Lenny's PodcastHow to build trust and grow as a product leader | Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack, Instacart, Pixar)
CHAPTERS
- 4:03 – 7:17
From Pixar engineer to product leader: Fareed’s career arc
Fareed shares a concise walkthrough of his path from engineering into product leadership roles across multiple companies. He highlights his current role at Reforge and prior stints leading growth and product work at Slack, Instacart, Runkeeper, and Zynga.
- •Career overview and current scope as Reforge’s Chief Development Officer
- •Leading Slack’s lifecycle/growth function across activation → monetization
- •Growth/product leadership experiences at Instacart, Runkeeper, and Zynga
- •Early career foundation as an engineer at Pixar
- •How career moves were driven by problem-interest more than titles
- 7:17 – 9:06
Pixar lessons: optimize for the audience’s experience, not internal correctness
Fareed explains what working on animated films taught him about building products: technical rigor matters, but only as a means to delivering the desired end experience. He connects this to product strategy and content design—what’s written in docs is only valuable insofar as it produces real outcomes for customers.
- •End-user emotion and experience is the true target, not “realism” or internal elegance
- •Technical constraints and models should bend to serve the intended outcome
- •Strategy docs and frameworks are inputs, not the product
- •Content/program design should prioritize problem-solving over perfect MECE structure
- •Learning to solve cross-disciplinary problems by sitting at intersections
- 9:06 – 11:57
What Reforge actually is—and what Fareed does there
Fareed breaks down Reforge as more than a software company: it’s a set of learning and community experiences combining platform, cohorts, content, and expert partners. He describes owning content production, program experiences, partner development, and the teams that deliver them.
- •Reforge as a multi-modal product: platform + cohorts + community + content
- •Unlocking operator expertise and turning it into scalable learning experiences
- •Building and running content teams (strategy leads, producers, designers)
- •Designing member experiences including cohort delivery and member Slack
- •Role scope: production, new experiences, and partnerships
- 11:57 – 14:21
Reforge at scale: team size, programs, and member footprint
A snapshot of Reforge’s operational scale: headcount, number of programs, and the size of its member community. Fareed also notes the network of executives-in-residence and expert partners that extends beyond full-time employees.
- •~150 full-time employees (and growing)
- •19 cohort-based programs across product, growth, engineering, marketing
- •10,000+ active members
- •~a dozen executives-in-residence
- •Hundreds of expert partners contributing as guests/mentors/content collaborators
- 14:21 – 18:34
Why becoming a better PM is uniquely hard
Fareed outlines why PM skill development is difficult: there’s no universal pre-training, breaking into the first PM role is structurally hard, and much of PM competence is “specific knowledge” learned only by doing real work. Courses and mentorship help, but only on top of real reps shipping real products.
- •PM lacks a clear foundational curriculum like engineering or other professions
- •Breaking into the first PM job is a major bottleneck
- •PM excellence is hard to assess until someone does the work
- •Learning generalizes poorly unless you practice on real products with real customers/data
- •Training/reading/mentorship accelerate—but cannot replace execution reps
- 18:34 – 24:25
The PM growth loop: execution → generalization → communication → scaled opportunity
Fareed reframes PM development as a loop rather than a pie chart. You execute on real problems, generalize the learning into transferable models, communicate what you’re learning, and earn chances to tackle higher-scope and higher-ambiguity problems—then repeat.
- •Execution is the core, especially early-career (known problem/known solution)
- •Generalization turns a project’s lessons into reusable frameworks
- •Communication is required to make your impact legible to others
- •Scaling means more ambiguity, autonomy, and broader scope—not just more tasks
- •Senior growth requires moving from specialist perception to broader product leadership
- 24:25 – 26:45
Career inflection points: sponsorship and the compounding power of trust
Fareed describes pivotal moments in his career where sponsors trusted him with larger problems—distinct from mentorship. He emphasizes that scaled opportunities often require someone senior noticing your effectiveness and advocating for you.
- •Biggest leaps came when leaders trusted him with bigger scopes
- •Sponsorship (advocacy/opportunity) is often more career-defining than mentorship
- •Communicating problem-solving approach helped leaders recognize readiness
- •Examples: early startup CEO sponsorship; Slack leaders expanding his remit
- •Trust is earned by organizational impact, not just project output
- 26:45 – 34:03
How to earn sponsorship: pick visible problems, be deeply curious, and connect the org’s dots
Fareed gives practical ways to create the conditions for sponsorship: work on top-priority company problems, and cultivate curiosity “two levels up/down and left/right.” Being the person who understands how the system works builds trust and makes leaders want to bet on you.
