YouSaid · the spoken record

Gibson Biddle

lines on the record: 71
first: 2022-06-20
most recent: 2022-06-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Ask Gibb, wherever there's a link to give me feedback. And it's always the same question. A scale of zero to 10 where zero sucks, 10 is excellent. How likely would you be to recommend this to a friend? That has been incredibly helpful to me. And that's how I've learned to slowly get better at everything I do. The insight I get each day from folks is amazing. I'll ask one follow-up. What'd you like and what could be better? And it's just been incredibly helpful. So don't ignore that link at the end. Don't treat it like the United Airlines asking, how was your flight? This is important, damn it. And your feedback is incredibly helpful to me. So thank you.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question. Thank you. The first, I would say that Lenny has been a mentor for me in Ask Gib product newsletter. So I reached out to him via Twitter, asked him lots of stupid early questions. So he was incredibly helpful. So probably the most important thing is to know that I write a newsletter every two weeks. That's the cadence I'm on now. Lenny knew me at the beginning when I was doing dailies like, dude, don't burn out. So it's called Ask Gib. I answered like 63 questions so far. I really have enjoyed it. Second thing would be my baby website at gibsonbiddle.com. I have the advantage of being the only Gibsonbiddle on the internet. I'm sure you're the only Lenny, but nobody can spell your last name, right? Yeah. And then the third, how can people be useful? So I'm a feedback freak, so you'll notice at the end of every talk I do every essay, whether you find me on medium or”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I just nicely encourage people to be bold, to go a little bit out of your comfort zone because that's where you learn more. And that comes back to this idea of optimizing for learning. Anyways, and how do you encourage people to be bold? How do you encourage them to try new things? And the simple thing is just start. Try it tomorrow. Like for me, the baby step was when I talks, I would just ask my friends if I could drop by and do a talk. I just did it. I didn't overthink it. I didn't spend 97 years setting up my display and getting the right clicker. I just gave a really bad talk. Okay. But that's how I started. And then I sort of optimized from there.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Largely because I was required to be in Palo Alto every fall. I couldn't travel as much as I liked to, right? Okay. So on one hand, okay, don't teach in the classroom. And in my next vector was what if I teach outside the classroom? That's what I really love to do. I do talks, workshops all around the world in the last two years virtually. I just love doing that. And I have a ton of flexibility. So that's just a little example of me treating my career. Like, what's my hypothesis? Finding where to experiment with, and then based on the results, do the next thing. And I've really been doing that my entire career. So if you embrace this idea of experimentation, you're like a product. You need to have hypothesis. You need to try, see what works not. The next thing you need to do in building a product or building your career is be bold. So don't wimp out. At some point when I'm working with different companies, they all kind of get attracted to the small incremental wins and they sort of forgot what made them a successful startup in the beginning, which is taking on fundamental risks.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I did the early stuff. Pick the right company. At some point, understand that you're responsible for your career, not your workplace. And that's one of the reasons I encourage people to start building that personal board of directors so you can compare notes. You know, the other thing I say is don't listen to your parents because they're a generation ahead. They really don't know what the future looks like. I mean, I know I would give bad advice to my daughter. Don't listen to your parents. And then later, so ever since I stopped direct deposit, I think of myself as just purely career hacking. So in your career, it's just a lot like building a product. You have theories and hypotheses. You find ways to experiment with them and then you are successful or you failed. So one of my hypotheses, whatever it was, six years ago, was I would enjoy teaching. I actually tried it. I taught at Stanford entrepreneurship for graduate level engineers. And I really liked it, but I didn't love it.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My wife's trying to cure cancer. She's like, oh, congratulations, Gibby. You helped invent binge watching, you idiot. What good are you doing for humanity?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that invoice voice. Yeah, our invoice, Gib, you should write a damn book. We're ignoring that inside voice. Yeah, you and me both. And then, I don't know, like for me, exercise is awesome for me. It keeps me happy and don't watch too much TV and I watch too much TV. So there you go. And don't do what I do, do what I say.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Short answer is begin your day with intent. What are the three to five things I'm hoping to do today? Second, minimize meanings. Minimize meetings.