YouSaid · the spoken record

Jiaona Zhang

lines on the record: 76
first: 2023-07-02
most recent: 2023-07-02
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

“Not yet, but it will come soon. And maybe I'll do is I'll post it on my website, which is built in Webflow so my full name.com”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I always love feedback. So if there's feedback on the podcast, send it my way. Or like, or even just like, what would you want to learn? Send it my way. And the reason I ask that is because I'm actually working on a course through ReForage, which is around managing your PM career. And so really just, you know, I've talked to so many people advice around their career, but if you want to reach out and be like, these are the problems that I'm facing, it would actually really help me as I am creating this course, which is going to launch in a couple months. And so I'm excited to find me there if you want to chat more and send the problems that you're struggling with when it comes to your career. And that would help me refine my course.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some things are in alpha infinite beta, but we do want to be developing it with our users and really learning like, is this the power that you're looking for? Is this the thing that's going to get you over the activation hump that you've struggled with in the past?”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My number one pro tip is there's a lot of stuff coming out that I'm very excited about. I do think Wetflow has traditionally had a high learning curve and it's because we're a pro tool, we're a professional tool, we can do really amazing stuff, so much power that we deliver you. But with that power has come with like, it's like hard to learn. And so one of the things that I'm really excited about, pro tip for using Webflow in the future is we're really going to bring the magic of Webflow University, the magic of AI all together so that you can just use and learn Wefflow so much faster. Learn Wefflow in the context of what you're doing as opposed to going into a different tab and like looking for like the Wefflow University stuff, it's going to be in context to the product, being able to actually like take action directly, like prompting WebFlow to be able to do things for you. Like it's just going to be so much easier in the future to use the product. So that's what I'm excited about. We're working on it and it will be out in the future.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Work with teams. So it's really, I don't know if there's like one thing, but it's almost like every day I'm thinking about small tweaks and process to make all of us more efficient.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are so many different things that we've done at all the different companies. It really depends on the company. And what I mean by that is like at a company like Webflow where the tech stack is complex and where a given feature has so many different interactions, right? You're like, people depend on this workflow. This thing interacts with this thing. It's a whole platform. One of the biggest things we've been tweaking is like, how do we do more of a tech spike at the beginning to be like, do we have a good sense of like how difficult this is going to be, the unknowns? Can we get a little bit more detail on them so that we don't go down a path and be like, oh, this doesn't make sense. So I feel like that's like a tweak in the process that has really made a big difference at a company like Webflow. But when I look back to other companies, again, that might not be your biggest problem. Another problem could be like, hey, just like so difficult to work with cross-functional partners and doing a little tweak in the process where you bring them in in a kickoff meeting. That might be the thing that just like changes the dynamic of like how you.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Executing all the pieces of it, but it's so important to still be able to be like, I want, like, this is the idea that I want to bring to life. And so I just think like training that is huge.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love, I mean, it's not recent, but I do love the snoo, and it's very top of mind because I just graduated my second son from the SNU, and it was a little bit like, oh my gosh, like no more rocking of the baby. But I do think it does a good job of like actually doing the thing and also giving parents peace of mind. The other thing I'm a big fan of, again, you'll see where my head's at, lots of child, like related things, my journey for your toddler is actually great because instead of it being like absolute instant gratification of like, I want to see a fire truck and here you go. Here's my phone. It's like, let's wait for mid-journey to create the fire truck. And specifically, can you even tell mid-journey what you want? It could be like, I would like it to be blue. He's obsessed with the jungle book. Wearing a fire hat next to a fire truck, right? And so you can actually like create. And I do believe in the future so much of what we are going to be doing as humans is literally like, what is the creative process? What's the idea? It's less about like.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good answers are people who put structure and a way forward through the ambiguity, like that's what you look for. You want your PM to not just be like, oh, no, we're swimming in ambiguity, but like actually put a path forward. I think also looking for people who are like seeking help, seeking those inputs as opposed to being like, yep, this is the way, this is very clear. Because again, the chances of whatever path you chart out for any product, for anything that you're doing is like the right path from the first time that you do it so rare. And so I want to see someone be able to like get those inputs, be able to like say like, this is the path, this is how I like learn why, you know, I put this path together. And then going back to a lot of the stuff I think we touched upon in this podcast is like, what are the little milestones that make you say, hey, is this working? Is this not working? And then make you either make a different decision seeing people do that really well is a big thing I look for.