YouSaid · the spoken record

Sanchan Saxena

lines on the record: 74
first: 2022-07-05
most recent: 2022-07-05
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

“We're going to move engineers wherever we have to. We're going to move PMs wherever we need to. And there is no such thing as sub team anymore. So a lot of engineers on my team would go on to do marketplace dynamic stuff like pricing and all that stuff. While some of those engineers would then go on to build CX tools or something else, that was needed for survival. So I felt like a 4,000 people company was operating as a four people company or a 40 people company, you know, which is one team. No sub teams. Everybody rowing in the same direction. And that was really important because remember employees were at your company are looking for clarity. What should they work on? It's the thing that they're going to work on meaningful, right? Because nobody knows, right? And when people will ask you as a leader, like many people ask me, so what does six months look like? What does a year look like? Where have you from a year from now? The most honest answer you can tell them is, I don't know. Because if you cook shit up, they're going to see through that lie. You know, they're going to be like, this is just all marketing fluff, you know. So we would be very honest.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For example, would make a decision on here are the things we're going to go handle, right? And there were no teams anymore. We basically dissolved this idea that there are sub teams. There was one team. Hashtag Airbnb. Didn't matter whether you worked in CX or Airbnb.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think so one of the things about Airbnb, and we'll talk about it later as well, but it's a very founder driven company while there are leaders over there, the founder is deeply in the trenches. He really understands the customer. He's not this executive who's so far removed from reality that they can't actually create the content. So Brian was living, breathing that exercise. Executive breathing that thing. So what we'll do is we'll have a bunch of things top-down. Again, this is what we need to do, guys. We need to cut this feature. We need to cut this product line. We need to cut this business unit. You know, I literally had to shut down one full business unit because we had to cut the bleeding, so to say, and let go of those many people. So it was a top-down mandate, but also it's a bottom up, you know, the engineers, the product managers, the designers are frontline. They are in connection with the CX team who's hearing what customers are complaining about. And so there was a mixture of top-down guidance to a bottoms-up things that we're seeing on the field. And every two weeks or so, the leadership, Greg in that case,”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The air you breathe is only you and your family turn out to be a huge secret sauce to compete, you know, when you're in a hotel, there's a lobby. You get to be with other people. But when you're in an Airbnb, you're safe. So we pivoted our marketing as well and messaging as well. So the entire company came together to become one. And through this, I would say Ryan's leadership was just phenomenal. Everything I learned about crisis management, leading with calmness. There's a very good saying in boxing. I love sports. There's a very good saying, which is, you know, you can have all the planned. The moment you step inside the boxing ring and you get a punch on your face, all your plans go out the window, right? And you got to stay calm when you get a punch on your face. And that is what I learned from Brian, how to stay calm, how to stay composed, while at the same time deep down, you know you owe a lot to these employees. You know you owe a lot to these employees to have clarity and for them to stick around with you and believe in you that the company can turn around. So it was an amazing journey, you know, but pretty painful.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things are going to go alright. Things are not going to go as you plan. So the real genius isn't to dot every I, to cross every T before you get started. The real genius is what do you do when ship goes wrong? And I believe rapid recovery is the key to success. What you do, how quickly you can recover from failure becomes really important. So our operating model change. We went to two week shipping. All right, what are we doing for the next two weeks? What is the most urgent thing for the company? For the company, not my team. not your team, not somebody else's team. And we pivoted the entire machinery down over there. And then slowly and slowly after two or three months, we got to a place where we got a semblance of what is happening. I want to tell you one story. You know, hotels and Airbnb are competitors, right? And when this thing happened, we had a debate. How are we going to position Airbnb against hotels, right? And actually, we had to figure it out, what are the advantages people staying in an Airbnb? And luckily for us, being in an Airbnb, we're...”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who was the president of Airbnb used to say, Look, you can't plan for a year, can't plan for a quarter, we're going to plan every two weeks. We're going to react to every two weeks. And I think this is the lesson that I've tried to share with a lot of product people as well and founders as well, is that”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second equally most important thing was the people who stayed back. How do you motivate them? One is you can let go of the people, but people who stayed back, they need a light of hope that something is going to turn around. But how do you plan? When data is changing every single day and every day we will wake up, a new country will go down and say, nope, no more travels into our market, right? And we start predicting that our revenue will be 10, some ridiculous, very small percent of last year's. So there's panic. And this is where I would say Brian Chesky is an incredible leader. He's the rocky Balboa of Silicon Valley. You can punch him. He'll go down. He'll stand up. He'll fight again. That's the analogy. He's truly the Rocky Balboa where he took so many punches, but he stood up again and said one more round, you know, and that's how the company survived. So if I'm an operating principle, we went into two week planning mode.