YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Yien

lines on the record: 96
first: 2024-08-18
most recent: 2024-08-18
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

“Is going to sound trite and it has nothing to do with product necessarily Be kind. Like, make for a nicer world, right? Say thank you a little bit more often, hold the door open a little more often, wave if you cut someone off in a car. I think there is a temptation and incentive structure to create conflict intention. And in most cases, the world would just benefit from a little bit more kindness.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is something really special about having your corner of the internet that you built sort of hand by hand line line by line. And so like my website is like, it's a GitHub page. It's hosted on GitHub pages, but it's just raw HTML, CSS, nothing fancy. And I get so much joy every year just doing like a slight tweak or cleaning of it. And so I really do recommend that for anyone with the curiosity and the desire to buy your domain, even if you're never going to write anything on it, you're never going to share it out. Just own a little piece of the internet. It feels good.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On Twitter, just Kevin Yen. Technically, I'm on LinkedIn. I don't post it very often. I probably should. I hear it's very good. But that's where you can find me. I also have my website. I don't write that often. And I don't have an RSS feed, which has always been on my backlog, and I'm always too lazy to do. But one day I will add it. One quick note I'll actually make on websites. So on one hand, I love all the different website builders that exist. It's amazing what we've sort of enabled anyone to be able to do.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sit down, I order it thinking, this is going to be great. They put it in front of me, it's a monster. And you have to eat in under an hour. And so 45 minutes into it, I'm not halfway through and about to die. The catch is if you finish it in under an hour, you get it for free. And so my dad, again, leans in and goes, you can't afford not to finish this. And so message receives her, hunker down. I cloud the other half in 15 minutes. I then slept for, I think, three days afterwards. But after that, I was like, oh my God, if I could do that, what else could I do? And so Anna carried for, I don't know, nearly a decade of trying to do these interesting challenges.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, it was more eating challenges. And so whenever I would travel, I would find like the local eating challenge, whether it was time-based, volume-based, something else, and just like try to see what I could push my body to do. I was blessed with the great metabolism. So I never really had to worry too much about anything else. The origin, like the first moment of this, was when I was 14. My sister was going to college in Minnesota. And there's this steakhouse up there called Manny's, which is where like the Vikings front line goes to after every game. And they have this ridiculous 97-ounce quarterhouse. I don't know how many pounds that is, but it's too much meat for a human to consume. 97 ounces, yeah. And so”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I carry that theme forward where there's this weird transition we all go through from childhood to adulthood where we no longer receive homework. We're responsible for defining the work that we do. And when you do that, if all you do is the minimum of what's defined, the 100% of what your job requires, you'll never grow. And so it's up to you to actually find what is the additional 3%. There's always 3 more percent. So that's my dad's lesson.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So confused. I'm like, I got 100 out of 100. I have no clue what you're talking about. He just looks at me down the eye and goes, who said 100 is the most you can get? That age, I literally had no clue he was talking about. And he had to reframe it for me in the moment around like, well, was there extra credit? Who said, like, can you just write your own problems to challenge yourself more? Could you have given yourself another test? And maybe the teacher won't give you credit, but you give yourself credit.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so just having that shift in perspective, I think has helped me a lot to not overreact to anything that happens in my life. So that's one side. And then on my dad's side, so the funny origins of this, unsurprising to anyone with Asian parents, I'm a spunky little seven-year-old. I come home with my math test one day. The guy at 97% was pretty good. I go show it to my dad with beaming eyes and pride. He sort of stares down, his nose at it, looks at me. Where's my other 3%? Oh, my God. I'm just like distraught. And I sulk away. I'm very sad. I study hard. I do the next math test. I get 100%. Yes. All right. Dad's approval. Here we come. I come flying back. I put the test in his hands. He stares down his nose at it, looks at me. Where's my other 3%?”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something bad happens because everything happens for a reason. And I'm like, no, it doesn't. Life just sucks. And to no surprise at this point in the conversation, I've now grown to really, really appreciate that piece of advice because what it's actually trying to communicate is when something happens, good or bad, frankly, don't dwell on it. That's the past. Focus on what you want to do and then just move towards that. And then in most cases you'll be able to look back in one, five, ten years and connect the dots in a way where the story makes sense in your mind.