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do like to do behavioral questions, just really understanding when they've been in challenging situations, when they've been in ambiguous situations, like how do they navigate ambiguity is a big one for me. Because at the end of the day, like the PM job is really ambiguous. It's really hard to describe on a piece of paper all the things that you're going to encounter. So asking a lot of behavioral questions around that”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a big fan. So painted this a long time ago before Jinx and Vi were a thing. And, you know, when Arcane was made, both my husband and I were like, what? How did we predict this? It's amazing. So it's a good one.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel like every night I'm watching Sesame Street songs, we don't do TV, but we do do YouTube songs. So I honestly don't have an answer to that other than like we watch like the Elmo song and the ABC song with three-year-old.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he was like, I have a secret, or I have a confession to make. And everyone was like, Oh no, are you going to say that you have like a ghostwriter because you're so prolific? And he's like, nope, I just wrote former books.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a big fan of Brandon Sanderson. He completed the Wheel of Time series on behalf of the Prius author. He has the Mistborn series. And so he's a great one. He actually has during the pandemic, he like holed up and like wrote a bunch of books. And Bitz was like, I have a confession to make. Or I wrote four extra books. And the latest one is Trust by the Emerald C that I really love.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love the design sprint by Google. I also really like Julie's book around managing people, how to be like a good manager. That one's really great. And so those are my, I guess, like more like business side of the house books. And then we can also talk about fantasy stuff if you want.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm working on our product strategy for the next three years. I'm thinking a lot about how we really leverage AI to support all of our source providers and to support all our users who come into Webflow and have a hard time sometimes learning how to use our product. And so I'm not an AI expert. So asking for help from the founders, from external folks, from engineers to be like, well, what's happening? Like every single week, I feel like LLMs are changing. What's possible in the world is changing. And so constantly asking for help to iterate on the strategy is a huge part of it's happening every day for me and my job.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About what you know and what you don't know and ask for help when you don't know something, that's probably the biggest thing that I hold as like a core principle and just helps me build better products.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't remember where I explicitly got this advice, but I feel like I got it in multiple forms, and it just really sat with me is this idea of like asking for help. I do think about that a lot because I think there are so many times when you're like, oh, I'm the leader of X thing. Like everyone's looking to me, like the puck stops to me. I need to have I act together, you know, like I can't be asking for help. If I'm asking for help, like is everyone going to feel like I don't know what I'm doing? And ever since I've been people managing, I've been pushing myself to be like, I know it feels non-intuitive to go ask for help when everyone is looking for you to give them advice. But if you don't ask for help, there are so many times where you're just going to be sitting there with your problems and there's like whatever you have in your mind is just not the global best thing. And you have to go ask for help. You have to go ask for help from your partners, your peers, even your team, even being like team, I don't know. Like I really don't know. Like here's the guidelines. Like here's how you might want to think about it. But like I don't know the answer. You know the answer. Going out and getting mentorship. Like I think this idea of like really being able to say like be honest.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A new product really goes back to again what's the core of our advantage and how can that be something we leverage in delivering a really great product experience for our users in X adjacent area or X add-on.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Knew that you wouldn't spend all that time being like, I'm going to really deeply invest in the tech team. I'm going to do all these interesting things. You'd be like, I just need to make inventory management great. Like I need to make it so that like the sales team, the operations team, like they have the tools they need to go out and get the inventory on the platform, you wouldn't do all this other stuff that's just not the core. And then finally, like even at Webflow, we are learning this lesson all the time. We're like, at the end of the day, like people really love our designer. They love the fact that they can use it. It does so much for them. It's so powerful. And then you add our CMS and it's really powerful. You can design with data. So like investing deeply there as opposed to spreading ourselves too thin is also a lesson. So I think that I think across so many companies, this lesson around like understand why people love you, double down on that. And then whatever else you build around it. Because again, you don't want to also be like, you're not like a single product company. You're not like a one-trick pony. You are going to invest in these multi-products. But when you invest.