Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD)

Claire Vo (00:00:00):
People often think that I get hired into later stage companies because I'm supposed to teach them how to operate like a big company, and in fact, I say I'm hired to remind them they can operate like a startup.

Lenny (00:00:11):
Everybody wants this. Everyone's like, "Yes, move fast, amazing quality." What's an example of that for you?

Claire Vo (00:00:16):
I communicate to my leaders that my expectation is they bring in the clock speed one click faster. If you think something needs to be done this year, it needs to be done this half.

Lenny (00:00:24):
There may be a trend happening here of combining engineering product.

Claire Vo (00:00:27):
I'm using CPTO for short code of running product and engineering design functionally together. There should be no debates over what's best for product or what's best for engineering, what's best for design speed. What is best for the organization?

Lenny (00:00:38):
You built a tool called ChatPRD. My guess is it's the single most popular AI PM-specific tool out there.

Claire Vo (00:00:44):
Is it going to eliminate PMs next year? Probably not. Are the skills required going to shift? Yes. Could they shift much faster than we all anticipate? Probably.

Lenny (00:00:56):
Today, my guest is Claire Vo. Claire is a longtime chief product officer at Color, Optimizely, and currently chief product officer at LaunchDarkly. She's also been a two-time founder, engineer, designer, and a marketer. She's also the creator of ChatPRD, which I suspect is the most used PM-specific AI product out there, which she builds on nights and weekends.

(00:01:19):
In our conversation, we dig into what PM skills AI will complement and potentially replace in the future, the story behind ChatPRD, and Claire's advice for how to stay ahead of the curve on AI within the PM role, the importance of feeling agency over your career, and how to bend the arc of the universe to achieve the things that you want to achieve, insights into what it takes to be a successful woman in tech, especially as an exec, how she creates a fast pace within larger companies while also keeping the bar very high, the rise of the CPTO role, combining product and engineering under one leader plus a ton of career advice both for early career people and senior leaders, and so much more.

(00:02:01):
This episode has something for anyone that's in product or interested in the role of product, and I'm very excited to bring it to you. 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. With that, I bring you Claire Vo after a short word from our sponsors.

(00:02:23):
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(00:03:07):
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(00:04:16):
Claire, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.

Claire Vo (00:04:20):
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Lenny (00:04:22):
I'm even more excited. You're someone that, to me, has always felt inevitable would be on this podcast and that we'd be doing an episode together. Do you feel the same way, or not? And it's okay if you don't.

Claire Vo (00:04:32):
It's a privilege and a pleasure, and I'm glad I'm here. I've been so impressed with your guests and your content. It's been so exciting to see just the wide range of product leaders and thinkers in this space. And if I can be on a list of product leaders and thinkers in this space, then I'm doing something good. Thanks for having me.

Lenny (00:04:51):
It's absolutely my pleasure.

(00:04:53):
I want to start by talking about career advice. I was perusing your LinkedIn, and your career path is basically what most PMs probably dream of in their career. Just to summarize, you went from associate product manager to product manager to senior product manager to director to senior director to VP to SVP to chief product officer, and now you've been chief product officer of three different companies. And along the way, you're a founder, you're a designer, you're an engineer.

(00:05:22):
Here's my question. If you had to boil down what you think your secret sauce has been to progressing so far and so quickly throughout your PM career, what might that be?

Claire Vo (00:05:33):
Yeah, so when you list it all out, you can probably guess underneath it all is a relentlessly curious, impatient, eager to build person at their core. I just like building stuff and I find a lot of fun, and I think if you find a career or a craft that's fun, it's easy to accelerate your growth in that career. One thing, I just love what I do.

(00:05:56):
But when it comes to career growth and that progression from, I actually started as a copywriter of all things, copywriter all the way up to a CPO or CPTO that runs an engineering organization, it boils down to something really simple, which is know what you want out of your career, be clear and ask for it, and then make it easy for your boss or whoever can support or champion you to get you from here to there.

(00:06:20):
And so I'll take a really specific example from earlier in my career, where I had been in management for design and product management, so a senior manager level over product and design at an e-commerce company, and worked very closely with growth and marketing. We were just two sides of the same coin and worked very closely. And the head of marketing left and there was this big to-do pretty quickly of, "Well, what are we going to do with marketing? And do we need to hire somebody?"

(00:06:49):
And I sat for about a half a day and I thought, I think I can help here, drew out an org chart, put my name on the top, walked into my boss's office and said, "This is one potential solve of your marketing organization question, is we'll bring product and marketing growth together. I can be in this position. Here's how I'd change the management structure underneath this. Not just where do you put me, but where do you put everybody else? And I think this could work for the company, and this is how I'd suggest we roll it out and this would be my JD." And I got that job. I think when people ask me about career advice, they want to hear, "What can I do?" Really, what do you want? And how do you make it as easy as possible to make the case to your boss to get you here to there?

(00:07:33):
The other thing that I give people advice about is know what you want out of your current role and know exactly what you want your next role to be. And I even know this, and I even say this to my boss. When I was VP of product at Optimizely, I said to my boss, "I want to be a chief product officer. Here's how I'm going to get us here to there, and I want you to partner with me on it." And even coming into this role when I was interviewing at LaunchDarkly, my boss, Dan, the CEO of LaunchDarkly asked me, "What do you want out of this role?" And I said, "I want my next role to be a CEO role, so I want this role to fill in my gaps, learn, help me elevate my experience to get me to that next step."

(00:08:14):
And so I always know what that next role is going to be and I'm always clear about it. Now, I think there's a fine balance here. There's one thing to be very clear about your goals. It's another to suck the oxygen out of the air about only talking about getting promoted. These are probably 0.005% of my interactions with my boss are about my career growth and my path. It's very small. "Am I clear? Are we on the same page? And am I communicating as I'm making progress against those goals?"

(00:08:44):
High-slip people I think get promoted basically as fast as the org can support. I've almost never wished I promoted somebody earlier. I've seen managers or folks promote a little too early, and so as somebody that's managing their own career, you have to be a balance of ambitious and assertive and take care of yourself and advocate for yourself, and the work needs to speak for itself at the end of the day, and that's what's going to drive for your career growth. And so know what you want but do the work and produce the results, and you can have a career like mine.

Lenny (00:09:24):
Maybe first to summarize, some of the core advice you're sharing is know what you actually want because you're not going to progress towards this amazing future career if you don't actually know where you're going. Otherwise, you'll be pushed in directions that you're not necessarily interested in going.

(00:09:38):
I have a sense of where you want to go to tell people and ask for it. "Here's what I want to be doing in the future. Help me get there." And I love the other point you made of just, don't over-focus on that. There's many people that spend a lot of their energy on, "I need to get promoted. How do I get to the next level? I deserve the next level." And I guess maybe along those lines, is there any other advice you could share of just how to avoid being that person that's just constantly obsessed with promotion? Any more advice of just how to find that balance?

Claire Vo (00:10:06):
Yeah. One, you've got to lock to the norms, the talent norms of your organization. You should know how those things work, and they can work very casually if you're a very small startup and they can work more formally if you're at a very large company. And one, understanding how promotions operationally happen inside an organization can help you have those conversations at the right time in the right moment with the right context. That's one thing I advise. We're a slightly larger organization. We do promotion cycles. We have times during which we promote people. And so if you're talking to me four months before a promo cycle, maybe it's top of mind, maybe it's not. I sometimes functionally cannot promote people inside larger organizations whenever I want.

(00:10:52):
One is, I think, understanding the talent calendar of your team, especially at a larger organization. I think the second thing is really the conversation needs to be about what you being in a different position does for the company and why the company needs it. Often the conversation is, "I want to be promoted because I want to be a director of PM, because I want to become a manager, because I need direct reports." Instead of saying, "Look, your span of control, you have nine direct reports, you need leverage here. I have a lot of credibility with this side of the product organization. I think we could be doing more if this position existed. And I think I'm good for this position because of what I've proven A, B and C."

(00:11:43):
That's solving a problem for the company. That's not solving a career growth issue for an individual. And I think people who want to be promoted need to think in that orientation versus the other, because honestly, especially now, let's say [inaudible 00:12:01]. There are not just these wrote every 12 months we're going to give comp increases and merit increases and you get to be promoted. We really have to be thoughtful about the structure and size and organization of teams. Product teams are naturally pretty small.

