YouSaid · the spoken record

David Meyer

lines on the record: 94
first: 2023-11-01
most recent: 2023-11-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That's where I get most creation. Not on the craft or the product. I really respect the craft of the product. The companies that I find most intriguing are ones that have a very unusual insight into business model. Like the early days of a company like OPAR, they were using data to drive efficiency at power plants in the US because a power plants got paid by the government for reducing the demand of the energy. So it's like multiple ways. It's very complicated to pull things off like that. Like figuring out the big problems of environmental transformation, energy efficiency, social and economic equity, you have to come up with really creative business models to tackle those things. And I think those are the fun ones to think about.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're very important. You got to balance it. Yeah. Why didn't that happen 20 years earlier, though? That's what I can't figure out. It seems so self evident. When you ask the question, I was thinking more about business model, because I think that's where disintermediating things. And there's a...”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My wife says bigger kids, bigger problems. So it gets different. It's interesting. It ties into career, right? Because these things are a balance. I used to think when I left work to go home, I was being selfish until I had kids. And then I thought when I stay at work and don't go home, I'm being selfish. I think the clarity is easiest when they're young because spending time is good and what to do. How to navigate as they get older. How much do you try to direct shape? I'm bad. I'm a bad disciplinarian, you know? In sales and engineering, I try to find the third way. The kid is obstinate. You know, the rules are this. I try to find a compromise. Compromise isn't always good for kids. You need to set boundaries. I don't know.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first kid we had, it's like urgency for them to roll over. They're going to walk. When are they going to walk? When are they going to like? Second kid, you want to delay walking as much as possible because then you have to chase them, you know? Just watching them. You watch videos of them as babies now, and you're just like, it's just amazing. Every little thing they do is amazing. Stop trying to shape them. Just get a front row seat.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when I was at Plum Tree and Phil Sopher left and told John Koonst to make me run product, I met with John Koontz, and he was at Adobe in the Great Days, you know? And I was like, John, I'll do this. I'll do this if you want me to do this. But I need you to be my mentor. I need you to teach me how to do products. I don't know what to do. And he's like, you can't teach it. That's all he said.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but they shouldn't be Vanity Winds, you know, if the early winds are human more than technical, you'll build the followership you need.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a failure mode where you feel like you have to put together comprehensive frameworks that sales is given confidence by and just give yourself time. Do as little changing the world of how the company works as possible in the first 90 days.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, okay, okay, so I was talking about good founders. Yeah. I've worked with a lot of people that were basically like, the right thing for me to say was I've got it. And I tried that for the first six months at Databricks. And that's not what Ali wanted to hear. He didn't want me to go off and do something and then show him how awesome it was. You know, he wanted to be deeply involved and have the founders deeply involved in the sausage making because they had so much more context and I wouldn't go through wasted time that way.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not being clear about the level of agency they'll have, a founder CEO is going to be in the details of all the shit and that's good. And some people expect complete agency calling the shots as a product leader and they will fail.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“really know the customer and really, really know the product, know exactly how the product works and know exactly what the customers need in aggregate.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's why sometimes it's like, so we're doing this conference, you know. So I gave a couple keynotes yesterday, customer meetings for five hours. And then I go to dinner with like 50 customers. Are you kidding me? It's so loud. You can't hear people, bizarre accents. You have to really focus. You're just done. You just need quiet time.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so funny. We both know Jay Simons well, right And he just talked about like there's a stage you get when an elevator ride is like heightened and consequential for how you interact with everybody in the elevator because of your role. And people want things from you. People want to feel seen by you. It gets crazy.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that gets to you talked about how everyone on one is different, right? Yeah. Just be direct and honest. Be vulnerable and share what's going on, and then they'll assume best intent with how you communicate.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Move on. Being cognizant of it minimizes it and takes the edge off it, but it's just, you know, moving fast. Or is it communicating?”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I might be despondent about something unrelated to the topic at hand. My body language conveys that and that's interpreted as disappointment in the topic at hand.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very seldom, but is generally messaging and calls late at night because the key is to be sympatico enough. Like for example for the second half of the year, I listed all the main objectives I had and the tide of the vision and what outcomes they drive. I get in a”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, it gets back to hiring, but high bandwidth and truth seeking, taking ego out of it. I've had a lot of difficulties.