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We spent a bunch of times on other things. But if you really sat back and you're like, well, what makes Airbnb special and how do you double down on your strength? It's like spending the time to make that experience of like really understanding what's in a home so people don't go and get surprised, like making that onboarding journey for the host and then discovery journey and like, you know, like, you know, guest booking journey really, really great. So I think that that same lesson would apply to Airbnb would have in my head changed the way we invested. And I think we would have gotten more returns as opposed to spreading ourselves and then like having things that like sort of work, but then didn't quite work. And then again, same principle applies. So we work. What is the thing that makes you really special? It's the inventory. Like it's not actually like, oh, it's so amazing that I get to use this key card and this keycard does like 10 different things. Like that's not what makes the we work experience special, right? And so again, if you”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is your alpha? Like, again, why do people come to you? You know, people come to Dropbox again for all the things I mentioned, but also ultimately, like, we have your files, right? Like, so if you're going and building a chat product, that's fine, but really the best chat experience or like collaboration experience is going to be more around your files as opposed to around just the conversation, right? So I think really understanding that is like a huge, huge learning. And I think that same lesson can be, you know, it's very true for Airbnb, right? So at the end of the day, Airbnb is known for like all the homes. The fact that these are homes that real people put on the platform. And we spent some time talking about Airbnb Plus, when you are thinking like, I got to go in. I got to manage the inventory, I got to inspect it, you're almost like taking away from the thing that is like what makes Airbnb special as opposed to leaning into it, right? We also spend a lot of time on experiences. We dabbled in transport.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, how long it takes for the thing to sink is a big part of the experience of using Dropbox, right? And so I think that is like a big, big learning where it's like really understanding that would have shifted your investments into like doing that performance work as opposed to kind of like chasing the competitive space. And I think going back to chasing the competitive space, it's this idea of like,”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really about really understanding why people love you and like not forgetting to invest deeply in that core concept and then building everything around that. And so I'll walk you through the different companies. So specifically for Dropbox, I think we did waste cycles where we would be like, oh, we see, you know, X happening in the market. Like Slack is really taking off. Why don't we build a Slack competitor or like, why don't we build chat? And I think that it really missed this idea of like, well, why do people love Dropbox? And what do we need to do to continue investing in that?”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm gonna actually give you my biggest thing across all four on the product side and then on the people side. There are so many nuances also and we could spend another two hours talking about each one of these. But I think just to impart like my biggest high level learning on the product side.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Head, I was like, I would much rather understand how the team is functioning together. And the reality is like the team was comprised of a lot of people with a lot of deep product context. So ultimately, you know, as all things in product, you know this Lenny, like everything's a trade-off. And so it's a trade-off. And so, you know, you kind of had to make the call of what you wanted to trade off. And the thing I traded off the most was that product context in my first 90 days. And again, it got me some things because I was able to have the time to go deep on the things I mentioned, but it didn't give me enough trust in the piggy bank around the actual product fundamentals or like product, like the actual thing we're building as a opposed to like the discipline.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think something like a product like Watfl is a very complex product, and there are so many pieces to it. So, you know, it's very difficult to learn the product in the first 90 days, especially if I was also prioritizing all these conversations with the team. And so I think that, again, without the time constraint, what I would recommend, right, is to be like, hey, every product leader has to take the time to really go deep on the product. Given the complexity of workflow and given the time-bound nature of what I had to go out and given the fact I really also wanted to build that like social context around like what is working and not working from like a functions working together not just like what the product is. What I wasn't able to do is spend enough time with my with the product to be able to have all of that in my back pocket, to be able to be like, oh, okay, well, like I know how this, this, and this works because I've literally used it like a bunch. So like you had to choose in my head.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As like a bank, right? It's like you're putting money into your bank, and then at some point you're going to take money out, you're going to use that social capital, you're going to use that trust to go push for things, push for change, but you have to be have to be thoughtful about how full your piggy bank is and you don't want to be spending, you know, when you don't have the trust in the bank.