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm thinking about joining the startup Cheg. He's a CFO. He's a VC. Would you invest in it, right? It's the same question I have to ask. Should I invest my time? So I had people like that who helped me to isolate was electronic arts a good company to join in 1991. Yes, was Netflix a good company joined in 2005? Yes. Was Chegg a good company joined in 2010? Yes. So I was fundamentally a good picker. And I would really give a lot of credit to that personal board of directors that I had for that.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culture as a tool to help lead organizations. And then, of course, they had to grow up as a builder. They had to learn all those damn technical skills for a product manager. If I abstract outside of all that, honestly, the thing that I probably did best, I think maybe I did three things best. So to know me, I was an English major, I'm non-technical, and I didn't care. First, I was in marketing and then I went into product, which I just loved. I think I did a good job of sort of optimizing for learning. So actually one of my hacks was I started doing talks. I used to call it topic de cement on Friday mornings about something I had just learned. It was the easiest way for me to learn something. So optimized for learning, we talked about building a personal board of directors. And that has been incredibly helpful for me. And that probably gets to the third thing. I was a pretty good picker. And the reason I was a good picker of companies is I would lean on my personal board director. Some of them were CFOs. I'm like, hey, Barry.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm interviewing any of those kinds of candidates. I am looking for leadership skills. So, can they do inspired communication of a vision? I do look for product strategy skills. That helps you to frame what that vision is. I do look for management skills. Have they built and managed teams? I look for people who are proactive results-oriented. For me, leaders lead. You can't be a follower. So I look for really proactive results-oriented folks. This is pretty nuanced, but later in career, I look for folks who understand how important culture is because culture helps people to understand the skills and behaviors that are wanted of everyone within the building. And they let you provide leadership in a highly leveraged way instead of using evil processes and meetings and rules. I look for people who appreciate”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of the heart. And that's why I try to. Product strategy is a great way to communicate what's important, what's not. I try to demystify it. If you're early in your career, ask if you could be on interview teams. Even though you're not hiring, because then you're starting to practice something that's really important as you want to grow your career later, which is it's really hiring and recruiting people. So when I was in the thick of that, I spent one to two days a week hiring and recruiting. It's really the most important thing. And then some amazing opportunity would come along at the company and they'd say, you know what, maybe somebody on Gibbs team should do it, right? Like because they knew I could replace people. There's always somebody new to pop in. So I really was expert in hiring a recruiting later in your career. So if you want to be a muckete, my theory is the skills of a leader are the same whether you're head of product or the chief financial officer or head of data.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's take a little step by step. So individual contributor and then to manager. So when you're just starting, you're just trying to learn the job. And I'd say at a high level, you're just trying to optimize for learning in your entire career. But for individuals, building products hard, and there's a number of technical skills that are required. So yes, some technical, but a lot of creative skills. There's some consumer science. That's the A-B testing. There's the management. How do you get people working together to actually build stuff? These are technical design skills, right? These are the technical skills. So early in your career, you're just trying to learn the job. And by the way, the job is hard. And second, it's different from every company to company in different stage. So you, Lenny, and I, we're trying to be helpful, you know, in a leveraged way. But the key thing is the job's a little different and everything. So just try to become expert in your area, expert, whatever your one thing is that you're building. And then the next step to become a manager is there's a lot of community.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For four years, they were much smarter than I, and they would refine my thinking. And I do that one by one, and then maybe six weeks later, I could share a product strategy across the company. But this is the value of a swag, which is a stupid wild-ass guess. And don't be afraid to start at that level.