Making an impact through authenticity and curiosity | Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG)

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00):
Boz, the CTO of Meta, said something about you. "Working with Ami, she could have the most profound disagreement in the world and she would respond, fascinating, you have to tell me more why you think that."

Ami Vora (00:00:09):
I really enjoy being right and then it turns out in the working world, that did not serve me so great. I think the hard part is sublimating your ego a little bit and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:19):
I love this very tactical piece of advice when you're trying to come up with a metaphor or analogy, think about what you want your users to feel when you're using the product.

Ami Vora (00:00:27):
If we all agree that the feeling of something should be, I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday, then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:36):
There's also this metaphor about the hill climb.

Ami Vora (00:00:38):
For me, the hill climb is all about the difference between a local optimum and a global optimum. You're standing on top of the hill, you're looking down, you can see rolling hills, the sheep, the grass, whatever, but then, way off in the distance you can see a mountain. And the thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:59):
Today, my guest is Ami Vora. Ami is Chief Product Officer at Faire, which connects independent retailers and brands around the world, and I believe is the most successful and biggest B2B marketplace startup out there. Prior to Faire, Ami was employee 150 at Facebook, where she launched the first Facebook developer platform and was later head of product for the $55 billion global Facebook ads business. She also oversaw the introduction of ads on the Instagram platform and most recently, she led product and design for the largest messaging app in the world, WhatsApp.

(00:01:34):
In our conversation we cover a lot of ground, including building your strategy skills, how to disagree with people skillfully, being a successful woman in tech, using metaphors and imagery to rally your team and get your point across, setting up effective goals, plus a bunch of jokes in the lightning round that you don't want to miss. This was a really special and authentic conversation that I'm very excited to bring to you. With that, I bring you, Ami Vora.

(00:02:03):
Ami, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Ami Vora (00:02:06):
Oh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:02:08):
So, when I asked you about your goal for our conversation today, you said the most amazing thing, which I love. You said that your goal is to be as authentic as possible and to show that people can be pretty messy and imperfect at times, yet still be very successful. I love that so much. Let's definitely try to do this. Is there anything else you want to add on that?

Ami Vora (00:02:28):
Yeah, I mean, maybe I'll just say a couple more words on that. Actually, I feel like when I was coming up, when I looked at people who were successful, they seemed to have everything figured out, especially the women. They were all super women, where they respond to every email in 10 seconds, they didn't seem to sleep, they always wore high heels. They were just perfect and I was just like, oh, I guess I'm never going to be successful. That is not me. I love to sleep, I waste time doing absurd things all the time.

(00:03:00):
And I'll tell you how glamorous my lifestyle is, I'm currently working out of my bathroom. I'm talking to you from my bathroom, which is where I work from because I love my house, it's a great house, wasn't meant for work from home, three kids, two parents remote work, and it was just the place with the most closing doors between me and my children when the pandemic started. And so it just took me a while to realize that actually, it's all fine. No one's got it fully figured out, you never know how someone else is living. Most of us are winging it and learning as we're going and learning through trial and error and it's all normal. It's all fine and I can do it and you can do it, and everyone.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:03:43):
I so love hearing this. This is something people often want to hear more of on this podcast, because there's all these stories of here's all these successes, here's all these things I did and everything, it just always seems to work out. And we try to, we have this failure corner on the podcast where people share story failure. So I love just setting that frame for this conversation of just super being real and being clear that there's a lot of things that go wrong behind the scenes that people often don't hear about.

Ami Vora (00:04:08):
I for a long time felt like I was held back because I don't have a plan, but I realized that probably the most important thing is to just acknowledge that that is true for me. That I'm not going to be a person with a plan, and actually the thing that has consistently served me is to do the thing that feels right, go to the place that feels like home, work with the people who feel like my friends. Just work where when I put on the code of the job, I feel like, oh, this is a place where I could really be lucky, I could be creative, I'm in the right spot, as opposed to feeling like, oh, there is an end state that I know of and I'm just going to have to work my way to that end state. Whenever I get in that zone of, there's only one outcome and I just have to get there, I'm not my best. I'm not bringing the creativity and the luck and the excitement in the same way.

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(00:05:34):
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(00:07:55):
Let's actually spend some more time here. I wasn't planning to go here yet, but this is really great and important advice. I've just, basically you're saying that a lot of your success has come from following people that are awesome. Can you just talk more about that, just what it is you've followed and seen that has helped you land in places that have worked out so well, because clearly you've done incredibly well.

Ami Vora (00:08:14):
I mean, I think a lot of us are just like, you have a spreadsheet in your head of the axes and certainly when you're choosing between jobs, for me it feels like, oh man, the rest of my career hangs in the balance of making the exact right decision and getting the exact right job. And you work through all of this spreadsheet mass of, if I took this job, here's what it would do for me, here's where I'd be in five years, etc. And I have that engine in my head also, but what I try to do is work through the spreadsheets and then tear it up because none of that stuff is actually going to determine how good I am at the job. The thing that'll determine... In my track record, the thing that has determined it is when I walk through the doors, do I feel like I'm lucky to be there?

(00:09:03):
So for me, it's actually a lot more emotional. I try to just put on the coat of the job. When I wake up in the morning, I'm like, what would it be like if I were doing this job? What would I think about on my commute? Who would I have lunch with? Do I like them? What problems am I going to solve today? And that gives me an emotional response, which is just much more telling than the spreadsheets of, here's where I'm going to be in five years.

(00:09:31):
And for me, the thing that has led me to the places where I do my best work is a feeling of being at home, which is all about trust and trust with the people around me. Can I walk through and feel like these people are going to have my back, they're going to let me take risks, I'm going to enjoy spending time with them? And that's where I feel like I've always just been able to try more things and do better because a big, trust is a big unlock for me.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:09:56):
I love this metaphor of putting on the coat of the job, of just feeling out what it would be to work there. I imagine that was something that you did before you joined Faire, which I want to talk about, but let me transition a bit to talking about Meta and specifically, Boz. The CTO of Meta was on this podcast a few months ago and he said something about you that I want to read.

Ami Vora (00:10:17):
Oh, kind.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:10:18):
Okay, so you've heard what he said about you?

Ami Vora (00:10:21):
[inaudible 00:10:21].

Lenny Rachitsky (00:10:20):
Okay, cool. So let me read this and then I want to learn from you how to do this. So here's what he said. "Working with Ami, it was like watching an alien because she could have the most profound disagreement in the world with somebody and they would say something that she thought was not just wrong, but crazy wrong, and she would respond, 'Fascinating, you have to tell me more why you think that.' And she meant it from the core of her being. She saw this schism and rather than reacting as if it was a threat, she reacted with the most genuine and profound curiosity. I just watched it absolutely tear down walls between points of view. Embracing curiosity in those moments of challenges completely changed my life and I owe that to Ami Vora."

Ami Vora (00:10:58):
Oh man, I love Boz, what a great guy, and so kind of him to say that. I mean, I will say that this did not come naturally to me. I really enjoy being right, I love to be right. I think most of us love being right, and at least in my childhood, part of my identity was built on being the person who was right and being the person who knew everything.

(00:11:22):
And then it turns out that in the working world, that did not serve me so great, it wasn't great to walk into things and be like, all y'all are wrong, I am the only answer, everyone please to listen to me and stop talking. And what really happened was that someone pointed out to me that not only... One of my old managers pointed out to me that not only was I spending a lot of energy trying to think through every possible thing by myself so I could be totally right, I was often not really coming to the right answer. Other people have a bunch of information that I do not have. And so I'm just ignoring that, I was letting my ego overtake my desire to get to the best outcome, which is just, that's a silly trade off and an unnecessary one.

(00:12:12):
The thing that changed there is me just saying it's more important for us to get to the outcome and I very selfishly just like to learn more things. And so by deciding that I already knew everything, I was cutting myself off from learning the things that other people were really good at and it's so easy to just open the door instead and say like, hey, you seem to know something that I don't know yet. Why not tell me about it? I'm going to get better. We'll probably come to the right outcome. Maybe you'll have a better time. Why not?

