Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product, Figma)

1. 0:00 – 4:29

   Mihika’s background

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky0:00

      ... I asked on Twitter (keyboard clicking) , "Who's the best product manager you've worked with?" (music) You were the most mentioned.

   2. MKMihika Kapoor0:04

      My take is that your scope is the world. Nothing should ever perceive as being out of bounds.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky0:10

      VP of product at Figma told me, "Mahika is really great at creating a vision and getting people to see what she sees."

   4. MKMihika Kapoor0:16

      We lean heavily into designing and prototyping even before a project gets a green light. If you and your team do your job correctly, what does the world look like?

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky0:26

      Say somebody wants to make their culture more entrepreneurial. What does it take?

   6. MKMihika Kapoor0:31

      We have this concept called Maker Week, which is our internal hackathon, giving people the breathing space to, like, see ahead into the horizon and be wildly ambitious.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky0:39

      (intro music) Today my guest is Mahika Kapur. Mahika is a design engineering PM hybrid at Figma, where she was an early PM on FigJam and is now spearheading development of a new product that the company is going to launch in June. She's known as the go-to person at Figma for leading new zero to one products, and as you'll hear in our conversation, is beloved by everybody that works with her. Prior to Figma, Mahika founded Design Nation, a national nonprofit that democratizes undergraduate student access to a design education, and led several products and launches at Meta focused on commerce and creators. On this podcast, I bring on a lot of amazing senior product leaders, but there's so much we can learn from stellar on-the-ground product managers like Mahika. In our conversation, we drill into many of the skills that Mahika has cultivated that have contributed to her success, including how to develop a compelling vision, get buy-in for your ideas, how to develop conviction, empathy, the importance of culture and how to create a culture on your team and within the company, and also how to deal with the constant change that happens within successful organizations. We also spent a bunch of time on how to effectively bring new ideas in your company from zero to one to launch, including getting into a bunch of the stories behind some of Figma's most successful products and features and how many of them began at hackathons and Maker Weeks. Mahika is a truly special product manager and leader, and I feel fortunate to have had this chance to learn from her. We went quite long on this conversation, but honestly, this could have gone for another two hours. With that, I bring you Mahika Kapur after a short word from our sponsors. And if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. This episode is brought to you by Paragon, the embedded integration platform for B2B SaaS product development teams. Are your users constantly requesting new integrations with other SaaS platforms that they use? Unfortunately, native product integrations take months of engineering to build, and the maintenance never ends. Paragon enables your engineering team to ship integrations seven times faster than building in-house by removing the complexities around authentication, messy third-party APIs, and debugging integration errors. Engineering teams at companies like Copy.ai, Cinch, tldv, and over 100 other SaaS companies are using Paragon so they can focus their efforts on core product features, not integrations. The result? They're shipping integrations on demand, which has led to higher product usage, better retention, and more customer upsells. Visit useparagon.com/lenny to see how Paragon can help you go to market faster with integrations today. That's use P-A-R-A-G-O-N.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Lenny's Job Board. As many of you may or may not know, for the past couple of years, I've been running a recruiting service. I've introduced over 30 companies to their next hire and helped build a candidate pipeline for tons more. I've been fortunate to work with companies like Ramp, Figma, Shopify, many more, plus a bunch of exciting young startups, connecting each to extremely talented engineers, designers, and product leaders that make up my community. Because of its success and the value that it's driven to companies and to people looking for jobs, we're ramping up the service in a big way and beta testing a bespoke headhunting style service, and I'm opening up a handful of slots. We work with a select group of companies each month. If you need to make a key product hire or quickly expand your team, I'd love to see if I can help. Head to hennysjobs.com/talent and hit Meet Candidates to get started. That's hennysjobs.com/talent.

2. 4:29 – 7:34

   Core attributes of great product managers

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:29

      Mahika, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

   2. MKMihika Kapoor4:33

      Thank you for having me, Lenny. I am a huge fan of the podcast and really excited to be chatting today.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:38

      Just, just, just set expectations, this is going to be a Mahika love fest podcast. And what I want to try to do with our time here is kind of have, like, an archeology of Mahika to understand what you've learned about product and building product, in particular because you are thriving at a, at Figma, which is one of the most interesting and successful tech companies in the world, with one of the best product teams in the world. So basically, I just want to learn as much as I can from what you've learned and what you've done in order to create more Mahikas in the world. That's kind of my goal here, because I feel like that would ... Mildly frightening. (laughs) In a very, in a very cool way, not in a creepy way. So what I did to prep for this conversation is I, as I said, reached out to a bunch of your colleagues at Figma to ask what you're especially strong at. And what I want to do is kind of go through some of these key skills, and they're essentially the core attributes of great product managers, and learn from you, learn from what you've learned about how doing these things well and just what you do to be successful at these things. How does that sound?

   4. MKMihika Kapoor5:40

      That sounds good. Um ...

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:41

      Okay.

   6. MKMihika Kapoor5:41

      I guess, I guess one thing to call out is that-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky5:43

      Yeah.

   8. MKMihika Kapoor5:44

      ... I think when I think about my own PM style, it's definitely not a tick-all-the-boxes style. There are plenty of things that I'm very bad at that PMs are traditionally supposed to be great at. So, um, you know, happy to chat about what makes sense.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky5:59

      Okay, that's actually really cool. So let's s- save that for the end, the things you think you're bad at. Like, the way I see this is, like, a reverse performance review. Like, here's all the things you're amazing at. Let's just go spend all our time on that.But I think that's gonna be really important. But I guess just along those lines, what I'm hearing is there's a sense of, like, do the things you are good at really well. This is a trend on the podcast is lean into your strengths. Is that the way you see it? Do you have thoughts along those lines of just the fact that you've been successful knowing you have these things you're not amazing at, and then we'll talk.

   10. MKMihika Kapoor6:27

       It's important to have two things. One is, of course, lean into your strengths. I think that PMing is traditionally a sort of generalist role, and people fall into it in a number of ways. But most often than not, I hear people fall into it by, like, trying a bunch of other things and then realizing that, like, "Oh, hey, maybe this PM thing makes more sense for me." So, like, for me personally, it was... I have always been, like, a very left-brain/right-brain kind of a person. I majored in CS and minored in visual arts, and when I worked as a software engineer, I really missed the design side. And when I worked as a designer, I missed the technical, and moving into product was a really great way to kind of straddle both, um, and have more touch points across the product development cycle. And so, I think that, you know, based on how you fell into it, you might have different spikes and different strengths, and leaning into those is really important, but for the other things, it's also, of course, important to have, like, a sort of growth mindset and to constantly be, like, conquering what comes next.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky7:32

       Okay, cool. Okay, so I'll save the stuff you think

3. 7:34 – 12:12

   Crafting a compelling vision

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky7:34

      you're bad at for later. Let's start with the stuff you're amazing at. Okay, so the first is, is vision. So, uh, Shoy Kuwamoto, VP of product at Figma, told me that, "Mahika is really great at creating a vision and getting people to see what she sees. She's working on a new project now and put together one of the best pitches I've ever seen internally on what it could become, why it'd be differentiated, et cetera. And like every new project, this had up and downs, but she's incredibly driven to keep the flame alive throughout these ups and downs." Can you just talk about what you've learned about doing this well, creating a compelling vision, getting people excited, getting buy-in for big ideas?

