Excellent reflections. Did you find that the CEO or others’ direct experience using the product was ever at odds with data or was too myopic (focused on some niche customer segment?) Or was it pretty much always helpful?
Yes for sure. Direct product experience gives you ground truth on the current state of product and how team is performing (speed, quality, thinking of team behind it). It's not a full substitute to understand your customers, how this fits into their lives, and how to prioritize among them. It's also not a substitute for vision. Direct experience is an input among many to inform both.
Data is good to sniff out patterns, but I still think its helpful to go from generalized data observations to specific anecdotes / people to improve or figure out what to build next.
I think you can over rotate on usage, but more often than not I see people under rotate.
What was it like as a culture? I worked at a small crypto starting during the boom of 2022 and it reminded me of a much, much calmer version of The Wolf of Wall Street 😂
It was quite crazy, and I think we could have been more opinionated on culture. If I had to put numbers on culture, I'd say 60% is determined by whom you hire, 20% imitation of the founders / leaders, and 20% is by the processes you run (incl recognition, how meetings are run, etc)
Excellent reflections. Did you find that the CEO or others’ direct experience using the product was ever at odds with data or was too myopic (focused on some niche customer segment?) Or was it pretty much always helpful?
Yes for sure. Direct product experience gives you ground truth on the current state of product and how team is performing (speed, quality, thinking of team behind it). It's not a full substitute to understand your customers, how this fits into their lives, and how to prioritize among them. It's also not a substitute for vision. Direct experience is an input among many to inform both.
Data is good to sniff out patterns, but I still think its helpful to go from generalized data observations to specific anecdotes / people to improve or figure out what to build next.
I think you can over rotate on usage, but more often than not I see people under rotate.
What was it like as a culture? I worked at a small crypto starting during the boom of 2022 and it reminded me of a much, much calmer version of The Wolf of Wall Street 😂
It was quite crazy, and I think we could have been more opinionated on culture. If I had to put numbers on culture, I'd say 60% is determined by whom you hire, 20% imitation of the founders / leaders, and 20% is by the processes you run (incl recognition, how meetings are run, etc)