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trust is so important. I mean, trust is everything, right? You know, as a PM, the trust that your cross-functional partners have in you, the trust that the CEO has in you, like it's huge trust is everything. And maybe here I'll even talk about some of the mistakes I made in the first 90 days. I think I was so much like, okay, I only have 90 days. I got to, you know, go, go, go, go. We got to go. I was almost pushing too hard. I was pushing too hard for change. I think that's the tricky part that every product leader, especially if they're coming into a new role, has to figure like, how do I gain trust and then take that trust and then push for change as opposed to push for change too quickly before I have that trust? And so again, it was a personal learning. And I think, you know, I think part of it was really driven by this time-bound nature of it. But if you hopefully not everyone has only 90 days. So if you take that learning into mind, it's like really thinking about your trust.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, definitely everyone on my direct team and definitely everyone in the leadership team. So call it those two combined were maybe, I don't know, like 20 or so people, 25 people. But then it was really about like finding the people and the other functions. And to me, for any given function, it was really like getting a read from, again, that leader, but also someone closer to the actual work. And so you kind of like look at the functions, whether it's product marketing or engineering, you know, whatever it was. Back then, I didn't have designs like design and really getting a couple of data points for each one of those functions. So if you add that up, that probably, you know, was like 45, 40 to 50 conversations. But again, if you're doing them back to back and you're really synthesizing, you're actually getting a really good picture of what's going on.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And explicitly articulating in that plan keep moving. These are things that we got to do a lot more research on and then like assigning people like, okay, you're going to do this research and then we're going to come back and talk about it in the two months that I was out. And I also, you know, took the time. I actually, funny story, I think I literally had a board meeting the day before I went in for a checkup. And then in the checkup, they're like, you're in labor. And it was really important for me to do that because I was like, I want, you know, for the things that I'm seeing, for the gaps that I'm seeing, I want everyone to be aware. I don't want to just like be with one founder. I want the whole leadership team. I want all the founders. I want the board. I want everyone to be aware that like, for example, engineering hiring was really, really important. And I was saying, you know, I was communicating, hey, we are just not staffed in a way where we can deliver some of the ambitious things that we want to do. And so explicitly calling those things out and creating awareness around them and then asking other executives, right, to like step in and be accountable. Those were big pieces of what I wanted to achieve in my first 90 days.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other piece was like, I was like, well, I'm going to be out. I was only out for two months, but I was like, that's still a long period of time in the life of a startup. And so it was really important to me was like, I did not go out having just listened and like, great, like I have the context. I'll see you in two months. But it was really important for me to actually have a plan in place before I went out for my team. And so there are pieces where I was like, okay, I want to first, again, get that lay of the land. I want to have enough of like a strategic, hey, these things make sense. Keep going, keep executing. These things don't make sense. Let's get the like, let's identify what those things are and let's actually start to do research around these things so that when I do come back, we have a body of work that we can look at and be like, okay, this information, this data is making us choose to go down a path or this is a no go or no go decision. We can make that decision now where we couldn't make that decision before. So that was another big piece, which is like getting all the strategic pieces in place, having a plan.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To speak to all of these types of people at the company, and I packed my first couple weeks with like a lot of those meetings. And so I think that was one piece, which is like, how do you build context as quickly as possible? And my tip there is like,”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because, yeah, essentially, I was going to go on Matt. That's great. And so the biggest things that I thought a lot about for my first 90 days was at the end of the day, yes, you have to, like the most important thing for anyone's first 90 days is to build context and to build context well. But what I had to think about a lot was, well, how do I quickly build context probably like faster than I would be given the luxury, you know, any other time in my life. And so I thought a lot about who do I speak to at the company? How do I create like a like a, even just like a calendar of like speaking to people, yes, my leadership team, but also like across a bunch of functions and then across a bunch of levels. So it's really important for me to like even start talking to some of the engineers from the team, some of the engineers who had been there for the longest time to really understand, well, what's hard about our tech stack? Like what's going on? Like what's hard about your day to day? And so I actually took time to really think about, okay, why.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I do think the first 90 days, depending on your role, is very different. But maybe I'll just talk a little bit about the first 90 days is like a header product, right? Because you're like, whoa, or even just as a leader? Like, how do you go in? How do you really absorb all the information and get all the context you need and then affect change? And I think what was unique about my first 90 days is it was time bound. It was literally something where you're like, sure, I'd love to absorb information for many months, but I don't like I just don't have the luxury of the time.