviously. Maybe talk about, like, what you use Miro for, but then what else is in there, like, what do you use for task management, bug tracking, things like that? Design.

    3. VPVarun Parmar56:12

       So we're starting, uh, from the bottom up, like, infrastructure up view, like, so we, uh, all of our, uh, tickets are- are- are handled in, uh, in- in Jira and, uh, you know, we're using some of the Jira, newer capabilities in Jira in terms of, uh, coming up with roadmaps and, you know, coming up with the priorities and stuff. Uh, uh, on top of that, the, uh, all of the specs, uh, you know, uh, generally get recorded, uh, uh, in Confluence. Having said that, we're actually a big fan, uh, of, you know, tools like, you know, uh, Google Docs as well as Coda, uh, you know, that, uh, allows us to track, uh, our KR as in, um, in a pretty, uh, effective way. You know, on- on top of that, obviously, like, we- we use Miro a lot, uh, I would say, uh, for a lot of our things, uh, especially on the- on the product and, uh- and design side, uh, uh, of the team. You know, generally, uh, all of our, um, uh, insights get captured inside of Miro boards when we are going and, uh, you know, conducting, uh, user e- uh, experience re- uh, interviews and stuff. We will record those, a- and then those recordings get, uh, added to a- a- a Miro board, so Miro acts as the content hub, uh, or a team hub, uh, uh, for a particular project. You know, once you capture all of those insights, then generally, uh, you know, all of the brainstorming, uh, and, uh, and team ideation happens on the Miro board as well, so Miro is actually also used as a tool to facilitate, uh, meetings and workshops. Once all of that, uh, uh, you know, uh, is- is- is synthesized into a set of recommendations and outcomes, you know, so when we go into these product reviews that we were talking about, Lenny, uh, that same Miro board then gets manifested into, uh, a set of presentations, so we use Miro, uh, for presentations. We've actually made some really amazing updates in terms of our capabilities there, and if folks haven't checked them out, I would strongly encourage them. So there's a capability called Showtime that a- basically extracts out the UI and lets people focus on the content, but do it in a way that it's interactive, so everyone that's on the call can- can- can have reactions, uh, you know, can share their comments and, uh, leave comments while the presentation is happening without actually disrupting any of the flow for the user, so we use that a lot for presentations as well. And I would say more recently, what we've started to do is that we've started to move some of our synchronous meetings into async reviews, so I talked about this talk track feature that we have, and a lot of teams, what they would do is that they would actually send you a, you know, five minute, 10 minute talk track in advance. And it's just a link to a Miro board, you click on it and then you just sit back and relax, you know? And then you have this magical experience where you're sitting back and the Miro board is automatically moving because Lenny was, like, recording it like that, and then you have the video play and then you can pause it any time, you can add in your comments and stuff, so that the next time when you meet, instead of actually providing context to everyone, tho- those- those synchronous sessions are a lot- lot more deliberate and focused on driving outcomes or- or achieving, you know, consensus. So people are just focusing on the comments that were added as part of the async product review, so that when they meet, uh, synchronously, they can use that. So Miro bo- boards are used for that as well, and I would say now, a lot of our dashboarding, uh, shows up in Miro boards now. We recently released, uh, data visualization capabilities around most popular BI tools. So at Miro, we use Google, uh, Looker a lot, so a lot of our dashboards are- are- are- are in Looker, and what you would typically find is that our analyst team and product teams will just grab a link to a Looker dashboard, put it on a Miro board and it unfolds into a full visualization. And unlike a screen grab, you never have to go update it because right there on the Miro board, it's always updated and you can refresh that. So you basically have this- this- this, uh, this experience where Miro acts as that single source of truth for a lot of the teams enti- i- across the entire journey of product development, where a single Miro board is- is- is- is, uh, meeting the needs of, like, multiple, uh, sort of use cases there.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky59:51

       And then for roadmapping, is that in Miro? Like, the, each team's roadmap? Or do you use something like Jira?