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we've actually maybe touched on both of these. I'll cheat and I'll pull one from maybe each parent so that in case they see this, they don't feel like I'm favoring one of them. So on my mom's side, I think something that she would always repeat to me growing up is everything happens for a reason. And I hated that growing up because she only said it when something bad would happen.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got a really old 2002 Jeep to work on with my daughters just like a true junker. And as a result of that, we're repairing it, we're taking off the rust, replacing parts. And so there's these little magnetic trays that you can hold screws and nails and whatnot so they don't go flying and rolling around everywhere. It's stupidly useful when you're working on a car. And the girls love it because they can use it for other things like collecting hair clips or whatever else. So magnetic trays, shout out, and then selfishly I will say my buddy Arjun Mahanti has an app called Circuit. If you search the app store for Circuit, like C-I-R-C-U-I-T, hit timer, it's such a delightful little app that lets you track Tabata sets or whatever else to just get a little workout in.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Korean shows that I've noticed is the amount of respect they have in this competition is bar none. Like you have this guy who is. Historically famous was the top champion in judo or something. And you have all these other athletes that are 15, 20 years younger. And they're like bowing and like just humbled to compete against the guy. I kind of wish that more American Joes had like that level of respect as opposed to just like trying to find the most conflict. There's something that I really like about that.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's less time for either these days. I will say not novel. The bear holds a very special place in my heart right now, both because I worked in restaurants and I got to build for them. And so seeing the details that they do actually gives me a lot of anxiety, but I really appreciate the craft they put into it. The other show, actually, this is, I think this is the first time, Physical 100. So this is a Netflix show. It's a Korean show about 100 different bodybuilders, athletes, what have you on who I was like the optimum physique or whatever i don't really care about that part the two things i love about the show are one it's ridiculous what people are capable of like you see what they can physically do and you're like oh my god that's amazing what they can put their minds to the other part though and this is maybe a trend of”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, a little bit. I was going to say the other book I was going to mention is The Paper Menagerie. This actually, shout out to Sean Rose for, I've never met him, but I really appreciate Sean. He was one of the early, if not first PMs at Slack. And he used to be really sort of. Loud on Twitter in a very good way. And I think I learned a ton from stuff that he would post. But one of the things that he'd posted was this book. And it is just the most beautiful collection of essays that span like sci-fi and fantasy. And so if you're into that kind of stuff, if you like exhalation, then paper menagerie is even better.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Focus on what you control. Like that's the one line. Don't worry about everything else. Don't worry about what other people think. Don't worry about what other people do. You cannot control those. You focus on yourself and you focus on the actions you can take and like be the person that you think will attract other people that you want to be around. And there's some like really pointed notes in there that I'm like, I don't fully agree with that one, but it always pushes me to question something about what I believe. And so in every like physical cognitive book I have, I like write the date that I started reading it again. And the front inside cover of this book, I think it's been seven or eight years at this point that I've read it every single year.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It covers, it's like a very Socratic method style, so it's about a philosopher and a young person, and it tries to teach you the ways of Evyrian psychology, which is sort of counter to Jungian theory. The reason I really like it is because it makes me uncomfortable. So the whole premise, in my opinion, behind the book and psychology is”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Start by saying the type of book by volume that I read and get the most joy from are autobiographies and memoirs. It is just like the ultimate cheat code to spend time with people that you respect are interested by or want to learn from. Could you imagine what it would take in real life to sit down with Albert Einstein for 50 hours and just have him talk to you about his life? Like impossible. You can read and pretty much get the same thing. So, anyways, strong requirement or a strong suggestion, go read like autobiographies and memoirs of people that you respect, mostly for their mental model and way to approach. But the one book that I read without fail every year has a very misleading title. It's called The Courage to Be Disliked. I think it's been mentioned previously on the podcast.