YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Fishman

lines on the record: 79
first: 2022-10-13
most recent: 2022-10-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Hypotheses in a series of solutions to test against this hypotheses so that you can learn and then productize those learnings. And there's a lot of ways to test this sort of stuff, situational behavioral interviewing. I talk a lot about this in my posts on hiring growth. There's like very specific questions you can ask to understand what people have done or what they might do in different situations. There's case studies and things like that. So that's the third one. And then the fourth one is communication and influence. And I would say I think you probably know this as a PM. Influence is one of the biggest and hardest skills to develop. It's no different in a growth practitioner. And in some cases, it can even be harder because sometimes people come in with a preconceived notion of what growth is and isn't. And you have to change their mind. And so within communication and influence, there's strategic communication. So how do a series”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, where are you deploying either your money, your people? How are you managing the portfolio? And how are you projecting that out into the future? And that's a really hard one. Like you have to become best buddies with your finance friends in order to do that. And so anyways, that's capital allocation and forecasting. And then the third one is prioritization and roadmapping. So you have to be able to sequence the work, much like in building a product, right? Building your growth strategy. You have to sequence it, that sequence has to make sense based on your growth models. You have to have the capital or the people to allocate to that stuff. And you have to be able to build a”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The third competency is growth strategy. And now the third and fourth competencies, I would say, are a bit more advanced topics. And again, remember when I said people index higher or lower on these as they go across their career? I would expect a more junior growth person to not necessarily be a 10 out of 10 on strategy and communication. These are things that you really have to work at a long time. They tend to be softer skills in a lot of cases. And you learn best by either getting a very right or getting it very wrong. And so you've got to put in the time. to develop these but in growth strategy there's three the first one is growth loop modeling so really understanding how you grow and where you should be spending your time what acquires users what retains them what monetizes them the second one is capital allocation and forecasting this is”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's a great example. I mean, seeking the solution in a customer interview is never, never going to work, right? You seek to understand and then you take that away and you can think through what the model should look like and how things should change as a result. Yeah, that's great. Can cover the third and fourth competency, and I'll try to be a little more brief on that. No, no.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, like, user psychology, I think one of the things that people don't usually understand is that most people come to your product with an emotional frame. And a lot of people want to appeal to their logical brain right away. And the reality is don't do that. And so you have to understand the sort of mindset that people are in, how low are their lows, how high are their highs, why are they seeking out your product? And it often, as I mentioned, stems from some emotional challenge that they're having or something that they're seeking. And it's not because your product is the best chatbot or because it gives the best answers. There's a different kind of thing that they're trying to solve. And only when you address that can you move on to those other sorts of things. So that's sort of the second competencies is customer knowledge.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not too late to pivot second career. Yeah, actually, I'm announcing today I'm pivoting the newsletter to just talk about therapy and psychology.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next one is what I would call customer knowledge. And within customer knowledge, there's a set of things. And really, this is about sort of data fluency and instrumentation, understanding user psychology, which is a big one. And then this idea of being able to kind of experiment and learn over time and how you develop your narrative and your creative approach to talking to customers. I love user psychology and it's like one of the things that I think attracted me to growth and to product. I studied consumer psychology when I was in college and I'm just probably would have been a psychologist if not for a growth practitioner, which is sort of a weird other approach I could have taken in my career. But not too late.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Yeah. It's really a good sort of foundational framework for being really concrete and specific in the feedback that you provide someone. So rather than saying, Adam, you really need to be more strategic, which everybody's heard that at some point and it's kind of like, well, what do you mean? You can say, hey, we need to work on the area of growth strategy. And that means I need to see better modeling of loops out of you, better understanding communication of what those loops are. And you can give really concrete feedback.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. You can almost use it as a reverse interviewing characteristic and say, what are the competencies you found or CEO care about? What's really important to you for the first person in this role or the expectations that you have of what I will bring to the table? And then you can be really candid about what you're good at and what you're not good at where you're kind of developing. So yeah, I agree with that for sure.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A track record of at least understanding how to take something they have learned that might be an experiment or something that's very MVP and turn that into something that has hooks into different areas of the product. And so that's a critical skill to evaluate. And one of like an example of the overall set of competencies.