(00:12:45):
And so it was a little bit just accidental evolution in that direction. But it's made work and life so much more interesting to just be like, hey, what does this person know that I don't know yet? It means that every meeting you walk into, you're probably not going to get bored and I get bored a lot, but if you assume that every person there knows something that you don't know, then it's not just wait to get to the right answer, it's like, discover the thing that they know that you don't know and it becomes just a little bit of uncovering.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:13:18):
For people that want to learn to be good at this the way you are, a couple things that I take away from the historian and the way you're talking about this is, one is there's an enthusiasm of, I disagree with you, but I want you to know I really care about what you think. So there's an energy of like, please tell me what I'm missing. There's also this assumption that a lot of disagreement is rooted in, we just have different information, so tell me what I'm missing. Can you talk a bit about just how to, what you've learned about actually do this well?

Ami Vora (00:13:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think the hard part is just sublimating your ego a little bit and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right. And I think all of growth is a battle with yourself, but this is one of the hardest ones because we all want to be right, we all want to protect ourselves and it served us, many of us for so long to be right. I just try to think about the feedback loop of, I think all of life is feedback loops, so I just started to think about the feedback loop I'm creating of like, I was curious about something. I learned something new, we got for a better outcome. Probably the other person felt better as well as I felt better. It's all positive feedback and you do that a couple of times and the positive feedback far outweighs the desire to be right because now we're more right, we're more right together. And so just building that as a practice of just noticing how much better things can get when you can be open to them, has been really fun.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:14:43):
What do you think of this phrase that he used that he remembers? Is that a phrase that you find useful? Just fascinating, you have to tell me more why you think that.

Ami Vora (00:14:52):
I do think that is a word that I say a lot. I do say that a lot, because it's true, it's fascinating that someone to look at the same movie that I was looking at and come away with a totally different understanding of the plot. I could sit in the same meeting as other people and they would leave with just a different retelling of what happened, and that to me is fascinating. Isn't that surprising, that we can all see the same, what we think are the same facts and walk away with a totally different narrative? And when you really go deep into that and you just understand how people see the world, and that is helpful. I'm curious about things, I like to know more things, and so that just helps me know more things.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:15:36):
I feel like the hardest part of this for people is you hear someone say something, say, okay, so our mutual friend, Dan Hockenmaier, he's in a meeting and he just says something that you are just like, no, because he's got influence. He's a big deal at Faire. Most people have this visceral reaction of like, oh no, I really don't think that's a good idea. Is there something you've learned about controlling that bodily reaction of like, oh, and then just being positive about it?

Ami Vora (00:16:00):
Yeah, I do think it is just that feedback loop. It's not like I don't have the visceral reaction, it's just that instead of interpreting it as this is a visceral reaction, I got to shut something down, it's like, this is a visceral reaction and it's a chance to learn more. Just reinterpreting some of the feelings in ways that are more about opening than about closing stuff down.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:16:23):
Got it, so it's kind of like a thinking you do of like, okay, hey, let me frame this and think about this [inaudible 00:16:28].

Ami Vora (00:16:28):
For me the most important thing is just taking a pause. I think when you just take a pause, your body calms down, your mind gets a chance to breathe a little bit, and then your response is going to be better, but you got to take the pause because the immediate visceral reaction, is not always... It's going to be primal, it's going to be protective. It's just when you take a pause you're like, this is all fine, let's just learn.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:16:52):
I feel like more people are going to start using this phrase, fascinating.

Ami Vora (00:16:55):
Fascinating.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:16:56):
When they hear something [inaudible 00:16:58].

Ami Vora (00:16:57):
It's kind of my tagline. There were a few years where I had to be careful about not saying it because whenever I said it, people would be like, she disagrees. So I've had to use a thesaurus and expand my words I use.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:17:12):
No, that's such a good word. Maybe we'll make that the title of this episode.

Ami Vora (00:17:12):
Totally.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:17:16):
What a great title that would be. So we've been talking a bit about the bodily reaction to stuff and our lizard brain almost, reacting to things. It reminds me of this metaphor that you called the dinosaur brain and how it applies to product reviews. Talk about what that is.

Ami Vora (00:17:31):
Okay, so a lot of people on my team, they're coming in to do product reviews and they're worried about it. They're stressed out, they don't exactly know what to show, and the normal temptation is just to show as much information as possible because that way you come in and you think, hey, the people in this room are super smart. I'll show them the information, they will come to the right conclusions. They'll probably make a better decision than I'm going to make. So my job is to catalog the information and present it.

(00:17:59):
And one of the first things that I talk to people about is, okay, for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to put myself in the capitally executive bucket because that makes what I'm about to say less offensive. Assume that executives have a little tiny dinosaur brain. We all have a little brontosaurus brain and we can really only hold three facts at the same time. We will never be able to go deep in the way that you are able to do on everything that crosses our desk. And so the best service you can do is actually do the work of making a recommendation. That's the way we're going to be complimentary. The breadth that I normally have to look across means that I'm going to be better at things like pattern matching or giving you more context or telling you stuff that's happening in the company or the industry. But what I'm not going to be better at is looking at all the information that you looked at and coming up with a meaningful outcome. That's what you're going to do and my little dinosaur brain is going to be like, okay, that sounds like a very reasonable pattern, I've seen other patterns that look like this. Okay, that sounds like an outcome, however, it conflicts with this outcome over here. I can tell you about that. Does that make sense?

Lenny Rachitsky (00:19:17):
Yeah, and I love that you put yourself in that bucket. You have a dinosaur brain also, it's not other people.

Ami Vora (00:19:22):
It's a pretty bad, bad look, but it's really true. As you get more breadth, you are less and less able to go deep on everything that deserves going deep and you just end up doing a different service than the people on your team, and recognizing that as complimentary has been really helpful.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:19:38):
You have this phrase, my manager owns context, I own the recommendation. Kind of along the same lines?

Ami Vora (00:19:42):
Exactly, very similar. And I think the thing that was helpful for me there is that really unlocked what I was looking for from my managers because otherwise I wanted them to be exactly like me. If I assume that I need to bring them information and then they would come to the same conclusion that I would come to, that's very narrow. They have to be able to look at the exact same information and process it in the same way and come out with the same idea. Whereas if what they're doing is complimentary to me, then I can learn from everyone. They're going to just have a different view, they're going to have new information that I don't have, and it gives me a lot more space to take accountability.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:20:20):
Is there any other advice that you could share along these lines of just product reviews? So, the big takeaway here is just keep it simple and have a recommendation.

Ami Vora (00:20:30):
Keep it simple, have a recommendation. I also think that, I think we misuse product reviews sometimes as ways to get decisions and actually, they should be ways to calibrate on principles. So what you don't want is to come to a product review for every single that you want to make. Instead, what you want is to come to a product review with one decision, but the goal of that decision is to walk out with principles about how to make these decisions in the future so that you don't have to come to product review, but you still have this consistent and coherent product that you're building.

(00:21:04):
And so I think when you flip the frame of reviews to being less about, okay, I'm going to bring this information to an exec, my manager, whoever, and they're going to decide every piece, you're not actually building that much more capacity in the system. You're getting fast decision making, but you're not changing who can make really good decisions. And I think you always want to change the org to constantly make better decisions, and a way to do that is when you bring these sorts of questions, what you talk about is, why did you make this decision? What are the trade-offs you have in mind? Who are you optimizing for? What timeline are you thinking about? What's the risk level we're willing to tolerate? And then you don't have to come back. You have enough information that you can take those principles and run with them.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:21:51):
Is there a framework or a process you use for product reviews that might be helpful for people to hear? Just like a agenda or a way of thinking about just how to set up a product review for success? Because a lot of people are trying to set these up at their companies and they're like, I don't know if we're doing this optimally.

Ami Vora (00:22:05):
Yeah, I think everyone's got... I think there's so many different takes on frameworks. I don't have a single system. I mean, actually I think Boz has written about a bunch of this, and I probably most agree with him. Where there's different kinds of product reviews, it's like, what are you trying to solve? What's the timeline on which you're thinking about for these? Is it a philosophy? Is it a strategic shift? Is it a day-to-day product decision? And then keeping it extremely short and pointed and then making sure you walk away with principles, not answers.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:22:36):
I think there's a lot of nuance and importance there of what you just said, which is start with the problem you're solving. What are we trying to do here? And the timeline, I think that's also really useful and important for people to hear.