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually have not watched it in parent life. You don't have any time. And I do think there's, you know, it's like I feel like if you ask people at Uber if they've watched some of the time, they're like, it's like, it's not for me. Same way of like, why haven't watched Silicon Valley? You're like, it's a little too close to home.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I made the call in that paternal case. I give the role to someone else. And then once I made that call, I was like, well, I gotta go find something. Like, I, you know, I know that this is my last day. So I'm going to have to go find something. And it was really interesting because I actually, well, I went through an interview process while I was in my second trimester. And then ultimately I chose to join Webflow and I joined when I was literally at the beginning of my third trimester. So I had exactly 90 days before my first son was born.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More time and more freedom to go find my next thing versus someone who I brought to the company who was on a visa. So that to me just really stood out and goes back to this concept around like leadership is so much about like empathy and like people. It's as much that as it about as it's about like understanding you know your market, your customers and the strategy of your product.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I basically was faced with a choice. It was like, hey, do I say at WeWork? I would be guaranteed maternity leave. I was going to be moved on to this other team that was definitely going to stay. Do I do that? Or do I actually, and I think just a last piece of like the thing I was wrestling with is I hired a lot of these people and I felt really responsible for the fact that, you know, I convinced them to come to this company that now was going through a lot of change. And I specifically remember someone when I hired them, you know, we had a long conversation about like their visa. And in my head, I was like, I just don't feel right again, like, you know, laying someone off. Like that's only going to have so many days to be able to go find their new role. And so the hardest moment I actually remember this very vividly, like, am I going to take this new role or am I going to put myself on the layoff list, essentially, and give the role to someone else on the team who, when I really think about it, like, yes, I was pregnant, but I would have.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think this idea like dreaming really big, like I think everyone who had joined WeWork, they were like, we could do a lot here. Like the idea of really kind of like the physical space, infusing technology, I just feel like the people that we work were dreamers and like the best possible way. So that definitely, I feel like for every company that I've been at, it's really about like, you know, you join, I personally join for the product, but I say for the people, right? Like you join because you're like, I want to work on this mission. This product is really motivating. And then you really stay for the people. And, you know, the people we work were really great. So that was definitely my favorite memory. I think the hardest memory was this gets a little bit personal, but I was actually in my first trimester when we were going through all of these layoffs.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That will help you have a sense of like, hey, you still be really ambitious, like, you know, again, in a hybrid world, it's like, why have real dedicated office space? Every company could go through WeWork as opposed to this dedicated space. Like, that's still a really good idea. That's still a really big vision and like a relevant vision. But what's the key piece of that vision? The key piece of that vision is around inventory. And then you make that inventory management easier. You make all of these things easier, but that's not a technology play in the same way as it is an operational play, right? So just really understanding, again, like you can still dream really big, but you don't have to dream big and higher big in all the things in order to have a very ambitious vision that you deliver to the market.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think there was a little bit of that in the ethos of how we work with functioning for sure. I think that what was really important for us to do was to be like, we have this operationally, we work as really strong. In fact, I went to WeWork because, you know, having been Airbnb, I was like, I don't feel like we've dialed this operational muscle down. But I know from what I've seen and the way we work is expanded that they're really, really excellent at the operations. But I think it was, again, we hired beyond our skis on the tech side. It's like we don't need a team of this size to go do the things that are needed for the product to feel really great. At the end of the day, it's about booking. And yes, there are definitely technology, there's technology that would accelerate that. But do we need it to be super platform aware? Do we need it to be like super futuristic? Like that's actually not what people care about. So this all goes back to what are people's core desires in whatever product that they're using, right? Whatever thing that your business trying to serve them. And so really understanding.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lot of learning. And I think, you know, probably a lot of people, even right now through the macroeconomic downturn, they're like learning that lesson in a really hard way. And so it was definitely something that I got a crash course on, I think, before, you know, early. And the second lesson really was around not overhiring. And so I think that was huge. And I think I personally learned that lesson through my time there and something that I'm very conscious of like at any company that I go to. And so just because like laying off half your team is. How are we really clear about again, like these milestones of like, we got to get through these gates, we got to be able to show these types of results, and then we unlock hiring in XYZ ways. Like that hygiene is really, really important.