The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch - 20 Product: Scott Belsky on How to Hire Your Product Leader and Team, 3 Questions All Great Product Leaders Ask, How To Structure and Run Effective Product Reviews & Is Product More Art or Science?

20 Product: Scott Belsky on How to Hire Your Product Leader and Team, 3 Questions All Great Product Leaders Ask, How To Structure and Run Effective Product Reviews & Is Product More Art or Science?

02/09/22 • 45 min

2 Listeners

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and currently serves as Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. Scott oversees all of product and engineering for Creative Cloud, as well as design for Adobe. In 2006, Scott founded Behance, the leading online platform for the creative industry, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Behance now has over 25M members. Scott is also an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, Sweetgreen, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and several others. Finally, if that was not enough, Scott is the author of two national bestselling books - Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle.

In Today’s Episode with Scott Belsky You Will Learn:

1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality:

What does Scott believe is the core challenge in product?
What was the single biggest product challenge Scott faced at Behance? How did they overcome it?
When should product teams listen to customer feedback vs ignore it?
What are the core questions product teams should ask user groups to extract the most feedback and value?

2.) The Importance of the First Mile:

What does Scott believe makes a great first mile when it comes to the product experience?
Where do so many companies go wrong in creating the first mile user experience?
Which company at scale has retained this simplicity of the first mile? How did they do it?
What does Scott mean when he says, "the devil is in the defaults"? What can product teams learn from this?

3.) The Makings of a Great Product Leader:

What are the 3 core questions every great product leader should ask on every screen?
How do the best product leaders structure product reviews?
Who is invited to product reviews? How often are they? Who sets the agenda? When is it sent?
What do the best product leaders do to retain direction and productivity in reviews when there are many people and many ideas? How do they stay on track?

4.) The Hirings of a Great Product Team:

How can founders know whether to hire the product leader or retain the role? When is the right time?
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first product hires?
How should founders structure the hiring process for product hires? What should they look to gain from each interview?
What are the must ask questions in those interviews? How do the best respond?
What case studies or physical tests can be done to determine the quality of a candidate?

In Today’s Episode with Scott Belsky You Will Learn:

1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality:

What does Scott believe is the core challenge in product?
What was the single biggest product challenge Scott faced at Behance? How did they overcome it?
When should product teams listen to customer feedback vs ignore it?
What are the core questions product teams should ask user groups to extract the most feedback and value?

2.) The Importance of the First Mile:

What does Scott believe makes a great first mile when it comes to the product experience?
Where do so many companies go wrong in creating the first mile user experience?
Which company at scale has retained this simplicity of the first mile? How did they do it?
What does Scott mean when he says, "the devil is in the defaults"? What can product teams learn from this?

3.) The Makings of a Great Product Leader:

What are the 3 core questions every great product leader should ask on every screen?
How do the best product leaders structure product reviews?
Who is invited to product reviews? How often are they? Who sets the agenda? When is it sent?
What do the best product leaders do to retain direction and productivity in reviews when there are many people and many ideas? How do they stay on track?

4.) The Hirings of a Great Product Team:

How can founders know whether to hire the product leader or retain the role? When is the right time?
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first product hires?
How should founders structure the hiring process for product hires? What should they look to gain from each interview?
What are the must ask questions in those interviews? How do the best respond?
What case studies or physical tests can be done to determine the quality of a candidate?

Previous Episode

undefined - 20VC: Biggest Lessons and Challenges Building One of the Most Successful Seed Funds, How To Manage Investor Psychology, Self-Doubt and Insecurity & The Secret to Truly Successful Venture Partnerships with David Frankel, Co-Founder @ Founder Collective

20VC: Biggest Lessons and Challenges Building One of the Most Successful Seed Funds, How To Manage Investor Psychology, Self-Doubt and Insecurity & The Secret to Truly Successful Venture Partnerships with David Frankel, Co-Founder @ Founder Collective

David Frankel is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Founder Collective, one of the great seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Coupang, Airtable, Whoop and many more incredible companies. Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT. David is also a founding board member of Endeavor SA and in the past has been selected by the World Economic Forum for the Global Leader of Tomorrow (GLT) program.

In Today’s Episode with David Frankel You Will Learn:

1.) How David made his way into the world of angel investing? How his mindset changed when making the transition from angel to an institutional investor with the founding of Founder Collective?

2.) Building the Firm: Founder Collective

What are the biggest challenges in venture firm building today?
Why is "deploy" and "the game" banned as words within Founder Collective? What terms are promoted as an alternative?
How does David construct investment decision-making in the partnership?
How does David create a safe space where all team members can share their thoughts in a non-judgemental, safe environment?
What are the biggest mistakes or challenges that David sees firms make when building?

3.) David Frankel: Investor Mindset

How does David analyse the current seed market today? What does he like? What worries him?
Does David agree that early stage investing has never been less collaborative?
How does David reflect on his own relationship to price today? How does he determine when to pay up vs when not to?
How does David think about the compression on fund deployment timelines? Will this change?
How does David keep a fresh and clean mind when viewing new opportunities, having seen many work and not work? How does one retain that mental purity when investing?
What have been some of David's biggest misses? How did it impact his style of investing?

4.) The Partnership:

What was the most recent disagreement David had with the partnership? How was it resolved?
How does David approach self-doubt and insecurity within the partnership? How can this be managed successfully?
What have been some of David's biggest lessons on how to give effective feedback without being judgemental?
In a world of Zoom, how did the partnership retain the same level and quality of connection that they had in person? What works? What does not work?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with David Frankel

David’s Favourite Book: The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

David's Most Recent Investment: PairTree

Next Episode

undefined - 20VC: Box's Aaron Levie on Why Founders Cannot Hedge Their Bets, The 2 Categories of Wrong Decision and How To Avoid Them & The Biggest Dangers of Being Over-Funded as a Startup

20VC: Box's Aaron Levie on Why Founders Cannot Hedge Their Bets, The 2 Categories of Wrong Decision and How To Avoid Them & The Biggest Dangers of Being Over-Funded as a Startup

Aaron Levie is the Founder and CEO @ Box, the company incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Prior to their IPO in 2015, Aaron raised from some of the best in the business including the main man Mark Cuban, a16z, Emergence, DST, Coatue, DFJ and many more. Aaron founded the company from his dorm room at the University of Southern California and has led the company to 1,900 employees and over $770M in revenue, as of 2021 data.

In Today’s Episode with Aaron Levie You Will Learn:

1.) How Aaron founded Box from his dorm room at the University of Southern California? What was that founding a-ha moment? What did the first year look like? Does Aaron agree, "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"?

2.) Phases of Leadership and Company Growth:

How does Aaron define the different phases of leadership required as a company grows?
Which phase did Aaron find the most challenging? How did he overcome it?
What are the first things to break when companies grow? What can founders do to prevent this?
Does Aaron agree, "the best CEOs are the best resource allocators"?

3.) The Market:

How does Aaron thinkj about the dislocation between private company valuations and public company market caps?
What does Aaron believe are the biggest challenges founders face when they are over-capitalised?
What does Aaron mean when he says, "raise when cash is cheap, spend as if it was expensive"? How does Aaron advise founders on fundraising today?

4.) The Team and Culture:

How does Aaron create a safe space where all team members can come to him with anything?
How does Aaron approach effective goal setting? How does one balance between achieveable and also aggressive goals?
How does Aaron approach the art of delegation? What is his decision-making framework for what to delegate vs what to control?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Aaron Levie

Aaron’s Favourite Book: Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)