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Personally, I'd start with a swag. I would take a stupid wild ass guess of what I think is right. So at least I started with a point of view before I shared it with my team. And frankly, the next most important thing that happens is if you're trying to create a metric focused organization that appreciates data and learning through numbers, deciding, I mean, the hardest one is what is your engagement metric? How do you measure product quality? So at Netflix, it's monthly retention. But that's a hard conversation. The growth story is pretty like it's usually some percentage year over year customer growth. I mean, but it's always different, but the only variation on what you said was have a point of view yourself and then get everybody's feedback. That's frankly like when I would join a new company, I would give myself two weeks to develop the product strategy for that company, which is a little outrageous, but I would just do it fast. It would develop the swag, but then I'd go to one person. Hey, this is my best thinking. What do you think? And of course, they had been there.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A year-over-year customer growth. Do you want it to be 50% or 10%? Whatever the answer is, engagement is how I think about product quality. A more engaging product is a better product. So if you think investing in building a better product is super important, then you go with engagement. And the proxy metric that I used for that Netflix was retention. And then the third is monetization. You have these customers. You have this product. And how much effort do you put into turning that into a business? So Dan said, well, that's easy. Growth, engagement, and monetization. And Greg said, yeah, that's easy. Monetization, engagement, and growth. He did the flip, right? I'm like, I'm going to come back in two hours. You guys got to fight this out, which is sort of what happened. Second, monetization third. And then a couple months later, it started to happen again. Greg.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, it's a lot easier because it spells something right as opposed to saying. Jim, I'll just give you a good case. I joined Chag 2010. You know, we were inventing a concept of renting textbooks to students instead of buying them, saving a lot of money. And my first week was challenging because on one end of the hall, the CEO, Dan, was saying grow baby, grow. The most important thing we can do is startup is grow. And at the other end of the hall, I had my CFO partner, Greg, saying, slow, slow, slow. We actually don't know if we have a business model that works. And I could tell the company's got like 40 people sort of driving folks crazy. So as the product leader, what the heck should I do? And the answer was I got them in a room and I said, listen, I just need you to force rank these three factors for me. Growth, engagement, and monetization. And I need the two of you to agree. So you could say growth is most important. And when we say growth, it's basically.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're in good company. Anyways, that's the concept of a personal board of directors. It's really important and helpful career advice in the long term.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The mentors can help you to see around corners. Actually, my favorite story of somebody who did approach me, they were in data, they wanted to be in product. They kept asking me, hey, do you have any startups I can work with on the weekends? That's a good idea. I didn't have any answers. I got sort of frustrated with them. And I said, just build me a website, a baby website. He said, I can't build a website. So I gave him my credit card and said, get on Squarespace. So if you go to Gibsonbiddle.com, that's my baby website that John Liu built for me. That was incredibly helpful to me someday I should get a real one, but I've decided it's not that important.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, what a war. So, short answer is it's really easy to build your community of peers. Just keep up your former colleagues. Keep up on LinkedIn. The harder part is building the mentors. And first rule of thumb is don't ask a person to be your mentor. That's really awkward. First, identify them. Say, you know, this is a person I think that could be helpful to me and then find ways to be helpful so everybody needs help. Everybody, everybody, everybody. to help you understand the kind of help I need. My greatest fear is aging ungracefully, right? So I'm trying to like understand what's going on. Like, okay, you know, I asked you earlier, should I be on Discord, right? Like, oh, crap, do I have to be on Discord? But in many cases, somebody can help me to understand Discord. That's super helpful to me. And that's how those sort of mentor relationships eventually end up. And between the peers and the mentors.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I didn't even know I was doing this. So, this concept began for me. I was probably 30-ish, 30? 30? Yep. I got promoted to VP and I asked my CEO, how do I learn how to do the job well? And he said, I don't know. Reach out and build your community of peers. I'm like, oh, that was good advice. It really was. So at any moment in time, you actually had one of my board members on a podcast, Melissa Harry. She's on my board, right?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so Lenny, I was thinking about it. I'm open. I don't know the answer on this one, but just you and me comparing notes, what do you think? This is the kind of behavior that I love all product leaders to engage in. I call it building your personal board of directors. You're on mine because I've been learning a lot about newsletters from you, right? Super helpful. But when I would have questions like these, I would reach out to my pals, like, okay, what's the right level of investment on a mobile app versus desktop? Like that was a moving target for years. And I would just text my pals and they would just give me the data. Like, that's amazing insight just by having peers in the business that you talk to, which this is the behavior that I want everybody out there engaged in. I call it building your personal board of directors.