YouSaid · the spoken record

Melissa Tan

lines on the record: 88
first: 2023-06-18
most recent: 2023-06-18
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

“I think for me, it's been a learning journey, too. I've actually gotten feedback on that very thing from my team that, like, Melissa, sometimes taking on too much or trying to do too much. And so I think it's a delicate balance if we're talking about the person individually, you have to know what your limits are.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Helping each other out, the better it is. And finally, I think, again, leading by example, because I actually am very team first, I'm often actually helping other teams. And doing things that might not ultimately benefit or be part of my scope. You know, a good example here is I was actually driving pricing and packaging at Webflow for a very long time just because no one at the company was driving it. And it was a huge opportunity area. And I actually was doing it for enterprise pricing too. And so even though I'm overseeing self-serve, I was actually supporting enterprise pricing and packaging. And so I also showed to my team, hey, I'm also doing all these things to help the company. And I think that is what helps set that tone in that culture.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's definitely a delicate balance here. It comes down to the way that I think the manager leads the team and sets the tone. And so for me, I always make it clear that even though results are important, it's a team sport. And so I often find that I am encouraging the team to work together. So I, like, again, as a leader, you have context and everything happening. So sometimes I know 1 p.m. is working on something or even a p.m. outside our team is working on something. And I try to actually fill in context if I think someone on my team could contribute. And I encourage that action, even though it doesn't maybe feed into impact on the thing they're driving. So it really comes down to the culture that you set and what you encourage the team to do. I also think the more that you can see that you actually benefit from”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right in my team, I'm the first one to say that ultimately I'm responsible and it's a failure or oversight on my side. And so that is what I think an ownership mentality is. It's just really thinking about the scope, creating that culture. And then as a leader, it's just seeing yourself as ultimately being accountable.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This infusing of the culture, I think it comes out in a few ways. One is, and this is really common growth, growth is so cross-functional that you often will end up feeling like you're blocked by other teams. Let's say we want to run an experiment on this part of the product. Maybe that it's a core PM that kind of owns that service area that doesn't want to drive that thing, or let's say we're blocked by a bottleneck on design or engineering. It's something where I think if you're thinking like an owner, you're not feeling like easily disempowered because you can't do something. And instead, you're thinking, what is everything I can do? And did I exhaust all the options? And then finally, it's leading by example. I try to also show to my team that I'm always thinking like an owner and that I'm always trying to do everything I can. And finally, like as a leader thinking like an owner also means taking responsibility for your team. And so if things don't go,”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that's quite a lot of impact. And being a finance team, they said, logically, we should just double the team. Like if each person brings in in more than a million, if we want to double the AR, let's just double the team. And so I actually push back significantly, though. I thought to myself, if we doubled a team, what is everyone on the team going to own and drive? Is it like we split up different parts of the website, different parts of the product, one p.m. owns just like the checkoff flow? I didn't think that was going to be interesting enough for the team and going to help us recruit people that were excited to solve such small parts of the growth problem. And so really thinking about how do you carve out scope? And if you are a growth team, maybe thinking about splitting up by problems to solve that are really meaty, by Aries of the funnel, like activation, monetization, et cetera. So first starting out with carving out good scope. And then the second thing is just infusing a culture of thinking like an owner.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it first starts with defining the scope that everyone is going to own and drive, right? So as you are setting up the team, it's important that each person on the team has scope that they can run independently and that they are excited to own and drive. So one example here is as I was leaving Dropbox, the finance team looked at our metrics and saw that each growth PM was bringing over a million in AR per year just for all the experiments.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The third thing is really this ownership mentality, something I directly saw at Dropbox is when we were a smaller company, everyone just felt a lot more ownership and accountability because there was just nobody else. You're wearing like five different hats. You have to do it. As you scale, it's really easy to suddenly feel like that ownership is diluted. And so something I always try to keep in the team, it's the feeling that we're owners. And that really proactive mindset of like, how am I going to solve this problem? I'm blocked by this team. What am I going to do about it? And just being people that have strong sense of agency. And then lastly, having fun. I think that it's easy at work to, especially, you know, in high-pressured environments, easy to get stressed and all that stuff. And at the end of the day, I think the more fun, this is very personal to me, but the more fun you can have, the better everything is. And so just making sure you're infusing fun along the way and you're not taking things.