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a different world we're living in. So we had to lay off $1,900 employees. Just 190 of those were in my organization. We had to raise $2 billion in debt and the valuation dropped to 50% of what the valuation was. It was one of the craziest times. And you know, Lenny, when you go through that, there are lots of challenges you face. One is, fine, you can cut costs by laying off employees for a little bit and create a little bit more runway. But remember, this is current amount of time. I had to let go of people over Zoom. I couldn't even meet them in person. I still remember when I actually finished my speech and I told them, this is the last day. Now, I literally shed a tear, you know, in front of everybody because I was like, man, this is hard. This is really, really hard. And the company let go of 1900 people. I just had to let go of 190 in my organization, but it was still very painful, you know, because remember, it is no fault of these employees. They just happen to be at the wrong side of the tornado that's hitting the world.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Share with you the behind the scenes story that we went through. So this is January and Brian had this idea of taking the company public in April and we were working on the roadshow deck. We were working through numbers. We had crafting the story, et cetera. Everything's going well. And then we hear the coronavirus crisis and all of a sudden countries are shutting down like one after the other. Italy shuts down. Japan shuts down. This country shuts down. And all of a sudden, we can see on a travel map, we have this dashboard where you can see where people are traveling, right? And you can see travel goes down to zero in this country on a map. This goes down to zero in this country. And you're like, holy shit, what's happening over here? So I remember in all hands where Brian stood up and said, look, we built this company for a crisis like this. We built this company. We have $2 billion in bank. I think something like that, some ridiculous number. We have not used a single amount of money from our last raise because we were profitable or growing really profitable. And we're going to survive this. Six weeks later, he's in the same all hands and telling people.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Man, one fine morning in January, Brian and us are all talking about going IPO, you know, like taking the company public six weeks later, we're figuring out, damn, how do we make this company survive? You know, the revenues, if I'm not wrong, dropped to in single digits of last year's revenue. And there is no header product. There is no CFO. There is no CO whoever has a business plan to say, hmm, what are we going to do when our revenue drops to single digits of last year's revenue? So I definitely didn't think that as well happened, but that's what ended up happening. Luckily, everything worked out, and I'm happy to share what we did and how we navigated through that with the audience. But it was some crazy, crazy times, man.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. Oftentimes, it's a joke, but I'll say it out anyhow. And oftentimes the meet leaders who are leaving Facebook, Amazon, Google, and like, hey, here's my Excel spreadsheet. Here's how magic the startup that I'm joining will grow. Here's the valuation. Here's my life. Here's my compensation. None of that shit's going to happen. Companies have a different trajectory and you can't predict those things. So yeah, you're right. When I joined Airbnb, I thought it's going to be a walk in the park just like Instagram was. I mean, Instagram wasn't a walk in the park, but like, relatively speaking, Instagram never experienced this kind of rapid pivoting of the reality. And I'll share with you. I was there when Instagram had like less than 100 million monthly active users, $0 in revenue, 50 engineers, till it had 1 billion monthly active users, billions of dollars in revenue, and thousands of employees, right? And I don't remember a time where the reality got bended so badly that we had to pivot. An Airbnb's guy.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got, I think, a masterclass from Chesky in how to build products by watching him act, behave, and make decisions as well. And we'll talk about it later today. But I learned some of my fundamental product principles from him and working with him and the team that he had assembled, the design leaders, the engineering leaders, et cetera. Like I learned a lot over there. And last but not least, it was still a hyper growth thing. We were going through crazy growth. And then I learned what happens in leadership when coronavirus happens. The company starts to tank. You know, it was a lesson in crisis management. I tell my friends, I could not have gone to HBS, Stanford Business School, to learn crisis management as much as I learned while being in the front row seat, you know, managing through that. So my learning as a product leader from Ryan, as a hyperscaler, taking the product management organization from 30, 40 people to 200 people. And last but not the least, managing the crisis. Like I felt like it all comes.