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think where I'm going on this is, I don't know if we can give any real insight. The team at Netflix, this is what they live for. And the team at Netflix is testing and experimenting. They've probably put in an assumption like yours. 5% will convert. And now they're seeing if they're right or wrong. And they're figuring it out on these smaller countries. And a year or two from now, they will have worked it all out and we'll see the answer in North America, right? But I think it's going to take them a year or two to figure this out because it's really hard. But they're keenly motivated because they're trying to get the growth going again”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's a fine guess. I'll just give you a different perspective. This is kind of like a free trial, right? They've been using a free trial. And the free trial conversion at the end of a month was 90% at Netflix, right? 90% enjoyed their first month so much that they continued with the service, right? So, I mean, I agree with you. It might be five or 10%. I was just giving you that 90% to get you to imagine, huh, maybe it could be 10%, right? Maybe it could be 20%. So this is just speculation. I think they're experimenting in these smaller countries. You know, as we do this, if it were 10%, they pick up an additional 3 million and a quarter. I think that's going to help them, right? When their growth is at a standstill. So the other question would be, would the primary account quit when you tell them their daughter's on the East Coast can no longer use the service, right?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your account in a different household can bump up to their own membership. Okay, so this is just complicated. Can I make the DHM model work with this? Well, it explains why they did it. So they were giving multiple streams because it was a really delightful experience. And Netflix isn't in rules. They were very permissive.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sound and video. And then they did clarify in the fine print that you can use one, two, or four streams for members in your household. And that was a new clarification because it used to be kind of with a family. Calcium Britt are my daughters. They're in the house. Of course they can use it. They go off to college. They're still my daughters. They're part of the family. Of course they can use it. Kelsey gets married. Like, okay. So this is the first time they clarified it. So now I come all the way back to your question. There as a potential growth opportunity, they'd obviously like to clarify how this should work. And they started testing in three different countries, Peru's one, I think like in the Caribbean. These smaller countries, I'm sure they're focused with new members to figure this out first. And so they have two different things. You could let a person outside your household. You could actually pay a little extra for them as the primary, as the sponsor, if you will. And the other is a function where a person who's sharing.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their email password outside the home. Okay. So how did Netflix get here? Netflix, generally, they've got three prices, $10, $15, and $20, and they're always trying to give people reason for choosing the $20 one. And so if you looked at their, I call it the price and plan page, it looks like a gas pump. Do you want the left one, the middle one, or the right-hand one? One of the incentives that they provided for folks to choose the $20 a month was the number of multiple streams. So they had gone all the way to four streams at the same time. So in my household, four people could be watching the same time. And of course people shared outside the house, right? And by the way, I don't think Netflix was clear that you couldn't. So now if you look at the price and plan page today, they're not sort of pitching for multiple streams as the reason you should go to 20 bucks. They're pitching other things. There's better resolution. That's the key one. Better sound quality. You're going to have HDR.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this one's got a lot of history. Okay, so I sort of told you a bit of the story, which is Netflix's growth has been excellent until now. And the reason they had that challenging earnings call is it was just really hard to forecast. So they had the influx of customers at the beginning of COVID. I call them fence sitters. They just happened to join en masse. And then are they going to leave when COVID lifts? Are they going to leave when the theaters open up again? How do I shut down for $700,000 Russian members, they shut off the service? You can imagine that in Eastern and Central Europe, Chern was a little higher than expected. Just nasty. One of the things that this cloud of COVID forecasting did obscured how the large extent to which sharing happens. And so what they said was in the US and Canada, there's 100 million customers total. They think there's about 30 million folks that are sharing.