   2. MKMihika Kapoor8:12

      Yeah, absolutely. So, my take is that vision is everything. It is really important to create a vision that you believe in, that your team believes in, and that your company believes in. Because the reality of the product development cycle is that it's so messy, it's so chaotic, you're going to have, you know, extreme highs and extreme lows. You're going to march in a certain direction only to hear from your users that it might just be the wrong direction and totally pivot. And in order to ensure that moments like that are not discouraging, but rather sort of learning opportunities for your team, it's so important to be anchored on that singular vision, because then any step along the way feels like forward progress. So first, just want to underscore the importance of, like, having that vision and that perspective on if you and your team do your job correctly, what does the world look like? In terms of crafting a compelling vision, I think that there's sort of a few aspects. The first is that you cannot go into a vacuum and come out with a compelling vision. That, you know, does not exist. You have to be fundamentally inseparable from your users and also fundamentally inseparable from your team. And so, I think that there's sort of this important cross-pollination of functions that is really important in crafting a compelling vision. You want to always ensure that, you know, there are research insights that help you feel what a user is feeling. You want to ensure that there are, like, beautiful designs and prototypes that help communicate what this future world looks like, and you also want to root it in engineering and feasibility, and you want to be constantly, even in the vision phase, ensuring that what you're marching after is something that is achievable and something that you can work towards. And so, I think a lot of folks, when they think about, like, visioning, they kind of think about, "Okay, how do we, like, start from scratch and learn about the user and then translate that into designs and then translate that into engineering?" And it becomes this, like, very... it's almost like linear process. And I think that to the extent that you can have this, like, cross-pollination of ideas and people working together, that leads to a really strong vision. And there's this book that I love called The Medici Effect, which basically talks about how when people come from different places, and you have that confluence of ideas, that leads to innovation at the end of the day. Um, the second piece is, okay, like, once you have your vision, like, once you have talked to your users and built up your perspective and things like that, it's like, how do you communicate it internally, and how do you help everyone around you see what you're seeing? And I think something that's really unique about Figma is that it is a fundamentally very, very detail-oriented culture, and it's also a company that very much practices what it preaches in terms of the future being visual communication. And so, you know, you kind of find that, or I've found that words will only get you so far. So, when I put together a vision with my team at Figma, it's all about, like, not just your traditional, like, "Okay, here are pain points, and then here are solutions, and then here is the timeline and costing," but rather, how can you bring all of those things together, and how can a vision pitch effectively be, like, pain point, solution, proof point, pain point, solution, proof point? Because at the end of the day, simply describing a product idea in words is not as compelling as seeing a testimonial from a user on top of a prototype or a mock and, like, really feeling the pain points.

4. 12:12 – 18:25

   The vision behind FigJam

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky12:12

      Is there an example that we could talk about? I know you can't talk about the product you're working on yet, um, but from the past of a vision that you crafted, maybe to share what the vision was or how you came to that to make this even more real?

   2. MKMihika Kapoor12:24

      So, uh, before I was working on, uh, the new product, uh, I was working on the FigJam team, and I was an early member of the FigJam team. And whiteboarding was sort of something that really took off during the pandemic, because it was the first time that people were not together in office, couldn't, like, jam together, couldn't just, like, throw up a whiteboard behind them physically, and so there was kind of this question of, like, okay, how do you combat these, like, disparate, uh, teammates and pull them together into a common space? And I think that when we think about FigJam and what success might look like for FigJam, so a part of it that I was really invested in was the meetings experience, and specifically, like, what the world would look like if we were successful at bringing people together into a common space. And one of the early insights was, okay, what is, like, the most common meeting that takes place in a FigJam file? It's a brainstorm, right? It's like you have a bunch of people who are coming together, and they're, like, dropping a bunch of stickies and stuff like that. And so you have this, uh, proof point of an activity that works really well inside of a FigJam file. But then, at the same time, something that's really interesting about FigJam, people often ask, like, "Oh, you guys are Figma. Like, how do you guys use Figma as a company?" And it's kind of interesting, because I feel like we use Figma the way that everyone uses Figma. But we use FigJam on steroids. Like, every single activity in this company is done in FigJam. It's like, our product reviews are in there, our Gantt charts are in there, our bug bashes are in there. Like, every single thing is in FigJam. And there was this gap between, like, the way that we were using FigJam as a company and the way that the rest of the world was using it. But brainstorms were working, right? And so you kind of think, like, okay, like, what's unique about a brainstorm? When you talk to your users and you're, like, why does a brainstorm make so much more sense in a FigJam file than, like, anything else? And what it comes down to is brainstorms are this incredibly democratizing process, right? It's this process where ideas can come from anywhere, where it's not the loudest or the most important person in the room who's doing the talking, uh, but it's everyone altogether, and you're able to elicit, you know, reactions from people who are more quiet in a meeting, or people who, like, may prefer to, like, ideate on their own before, like, coming out to everyone and things like that. And so we kind of started with this seed of, like, brainstorms being this, like, highly democratic process. And what you see is that, like, in most other scenarios, meetings are very one way, right? Like, you kind of have, um, like, one person talking, and one... Like, everyone else reacting. This is true of, like, a team kickoff. This is true of, like, an all-hands. This is true of basically, like, every sort of scenario. And so what we fundamentally, like, started marching towards was, how can we create this world where the generative nature of a brainstorm is basically the norm in other kinds of meetings, right? Where a team kickoff is not just, like, a PM and a designer handing to an engineer, but it's, like, everyone leaving stickies and everyone commenting at the same time, or everyone kind of, like, leaving, uh, like, we have this ritual called, like, kudos boards inside of FigJam where everyone will kind of, like, shower each other with love, um, and just kind of, like, call out their teammates for what they've done over the last week or so. And so, like, how can we ensure that, like, those kind of rituals are in our templates and that we're teaching people how to take any meeting and make it more democratic? And then you kind of anchor on this vision around, like, okay, what does a more democratic, uh, workplace look like, and how can we get people to, like, anchor around that? And how can we get people to, like, get into the flow? So then we started launching features like music, like voting, that, like, really help you get into flow when you're in that file together.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky16:22

      That is such a cool example. I'm trying to, uh, be this archaeologist studying what you're talk... what you're describing and breaking it apart. So what I'm hearing essentially is there's kind of this insight that you find of, like, oh, here's a way we should think about the way future of work. It should be more democratic, building off of this idea of brainstorming, which is, like, one of the, uh, most inspiring ways of working where it's not just someone sitting in a silo. And then you take that and create kind of a here's what the world could look like if we could turn the product into this... Make everything this, feel this way, very democratic. And then there's this pitch that you eventually make of, like, here's the product. And you talked about how the way you pitch it is you... Here's a pain, here's a solution, and here's a proof point of that solution. Could be a testimonial or some data, I imagine.

   4. MKMihika Kapoor17:06

      Definitely. I, I think that, uh, when you're actually presenting a vision, one of the most important things is that there is, like, a single artifact that the team is creating together. So I think, like, a common occurrence is to kind of have, like, the research readout followed by the design crit followed by the, like, product review. And that's, like, that's fine. That, that works in a lot of instances, but then you kind of have every team member thinking that their own deliverable is, like, what they need to pour all their energy into, and what you actually want is, like, for everyone to feel incredible ownership and incredible passion about this combined deliverable so that it's, like, a unified team who believes in a singular set of insights.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky17:52

      So what's an example of that? Is it, like, a deck in Figma?

   6. MKMihika Kapoor17:54

      Yeah. Exactly. So we often make our decks in Figma, um, and I think that we lean heavily into designing and prototyping even before a project gets a green light. So I think that's something that's really unique about Figma, is normally you will, like, talk about, like, the market space, um-... or the opportunity or the sizing and then decide to invest, versus Figma is very much a, like see to believe and see to feel that, like emotional pull towards this is something worth investing in.

5. 18:25 – 21:52

   Delivering a vision without design or engineering skills

   1. MKMihika Kapoor18:25

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky18:25

      Got it. So that's, that's what I was trying to get to, is how do you actually deliver a vision? So a lot of people, they hear, "I need to create a vision." It's, "I'm gonna write out a paragraph or a memo describing it." You can create mock-ups. Uh, the way you're describing is essentially make it as real as possible. Not just mocks, but actual prototypes potentially. Many people don't have design skills or designers on their team, or engineering skills to build a prototype. Is there anything you can share for how to do this where you don't have those skills?

   3. MKMihika Kapoor18:54

      Yeah. Um, well the good thing is that with AI it's getting way easier.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky18:58

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MKMihika Kapoor18:58

      Um, so-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky18:59

      True, true.