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I learned a lot from my time there. I think the most important lesson I learned was really around, I think there was like a people management lesson. And then there's also just like how do you build an org period? The people lesson I learned was just really around empathy. In fact, essentially what I was doing was built a team. I spent the first six months of my time there actually like growing my team a lot and not just in the US, but in Asia and in Europe. And then the second half of my time there was actually being like, okay, what do we do if this is what's happening with WeWork? What are we actually going to do with all of these people who have like come to WeWork to work? And there's just so many lessons there around leadership, around like how do you think about people? How do you think about giving them the right transition plans, the right like it was a little...”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For others, have someone shoot for the moon, even for someone to say, like, this is the thing I really want to do. I don't know my pack yet than to be really, really safe. Because when you're safe, you're always going to be building something suboptimal. It's going to be suboptimal use of your resources as opposed to actually trying to figure out what the best swing that you can take is.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I think it's creating a culture where, like, you are not punished for that because I definitely don't want a culture where it's like you took a risk and you failed and therefore your performance is impacted. I'd much rather people take risks than to be safe. So I think that's the first thing. That being said, you know, you're also not doing a good job as a PM if you're like, this is my super, super ambitious thing. And you're like, I have no idea how to achieve it. Like your job is to dream big and also have a plan to go tackle it. And so what I would expect the PM to be able to say is like, this is my north-north star. I'm not going to be able to do that in a quarter. That just is unreasonable. But here are the five milestones, you know, whatever number, some number of milestones that it's going to take me to do quarter over quarter to achieve this really, really ambitious thing. And let me draw you that path. Like here's the milestone all the way across. And this is the first one. And this is why it's so meaningful. So I expect that combination where you're like, I know where I'm going. It's really, really ambitious. And then you can then break it down. But again, I would much.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing I want to do for the company and for my users, then a lot of times you end up hitting all your OKRs, but the company and your users at large are like, I don't feel anything different. Like your company doesn't look at the things that you've worked on and they don't say like, this is a smashing success. Your users are feeling no differently. And so that is the worst outcome in my head where your OKRs, you're like almost like doing OKRs for the sake of OKRs as opposed to letting them be a guide to delivering really great product to your end customer.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it's less about like, I would rather have all the OKRs be read or yellow. And like we missed everything and we learned around why we missed it, then everything to be green. In fact, when everything's green, you're like, we definitely did not set ambitious enough OKRs. And so it really pushed a lot on like, what does it truly mean to like crush it and be successful? What does it mean for our users? What does it mean for our business? What does that like for our users to feel X? Like, can you describe that? Can you write that out for our business to see this in terms of, you know, the revenue growth? And I think it's really hard because a lot of times, you know, you get your data scientists, you get the PM themselves being like, oh, man, I'm owning an input metric, not an output metric. And so like I definitely can't sign up for that revenue target because I have an input metric. And all of those things are true. But if you don't do the homework of really drawing that line of being like, this is the ultimate.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, my biggest tip on OKRs is actually get really, really crisp on qualitatively like what would make you say yes, we did a great job. And the reason I push so hard on that is because I see so many teams get really mucked down by OKRs. They're like, oh, man, if I don't hit my OKR, I feel like I'm going to have like a really bad reputation or maybe I won't get promoted or like you just get all this fear around OKRs. And so you see people. You see people sandbagging. You see people, you know, being hesitant to put in numbers until like the very last second until they're like super, super confident. And that results in ultimately like a failure to for your company to like innovate and move quickly. And so what I really push on for OKRs is like, what are you actually, what's the spirit? I think I asked this question maybe too much to my teams, but like, what is the spirit of what you're trying to achieve? And what would make you say, I really, really crushed it this past quarter?”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it has evolved in my career, right? Like I think that at the beginning of your career, you do want to lean into some of these pieces that make sense, but also even when you start to manage, it shifts dramatically. You know, being known as like the best executor is not necessarily the thing that gives you and your team the most responsibility. So, you know, as I've grown my career, whether it's at Airbnb or Weork or other places, flex into maybe like a different, it's like taking your core strength, but then flexing it and finding different ways to bring it to life.”
2023-07-02 · Lenny's Podcast · Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source