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, I reflected on that for like five years. Like, why didn't he engage me in the decision? And then I just realized, I mean, by the way, being a CEO is a really hard job, but I realized I had so much pride and ownership. He just knew that I wouldn't want to kill it, that it would be hard for me to be objective. And he felt strongly that he believed he knew the right answer and said, hey, I just need you to do this. And he was right. So it took me five years to process that, but there's a lot of things you do to support the CEO. Because that job is really hard.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the core of what we do, which is personalization, which I thought was a really thoughtful response. So, my guess is they will do advertising, but he was very contrite, stock at half of its value. He felt he had disappointed shareholders, so I think he was looking for ways to earn back that trust.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Advertising to create a simple experience for the customers and so that we could stay maniacally focused on personalization. Now fast forward. So in the earnings call, for him, the debate is really between simplicity, which he's a huge fan of, but during the earnings call, he said, actually, there's something I believe in even more, and that's customer choice. And he was saying, you know what, I think for this new set of customers, giving them the choice to have a $5 a month plan with advertising, he did not say the five bucks. I'm just plugging that in. In this case, customer choice may be more important than delight. And in this case, at a customer choice may be more important than the complexity of advertising or maybe the stinky experience. There's something important. Ah, what he said is today it's relatively straightforward to execute an advertising-based business doing this. There's a zillion partners who could do it so we could continue to focus on.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the site, even for the members, we did a retention test and it actually did not hurt retention. A big surprise. And that was like the first year we generated an operating income of 20 million bucks. It was like the first profitable year. We also did this at our business. We were selling used discs, previously viewed disks. That's how we first made money and reid Hastings to see O came to me in 2008 said, give, I need you to kill advertising and previously viewed. Because I think we can deliver a profit in our core business. And he wanted to keep things simple, create this simple experience that's part of subscription. You have had this. We have a lot of pride and ownership. It didn't involve me in the decision, all of these things, right? He's just sort of sticking a gun to my head. He only asked me two questions. He said, Gibb, who's going to be the best in the world at advertising? And I said, Google. And then his second question is, who needs to be the best in the world at personalization? And I said, we do. And his argument was to kill previously viewed and out.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe. So if they create a, they pick up a new set of people, a new set of profiles. It's a technical term as you get big as you build economies of scale. So if they are able to grow, they'll spend about $18 billion on content this year, whereas poor Amazon will only spend $8 billion. I just love saying poor Amazon because Netflix can amortize it across 220 million members. So more growth, more customers, hopefully a different segment of customers that they haven't gotten yet. So it's not just cannibalistic could build more hard copy advantage. My argument, I'm just going to skip ahead, if you cross fingers, you are picking up a new customer profile, new customer type. So you're going to have incremental revenues, which is really what Netflix is looking for. For me, I just want to tell you why Netflix hasn't done advertising yet. We actually did do it five, six, seven, eight, 2005 through 2008. We put big ass ad banners every page.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so the possible delight is it might only cost you five bucks, or who knows, it might be free. I don't know. But for a set of customers who are ad tolerant, that might be a reasonable trade-off, right? You don't have to pay $10 or $15 or $20. You could pay maybe five or two. I don't really know what the right price is. Okay, so the next one is, would Netflix be building hard to copy advantage if they did this?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, your question is should Netflix have a lower priced advertising supported plan? Okay, let's do it. We'll DHM it would and add supported plan.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let's fast forward two years. Netflix earnings Q1 2022 were bad. So for the first time in 10 years, they actually lost customers. And they'd like to get the growth going again. Okay. That's a different context, right? Today?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you've skipped ahead. You're looking too smart. So on magnitude, it's a hundred million against a company that's doing 30 billion in revenue. And then the second thing you brought up is it's reversible, which is he could do it now, but he doesn't have to continue this practice forever. And so my joke there, I got married 30 years ago. I was anxious about getting married. My friend said, Kib, if it doesn't work out, you can always get divorced, right? So they're saying it's reversible. Now I've been married 30 years. So it's worked out. But my point here is as product managers, we feel like every decision we make is high stakes. It's good occasionally to think about, hey, what's the magnitude? And then is it reversible? Amazon calls those, this was a two-way door decision. It's reversible. The one-way doors, those are the bigger deal. And I think, frankly, most people would argue that getting married is a one-way door, but hey, you know, very hard.