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially if they're consistently paying you and they're retaining. And then the other thing that I think is important is culture. So how are you going to do these things? When thinking about culture, obviously it depends on the function and the culture you want to set there. For me personally, the type of culture I try to set for the team is one around being really results oriented. So something that someone on my team was saying the other day is you always make it really clear that we're going to be measured on impact and that's like how we are ultimately measured as a team. And so really creating that results oriented team. Also a team that's very team first and collaborative. I think when you have very clear goals, when it's very results oriented, you could potentially be in a situation where people feel they're competing against each other and you just don't want that. You actually want”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it first starts with the team having a really clear goals. They need to know what success looks like, and often I think that's for growth teams in particular, it's always really clear, hey, we need to hit certain metrics, we have certain goals for the quarter and for the year. And then also having a mission. So the mission's all about the why, right? So an example at Webflow is we have our growth team gold on ultimately the North Star is ARR, annual recurring revenue. And then you break it down into the levers that drive AR, the leading indicator. So that could be activation rates, the number of customers you bring in, et cetera. And so each team has really clear goals. And then we have our mission, the why. Our mission, the why behind why we do it is we want to build these delightful experiences for our users. We want to support them on their journey on the product. And the reason why the what is monetization is that's just good signal that people find your product valuable.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess I've mentioned Dropbox. The Dropbox was my first high growth tech startup. And then after Dropbox, I did a lot of advising. So I got to work with typeform in Barcelona and then someone at Typeform introduced me to Canva. So I met Canva when they were still about 200 people in their early growth journey and have worked with Grammarly, Miro, and then joined Webflow. And so have been fortunate to be part of a ton of, I guess, what I would think are our high performing teams.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's just going and reaching out when you actually have a problem, people that want to help others are just going to, if they have the time, they'll say yes.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She basically writes about how some people will go, Will you be my mentor? And I've got that question too. And it's just a lot of pressure to get asked that question really early in and you don't really know the person. And so the more it can be organic where you talk to somebody, you have actual advice that you want. Like some people will just reach out to me that I haven't worked with in a long time and like, hey, I'm thinking about a career decision or I'm in this tricky situation at work. Can we talk? And I just give them advice and they will reach out to me for advice occasionally. It doesn't have to be a recurring thing that you have to just nurture that relationship. I think that is a way to do it. Or if you are working with somebody and you want to set up some type of monthly thing, I think you even ask for that as well. The only thing is I would just be respectful of the time. So if you don't have anything to talk about that month or anything like that, I'm just always willing to help people. It doesn't mean we have to be frequently in touch. And so I think it's also less about being frequently in touch.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The questions I would ask if you're looking for someone external. I always find that that relationship is best the more organic it could be. I think Cheryl Sandberg wrote this in her book, Lean In. She writes like”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the questions to ask when you're interviewing for a role, I would actually ask things like, I'd love to get a sense for how you think about, I mean, I think you can flat out ask. I'd like to get a sense of how you think about managing folks on your team, how you think about developing talent on your team and seeing what their response is to that. I would also ask, how are you thinking about the career path for this role? And if the person has not thought about it at all or doesn't ask you, well, what is important to you, I think those are some signals that it's maybe not where this person tends to spend their time thinking. And then I would also ask other people on the panel that are not going to be your manager but that work with this person, especially if you happen to talk to people that they manage, how is this person as a manager? And that ends up being also very insightful.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone knows that it's a passion of mine to mentor people, and so they proactively reach out to me, ask me for advice, ask me, hey, can we set up a monthly recurring sink? And so I also think you can look for other people at the company that you work with. And then finally, the other thing is looking for like external advisors. Actually, in my advising, end up mentoring a lot of the people that I work with too. It just organically ends up happening. And so I would say summarize that as just look for the people that you think have this passion, build that relationship with them. And ideally, I think you actually build the strongest when you are working together. You just learn so much about each other. But if you don't have that set up, I think there's other ways to just proactively look for mentorship and guidance.