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is funny. Like, after every product role I do, when I'm seeking my next role, I want it to be anything but product. And then you meet someone like, you know, Ollie pulls back this curtain and you're like, holy shit, I want to be part of this. Let me do some product stuff. But the CEO is the CPO. So it gets back to, are you a rock star or are you a roadie? You're a rodee. It gets complicated because you want to exercise your craft and do something that you know is the right thing to do. The CEO is driving the vision of the company and knows the right thing to do. And you can't be in their brain and they can't be in your brain and you're both working really hard and really busy and probably don't talk that much. So there's always this conflict between you're hearing that we need to do things that you don't understand the full context of and it's frictive with what you know you need to do. But you don't have the bandwidth or the time to articulate what's in your brain to the CEO.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you've convinced all these people that something impossible is possible, and they're going to waste a lot of their career chasing you on it because you're so convincing. That's when it gets a dark side.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that every great leader in startups, you're bending reality, you're creating things that seem impossible. You have to enroll people in that. And once they're enrolled, if you think something's impossible, but you convince three friends, then the four of you think something's impossible, but the world, reality, thinks it's impossible. That's reality distortion. But you enroll people in it so they can hunker down and prove everybody wrong and accomplish it. As organizations grow and leaders have ego, you can believe yourself and not be truth seeking. And then you can do your company a lot of damage and you can do people a lot of it. Think about how many people that have been traumatized by startups. It was kind of like we want to accomplish this by any means necessary because it's the right thing to do. And you start to see less and less what you're compromising to do that. If you get caught up in your own reality distortion field, it might be impossible.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm like the fixer or the media for a lot of these things. So I always try to find a third way. People always present options that are myopic, you know? We don't do this and we lose the revenue or we do it and it delays our strategy. I'm like, no, I don't like either of those options. So you talk to the customer and you find out they don't even need the feature. It happens all the time. You're like, we could do this for you. We could do this for you. But wouldn't it be better if we did this for you? And no, no, I really need this. But then you just tease it out. I'm like, what if we did this? This whole scope of work you have to do first half of next year would disappear. So again, you talk to the customer, you diffuse the situation, you enroll them into what you really want to do, and then you make the salesperson realize you never needed the feature. Now, it doesn't always happen. And because I'm too optimistic, sometimes I like come up with a crazy third way. It's possible if...”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why? Because they're in opposite. So, like, when I came into Databricks, it was bimodal. Engineers thought sales ran the company and were destroying it, and sales thought engineering ran the company and were destroying it. There was no real product muscle. Ali ran product, but then he became CEO and there was a gap, right? Engineers and sales have opposite is a good word motivations, short-term, long-term. They're always going to think the company would be better if the other had less influence. A salesperson, like this is a customer that wants to give me $5 million. Are you uncracked? Why aren't we building this feature to get the $5 million? Engineer's like, it would destroy the company because nobody else wants what that company, you know, it's the you.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you know, measure, I hate to measure what people do, but make sure they're talking to customers all the time. A third of their time should be talking to customers. A third of their time should be using the product and working with engineering. And a third of their time should be thinking probably. But it never works out that way because usually 60% of their time is filling up bullshit.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Losing touch with the day to day of the individual contributor, I don't know what people spend their time on intrinsically. There's things I assume I ask for something to be done by everybody in the org. And in my mind, it's just a tiny, tiny, extra effort every week. But these things can pile up and be meaningless to the point where they're just running the machine and they're not doing the art.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not too big. You have to have people whose job it is to prove that the person's about hire. If I have people that work for me as the only people on the hiring committee and they know I really like a person, it'll color their view. So you have to have antagonists in the system, a small number. It should be cross-functional. You need to have someone technical. Well, in enterprise software, you need to have someone product, someone technical, and some naysayer as like the core three, and all three of them have to be deeply, deeply respected in the org. And that's the hard part. Then you need their signal to matter.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So people can be incredible in one company, a total failure in another company. I've worked with people who were brilliant game changers. Oftentimes they didn't show up first that that was obvious, but then they accomplished amazing things. And then I brought them to interview at another company, convinced they'd be a game changer at the other company. And then the panel was like, this person isn't a fit at all. They give me, you know, a bunch of reasons that are true. And it's just because different companies have different cultures and different needs. And like, let's say you know someone would be great. You know they would. But there's people that doubt in the process. If someone comes in and there's non-believers, confirmation bias is very real. So if you can't enroll the hiring committee to believe that this person's great, they're going to fail.