Picking sharp problems, increasing virality, and unique product frameworks | Oji Udezue (Typeform)

... products who try to be viral just for what I call synthetic virality that fail. Because in the end, if you're synthetically viral and people get to the product and it sucks, that's it. You know, Slack wasn't even viral, right? There was no synthetic virality. Slack couldn't even connect to an organization for the longest time. You could be working on the third floor and someone using Slack on the fourth floor and you would have no clue, there's no way to share it with them. But what happens when you went to lunch, people are like, "We got Slack and this is amazing." And people on the third floor are like, "Holy shit. When can we get it?" Boom, boom, boom. This is the bedrock of virality. Build a great product that solves a sharp problem.

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Oji Udezue. Oji has helped build and grow products at Microsoft, where he worked on Windows Outlook, Hotmail, and Internet Explorer, at Atlassian, where he was head of product for all their communication tools, at Calendly, where he was chief product officer, at Twitter, where he was head of product for creation and conversation. He's currently chief product officer at Typeform, which I am a happy customer of. Oji has one of the broadest and most interesting careers in product and he's also one of the most thoughtful humans I've met. In our conversation, Oji shares some of his favorite product frameworks, and also why you should be really careful applying frameworks at your company. We dig into what he's learned from Calendly and Atlassian, and Typeform on how to do product line growth successfully, and also how to get really sharp with your ICP, or ideal customer profile. Also, how to increase your product's virality and a concept called force time, which I love, and even his favorite Nigerian food, which I am currently on the hunt for. With that, I bring you Oji Udezue, after a short word from our sponsors. You fell in love with building products for a reason, but sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates, and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and road mapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds, and it's all built on Jira, where your engineering teams are already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and their never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny. Oji, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.