- •Work on one of the company’s top priorities to increase visibility and leverage
- •Curiosity two levels down: technical and operational mechanics (e.g., billing, systems)
- •Curiosity two levels up: strategy, business model, leadership/board priorities
- •Left/right curiosity: adjacent teams (core product, sales, marketing, finance)
- •Remote environments require more intentional relationship-building (more 1:1s)
- 34:03 – 37:15
Crossing the Product Leader Canyon: why IC excellence doesn’t translate automatically
Fareed introduces the “product leader canyon”—the difficult transition from strong IC PM to successful manager/leader. The skills that got you promoted (hands-on execution, detail focus) can become liabilities when your job becomes enabling others and owning outcomes across a broader surface area.
- •IC path is relatively linear; manager transition introduces a discontinuity
- •New leaders often keep the “best” projects and starve teammates of growth opportunities
- •Broader responsibility + unchanged habits leads to overload and bottlenecks
- •Leadership requires shifting from personal output to multiplied team output
- •Owning outcomes means defining solutions and orchestrating more variables
- 37:15 – 40:43
Avoiding the manager death spiral: become an editor, practice trust, optimize for leverage
Fareed explains the manager ‘death spiral’ and how to avoid it: stop acting like the primary doer and become the person who improves others’ work. He recommends explicitly thinking in terms of leverage/ROI and staffing correctly so you’re not forced to be the critical path.
- •Shift mindset from doer to editor: “make the work better”
- •Calibrate involvement by teammate capability and problem criticality
- •Use an ROI lens: least effort that yields the biggest quality improvement
- •Hire/staff thoughtfully to avoid being the bottleneck
- •Delegation is not abdication—choose directive vs hands-off intentionally
- 40:43 – 46:20
The four types of product work—and why leaders must manage a portfolio
Fareed shares a framework (developed with Casey Winters) that categorizes product work into four types: feature work, growth work, product-market-fit expansion, and scaling work. Leaders often fail when they over-apply their specialization (e.g., growth) to every problem instead of balancing the portfolio.
- •Feature work: deepen engagement for existing users via new capabilities
- •Growth work: connect more customers to existing value; improve key funnels/metrics
- •PMF expansion: new segments for the same product or new products for same audience
- •Scaling work: technical + user scaling (trust & safety, marketplace/abuse dynamics)
- •Senior leaders must guide across all four without bias toward their comfort zone
- 46:20 – 50:05
Resource leadership: stop being a victim of constraints and start marshalling the org
Fareed stresses a key leadership shift: you’re no longer judged on what you delivered with the team you happened to have; you’re judged on outcomes. That requires proactively asking for headcount, cross-functional commitments, and making tradeoffs explicit—especially with marketing, sales, data, and finance.
- •Leadership baseline: define what resources are required to hit the outcome
- •Make tradeoffs explicit: what you can deliver with/without additional resources
- •Orchestrate cross-functional partners (marketing/sales/data/finance), not just product/eng
- •Common failure mode: building a roadmap to “feed the beast” instead of solving the right problem
- •Lessons from Instacart (team growth case) and Slack (cross-functional leverage)
- 50:05 – 57:19
The portfolio career trend: advising, fractional roles, teaching, and creator paths
Fareed describes a growing shift where senior operators diversify impact across multiple companies via advising, fractional leadership, content, and investing. He frames it as a portfolio approach to time and upside, fueled by high demand for experienced leaders and a desire for flexibility.
- •Senior leaders increasingly diversify while still employed, then transition fully
- •Common modes: advisory, fractional head of product/growth, workshops, angel investing
- •Portfolio approach spreads upside and reduces ‘one big bet’ career decisions
- •High demand makes part-time expertise viable for earlier-stage companies
- •Reforge’s EIR model as a bridge for exploration and contribution
- 57:19 – 1:00:46
Downsides and longevity risks of “being your own boss”
They discuss the tradeoffs of independent/advisory careers: lost benefits, uncertain PTO, and the ongoing sales/BD burden. Fareed also raises the open question of how long advisors remain relevant as they get further from day-to-day operating work—and what it means for the ecosystem if top operators exit full-time roles.
- •Loss of benefits: health insurance, PTO, parental leave, 401k matching
- •Longevity concern: staying valuable while removed from hands-on operating reps
- •Ecosystem question: what happens if too many operators leave full-time roles
- •Advisory path may preserve more operational connection than VC historically did
- •Constant BD/sales work is a major hidden cost of independence
- 1:00:46 – 1:05:09
How to break into advising: build transferable expertise and strong company signals
Fareed closes with advice for those who want an advisory path: prioritize generalization, build a deliberate mix of depth and breadth, and choose companies where you can do great work and later “sell” your experience. He notes that recognizable brands reduce friction and that narrow, specific expertise can be highly monetizable.
- •Generalize your operating reps into clearly communicable expertise
- •Balance depth and breadth: same problem/different industry or vice versa
- •Develop a defensible niche where you can credibly be top-tier
- •Work at great, well-functioning companies to create opportunities and credibility
- •Recognizable company names reduce the sales burden later