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true, but it's powerful to know nothing because you ask questions that seem dumb, but it can kind of throw people off because they're not the questions they're expecting. And you see the internal consistency of what they're talking about. And again, how they're talking about it. If they're just taking credit for shit without the how, it's really the meta. It could be anything. It could be talking about how civilizations on Mars operate. They don't exist. But it's like a great...”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they can say something stupid, and I haven't given them the context, and I judge them for that. So if we take a problem from their domain, change part of the context, change a constraint, and see how they deal with it and talk through it, you're working with them.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that it's great to find a low stakes way to do work together. The best way to figure out if someone's good to work with is to work with them. But then if you say give me advice on my product, that's a big lift for them”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I try to connect as a human in the first meeting because, first of all, what's my main goal of the first meeting? I want to fast fail if they wouldn't be a fit. And I want them to want to talk to us again. Oftentimes it's easy to forget the second part. But like being deeply, deeply curious about what someone's done, they feel seen. And if you feel seen, you feel a connection and you want to talk again. That's my hypothesis, or at least people for whom that doesn't work, I just lose in the process.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first conversation I have with someone, it's the same as a customer interview or talking to someone in another function and move into product. So I want to understand impact you've had. And then you'll say something. And until I think I could do it, I keep asking questions. But you do that until you find someone's floor. I have an engineering background, or at least a civil engineering background. And I can decompose systems, you know? And a lot of product managers don't know how their shit works. In some consumer companies, that might be okay. But in enterprise software, you got to know how this shit works. Because otherwise you'll make bad decisions because you won't understand the dependencies, right? So we talked about how someone that was at Google during the aughts, whatever they did, the numbers went up. But was it causal is the question. So trying to understand how they dealt with a difficult situation. And then is it other people's fault? Do they take responsibility? How did they get out of it? Or other people damaged in the way they got out of it? Exactly in the phone.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the other thing is, like, I need to understand the system of something before I give advice on it, so I dig in hard. I assume everybody's brain works like mine, but I have a foibble of thinking people think like me. I assume that things that I find self-evident, you find self-evident because it's self-evident. But that's the luxury of me being in a bunch of meetings you're not in. It's not clear to me what is in someone else's brain. And I misread that a lot.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if we get back to they're doing the best I can, so why would they do stupid shit? Well, if someone does stupid shit on my team, I didn't give them the context because they're smart people. So if they're doing something dumbass, it's because I failed to give them the context and the framework to understand why it's dumbass.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So important, and everybody's terrible. I'm terrible at it. I like to be partnered with a program management type person because I'm not fastidious. I want notes to be sent out. And oftentimes I'll just like if I join a meeting and there's no document link to take notes for the meeting, I go apoplectic. And then I'll create one and I'll write really bad notes and then I'll forget to send them out. But I'll invite other people to and then they'll send them out. So like I really believe in the importance of that. I'm kind of shit at it personally, but it's so important because at any company of any size, any venture of any size, people do stupid shit. Sure.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because that takes maybe four seconds. To say it politely takes 10 seconds. Yeah. And so you want conversations to be as high bandwidth as possible. Like if we work together a lot, we have the same lexicon, right? We can be efficient, high bandwidth. If you get 10 people in the room, they'll oftentimes it'll be like damaging, we'll understand each other. They'll interpret it differently and they'll report the news to other people that's wrong.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because you dilute the clarity and the intensity of what you say, the more people are in the room. Even simple as like being glib, using curse words and things like that, you feel uncomfortable because like which actually can be”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, like, let's take Databrick. So when I got there, a lot of founders, they're all ridiculously smart, they're all operating in the company. And you want to include them in your early thinking because they have so much context. But then there's also the danger, you know, if you have a handful of founders, they might not all have the same opinion about the button placement, you know? And so that can be very wasteful to like do cycles on exactly how something should look with a lot of people. the intent and the context they bring to it is super critical so the danger is the more people in the room the worse it is in a bigger company people in the management chain all feel like they need to be in the room and there might be multiple levels there and then it's just a ceremony like more than six people if you're going to try to make a decision how many people you have in the room like it's got to be less than 10 probably more than four i i”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you just walk me to it. Okay. So, in short, it's like fractal. I use a product all the time. I'm reviewing the product when I'm using it, like continuously. And so getting into the preview, we have this dog food system and stuff like that. That's kind of like asynchronous product review. But then, you know, in the classic Scrum Sprint methodology, you demo every Friday. You want the core group to be seeing things as it's being built because you can't waste time if it's going the wrong direction you need to know soon. You should have like continuous product reviews for the core team and then monthly or quarterly for management, but the danger, the danger is like the seagull management. How do you”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. He's an old friend. I should have sent you his name, but he has plenty of stories. We tried to acquire Atlassian back in 98 or something. We thought we should get them cheap. They're a little dicky company, but they had a plan, you know, and they were like Pound Sand, there's no way. But we're like, it's Justin Jira. Then there's like this wiki confluence thing, you know? But then in that product early on, you could do a lot with like Markdown and stuff like that. But they moved a lot of those things to a like clickable text editor. And like, I was furious. I was like, these people are jokers because I want to do all these things. Now all these things, there's no button for it and there's a lot.