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You will leave the review thinking, this is actually possible. The guy just inspired you that this is actually possible, and you went in thinking it's not possible. So what I found is that at Airbnb, I learned a bunch of different things. One, I learned how to build products where software is just one part of the product. So let me explain that a little bit. The product of Airbnb isn't the app. It is a means to an end. The product of Airbnb is the memories you're going to create when you sit in that Airbnb beautiful house with your family, with your friends, and you're building those memories. That's the product. It's in real world, right? And how you build a real world product which is, of course, powered by software like the app, the website, et cetera, is different than just building a pure product that is purely software. So I learned what is operations, how to scale operations, how to work with operations, how to create beautiful physical homes over there. The second thing I learned is just how to build great products.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I would rank Airbnb be probably the place where I learned the most. And I'll share with you and your audience why I feel that way. So I joined Airbnb back in 2017, making decent revenue, had good product market fit. I remember when I got there, the entire product management order was like 30 people or 40 people, something like that. We had three directors of product, very small still, you know, for a company that was generating billion plus dollars in revenue. And then the context was there was this ambitious founder, Brian, who will never take no for an answer. And he would bend reality in many regards to make shit happen. And you are very familiar with those days as well, where you will have a profitability.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is not for everybody. Both sides of the games are not for everybody. So, first and foremost, recognizing what gives you energy, recognizing where you thrive the most is really important. Like, for example, I am not the guy who can optimize 100,000 employee company. I will never enjoy that kind of learning. I've done to some extent a large company thing, but I thrive in that starter to scalar angle, but when it becomes too large, I start to lose interest in that kind of learning. Some people enjoy different things, right? So you got to understand what it is and be able to optimize there.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is found product market fit. And I think depending on your journey, depending on your career, depending upon where you are, you might want to optimize for different types of learnings as well. So what I advise people is there is a great way to go to Google, Facebook, Amazon, and learn the scale mechanisms that these companies have built. I look at Amazon and I get inspired by that company because what they have figured out is how to scale innovation with one million employees. It's a pretty different learning, you know, and you can't potentially find that at a startup. Similarly, the ability to just get started, you know, the ability to see an idea, start hacking at it, start building it without the encumbrances of the processes and the system that these big organizations have. You can probably learn that in a big company as well. So you got to figure out what are you optimizing for? What goes well with you? I've seen many successful leaders who will get choked up in a big company in one. And I've seen many big companies successful executives who want to choke up in a very startup environment.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think there is no right recipe for one, but it matters to the individual. I'll share both stories with you. The way to think about this is let's say you want to get to a destination, whichever destination it is, you probably want to get on the fastest ship. You don't want to get on a slowest ship. That's one metaphor to use in your mind. And then when you got to the ship, you're on the ship. It'll get there. But remember, you're not going to get to your destination faster than the ship will. So you got to understand what your destination is, then optimize the learnings from there. So at a startup, you're going to learn a lot of things. There are three types of learning. A starter learning, meaning you can get started. You're a person who can get started. You see an idea. You see an opportunity. You can get started. That is something that a startup will teach you a lot. And you see something, you want to get started to do something about it. Great. You'll learn a lot over there. And there's zero to one people who can then take what get started and scale it to one. And then there are one and beyond. People who are scalers, who will scale the system.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You got to learn the art and the science of product management early on in your career. It's an art piece to it and then there's a science piece to it. And you got to be able to manage both of those things in your head. If you become too scientific, you miss out on opportunities because you can see those opportunities using the scientific method of discovery because they're too tiny or they're so far-fetched that people cannot even understand them. And the odd piece is really important for you to be able to sniff those out by being in the community, hanging out with people who are actually builders and learning where the next trends would be. So my advice to people is go get a job which will make you the fastest learner in the field of product management. That is what will help you a lot. No course, no degree, none of those things will help. The most important thing will be how quickly can you jump in, learn the art of product management. So