(00:12:19):
So, there aren't just management and director and senior director roles to go around. And if you want to get into a management, for example, you have to prove that you're good at organization design. I think really focus on why a role is good for a company or necessary for a company and then why you are the best for that role, rather than, "I want to get promoted."

Lenny (00:12:41):
That is such good advice and such important advice that focus on how do you solve problems for your manager and the business, not, "Hey, here's what I need for my career. This sucks. My career is stagnating." I love that. And I love so much of your message is empowerment. It's not just, here, there's the place you're in and there's not a lot you can do about it. Look for opportunities to help your manager, help your business. "Here's what I can do to move things further."

(00:13:06):
And I think there's an element of timing that you touched on. Propose this at a time when something could happen. You shared this example of there was a marketing gap.

Claire Vo (00:13:15):
Yep, exactly.

Lenny (00:13:17):
Is there another example where you did this sort of thing where you presented, "Here's how I can help the org," and that helped another promotion? If not, that's good.

Claire Vo (00:13:25):
It's honestly how I expanded into leading engineering teams in the technology organization. I was at Color and there was a real need to up-level our engineering organization, and I knew exactly what to do. I had high confidence I had the skills, both technical and organizational, to scale the engineering organization in a way that was really critical to the business, both from a architecture perspective and from a team and talent perspective. And so that was one where I knew there was a problem to solve. I knew that problem was important. I knew we had to solve it fast, and I was confident I knew I could do it. I had confidence that I could help there.

(00:14:06):
And so I'm still doing it today. And at Color, I came in as product. I very quickly began leading the engineering organization, which was fabulous, and then I actually took on some of our non-clinical operations as well where we had a pretty operational leader. We had some high-scale challenges to deal with, and it fit my talent set and I knew I could help the company pretty quickly.

(00:14:32):
And this is the other advice I might give particular to PMs. PM is such a generalist role, it's okay to go a little left and a little right to go up. I took this marketing growth role. That was actually my first director role. It wasn't only for product, it was for marketing. And I had to learn marketing and I had to develop skills there, but it was a foundation on which I could build a broader leadership career. And so I do think also looking left and right outside of your scope of product can be a really effective way to find growth opportunities.

Lenny (00:15:08):
I love that advice, and it leads to so many unexpected opportunities. One of the, I think, big questions with PMs, and coming back to your original advice of know where you want to go, there's so many directions a PM can go. You can eventually become a founder, become a GM, become a CO, something else. And trying these sorts of things often helps you understand, "Here's what I'm actually excited about. Maybe I want to move into design."

Claire Vo (00:15:31):
Yeah, and one of the other things that I think people don't understand, and maybe I experienced this as a founder and I really feel it inside companies, is the universe is bendable to your will. And what I mean is in most, at least in the stage I operate in in startups and growth stage companies and late stage startups, organizations are very fluid and I like to organize around talented motivated individuals.

(00:15:58):
And so just because we're organized in a particular way now, just because these organizations are separate or these are different, together, doesn't mean that's necessarily the way they have to be, and so you should think about your career growth in the existing structure of the organization. But as an org design thinker, it's a very important job that I have to do. You also have to think of this system as a living, breathing entity that can shift over time in particular around highly motivated, highly talented people.

Lenny (00:16:30):
And I think along the same lines, referencing this advice you've already shared of just thinking from the perspective of what is my manager and folks above, what are they struggling with and how can I propose, "Here's a solution that happens to also have me move into a more interesting role?"

Claire Vo (00:16:46):
Yep, exactly.

Lenny (00:16:48):
There's a direction I wasn't planning to go into, but I think it's really important and interesting is people like you that are incredibly good and successful end up taking on a lot, and that often ends up not being what they want.

Claire Vo (00:16:58):
SOS.

Lenny (00:17:00):
Exactly. Any advice on the classic, be careful what you're good at advice? Any advice on just how to not end up with everything?

Claire Vo (00:17:08):
I really believe operating in your zone of genius. I really believe in leaning into strengths. And if you are in a position in which you're good at things and you've been giving a lot of responsibility, but you have tremendous growth edges and you're spending more time on the things you need to level up than the things you are exceptional at, I think that's not fair for the organization. I think that's not fair for you.

(00:17:32):
I truly believe defining and understanding your zone of genius, where you are exceptional, where no one else can step into the job and do just as good of a job as you can, and where you derive tremendous intellectual emotional joy out of the work is what makes it sustainable over time. And so I don't actually think it's about the volume or breadth of the work. It's about sustainability of the work. And can you show up every day energized and engaged and excited about what you do?

(00:18:04):
And I think being very aware if you are operating the space or if you're not. And this might go back to, I think, I have never regretted promoting somebody too slowly, I have regretted promoting somebody too quickly. High-slope individuals in particular areas want to get more responsibility, want to have more scope, and I've seen less experienced managers or directors or even people at my level want to give opportunities that put people in a position where they're neither effective nor happy. And so I think being self-aware of that is really important, and then I also think as a manager, being cognizant of that is really important.

(00:18:50):
Individually, I do do a lot, but I do feel like I'm in my zone of genius and I also know that part of staying in my personal zone of genius is having this breadth of responsibility but preserving builder time. And what I mean from time is I have to have time to produce real work that comes from me as an individual, and that means that calendar management is quite important. Time management.

Lenny (00:19:21):
We're going to talk about some of the things that you built.

(00:19:23):
In terms of finding your zone of genius, any advice for someone that's trying to figure out what it is that is in that zone of genius? I know there's a Ted Talk of here's how to think about the zone of genius specifically [inaudible 00:19:33].

Claire Vo (00:19:32):
Yeah. I'm not going to relay it in precision, but one of the tactics that I've seen out there is basically go through your calendar for the last month or quarter, whatever it is, write everything down, and basically group them into, I hated doing this, I didn't love doing it but it was fine, I love doing this, and then I love doing this, and if I could spend all my time on this, I would be the happiest person in the whole world. And literally categorize the way you're spending your time into those buckets, and then put the bottom buckets away. Just focus on that top bucket and go, "How can I be here more?" And often, that is a true guide to where your passion is, where your special expertise is, and where you're going to add a lot of value because you're highly engaged.

(00:20:26):
I think the other thing is really asking yourself, and this maybe goes back to the career advice perspective, really asking yourself, "What do I do that no one else in this organization can do?" There are lots of things that I do that other people in the organization can do, but what are the things that I do that are... You think about a differentiated product that are hard to replicate, and knowing what that is and leaning into that can drive a lot of exceptional career growth but also just make you quite happy.

Lenny (00:20:58):
What's an example of that for you?

Claire Vo (00:21:00):
I think I'm actually quite good at traversing across and up and down. What I mean is I am fluent across product engineering, design, data and operations, and candidly revenue in a way that vertical or functional leaders maybe are less so. I feel like I have a high level of fluency broadly and can bring conversations between functions together against a business objective pretty easily. It's just the way I'm wired. I was a founder. It's second nature.

(00:21:31):
And the other thing that I think I can do pretty well that I find very joyous is traverse elevation. And so, yes, I love to be up here and think about strategy and vision, but I also like to drop into the details to move things forward. And I think that operating horizontally and then being able to spend some time in the vertical up and down, wherever that vertical up and down happens makes me quite happy. I think I'm pretty good at it.

Lenny (00:21:58):
Amazing. We're going to touch on some of these things you just mentioned actually, but real quick, you mentioned this idea of essentially an energy audit. There's actually a really good guide that I'll point to in the show notes by Matt Mochary that walks you through how to do this. And we talk about this a bunch on this podcast actually, this whole idea of just find things that give you energy, do more of that. Find things that zap you of energy, do less of that. Easier said than done when you have a job and you have to do stuff that people are paying you to do, but it's still really helpful if nothing else to help you point you where you want to be going in your career long-term.

(00:22:29):
Okay, so you mentioned you're a founder, and it feels like you're a founder at heart, but you've been working at larger companies for a while now. And I hear that you're really good at setting a fast pace within larger companies and maintaining that startup focus while also having a very high bar for quality and product. Everybody wants this. Everyone's like, "Yes, move fast, amazing quality." Why would we not want that? I'm curious just what you actually put into practice concretely that allow for you to build teams that move really fast and maintain a high bar. Are there processes you find helpful, values, ways of working?