   7. MKMihika Kapoor19:00

      ... a couple of weeks ago, Cognition launched. Uh, which for those who don't know, is a startup that made this AI agent called Devin, which can code anything for you, supposedly. Um, it definitely took Twitter by storm and got me super stoked. And so I think something that's interesting about the, like current AI revolution is that it's very much, like lowering the floor to starting out and to building something, right? Um, and so recently I was, uh, doing a chat with David Hong from Replit, and he's the head of marketing and design at Replit, and he was basically talking about how if Replit does their job right, you kind of start seeing it as your technical co-founder. And I think like, you know kind of conversely, like at Figma we kind of think about if we're doing our job right, like maybe in the future people will think about Figma as their designer co-founder, right, where you can kind of like go in and use it to start, like bringing things into existence. Um, so I think one is like, yeah, I do think that like we're just trending in a direction, and this was not true a year ago, where like the floor to building something is just like so much lower. So that's like, that's one piece. I think the second piece is just like go around and ask people. And so for example, (laughs) for the project that I'm currently working on, um, I used a hackathon to pitch it, and basically I built conviction in the idea like many months before the hackathon and I was kind of verbally pitching it and it was kind of like, "Oh yeah, like maybe at some point in the future we would make an investment like this." But what actually ended up happening was like we have this concept called Maker Week, which is our internal hackathon where the entire company goes on pause for a week, and I think that most people think that like, "Oh, hackathons are only a time for engineers to build." And I think that that's one of the biggest mistakes ever. I think that anyone can have an idea and can literally, what I did was like walk around the New York office asking every single person like, "Will you work on this thing with me?" And, you know, eventually someone says yes, and then you can use that to like build momentum, grow the team, and build something great. But I think that like never letting your own skills stop you from like going out there, making a pitch, um, and then turning that into reality is really important.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky21:26

      I love both of these points and pieces of advice. I feel like I always say that, uh, if a PM has a designer partner that can just do, help them with a deck or help them with ideas, that you're such a superpower. Everything just looks so much more interesting when you have a designer helping you craft your idea. And the way you describe it is pretty simple. Just go ask (laughs) people for help, 'cause you may, you're probably gonna find someone that's gonna help you out. You to- mentioned conviction. So that's a great segue to where else, where I wanted

6. 21:52 – 26:36

   Creating momentum

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky21:52

      to go next. So I asked, uh, Yuki, chief product officer at Figma, about your strengths, and he told me that, uh, conviction, that you get extremely strong conviction extremely quickly. He said that, that this strong conviction allows you to navigate the messy journey from zero to one and rally your team in a really powerful way. He actually wanted me to ask you this very question. How do you get to the strong conviction and how much of it is true deep conviction versus there's an inkling of like instinct that this is gonna work and then you prop it on the sense of conviction to get people, like rallying behind you and to kind of take the leap of faith?

   2. MKMihika Kapoor22:31

      I think that one of the most important things for a PM to create for their team is momentum. You have to constantly be creating forward progress, you know, probably towards that vision that we were just talking about. But I'm a huge proponent of, you know, Jeff Bezos' one-way doors, two-way doors framework. And I think that especially in a software company, most things are two-way doors. You can, you can come back. And so it's, it's so important to have an opinion and use that opinion to, like anchor people around and have people react to. So I used to work at Meta before I worked at Figma, and Meta basically distilled the product role into two core capabilities. One was product sense and one was execution. And when you think about product sense, it's kind of like, okay, what is product sense? It's like a really abstract term. And at the end of the day, I think product sense is just like having good intuition. And so there's kind of this question about like, okay, how do you build up intuition? And I think that it's just by like having this insatiable curiosity and talking to users at every chance you get. So I will like go to dinners and grill the people around me on like how they use Figma and how they use FigJam. And I think when you have a conversation with someone, it's so much more powerful in terms of getting those anecdotes to stick in your head. And what actually happens is once you start having enough conversations, let's say, you know, you start with conversations A, B, C, then you progress to conversations D, E, F, over time you build this like almost repository or library of conversations that you can draw from as you're making product decisions. And so I think that that's a really powerful...... thing to lean into as you're thinking about, like, "Okay, which path do we go down?" Now there's kind of the question of, like, okay, in the absence of, like, any external signal, right, like, what, what can you do? And I think that a very common thing, especially for PMs who are younger in their career, is to think that your opinion isn't right or might not be reflective of what the user thinks. So you think, like, "Okay, I, I believe this." And, you know, at the end of the day, like, everyone has an opinion, right? "So, I think this, but, like, what do I know compared to, like, these people who've been at my company for, like, 10 years?" Or, like, "What do I know compared to, like, my users who are using the product?" And so then I think what might happen in those instances is you kind of, like, start from nothing, right? You start from zero and you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna, like, build up from zero and, like, gather all this insights to, like, get to a good place." And I think my take is that putting out an idea, even if it's, like, totally wrong, is a much better catalyst for getting to a good solution, because people are much more likely to react to an idea than to nothing. So if it's, like, the right idea, then they'll be like, "Oh my God, yes. Like, let's totally do that," right? And if it's wrong, then it's like, okay, then they will, like, take you in a different direction and you end up with something that's probably much more opinionated than if you hadn't put anything out there. And so it was funny, like, one piece of advice that I got from Yuki when I was, like, working on my vision sprint was like, "Okay, when you go into research, you want to go in with something that's, like, at least an A- idea, or you think is at least an A- idea, because if you talk to users and you learn something about it, that's awesome, get to an A+. If not, like, at least you're not at a B." And so I think that having that early conviction, willing to c- being willing to communicate it, being willing to get feedback from other folks on your team, have them react to it, then get users to react to it, is so important, but then also something that's equally important when you have, uh, high conviction, quote-unquote, is to be willing to, like, kill your darlings if you hear something that, like, tells you otherwise. You need to be so, sort of, like, strong opinions weakly held and, and if you get external signal that's telling you something different, you should be ready to pivot and have that agility to do so.

7. 26:36 – 27:45

   The importance of strong conviction

   1. MKMihika Kapoor26:36

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky26:36

      There's a lot of PMs that kind of worry about having too strong of an opinion and being like, "Here's what we're doing," 'cause then it, there- there's this, like, "Oh, okay, they're just, they just want us to do the thing they want us to do and they're, we don't have a voice, we don't have a chance to influence." It seems like you find a really magical balance of, like, strong opinion of, like, "Here's this, how we, what we should be doing," but people still love working with you and don't feel like ... I even heard, like, "Oh, she just tells us what to build." What advice do you have there just finding that balance and making it clear, "This is just my idea, we can change it"?

   3. MKMihika Kapoor27:07

      I would say that, you know, speaking about weaknesses, having such strong conviction absolutely has downsides. In particular, it can, it's possible that it doesn't have the desired effect. So, for example, um, like, my designer who I work with, uh, his name is Kian. He's so talented, um, we work like this, like, literally for most of last year we had, like, an hour long one-on-one every single day and still that wasn't enough meeting time.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky27:32

      Every day?

   5. MKMihika Kapoor27:33

      Yes. Like, we, like-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky27:34

      Oh, wow.

   7. MKMihika Kapoor27:35

      ... basically, like, worked together like this. But he also told me that when I joined the company, he was like, "Who's this girl and why does she have so many opinions?" (laughs) um, and so I think that

8. 27:45 – 32:48

   Direct communication

   1. MKMihika Kapoor27:45

      something that I have learned to do over time and I think that's something that's, like, a good sort of thing to lean into if you are a PM who has strong opinions, is to be very direct about how much you care about your opinions. So, like, now I'll do this thing where I'll be like, "Oh, I think we should do this, but I feel, like, medium confidence on it, so if you feel stronger, like, I defer to you." And always being, like, very, very, very explicit about, like, "I feel really strongly about this," uh, or, like, "This is my hypothesis," or, "I do not have an opinion here, I defer to you." I think the second thing that I would mention is real- that is really important, um, in order to do this correctly is, so I have, like, a very direct communication style, like, I will never sugarcoat anything, I will never say, like, I like something if I don't like something. If I'm in a meeting and someone tells me they don't agree with me, (laughs) I will tell them I don't agree with them back. In return, I really like it when people are very direct with me. And so I think that whenever I join a team or whenever I start working with a new person, I'm always, like, I always let them know, I'm always like, "I am very direct and if you disagree with me, I want to know that." Because I think sometimes what can happen is really strong, strongly minded PMs can go into a conversation and can be like, "Oh, I think we should do X," even though they actually feel a medium confidence about X. And then the rest of the room is like, "Oh my God, that PM feels so strongly about, like, doing X that I'm not gonna say anything, because they clearly have, like, so much conviction in X." And what you actually want is for everyone to feel comfortable speaking up, and so creating that culture where everyone feels comfortable giving their opinion and communicating their level of em- confidence is really important.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky29:27

      So this direct communication, uh, point you made, somebody shared this quote, uh, Alice Ching, who's I think your EM, said this about you, that she's in awe of how direct you are, especially how you can make it not personal to help people focus on the matter at hand. Any other advice you have there for people to, one, either be more direct and successful in that being directness, or is there an example you can share where, like, 'cause I think people hear this, they're like, "Oh, yeah. I'm gonna be direct. I'm gonna be so direct, it's gonna be great," and then it's so hard to actually do. So, uh, is there maybe an example that comes to mind of, like, here's something you did recently of, like, "Oh, wow. Okay, I see what she's talking about"?