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you are looking for a job, And even in the interview process, asking kind of interviewing your manager too and understanding what their management philosophy, how do they think about your career path in that role, those are things I would look for. The second thing too is as you're interviewing, looking for a manager who especially your success will be tied to their success. This is actually what happened. I mean, it's not like you need to be super strategic about that, but when I reflect back at times when I got closest to people was when I was one of the most critical people on their team. And they really needed me to be successful. And so they also just would spend a ton more time with me, right? So really looking for those opportunities and being really selective in the types of roles you're taking. I also think there have been times for me personally where I've built relationships with someone that wasn't my direct manager that worked at the same company. And this actually has happened a lot at other companies I've worked with where”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team can grow with you. People will build institutional knowledge, and people talk a lot about founder intuition and that intuition that founders just have. I actually think that extends to early employees too that have built a ton of content on the user, on how to get things done at the company. So the more that you develop talent within the company, the smoother to transition is versus bringing someone from the outside where there's just a lot of different factors and there's risk there. And so it really comes from a personal place, but also it makes a lot of sense from just like de-risking the situation as you're scaling.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll start with the why behind developing people. For me personally, it comes from, like I'm personally passionate about it just because I feel that a lot of folks invested in me personally when I started out in the working world, I actually struggled quite a lot. I think making the transition from school where it's really clear what success looks like you're just studying getting good grades to work where things are much more ambiguous was a really big transition for me. And I really benefited from so many mentors that invested in me that I kept in touch with over the years that have also just helped me with my careers. Two that really stand out are from Dropbox Oliver J goes by OJ and GC Lionetti. So it really has come from a very personal place for me. Secondly, I think it's just makes a lot of sense as you're scaling a company that as you are growing it just is a smoother transition that the folks on your”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Criticizing, it's really just, hey, this is what I observed, this is the impact that it had, and here is like a different way. And so keeping the feedback really about the work itself and the things that the specific things that you think can be improved.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think in that conversation, what's important is also saying I believe you can do all these things and I'm doing this to support you or I'm sharing this feedback because I believe in you. Also saying that I'm here as support like as you are building that out let me know what I can do to support you. We can jam on it together if it's helpful. Basically, I guess like boiling it down to like one restating your intention and why you are having that conversation to sharing that you are there to support them and offering your own help as well. Those I think are the things that go along well. And I think the third thing is as you give someone feedback, it should never sound like finger pointing or”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In later conversations a year into working together, that they were so grateful that I had that conversation with them. And that I took the time to tell them those things. I think sometimes as a manager, it can maybe, you know, you want to avoid the uncomfortable conversations. But I actually think the more direct you can be, but also saying this is my intention. My intention is to set you up for success goes really far. I think that's a great example of how do you deeply care about somebody and give them direct feedback and you're giving them direct feedback because you deeply care and you also believe that they can do things differently, right? I think the only reason you would give that feedback is because you know they can do things differently and you just want to help support them”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An example from someone that they joined my team and I just early on thought that they weren't maybe moving quickly enough and they needed some more direction. And so really early into them joining the company, about was about two or three weeks in, I actually pulled them aside and I said, hey, we need to move a lot faster. This is where we need to get to by X. We're a growth team. We need to prove wins out early. This is how I think we should do it. Let's try to create a roadmap, a list of problems to solve, et cetera, hypotheses. And they don't have to be right, but just getting something out there, starting to line the whole team on what those are, and then defining how we're going to measure success and know where we're in the right path. We just need to get there as quickly as we can. And so I gave them that feedback. And afterwards, you know, ever since then, they have been just like on a tear and they actually have mentioned that.