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big components or buckets are growth execution, customer knowledge, growth strategy, and then the last one is communication and influence. And each of those has three really specific skills. And so to give an example, let's like break down growth execution, for example, which is kind of one of the very first ones that you should be good at if you're a growth practitioner. Within this competency grouping, there's three individual competencies that are channel fluency, experimentation, and what I'd call productizing learning. And so you can evaluate and ask questions to understand how good people are at these different things and what their experience has been with them. So like in productizing learnings, for example, one of the key things that a growth person has to do is generate hypotheses, learn from those hypotheses, and then translate that into changes that they're making in the product. And you want to find somebody who”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like a TikTok. The whole thing looks like a big circle, and there's four sort of wedges in that circle, four equal parts. And I think that answer of what are the components, what should people look for really, you know, I'll give the PM answer, which is it depends. And what does it depend on? It depends on the state of the team and where the skill gaps are. So the goal of the competency model is not to find a unicorn human being that is like an 11 out of 10 on every one of these things. Because frankly, that person doesn't exist. Like I am not an 11 out of 10 on these skills and I have been a growth executive at many companies. I consider myself to be pretty good at the job. The goal is to create a well-rounded team so that you're hiring and balancing skills across your team and that you don't have any gaps in your portfolio. And so when you think about it, there are four main components to the growth competency model.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I help them build this office in San Francisco, hired a bunch of folks. We actually closed down the office. I delay off a bunch of the people that I'd hired, including myself, which wasn't particularly fun. And I think all of it comes back to that they didn't have a really strong set of criteria on what it meant to hire a great growth person. And so if I can help even just a little bit with founders making that decision better, it'll lead to fewer mismatches, I think, in the hiring process.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's now part of a bigger learning company. And the founders of that company were looking for what I would call like a silver bullet strategy to their growth challenges. And what they really needed, and I was sort of naive and didn't think about asking these questions or about evaluating this properly, what they really needed was to create a strategy to add on new growth loops and a system for how to execute against that strategy. If we had talked about that as part of evaluating each other, as part of them evaluating me, it would have given me a lot of confidence that it was the right hire to me. But the problem was they didn't approach it that way. They didn't ask me those questions. And I was too naive to recognize that like, hey, they're not actually evaluating this with the competencies that you would expect for a growth. Executing a growth strategy takes time and patience, and they didn't really have it. And overall, like it ended rather unsuccessfully.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cool, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I do think we need more of these. I think we need one for marketers. I think we need one for engineers, designers, research. Probably there's probably a bunch of functions that could benefit from some canonicalized resource around this stuff. So yeah, some myths and mistakes that I think founders made and that I've made. I've definitely lived through some mistakes. A few experiences where I was hired into a company where the founder had really messed up expectations of what a growth person should be doing, what I should be doing. And I wanted to kind of set the record straight for founders because they are the folks who hire for this and other leaders. So one example that comes to mind is I did a very brief stint at a company called Wise Ant in between Lyft and Patreon. And the founders of that company, so Wise Ant was a tutoring marketplace. It was acquired by a company not too long ago.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That question is missing the first principles approach to hiring a growth person. If you're doing that, you're just pattern matching to me. And I may not be the best person, right? Or somebody who looks like me may not be the best person. So I think we're missing that. And then third, one of the programs that I'm currently creating is around growth leadership. And so I've been thinking a lot about what it takes to be an exceptional growth leader, how you hire other people onto your team and create balanced teams. And this is going to be a really important component of that program. So it was just really top of mind. So yeah, that's why I wrote it.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so first I'm going to put up my new background here, which is my growth competency model background. For those watching on YouTube, I have a funny graphic in the background for this. So I guess the reason that I wrote this, there were sort of a few reasons that I wrote it. One is it really, it felt necessary to write it. And at first, I don't think I've ever come across this type of canonical reference before around how to hire and plan for Groom. So that's number one. I didn't think it existed. It needed to exist. Two, as an advisor and someone who has held the head of growth role many times, I get asked this question a lot. I get asked all the time about how do you hire growth people? And it's usually something like, hey, how do we find you? But 10 years earlier in your career, it feels like”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. We talked a bit about that journey, and I asked him some questions about how he prepared for the role and stuff like that. And so, yeah, it was pretty fun. We kind of swapped some stories and stuff. So yeah, it was neat.