YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim Holley

lines on the record: 80
first: 2023-09-03
most recent: 2023-09-03
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

“As an example, yeah, and then really thinking about some of the kind of signals or the snippets of information that we highlight, you know, what goes into that? We know that great customer service, a seller will be providing, they'll be responding to, we call them combos, but messages on our platform. They'll be responding really quickly. And that's something that we then highlight in the experience and that if you're meeting that criteria, then we can start to signal to a buyer that, yes, this person offers really excellent customer service and you should set your expectations accordingly.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and to some degree, we use the buyer experience to kind of signal what matters. When we're clearly highlighting photos, then that's obviously a very overly simple example. Sellers just noticed.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're business people. They have limited time in the day, and they want to spend time making. So, how can we make sure that the time they spend on Etsy managing their inventory, you know, offering customer support is as valuable as possible?”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to that data driven point, right? If we can clearly articulate that if you show more photos, you will help buyers understand your item in new ways, in deeper ways, and you're more likely to make a sale. That's maybe a somewhat reductive example. But those are the types of things where we generally know either through the data that we observe based on activity on the marketplace and or through the research we're doing, that this will be valuable. The challenge is often we have so many things that we want our sellers to do. What's the most important thing for them to do right now? And that maybe changes somewhat seasonally, right? We're slowly starting to get towards the holiday season. And that just has a heightened purchase. It's a heightened time of purchasing and contrast that with, you know, when it's around Mother's Day, maybe different type of inventory works really well. And so we need different inputs from our sellers. Because ultimately there.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The needs that you have, when is it going to arrive? How much does it cost? Is it this size or that size? So really trying to lean into those types of things. And again, to some degree, that's ECOM 101. But given the scale we're at, it is a pretty unique challenge.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the high level, we have 100 million items. So if you take that number at base value, you would think we do not have a supply constraint. We have largely, you know, we want to drive buyers to that supply. When you dig in maybe a more category subcategory, subcategory level, that's where we do start to see pockets where maybe we want to increase the type and the amount of inventory we have in Wal Decor seeing something behind you. That might not be the right example, but that's where we then start to focus and say, you know, are there areas where we want to lean in? Ultimately, really thinking about how do we help buyers choose? Because that's when you have 100 million items and even in a subcategory or for a specific search query, you still generally have a lot of results to choose from. How do you distinguish one item or one seller from another based on”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think it's also the fact that we as the marketplace, and I'm curious if this was true at Airbnb as well, but we have the insight into information, into data that an individual seller won't. And so we can help them make hopefully better decisions that lead to sales leveraging the insights that we have. If you put an item on sale during this time period, chances are it's going to resonate with buyers and you might make an incremental or you might get an incremental sale. And so trying to be really data driven in how we help and guide sellers to take actions that we really believe will be valuable for them and their business because they simply, you know, they're either a small business owner and so they don't have time to do that level of digging or it's simply not accessible to them because they have the worldview of their business and we're looking at the entirety of the marketplace.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and maybe to your point, that's also evolved at Etsy. And the place we're in at the moment is the job of a marketplace, even pre the technology definition of a marketplace, is a seller will go there to make sales. And if they're not making sales, they probably won't go to that marketplace. And so we really see it as paramount that we have a qualified set of buyers who are looking for the items, the type of items our sellers are selling, and that we can help them make a purchase decision and therefore a seller maker sale. That doesn't mean that every single team is working on building features for buyers because it doesn't work, not least because you have a limited piece of real estate marketplace. And if you have too many teams working on it at one time, you'll end up getting in each other's way and you won't be that productive. And so we, of course, we have a team that's laser.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I guess that I'm painting it as a linear approach. It certainly was not because if you've got supply without demand, then you don't really have a marketplace. If you've got demand, then no supply to meet it. Then you also don't have a marketplace. So there's this flip-flop between, you know, do you have enough supply to satiate the demand you have and kind of playing that out is certainly, I feel like art, not necessarily strictly science.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Create a world-class buyer experience that ultimately drives sales for our sellers because when you have over 100 million items, all of which are unique, you've got a different challenge than when you have 10,000 SKUs that you could kind of find anywhere or on many retailers. And so topics like structured data, topics like how do we help you gain confidence by this thing will meet your needs from a seller who you may never have heard of. They don't have a brand that you've ever encountered before. And so we have some kind of somewhat unique challenges on that front where we need to lean into themes that other marketplaces absolutely touch on. For example, customer reviews play a big role in our experience, but they play a heightened role given the things I mentioned, right? Unique inventory from a seller that is maybe an independent person who is a single.