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that they are mutually exclusive of each other because I think the other thing that I really emphasize on my team is being very results oriented. So as a growth leader, for better or for worse, everything to do is very measurable. And so I actually think this is why a lot of folks on my team, something that they actually appreciate is knowing what success looks like and knowing how they'll be measured. I actually create a very results-oriented culture on the team where it's clear what our goals are. We break it down into the individual levers. It's clear how success is measured for each individual. And so I don't think they are mutually exclusive. And then my role as a leader is also supporting their career growth, helping them meet those goals and giving them feedback along the way. So even though they might sound like two different things, I actually.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Helping them figure out where they want to go in their career. I think for me, it's very personal. I have been really fortunate to have great mentors and managers that helped me in those respects. And so it really started from just paying it forward and wanting to do the same thing for other people that were on my team. I think it just comes down to deeply caring and everything. All your actions follow through from there. So that's how I would describe that.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been really fortunate. I've worked with a few folks from my early Dropbox team that I've known for 10 years now, like a couple of times, in some case three times. And I am always feel so privileged that I get the opportunity to work with them again and they have that trust and confidence in me. I think what it is, and it took me time to develop this, is I have a very people focused approach to how I lead and manage. I really think the core of it is deeply caring about people building that trust, investing in their career.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End user at scale. And so I think it's basically first figuring out where do you start and then starting to invest in the area and kind of, I guess, like maybe lastly, knowing how the whole picture fits together. There's a lot of companies that do consumer and B2B. And I think the earlier you can figure out how they go together and what the paths and journeys look like, it just ends up being more seamless to the user. And, you know, yeah.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you're building out the product led motion, you have probably larger companies in your self serve base. And they are often knocking on your door. This happened at Dropbox being like, I need you to build SSO for me. I need you to build all these enterprise grade features. It's not secure enough. And so you are also collecting the list of things you need to build on the enterprise side. And so I think it's typically looking like you might start product-led, then go enterprise. And then the other direction I've seen is some companies initially just more conducive to an enterprise in sales motion. Potentially, you know, you need to build custom things for these users. It's also not a bottom-up motion. Like maybe the way you sell the product starts with, you know, the legal team or the finance team or some important stakeholder. But then a lot of companies now are trying to make that shift to make the product more accessible and go product led. And so then you're thinking about, okay, how do I make this product simpler to onboard onto? How do I think about reaching the”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really comes down to the product because initially I think most companies are leaning heavier into sales or heavier into product led. You're usually not doing both at the same time. And so a trend I've seen is starting product lead first and product led, you know, the signal is that product lead is a good motion for you is if the product is really intuitive to onboard onto, there's a low learning curve so you don't need a human to onboard the user. Also, if there's a viral component to it, that is really what can take Dropbox massively viral. And I think also about Miro or Figma, those also are very viral products. Those have a kind of the DNA of product lead. And initially, I think you, when you have scale, you're getting a lot of signal on what is resonating with a user. Initially, you also don't have, it takes a while to build out the features for enterprise. And so.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess the four things there are just the importance of hiring, execution, think about your go to market early on, and then how do you engage the whole company on thinking about go-to-market and growth?”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I really believe in is how do you engage the whole company in thinking about go to market growth and revenue? Back in 2013 in tech, growth was kind of like this dirty word and revenue was a dirty word. And so we were like, oh, a good product should sell itself. And it wasn't until our self-serve business started to slow down that we started our team because we realized there was a ton of opportunity in just optimizing the experience. Because we started a bit later, it always felt like growth was a layer on top of product. I think the best way to execute is just to have that be front and center from the start. What is our go-to-market strategy? How are we thinking about monetization and having that infused into how you think about product development? And that's something both Jay-Z, who leads product at Webflow and myself been really intentional as we've thought of the collaboration across product and growth. So that was definitely a learning.