Affirm

Lead the growth & engagement product areas:

- Grew App MAU ~3.5x by driving app installs, app opens, return visits via transactional & lifecycle emails, the website, and checkout optimizations
- Hired and developed PMs to lead the individual product areas across activation, the website, first time user experience, and app information architecture
- Set the 1 year+ product vision & strategy for a cross-functional pod of more than 50, then evangelized their work cross-functionally and to executives 

Developed my product leadership chops in a rapidly scaling post-IPO company. Exercised muscles around cross-functional alignment and analytically-driven product leadership.

Group Product Manager

Epic Games

Led data driven growth for Fortnite:

- Led OKR driven development for Fortnite across growth levers including social, creative, matchmaking, and concerts: helped kickstart growth for the largest game on the planet
- Created and pushed through experimentation agenda: helped produce experimentation platform and plug in with matchmaking, social, and recommendation tests to increase retention, average revenue per user, and playtime
- Helped drive the strategy & execution behind the Travis Scott concert, which at the time became the largest concert ever with 12.3 million concurrent concertgoers 

Developed my chops in the gaming industry for a mass-market social product. Finessed my product leadership style and craftsmanship.

Lead Product Manager

Google

Product management for one of the fastest growing products of in Google Cloud's history, the Job Search API:

- Enhanced core search functionality: launched evolutions of ML model to create sub-industry taxonomies and improve conglomerate search results
- Developed executive-level growth funnel dashboards: showed engagement and other predictors of churn to help maximize retention
- Launched updates to PLG motion to optimize form and onboarding, increasing channel contribution by XX%

Became proficient with Google product process and got large company SaaS experience to supplement small company experience at ScoutForce

Senior Product Manager

thredUP

Helped set stage for company's eventual IPO (March 2021):

- Led, built growth team: played key role in series D & E investments by increasing conversion ~2x, scaling marketing ~100x 
- Developed ad technology platform: led data infrastructure projects. Worked with C-Suite daily. Sat next to CMO, CTO, CEO. Hired first PMs
- Played integral role in growth from ~25 employees to 1200+

Became proficient with Jira, Asana, and the modern product stack.

Director of Product

Rap to Beats

Developed iOS app Rap to Beats & scaled to 300K monthly active users (MAU):

- Developed features: put the user first with testing and analytics. Worked extensively in XCode and iOS SDK, as well as Photoshop, Balsamiq, and Envision 
- Led organic growth: mastered viral growth through community leaderboard, sharing, App Store Optimization, and PR
- Iterated growth levers and personalization to build for specific segments and test funnel improvements >5x

Became proficient with mobile development stack, gaming publishing, and app stores.

Head of Product, Co-Founder

ScoutForce.com

Grew the top SaaS platform for College Sports recruiting, used by Major D1 programs like the University of Michigan:

- Only PM on the team: did everything from product requirements documents (PRD) and user acceptance tests (UATs) to SQL queries &  product strategy
- Developed customer personas and redesigned web app: identified key consumer use cases
- Launched entry into new segments: identified opportunity, sized market, then developed pricing and marketing strategy 

Became proficient with online web software stack and B2B SaaS product management.

Product Manager

Product leader with 15 years in product and 7 years of people management experience (managing teams of up to 10 PMs). Most recently at Affirm, leading the growth & engagement product areas. Formerly at Epic Games, Google, thredUP, Rap to Beats, and ScoutForce. 

Wharton MBA, University of Michigan economics, and high school coding competitions before that.

Too many product releases don't move the metrics that matter. My product leadership style is the inverse. I specialize in driving business outcomes. This is across B2C and B2B SaaS, both in the core product and PLG (product-led growth).

To hear from me weekly, sign up at aakashgupta.substack.com. To hear from me daily, follow me on Twitter: @aakashg0. To browse my long-form writing, check out aakashg.com. 

Live in Durham, NC.

This was the most important week in AI history. 

But everything's moving too fast. 

Here's everything you need to know (beyond GPT-4):

***

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Aakash Gupta

One of the most common afflictions of modern product organizations is the disease of delivery focus.

Making the shift from project to PRODUCT thinking can 10x your software development.

Meet America's first hot sauce billionaire: a Vietnamese refugee who built a $150M per year empire with no marketing or sales team.

How did he do it? Here's his spicy story.

David Tran fled Vietnam in 1979 after the communist takeover. He arrived in LA with nothing but a passion for spicy food. He started making hot sauce in a bucket and selling it from his van. He named it Si Racha, after a Thai surf town where he liked the sauce.

Tran didn't care about branding or advertising. He just focused on making the best hot sauce possible. He used fresh jalapeños instead of dried ones. He added garlic for extra flavor. He kept the ingredients simple: chili, sugar, salt, vinegar, garlic.

Tran's hot sauce was so good that it spread by word-of-mouth. People loved its taste, texture and heat level. They put it on everything: pizza, eggs, noodles, burgers...

Tran didn't need a marketing or sales team because he had had something better: distribution. He partnered with local Asian restaurants & grocery stores. They gave him shelf space and exposure to new customers.

Early on, one of Tran’s packers suggested his product was “too spicy.” They suggested to add a tomato base to sweeten it. Friends agreed, saying it would pair better with chicken. Tran stood firm: “Hot sauce must be hot… We don’t make mayonnaise here.”