    5. VPVarun Parmar59:57

       Yeah. So I think, like, we've got a couple of tools, uh, for- for roadmapping and our observation is that while those tools are great for- for- for the unique needs that they're solving, we haven't found, like, a- like, a universal solution for roadmapping (laughs) so there are some teams that use Miro, you know, for roadmapping and they would use the Kanban sort of, uh, widget in- in- in Miro for that. You know, what are they working on, what's coming next, what's in the backlog. But I would say, like, it- it is a problem that is not completely solved in terms of how do we actually bring, uh, you know, these- these artifacts together at scale? What we are starting to see, and this is actually a unique use case of Miro, is that we actually enable our entire field organization using talk tracks. So what happens is that we have our entire roadmap published out as a Miro board for enablement purposes, so that- that's an artifact that is approved to be shown to a customer, um, and, uh, what you will see is that you'll see five or six recordings in there and, uh, you know, the leader for enterprise has done a five-minute recording on everything they're working on, the leader for, uh, platform has done that, the leader for end user experience has done that.... uh, you know, the- the person who's driving some of our AI experience has done that. And so you can go in and you can just click on that video, and you can self-serve, sort of meet your needs, uh, by- by using Miro and- and this capability that we have.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:09

       That's awesome, and it sounds like each team can basically choose the tools they want to use. There's no, like, standardized, everyone needs to use...

    7. VPVarun Parmar1:01:15

       Exactly.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:15

       ... Jira or Miro for their roadmap.

    9. VPVarun Parmar1:01:17

       Exactly.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:17

        I like that. I like how teams do that often.

14. 1:01:20 – 1:03:44

    Big bets vs. maintenance and bug fixes at Miro

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:20

       Maybe one last question around the product org, and then I want to shift a little bit to growth and how Miro grows and things you've all learned about growing. So question I- I always try to get to is, how do you think about balancing new bets and innovation with maintenance and just general, like, incremental work? Do you have some sort of philosophy as a product leader broadly and then maybe at Miro specifically of just, like, the- how to balance investments in these two buckets or maybe three buckets, you know, bugs, incremental work, and then just big bets? How do you think about that?

    2. VPVarun Parmar1:01:54

       So, uh, you know, we have some, um, uh, some rule of thumbs in terms of, like, how we want to, uh, allocate, uh, you know, our- our investments across these buckets. And I would say a lot of it, Lenny, actually depends on sort of the state of the team. Like, there are- there are certain- certain teams that, uh, have more tech debt than others. There are certain teams that are actually working on some really big zero-to-one features than other teams. And so I think, like, there is a variance. You know, the standard deviation actually is dependent on, like, which part of the spectrum that you're in, which is, are you a team that we believe needs to create the next generation experience on the platform, and hence we have to prioritize innovative work? Or are you the team that's actually so critical to actually, e- you know, meeting our objective around, like, better board performance or any of the other things that we believe are- are important, and hence we need to invest in those, uh, in those critical areas? But I would say, in general, you know, uh, uh, innovation versus not, uh, you know, uh, you know, varies on a spectrum of anywhere from 60 to 80%. Uh, so I would say about 20 to 40% of the available, uh, capacity at any given time is either getting allocated, uh, to, uh, to architectural initiatives. You know, there's a technology roadmap that our CTO is- is driving that we believe is extremely important as the platform scales. And you know, now as you know, we have over 50 million people on the platform, so we continuously have to invest in making sure that the platform can scale. And there are certain teams, you know, that probably have 40 to 50% of their allocation towards that because they're a critical part of the component. And there are other teams that are maybe more end user-focused and are more UI-focused where that allocation is lower. But I think general rule of thumb is 20% is always a given, but it can go as high as 40 to 50%.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:30

       On, uh, bigger bets and longer term thinking?

    4. VPVarun Parmar1:03:33

       Yeah, 22, uh, 20 to 40%, uh, goes on the technology-related initiatives and-

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:38

       Oh, got it.

    6. VPVarun Parmar1:03:39

       ... maintenance

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:39

       Like infrastructure maintenance, making sure everything's there Run the business.

    8. VPVarun Parmar1:03:43

       Exactly,

15. 1:03:44 – 1:04:30

    The “three horizons” framework

    1. VPVarun Parmar1:03:44

       yeah.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:44

       And then what about just, uh, big long-term bets that you're not expecting to pay off anytime soon? Do you have a heuristic of just what percentage of, say, total resources you put there?

    3. VPVarun Parmar1:03:53

       You've probably, uh, yeah, seen this, uh, you know, the framework of, like, three horizon, like it's a- it's- it's quite popular in, like, McKinsey and, like-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:00

       Amazon.