Ami Vora (00:22:47):
I think the temptation is always to err toward writing more, and what I always really recommend people do is write whatever you need to write and then cut out almost all of it. What you really want to bring to any forum, whether it's a product review or a written inform or anything else, is the minimal amount of information that you need to make a clean recommendation because then you are forced to be opinionated. Otherwise, the opinion can get lost in all of this information. You can hide behind, well, all of these analyses seem to suggest, and instead you should probably just say, looked at all the data, there's three analyses that suggest this. There's one that suggests that, we think that one is inaccurate or worth taking the risk on. Let's go. Any objections? Let me know. Any new context? Let me know. That really forces you to deeply understand and take an opinion on the material.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:23:43):
Final question, who do you like to invite to these product reviews and your thoughts, rules, policy?

Ami Vora (00:23:50):
Yeah, I mean I do think that usually fewer people is better. It leads to a sense of being informal and that is really useful because it lowers the bar on how complete or strong these conversations are and I'd rather have a less formal conversation faster than a formal conversation and lose three weeks in the process when we could have been building. I think it needs to be cross-functional. I think one of the things you want is cross-functional accountability. So we want it cross-functional at the leadership level and cross-functional at the team presenting level. And I think those are normally the groups.

(00:24:25):
I think the thing that gets hard is you often cut out the middle, where if it's a working team presenting to the senior leaders on something important, it's really hard because it means people's managers are not in the room and can't help the conversation or other things. And so in order to do that, you have to really have a bunch of implicit trust inside the team that everyone will get the context later, that everyone's going to be kind to everyone else and you don't need a ton of air cover, and that the managers trust their team to present in the best possible way.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:25:02):
That is always a stressful place for a manager to be, where their success is riding in that meeting and they're not there and they-

Ami Vora (00:25:07):
It's so stressful, it's so stressful. I think anything you do to make it less stressful is useful. But then there've also been times in my career where I would keep the room itself small, but because we were all trying to calibrate on specific principles, I would record or broadcast the reading to anyone who wanted to see it, just so they could all see the principles by which we were decision-making and get calibrated on that.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:25:32):
So through your career you've transitioned from being the person pitching the products and being reviewed to the person reviewing and being on the other side. Is there anything being on this side of it that you think is helpful for people earlier in their career to know about that experience, from your angle now?

Ami Vora (00:25:53):
I mean, I think for what it's worth, I think I still do a fair amount of product pitching in the past few years because there's always someone else to convince.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:25:59):
That's true.

Ami Vora (00:26:01):
Especially if you want to do something dramatically different. Really, I think the biggest service for people who are starting out a little earlier is that point around bringing the recommendation, really having the opinion and standing behind it with conviction and doing what they need to do to build that conviction for themselves.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:26:22):
Awesome. You've done this a number of times already in this conversation, and so I want to spend a little time here, which is using metaphors and imagery to make your point and get people to understand what you're trying to say. So you have this code of putting on the coat of the job and this dinosaur brain, and so someone told me that this is just a skill you have where you use metaphor and imagery to rally a team, get your point across, get people to understand what you're trying to say. There's also this metaphor, someone told me I need to ask you about the hill climb metaphor. Does that ring a bell?

Ami Vora (00:26:52):
Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:26:53):
Okay, what is that all about?

Ami Vora (00:26:55):
For me, the hill climb is all about the difference between the local optimum and a global optimum. That sounds very abstract, but I think a lot of the time when we're doing our job, when we're doing life stuff, whatever you're doing, you try to just get better and better and you optimize your current system and then you feel really good about it, and that is great. You're standing on top of the hill, you're looking down, you can see the, I don't know, rolling hills, the sheep, the grass, whatever. But then way off from the distance you can see a mountain, one that's even higher than you can't even see the top of it, and you have to decide, are you going to take the risk of climbing down your hill, crossing an unknown chasm, and then climbing back up, just to get to the same level you started at with more climbing to do to get to that summit? And that is really hard.

(00:27:51):
I'm thinking of things like, maybe the first time I saw this was like a lot of companies were really good at desktop and you could see the mobile mountain way out over there, but to get there you had to really make a lot of trade-offs in your core desktop business that you were not totally sure were going to pay off when you made it to the mobile mountain, and you had to do a ton of work. You had to fundamentally rewire a lot of what you're doing without a guarantee that you're going to get there. I mean, you can see it in life when you think about new jobs or new moves or new relationships, anything that you think about. You are giving up something that is working pretty well without knowing whether you're going to make it to the top of that next mountain. And that's been really helpful to me just to place where I am on different things, where you get the inkling that there is a much better way to do this, there really is.

(00:28:48):
Is it going to be worth going down into the valley, climbing up, keeping climbing? Is that going to be worth it? Most of the time the answer is yes, but it's helpful for me to know, boy, this feels like a slog. It is supposed to? Because I'm still in the valley and the thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like. When you're on top of it and you're like, this is great, it was absolutely worth it. My life is better in these ways, we're able to solve these problems in these ways. It was worth it.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:29:19):
I love that. It feels like a big value of the metaphor, which I love is that to set expectations, it's going to be really hard for a little bit or we will slow down what we're trying to do now, but the idea is there's a bigger hill and a bigger mountain.

Ami Vora (00:29:32):
It's a bigger hill and it's worth it.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:29:34):
On this kind of broader idea of metaphors and imagery, is there something there that you've learned of just like, this works really well, I'm going to invest in becoming better at this, or is this something that's come natural to you? Anything you can share about that skill and approach?

Ami Vora (00:29:46):
I think this one came from, I worked for a manager, his name was Eric Antino, and he was just a master of the metaphor and analogies. And so whenever I would bring him something, he would be like, how is this product going to make you feel, and when is the last time that you felt this way? And you can say, oh, I felt this way when I was hanging with my friends in Dolores Park and he'd be like, cool, tell me what it feels like, why that's the analogy, what ramifications come out of that?

(00:30:18):
And one thing I like to do is try to build an emulator for different people in my head, because I've just had the good fortune of working with an amazing number of very different leaders, and so he's one of the people I tried to build an emulator for where I'd be like, okay, I see this thing. I don't know how to solve this problem. How would Eric describe this? I've tried to build one for Boz, which is all about principle of decision making and principle of trade-offs. There's a few other people where I'm like, I don't know how to solve this problem. Can I load this other person into my head and how would they approach it? And that gives me a fresh lens on it.

(00:30:55):
And I really like metaphors and analogies because I think especially as you scale a team, narrative becomes increasingly important. Narrative can carry so much weight and water where otherwise it's similar to the product review point, where either you can tell everybody exactly what to do at every point or you can create a story that we all agree on. And when we all agree on that story, people just know better what to do. If we all agree that the feeling of something should be, I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday. You know what the iconography, the designers know what iconography should look like. You know what the communication and join pattern should look like. You're not going to build something cold and corporate, you're not going to build something strobe light, you're not going to build something flashy, but you don't have to go and make all those individual decisions. You can buy into the same story and then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:31:56):
This is such a powerful and important skill. Is there an example that comes to mind where you did this really well, say at WhatsApp or Facebook of the story that carried a lot of water for you and the team?

Ami Vora (00:32:08):
Yeah, I mean I think the product metaphor we arrived at for WhatsApp was face-to-face communication. Our goal there was to make it so that every person in the world could feel connected to the people they cared most about, even when they were separate, even they're distant geographically for whatever reason, we were always going to be apart from the people you cared about. And we really had to build something that would work for literally everyone in the world. People who are carrying these high-end devices in western markets who are very tech comfortable and savvy, and people in the low end markets who were carrying these low end devices, they weren't that familiar with technology, it was maybe their first time online. We had to build something that worked for everyone.