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there were all these things that I saw as broken edges to the product. And I thought it was really important that we fix them. But most of the things I wanted to focus on didn't matter at all. Didn't matter at all. It's like the speed of execution mattered. Auto completing in code mattered. Consistent gutter width on the UI. Nobody gave a shit. But it hurt my eyes to see it because different things matter to the developer wanting to be in the flow of their work than the goofy product manager that joins a company that's like UI is not pretty. So it's not clear what simple means. Simple doesn't mean removing optionality unless it does. And that's where it gets complicated. Like you don't want to give people five ways to do things. If you can give people one way to do things, that's great if they can still do the thing that they need to do that they're using the product for, which oftentimes, you know, like I remember. So I've been using Adlai stuff for a while. In fact,”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clearly, is it always better? No. If it's possible to still give the superpowers to the person you're giving superpowers, but you can't dilute their superpowers, right? So when I came into Databricks, I started using the product and I was like, good lord, you know, I'm not a developer. I mean, I've done it. I'm not good at it. Good lord.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I watched that It's hard. Like, you need to use your product every day, and you're not going to always be the persona is for, but you need to at least have an appreciation for what that persona goes through. Products become complicated over time. You add a feature for one person. It might be another click for another person. But I think that's where the art is. It gets down to the human connection.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the whole world's going to collapse. But you need your fanatic users. If your product becomes everything to everyone, you lose the fanatics. But your fanatics are the ones that talk about it in bars, bring their friends in, have the viral coefficients and stuff, but they're also the ones that push you to do unimaginable things, to really break through barriers”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Curb appetite, they curb other addictive things. They're good for people that have a gambling problem. But then someone looked at the data and this power users are the thing that makes the revenue for all companies, basically. Like there's people that, I don't know if you have Chipotle here, but say fast food that eat it every meal. I go once a year. The company makes a lot more revenue from these people. And if you take away the addictive tendencies of the super users, no one will make profits in any sector of any business anymore because the AD-20 rule means you're going to lose 80%. Obviously, that's crazy, but it gets to the...”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's so many dimensions of it, but one of the classic failure modes of a startup is they get like early signal of product market fit, and then they start talking to customers. And customers, big deal, I'll roll this out to all these users. If you just do this, but it's not coherent with like the focus, suddenly you're going large enterprise and SMB. Suddenly you're going after the practitioner and the business person. And then you try to be all things to all people. It's just way, way, way premature. And then you're nothing to anyone. Now, you could choose the wrong narrow focus and implode. That's the balance.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being more selective about the things you care about, I would imagine investing in a company, you need to care a little bit. And so not caring about another BI tool is a blessing. There's so much optionality in the world that when you reduce dimensions, you get more powerful because you can focus, have more domain context, more point of view, and probably more impact.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of embrace becoming Senegalaton because I mean, we talked about one of my weaknesses is I'm too optimistic. I think that's unlocked incredible things in my life, incredible things. But it gets back to if you haven't enrolled people in the vision, oftentimes you can't achieve the vision. And then it falls apart and then they're like, why were you such an idiot for being so optimistic? I'm like, well, if you believe we would have gotten there, it's your fault. Don't say that.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are you sweeping shit? Someone categorized a bunch of animals. So I asked people that know me. Like, was I two seagull in that meeting? And sometimes to my directs, it's fine. But then a new product manager that doesn't know me is like, why is this SVP giving me shit about all this stuff?”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, exactly. And when I come into meetings in my maddening way, there's like, you know, the term like seagull management, like you swooping and shit over everything in flyway.”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I do that with my immediate staff, but oftentimes there's layers in an organization and not everybody knows you that well. But I feel, because I feel strong connections with people, I feel that they should know me that well. Don't you know me? Don't you get that I wouldn't like walk you out of the building in anger?”
2023-11-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source