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Ami Vora

Episode #11

Chief Product Officer

Faire

👥Team & Culture🎯Product Strategy

📝Full Transcript

16,664 words
Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00): Boz, the CTO of Meta, said something about you. "Working with Ami, she could have the most profound disagreement in the world and she would respond, fascinating, you have to tell me more why you think that." Ami Vora (00:00:09): I really enjoy being right and then it turns out in the working world, that did not serve me so great. I think the hard part is sublimating your ego a little bit and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:19): I love this very tactical piece of advice when you're trying to come up with a metaphor or analogy, think about what you want your users to feel when you're using the product. Ami Vora (00:00:27): If we all agree that the feeling of something should be, I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday, then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:36): There's also this metaphor about the hill climb. Ami Vora (00:00:38): For me, the hill climb is all about the difference between a local optimum and a global optimum. You're standing on top of the hill, you're looking down, you can see rolling hills, the sheep, the grass, whatever, but then, way off in the distance you can see a mountain. And the thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:59): Today, my guest is Ami Vora. Ami is Chief Product Officer at Faire, which connects independent retailers and brands around the world, and I believe is the most successful and biggest B2B marketplace startup out there. Prior to Faire, Ami was employee 150 at Facebook, where she launched the first Facebook developer platform and was later head of product for the $55 billion global Facebook ads business. She also oversaw the introduction of ads on the Instagram platform and most recently, she led product and design for the largest messaging app in the world, WhatsApp. (00:01:34): In our con...

📚Methodologies (3)

👥 Team & Culture

A framework for presenting to executives by assuming they have limited cognitive capacity for new details ('brontosaurus brain') and can only hold three facts at a time. The goal is to move from information dumping to making a clear recommendation.

Core Principles

  • 1.Executives can only hold ~3 facts in their head at once.
  • 2.The PM owns the recommendation; the Manager owns the context.
  • 3.Do not dump data; catalog it, but present only the conclusion.
  • +1 more...

"Assume that executives have a little tiny dinosaur brain... we can really only hold three facts at the same time."

#dinosaur#brain#approach
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🎯 Product Strategy

Using evocative imagery and emotional metaphors to align a team on the 'feeling' of a product. This narrative acts as a decision-making heuristic for designers and engineers when specific requirements aren't defined.

Core Principles

  • 1.Define how the product should make the user feel.
  • 2.Identify a real-world scenario that evokes that feeling (e.g., 'Dolores Park').
  • 3.Use the metaphor to guide micro-decisions (iconography, copy, latency).
  • +1 more...

"If we all agree that the feeling of something should be, I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday, then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent."

#metaphor-driven#product#alignment
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👥 Team & Culture

A strategy to prevent all teams from chasing the exact same high-level metric (like toddler soccer players chasing one ball). It involves assigning distinct, non-overlapping goals that ladder up to the main outcome, ensuring the 'whole field' is covered.

Core Principles

  • 1.Don't assign the top-line metric (e.g., GMV) to everyone.
  • 2.Play the whole field: Assign distinct input metrics to different teams.
  • 3.Detangle incentives so teams don't trip over each other.
  • +1 more...

"I have three kids, I've watched a lot of toddlers play soccer... everyone's tripping on each other... nobody really gets contact on the ball."

#anti-toddler#soccer#setting
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