(00:32:57):
And the most universal form of communication is face-to-face. When you talk to someone face-to-face, you're not thinking, how do I present? What tool do I have to learn? You just open your mouth and words come out, and that's the feeling that we wanted to create. And that involved a lot of the app stepping back from communication, creating spaces that felt really intimate so people wouldn't have to think to themselves, what kind of space am I in? They could immediately map where they were in the app to the, okay, I'm sitting around in my kitchen table and people are joining and leaving calls just like they're walking in and out of my living room, but it is a family space and the family is there. Or, in one-on-one disappearing messages, you're like, cool, this is my close friend. We don't need to keep track of everything that we're saying. We're here for a little bit of banter, a little bit of relationship, a little bit of quick, what's your wifi password and stuff, and whatever's really important, that's what we'll hold onto and the rest is just day-to-day, normal intimacy.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:33:58):
That is super interesting. WhatsApp, one of the main differentiators and benefits is it's super fast. And I see completely how it connects this idea of you're just like, ideas, we want you to feel like you're talking to someone.

Ami Vora (00:34:09):
And it's all really a small thing. It's like a typing indicator is like someone who's about to take a breath, give them a second to talk, the two check marks lighting up or someone's face lighting up when they hear you, it's just a recognition of being heard. These are all super small things, but I think they add up to a feeling of being there.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:34:29):
That is super interesting. So I love this very tactical piece of advice that you just shared of just when you're trying to come up with a metaphor or analogy, think about what you want your users to feel when you're using the product and when else have they felt that same feeling? So interesting. And then this other point you made of making this emulator of a person in your head.

Ami Vora (00:34:49):
I mean, it sounds a little wild now that I think about it.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:34:51):
No.

Ami Vora (00:34:51):
That's robotic.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:34:52):
It makes total sense.

Ami Vora (00:34:55):
I get very bored a lot. It's another way to make sure meetings are really interesting where you're like, okay, let me see what that person is going to say next. Let me put myself in their shoes. Let me think about what they're reacting to and why they're going to think that and how they're going to see the world. And again, it just gives me more toolkits because it means when I'm stumped on something, I can be like, what would Rob Goldman say? He'd say, look at the dashboard. Have I looked at the dashboard? No. Okay, let me go look at the dashboard. You can load up these different skillsets that people have been so generous with sharing with me.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:35:28):
What would be the Ami emulator? What are people thinking when they loaded it?

Ami Vora (00:35:33):
Fascinating.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:35:33):
Fascinating?

Ami Vora (00:35:35):
Fascinating, probably the number one, no joke.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:35:37):
Is there an emulator you most often come back to that you find most useful in just in your day-to-day? Who's the person that like, oh yeah-

Ami Vora (00:35:44):
I think those are the three. I think it is like Antino's story. Story, metaphor, analogy creation. I think it's like Boz's, if we played this out, what principles are we using? And if we kept on using those principles, what would happen? And it is Rob Goldman, who's an amazing metrics growth product leader being like, look at the dashboard. I mean, look at the dashboard, which is a great central rooting part of my life.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:36:16):
This was so fascinating, fascinating.

Ami Vora (00:36:19):
It revs up.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:36:20):
I love this topic of just metaphors and stories and visions and things like that. It's something that a lot of people are wanting to get better at. Is there another example, per chance, that you could share of maybe using a metaphor to rally team, get things done?

Ami Vora (00:36:34):
I mean, I think taking a sub part of WhatsApp or when we talk about video calling. I really, one the metaphors was sitting around in your family room when you think about how to make calls work, where when you're sitting in a family room, you're not scheduling it, you're not, I don't know, having this cold corporate feeling, the way you do with a conference where there's heavyweight interactions, and instead there's just, you can join and leave. It feels lightweight, it feels like the space exists even when you're not there. And so just creating things like joinable calls, like that feeling of people popping in and just paying attention to whoever's there and letting them leave, but the call can flow on without a super heavyweight action that everyone needs to take. I think that was another one where we were just able to agree on the feeling and then you know what to build.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:37:27):
I was just using WhatsApp to do video call with my mom. They were traveling to Italy and so-

Ami Vora (00:37:30):
That's great, that's exactly [inaudible 00:37:33].

Lenny Rachitsky (00:37:32):
I experienced it, it felt great.

(00:37:35):
Let me go in a slightly different direction. One of my favorite posts of yours is called execution beats strategy every time, and I think another way you phrase it is, execution eats strategy for breakfast. I think you put that somewhere. I'd love to hear about this because I completely agree. I think a lot of people obsess with strategy and vision and got to get this right and forget that most of the work is execution. So yeah, I'd love to hear just your take and insight here.

Ami Vora (00:37:58):
Yeah, I don't know if I coined execution eats strategy for breakfast, I think a lot of things eat other things for breakfast, but I'm a believer. I do think execution eats strategy for breakfast and that's something we used to say a lot at Meta. It was just the most important part and I was well-trained in that. That was one of the key lessons that I learned there, and it's because when you have... Look, strategy is super fun. You get to think about all this pie in the sky stuff. You get to think about if the world operated in rational patterns and you could predict the future, what is going to be the second and third order effect? You get to use your brain in a really fun, philosophical way, but customers don't care. Customers don't care about your fancy strategies and your five-year plan. They care about the product that's in their hands. And so anything that distracts you from thinking about the product in your hands I think, or maybe worse, takes you away from solving customer's problems today, I think is a distraction.

(00:39:03):
And I think one of the things that you learn is if you have great strategy, perfect strategy but poor execution, you don't win because your strategy never makes it to the market. And what's even worse is that you have learned nothing. You don't know whether it was your strategy that was wrong or whether it was your execution that was wrong, all you know is you didn't win. Whereas when you have a pretty good strategy, a good enough strategy, you're in the right direction and you have perfect execution, you still don't win immediately, but you know your execution was great. So then you learn, what do you need to do to improve your strategy? You've got the execution machine, you go back, you update your strategy, you relaunch, and you keep on doing it until your strategy is perfect and then you do win. And that's the lesson I repeatedly learned.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:39:50):
Is this advice a reaction to what you said, where people, PMs let's say, are just like, I want to work on strategy, we got to spend all this time, get the strategy nailed, and it's just like, okay, we also need to execute and that's maybe even more important.

Ami Vora (00:40:02):
Yeah, I do think it's very glamorous to work on strategy. It's so fun. It's so fun to have the word strategy in your [inaudible 00:40:11]. I don't know, we've built a mythology around strategy being the most important thing. And execution is not glamorous, it is not like white-boarding by yourself and pointing to things and coming out with the grand vision. It is the nuts and bolts and sometimes boring, sometimes grind it out work of like, you got to bring the donuts, you got to look at the dashboards, you got to rewrite the spec. You got to just do a bunch of the grinding, but that is what leads to the customer's outcomes. That is what the customer is eventually going to feel. They're never going to see the whiteboard, they're going to see that someone took the time to fix this bug.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:40:53):
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(00:41:11):
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(00:41:39):
Is this advice you give to your PMs on your teams? I guess, how do you think about this when they're trying to move up the ranks, become better product managers? Is this just a common thing that you often share, like yeah, strategy is going to be amazing, important. You got to get good at it, but also make sure this is going great.

Ami Vora (00:41:57):
Yeah, I think about it a little bit in terms of proportion of time you should expect to spend. So I mean, there's no point next being on that strategy, you can't have a bad strategy. So you should spend some time, maybe it's like 20% of your time, but the bulk of your time should be confirming that strategy actually makes sense for the customers. Getting it out there, building the machine to constantly make it better, as opposed to a perfect strategy. You go away, you build it for a year, you ship it, the market has changed. Customers have changed, their needs have changed, competition, just the whole landscape has changed and you probably could have solved those problems more easily had you headed in the right direction, but done it with more ongoing customer feedback.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:42:39):
In terms of this proportion, I imagine what you see is as you get more senior, more of your time spent on strategy, less time on execution, right?

Ami Vora (00:42:46):
I don't 100% know that that's true. I think again, even at high levels, maybe the strategic directions become more important to get mostly right, but I think still most of your time is making sure they can make it to market. I think you should still be spending your time understanding what's slowing people down and unblocking it. Understanding, how is the market changing? Understanding what the broad customer feedback is, just constantly improving the system that you are building. I think that's, I mean, how much time can you spend thinking about the future, as opposed to actually trying to create it.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:43:29):
That is really interesting advice because I think most people imagine as you get more senior, I'm going to have more time thinking about vision and strategy, not have to be in the weeds building things. And I love this point you're making of even as a senior exec, you're still, it's executing in a different way, but it's still execution.