Claire Vo (00:23:06):
Yeah, it's really funny, people often think that I get hired into the roles that I get hired into in later stage companies because I'm supposed to teach them how to operate like a big company. And in fact, I say I'm hired to remind them they can operate like a startup. And so I think about it completely differently.

(00:23:23):
And there are two things I think about in terms of pace and high bar. From a pace, it's know what your internal pace is, and essentially don't let it degrade to the pace of your recurring meetings. I often find that pace of organization locks to pace of the calendar, and so I am really thoughtful that reoccurring meetings do not drive next steps. It's a very tactical thing, but when somebody says, "Oh, we'll discuss this or we'll decide this in the next meeting," it's, "No, we should discuss this now. We should decide this tomorrow."

(00:23:58):
The other thing that I think about is setting one click faster pace expectations inside an organization. I tend to come in and love this, hate it, it's what I do, which is if I look at an organization that is operating at a lower pace than I would expect, I communicate to my leaders that my expectation is they bring in the clock speed one click faster, which means if you think something needs to be done this year, it needs to be done this half. If you think it needs to be done this half, it needs to be done this quarter. This quarter, this month. This week, today. End of day, in this meeting. And actually setting an expectation that your natural pace is going to be slower than your ambition and being explicit about pulling things in I think can change the way expectations are set and honestly change the energy and momentum in the organization.

(00:24:51):
The third thing on pace is personal SLA. I never want to be a bottleneck for the organization. This is one of the more challenging things about being in my role, is you are often a point of decision-making, tie-breaking, next steps, approvals, socialization. And if my personal SLA is slow, then the rest of my organization cannot be as fast as possible. I try to be fairly responsive. I try to say, "Do both very high rate," and also very quickly. It's really hard, sometimes it's not totally possible, but it's a goal I have.

Lenny (00:25:27):
I love this clock speed concept of just let's move one iteration faster than we would normally move. How do you actually do that? Is this just you doing it and then everyone trickles down from the way you're approaching it? Is this a principle on a team? Is there a phrase you use?

Claire Vo (00:25:41):
Yeah, it's a phrase I use and something I asked our leadership teams to do. It started at, one, I'm going to do this, and two, my expectation is you look for opportunities to do this. And the reason I think this is effective, it's very tangible and it's very tactical. It just is one of those things that a moment when you're about to say a due date, you check yourself and you go, "Is this right or do I need to pull it in by an iteration?" And so it's a very tactical piece of advice and expectation I give to my leadership team. If they can show up that way, then the expected pace of the organization goes up, and then people tend to rise to the occasion.

Lenny (00:26:26):
And then it connects very directly to your first piece of advice, is not rely on the meeting cadence to determine your action cadence. I imagine that's a similar situation where you tell people, "Here's how I want to operate," and then you actually work that way and that starts to filter through.

Claire Vo (00:26:41):
Yeah, I just think there's this anti-pattern of, "We'll make the decision in the next meeting," or, "We'll follow up on this in the next meeting." That is an artificial timeline introduced by Google Calendar or whatever calendar you use. It's not a real thing, and so I want to put us on real timelines. When can we make the decision? How much information do we need? And that doesn't mean that every decision is made now, today, tomorrow, but it does mean we don't snap to artificial cadences to make our product move forward.

Lenny (00:27:12):
Awesome. Let's talk about quality. What are some lessons there?

Claire Vo (00:27:17):
Yeah, I think in terms of high bar, there's probably two things that I think about as a leader. There's the talent bar being exceptionally high, and then there's the product bar being high.

(00:27:28):
I'll start with talent, which is, on the talent side I think you have to define the bar. You have to be really specific, and that means you have to think about pretty deeply what are your leadership principles? If your leadership principle is bring the clock speed up one iteration, be explicit that that's what you expect to see, and then articulate that and hold people accountable to it.

(00:27:51):
And so I do think it's really important to have a specific and measurable career ladder, especially at the senior levels. I often find that they're very soft. They're hires and manages multiple departments or takes in cross-functional stakeholder feedback. Those are just not tractable, specific things. And so I think, PMs, put on your product definition or OKR hat or whatever and define some real goals for these levels and be specific in a way that you can look at people and say, definitively, "Yes. Measurably, yes, they're meaning this bar measurably. No, they're not meeting that bar." And so I think that's very important.

(00:28:39):
The second thing I think is you have to normalize feedback. And Brené Brown, fellow Texan, love her, "Clear is kind," I think conflict-avoidant, feedback-avoidant cultures degrade the talent bar. They just do, because the expectations are not stated and you're not holding accountability. And I do not think that's kind. That is not setting up people for success in their careers. That is not helping them become the best teammate that they can become.

(00:29:08):
I really like to normalize feedback and, as I say, take the temperature out of the room when it comes to open and candid feedback. And that means being very clear when people are not meeting expectations, making it very clear that questioning ideas is not questioning innate talent. And I think that has something that people need to hear to normalize feedback. But I think feedback is quite important.

(00:29:30):
And I think the third thing is unfortunately when you're working to build a high talent bar and high talent density, then when folks aren't a fit and it's not working, moving against that quickly is part of the job. And it's a hard part of the job and it's part of the job that most managers really avoid, but I think it's important because it keeps your overall team operating in a really healthy, effective, performant way that makes everybody happier, including people that probably weren't a great fit for the work of the role at the time.

Lenny (00:30:02):
Is there an example of you being surprisingly candid to someone or giving feedback, hard feedback, to someone about quality, something that's just like, "Oh wow, that's what I should be doing?"

Claire Vo (00:30:16):
There were two leaders in my organization, I won't say which ones and I won't say when, but two leaders in the organization, partners across product and engineering, and they could not get it together. They could not work together. They were having misalignments and priorities strategy. They could not communicate. They were having conflict in front of the team.

(00:30:38):
And the managers that had managed them were taking this very soft pedal approach of, "You need to work on your [inaudible 00:30:47] functional stakeholder, and here am I expecting all this performance management stuff to happen." And I called both of them individually and I said, "The way you are operating is not meeting our leadership expectations. If you do not change, you cannot be part of this organization anymore. I believe you can operate differently. I do." And I did. I believe these are very talented people who could operate. "I believe you can operate differently, but it is your responsibility to do so, and I need to see change starting tomorrow."

(00:31:20):
I wanted them to succeed. And in fact, they did. It snapped in, they got it, and one of the... Turned into one of the most influential effective managers in our team over the course of probably the next six to nine months. And I think just clearly saying, "You are not meeting expectations. You will not be successful here if you continue on this path. I believe you can get here, but it is your responsibility." That is the conversation that is clear and kind and honestly very effective in most instances.

Lenny (00:31:55):
That's an amazing example. Clear is kind, as you said. It reminds me of Kim Scott, who's on the podcast, shared this story about Bob. I don't know if you remember that story at all of just this guy at their company who was just doing a bad job and everyone knew he was doing a bad job, and then they had to fire him. When they're firing him, he's just like, "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't anyone tell me that nobody thought I was doing a great job?"

Claire Vo (00:32:16):
And I honestly think saying, "You are not doing a good job," is much kinder than, "I think you can improve on this aspect or that aspect." Or, "I've gotten some feedback that you could be better at..." That's not kind because it doesn't set somebody else up for success either in your organization or somewhere else.

Lenny (00:32:36):
Okay, let's go in a different direction. Let's talk about being a woman in tech.

Claire Vo (00:32:40):
Oh yeah.

Lenny (00:32:41):
This doesn't get talked about a ton on podcasts like this. I know you have a lot of thoughts. Obviously, you've been through a lot. You've had a lot of experiences. There's probably a lot of stories you haven't shared in other places, so I just want to give you a chance to share what you've been through, what you've seen, and any advice you may have.

Claire Vo (00:32:58):
Yeah, and I'm happy to talk about this. I know a lot of people don't want to be defined or consistently asked about being a woman or a mom in a C-level leadership role. Let's not have women in tech panels anymore. But I've been reflecting a bit on this lately because I just came from a few years in healthcare, which, from my experience, it's a lot more women in leadership roles. I was a little spoiled, even in our technology organization. And now, I'm back in startups and tech, where the ratios are completely opposite, especially in roles like engineering, which is a team that I run.

(00:33:30):
And look, this is just, it's math. I think Carta said that 13-something percent of founders last year were women. It's declining year over year. FEMA led founded teams, or at least 2% of venture capital, women hold 30% of senior leadership org roles. Women are 30% of software engineering teams. This is just math. We're just facts. We're not in the room in the equal proportions. And as somebody who has, despite the numbers, had a fairly successful career so far in technology, I feel like I owe it to the industry to say it hasn't been easy and it's still not easy, even at my level.

