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Shweta Shrivastava

Episode #269

Senior Director of Product Management

Waymo

🎯Product Strategy🔍User Research👥Team & Culture

📝Full Transcript

7,625 words
Shweta Shrivastava (00:00): Are you proactively trying to challenge your own assumptions is extremely important, right? As a big enough product manager as well as a seasoned product leader, if you're not doing enough of that, then I think you might not be listening. If there's no conflict, if there's no contention, then something is missing. Lenny (00:20): Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard one experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Shweta Shrivastava. Shweta is senior director of product management at Waymo, which if you're not familiar with Waymo, they're building self-driving cars that already live on the streets in San Francisco, LA and Phoenix. I actually got to take a ride in one ahead of this chat and you'll hear all about that in this episode. (00:48): Before joining Waymo, was chief product officer at Nauto and AI started focusing on driver automation safety. Before that, she was head of product management at Amazon Web Services for their database and analytics services, and before that she was at Cisco. In our conversation, we delve into what it's like to work as a PM at Waymo and how it's both different and similar to software only products. (01:09): We talk about their KPIs and goals at Waymo, including how they track progress towards a future of self-driving cars, how they build subtle cues and behaviors into the cars to create trust for the rider and also for other cars on the road. Plus Shweta's biggest lessons about building products and teams across the many companies she's worked at. I can't wait for the future of every car being self-driving, and it was super fun to learn about what goes into making this all happen. With that, I bring you Shweta Shrivastava after a short word from our sponsors. (01:40): This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Tho...

💡 Key Takeaways

  • 1In safety-critical deep tech, the MVP bar is significantly higher; you cannot 'cut corners' on safety to iterate faster.
  • 2Building trust in AI requires designing 'body language' and predictability into the system, not just following traffic rules.
  • 3Autonomous vehicles must learn 'social norms' (unspoken rules) of driving, not just legal regulations, to feel natural.
  • 4Use the 'Rule of Seven' to stop endless email threads and force synchronous resolution.
  • 5To get promoted, focus obsessively on business impact rather than maneuvering for the title.
  • 6Large companies must disrupt themselves before startups do (The Innovator's Dilemma).

📚Methodologies (3)

Safety-Critical MVP Framework

by Shweta Shrivastava

🎯 Product Strategy

Redefining the 'Minimum' in MVP for deep tech. Instead of launching with bugs to fix later, the product must meet a 'super-human' safety benchmark before public deployment, shifting the focus from speed-to-market to rigorous simulation and validation.

Core Principles

  • 1.Benchmark against human performance: Establish specific safety metrics (e.g., collisions per 100k miles) based on human data.
  • 2.Zero compromise on safety: The 'Minimum' viable feature set must include full safety redundancy; no cutting corners.
  • 3.Simulation before Real World: Extensive use of simulation tools to validate performance before physical deployment.
  • +1 more...

"The concept of MVP, which is so widely popular in the SaaS product management world... has a whole new meaning here at Waymo... can't really cut corners on safety."

#safety-critical#strategy#product
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🔍 User Research

Building trust by programming AI to adhere to social norms, not just strict rules. This involves creating digital 'body language' to communicate intent and ensuring the ride feels natural (e.g., not overly robotic).

Core Principles

  • 1.Digital Body Language: Use subtle movements (inching forward) to signal intent to other drivers/pedestrians.
  • 2.Social Norm Adherence: Understand context (e.g., stopping behavior in SF vs. Phoenix) beyond legal signage.
  • 3.Naturalness over Strict Rule Following: Adjust behavior (like speed on hills) to match human expectations of physics/comfort.
  • +1 more...

"If there's cars coming in that lane... the car just kind of subtly was inching its way out, communicating through this interesting body language thing."

#'social#driving'#trust
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The Rule of Seven

by Shweta Shrivastava

👥 Team & Culture

A tactical rule to prevent communication breakdown: if an email thread reaches seven replies (or ten in very large orgs) without resolution, you must switch communication channels immediately.

Core Principles

  • 1.Monitor Thread Depth: Actively count exchanges in a thread.
  • 2.Automatic Trigger: Reach 7 replies -> Stop typing.
  • 3.Synchronous Resolution: Call the person, walk to their desk, or schedule a huddle to resolve live.
  • +1 more...

"If there have been seven emails in an email thread and you still haven't resolved the issue, just call the person or get in a room huddle."

#seven#team#culture
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