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We execute just a little bit differently, and you know, some of the learnings there where I think the first time we started growth, we could have been more user-centric and been a lot more hypothesis driven. We were following a lot of best practices that just didn't really apply to Dropbox. And so the way that you execute ends up really mattering, that was like the second learning, the third is just focus. I think you alluded to this. I think kind of the blessing and the curse of early success is that you can get pulled in so many different directions and Dropbox had a consumer business, a B2B business. And I think we could have clarified what is our point of view on what the overall motion should look like. How do we blend and think about the journey from consumer to B2B really early on? And I think a learning was that we just started our sales motion in our enterprise a little bit later than we should have and a lot of competition caught up to us. And then finally, I think the fourth one.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That were just knew how to solve problems and worked really well cross functionally across product growth sales, et cetera. And also, broadly speaking, the company just infused the topic of hiring and recruiting into the culture. It was something that as I was there, everyone knew we were all going to be spending a ton of time interviewing. We all were trained on how to sell Dropbox and how to sell the roles we were recruiting for too so that we could close top talent. So I think that's something we definitely got right. And I learned a ton about. The other thing was like the importance of execution. So a lot of times, you know, at Dropbox, we would try something and it didn't work the first time around. And it was easy to maybe say that just doesn't work for us. Like growth, we actually had tried to do some growth experiments back in 2013 and they didn't find much traction. But what we found is the devil, I like to say the devils and the details and the devils and how you execute. And so coming back to how do”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the things that Dropbox got right, one of them was definitely hiring. So when I think about 2013, Dropbox was actually known in kind of the tech circles as a place that was like very selective, very difficult to get into. You could have an amazing resume. And Dropbox was really selective about the type of people they brought in. So I think they looked for like two main things. They looked for first principles thinkers. So not necessarily your experience, but how do you approach problems? How do you know the right questions to ask? and then create your own framework around that. Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative, and team-oriented. And the combination of those two things, people that were just first principal thinkers, also just really collaborative led to tons of innovation. And so when you think about freemium product-led growth, even we created a high velocity sales motion there. There was just so much innovation because you had these folks.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question. And having been at Dropbox for close to five years, I did a lot of reflection while I was there. So I was there from 2013 to 2017 around like 200 people. Think about a billion dollar valuation to essentially, I think when I left, we were 1,500 people and we were valued at 10 billion.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've worked with companies across many different stages. So even in the early stage, as companies are thinking about their go-to-market strategy, previously at Dropbox I worked across sales, I also helped start their initial product growth and self-serve team for Dropbox business. I've also overseen pricing and packaging at Webflow. So a lot of companies initially, as they're thinking about their go-to-market strategy, should they be product-led? Should they lean more into sales motion? What should the pricing and packaging look like? I've worked with earlier stage companies. Also post-product market fit as companies are building out growth and they want to make sure to optimize the funnel across activation, monetization, engagement retention. I've also advised and helped growth teams. So kind of across stages, focus on growth and go to market.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over the last couple years, I've been at Webflow building out the growth team there. I'm actually transitioning right now and I'm out right now. And I'm going to go back into advising, which is something I was doing a lot of before Webflow working, you know, having been fortunate enough to work with great companies like Canva, Grammarly Miro, et cetera. And so that's one of my biggest passions is working with earlier stage companies once they found product market fit in helping them scale growth. And I'll be going back into advising.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My aha moment of the value of first principles thinking was when I was at Dropbox. We would hire a ton of like really smart people that had never done sales and had them do sales. There are a lot of disadvantages to that, but I do think it led to a ton of innovation. That's how we got our very innovative go-to-market motions, because a lot of those people then moved into different functions at the company. They had all this context on who the user was. They had talked to so many different users at that point. If you take people that are just super smart, they've never done it before. One advantage of that is they can like innovate because they also, I think they come in with, I don't know anything. Let me just like figure this out”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source