(00:34:09):
And what I want to be clear about, because it gets talked about a lot in forms like this, this is not about imposter syndrome. How could I have any right to imposter syndrome? I've proven myself. I've been a founder, I've raised venture capital, I've had a successful exit. I've been, as you said, a CPO across increasing large teams. I get to invest in red companies. I'm on boards. I get to be on this podcast. I'm a TikTok influencer. This is not about feeling like an imposter. It's really about, it is hard and it is different, and the numbers pencil out in a way that is not favorable to women.

(00:34:47):
And as you said, there's been a lot of stuff in the past that you look at me now and you say, "Oh, she did associate and all the way up," but I had to fight for my all-girls school to carry computer science at the same rate that the all-boys school had it naturally. I grew up in teeny tiny startups in the early aughts. I saw some nonsense. I had VCs tell me, "Don't get pregnant," when I was... These things happened. And yet here I am, and it's fine.

(00:35:21):
And I'm not complaining. I just think what people also don't understand is that stuff still happens. I don't need to litigate who it happens with, where it happens. It still happens. I have arrived and it still happens. And the reason I bring this up is I think it should be a point of reflection for industry, and I think it can be a really effective point of reflection for women who want to get into leadership roles.

(00:35:46):
And the way I approach it is I'm just very curious. I wonder what is structural about technology that creates these things happen? What is cultural? What is external? What has happened to me or happens around me? What is internal? What do I bring into the room that doesn't serve me? And so I try to stay very curious. And then constant product thinker, what are the points of leverage I can use to move things not just forward for me, but for the industry broadly? How can I influence thinking? Where can I not? Where can I walk away from things?

(00:36:24):
And then as for the internal aspect of it, I think this is also a very powerful thing, which is I try to stay in an empowered space. I know my value. I have no time for imposter syndrome. It's not a constructive thing for me, but I do think knowing that, as I said earlier, the universe is bendable to your will. There are things we can change. I don't think these numbers are not tractable. And so my recommendation and what I'd love to say to the industry generally, to women in particular, is curiosity and empowerment have been my path to joy in this sometimes complicated industry. And I think there's a lot better we can do. There's a little bit of ways to go.

Lenny (00:37:10):
Is there a story that you could share if you're comfortable of just something you've gone through or been through that maybe people are like, "Oh, wow, I see what stuff she's dealing with or other women are dealing with that I had no sense of?"

Claire Vo (00:37:21):
I've been trying to wrap my head around this one, which is I consistently get asked if I'm technical enough. Not even if I'm technical enough. Let's put enough aside. If I'm technical. And it's fascinating to me because as a technical co-founder of my startup, I wrote code for the first 12 months solo. I led the engineering team there. That code is still in production in very large environments. I have run multi-hundred people, engineering teams for many years, and I spend my Saturdays and Sundays shipping code. This is what I do. And truly, the first question most people ask me is, "Oh, well you're not technical though. You're a product person."

(00:38:11):
And I've been really trying to unpack where that is coming from. It's hard for me to imagine somebody else that looks different, that has a different name, that has a different gender getting that question with my background. And so that's one of those things that has really been spinning my head. Again, it's not about imposter syndrome. I don't have anything to prove to people, but I am quite curious where that orientation comes from. And if it comes to somebody like me, who has really had some proven success, I know it's happening to other people, and I'm hoping that I can do something from my position to turn that a little bit.

Lenny (00:38:50):
And this connects to what you shared, the advice you had of just try to get curious about why it's happening, which is exactly what you just said. Is that just mostly to help you not get upset and frustrated? Let me just understand, why is this happening again and again?

Claire Vo (00:39:02):
One, I do think sitting in your power is very effective. And so curiosity means that I'm in control, and I do think I'm in control more than I'm not. That's one part of it is, I think. And the other thing is I think a lot of this is it's complicated. It's structural, it's cultural. It's what you see and what you don't see, not just in the workplace. It's what you see and don't see in media. Am I reading my 7-year-old and my 4-year-old books of, "My grandma's a software engineer?"

(00:39:35):
Books called the Mom Test, which I actually think is a great book, but it has this underlying presumption of who is technical, who's not, who understands things, who doesn't. And that all bubbles up into how individuals experience an industry that's driving tremendous economic growth here, where at the end of the day, it's about economic participation. It can be about individuals and aspirations, but it is also about economic participation.

(00:40:00):
The reason I'm curious about it is I do think it's complicated and I do think you can be successful, but I don't think we're being successful at the rates I would love to see. And I think we're missing a lot of innovation and a lot of economic growth by not having incredible, technical, capable women start companies and lead organizations. And so I think we're all missing out for that, and I'd love to see more of it.

Lenny (00:40:25):
And is there an answer to how do we do this better? Anything you think, hey, you've seen work to help get us past this?

Claire Vo (00:40:34):
I think normalize seeing it, so thanks for bringing me on this podcast, but I do think normalize seeing it is one of the simplest ways. If you close your eyes and imagine a software engineer, my dream is you imagine a diverse set of folks. You don't imagine a very specific art type. And so I do think you can't believe it unless you see it, and so the more that you can provide platforms for diverse voices to talk about their journey in technology, expose that there are leaders out there that come from different backgrounds, technically, culturally, all those things, the more the industry can imagine different types of leaders in different types of roles.

(00:41:17):
And so I just want to see it more. I want to invest more and raise the voices of female founders. I want to call out their amazing female CTOs out there, all those things. And I think if you can see it, you can start to unlock these very embedded concepts of who is and is not a technology leader who is and is not technical.

Lenny (00:41:40):
Awesome. I love that advice. It's something I try really hard to do with this podcast.

(00:41:44):
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(00:42:36):
I know you have a fun story about when you were very pregnant selling your startup to Optimizely. Can you share that story? I haven't actually heard the story.

Claire Vo (00:42:45):
Yeah, this was a fun one. Again, this is the universe is bendable to your will and lean into your power, which is, I had been running Experiment Engine, which was a platform for enterprises to run high scale experimentation programs. Not necessarily the underlying A/B testing technology, but all the stuff around hypothesis gathering, insights, aggregation, operations, keeping things on track. Because I really know, as you do, that high scale experimentation programs can be very impactful to businesses.

(00:43:19):
That being said, it was like a niche inside in industry, as opposed to a large TAM problem. And so I think we just fundamentally hit a TAM ceiling here. We had a great product for a great market that was very narrow. And three years, four years into running the company, I knew that to be true and I knew that we would be better served by being part of a larger organization, and one of those organizations could be a large testing company. And so I remember that was noodling on my mind, but we were also really trying to sell to enterprises.

(00:43:52):
And I heard that Microsoft, who was one of our biggest customers, was doing a experimentation day with Optimizely, and I knew Optimizely was a natural acquirer. And I knew I had to get into that room, so I called Microsoft and I said, "Hey, friend of Microsoft, I'm going to be up in Seattle seeing our other customer, very large Seattle company, this week, week of experimentation day. Could we stop by?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, sure." Well, then I went to other big Seattle companies and said, "Hey, other big Seattle company, I'm going to be up Microsoft at their experimentation day. Would you be..."

(00:44:34):
I got these two meetings to manifest against each other, and then I walked into that experimentation day and I eyeballed the CFO of Optimizely and I sat in front of him and started pulling up the product and coding at the same time. I was just like, "I'm going to sit in front of him in the row and I'm going to do this and we're going to have my screens." And then I went up and did a demo. And I'm not saying that's the thing that made it happen, but I will say very quickly after that, we became very close partners and ultimately they acquired me.

(00:45:06):
And I give this advice to founders because one of the things that, and founders and PMs, one of the things that I really hire for is scrappiness. I think you have to be able to do a lot with a little, and I think you have to know where you're getting and, come hell or high water, figure out a way to get there. And this was a very fun example of working my way into the right room, setting myself up for the success that I wanted, and having the backing, the good job, the great product, the outcomes to earn it. But you also have to get yourself in the room.

Lenny (00:45:39):
And how many months pregnant were you?