Ami Vora (00:43:44):
A different way, yeah. You're focusing on the execution of the system a little bit more, but you got to stay connected, I think, to the customer and to what you're bringing to them.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:43:54):
I love that. Obviously, strategy is also very important. You have this great quote that I'm going to read here. "For strategy to be useful, it actually has to change our behavior as a team to create better customer outcomes." Can you talk about that?

Ami Vora (00:44:08):
Yeah. I mean, I think again, some of the joy of strategy is the philosophy and excitement of thinking about all the long-term stuff that will happen, but I try to always come back to, what's going to change for the customer? If we have all of these conversations and we come out with this shiny five-year plan, but then we change nothing about the products that we're building or how we are building, what was the point of that exercise? It made us feel good, and there's something to making us feel good. That is good, it's important for teams to feel good and connected and this is a good exercise for that, but it's so much more powerful when it's an exercise that translates into us doing something differently, whether that's prioritizing different products, whether that's changing our portfolio allocation, like moving people to the things we think are most important now versus things that are going to be less important right now. What's the change, or coming out with a strategy that'll align people because we have the story, we have the narrative, we have the sequence. What's going to change for our customers as a result of this strategy exercise?

Lenny Rachitsky (00:45:12):
Many people want to get better at strategy. Often their performance feedback is become more strategic, think better about strategy. What has helped you become a better strategic thinker? Is it just doing it? Is it a person that influenced you heavily? Is it a book? What has helped you and what do you often recommend to people to get better at this skill?

Ami Vora (00:45:30):
I think I got that same feedback quite a lot, actually, of needing to think bigger and be more visionary, etc. And I still do, frankly, actually, there's moments where I retrench way too far into execution and worry a little less about long-term strategy. So it's definitely my bias still.

(00:45:49):
The biggest thing that held me back from talking about strategy was I didn't feel confident that I knew enough to declare a strategy. It was actually almost like a self-confidence, imposter syndrome thing, where there were people who could just say, I know how the world is going to develop in the next five years, and let me tell you, here's where we're going to be, this is the dot on the map. And I was always like, how could anything could happen? Who would I be to say I know how the world's going to develop and here's where we're heading?

(00:46:21):
And so for me, a lot of it was actually learning the things that made me feel confident in my own opinion. And there's a bunch of things that do make me feel confident in my opinion. When I talk to specific customers and I feel like I can build an emulator for them, like a customer on my shoulder where I can say, oh, I talked to this person working in this job, here's what they would say if I showed them this product or this strategy. So, I think talking to customers is a big unlock for me and feeling like I have unique knowledge of the customer. I think working through different product iterations of, if we thought this was the right outcome, what would it really look like from a product perspective or a product portfolio in three to five years? And which of those seems right or rational or it will go the way I think the world goes. I think asking for other opinions. Sometimes I run surveys to the leadership team where I'm just like, what percentage of our revenue is going to come from small businesses versus big businesses in three years? And if we all agree on that topic, we should just take it as the truth and we should just fill it. If we disagree, then we should talk about it and we should talk about the strategic ramifications if we chose one path or the other path.

(00:47:35):
So for me, it was getting more comfortable having an opinion, honestly, about how the world was going to go, and also feeling comfortable that we would be able to change it when we learned that maybe that wasn't exactly right. We would have the machine, the execution machine behind it to try it out and then change and iterate and improve with customer feedback.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:47:59):
At which point in your career was this overcoming this fear and uncertainty? Was it sometime within Facebook?

Ami Vora (00:48:07):
It was sometime within Facebook. It was really when I was stepping into the bigger ads jobs, getting to be Head of Product for Facebook ads. I got feedback, I got a lot of feedback over the course of my career and some of the stacking of feedback was basically like, you could be the smartest person in the room, but it doesn't matter if people don't like you, which is very complicated feedback and I wouldn't give that feedback to anyone else, but I took it very seriously. It was coming from so many different places, it was coming from people I'm really trusted. And so I went out of my way to be more likable, which for me ended up being shrinking myself a little bit and not being so aggressive and not being so opinionated, being more unobjectionable.

(00:49:07):
And the weird part is that it worked for a long time. People were more likely to work with me, they were more likely to say nice things. I mean, I take this to extremes. I wore earth tones for two years because I was just like, I got to fade back a little bit. And then at some point I actually had to do a leadership job and my team was like, well, what do you think? What's your opinion? And I was like, you've been telling me not to have an opinion for so long. And so it took a little bit of work to get back to, oh yeah, I have a lot of opinions, I have a lot of thoughts. It is okay for me to express. It is needed, my team needs me to have these opinions and thoughts and be a leader who can take ownership and be visible.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:49:52):
Thanks for sharing that. Do you think that was the right approach, going and indexing far to the other end and then realizing that maybe that's too far, or do you think you would've done things differently looking back?

Ami Vora (00:50:05):
Yeah, it's one of my Roman empires. I think about this every so often, way too much, I think. Especially because I talked to other senior women who received similar feedback and chose not to act on it or did act on it, and what happened to their paths were different. I think where I landed is I wouldn't give that feedback to someone else. And the way I do give that feedback, actually, because I think there is a lot of really useful information in that. The way I do give that feedback is, you do need to be able to work with a broader range of people and the way to do that is to expand your tool sets. You're not going to make yourself smaller, you're not going to be any less of who you are, but you are going to build new tools, new keys to unlock new different kinds of doors. And that is only going to make you bigger and more powerful and more expansive. But the end outcome is the same, is that you can work with more different styles of people, more different styles of problems.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:51:08):
I love that framing. There's an episode that's going to come out before this episode with this professor from Stanford, Jeffrey Pfeffer, who teaches a class called The Path to Power, which is how to become powerful in the world. And he actually has a big lesson that many people hate hearing, which is, you don't need to be authentic in the workplace, what you're trying to achieve, you're trying to achieve stuff and you can do... You need to use tools that you need to use to achieve the thing you want to achieve. So sometimes don't be exactly who you are and act in a slightly different way, which is basically what you're describing.

Ami Vora (00:51:42):
More tools. I think that's a theme that's coming up, is just like, I'm all about more lenses, more keys, more tools in general because why not? Why not have access to more different styles of things?

Lenny Rachitsky (00:51:54):
Something that you were talking about subtly is the being a woman in tech and being a female leader. I imagine you've gone through some stuff that isn't what something men would've gone through. Is there anything there that you want to share or anything you've learned about just being really successful as a woman in tech?

Ami Vora (00:52:13):
I think we've talked through some of them. I think one, you get a different style of feedback and a lot of the ways to interpret that feedback. I think to this day, I get feedback that is about walking a very narrow tightrope where not only do you have to change a bunch of things and do a bunch of things that are important, you have to make people feel a certain way about how you do them and the ways that they want you to make you feel are diametrically opposite. Some people are going to be like, be more directive so that way everyone knows your thing. Some people are going to say be less directive so people can come to their own conclusions. Some people are going to say move faster because there's always more you can do. Some people are going to say move less fast because otherwise you're going to end up steamrolling people.

(00:52:57):
And a lot of it is personal, there's a bunch research about how women get a lot more personal feedback that is less about the content of their role and more about their style, I think that is still true and there's often a kernel of truth in it. For me, this is forever work. I do have biases toward execution and being directive and things like that, but I think learning how to interpret and respond to feedback has been a really important point for me and making my choices of, just because I'm getting feedback doesn't mean I immediately need to respond to all of it. There's a step in between where I can choose, is this feedback I want to take action on in this exact way? Am I going to look for more themes, take action in a different way, or am I going to say this is who I am and I understand the trade-offs, I'm going to do a better job of giving people context on the decisions I'm making and why I'm choosing these trade-offs. But actually this is part of how I want to operate and I'm going to keep on operating.