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opposite from Travis Callanet. Obviously, they're both super successful, but he's a really JGL is a really down to earth, like nice, very family-oriented kind of calm guy. So anyways, this is a funny story of my time meeting and interviewing with him.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another part of me was happy that to see that all of the things were out in the open finally. Things that like were hard to talk about, like about competitive practices and stuff like that and just like shady things. And some part of me was happy that it was out there. And then one other thing separately. So I actually was interviewing with Joseph Gordon Levitt to be an advisor with his company, Hit Record, while he was filming super bumped. And we had this conversation over Zoom when he was on break in between scenes of filming the show. And for those who don't know, he's the guy that placed Travis Kellenick, the CEO and founder of Uber. So he did this interview with me and he was like in his trailer on set, fully decked out as TK in his look with like his hair slicked back. And it was really kind of funny and also cool to see him in this context. And he is probably the polar.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have seen it. I actually read the book first. I've been a pretty big fan of Mike Isaac, who's the New York Times reporter who wrote it. So I've been big fan of his reporting for a long time. I connected with him a bit while he was writing the book. And I would say like there were parts of it that were painful. It was like re-navigating, relitigating a history that I had lived through already. And so much of that story was stuff that I had.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a ton of memories from the almost three years that I was there, but I think the biggest one and probably the most tactile or memorable thing was when we launched Lyft, when we sort of were bringing it out of private beta, we had this press event at the office, which is in Soma. And it had these doors, these big, huge, like garage style doors. And so we opened them up and we actually drove a car into the office with a pink mustache on the front of it. And then a bunch of drivers piled out of it and met the press members and were high-fiving people and stuff like that. And then we also served a giant pink mustache cake at this event. Of all of the things there, that one kind of sticks in my head the most.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm pretty busy, but it is a bit of a revolving door, so there's always some pipeline. So even if I can't work with folks right now, sometimes it makes sense for me to work with them a few months down the road. So always open to new interest and learning about new companies. All right, great.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And clear It is FishmanAF Newsletter.com. I am blessed with great initials that allow me to have that name for a newsletter. It's not”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm setting my timer for 45 seconds. So I've been chief product officer and VP of growth and product at a bunch of different companies. Perfect foods, Patreon, Lyft, the precursor to Lyft, which was Zimride, to name a few. Now I do three things primarily. I'm an EIR at ReForge and a program partner, which means I create courses. I run an advisory practice on growth and product strategy, which keeps me pretty busy. And then I recently started a newsletter, which was pretty much inspired by your work in this area over the last several years. Those are the three pillars of my life these days, my professional life at least.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This very podcast. Over the years, I've seen code at Evolve from being a tool that makes teams more productive to one that also helps bring the best practices across the tech industry to life with an incredibly rich collection of templates and guides in the coded doc gallery, including resources from many guests on this podcast, including Shreyos, GoCool, and Shashir, the CEO of CODA, some of the best teams out there like Pinterest, Spotify, Square, and Uber, use Coda to run effectively and have published their templates for anyone to use. If you're ping-ponging between lots of documents and spreadsheets, make your life better and start using Coda. You can take advantage of a special limited time offer just for startups. Head over to Coda.io slash letty to sign up and get a thousand dollar credit on your first statement. That's CODA.io.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Using linear as magical A linear.app slash lenny to try linear for free with your team and get 25. Off when you upgrade. Linear.applen This episode is brought to you by Koda. CODA is an all in one doc that combines the best of documents, spreadsheets, and apps in one place. I actually use CODA every single day. It's my home base for organizing my newsletter writing. It's where I plan my content calendar, capture my research, and write the first drafts of each and every post. It's also where I curate my private knowledge repository for paid newsletter subscribers, and it's also how I manage the workflow.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This episode is brought to you by Linear. Be honest the issue tracker that you're using today. Isn't very helpful It that To be working”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Onboarding is the only part of your product experience that 100% of people are ever going to touch. Good luck getting 100% feature adoption of anything else in your product, right? But onboarding is the thing that you have to go through in order to use the product. It's also the first opportunity that you have as a company to kind of deliver on the promise that you made out in the marketplace. So I like to think of like your brand is the promise that you're making and your product experience is your delivery of that promise. And those two things have to be in lockstep with each other or you're going to have mismatched expectations and some really disappointed customers. So this is the first chance that a customer has to be really excited or really disappointed in what they thought they were getting. So don't mess that out.”
2022-10-13 · Lenny's Podcast · How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source