Claire Vo (00:45:44):
I was extremely pregnant. A ticking time bomb of a belly is a really good negotiation tactic in a deal. I think I remember when we were negotiating the final term sheet, I was 34 weeks pregnant, something like that, and they said, "Can you fly out to San Francisco?" I was in Austin at the time. And I said, "Literally, you can fly me out today and back tomorrow, and then I'm not allowed on planes." And that's how. It was very fun. It was fun, and what a happy acquisition. I can talk all day about how that was great. Great experience.

Lenny (00:46:11):
And I love it's another example of the phrase you've been coming back to of bending, I don't know if it's bending the world to your will.

Claire Vo (00:46:17):
Bending the universe towards your will.

Lenny (00:46:19):
The universe? Even bigger. I love it. It feels like a recurring theme here, is to take agency and control where your career and life is going. And that's such a good example of just finding a way into this room that would be very hard for someone to get into.

(00:46:33):
You've touched on the CTPO role that I haven't heard much about. And I know that this is a big topic for you, and I feel like there might be a trend happening here of combining engineering product. Can you just talk about this role and why you think it might be emerging?

Claire Vo (00:46:51):
Yeah, I get asked about it a lot because it's not super rare, but it's not super common either, and I think it could potentially be rising. And I'm using CPTO for short code of running product and engineering design functionally together. It's very different. I've done both. It's very different than a pure product or a VP product role.

(00:47:13):
And so first, I talked a little bit about how I got into this role. I do think you have to be technical to do a role like this. I think a lot of people look at my professional background and think that I use my broad leadership skills and leverage of a great SVP to keep engineering team going. But no, actually I spent quite a bit of time on the engineering side, because as somebody who is responsible for the business outcomes of the product, one of the best ways to drive value is having a highly performant engineering team that works on a scalable platform.

(00:47:45):
And so I spend a lot of time making sure that we're building the right architectural decisions, that our infrastructure meets the needs of our team, that our edge team is operating in a way that drives velocity. And I just don't think you can do that job if you don't understand how software gets built on a technical level. So I'm the kind of person that when we're doing a product review, I have the PRD up and GitHub up and I'm comparing both, because I think both sides matter.

(00:48:10):
I think the other thing that's different about this role is it's quite operational, and so you really have to know about operations and organization design. Edge teams are by nature much larger than product organizations. You just think about the classic ratios, there are more people in engineering than there are in product. And the talent challenges are significantly different in engineering, whether it's the high volume of recruiting, culture-shaped challenges are different. You have to really think about org design. And so you have to have a different level of mindset around organization design and operations when you're in a CPTO role.

(00:48:51):
You're on pager duty. You're getting paged at 1:00 AM if a service, if there's a Sub-Zero and it goes down. That is not what it's like to be a product leader. So you got to know what you're getting into and you have to be technical. And then the thing I would be remiss to say about this role is the P and the T get a lot of air time. Product and engineering get a lot of air time. Design data, these are such functional, very important organizations, and why these roles get... That's what the role is and how you could be good at it or whether it would be a fit for your skills.

(00:49:24):
The question of why have this kind of role, and I think there's two reasons. There's the obvious strategic reason of, they're all the same thing. They're all building capital P product, they're all builders, they're the same types of folks, they're all builders, and bringing them under one house allows you to optimize for the whole, as opposed to optimize for the function. And if you can find a leader that is effective at that, I think you can get a lot of value added. And honestly, the second thing is it provides a tremendous amount of leverage to the CEO in many ways. At the end of the day, R&D is a very expensive and complicated investment the company is making, and having a single person responsible for R&D investment at the executive level is quite important, especially when you're candidly spending a lot there.

(00:50:21):
And so I think it's those two things. It's, these are one team. There should be be no debates over what's best for product or what's best for engineering, what's best for design. It should be what is best for the organization at whole. What do our customers need and what do our business needs? And then it's the accountability candidly of this quite meaningful investment against business objectives and having a singularly responsible individual to care for that investment.

Lenny (00:50:46):
It sounds wonderful, having one person to deal with across all these functions.

Claire Vo (00:50:50):
It is and isn't. I'll just say, I've done both. I've been a CPO next to an SVP of Eng. I've run both together. Founders can play this role. And again, this is why I say you have to optimize around talent in your organization. If your CEO has the skills, bandwidth, et cetera, to do this, they can do this. You can keep the organization separate. They can hold that. If they have a different area of expertise, if they've never done that before, if it's just not working operationally, they have broader areas of focus, then bring it together under someone. I don't think there's a perfect organization structure. This has just been one that's worked well in the shape of organizations that need someone like me.

Lenny (00:51:33):
And along the same lines, designing an org around the person, I imagine there's not many very engineering background experience people that are also really good at product and can do design. I guess how deep do you need to be in each of these functions to be successful in this role? Because it feels really rare.

Claire Vo (00:51:51):
Start a company and then you have to do it, in some ways. I've worked for both and they've told me, I've worked for two, they go, "I'm not a founder, but I'm the CEO." And I go, "That's fine. I'm an operator, but I'm going to bring a founder mindset."

(00:52:08):
And so I think as a founder, especially early stage, you do all of this. You see how all of this is one person, because honestly sometimes it is one person, and sometimes that person is you. And so I do think working in a very small startup gives you the opportunity to experience a breadth of functional skills and develop a breadth of functional skills that can set you up for this kind of role much further down the line. I do think early stage startup experience is one of those shortcuts to getting visibility here.

(00:52:46):
I think the other thing is, again, I said this earlier, so many people get siloed into, "I'm a product manager, and so my job is this, but it's not that. And I can only do this, and if designs are needed, I am blocked and I will just wait." And I just give permission for people to make... We have a leadership principle inside our team that's like, "There are no lanes." Our lanes are dotted. They're not solid in that you can shift over and pencil out a design, an engineer can write a spec. All those things are fine. They're natural, they're normal, and I actually think they're quite healthy. And it's that kind of thinking that probably is going to breed the type of leaders that could do this type of role.

Lenny (00:53:29):
Awesome. It reminds me at GitLab. I just interviewed their head of product, or CPO, and they have a core value of, "Short toes." Don't worry about stepping on people's toes. Have short toes. Don't worry about people getting into your stuff. It's all good.

Claire Vo (00:53:43):
Yep.

Lenny (00:53:43):
Okay. You mentioned AI. Amazing segue to my next topic that I want to spend some time on. You built a tool called ChatPRD. My guess is it's the single most popular AI PM-specific tool out there, other than some big company's tool like, I don't know, Sprague or Figma or something like that. First of all, just what is ChatPRD, and then why did you build it?

Claire Vo (00:54:06):
Yeah. ChatPRD comes out of, again, pace setting. And I'll actually tell you the real genesis of ChatPRD, which is at a previous company we had a quite technical product we needed to build. We're scrappy and resource-constrained, and our platform PMs were working on something very important, but this was critical and we needed to get it done. And we didn't really have a platform technical PM to spec this thing out. And it was quite complicated.

(00:54:35):
And I raised my hand and I said, "I'll IC this. I think I know what we need." And between the beginning of the meeting and the end of the meeting, I had used ChatGPT and a prompt to come up with a very serviceable PRD spec for this very technical product. And I took that prompt and that long-running ChatGPT thread and crafted the Claire version of a product leader or product person that could, with really solid consistency, output product specs, give good feedback, build out plans, build out tracking mechanisms and goals.

(00:55:20):
And so while I say, "She may just be a prompt, but she is prompt," this was lovingly crafted over several months. And so when the GPT Store came out, for my team I just said, "Hey, you all know I've been writing PRDs with ChatGPT." I created a GPT and just gave it to my team. I was like, "Here, you can use this if you want it." And they really liked it, and other people started asking about it and I eventually ran into the monetization and access wall that is the GPT Store right now. And so I've also been having a lot of fun coding again, and so I thought, this is easy. We're just going to stand up a standalone app and wrap, come on, it's a wrapper, it started as wrapper, wrap some of these capabilities and just publish it and put a fairly reasonable price tag on it and see what happens.

(00:56:12):
And now, I have thousands of people using ChatPRD. Every day, people are creating dozens of specs and PRDs every month. It's everything from, "I'm an engineer on a team with too few PMs and I get blocked, so I'm going to build my own requirements," to, "I'm a solo founder and I need to put some structure on my thought for my team," to, "I'm a PM and this has saved me truly hours of work to get the basics of my product requirements done so I can spend time on the details." And then I've added on more functions and capabilities than the standalone app. It is my personal product copilot that I've released for the world.