(00:54:01):
And then I think we just give women weird advice. Here's a hot take. I think we tell women things like, you need to find a mentor and you need to find a sponsor, and that's just another set of hoops that we have that we tell women to jump through that I don't think we tell other parts of the population to jump through. I think we tell women to unlock your future success, you've got to find somebody who has made all the same life decisions you have and who you look up to and relate to, but who also had an hour every month to be an oracle to tell you all the things you do in your life. And it feels like yet another burden where you're like, I don't know how to do that.

(00:54:45):
I had the extreme generosity of so many wonderful leaders who helped me on my way, but I didn't feel like I had this mentor and for a while it was just like, oh man, if I only had a mentor, I would know how to do all of this stuff and it felt like another weight that I needed to carry, which I didn't. I had everything I needed, people were so kind and generous, but I didn't recognize it that way because we talk about it differently.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:55:09):
Thank you for sharing all that. I wasn't planning on going in this direction, but this is such important advice for say, young women that are just getting started in the same product. Is there any advice you'd want to share to help them get to be the next Ami?

Ami Vora (00:55:23):
Oh, I mean number one, no next Ami, they're going to be their next themselves. That is maybe the most important thing, is everyone will only tell you their own story. That's all anyone can do, but the thing that I tell people is, don't dampen who you are and your strengths, just continue expanding. Whenever you run into a problem, just add more to the things that you can do, the tools that you have, the way you can express yourself. Just keep on adding and growing and don't shrink yourself, ever.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:55:57):
I love that. I want to move to a different topic. There's a few things I definitely wanted to touch on while we had our time together. One is that I hear, now this is going to be a total tangent, but I think it's really important and I'm excited to talk about it. I hear you're really good at setting goals and aligning incentives really well for teams. One of your colleagues told me you're best in class at building product orgs and figuring out how product orgs can best work with other teams. I'm curious if there's any tricks or lessons you can share here about what you've learned about how to do this well.

Ami Vora (00:56:27):
Yeah, I mean I think one thing is to try to decouple all the things we're trying to do. Sometimes when you give people direction, you're like, okay, everybody just go get revenue or everybody just go get GMV. And it seems obvious because that's the thing you have to do as a company, but there's only a few places where you are guaranteed to get that and it's measurable and you can do it. And that leads to what I call toddler soccer, where everybody just runs to the same surface or the same customer set or the same exact product where you can do this and it's measurable and you end up, everyone's tripping on each other, everyone's trying, nobody really gets contact on the ball, there's no coordination. I have three kids, I've watched a lot of toddlers play soccer. [inaudible 00:57:18], it's a very fresh, very fresh metaphor.

(00:57:20):
And instead, one of the things I like to do is just detangle, okay, as a company, let's think about our customers. Let's think about all the things they're going to need in their journey. Let's think about how we will know how we will match our own metrics to customer success. Let's play the entire field. What would it look like if we could detangle it so that every team we had internally had a different goal that ladders into a goal framework that's actually the thing that we need to do to solve the full customer impact? And then you don't have the same swim lanes problem. You have plenty of room for people to make progress on their lanes. They all know how they fit into the bigger picture, and it just opens up a lot more growth for every team and it makes sure that we're solving the customer problem end to end.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:58:11):
Is there an example that you could share to make this even more concrete from say, WhatsApp or Facebook or Instagram or anything like that, where you can share some of these goals that you've like, oh, this worked out really well? I know it's probably private information and partly-

Ami Vora (00:58:25):
It might be trickier. I mean, maybe going back to the GMV example. Maybe instead of motivating everyone on GMV, you motivate them on GMV per surface and you divide up the surfaces, or maybe you motivate them on actually different goals that underlie. When you think about GMV, what are all the various engagements, customer engagements that lead to GMV? Can you goal on those input metrics, can you goal on number of people who visit, number of people who convert, number of people who reorder, number, etc? Rather than going strictly on the output.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:58:59):
So the core advice here is each team should have different goals that are part of this metrics tree that ladder up to revenue, GMV, something like that?

Ami Vora (00:59:07):
Whatever, yeah. The thing that best matches the overall customer outcome that mirrors the company outcome as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:59:14):
Got it. And there's always this balance between it's actually the best metric versus it's something they can move and understand and it's easy to watch and it's movable and things like that, right?

Ami Vora (00:59:24):
Yeah, and you have to have faith that it is actually connected to that output metric. You don't want to create a metric that's disconnected just to make a team feel good. It really does need to solve the customer problem and that's reflected in company's performance, but you can usually break it down into smaller pieces and I think that breaking down into smaller pieces and assigning those out to teams, that's really helpful.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:59:46):
Is there anything else along these lines of things you've learned about helping teams work together and not play toddler soccer, beyond having different goals that all ladder up to the one that really matters?

Ami Vora (00:59:58):
I think there's value in also acknowledging that teams are going to have different incentives. Even inside a team like cross-functional teams on the same pod or whatever, are going to have different incentives, they're going to come in with different information, they're going to have disagreements. And certainly, different teams inside a company or different pillars inside a company, different products inside, they're all going to have different incentives, and I think sometimes that feels like something is going wrong when people disagree, but actually, that's just a sign of healthy tension and knowledge.

(01:00:34):
I think the thing that makes tension healthy is one, when you can acknowledge it and say, yeah, of course there's tension. You're bringing different information than I'm bringing. We should be disagreeing. No one's a bad person, no one is coming in with poor intent. Everyone's doing the thing they are supposed to do and that is a useful thing to do. And then you have to agree on an outcome that you're aiming for. If you disagree on what the company outcome is or what the customer outcome is, then you've got some structural stuff you need to work out and normally you just have to escalate it, but if you agree on like, we're all trying to move this metric by changing this customer experience, then all you're doing is having a conversation about the best way to do that using the different information that everyone is bringing. And I think that's super important to just have as a rational, open, explicit discussion, as opposed to trying to hide it or pocket vetoing or something else. Because you assume that when someone disagrees with you that, I don't know, there's something emotional or wrong about it.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:01:37):
But it's fascinating.

Ami Vora (01:01:40):
Exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:01:41):
There's a piece of advice I once heard from the Head of Product at Airbnb once where we were trying to find, reorg the business and try to figure out the best org and his advice and something he realized is, there's never the best org, there's just the best idea we have at the time with the here's the things we know are not going to be optimal about it and let's build processes around that.

Ami Vora (01:01:59):
I think that's my take on leadership in general. Especially as you get more senior, you can only make bad decisions. At some point someone can bring you a problem, you can recognize a problem and you can solve it, and there's so much happiness in solving that and tying a bow around it. But as you get senior, the only problems you'll see are ones that are fundamentally unsolvable because otherwise, someone would've solved it before they got to you. And so all you're doing is choosing which branch of suboptimal you're going to put your name on and describing the principles you're using and the context and the fact that it's suboptimal, but it's still the best thing. I think that's a really hard thing, is just to recognize and acknowledge that increasingly people only see you do, make suboptimal decisions and from a distance they're just like, why is that person only making bad decisions? And it's because those are your only options. All you can do is choose the least bad, the best possible for the time, for the problem that's consistent that makes sense with the framework, and that's been a tough thing to learn too.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:03:10):
You said somewhere that as you get more senior, you get worse at everything because the problems get harder.

Ami Vora (01:03:14):
Yes, exactly. I mean, it's a kind of dark view of leadership where yeah, you can't fully solve problems, you have to say no a lot people are unhappy with you. I thought as you get more senior, everyone listens to you and they like you and you could just say a thing and then it happens and that is not at all accurate. It really is, most of the decisions you make are not going to be perfect.

(01:03:42):
And I think I'm all about just normalizing and acknowledging those hard truths because otherwise, I feel like I'm failing. And if I just know that something is normal that it's part of the job, then it's not me. It's just like, okay, this is a fact of the job that I have to get accustomed to if I want to have this kind of impact. And there's something about having the impact, being able to serve the customer, being able to be part of this team, there's something about it that is so worthwhile that it's worth being terrible at everything and being visibly terrible at everything because that is the best way that I have to have that kind of impact in the world.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:04:21):
I think this is really important for early ICPMs to hear because they see their CPO and founders making all these decisions and they're like, what the hell? That's a terrible idea, why are they doing this? What you're saying is just like it's the best... Options are limited and then-

Ami Vora (01:04:38):
[inaudible 01:04:38].