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is why performance conversations can always feel so difficult because it seems like you're telling someone you are bad. And as the recipient, you're like, I am bad. And no one wants to hear that. But the reality is you are not bad. It is that maybe the way that your environment is working. Like the machine that you exist as a part of is not the kind that you thrive in. And so it's within your control to decide i'm going to change how I work to fit that environment or I'm going to find a different environment that actually fits the way I work much better. And that's empowering.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one is the business just as I have a need for you. They got ahead of their skis, and that's their fault. And they probably admit that, but that's not up to you. The second one, though, is My skills and the way that company operates are not compatible. And this one, I think, is really, really important because I've seen so many times where there's been a PM engineer designer, like whatever role they cannot make it work at company A. And then you see them five years later just killing it in company B. And you're like, did they change as a person? Did they get super good at what they were bad at before? maybe a little bit, but honestly, it was just a change in environment. And when you find the right environment in the right role, like you just flourish. And I think this is actually, sorry, we'll go back to hiring for just a moment, or at least management.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use these moments where it feels bad and feels like a failure to reevaluate what parts are actually part of your identity and which parts are in your control to change in whatever you do next.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some cases, maybe that's true, and you can sort of have a career transition or a pivot in your life, but I think it's worthwhile to reflect on what are the things that were in your control that you can now change moving forward. And then what are the things that were truly out of your control that you can now apply to find a better fit? And that's one of the big things that I've been able to, I think, come around to. And it's really hard because early on, I think it's very tempting to associate a lot of different things with your identity. You're like, I'm a startup guy. I'm a PM. I'm fast whatever. I'm a fast thinker. And when an event happens that pokes at that part of your identity, the rest of it crumbles. And so long story short, I think it's really important for folks to”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't go down during rush hour because of this. That gave me the validation to say, okay, I am competent at this thing called product management. And then from there, you can continue to build and continue to grow. But I think right now, the market's weird, right? The market's wonky. There's a lot of really good talent that is just getting hit over sideways. And I have a lot of friends that are having the same mental conversations around, well, I guess I'm just not worth it. I guess I wasn't cut out actually to do this job, do this role, be of this purpose.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a difference between you not being good at something and a business or company not needing that thing at a particular moment in time or you being very good at something but not in the way that a company needs. And so I think once I was able to get to that, Square for me was the immediate subsequent role that I took on. And I went into that thing just full steam ahead. I'm going to prove myself like I know I'm good. Unless I think I'm good and I am going to prove the hell out of that mainly to myself, but ideally to other people too. And I think, you know, you shouldn't do things for other people for validation, but the initial success I got to see in like launching a product, gaining the trust of my peers, having something that restaurants were texting me about saying, I can start my restaurant because of this.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mentality of how I got to the other end of it helps even myself sort of get back on the horse. So, okay, I get laid off. I'm distraught. I have no purpose. I'm nothing. And it was through a lot of reflection, a lot of conversation with friends and my wife where Eventually, need to convince yourself that”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I am freaking out. There is the personal side that I'm worried about, but then there's also my identity that has been completely crushed. Because in the moment, all I could think was I thought I was a product manager. This is evidence. I am not. And I couldn't get past that. And so, for what's worth, this is the one post I have on my website that I actually feel like really, really proud of. It's called Finding Swagger. I can talk about why it's titled that way. It's the thing that I really wrote more for myself because it's a good reminder to me every time I fall into this. Because that may have been the first time that I really. Had the feelings of I'm not worth it or I'm not meant to be this person, but it's recurred several times since then over the past decade. And when I read back through”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's countless stories of failure, but I'll choose the one that I think I've had to reference the most with people and has been to date the most difficult one to really talk about. I'm on the other end of it, and so now it's very easy, but it took several years to get there. So context, I meander my way to PM. I land my first official by title PM job at a startup. I made it. I've arrived. I'm officially a product manager. We go up, we go down, all the things happen fast forward. The company is really struggling. And so we go through a series of rolling layoffs. And I'm around four or something. At that point in time my wife was nine months pregnant with our first child.