Lenny (00:56:49):
Okay. First of all, where can people check this out? Is it chatprd.com?

Claire Vo (00:56:53):
.ai. Come on.

Lenny (00:56:54):
.ai, of course.

Claire Vo (00:56:54):
Yeah, chatprd.ai.

Lenny (00:56:58):
I saw some stuff about the country that has .ai is just making so much bank right now.

Claire Vo (00:57:01):
So much money.

Lenny (00:57:02):
All these domains.

(00:57:04):
Then in terms of the stack, just to be clear, so it started as a ChatGPT prompt, custom prompt, you evolved, then it became a GPT, a custom GPT, and now it's your own app that is using the OpenAI APIs behind-

Claire Vo (00:57:17):
It is, yeah. It's using the assistance APIs. And what's different about the standalone app versus the GPT is every person that uses the standalone app gets a customized assistant. It learns from their specific content. It learns from their role. It learns from their company. If you use the GPT version, you're not getting that customization. When you use the standalone app, you are getting that customization. And then I've layered on a couple of different capabilities. In addition to having the chat format, it will actually create the document for you and iterate on the actual doc for you, and then working on some additional tools and integrations in the future.

Lenny (00:57:55):
Okay, great. What are the most common use cases again? Just so people can get a sense of, "Oh, let me use this for these things."

Claire Vo (00:58:00):
Yeah, about 60% of people use it to put in an idea and get a PRD out. Just get the specs of what are my objectives and user goals, what are user stories, what is out of scope, walk through the UX. In our standard template, I have what's called a narrative, which is, how do you pitch this product? Which I feel like is a thing product managers miss a lot, which is how to position and pitch it, sequencing and milestones, measurements and goals, all those sorts of things.

(00:58:33):
Now, that's the out-of-the-box template. As I said, you can actually customize what your PRD template is in ChatPRD if you do something different or want something different for your company. About 60% of people are using it for that. 30% of people, I would say, are using it to put in a spec or a PRD or a strategy doc or a roadmap and improve it. And then the rest are using it to brainstorm ideas, internal PM work. How do I come up with a good agenda for X, Y, and Z? That kind of stuff.

Lenny (00:59:02):
Amazing. Okay, so I wrote a post recently sharing a bunch of examples of how people are using different GPT specifically at work, and I think it's spurred a lot of people to experiment with this stuff. If there's one tip that you could share for someone that's trying to build a GPT or their own custom app using APIs, any advice?

Claire Vo (00:59:24):
Prompt matters. We went through this whole cycle of prompt engineering is a thing, it's not really a thing, fine-tuning is... Prompt really does matter, and a good PM, I do competitive analysis. I use the same input and look at different GPT or ChatGPT. I look at the GPT Store version, I look at other PM tools that do this and I look at mine. I think mine is actually better.

(00:59:50):
And then I'm getting into a mode now where I may do some model experimentation and tuning behind the scenes, so it might not be OpenAI, it may be other things, but it matters. The instructions matter, the context matters for the quality of the output is something that I would say when building these kinds of products. I think the other thing is there is no solution right now for monetization. Knock on wood, open it and we'll figure it out. If I had more time, maybe I would create a platform out of what I've created for ChatGPT to let other people monetize their GPTs and add on capabilities. But it's not out of the box yet for folks. There's a lot of work that I had to do to get it from here to there.

Lenny (01:00:31):
Are you making real money with this thing? And is it an idea that this becomes the thing you do someday maybe long term?

Claire Vo (01:00:38):
My original goal, and I said this out on X, my original goal is I just want to buy a nice glass of wine a week. That was my goal. I could buy cases of wine now. This is very exciting for me. It's making what I would consider real money. Is it a venture scale thing? No. Does it need to be? No. I have a goal around my kids' education expenses. I would love for this to cover a little bit. I have a ambitious but not audacious goal for ChatPRD.

(01:01:13):
The other goal that I have, which is, let's put monetization aside, is this is my joy space, zone of genius joy space. And my goal with ChatPRD is it has to be a hundred percent fun for me. This is my hobby, so I'm not doing anything that makes it not fun. It is a pure bliss space for me. I get to code on the weekends, I get to do customer support at night, and I get to build things that I would use. I get to learn new technologies. I want to keep it in that space because it provides a lot of joy for me. Put money aside, I just want it to be fun.

Lenny (01:01:51):
Love that. Okay, so some people listening to this, especially PMs, may be like, "Claire, what the hell are you doing? Are you going to replace product managers in a year or two?" This connects to something I've just generally been thinking about and that's come up a bunch, is just over time, which skills and jobs of a product manager will be greatly enhanced by AI and which will be completely replaced by AI, if any, so that people can understand which skills they should be investing in and which maybe are less important.

(01:02:22):
I guess just broadly, do you have a sense of just here's skills that are going to continue to be incredibly important and AI will not take these skills and jobs off your plate? Versus, these are going to be the less important, AI will do these?

Claire Vo (01:02:36):
At the highest level, I tend to be very short-term pessimistic, although I'll frame that short-term pessimistic and very long-term optimistic. I am a big believer that technology has made society generally much more affluent, wealthier, happier, healthier. I am a big believer in technology and I am optimistic about its impact on the human race. There are lots of things that are not going well, but I really do believe that innovation and technology, I'm excited for my kid's future. I'm not afraid of it.

(01:03:11):
Now, that being said, I am of the mind excitedly that this is going to change stuff in companies incredibly quickly. And part of building ChatPRD is I hold myself to the bar as a technology leader, I need to be leading the league on understanding what this can disrupt, using these tools to make a better team, and actually shifting the size and shape of my organization in response to the technology around us. Is it going to eliminate PMs next year? Probably not. Are the ratios between PMs and other teams going to shift over time? Yes. Are the skills required going to shift? Yes. Could they shift much faster than we all anticipate? Probably. I think there's a lot of change coming and I want to be prepared for it.

(01:04:00):
Now, what do I think this replaces and what does it not replace? I was reflecting on this question and communication, lowercase C, I feel like is one of the places that's going to be replaced. And I call it lowercase C. It's the functional trading of information that allows other people to do jobs. I think that these language models and these tools are really good synthesizing information, putting together communication, and can coordinate who that communication goes to and get it out in many modalities of content.

(01:04:41):
And so I'm really thinking about the PM as the keeper of cross-functional relationships and communication is really, I think, potentially going to change. Now, but capital C communication of are you influential? Are you convincing? Are you bold? Can you get this system of humans to follow you down a path? That's, I think, going to be much harder to replace, and so I'm thinking about the edges of communication and where they'll change and what they won't.

Lenny (01:05:15):
That's really interesting. I did a little poll on Twitter asking people of between communication, execution, strategy, and product sense, which skills are most likely to be basically taken over by AI. And communication was number one, by far. I have a contrarian perspective. And strategy was the least voted. I feel like, so strategy work is essentially, "Here's everything we know about the world and competitors and the market and our advantages. Here's a plan to win in the market essentially." I feel like that's what AI is incredibly good at.

Claire Vo (01:05:49):
I agree with you. I totally agree with you. I think, and again this comes to synthesis, good decision-making, and communication, if you can synthesize, distill it into a plan and communicate that plan, I found these tools exceptional. Use ChatPRD and give it a try.

(01:06:09):
Now, I think it's the human aspect though of boldness, seeing the future in a way that a thing trained on priors cannot. Those things I still think, and then charisma and attracting all those things to actually make the thing happen are pretty hard to replicate, which is why I love using ChatPRD. I'm not going to come up with the most genius way to do data export for Snowflake for some... That is a solved area that we should just scaffold up. I should customize it to what we do, and then we should ship it. That is not a place where my magic skills as a human are going to impact.

(01:06:54):
But I don't think a lot of PMs see it that way. I think there's this real identity shift that's going to happen where PMs think that their value is coming from their ideas that they manifest into the world and how they individually manifest them. And I think we're going to shift to, are you building the right stuff? Are you building it quickly? And is it delivering? No matter what the tool chain is.

Lenny (01:07:19):
Yeah. I think your point about getting buy-in and getting everyone aligned, I don't know how an AI bot does that unless everybody's got their own little bot and they're all talking to each other.

Claire Vo (01:07:29):
They all just get along.

Lenny (01:07:30):
We're in. I'll [inaudible 01:07:32] this a little higher.