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This narrative is still there, but I think we really focused heavily on the seller side, so the supply side of the business early on. And we really immersed ourselves in who sellers are, what they need, and how what they need maybe differs from what the solutions that they can find elsewhere. Back in the day, we were doing studio visits with sellers. We were going to their workshops. We were going to their homes. We were seeing how they make items. We were seeing how they package and ship them out. We were bringing them into the office when we were running hack weeks to say like, hey, we've got this crazy idea. Is this interesting? So trying to involve them in the product development process to the extent that it was reasonable or feasible. And so I think that served us really well, right? We have a very deep and rich understanding of our sellers. And then the next phase was really, and the more recent phase has been, how do we”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To tackle, of course, on a pretty heightened degree of intensity and kind of focus from the business. Yeah, that was an exciting time”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the product side, we, as I mentioned, we were really starting to get focused on driving retention or maybe said slightly differently, driving frequency. And that was a newer topic for us. We've long at Etsy been a really and maybe roast tinted glasses speaking a little bit, but a really great experiment, A-B testing driven culture. And so when you think about things like retention, you can absolutely test course, not saying you can't. But you're looking at a different time horizon instead of someone making a purchase in that visit or in a week, you're looking at, do they come back in 30 days, in 60 days, in 90 days? And so that forced us out of our comfort zone to some degree in terms of how we understand how we measure change, how long we're willing to wait to see it show up back to the incrementality point on minimizing waste. Is this actually adding value to the business? And so those were great challenges.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was one of the fortunate ones back then, no kids or worked in an industry that was clearly critical at the time. So I am in awe of how parents work through that time. So stressful, yes, but not to the extent that other people experienced the stress of COVID. We just tried a lot of stuff. I remember early on, I think we had maybe even daily, but at least three times a week coffee chats with the team, just like, how are you guys doing? What's going on? And at a certain point, we realized all we're talking about is exactly the same things. Nobody wants to be on more calls and more video video chats. And so we just kind of continue to evolve and really try to keep a pulse on what the team needs. And that, like I said, given context of being parents or whatever differed pretty dramatically, person to person. So definitely wasn't a one-size-fits-all solution. That's more on the people side.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time and again. And so that was kind of the journey that we then went on mid 2020 to probably the subsequent 18 months or so.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How are you guys doing? What can we do to help? And some people said we've got this, don't worry. This is squarely in our wheelhouse. We can absolutely meet the supply. And others said, you know, actually we need a little bit of help. We need to take a pause for a moment while we catch up with all these orders. And then we can kind of come back to taking more. And so just getting back to good old-fashioned, you know, know your customer. What do they need from you at that moment was just a really kind of powerful, powerful thing that I took away from that time. And then from there, things kept going and we really worked hard to make sure that the story was not just about face masks for our buyers, that they understood that Etsy's a place for so many different categories and so many different items. And that was then kind of the next phase of the challenge. We got a huge influx of new or reactivated buyers. How do we keep them around? How do we make sure that the product does a little bit more work to retain them and can really have hooks that bring them back?”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Supply rising to meet it. And we did something that, as far as I know, we've never done in Etsy's past, which is we put out a call to our sellers to say, now's the time. Now's the time to make face masks if you can. And so it felt like this is our time to shine, to really help sellers continue to make sales, to help buyers find this critical item that they were looking for. So it was a very, very exciting couple of weeks while we were kind of adapting to that change. And we were just really every day there would be stand-ups. What's happening? What do we need to change? I remember distinctly we were worried about certain sellers not being able to meet the demand that they were seeing. And so, you know, we did the old fashioned.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was quite wild. I'll say that. And to be more specific, we, you know, as many or all of us did in probably the world of tech, at least, you know, we went home not knowing what the next weeks or weeks as we thought would bring. Turns out years. But when the CDC mandated face masks in, I think it was early April 2020. That's when essentially we went to sleep one day with our typical April traffic, typical April sales. And then it was Black Friday overnight. And in part because nobody knew where to find face masks. Our sellers are incredibly astute business people. And, you know, if you had been making wedding dresses and you know how to sew and you've got material and you've got a bit of time making a mask is quite a simple task. And so we just saw this huge surge of demand and then”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you then scale back to engineering and product, we're not big. And so we have to be really diligent about how we're investing our time and our resources in order to be successful.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We call them guiding principles at Etsy. We have a few of them, and I won't go through all of them, but just to give you a flavor, one of them is around digging deeper and not really speaks to aiming to really understand the why behind a change, to really push on the insights that we're learning through Qual or Quant research or other inputs that we might be looking at in order to make the best decision possible with the information we have at the time. Another example of a principle is minimizing waste. It aligns with how we think about product development, which is we want to know, is the work we're doing adding value to the customer and the business? And so something that isn't working out a lot of times in product development, you know, we're wrong. And so being able to say, no, this is no longer valuable. We need to move on to the next thing has been something that's served us really well. Ultimately, we are quite a small team, right? Oh, just over 2,000 people in the business.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely focus on a clear KPI that the teams can rally around. That's one. The other is, and I respect Josh immensely on his ability to tell a really clear narrative and use that consistently over time. You know, the old adage of you need to say something three times before people understand it. I would wager, you need to say it another three times before they internalize it. And having that be part of the day-to-day conversation, it seems like such a small thing. But it adds up to having clarity on goal, the KPI point, and then clarity on why the narrative point. So you can marry those two things. I think that's an incredibly powerful combination.