    5. VPVarun Parmar1:04:00

       ... Harvard Business School and so on (laughs) and so forth. It's like horizon one business, which is what we are, what, you know, the- the thing that's delivering, uh, food on the table. Uh, generally, there's about a 70% allocation of resources that we have give or take. Then there is horizon two, which is an adjacent thing, uh, you know, over the next 12 to 36 months. We believe, uh, it's material. Usually that tends to be around 20% of the allocation. And then there's horizon three, which is like three years out, you know, three to five years, you know, next generation things, and that's about 10% of the ratio. So it's like 70, 20, 10 across horizon one, two, and three.

16. 1:04:30 – 1:10:46

    The importance of accountability

    1. VPVarun Parmar1:04:30

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:30

       Awesome. Any other, uh, thoughts along the lines of just how you think about product before we shift? And I only have a few questions around the growth kind of story of Miro and what you've learned about growing.

    3. VPVarun Parmar1:04:41

       In terms of, like, product leadership and, like, uh, uh, what, you know, what we believe is- is- is- is- is the way we wa- we want product leaders to be developed, and I think it's, like, more of a people philosophy. And so, you know, we have our product leadership, which is- which constitutes of all of the folks who are running all of these, uh, streams. And I always tell them that you have two personas that, uh, uh, uh, you have to think about. Everyone who's on the product leadership team is- i- is a product leadership team member, and the fundamental thing that you have to do is drive accountability. So the number one thing that a product leader on the product leadership team needs to do is drive accountability with others in the product leadership team. The other persona that they have is that they are a stream leader. They're actually responsible for delivering value for the respective persona and respective customers and stuff. So when you put on the persona hat of a stream leader, which is different than the persona o- of a product leader, your number one metric, the number one goal that you have is- is drive improvement. So when you go back and you work with your team, always have the lens, are you improving things? And whatever you want to improve, but you always have to ask yourself, today compared to yesterday, tomorrow compared to today, have I improved things? And that's the yardstick you should think about. When you go sit in the product leadership team every Monday morning, e- every Monday afternoon at one in the afternoon when we meet together, your number one goal is actually to drive accountability around this. And are you making sure that we as- as leaders in the organization are doing the right thing for the, uh, for the company? And- and- and I think, like, that's, like, a philosophical construct that I always remind people in terms of, uh, what they should be doing. So as an example, uh, tomorrow we have calibrations. We have our annual sort of review cycle happening in the company, and-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:22

       Good times. Always a blast.

    5. VPVarun Parmar1:06:23

       Yes, always fun and so critical, uh, you know, as a leader, because it sets the tone, uh, for everything that you're going to do. And, you know, in my opening remarks, the only thing I'm going to remind everyone in the room is that your number one goal here is to be a product leader, and- and- and- and accountability is what you have to drive. That's it. Just hold each others accountable, including myself, in terms of making sure that as we go in, like, that's the key thing. And I think, like, once people sort of understand sort of, like, uh, that duality of how they need to operate across those two specific goals, it actually leads to, uh, to really high-performing teams and teams that actually are able to create, uh, somewhat of a magic, uh-... you know, if they are open and there is trust there that, that has been built in the team.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:07

       And when you say accountability, what does that look like? Is it pointing out, "Hey, you didn't achieve this thing we were trying to achieve," or, "You didn't do a great job leading this meeting"? Is it just like direct feedback often or is there some other way you see that manifested, and what do you like to see?

    7. VPVarun Parmar1:07:24

       Yeah, I think it's, it's basically, uh, practicing, uh, uh, feedback in a very open and constructive way and, uh, focusing on what is important for the business and not shying away from having, uh, some of those, uh, those observations and conversations. You know, not shying away from that. Uh, but it's all in the lens of like what is the right thing to do for the business? Uh, and, and if you feel that, uh, that, uh, one or more members of the leadership team are not living up to what needs to be done, then just voicing it. And it's not like you're complaining or anything, it's just like, "I have this perspective. Is this the right perspective or not?" Because actually it ties very well with the overall cultural values that we have. If you do things with the lens that you are being e- empathetic, then you pose it as a question as opposed to a statement. And I think that's one of the things that we practice a lot at Miro is that I believe that I'm seeing there are certain things (laughs) that are happening, that it could be just me that I'm not seeing the other things, but, but, but, but what is it? Can you help me understand? Can you help me figure out that why, why certain things are happening? Because I might just be missing the perspective. But because you bring it up a- and, and that's part of practicing accountability in an empathetic way, it actually gets the entire team, uh, in the right man- mindset, you know, uh, in terms of how they operate.

Episode duration: 1:25:10