Claire Vo (01:07:32):
Yeah.

Lenny (01:07:33):
I actually made this list. I feel like this could be the entire podcast, but I made it a quick list of, "Here's the jobs of a PM." And it's interesting. I don't know if this is really a question, but it's just interesting to think about which of these will some ChatPRD maybe do in the future. What does the job feel? You're writing PRDS, you're setting goals, proposing a roadmap, aligning a team behind a roadmap, developing a strategy, developing a vision, communicating timelines, finding blockers, and unblocking people, getting buy-in from up on high, getting budget resources for your team, giving feedback on product and design. Those are just some of the day-to-day jobs. I'm so curious just which of these AI can actually just do and not have to worry about it.

Claire Vo (01:08:17):
I think a lot of them AI can do. And so the question is, which of them do you want to hand the keys to an AI tool? And which of them are going to be much more valuable as a tool that an individual or a team's intellect can use to do a better, faster, higher impact job?

(01:08:38):
Again, I believe in technology and I think this stuff, what's interesting about this moment right now is every week I see something that I would not have in a million years thought was possible three years ago. Every week, something new comes out where it just changes my mind of what's possible. I believe all of those are 80% good functionally tractable. The question is, is 80% good functionally tractable the best way to do that? Or can we take a certain type of person with a certain skill set backed by a purpose-built toolkit and make it 3X better, 4X better, 10X better? I think that's the more interesting question.

Lenny (01:09:16):
I think on the point of amazing things are happening every day, we had SpaceX launched the Starship and it was barely mentioned anywhere. We have the spaceship that could take us to Mars and, "Meh, we don't need to talk about that."

Claire Vo (01:09:31):
We get the kids up and stream it on YouTube.

Lenny (01:09:32):
Oh, that's awesome.

Claire Vo (01:09:33):
It's magic. We live in this magic time. I think it's so fascinating. But I agree, we're getting spoiled by innovation.

Lenny (01:09:41):
You said that there's this ratio that might shift with product managers, engineers. I'm curious which ratio, because engineers are also getting more efficient, and so it's interesting if the ratios will be consistent as engineers become more efficient, PMs get it more efficient.

Claire Vo (01:09:53):
I wonder if whole roles get eliminated and replaced, and then ratios aren't even the right way to think about things. There's the ratio of this PM role to this many, one PM to seven to 10 engineers or one EM to... There's those ratios.

(01:10:12):
I also think there's going to be this interesting shift of as a manager, as a leader, how you allocate budget against tools and people I also think is going to shift. And I saw something where somebody said that every role that they got asked to open, the team had to spend a week trying to automate it before they were allowed to open the JD. It's just this very interesting... In my mind people, think that's scary and it's going to reduce jobs. Yes, and I do think there's also potentially other jobs that open up that can become very interesting.

(01:10:45):
And so I don't know how it's going to pencil out. I really don't. What I do know is things are going to change and I, as a leader and a person that cares for people's long-term careers, want to be much more forward-thinking than close my eyes to what the possible maybe dramatic changes are in our industry. I'm thinking about it, I'm experimenting with things, and I'm hoping that in our team in LaunchDarkly we're leading from the front here as opposed to on our back foot.

Lenny (01:11:17):
I'm thinking many people listening here are like, "Okay, I need to get on top of this. I need to stay ahead. I want to follow Claire's lead." Is your advice simply create GPTs, play with ChatGPT? Is there anything else there to help people?

Claire Vo (01:11:29):
I also think PMs need to be thinking about building product skills particularly around these non-deterministic products. It's been [inaudible 01:11:40]. Part of why I built ChatPRD is not just to stress test how these sorts of things are going to change the product function. It's literally, this is a new type of product built by a new type of technology and it's moving very fast. And learning how to build these kinds of products, if you can do that, I just think back to when mobile happened, if you're a PM that jumped on mobile, you had the pick of the litter when it came to jobs in very interesting startups.

(01:12:11):
And so I think we're in the same moment here where, if you can ratchet down and specialize and learn a new technology, you actually can get into very interesting positions. Those are both of my motivations on ChatPRD, is understand how it impacts the function that I lead, but also understand how to build a great product with these underlying technologies that are just much different than the technologies that I personally built on before.

Lenny (01:12:37):
And so for someone, let's say, not super engineering-oriented, I guess how do you recommend people on your team explore this sort of thing? Is it [inaudible 01:12:46]?

Claire Vo (01:12:45):
Yeah. I do think studying products that are out there is quite interesting. I love this idea of doing outside-in product tear-downs. What is good about this? What is bad about this? How would I have written the PRD here? What would I be measuring? How would I think about error states? How would I think about if this is a great product, a good product, or an okay product? I do think doing that sort of crit on an external product can be a really accessible way to start to stress test your own skills around this and figure out where there are gaps.

(01:13:20):
That's one thing I think you can do. Two, I think there's a lot of no-code, low-code stuff you can play with. Even if you can't put your hands on keyboard and write code, you can certainly stitch together things and try some no-code tools. That's another way to do it. The other thing is find where it's fun. I think how fun is Midjourney? How fun are some of these more creative tools? And so find where there's something fun and build art out of it as a mechanism for learning. It doesn't always have to be commercially driven. It doesn't have to be part of work. It can just be find a space that you're personally interested in and play with what's out there.

Lenny (01:14:00):
Awesome. One last question about ChatPRD. With Copilot, there's all these stats. It's making engineers 50% more efficient, whatever percentage. Do you have any sense of efficiency gains so far with ChatPRD?

Claire Vo (01:14:14):
I have qualitative feedback from product managers who have used ChatPRD, who have said, "This has saved me dozens of hours I would've spent on writing documents." And another person said, "I am a single PM on a team that's growing and I don't think we're going to have to hire another PM now." There's the people, there's both the individual aspect and the hours aspect, which is it's helping individuals PMs get higher leverage across a broad engineering or building team, and that it's helping them spend their time more effectively.

Lenny (01:14:57):
Many people don't want to hear that they don't need to hire a PM. There's many people looking for jobs right now.

Claire Vo (01:14:59):
It's true, but we can't... I think we saw this in the last couple of years. Inefficiently hiring and building unsustainable costs into a company leads no one to success. And if that's a lesson that I can teach anybody, it's sustainability in organizations is the responsibility of a leader. Yes, I would love to give everybody positions. There are not positions to have. And the best I can do for the people in the team is be really responsible and really thoughtful about that because that helps me grow their careers and helps me sustain their careers long-term.

(01:15:41):
It's incredibly complicated, but also on the flip side, this is a very small startup. They can't afford another PM and they're extending their runway to build something transformational by not growing the team. And so, yes, people [inaudible 01:15:57] their teams and have these jobs and startups can't afford it, and they still have great things to do in the world.

Lenny (01:16:04):
Great answer. To start to wrap up our conversation, I have these two segments, Failure Corner and Contrarian Corner, and we can pick which corner you want to head to. Would you like to share a story of your career where you failed and something you learned from that? Or something you believe that most people don't believe? Which corner sounds more interesting?

Claire Vo (01:16:24):
I'll take Contrarian Corner.

Lenny (01:16:26):
Let's go for there.

Claire Vo (01:16:27):
Yep.

Lenny (01:16:28):
I need some sound effects for these corners. Do share.

Claire Vo (01:16:33):
I'm sharing this because you just released your podcast with Marty again. And I'm a sales-led product apologist unabashedly, which is, I think that it is okay to listen to the market and to be commercially oriented in products in ways that probably would make some folks in some types of product organizations squirm a little bit. And the reason why I believe this is I think there are tremendous businesses built on sales-led motions. And I disagree with the fact that that means you do not care for the craft or the experience of users. I think it can be the best of both worlds.

(01:17:19):
I love sales. I say if I was not in this role, put me on a quota and make me enterprise West. I love to sell, but I think product teams, this opposition we have industry-wide with sales-led I'm not convinced is healthy in every organization. And I was listening to the podcast and I think you all were talking about, you said, "SAP is like this. And who wants to be SAP?" Man alive. There are a lot of companies out there that would love to be SAP, now with a better product, with better experience, with more love from the industry maybe. But what a powerhouse company. And I think we as PMs turn our nose up to powerhouse companies too often because we want companies to be product-led, not sales-led.