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The concept of these image generation models is the same as a crayon to her. Like there is no difference in her mind. And that is an insane change that I can't even comprehend. And so for me, that's just been, I think, an experience that I go back to when I think about people asking, what do you think AI is going to do? And what's the next thing? And is it chat or is it something else? I cannot comprehend what a child who grew up with a crayon of an LLM is going to think is a good product in 20 years. I need to start trying, but God damn it. Like, I have no freaking clue. And so I think I have a cheat code, actually, as a parent because I get to see how they evolve and use these tools in real time. But all I can say is we are not even like beneath the dust on the surface when it comes. To what's going to change?”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I type in the first prompt, image gets generated, it's like a rainbow or something. And then I ask her, do you want to try it? She goes, of course. So she types in unicorn prancing in a field. And it generates this hideous looking, demented unicorn with two rear ends and like a demon flying over it. And I'm appalled at first, thinking that she's going to feel really bad about what she got shown. But instead, I look over and she's in awe. She is amazed. And then she turns to me and she goes, did I draw that? I guess you did. And the thing that I got hung up on was that she used the word draw. She didn't say, oh, it did. Like I enter a prompt and the LLM produced this thing or like whatever weird terminology that all of us use. It's like, did I draw that? Know when it clicked for me, but at some point in time after that, I was like”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's plenty in work. I don't know if any of them are interesting or novel. I feel like everyone's just like figuring it out in real time together. So I'll actually take us in a slightly different direction. And this maybe isn't directly useful to product managers, but I think it's a really good story. So when mid-journey V1 was released, if we can remember that far back, it was at least I got beta access on a Saturday. For what's worth like I have three daughters, one of them's seven years old, and so her and I were awake. We were waiting for the others to wake up. And I was like, oh, like, I have this cool new thing. Do you want to play with me? And she goes, of course. So we log in, we create an account.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And I think just like the last point on this one is. When you join a new team or start a new role, every PM is like budding with energy to do this. Like, of course I'm going to talk to my users, but then you reach a point where you go, no, I know them inside and out. I don't need to talk to them anymore. I can write a PRD in my sleep, and I'm so busy doing both product improvements, maintenance, annual planning, something else. I can use my intuition from the hundred interviews I've already done. I don't need to do one more interview. And that is a very tempting lie to tell yourself because the world is changing, their lives are changing, and you need to constantly be exposed to those little micro changes in their lives in order to build the product that they'll eventually need.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of what their life is like that cannot possibly be communicated in like a report. And you owe it to yourself as a PM to be exposed to those things all the time.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you can take advantage of that, you can usually set up something, and if it's not a gong or a zapier, maybe it needs to be just like a custom script that you write or you sit down with an engineer to say, how do we set up alerting around this thing so that I know when things are happening? And I think you can't use the effort required to do that as an excuse to not be talking to your customer a little more frequently. Because again, if we go back to a product manager should be trying to like convert this potential into kinetic energy, like part of that understanding and part of knowing the constraints you can apply is just living in that world as much as possible. Like the best comparison I can give is there is a world of difference between reading a report about a lime cook and then standing with a lime cook. You will just pick up on so many ancillary aspects.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I take a step back from the automation side, or maybe straddle it, depending on the type of business you're in, there's ideally people talking about you somewhere, right? It's either happening on Reddit or Twitter or on some forum or your support forum. There is a community, there's a destination somewhere. And if there isn't, then I don't know, that's too bad. Maybe you don't have product market.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so Gong has an integration with Slack. You set up this alert. It posts to Slack the excerpt of the transcript where it was mentioned along with the user or customer name. So in this case, it'll be Lenny's burger shop. Lenny at Lenny's Burger Shop.com. And then you can set up a Zapier to take every new Slack post from that and then send using, I don't know, customer I.O. in email. That person using that field, and then in that template of the email drop in your calendar specifically for user research”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Channel or otherwise, and then you can set up workflows either via Zappy or something else to say, who was the customer, pulled their email, put that into a sequence, drop in my calendly, and you just have interviews showing up automatically on your calendar. I will say I cannot take credit for this. Shout out to Beth Hills, who was a PM that I hired at Mutiny. She is the queen of automating customer research and built an amazing system around this.