The 'Minus One to One' Turnaround Strategy
by Tomer Cohen • Chief Product Officer (CPO) at LinkedIn
Tomer Cohen is the Chief Product Officer at LinkedIn, overseeing all product teams, design, and business development. He is credited with leading LinkedIn's mobile transition, the successful revamp of the Feed (turning it from a promotional space to a knowledge marketplace), and shifting the company to an AI-first mindset long before the generative AI boom.
🎙️ Episode Context
In this episode, LinkedIn CPO Tomer Cohen reveals the strategy behind transforming LinkedIn's feed into a high-engagement knowledge marketplace. He discusses the unique challenges of "minus one to one" product turnarounds, shares his framework for AI-first product management, and explains his leadership mantra: "We might be wrong, but we are not confused."
Problem It Solves
How to transform a struggling or 'cringey' product (like the old LinkedIn feed) into a successful one without tanking current business metrics or facing internal resistance.
Framework Overview
A strategy for revitalizing products with negative momentum. It involves envisioning the ultimate potential ('The Mountain Peak') rather than iterating on the status quo, and using isolated cohorts to prove the new model works before scaling.
🧠 Framework Structure
Start Backwards from the Peak: Don't ...
The Cohort Carve-Out: Isolate a stati...
Value Exchange over Volume: Shift the...
When to Use
When dealing with legacy products that have plateaued or have a bad reputation, but possess high latent potential.
Common Mistakes
Trying to iterate incrementally on a broken foundation or letting short-term metrics (like ad revenue or session time) kill long-term value shifts.
Real World Example
LinkedIn carved out 2 million users to test a 'knowledge-first' feed. They ignored the revenue drops/metric fluctuations for this group to prove that high-quality engagement would eventually lead to better retention.
This is not a springboard for other products... It's really about people that matter, talking about things that I care about professionally.
— Tomer Cohen