Be fundamentally different, not incrementally better | Jag Duggal (Nubank, Facebook, Google)

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

May 16, 2024

Duration

1h 35m

Channel

Lenny's Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Jag Duggal is chief product officer at Nubank, a decacorn neobank founded in Brazil. It’s valued at over $30 billion, is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, and SoFi combined, has 100 million customers (more than Bank of America!) while only operating in three countries in Latin America, and 80% to 90% of its growth comes through word of mouth. Prior to Nubank, Jag was a director of product management at Facebook, a senior vice president at Quantcast, and a product leader at Google. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How Nubank builds a fanatical user base
• Tactics for driving word-of-mouth growth
• Measuring customer love through the Sean Ellis score
• The importance of strategic clarity
• The role of category design in creating successful products
• Why companies should strive to be “fundamentally different,” not “incrementally better”
• Nubank’s vision for an AI-powered banking future

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Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/be-fundamentally-different-jag-duggal Where to find Jag Duggal:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagduggal/ Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Jag’s background (04:34) Nubank’s remarkable achievements (06:01) Nubank’s product development process (11:23) Nubank’s values (12:16) Building products people love fanatically (15:21) The Sean Ellis score (21:27) An example project using the Sean Ellis score (25:07) Picking up the phone and calling customers (28:20) The importance of starting small and iterating (30:42) Pushing back effectively (34:10) Uncovering pain points through customer research (37:53) An example of setting a clear hypothesis (43:11) Developing a strategy (52:16) “Be fundamentally different, not incrementally better” (53:10) Category design (57:37) Nubank’s founding story and goals for the future (01:00:46) Advice for adding new product lines (01:03:46) The future of fintech and banking (01:09:23) AI corner (01:12:34) Failure corner (01:20:24) Key takeaways (01:22:11) Lightning round Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lenny Rachitsky

  host

• Jag Duggal

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Jag Duggal, Be fundamentally different, not incrementally better | Jag Duggal (Nubank, Facebook, Google) explores Nubank’s Fanatical Customers: Building Fundamentally Different Financial Products Worldwide Jag Duggal, CPO of Nubank, explains how Nubank became a massive, word-of-mouth-driven fintech by obsessively building products customers love “fanatically,” anchored in deep pain points and a clear, focused strategy. He details how Nubank operationalizes product love through cultural values, rigorous product‑market‑fit gates like the Sean Ellis score, and extremely high NPS expectations before scaling new lines. The conversation dives into strategy craft, category design, and how to be fundamentally different rather than incrementally better, while also unpacking Nubank’s expansion into dozens of product lines and new geographies. Jag closes by outlining a future where banking becomes AI-native, social, and “self-driving,” effectively putting a personal banker in everyone’s pocket.

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