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Implicitly focused on B2B, and you can put in super clear criteria on the type of people you want to talk to. They do the heavy lifting and sourcing it. And then you just review and say, yes, yes, no, no, and you can have a steady stream of the exact ICP you want to go after. ICP is ideal customer profile that you want to go after just coming to you automatically. Amazing. The next one, though, it depends on whether or not you have this tooling in place, but the broader theme behind this next category is your sales team is a research team. And if you don't view them that way, you are missing out on half the value. And so there's tools like Gong, which do call recordings, and you can set up filters and alerts for specific terms, phrases, competitors, whenever you want. I don't care what PM you are in a team like, you can find the terms that are associated with what you care about the most. Those then get pushed automatically to a Slack chat.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have time. It's so hard. How do I find them? My customer success manager says I can't talk to the client. If you are in a situation where the product manager is literally not allowed to talk to a customer, there is something structurally wrong and that needs to be fixed first. So I'm going to ignore that one for now just because that's a whole other sort of rabbit hole. But you need to fix that in order to even get close to the next thing. So, okay, now the excuse is going to be, well, I don't have time. I don't want to run a program. I don't want to have to query and look up and send out emails every week. There's so many good resources out there right now. And I think that there are, I'll speak mainly from like a B2B sense. I think B2C slightly different story. I don't have as much experience there, but B2B, the two things I will say. One is there's this thing called userinterviews.com. Shout out to them. They're pretty much user testing, but”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's start from why this even matters. I think a lot of folks going back to what is the point of product management, I think there's a similar overlap with UXR, like user experience research. And people will say, well, if they're doing research, what do I need to do? I should just be consuming what they're producing to help with that. I know PM should settle for looking through bent glass, in my opinion, because whether it's a research report, whether it's something a salesperson is telling you, whether it's market research, don't care. It's been processed by someone and PMs need direct exposure to raw material. End of story. And so that's where I think like you just need to constantly be talking to or interacting with whoever is your customer. That's like the foundation. So, okay, if we all agree on that, then the question is, well, I...”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You need to bend to do whatever it takes for them. And so if they're like, hey, the only time I can talk is tonight at 11 o'clock after my kids go to bed. No problem. Here's my phone number. Let's hop on. I will walk you through whatever you want to talk about. And that sort of has to be the place you get to for like really strong hires. So that's just like one other thing I'll say. The meta point around that is you need to be really invested in the candidates. This probably does change at a certain scale. Like, you know, if your quote unquote organization is hiring 100 engineers or whatever, like you have process around it, you have pipelines as a machine at that point. But I do think the direct hiring managers have a responsibility to be really involved in every individual. Because there's no one who's like.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One final note I'll make on unsell email is it's not as if you just send the email and then the other say yes or no like most of the time they will say thank you I am cool with six of these this one freaks me out can we talk more definitely and I think this is where hiring managers have an incredible”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think some companies have shifted on that where Recruiters and sort of salespeople are compensated sometimes in similar ways in terms of like quote and whatnot. And so they'll hold the recruiter accountable to six, 12 post offer tenure before they say, oh yeah, you successfully landed this role. So you can tweak the incentive structure a little bit, but not everyone does that”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Square, at least when I first started doing it. Luckily, I had a very good relationship with them, so that's a good starting point. This is maybe going to come across a little bit flippant, but. Can't stop you from sending an email, technically. I'm just going to send the email. And if someone really wants to come and say, this is bad for business, whatever it is, I have very strong reasons for why that's not the case. And now I've done it so many times at least, that I can point to very clear proof points on why this is the right right.