some people prefer doing that at a startup. Some people prefer that doing it at a stablished fang company which has processes and systems as well. It's your choice. But at the fastest you learn that”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's how you would create a great career as opposed to sort of a five year career plan and working backwards from there. Those things just don't work. The other thing I'll say is I read this book early on in my life called The Little Bets. It actually was a reflection of whatever I did in my life. Before that, I thought I was a weirdo. I don't know what I'm doing. And then I read that book and I realized, oh my God, there's some method to my madness. It's called Little Bets. You know, you take little bets. You try them out. If they don't work out, you build rapid recovery and start to do something else. And that is the meta story connecting all the dots in my life, in all the career opportunities that I've had. That's one piece of big advice I'll tell everybody. The second thing I'll say is product management is a very interesting discipline. You don't go to school for that. You don't get a degree for that. And most people that I know in product have stumbled upon product management. They were doing something else and like, oh my God, this seems cool. I want to do this. So the advice I give, early stage product people is.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I look back at my career. One thing that is very true is that I never had that plan. I stumbled upon a lot of things. I mean, I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. Didn't work out. Pivoted. I started my own company. Didn't work out. Pivoted. You know, I came to Silicon Valley, worked at Hotmill, didn't work out, pivoted. Things start to materialize when you actually take steps to do something. So my biggest advice to people is. You know, oftentimes the analysis paralysis of dotting every i, crossing every t sometimes chokes you out of opportunities. When you find something that gives you energy, just jump in with both feet and try to go through that process and pivot and learn and pivot and learn and pivot.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Organization established the culture of it and see how best we can build a world class organization. And then after that, I took some time off about six months, introspected to see what do I want to do next. And that is when I went into the Web3 rabbit hole. And that's when I learned more and more about Web3, what's happening over there. I've always been investor in crypto since 2014, but never thought of it as a builder. You know, I was like, I don't know if I want to build in there. Seems cool. I can participate in the outside. But then the more I read, the more I realized, man, this is one of the biggest revolutions happening. And that's when I joined Coinbase. And here I'm the VPO product for ecosystems and a bunch of other stuff that I do here. And excited to be able to play a small role in this next revolution called Web3.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, it's kind of crazy, you know. So, back in the day, it was pretty cool. So, I worked there, and then since then, I've been in Silicon Valley, so moved into product back in, I think, 2005 or 6, something like that. And since then, been in product. So I've been very lucky and fortunate to have stumbled upon incredible opportunities all the way from Facebook and Instagram to Airbnb and Coinbase. And fun fact, when I joined Instagram, was still very small. And it was less than, I think 50 engineers or something like that, very tiny. It was pre-revenue. We paid zero dollars in revenue. I still remember the day when Zuck told Kevin's sister, we got to go make revenue. And we made zero dollars back then and was there till 2017. By the time it was like a billion monthly active users, multiple billion dollars in revenue was my first hyper growth experience as a product leader. And then in 2017, I joined Airbnb, which is where you and I work together. There I had a dual role. I was a GM of Airbnb Plus, but also the head of product helping Brian Chesky scale the product management.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I moved to the Silicon Valley office of Microsoft, never worked in Seattle, but always worked in Silicon Valley, in Mountain View. And I work for this product called Hot Maya. I don't know if many people know this or not, but there's an email service called Hot Mail. And I was one of the product people.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, happy to answer. Maybe I'll go back in time and start from my first job. So I was in my third year of engineering where the entrepreneurial bug caught me, so to say, bit me. And I took a little bit of sabbatical from my engineering, which by the way was an aerospace engineering. I wanted to be an astronaut, go to space. You know, unfortunately back then, there wasn't an Elon Musk for SpaceX. If you wanted to go to space, you got to work for a government agency, which I didn't like. So fast forward that to by 30 year of engineering and I start my company, raise a bunch of money, hired some people, didn't go as planned. So I shops came back and finished my engineering and got a job at Microsoft, which made my mom very happy. My mom said, you know, my son finally has a stable job. You know, what the heck he was doing, running some companies. But jokes aside, I got a job at Microsoft, which was a great starting position. I started in engineering. But within a year or so, I moved into product.”
2022-07-05 · Lenny's Podcast · Sanchan Saxena (VP of Product at Coinbase) on the inside story of how Airbnb made it through Covid; what he’s learned from Brian Chesky, Brian Armstrong, and Kevin Systrom; much more · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source