Lenny Rachitsky (01:04:38):
... nothing's going to be optimal.

Ami Vora (01:04:39):
Yeah, no org is optimal. It's definitely not. You can optimize for the people you have and you can optimize for the products you have, can optimize for the customers you have and you can optimize for the technology you have. Those are the options that you have, and in every one of those you trade off everything else. And so you just have to know, there's not going to be a perfect where all of it works and that's okay. That is part of the fun of it. That's part of getting to do this work, is continuing to improve, but it's hard. It's hard when people, it's hard, especially when you want everyone to think you're so great at everything.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:12):
This idea you mentioned of as a senior person solving people's problems, feeling really good, reminds me. Rolling to this, there's this Harvard Business Review article from the '70s or '80s or something about monkeys on your back. Have you read this or heard of this?

Ami Vora (01:05:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, I did.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:26):
Where it's basically like as a manager, [inaudible 01:05:28]-

Ami Vora (01:05:28):
You're trying to get monkey off of your back on people's backs?

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:28):
Exactly.

Ami Vora (01:05:28):
Right, right, right.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:32):
People come to you, Ami, here's my monkey, please take it for me and feed it for me and take care of it. And your job as a leader is to keep the monkeys on people's backs and help them figure out how to feed this monkey themself.

Ami Vora (01:05:43):
It's a weird one.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:43):
To get it off their back. It's very visceral. I want to talk about Faire and your current role as a final section of our chat. First of all, what was it like starting something completely new after 15 years at Meta at the various properties of Meta?

Ami Vora (01:06:00):
Yeah, I mean, I was so lucky. I had such an amazing run at Meta. I got to work with amazing leaders, truly great products. And I came to Faire for the same reason that I've been anywhere, because I believe in the people and I believe in the mission. A lot of my family in India is in wholesale and local retail, which is what Faire does, and so it was also a very personal thing for me too. I felt like I knew those customers. I'm a huge fan of small businesses, I got to work with a bunch of them in previous jobs as well.

(01:06:30):
I would say coming to Faire, I mean, one of the things I always think about is that especially as you are more senior, ramping on anywhere feels terrible because you expect to be as good at your new job as you were when you left your last job, but you forget that at your last job, you were there for years, you had years to build up the vocabulary and the cultural context and the network and the product knowledge, and then you're stepping in somewhere where you know none of that, but you have the same expectations of yourself of being able to have an impact and improve things and help your team. And so I always just try to remind myself, it's going to take time and what's most important is not for me to try to come in and change everything immediately, but to learn enough to be able to change things like 60 or 90 or 120 days in the future. And so that breathing helps a little bit.

(01:07:29):
It was also really interesting because Faire was entirely new to me. It was a new business model, it was a whole new set of people. It was a whole new set of customer problems. And so every interaction I just had to learn so much. I had to learn, who is this person? How do they see the world? What's the problem they're talking to me about? What's the customer impact, I think? So it was just a dramatic learning curve, which I always really love.

(01:07:54):
Maybe the last thing I'd say is, again, I was super lucky at Meta. I think I always had this maybe deep-seated insecurity that maybe I was only good at Meta. Maybe there was something about that network of people and how great they were and how well I knew those products, and maybe I wouldn't be that successful somewhere without that scaffolding. And so leaving and being able to go somewhere else and lead through change and a new place, a new customer set, a new business model, that's also been really, really affirming for me, honestly.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:08:34):
Well, you have a lot of fans at Faire from the people I know there.

Ami Vora (01:08:36):
[inaudible 01:08:36].

Lenny Rachitsky (01:08:36):
And so clearly, things are going well, at least as far as I can tell. Something that I think is, Faire definitely has, and a lot of companies have, is a very product minded visionary founder. And CPOs classically last a year or two, and then they're like, ah, this sucks. The founder just tells me what to do and what's the point of this role? And it's so frustrating. I'm curious just what you've learned about, at least so far, about working with someone like that as a CPO and not just being this middle person between what the founder wants to do with the team, this building.

Ami Vora (01:09:09):
Yeah, I mean, this is going to sound so naive, but I literally didn't know how important it was for me to have such a great relationship with the CEO, because I always had great relation, I was lucky, I had great relationships with a lot of people at my previous jobs. I was like, oh, of course it's going to be fine, everyone's going to let me do what I want, whatever. And I think I just got really lucky because Max is an amazing CEO, who's also super growth mindset and super open to talking over ideas, even when they involve a lot of change.

(01:09:42):
So when I was onboarding, one of the things I always like to do is write a list of observations. I go out and talk to, I have one-on-ones with a lot of people, and I write, here's the themes that I'm hearing. Here's what's going well, here's what's not going well. And that's a way for me to both share what I'm seeing and build some credibility and trust that way, but also for people to give me feedback and be like, oh, you're wrong about this, just so I can correct my starting point of knowledge.

(01:10:10):
And with Max, I also wrote a parallel document of hot takes. So once a quarter or so for the first year, I'd write a document that was just like, hey, for sake of provocation, if we wanted to fundamentally change a few things, here's ideas on what we could fundamentally change. And Max, very, very well could have just been like, hey, can you please just run product? That's you're job, can you please do that? And instead, he and the entire rest of the executive team were like, yeah, let's step through these. Let's talk about which of these we should try, let's talk about maybe context you don't have for why these don't make sense or why we don't do these. And that was such a gift because I was able to build such a great relationship, a trusting and complimentary relationship with Max and the rest of the exec team, and also that he took seriously things that he really didn't have to that I have so much respect for that, and I think I got really lucky in just finding a great CEO and exec team.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:11:18):
Is there anything you learned about this vetting process? Say you're a founder looking for a head of product, A CPO, any advice for how they might vet this person to make sure they are good fit and will last?

Ami Vora (01:11:32):
What I'd say to everyone else is, make sure you just have a mind meld with a CEO. Before you decide to take the job, spend a day together, understand how they think and how they operate, and whether you're going to work together in a way that feels really high fidelity and high trust and you're going to have room. I mean, I'm not a founder by any stretch and so when founders ask me what should I look for in a head of product or CPO, I say something a little bit different, which is, make sure that you really need the level of seniority that you are hiring. I think that a lot of founders think, I need a CPO, I need a VP of product, I need someone who's really senior, when often the founder has a bunch of the vision and knowledge, and what they really need is somebody to build the product. They don't need somebody who's going to scale the team or build systems like they've got enough of that. And so that to me is part of building that complimentary relationship where the founder and CEO know what they need and on the CPO side, they know that they can mind meld enough with the CEO to actually have an impact.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:12:41):
Last question. You started as an intern in the PR department, I think, at Meta?

Ami Vora (01:12:47):
Oh, I started as a temp, actually.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:12:51):
At temp, okay, amazing. And then you ended up leading Facebook ads and then WhatsApp and many other things. Can you share that story of just how you joined and how that happened?

Ami Vora (01:12:59):
Well, I had quit my last job. I knew that what I wanted to do was be involved in all the wild stuff happening in Silicon Valley in the mid 2000s. So I'd quit my last job, I was traveling around the world a little bit. I was living in New York, an extremely blissful lifestyle. I was unemployed, I was doing whatever I wanted. It was some of the best time I've had in my life, and eventually I needed a job, like you do. But it was 2007 and the only place I wanted to work was Facebook. You could hear the way people talked about these products. People would say Facebook is more important than than my car. It's like how I connect with the world. It was such a magical product, and you could hear that.

(01:13:51):
And I knew some people at the company and I convinced one of them to introduce me to everyone at the office. I'd made a trade, I said, I'll buy you a fancy coffee at Coupa Cafe in downtown Palo Alto, and in exchange just introduced me to everyone, everyone you know, take me around the office. So everyone I met, I said, "Hey, I'm Ami, I really want to work here. I'll do whatever you need." And the only call I got back was from the Head of PR, Brandy Barker, who said, "Look, we can't hire you. We didn't interview you. We don't have headcount. You're not really qualified." It was just like 10 reasons. I was like, okay, thank you for calling me. And she said, "But we need a temp to review our press releases, so if you want to come join a temp agency, we'll tell them to send you here." And that's what I did, I moved out to California and I slept on people's couches and eventually they hired me full time and I didn't look back.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:14:50):
And now you're on Lenny's podcast, what a run. It's interesting, this reminds me of another path to power rule from the Jeffrey PFeffer podcast, of networking is one of the best ways to acquire power in the world. So it's interesting that now that seed has planted in my head. Anyway, just A plug for that other episode also.