   3. MKMihika Kapoor30:07

      So I think that directness only works if it's two-way. Um, if it is one person being really direct with another person and then the other person being afraid to talk, you will-... end up in probably a not great relationship where communication is only going one way and both people will be, like, in their own head. The person being direct will be like, "Why is the other person not responding to my feedback?" And then the other person will be like, "Why am I the only one getting so much feedback?" You know, men where I used to work had this phrase, "Feedback is a gift," and I so deeply believe in this. And in order to really lean into that phrase and really embody it, I think it's really important that feedback is this, like, constantly flowing thing, not something that happens, like, once or twice a year when you have an official feedback cycle. And the way that I try and create this culture of constant, like, direct communication, constant feedback, is if you have feedback to give someone else, I think you can start by asking, "Hey, do you have feedback for me?" And kind of taking the feedback first so then the- that person feels like, "Okay, like, maybe I have my way of seeing this situation. Like, let me communicate that and get it off my chest." And then when you give your feedback, it's sort of even. And then feedback, in my opinion, is something that you should always act on, right? So then to the extent that you can, as soon as possible, put that into effect and be like, "Okay, I'm hearing this. I'm gonna do X, Y, Z in order to, like, combat that," um, I think then that incentivizes the other person to do the same.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky31:43

      Okay. Let me quickly summarize what we've gone through so far in our archaeological study, and then I'm gonna drill into a specific trait. So one is just, uh, having a really, uh, powerful vision that people get really excited about and the way you described it is kind of find, like, an insight about how you think people could be, in this example, how people could be working maybe through this brainstorm approach, and then kind of expanding that into something where this is what would happen if we achieve this in the future and this is what the world could look like, and that's something people get really excited about. So kind of creating compelling vision, being able to communicate it with, and in your experience, communicating with prototypes and mocks is, is the way that you find it to be most effective. Also, just getting to strong conviction. Whether it's real or not, but it sounds like it's actually very genuine about an idea and making clear you're, like, very excited about this and here's how it's gonna be amazing for the business and the company and here's why you should be excited about it. Also, you talked about being very direct and being very honest and basically radical, radical candor, uh, as some people describe it. (laughs) First of all, is there anything else I missed specifically before I drill into one of these?

   5. MKMihika Kapoor32:47

      That sounds right.

9. 32:48 – 42:20

   Building hype

   1. MKMihika Kapoor32:48

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky32:48

      Okay, cool. So kind of along these lines, something else that came up a bunch of in, in my emails with folks that you work with is how you build hype really effectively, and you talked about this a bit of just, like, creating momentum about an idea. So you got this idea, get everyone, pitch it, get everyone excited, and then it just continues to build hype and momentum. So a quote, uh, from Carl Jiang, who, um, is on your team maybe, he said, "I've- I feel no PM has ever got me so hyped about a feature." And, um, Yuki said that, uh, that you overcome people's doubts by, by building hype and hacking hype is the way you described it. (laughs) Talk about this and why do you think it's important and how you actually go about doing this.

   3. MKMihika Kapoor33:31

      When you are spearheading an idea or a product, it's really on you to have a pulse on how everyone else is feeling about that product, right? And, you know, different products need different levels of excitement to make it out the door. Right? If there is something that, you know, leadership has really strong conviction in, it's important for leadership to, like, amp the whole company up, you know, like, behind that vision. On the flip side, if you are yourself are pushing a zero to one idea from the bottoms up, the onus is even more on you to make sure that that project and that product is constantly propped up and that people are excited about it for it to make it out the door. And so one example is, like, you know, we've been talking about this product that I'm working on and coming out of winter break this year, um, there's kind of this sense, or at least I always suspect that there's this sense of, like, over winter break everyone forgets what happened last year. (laughs) You know, it's like goes out the door 'cause you were hopefully doing, you know, something that took your mind off work. And so at the same time, there's kind of this, like, sense of, like, how do you create forward momentum inside of a company in January, right, when people are kind of, like, slowly, you know, coming back into office, everyone's, like, trickling back in at different dates 'cause everyone took, like, slightly different PTO. Like, how do you kind of, like, rally people in a certain direction? And so we have this thing at Figma called SKO or sales kickoff, um, which is, like, every year the sales team comes together, um, and we, you know, like, we have, like, a keynote, um, and, you know, a set of fireside chats and stuff like that and we talk about, like, what's coming for the year. And at this point, our product, like, it existed, but it was absolutely barely built. It was rough around the edges, it had bugs every day, maybe, like, 10 people in the company were using it and, you know, something like that outside of the team. Yet it was so important to me that this product got visibility in this forum because this was the first company-wide forum of the year where we were, like, declaring priorities for the year, right? And so it was, like, so important to me that this product had some sort of a moment or, you know, a speaking of, like, show don't tell, like, a demo in the context of this keynote. And so, you know, Chris, our CTO, and Yuki, our CPO, were giving this keynote on, like, what does our year look like, and I, like, really, really deeply insisted that we should include a demo. Mm-hmm.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky36:14

      And I think what ended up happening is something like that-

   5. MKMihika Kapoor36:20

      ... uh, like a demo that wasn't meant to be a demo or that people weren't expecting does so much in terms of, like, driving that sense of hype and helping people see, like, what you yourself see in the future. And what's really interesting is, like, I, I think that hype is something that you can't really create hype for something you don't believe in, in my opinion. The only way to create hype is to get people to see what you see. And so, I think that it's, it's, it's incredibly important to, um, leverage, like, very large forums like that, like Maker Week, like Sales Kickoff, um, like, you know, we have Config which is our, like, annual showcase to the world of what we're working on, in order to get everyone to see what you're seeing. And to be, like, really scrappy about it and to really, like, be the person who's, like, pushing your product to its limits in the right moments. And I think what you find is that if you push your product to get visibility, maybe even beyond what, like, the current stage of product development merits, is that you have really incredible learnings. Because the more that you can put your product in front of people and get them to use it, the more signal you get on how it's trending. And so what ended up happening was, like, something that could've originally been perceived as a distraction to t- the team actually ended up being something that added so much fuel to the fire in terms of, one, giving us, like, product insights to inform our next steps and, two, getting the entire company to feel, truly deeply feel, um, excited about getting this thing out the door.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky37:58

      And, uh, this pitch and product you're describing is the one that's gonna be launching this mysterious new product, right?

   7. MKMihika Kapoor38:03

      Yes. (laughs)

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky38:05

      I, I feel like we're gonna build so much hype for this thing whenever it comes out.

   9. MKMihika Kapoor38:07

      (laughs) .

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky38:07

       I'm so excited to learn what it is. Coming back to the point, so what I'm hearing essentially is you find it's important to take responsibility for this thing to become a thing at a company. Like, a lot of people have an idea. They build a prototype. They build a hackathon project. And then they're like, "Goddamn. No one's ever doing anything with it. It's not going anywhere. Nothing ever happens." What I'm hearing is you ... It's on you to get people excited about it and find these opportunities to get people excited about it. And there's also this, like ... What I'm feeling is, like, the feels is really important. It's like you have all the data probably. There's probably a logical case for this that you've made across the company, but what, what you're describing here is you need to get people, like, hyped about it in, like, an emotional visceral way and basically find opportunities to do that-

   11. MKMihika Kapoor38:51

       Yeah.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky38:51

       ... is kinda the lesson here.