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. So, if I told you, and this is the case, Netflix chose to auto cancel these folks. Like, huh, that's a really cool thing to do, you know. And then the margin, the bad news, you're going to lose $100 million. So there is the light. There is hard to copy advantage. And you're going to lose $100 million. So does that delight and hard to copy advantage outweigh the negative losing a hundred million? So I'm just going to ask you two more questions. Is this a high stakes decision or a low stakes decision? Eddie's decision to auto-cancel these folks and lose $100 million. High stakes or low stakes. You're the product manager, Lenny.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, probably seen like the stock history. But the beginning of COVID, they thought they were going to have 8 million new members Q1 2020. They picked up 16 million, right? So that was awesome. So it was about that time that my perception as the product manager at Netflix was looking at the data focused on non-member experience. I think his name is Eddie Wu. And he's looking at the data and he knows half percent of the members weren't actually enjoying the service like for a year. So they clearly had entered their credit card, their email a year ago, and then just forgot that they had the service. And so when he thought about it, he said, you know, feel like it's the right thing to actually auto-cancel people who aren't using the service. They're paying. Of course, he was doing it at a time where there was great growth. So let's use the delight in hard-to-copy margins model. Is this a delightful thing to do?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you don't have enough delight, enough usage, there's no shot at improving margin. Okay, you were awesome, Lenny. I told you sounded exceedingly smart. Okay, what do you got? What's the next one?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I think that's a good guess. So I'm going to give you some historical context. We actually did Xbox Party back in 2008, 2009. You know, my guess with the Xbox team was it would be a 2%er. I think it barely squeaked to 5%. And then because it was only a 5%, we killed it. So I think that's a great guess. If you would said 10 or 15%, then I would have been scratching my head. Could that actually have a shot at improving retention? Anyways, Netflix hasn't launched this. They could, of course, test it, but I think the history, the failed hypothesis of social kind of leans against it. And just gave you two examples. The Friends Network getting ideas of friends and Netflix and the second, the Xbox Party, those are two failed instances of social. Netflix will keep experimenting with this, but in this case, they chose not to. So not enough delight, despite the fact that it could build hard to copy advantage.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For is I don't like two percenters. So if you find an idea that only works for two percent of your customers, now you're creating complexity. One more thing to choose. What happens when I hit this button? And frankly, some complexity that everybody else building the product forgets, right? Like, oh, like this happened to me a lot. We'd have a, in the old days, there was a profiles feature when we launched streaming, we forgot about the profiles feature for DVD. Like, ah, crap. So as a rule, I never used rules of sums, but these 2%ers, I would kill them. If I launched something and it was only 2%, we called it scraping the barnacles. Just get rid of it. So I think the key question here is what percent of Netflix members would use Netflix party if you launch to all? So you want to guess at that, Lenny?”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've tried it actually. Yeah, it's complicated, right? I mean, you and I are both freaks, so we can figure it out. So the idea is it will delight customers because this sounds like fun, especially during COVID. We can have this connected experience when we're also disconnected. Hard to copy advantage. We're kind of building a network effect. You and I will be connected and watching on Netflix. We don't want to quit because we don't want to leave each other behind. And then the margin for Netflix, it's largely about will it improve retention. So Netflix today, 2% are canceling. Netflix has just ticked away at it point by point. It's just, it's these kinds of things that create a little bit more value that improve retention. So the way I think about this is the way that addition of this feature would actually improve retention is if some reason number of customers actually used it. And so what I look out”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of a real case. A bunch of engineers at Patreon, six or seven of them, they actually enabled, if you're using Netflix, they let you connect with your friends on Netflix, watch the same TV show or movie at the same time and chat with each other while you're watching it, trash talk each other, use emojis, what have you. And they called it Netflix Party, the Netflix lawyers noticed it. And so they renamed it Teleparty. It exists. You can use it across multiple games, across Disney and Netflix, whatever you want. Okay, so the hypothesis is Netflix should launch this idea for real, not just to download the Silverlight.