Lenny (01:18:07):
Amazing. I'm going to not go deeper into this topic because I don't want to be speaking on behalf of Marty's perspective, but there's so much debate that came out of that episode and I love that it trickles to more opinions being shared about ways product can work.

(01:18:20):
I guess, just to understand your takeaway here, is sales-led companies can be awesome. They can build amazing businesses, and it can be great to be a PM at a company like that.

Claire Vo (01:18:27):
Yeah, and they can build great products.

Lenny (01:18:30):
Great. Claire, is there anything else that you want to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

Claire Vo (01:18:39):
I will say, because we've been talking a lot about AI and replacing PMs, I love to sell. I love to help people get jobs, so if there are ways that I can help people find great fit companies, it's one of the things that I get a lot of energy out of. I just want to say that in the world. It's something that sparks a lot of joy. I get a lot of it inbound, "Can you help me get in here? Can you help me get there?" But if there is a tractable way that I can help you get to a connected to a company or a role that you think is great for you, that's fun for me and I'm totally open to it.

Lenny (01:19:09):
How would people reach out to you to try to help you get them [inaudible 01:19:13]?

Claire Vo (01:19:15):
I am, of course, on LinkedIn. I'm on X at ClaireVo, all one word. And then if you really want to go into the archives, I have a very fabulous TikTok where I'm ChiefProductOfficer. It's all one word.

Lenny (01:19:27):
Amazing. We'll link to all these in the show notes. And we will refresh these two facts at the end of the podcast anyway, because I always ask this anyway. Before we do that, welcome to our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?

Claire Vo (01:19:28):
I am so ready.

Lenny (01:19:41):
Okay. First question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

Claire Vo (01:19:46):
High Growth Handbook I love, and I like Scaling People. These are two books that the reason why I recommend them to people is because they have solid playbook answers to 80%, 90% of everyday leadership scaling people questions. And so they're just great reference books for what I think great leadership inside startups can look like, and they solve some of the things that you don't need to solve novel-ly. And then one on the fiction side that I've been recommending is Circe, which is a retelling of Circe's story from her perspective. It's a great read, and everybody I've recommended it to really loves it.

Lenny (01:20:28):
From Game of Thrones?

Claire Vo (01:20:31):
No, Circe from the Odyssey. Odysseus [inaudible 01:20:34]. She turns men into pigs.

Lenny (01:20:36):
[inaudible 01:20:36] lack of culture.

Claire Vo (01:20:37):
It's great. My kids are very into Greek mythology, so this is me meeting them on my side.

Lenny (01:20:42):
Amazing. The first two books are both Straight Press. Shout out to Straight Press.

Claire Vo (01:20:46):
Yeah, Straight Press.

Lenny (01:20:47):
And I have both books in the back there, and my laptop's actually sitting on Scaling People.

(01:20:52):
Next question. What is a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?

Claire Vo (01:20:57):
I have kids, so I don't get to go see movies. Movies are, that's an adventure. It's basically a vacation. I saw Poor Things, which if you like capital W weird capital A art, highly recommend Poor Things. The show that I recommend to people, I love Mythic Quest. Everybody references Silicon Valley, but Mythic Quest gets at some of, I was in gaming once, gets at some of my experiences in the technology organizations. It's got a technical female lead and think it's quite funny. I like Mythic Quest.

Lenny (01:21:31):
Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates?

Claire Vo (01:21:31):
I like to ask candidates how they would improve our business model. I think so many PMs come in with a point of view of the product and the target market but don't actually understand the underlying mechanisms of how we make money and what our unit economics are and how that could be improved. And the candidates that do come in and have a strong point of view on business model often are pretty successful in our organization.

Lenny (01:21:55):
And what do you look for in a good answer that's, "Oh wow, this candidate's great?"

Claire Vo (01:21:59):
It's thinking along the chain of value from how do we identify people in the market? What does our pricing model look like? What could they hypothesize our underlying unit economics or cogs are? And then where are their points of leverage along that whole funnel? It's really, do they have a mental model for thinking about a business model? Have they thought at all about how we make money, either top line or margin? And then can they identify places where they might improve it?

Lenny (01:22:28):
Awesome. Basically understanding the business really well. Great.

(01:22:30):
Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really like?

Claire Vo (01:22:36):
Okay, I'm going to make you laugh because you've gotten all these cars, right?

Lenny (01:22:40):
Yeah, I have such expensive cars.

Claire Vo (01:22:42):
You've got expensive cars. It's not new, I love my minivan. I am a big fan of my minivan. As my friend says, "It's like driving around your living room." And when you have two kids, you know what I want to do? I just want to drive around my living room, Bluey included. And so no Rivian, no Mercedes-Benz, but I really love my Pacifica.

Lenny (01:23:06):
Pacifica? Okay, I was going to ask.

Claire Vo (01:23:07):
But the actual car product that I really love, I love Waymo. We're in San Francisco, we've got these autonomous vehicles. It is, top to bottom, just a lovely product experience from the app to when it shows up, the sound design is great, the cars are comfortable, the displays in the car are great. It is, now every time a tourist comes in, a friend comes in to visit San Francisco, I make them take a round-trip ride in a robot car. And then even I've had a customer service experience with the Waymo team where my friend left an iPhone and [inaudible 01:23:44] and customer experience was great, 24-hour service. Top to bottom, great product design, great service design.

Lenny (01:23:53):
I just got into Waymo actually in the wait list, and so I'm excited to actually try it. I was actually treated as press early on to ride in a Waymo with a person from the company, just to experience it. And then I never got access to it after. Now, I finally can try it.

Claire Vo (01:24:08):
Enjoy. It's so nice. It's my preferred mode of travel.

Lenny (01:24:12):
The future. We've talked about a lot of ways the world is changing. That's another great example.

(01:24:18):
Two questions to go. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family they find useful in work or in life?

Claire Vo (01:24:26):
Fast beats right. Every time when debating between, do I noodle this for a thousand years and try to come to the perfect solution or do I make a decision and get executing and direction I have conviction on, I consistently see and believe that fast at the end of the day, wins. Fast beats right.

Lenny (01:24:51):
Final question. You mentioned TikTok. You put a bunch of awesome content out on TikTok. Any advice, slash is there a tip you could share with someone that is trying to be successful on TikTok from your experience?

Claire Vo (01:25:03):
I've been neglecting my TikTok for a little bit with new job and winter with sick kids. This is my advice, and I think you know this, consistency drives audience growth, which is, when I was on TikTok posting every day, you would get followers and engagement and the algorithm would bless you. And when you don't, you don't. I think consistency in almost all things wins.

(01:25:27):
The other thing that I think is a really good advice for any quote-unquote creator of whatever scale, of whatever ambition, is I think thinking about content creation as documentation, not creative generation is really helpful. I just like to talk about what I think about at work and I like to, an interesting meeting or interesting interaction, document why I thought that was interesting or what could be done better. And that becomes the basis of a very natural flow of content for me. It's a tactic that's worked really well for me and helps me do stuff in my free time.

Lenny (01:26:00):
Amazing. It might be time to start exploring Instagram also with all this TikTok news.

Claire Vo (01:26:05):
I know. Yep.

Lenny (01:26:06):
Claire, before we started this podcast, I asked you what your goal for this was, and it was to be helpful to people. I think we've 100% done that in so many different ways. Thank you again so much for being here.

(01:26:16):
Two final questions. We already covered these, but just to refresh people's memories, where can people find you online if they want to reach out? And then how can listeners be useful to you?

Claire Vo (01:26:24):
LinkedIn, X, I'm ClaireVo, all one word. And then on TikTok, get me back into it. Give me a follow, maybe I'll start posting some of my excellent content. But it's @ChiefProductOfficer.

Lenny (01:26:37):
Awesome. And then how can people be useful to you?

Claire Vo (01:26:41):
Help each other. That's what I want the most, which is I do really see, it is a tough time in tech right now and there are a lot of people looking for jobs. One, I think help each other. And then the other thing that I really, if I could ask your audience anything, is if you have a job where your job is typing into an internet box to create products out of nothing, really acknowledge the privilege and joy of that job and try to have some fun because a lot of people want to sit where you're sitting. Have fun. Appreciate what you have. Enjoy it. Enjoy each other.

Lenny (01:27:13):
Great and important advice to leave people with. Claire, thank you so much for being here.

Claire Vo (01:27:13):
Thank you.

Lenny (01:27:18):
Bye, everyone.

(01:27:21):
Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.