   13. MKMihika Kapoor38:52

       In my mind, there is, like, internal hype which is how do you get buy-in and, like, everyone inside of the company to be, like, banging their fist on the table for a product to get built? But there's also external hype which is, like, how do you get your users hyped about your product? How do you get them to, like, really be so stoked when there are, like, milestone occasions for your product or milestone launches and for them to be celebrating with you? And one of the things that I loved the most when I joined the company was, you know, Figma and design Twitter have had this, like, very symbiotic relationship where, like, each has grown with the other over time. And what really happens is, like, any time we launch something, you have, like, all of design Twitter celebrating with us. And one other moment when, you know, I thought it was very fun to drive hype was when I worked on FigJam. In 2022, it was the one-year FigJam anniversary in April, and you know, project anniversaries or product anniversaries, they are quite an exciting milestone within the company, right? You, like, bring everyone together. Maybe you pop a bottle of champagne. You kind of, like, celebrate how far you've come and, like, what all you've learned since the launch. Um, but we were really thinking, like, okay, like, you know, FigJam is, like, awesome, but, like, FigJam isn't just any product. Like, FigJam has a personality. FigJam is, like, cheeky. FigJam is fun. FigJam is like ... has this, like, cute skeuomorphism going on where you feel like, you know, it's your friend. And so like, okay, how would you, like, celebrate that moment for a friend? Like, you wouldn't really have, like, an anniversary party. Like, you would throw it like a full-on birthday party. And so (laughs) what we basically did was at the one-year anniversary of FigJam, um, I worked with the marketing team and our engineering team in order to basically, like, kick off a mini-launch inside of the product of a bunch of new features. And what we did was we, like, Easter egg them through the product, um, and each sort of product that we were releasing inside of FigJam was hidden under this, like, little birthday present and throughout the day, we sent, like, all of our users on an Easter egg hunt of presents inside of FigJam. And so, like, not only was it FigJam getting the presents, but it was our users getting the presents. And so-

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky41:14

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MKMihika Kapoor41:14

       ... I think that hype as well is, like, really tied to emotion, so, like, to the extent that a person using a product can feel like, oh, um, this thing that is built in the product was built, like, for me. Like, not to advance the company's goals or anything like that, but, like, to make me feel special, to make me feel happy, I think that's a really key instrument in driving hype as well. And I think that something that's quite interesting about hype and getting your users to feel strongly about your product is that, like, every product has their own brand of delight or excitement or energy. So, hype for FigJam is incredibly different than hype from Figma, where hype for Figma might be, like, this really, really, like, niche design capability that, like, unlocks this pain point that designers have been having for, you know, years and years. And then, you know, hype for Apple might be, like, the world's best unboxing experience or something-

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky42:07

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MKMihika Kapoor42:07

       ... like that, right? And so, like, leaning into a product's brand in order to figure out, uh, what is the optimal way to generate hype with your audience and form that connection is something that's really important.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky42:19

       I love that example.

10. 42:20 – 47:16

    Immersing yourself in user insights

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky42:20

       Something else I'm-... finding as a thread throughout all of the lessons and stories you share is, is just an immersion in your user base and truly knowing what they're excited about, what problems they have. And, you know, you talk about having strong conviction and painting a grand vision. It's one thing if someone that doesn't do that does that. It's just like, "Why would I believe them?" Versus someone that, like you, where you're just constantly talking to users and actually have, uh, understand what they need. So, I guess the question here is just what advice would you share with folks to, to build that, to be immersed with users? Like, what do you actually do? How do you actually do that? Are you just organizing meetings and events? Are you scheduling chats? How do you do this?

    2. MKMihika Kapoor43:03

       Yeah. So I think it honestly depends on the product. Um, so when I worked at Meta, it was so easy. Everyone and their mom had an opinion about the product (laughs) uh, which was really great because it meant that anyone you met, you could kind of ask them what they liked, what they didn't like. You can, like, relay that through the company, et cetera. Now at Figma, we have a slightly more niche audience. Um, I think that, you know, hopefully ultimately we get to everyone. We started with design teams. Now we're thinking about, like, the entire product development cycle and how we can build for that. And then, you know, who knows, you know, beyond that. Could be anything. Um, but I think that constantly, like, immersing yourself in those circles where your users are is really important. So, for me it's like, you know, any time that I'm, like, catching up with a friend who, like, mildly works in tech or a tech-adjacent field, like, I will generally be asking them about, like, Figma. And I think what's really great is that, you know, as we... As a company scales over time, their user base gets, like, broader and broader. And so when we grew from a single product company with Figma into now a multi-product company with FigJam, DevMode, et cetera, our audience exploded. And we already saw latent behavior inside of Figma, but now it's, like, even more clear how wide-reaching the product is. And so something that I find incredibly useful is to not just ask users of your product what they think about your product but to ask non-users about your product why they are not using your product. And actually, I think that those are the most insightful conversations because I think that having a product shine and having a product do well and have great adoption isn't just about, like, the product being great. It's also about, like, the marketing and the perceptions that s- surround the product and potentially, like, the hype that surrounds that, right? And so having those conversations about, like, you know... I remember having, like, an early conversation, uh, with, uh, folks from my previous team about, like, "Hey, like, why aren't you... Like, are you guys using FigJam?" And they would be like, "Oh, like, maybe sometimes." And I'd be like, "Well, why aren't you using FigJam? (laughs) It's, like, literally built for you." Right? And then that led to, like, a series of product insights that, you know, led us to, like, invest in a set of features that would make it much easier for a non-designer to get started out on the canvas. So we launched this kind of, like, placeholder experience that rather than traditional templates really, like, let people see the various use cases and preview the various use cases on the canvas. And so that was incredibly important. And then, you know, Figma of course is kind of, like, it's in this, like, prosumer space where it's, like, you know, you talk to anyone in tech and, you know, maybe they're your top total addressable market. But then there are, like, some products I know that people work on which are, like, very removed from the average person, right? Like, you have, like, infra products, security products, and things like that where, you know, you can't just, like, walk up to someone and have a conversation with them about, like, you know, why aren't they using your product, because that conversation might not make any sense.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky46:08

       Mm.

    4. MKMihika Kapoor46:08

       And so in those instances, I think that what's really important is it depends on the stage of company that you're at. If you're at an early stage company, you need to be the one going out there and having conversations with your users and just, like, literally, like, looking up your users through whatever channel is necessary and, like, figuring out, um, how you can connect with them. I think this is also why, like, founder market fit at startups is so important is because, like, to the extent that you can use yourself as a litmus test for what user needs there are, that's... helps you move really fast in the product development cycle. And then if you're on the larger side, I think that having a really tight relationship with your, like, sales team is really important and basically just, like, being on sales calls, um, because you wanna be in a situation where the customer pain points on sales c- calls are cross-pollinating into the product roadmap and you also want to ensure that your sales team has visibility into, like, what might be coming and are constantly informing that. And so I think, like, really leaning into that, building that relationship between these traditionally, like, more siloed orgs and hopping on those calls is something that I'd really recommend.

11. 47:16 – 50:33

    Operationalizing user insights

    1. MKMihika Kapoor47:16

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky47:16

       Awesome. Let's go actually one layer deeper here. So, you're talking to people all the time about FigJam. "Why aren't you using FigJam? What do you think of Figma? What do you think of this?" You're hopping on sales calls. What do you do with what you... with what you hear? Is there kind of an operational approach where you... Do you just put it in your head and it sticks in your head and rolls around and comes up, things emerge? Do you have a place you put these insights you're learning? Are you putting Post-its in FigJam, for example? And then on the sales side, do you have a cadence where you're like, "I'm gonna join a sales call once a week. Here's a person I love in sales. I'm gonna try to join all their calls." How do you actually operationalize these things?

