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Tanguy Crusson

Episode #274

Head of Product, Jira Product Discovery

Atlassian

🎯Product Strategy🔍User Research⚡Execution

📝Full Transcript

21,632 words
Tanguy Crusson (00:00:00): Been in the product management team at Atlassian for roughly 10 years now. I worked on HipChat and Stride, and more recently I started Jira Product Discovery. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:09): Why is it so hard to start new products, go zero to one within large companies? Tanguy Crusson (00:00:13): The company has a tendency to over-invest. Startups have the benefit of starving, and so you need to create scarcity. What we try to do is remind everyone things are going to fail, let's not drag the rest of the company into it. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:24): Sounds like one of the biggest lessons is super silo sort of team. Tanguy Crusson (00:00:28): I needed the rest of the company to go away so we could get the autonomy to test the things that we needed, but it's not going to scale. That is not going to respect all design guidelines. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:35): The biggest challenge I think a lot of companies have is just, it's been six months, no one wants this, we're going to kill it. How do you protect that? Tanguy Crusson (00:00:41): Be very clear about what we're testing, doing that with data, doing that with personal customer stories, give people a sense of velocity and speed. No one wants to fuck with a high-speed train. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:54): Today, my guest is Tanguy Crusson. This is a really unique and important episode because we get into something you don't hear much on podcasts like this, the real talk challenges of trying to innovate and build zero to one at a large company like Atlassian. Tanguy has been at Atlassian for over 10 years and has worked on a bunch of internal big bets, some that have worked and some that have not, including products like HipChat, which I was a huge fan of back in the day, also a product called Status Page, and most recently Jira Product Discovery, which is one of the fastest growing products in Atlassian history that Tanguy led from idea to launch. We go through each of these stories, and Tanguy...

💡 Key Takeaways

  • 1Position internal bets as 'likely to fail' to secure autonomy and prevent the wider organization from over-investing or meddling too early.
  • 2Avoid 'Competitive Myopia'; focusing too much on competitors (like HipChat vs. Slack) leads to feature parity chasing rather than solving unique user problems.
  • 3Do not rewrite a product while trying to compete with a fast-moving startup; you cannot fix the plane while flying it against a faster opponent.
  • 4Use internal communications (demos, customer snippets) to create 'High-Speed Train' momentum that stakeholders are afraid to block.
  • 5Create scarcity deliberately; large companies tend to over-resourcing, but innovation requires the 'starvation' mindset of a startup.
  • 6The 'Why Now' is as important as the idea itself; good ideas get shelved if you cannot articulate the urgency of the market timing.

📚Methodologies (3)

🎯 Product Strategy

A four-stage gated process used at Atlassian to guide new products from concept to revenue, ensuring the right questions are answered at the right time without burdening the team with mature product requirements.

Core Principles

  • 1.Wonder: Prove the problem space exists and articulate 'Why Atlassian' and 'Why Now'.
  • 2.Explore: Validate solutions through prototypes and customer interviews (don't build yet).
  • 3.Make: Build Alpha/Beta versions focused on 'Lighthouse Users' rather than revenue.
  • +1 more...

"Innovation is like a muscle. Unless you exercise it, it becomes weak."

#point#incubation#lifecycle
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🔍 User Research

A qualitative scaling strategy that prioritizes deep engagement with a tiny cohort of users over broad adoption, ensuring the product actually solves the core problem before scaling.

Core Principles

  • 1.Phase 1 (10 Users): Deep empathy. Engineers talk directly to users. Solve their specific problems manually.
  • 2.Phase 2 (100 Users): Test variations and edge cases. Validate security and compliance needs.
  • 3.Phase 3 (1000 Users): Focus on self-service onboarding, support scaling, and reducing friction.
  • +1 more...

"Climate change is a thing... do we change? Not enough. What makes people want to change is empathizing with individual experiences."

#lighthouse#program#research
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⚡ Execution

Using aggressive internal communication to create a sense of inevitability and speed, making it politically difficult for others to block the project.

Core Principles

  • 1.Weekly Demos: Send bite-sized updates (tweets/videos) every single week, even if you have to save features to ensure cadence.
  • 2.User Snippets: Share video clips of customers praising the solution or articulating the problem to build emotional buy-in.
  • 3.Radical Honesty: Admit what is broken to build trust, but always pair it with what is being fixed.
  • +1 more...

"Give people a sense of velocity and speed. No one wants to fuck with a high-speed train."

#high-speed#train#momentum
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