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, it's so idiosyncratic. It's going to be different for each company, each startup or different stage. And that's why the tools, the models, the frameworks I use, they have to work generally, but then people have to apply their own good judgment.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And your sort of true north is okay, how can we best serve our customer? And that's what I really love about that particular model. Lenny, I would be very careful about anything I say about enterprise and B2B because I've spent zero hours in this. Now, having said that, half of my audience is in B2B and enterprise, and you hear a lot about the consumerization of enterprise software. And I think that's good. I think that's helpful and important.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Using our software are using it 10, 12, 14 hours a day. That's very different from a Netflix experience. And in fact, they want and need to engage in the complexity. Like there's stuff that they're trying to do that is really complex. You can just think about our use of spreadsheets to build a cash flow statement. I'm highlighting some differences, but the model, I think, is still there. If you're starting a punk B2B SaaS company, I think at the end of the day, you're trying to find something that's 10x better than what's currently out there today. And then over time, you're hard to copy advantage. It will be different from Netflix. It'll be different for every startup. But if you can delight your customers in these hard to copy ways, that also builds a business. I mean, the reason you do that, you want to feel like you don't have to compete with peeps, really. Like, you don't like it when you're always on guard about what your competitors would do. You sort of want to get to this place where you don't really care.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, first, I think that most or all of the frameworks I use work for both consumer and B2B. Personally, I've spent my whole career on consumer. The thing about consumer is you're sort of trying to catch lightning in a bottle, right? Where enterprise you can actually walk into it a little bit more thoughtfully. You can always find your first customers, et cetera. Anyways, I was thinking about what's different. So for instance, one of the hard-to-copy advantages of B2B is switching costs, right? So I didn't bring that up in the context of Netflix. It's wicked hard to cancel. It's wicked easy to cancel Netflix and restart Disney Plus, whatever you want to do. I was thinking about, I used to complain that the user interface for B2B software was horrible. And it's like, you got to do better than this. Netflix, we prove that a simple, easy experience actually improves retention. So I would advocate, like, this is important. And they would explain to me all the basics. Hey, Gib, actually one of the basics surprised me. The people that are”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business, anyways, back to your original question. I mainly was just trying to find these high level theories and hypotheses that I hope would delight in hard to copy margin enhancing ways. The reality was we'd have 10 ideas and probably six of them would fail, but a lot of value in the three or the four that worked. When we went to TV-based systems, we actually couldn't AB test. At first, so we were going back to Qual there, you know, looking over people's shoulders and focus groups, et cetera, but eventually Netflix could A, B test, what's a good experience on a TV-based system. They have server-based systems now where they can create different experiences for different folks. So I guess my short answer was so hard to find these product strategies that worked. There was no notion of building a perfect experience of all these things together. So we just took it one theory at a time.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, I think of these product strategies as these high level theories, these hypotheses about how you will delight customers in hard to copy margin way. So I just gave a failed hypothesis, the social one. You actually brought up a winning hypothesis, personalization delights customers because it makes it easier to find movies you'll love. It's hard to copy. Netflix sort of knows the movie tastes of a billion people worldwide. That's 222 members times about five profiles per. And then the margin, this is an interesting one. When Netflix is making an investment in a TV show or movie, they kind of can guess how many people will watch it. So they guessed that 100 million people would watch Stranger Things, so they were willing to invest 500 million. They guessed that 20 million people would watch Bojack horsemen. I'm a freak. So they're willing to make 100 million. I call that right sizing, the investment. But that's how personalization helps Netflix to build margin or to build a better.”
2022-06-20 · Lenny's Podcast · Gibson Biddle on his DHM product strategy framework, GEM roadmap prioritization framework, 5 Netflix strategy mini case studies, building a personal board of directors, and much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source