    3. MKMihika Kapoor47:50

       The insights get operationalized in a number of ways. So first is... So, like, yeah, let's continue using FigJam as an example. Um, I think, you know, like I mentioned, like, Figma as a company uses FigJam for everything. Like, multiple FigJam files are made, like, per day, per meeting, et cetera. We had this initial situation where people outside of the company were mostly using FigJam for brainstorms. Um, and so as we were scaling our FigJam sales team, I sort of set up, like, a recurring cadence with the folks on our sales team in order to understand, like, okay, like...... "What are you guys hearing?" And then I would share what was coming. And then I would use their input as signal as to, like, what should be prioritized or de-prioritized on the roadmap. And they would use my signal to understand what were the various use cases that they could be pushing with the customers. And one thing that happened during one of the meetings was I literally walked them through, "This meeting, this is how I used Figjam. In this meeting, this is how I used Figjam. In this meeting, this is how I used Figjam." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what that resulted in was I actually made, like, a Loom video walking through my, like, week in Figjam, um, that our sales team later distributed to a bunch of companies to inspire them as to like, "Hey, not only can you use Figjam for this, you can use Figjam for, like, X, Y, Z. You can use it for your, like, your team pick-ups. You can use it for your retros. You can use it for, like, you know, planning your mom's birthday party. You can use it for, like, liter- planning your All Hands. You can use it for sketching out the contents of what's going to go into your next deck." So on and so forth. Um, and so it basically, like, manifests in two ways. The first is having it inform, like, the prioritization of your product roadmap. And then the second is what, like, ideally creating artifacts that the sales team can use to evangelize the things that you are seeing and the, like, stepping stones to that vision that you are creating. And then the last thing is that sometimes the conversations aren't immediately actionable, right? Sometimes, like, the sales team has an insight or has a request that is just, like, objectively not feasible 'cause the team has too much on its plate. Conversely, like, sometimes, you know, the team might have a suggestion for something that might be pitched to the sales folks that's, like, too early given the stage of the conversation. And for that, we basically have... We s- we store it in Asana basically. We create, like, we have this integration, um, which m- many companies might have, which is, like, a Slack integration where you can, like, react with an Asana emoji and then, like, any piece of feedback that comes in, um, from sales or from the rest of the company gets, like, turned into a task in your backlog and you do, like, a weekly grooming of that.

12. 50:33 – 54:01

    Caring deeply about what you build

    1. MKMihika Kapoor50:33

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky50:33

       Amazing. Cool. Very tactical and useful. (instrumental music) This episode is brought to you by Vanta. When it comes to ensuring your company has top-notch security practices, things get complicated fast. Now you can assess risk, secure the trust of your customers, and automate compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more with a single platform, Vanta. Vanta's market-leading trust management platform helps you continuously monitor compliance alongside reporting and tracking risks. Plus, you can save hours by completing security questionnaires with Vanta AI. Join thousands of global companies that use Vanta to automate evidence collection, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash lenny. Another thread that I've noticed, and this isn't, I wasn't planning to go in this direction, but is just, um, you just care so deeply about the things you work on. Like, you actually really, really love it and want it to be incredibly successful and feels like you're just always thinking about it. It reminded me of this quote from your colleague, Carl, that you shared, that "It feels like you care deeply, which makes me feel, which makes me care deeply. Who wants to be led by someone who doesn't care about what they're building?" Feels like that's an important part of the way you work and think. Is there anything you wanna say about that?

    3. MKMihika Kapoor52:01

       When I started out my product career, I actually joined as a RPM or rotational product manager at Meta, which is effectively a program that brought together, uh, new grad PMs, so people who had, like, zero PM experience and taught them how to be PMs. And in the beginning of this program, uh, we had a series of conversations with leaders across the company and one particularly notable conversation was with Julie Zhu, who was the first ever intern at Meta and the VP of Design, and she was giving us feedback and advice about, you know, how to draft compelling product strategy, et cetera, and something she said that has stuck with me, like, throughout my entire product career is that when two people disagree about product strategy, it is because they have different assumptions. Because if you have the same assumptions, like, there is no reason why a person should think, like, we should do X versus we should do Y. And so it's kind of like, okay, how does this relate to what you were just asking about, like, feeling deeply and caring about what you're building? I think that it's really important to not just build a roadmap because it's handed to you, or not just build an idea because it's handed to you. Um, I think that you need to understand, um, in the event that it's, like, you know, a top-down strategy, what are the assumptions that led to folks believing that that is the right idea? And then if it is you pushing something bottoms-up, you need to be able to ensure that everyone else has the same assumptions that you have in your head that leads them to, like, believe deeply or not believe deeply. And I think what's really important is that people can, you know, to Carl's point, like, gauge how passionate someone is about a project, and my take is that the more you believe in an idea, the more natural it is to be passionate about it.

13. 54:01 – 57:00

    Finding passion in your work

    1. MKMihika Kapoor54:01

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky54:01

       I imagine people listening to this will feel like, "Oh, shit. I don't really love what I'm working on, but I don't have... Uh, I don't work at Figma. I don't have, like, the best and most amazing products that maybe it's hard to get excited about stuff." Is there anything you could share there just, like, say, you're s- working on something that you're not so passionate about? Is it, like, find thing to keep searching or is it, is it, like, just figure out something you're excited about? Any advice there for someone in that boat?

    3. MKMihika Kapoor54:25

       My first piece of advice would be to-... not just think about the scope of what you are working on as the thing that happens to be in flight at any given moment. But to, if you're working in a company, like take a step back, understand like the vision of that company and understand your users and understand if there's like anything in that space that you are passionate about. I think it's quite easy to believe that the project that you're working on is your scope. My take is that your scope is the world, and to the extent that you can figure out does the idea that you're passionate about fall within your company versus fall outside of your company? That should kind of like guide the next steps in your career.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky55:15

       Mm-hmm.

    5. MKMihika Kapoor55:15

       Um, and so I think that, you know, potentially like common mis- misconception is that founding something is just for, you know, capital F founders. But I think that anyone can found something. You can found something inside of an existing company, you can found something from scratch. And there are different reasons why you would do each, right? Like, the reasons why you would found inside of an existing company is if you think that there is a distribution advantage that you want to take advantage of, if there is a technical or platform advantage that you wanna take advantage of. Or there's also like a reality which is like, you know, it's slightly less risk. So, you know, if, you know, depending on what your risk tolerance is, you can like figure out what makes sense. There are things that are harder inside of an existing company, right? It's like harder to take an executive decision. You actually cannot take an executive decision. You need to receive buy-in on every single decision that you make. Sometimes it's like harder to move faster. Um, and then sometimes there are things that are just like different when you're starting inside of an existing company versus like starting something outright. Um, so the things that are different is like building a team is quite different. Like, the way that you recruit and the like set of folks that you can recruit from, like that composition is quite different. And then the way that you pitch and who you are pitching to is quite different. Um, and so I think that, you know, sometimes yeah, it makes sense to found inside of a company and to like use that to like make your flame burn bright. Sometimes it makes sense to found outright. But I think that, you know, the first key to being like passionate about what you're working on is to like find an idea that you're passionate about.

14. 57:00 – 1:07:07

    Building a strong culture

    1. MKMihika Kapoor57:01

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky57:01

       I love this metaphor of the flame where it applies both to you as a person at a company and keeping that flame going and building it and then also the idea and the project that accompanies the little flame that you're kind of growing over time, building momentum around. So you've kind of hinted at this whole idea of starting Zero to One and building new products within larger companies, which I wanna get to. Uh, we've gone really deep on a bunch of awesome stuff and I'm really happy we did. There's four more skills of things you're amazing at. So here's an idea. Let me share the four. How about you pick two that you're most passionate about that you think you have the most advice to share? And then we'll just do those and then we'll go to what you've learned about building something completely new at a larger company. How does that sound?

    3. MKMihika Kapoor57:40

       Perfect.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky57:41

       Okay. So the, from folks that you work with, the four other skills, things you're amazing at. And I, I still want to hear the things you think you're not amazing at. Um, one is creativity, that you're just like, you have really creative solutions to problems. Two is empathy. You're really strong at empathizing with users and using that to build amazing products. Three is culture. Uh, Shao tells me you're the, uh, culture carrier at Figma, which is amazing 'cause the culture there from what I hear is amazing. And then four is dealing with change. You're amazing at just like, "Okay, cool. Priorities are changing. Great. Let's go. Here we go." Which of those two feel most interesting to you?

    5. MKMihika Kapoor58:21

       Maybe we can do a lot or two 'cause they're a little bit different than, um, the other things we've been discussing. Yeah.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky58:27

       Sounds great. So I guess culture, let me start there. So okay, so yeah, Shao called you the culture carrier at Figma. I hear there's a, some fun things you all do there. There's something called a hot seat. There's something called the Figgies. First of all, can you maybe explain these two things and then just broadly what you find is important about focusing on culture as a PM?