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A really helpful one that helped ground us in kind of the overall dynamics of what buyers are doing, where they're spending their money, and how they think about us.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One huge standout. And that's been a drumbeat over the years. Let's continue to stay focused on that as a metric. The other thing to me is bringing an outside in perspective, you know, really benchmarking against your competitors and your competitive set. Don't get me wrong. And Agatzi is a unique marketplace, right? Our sellers are independent sellers. They sell unique items. The reality, though, is that our buyers are shopping all over the internet. They're shopping on High Street. They're shopping in different places. And so we have to be aware of the broader context that of where they're spending their dollars helps us make better decisions over time. And so on the one hand, there is no one-to-one direct competitor to Etsy, but there are other businesses and other brands that are competing for eyeballs or wallets that we need to be aware of. And bringing that into the discussion was.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that is just such a standout is having, and I mentioned GMS as our North Star KPI, just having that being absolutely front and center, being the drumbeat that we talk about in every meeting, the measuring stick that we measure, the success of launch is against. And maybe it's a bit surprising, but we didn't have that type of clarity in the past. And so rallying everyone around that, and you might not pay into it directly, you might pay into it through one or two levels of abstraction, but you're still clearly aligned with what the company is trying to achieve. And that was something that was a really stark difference. And I think that helped really helped the prioritization discussion a lot. If you can't really articulate why this thing matters to driving GMS in the type of timeframe that we're talking about, be it a quarter or 12 months out and different projects will contribute in different ways, but that was just”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outcomes, right? Thoughtful products that have a lot of viewpoints really baked into the core of the thinking. On the other hand, not fast. When you have your identity tied up in the company and what you do and then you're kind of being asked or you realize that you need to change how you're working, it can feel pretty existential, right? That's really cutting to the core of who you are and things that you hold really true. The reality is it's a business and we needed to get faster at launching features, improving experience, and ultimately having a predictable way to drive GMS gross merchandise sales, which is kind of our North Star KPI. And so it definitely took some time to work through that. But we got to a good place and, you know, the results over the last few years kind of to some degree speak for themselves, but it was, yeah, it was a testing and trying time for sure.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'll say is it was a hard transition. And I was personally fortunate in the sense that the transition you're speaking of in 2017 also happened to coincide with rounds of layoffs. And I was super fortunate that I didn't lose my job. So I don't want to presuppose that my version of hard is the same as another person's version of hard. But I think a lot of us and myself included, we had a lot of our identity tied up in Etsy and what we're doing, you know, a really deep passion for the mission of the business and what we're trying to achieve. I just mentioned helping small independent sellers. And that, just to be clear, that hasn't gone away. I think that that's something we've been really successful at pulling.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The vast majority of them, it's reaching an audience that they wouldn't be able to reach. And so that feels like a really great thing to get up every morning and work on. And so that's maybe the kind of the business and the product side. And the other side is people. And it might sound a little twee, but just working with people who you can learn from and who you respect and ultimately can have fun working with, it matters a ton. You know, we spend a lot of time of our days and our lives at work. And so doing it with people who you really value, it's awesome. I have one memory that we used to have an engineer who used to be a stand-up comedian. And so that really pushed the boundaries of what a stand-up meant every day. And it was always, you know, a little fun, a little exciting. You never quite knew what you were going to get. And so just little things like that. You know, they make the work life really, really great.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, at the time I'd been at Etsy for over six years, and I just had the itch. You know, I wanted to go work on a different product, build different things, experience different industry. I've long had a theory that working on kind of the proactive side of healthcare, meaning fitness and wellness, is how you achieve better outcomes. And it felt like Soul Cycle was a really interesting way to do that. Pretty well-known brand, high street presence in many cities. Could you affect change through that? Ultimately, realized it wasn't a place that I wanted to spend a ton of time and energy. And so, you know, through a lot of soul searching grown, I know I found my way back to Etsy, really kind of anchoring on three things. One, working on a product that you care about that adds value to other people's lives. And so, you know, what we do every day at Etsy is we help our sellers make sales. And that's really meaningful for.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Critical item that they were looking for. And then from there, things kept going. And we really worked hard to make sure that the story was not just about face masks for our buyers, that they understood that Betsy's a place for so many different categories and so many different items.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When the CDC mandated face masks in early April 2020, that's when essentially we went to sleep one day with our typical April traffic, typical April sales. And then it was Black Friday overnight. And in part because nobody knew where to find face masks. Our sellers are incredibly astute business people. And, you know, if you had been making wedding dresses and you know how to sew and you've got material and you've got a bit of time making a mask is quite a simple task. And so we just saw this huge surge of demand and then supply rising to meet it. And we did something that, as far as I know, we'd never done in Etsy's past, which is we put out a call to our sellers to say now's the time. Now's the time to make face masks if you can. And so it felt like this is our time to shine, to really help sellers continue to make sales, to help buyers find this.”
2023-09-03 · Lenny's Podcast · Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source