(01:15:06):
Ami, is there anything else that you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to a very exciting lightning round?

Ami Vora (01:15:13):
Sometimes people ask me who are working in product, what's the one thing they should do to be successful at product? And maybe the thing I would say is, especially as an org scale or a company scales, there's just a lot of distractions that get between you and the customer. And so the one thing that I would just advise everyone to do is just think about the customer, talk to the customer, be an advocate for them. It's such a shortcut to everything else you need to do in order to be successful, but it's so easy for that to get lost when you're thinking about, okay, how do I get alignment on my team? How do I figure out my roadmap? How do I convince people to join the company? There's all these different things, but fundamentally, we're here to create value for the customer. And the closer you can get to that, I always found myself the happiest because I'm building that feedback loop with the customer, but also more successful.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:09):
Well, let me actually follow up on this because this is really important and interesting. There's a PM part of my brain of like, okay, but we also got to move some metrics and sometimes that metric isn't going to be moved by, we need to do something specifically for the customer, but it's something that will help the business. Is there anything there of just that balance of like, we need to move over this conversion metric, versus, let's focus fully on what does the customer want and need? Any thoughts there?

Ami Vora (01:16:34):
Yeah, I think we often make things adversarial that are not actually adversarial. It is very rare for customer value to be different than a company value on a long enough time horizon. There might be short-term divergences, but really, to solve, to create value for the customer, you got to be around as a business, otherwise you are creating zero value for the customer. And so I think really, just starting with the, what are the end goals and where does stuff diverge in the very short term versus the medium term versus in the long term? It shouldn't, and really thinking about where you are in the journey and how to place that. That always helps me because our metrics should absolutely be about long-term customer impact. It's very rare if those aren't, and then you're still able to be successful.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:17:26):
It comes back to our chat about metrics and how to do those well.

(01:17:29):
With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round.

Ami Vora (01:17:32):
Cool, I'm ready.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:17:34):
Here we go. First question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

Ami Vora (01:17:39):
The Year of Yes, by Shonda Rhimes. I almost never read nonfiction. I love Shonda Rhimes, made an exception for this one. It's about just saying yes to things and finding your voice when you do feel like you're sometimes the first or the only or the different, and what that feels like. And it was very life-changing for me, actually.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:00):
That's an awesome pick. No one has recommended that one yet. Reminds me of an episode of Matthew Dicks, who has a Ted Talk about saying yes to everything.

Ami Vora (01:18:00):
Really?

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:07):
He just says, Chris, to say yes to everything and his life is incredibly interesting as a result. Next question, do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?

Ami Vora (01:18:17):
I watch a lot of witty workplace comedies from the mid 2000s. So I watch a lot of The Office or 30 Rock reruns. Things are just very comfortable that I already know everything, there's no surprises. I'm not great with new stuff right now.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:33):
I heard they're bringing back The Office. There's a reboot happening.

Ami Vora (01:18:36):
Oh really? Let's see.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:38):
Yeah, exactly. Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you love, either digital, physical, anything?

Ami Vora (01:18:47):
Maybe a physical product that I really like. I drink a lot of coffee and tea through the day and it's just, I don't know, a calming ritual. And so I have a Fellow's electric kettle, that was my big work from home upgrade. So I have this life for kettle, I have a pour over kit. I have these lovely colorful mugs that I like, that has actually just made my day-to-day a lot better, is just a little feeling of luxury.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:19:16):
I love that. I think we have that same kettle. I also drink tea during every episode I have here.

Ami Vora (01:19:19):
Oh, yeah. You know it.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:19:21):
So we're on the same page. Next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often think about, come back to, share with friends or family, in work or in life?

Ami Vora (01:19:30):
It is definitely not a motto. I feel like I know people have mottos and I'm so impressed. I'm like, you know what you are, you know what you need. I am not that person, but I have a piece of advice that someone gave me very early in my career. Actually, it was Chamath, he said, "You can either have more energy or less ambition." And I was like, oh, that's a little harsh, but also really true. And I think about that, it's another of my Roman empires. I think about it all the time where I'm like, okay, if I want to have this kind of impact, I'm going to have to do the work, I'm going to have to try new things, I'm going to have to feel uncomfortable, and sometimes I don't want to do those things. I don't want to do all of that work, and then I can't be mad if I'm not having the impact. Those two just have to go together. I also have to get lucky in all these different ways, but the two have to go together and that's been just a good governor, a little bit, of how I think about what I'm putting in.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:26):
I love that quote. By the way, if people don't know what you're talking about when you talk about the Roman Empires, there's a meme on TikTok where somebody said that every man thinks about the Roman Empire at least once a week. Right?

Ami Vora (01:20:39):
It's made me think about, what are all the things I think about repeatedly without really having trigger or reason? And there's still a lot. I don't think about the Roman Empire though. That is not one of them.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:49):
I also don't think about the Roman Empires, something's wrong with me. Okay, final question. You can blame your colleague Barr for this question. He tells me that you are very good at jokes, you tell very good jokes. Do you have a joke that you want to share by any chance?

Ami Vora (01:21:06):
I love jokes. There was a year at Facebook where I posted a joke of the week to the company and they're all terrible.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:15):
To the company.

Ami Vora (01:21:19):
Yeah, exactly. All right. Here's my favorite joke.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:22):
Great.

Ami Vora (01:21:24):
Why don't sharks eat clowns?

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:26):
Why?

Ami Vora (01:21:27):
Because they taste funny. I'll tell you one more and you can choose one, you can choose which one. All right.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:33):
No, we're not cutting anything.

Ami Vora (01:21:36):
What did the zero say to the eight?

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:38):
What did the zero say to the eight? Something like us. Okay, no, I don't know.

Ami Vora (01:21:43):
Nice belt.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:44):
Nice what?

Ami Vora (01:21:45):
Belt.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:46):
Belt. Oh, I got it.

Ami Vora (01:21:51):
[inaudible 01:21:51].

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:53):
I get it, I get it. I'm going to tell you a joke. I just heard a standup share. How do you turn an egg into a vegetable?

Ami Vora (01:22:02):
I feel like if you put a letter on it'll turn into a vegetable name, but I can't think of the letter.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:22:06):
I love that you're really trying to analyze it and get there because I don't know if it's ever possible to actually get the answer. Okay, so how do you turn an egg into a vegetable? Squash.

Ami Vora (01:22:17):
That is definitely my level of joke, definitely.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:22:20):
They're like, this is for your kid. Go home and do this joke.

(01:22:24):
Ami, this was everything I hoped it would be. I'm going to read again the goal you had for this podcast, I 100% think we achieved it. To be as authentic as possible and show that people can be pretty messy and imperfect at times, yet still be very successful. I think exactly what this podcast ended up being. Thank you so much for being here.

(01:22:40):
Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and learn more, and how can listeners be useful to you?

Ami Vora (01:22:46):
Oh, thank you, Lenny. It's been such a pleasure. I write a blog on Substack at amivora@substack.com. It's called The Hard Parts of Growth, it's just about how even when you're working in great places with great people at great companies, sometimes things are hard and that's normal. And so you can find me there. I do the same, I crosspost to LinkedIn so you can find me there. And how can people be helpful to me? I don't know, just by being great, by being kind and nice and making the world slightly better. Yeah, I think that's what we can all do.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:23:17):
I love that, and I will link to your Substack in the show notes, so if where people want to check it out, and I'll recommend it. I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to recommend it for my Substack.

Ami Vora (01:23:25):
Thank you, Lenny, so much. This was such a fun conversation. I've really enjoyed it.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:23:29):
I loved it. Ami, thank you so much for being here. Bye, everyone.

Ami Vora (01:23:33):
Bye.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:23:35):
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 lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.