    7. MKMihika Kapoor58:49

       Yeah, I can definitely talk about those two things. So Hot Seat is actually a tradition, uh, I started at our first PM off-site post-pandemic. Uh, so this was March of 2022. The PM team was like sub 15 people at that point and we all fit around a dinner table, which is no longer true today. (laughs) And it was really important to me that we all got to know each other in a context that was outside of work. I think that PMing is a highly collaborative function and to the extent that you have great relationships with all the teams that you're interfacing with, that just goes... One is it goes a long way in terms of the product, but two, it makes, you know, speaking about passion, like it makes your day-to-day so much more fun if you feel like you're working with your friends. You know, and if you are working with your friends. And so, you know, we were coming out of, um, a like long, intense day session. Um, and I was thinking about like, "Okay, like how do we break the ice?" And Hot Seat is like this game where you go around the table and each person gets two minutes on the clock and everyone else at the table can ask them anything. And if they want to, they can decline to answer. Um, but we try and keep it like generally speaking, like quite friendly and comfortable, um, for folks. And so we kicked off this game and what was really interesting was earlier that day we had done a personality test. A side note, our PM team is like obsessed with personality tests.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:17

       Which, which personality test, by the way?

    9. MKMihika Kapoor1:00:19

       We, we to this day say the best one was the one that we did at this off-site, which is the StrengthsFinder test. Um, and-What had basically happened was over the course of that morning, we had all kind of dug into like, like we were saying like what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, et cetera. And we had this like really fun foundation to build on during the game of Hot Seat where it was like we were digging into like what about people's backgrounds made them think the way that they do today. And like what random anecdote at age seven of playing catch with their dad in the field led to how they thought about auto layout, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and I think that, you know, being able to understand what motivates a person, uh, is so important when you're working with them and also just like in building a connection with them. And so that was this like, that was this moment that really brought the whole team together. And something that I was really gratified to hear after is that, you know, since then Hot Seat has kind of become a tradition within the company. And so all the PMs went on to play it with their own teams. Yuki and Shou went on to play it with the exec team, so on and so forth.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:22

        Mm-hmm.

    11. MKMihika Kapoor1:01:22

        And so it's kind of become this thing that now anytime that like someone joins the team, it's like, okay, you put them in the Hot Seat. And then, you know, if you're meeting someone who's like significant other, you like put them in the Hot Seat. And it's this thing that is just like totally spread, but it's a really fun way to like just get to know folks and what, what drives them. So that, that's, that's one of my favorites. Um, I highly recommend. The second thing that you asked about which was, was the FIGGIES. And this is basically like an Oscar-style awards ceremony, uh, that-

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:51

        Oh, wow.

    13. MKMihika Kapoor1:01:51

        ... was like hacked together. And so, uh, where the FIGGIES was inspired from was actually every year we have, uh, you know, I was mentioning like SKO, our sales kickoff. And, uh, on the last night of SKO there's like this awards ceremony where they appreciate all of the incredible work that has taken place in the sales and marketing org. And I saw this and I was like, "This is incredible. Like, we should absolutely be celebrating the product team as well, um, when we're together." And so what I did was I basically like took our, uh, Figma boardroom, which is called Bigma, um, and like worked with another PM, Yulin, to deck it out in like a red carpet, gold curtains, et cetera. And we bought like little Oscar trophies for everyone, um, and got their names written on it and voted people in for all of these like absurd categories, like most likely to name their child Figma, most likely to go their career without writing a PRD, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and you know, of course forced everyone to give some sort of acceptance speech. But I think that, you know, making people feel appreciated for, um, the, even just like the quirks and the energy that they bring to the team is something that's incredibly important. And celebrating that diversity together is something that I think goes a long way in terms of making people feel close and also, you know, making people f- understand like maybe someone who they don't know that well on the PM team because then you kind of learn like, okay, like beyond them, you know, kind of like having this Zoom background, um, this is what, you know, this is what's like cheeky about them or this is what's like interesting or unique about them. And so I, I think that culture is so important. Figma has this core value called Play, which I love, which really emphasizes just that everyone should be having fun at all times and work should be fun and gathering should be fun. And I think that I personally am like a huge believer in like in this remote first world that we live in, you also want to kind of like take advantage of those times when you're able to like get together and, you know, do things that make the team feel like even geographically close, oh sorry, close even when they're like geographically spread out.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:09

        Oh man, that's so fun. I, and I love that it's just like you did this, right? It's not like Dylan is adding all these rituals to the team. It's very bottom up. And in theory, any PM on the team could have done this.

    15. MKMihika Kapoor1:04:21

        It's kind of interesting, something that I'd heard, uh, Vishal Shah, who was the former head of product at Instagram say, is that often in companies, culture is set top down and then like the innovation that comes out of that is bottoms up. Um, and so like I think in the first place, like having a value like Play, you know, does a lot in order to, uh, make folks feel like these kinds of things are celebrated and like time should be carved out for them.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:49

        To come back to your original point of just culture is everything, a lot of PMs are like, "I have so much work to do. I have like so many things to do. I'm just like working all day every day." What can you tell them about why this is so important and worth putting some time into, and should everybody, or is it just like if you're excited about this, do it? If not, don't worry about it.

    17. MKMihika Kapoor1:05:06

        I think culture is important in that it establishes trust between groups of people. Um, and so I think that, um, you know, actually earlier you were asking about passion and what makes someone feel passionate about work. And I think that realistically that passion, you know, breaks down into two things. One is like are you passionate about the vision that you're building towards? Which we spoke about. But the second thing is are you passionate about the people who you work with? And I think that, you know, roadmaps change, products change, but feeling a connection to the folks that you're working with, uh, make you much more durable as a team. It means that when times get tough, which they will, um, your gut instinct is to rally together and collaborate together to find a solution rather than to like jump ship or something. I, I think I personally, like I'm like in love with my team. They give me like so much joy and happiness on a daily basis. I was telling them the other day that like when they like post like prototypes in our Slack channel, like sometimes I get like little flutters in my chest like when you have a crush on someone. (laughs) And I think that like having that emotional connection to your team is fun. Like I, I, I think that like, um... And I think that that emotional connection comes from like investing in culture.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:26

        And again, it's like you did it. You di- you made it happen, right? It's not like, "Oh, this sucks. My team's no fun." It's like you can make it more fun. And I think the two examples you shared are awesome 'cause one is like a high-end pro-... high-end version where there's, like, a lot of work. And the hot seat is just, like, a quick idea that takes no work, just an idea and then you just ask to do it and the t- and it's there.

    19. MKMihika Kapoor1:06:44

        Okay. So actually, I want to combat the perception that the Figys was a high production-

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:48

        Okay. (laughs)

    21. MKMihika Kapoor1:06:48

        ... high cost thing. It was very low cost. I ordered everything on Amazon and assembled it in, like, an hour. And so there are ways to be, like, scrappy in kind of making things come together. Um, and so I would, I would say, like, don't be intimidated by any idea being, like, too large to take on. Um, just kind of like-

    22. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:06

        Great.

    23. MKMihika Kapoor1:07:06

        ... go for it. (laughs)

15. 1:07:07 – 1:11:48

    Pivoting with grace and enthusiasm

    1. MKMihika Kapoor1:07:07

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:07

       That's an awesome, uh, correction of that. Okay, final, uh, trait you are great at. Somebody shared that you, you pivot with grace and enthusiasm when things change and priorities change, projects are killed, projects are spun up. There's something that a lot of people at companies just get so sad about, "Oh my God, things are keep changing. Like, my project's killed. Oh, this priority changed." Uh, feels like you've learned to make that a, a superpower. What can you share about what you've learned there and how to leverage that into doing great and being successful?