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which drove my recruiting partners insane because they look terrible. Their manager's like, what the hell are you doing? You're losing everyone at the very end. And so they ask, can you either not send this thing or can you send it at the very beginning? And the answer is no, because I don't know what they're afraid of yet. I have to go through the whole process to actually understand the thing that's going to potentially make them say no. And that's really crucial, I think.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up front, and they can read that whole email and still be equally excited to join, you found yourself any plus higher. But if they read that and they're like, I don't know anymore, it's way better to say, great, this is not a good fit. Let's go our separate ways than have them leave after six months. And when I first instituted this, I lost 30% of candidates at offered stage.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not explicitly saying, but they're definitely hinting at. And you got to be pretty honest with yourself about which ones are real. But then when you get to offer stage, I send an email with no more than eight bullet points. And I say all the terrible things that are probably going to reinforce their fears. And I'm pretty tanded about this is what it's like here. Maybe one example would be, hey, I'm a parent and I'm worried about work-life balance. Maybe they don't say that explicitly in the interview process, but you get a feeling for it. And I get that as a parent too, right? So if I'm at a startup, I'll be really clear and I'll say, you know what? We are a series A startup. We are pushing really hard at product market fit. The expectation here is going to be that you're online at 10, that you can occasionally hop on a meeting on a Saturday or Sunday. And if you can tell them that.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They come to me and they're like, This is not at all what I thought I was going to do. This is not the environment I thought I was going to walk into. You didn't warn me about this, that, and the other. I feel terrible. How do I prevent this? And the reason it's bad is not just because they feel surprised, but because then either one, they decide to leave. Two, they're not performing because it's not the right role or environment for them. Or three, you know, maybe the company is still good, but that role isn't. And so they immediately try to do like internal mobility or something to another team, which then leaves you with the same hole. So all of those bad outcomes. So I'm like, all right, how do I prevent this? Well, I just got to front load all the gnarly stuff they're going to find out in their first six months. And so the practice I started developing is you go through the whole interview process. And during that period, you're collecting all these little concerns, fears, anxieties.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say the idea of the unselled email came from a place of failure, which is at Square, I had sort of shifted into a position where I had to hire a lot of people really quickly. And through that, as a fairly new hiring manager, you're like, all right, great. The goal I've been told, the goal is to hire fast. Okay, you give me a metric, you're going to go after it. So you do your best to get as many people in the door as possible. And when you're talking to your recruiting partner, they're incentivized to increase pass-through rates, offer to close rates, all these other things. And so they're like, yeah, this person's really good. And you listen, like, yeah, they are pretty good, aren't they? Even though there's a sneaking suspicion that maybe they're not the right fit, but you move forward anyways. So fast forward, there's a few folks. I bring on and within six months.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think some of the best companies actually do have a practice around this where they had a six, 12, 18 month check-in on new hires and they then compare their sort of performance against level hired at and then review against the scorecards. It's like a pretty laborious process. So startups aren't probably going to do it in the same amount of rigor. shows you so much about the holes in your inner being process. So I definitely plus one of that one.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it depends on how far you want to go down productivity and taking sort of rabbit holes, but let's start basic. This is not what I do, but I think it's the easiest place to start. Spin up a Google Doc or a Notion page. Just call it daily log, and then bullet point out the date of today. And then as you're going through your day, you have a meeting. Just type in the meeting name. If there's a takeaway, put it under there. If there's a decision you can make, do hashtag decision. And in this case, say Shopify launched ShopApp. I think this is their way to take over the fulfillment to buying behavior loop. The reason for that is XYZ. Follow up on this in six months and then set your calendar invite.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. I do want to apply a pretty severe caveat here, though, which is a decision log is not a replacement for building products. Like it's an additional complementary thing that you can be doing on your own. But if you think that you can just sit back in your chair, look out at the market, make a bunch of calls and be like, look at how smart I'm getting without actually being hands-on with like building a product, you're not actually going to get any better. So I just want to interject that.”
2024-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Unorthodox PM wisdom: Automating user insights, unselling job candidates, logging every decision, more | Kevin Yien (Stripe, Square, Mutiny) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source