    3. MKMihika Kapoor1:07:40

       For this one I could actually, like, maybe give an example that preceded my product career, um, which was when I was in college, I actually founded a national design conference for students across the country. And the way that this came about was when I was in college, design was very much having a watershed moment in tech. So companies like Airbnb and Pinterest were leading an industry and they were leading not just because they, like, built technology and made it accessible, but because they were really using the interface layer to differentiate. So there was this point where, like, software had reached, like, a certain level of saturation where things that were not possible were now suddenly possible and now suddenly possible in multiple companies, and design became this differentiator, which is really exciting. But at the same time, none of this was reflected in most schools across the country. And so I went to Princeton and there was, like, nothing that resembled product design in our curriculum. And this was baffling to me because I was like, "There is such clear momentum," you know, speaking about momentum, um, "in industry about this being a profession that is, like, so important and so influential in building the next generation of companies, yet the kind of groundwork to make that happen wasn't really there." And then I interned at Facebook and I realized that my entire class of 25 interns had very similar experiences, uh, where they too were self-taught product designers. And so that summer I actually watched a movie which was coincidentally, or a documentary that was coincidentally produced by Envision, uh, that featured folks like John Maeda amongst others, and was talking about how design changed the world that we lived in, um, and was going to rewrite the future, which I really believed in. And so I was sort of incentivized to found this conference called Design Nation that would democratize access to a design education and bring together top students from across the country with, like, industry leaders. And originally my plan was to build this within an organization that already existed at Princeton, um, because, you know, they had the funding, they had the resources, they had the expertise in order to kind of, like, make this a reality. And then what actually ended up happening was, like, they too were skeptical of the business value of design and didn't think it would be possible for something like this to be funded. And so I went from, you know, building something in a situation where I thought, like, finances, expenditures, connections, et cetera, were, like, totally taken care of, to having none of that and needing to, like, build it from the ground up. And it was funny, one of the best, like, pieces of advice I got in college was, "Don't underestimate the power of a .edu email address." And I just went, like, on a spree, like, cold emailing, like, so many people, um, so many executives about this, like, problem that I was trying to solve. And what actually ended up happening was people would hop on the phone with me, um, and a lot of the folks who I spoke to, you know, designers who I really admire, uh, like Daniel Brica, uh, Jamie Mirold, et cetera, um, were folks who would be like, "Oh my God, this was such a problem when I was in college. Like, of course I'll help you solve it. (laughs) I can't believe it hasn't been solved yet." And so, you know, ultimately, like, it grew into this conference that, um, you know, lasted many years, brought together folks from originally around the country, then more recently around the world, and ultimately, like, did live under that broader organization. But I think, like, having the ability to, you know, like, in the absence of formal backing or something, still, like, chase after something and maybe pivot the way that you're thinking about it or pivot the way that you are allocating your own time. Like, maybe, you know, suddenly, like, speakers is not the most important thing, fundraising is the most important thing. Or, you know, building a hype landing page (laughs) so that you seem more legit than a, like, very scrappy few person student organization is the most important thing. Um, and just being, like, quite adaptable when it comes to resourcing I think is very important.

16. 1:11:48 – 1:13:15

    Design Nation

    1. MKMihika Kapoor1:11:48

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:48

       That's an awesome example. It, uh, uh, shows another, uh, trait of Mehika that, uh, in our archaeological study, which comes, which has come up a bunch and I'm just putting, uh, my n- my finger on it, is, uh, is just, like, high agency. Y- it feels like you just consistently just like, "I will make, make this happen myself. This problem exists. We need more product designers in school. Uh, I will solve that problem." And so, and I love that. And by the way, and Design Nation, for folks that want to explore that, what's, how do they find that and it's still going, right?

    3. MKMihika Kapoor1:12:19

       Yeah. So, um-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:20

       Okay.

    5. MKMihika Kapoor1:12:21

       ... it, you can Google Design Nation.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:23

       Okay. (laughs)

    7. MKMihika Kapoor1:12:24

       Um, and we have, like, a Instagram page amongst other things. Um, and yeah, last year we had folks like Stuart Weitzman and Joe Gebbia, who's one of the co-founders of Airbnb come and speak, which was super exciting.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:37

       Awesome. And then who, who is it for? It's for students? Like people in college that want to learn to be designers?

    9. MKMihika Kapoor1:12:40

       Yeah. It's for design-driven college students. I think one thing to call out is that, uh, one of my focuses in the early years was to ensure that this is for not just like capital D designers, but like design-driven students. So we also took like engineers who are very design-minded and you know, marketers who are very design-minded, et cetera, because of that core belief that the... you know, most innovative solutions will come out of people that are kind of like operating-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:13

        Mm-hmm.

    11. MKMihika Kapoor1:13:13

        ... at this intersectionality.

17. 1:13:15 – 1:16:07

    Mihika’s weaknesses

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:15

       Okay, so we've talked about all kinds of things you're amazing at. Before we transition to what you've learned about just building new stuff at larger companies, which you're very good at, can you just, uh, bullet point the skills you find you're not good at? Just to... (laughs) I said we would come to this. What do you think you're not good at? And we won't go too deep here, unless you want.

    2. MKMihika Kapoor1:13:33

       (laughs) So it's kind of interesting because I think that there are many things that we talked about that are actually a double-edged sword in practice. Um, so let's start with the conviction piece. I think that the good thing about being high conviction is that you're able to, you know, sell forward and to get people to feel strongly about something and a next step in the future. I think the downside of that is if there is less of a history of working together, um, there might be skepticism about like, oh, are you just pushing something because you believe in it or are you pushing something because our users actually needed it? And so in those moments, it becomes really important to like constantly be highlighting user proof points. I think the second is like scrappiness. So I think I have like a very high ability to like thrive in ambiguity and to like pull things together last minute. So for example, it's like very common that I am like editing a product review deck minutes before we are about to present, or that like I haven't started until the night before and then stay up until 3:00 AM to do it. And this is like somewhat fine, but then I think that other people don't always love it because they're like, "Hey, like maybe let's start earlier next time." (laughs) It's like, I, I get that.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:49

       (laughs)

    4. MKMihika Kapoor1:14:49

       The third piece would be, um, I, I get very consumed by the details of something, and I think in a lot of instances this is great. Also, at a certain point, like sometimes you want to defer those decisions. And so that's also like an important skill to learn.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:11

       Awesome. Thanks for sharing all that. This touches on something that came up in a previous podcast episode. Um, Nikel from Meta had this really interesting metaphor where there's kind of every superpower has a shadow. Basically everything you're amazing at, there's something that you, it you'll, you'll... it'll be a problem, a liability basically for you.

    6. MKMihika Kapoor1:15:29

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:29

       And so I think what you're pointing out is you're amazing at these, some of these things, but there's downsides. And I think that's really important for people to know. And we already talked about just something you believe that I also believe, it just you will have things you're not good at, focus on the things you're amazing at and just getting better at those things and use that to achieve... because it ends up being a lot more.

    8. MKMihika Kapoor1:15:47

       Also, uh, kind of building off of that is as you scale your team, um, it's really important to be self-aware of what those blind spots are and to sort of hire for that. Because at, at a team level you want individuals to be spiky and you want team to be well-rounded.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:16:06

       That's a great

18. 1:16:07 – 1:20:50

    Building new products at larger companies

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:16:07

       segue to talking about building completely new things at a, at large companies. So what I hear is you're kind of the go-to person for zero to one stuff at Figma, which is incredible. Figma is one of the most admired, successful tech companies in the world, and you're the person people look to to build completely new stuff. So first of all, why are you so passionate about this stuff? Why, why do you want to be working on brand new stuff like this? And why, why is it important for companies to be good at this?

    2. MKMihika Kapoor1:16:36

       Yeah. In order for a company to stay competitive, a company needs to stay entrepreneurial. Um, if you are not constantly thinking about what's next, uh, defining the industry standard, seeing around the corner from your competitors, you, you know, will get taken over. That is like a reality. And so consequently, I personally love to screen for very entrepreneurial companies and companies that have that culture. And so Figma has this huge run-with-it culture where run with it is also one of our core values, and it's really encouraged that people can kind of just like sprint off in a direction and that is seen not as a distraction, but rather a manifestation of the company's values. And so at the company, you know, some of our most monumental launches have come out of hackathons and have come out of bottoms up, uh, projects. So like recently this week we had a launch of multi edit, which was like a long clamor for feature where folks can, you know, edit things across multiple frames at the same time. That was a like multi-year, multi-product long initiative. Um, we have things like JamBot, which is an AI plugin inside of FigJam that has, you know, come out of an AI hackathon that we had last year. Our entire widgets platform was originally a hackathon project. And so there is this, you know, culture of celebrating things that have been pushed bottoms up. And so, you know, constantly thinking about like how can people within the company be entrepreneurial both in terms of getting new products out to users and in terms of improving internal processes is just like a culture that you constantly want to be facilitating and leaning into.

Episode duration: 1:40:40