Tran's hot sauce became a cult phenomenon among foodies and chefs. It was featured in magazines like Bon Appétit. It was praised by celebrities like Obama.

Tran's hot sauce became an icon of multiculturalism and diversity in America. It represented an immigrant who pursued his dream despite all odds. It appealed to people from different backgrounds who loved spicy food. It embodied "Made in USA" with an ethnic twist.

Today, Sriracha is one of the most popular condiments in the world. It sells over 20 million bottles per year. It generates over $150 million in annual revenue. And it’s still demand constrained.

Tran focuses on getting the best out of his ingredients. The short ripening window for Jalapeños means the company has a tight window for production. It makes a year’s supply in 10 weeks, running its huge facility 16 hours a day.

Tran's net worth is $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. He still owns 100% of his company, Huy Fong Foods (which he named after the ship that brought him to the US). He still works at his factory in Irwindale, California. He still wears the same blue shirt and hat every day.

Tran's secret to success is simple: make a product that people love and can't get enough of. He doesn't care about trends or competitors. He doesn't chase growth or profits. He just follows his passion:  

"I don't make hot sauce for money. I make money for hot sauce."

**

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A great manager is an umbrella:

Many people have never had a great manager, so they don’t know it’s possible. They’ve gone from chaotic job to chaotic job. Stressed, unfulfilled, and unhappy. It’s unfortunate, but understandable. 

See - it’s always raining as a manager. Execs, the economy, results, and re-orgs are always stirring the pot and sowing chaos. The way most managers thus react is to throw down the chaos onto the heads of those below. I call them, “chaos managers.”

But the rain isn’t always meant for the team. There’s definitely the right times to expose the team to more of the chaos. But that’s less then 10-20% of the time. If the team is constantly drenched, morale will tank and they’ll never get anything done.

The rare great managers transform chaos to order:

• Ridiculous requests → stable, achievable goals
• Unclear priorities → clear expectations 
• Unnecessary meetings & last minute chaos → work-life balance 

Here’s how they do it (they’re the same ways an umbrella does):

1. Protect you from rain & sun

Life under an umbrella is considerably easier. Although the world around you is changing with harsh conditions, under the umbrella it’s peaceful. A great manager does the same with macro conditions. Chaos managers transfer that weather downward.

2. Easy to access

An umbrella is of no use if it’s hard to carry and store. Same with a manager. They need to be approachable and available when needed. Responsiveness is critical. Chaos managers are more often seen with double booked, back to back days.

3. Resilient

When the business targets are missed, chaos managers transfer along the energy. But bringing the team along for every twist & turn generates unnecessary churn. A great manager is like a resilient umbrella. They stand tall and steady.

4. Practical

Great managers are constantly translating crazy asks to practical guidance. They take demands of execs and make them tasks that can actually be accomplished. They are down to earth and hands-on. Chaos managers don’t provide the same practical clarity.

5. Reliable

A great manager doesn’t bail when you aren’t doing well. They’re their for the wins and the losses. Chaos managers come and go. You see them a bunch for two months, and then you don’t for two. Great managers, on the other hand, have a reliable presence.

Do you have an umbrella or a chaos manager?

***

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Elon’s Twitter takeover has been a masterclass on how NOT to PM.

5 lessons from Elon of what NOT to do:

1. Prioritize by user likes

Elon tweeted for feature suggestions and said he would prioritize by most likes and least work. This is also a common product strategy: build what the users ask for. 

The problem is that users don’t know what’s best for the business. In the Venn diagram of business and user value, the best product features sit at the intersection. 

Users don’t know what those features are. You have to invent on their behalf. Start with a deep understanding of their needs, layer on what’s only recently possible, then ship.

2. Pursue exec pet projects

The Twitter blue premium subscription has 300K payers. That’s just $29M yearly revenue in a multi-billion dollar business. It’s meaningless. 

And it would have been completely predictable if they analytically sized the project and did user testing. But instead of doing rigorous sizing or user testing to validate, Elon just went with his pet project. 

This is a common tendency of junior PMs as well: please the VP. It’s a mistake.  The extra cycles to do dig into features with data & user research are worth the squeeze.

3. Set aspirational dates to ship 

Elon chronically sets dates that the team misses by weeks or months (or years in the case of Tesla). For instance, the team rushed to ship Twitter Blue to hit his deadline. 

But the rollout was a disaster, and they had to roll it back. People were impersonating companies and swinging stock prices. The final product didn’t come out ‘till months later. 

Setting crazy dates stresses teams out and results in botched launches. Realistic timelines allow teams to ship quality features and maintain their sanity.

4. Ignore the revenue driver

The NYT reported Twitter advertising revenue is down from $5B/year to $3B. That’s an enormous 40% dip. 

Elon ignored the core business of advertising. He fired the sales staff that maintained and grew relationships. Then, he offended many advertisers - prompting them to leave the platform. 

That was exactly the wrong strategy. Great product work would have improved and nurtured the ad business first. A 1% improvement on 5 billion could have generated $50M - more than Twitter Blue.

5. Launch without experiments

Elon changed the default feed people look at from the algorithmic ‘for you’ feed to the ‘following’ feed. But the ‘following’ feed is full of retweets and doesn’t encourage discovery of new authors. 

It could be a worse experience. But, because Elon didn’t ship the change as an experiment, he’ll never know. 

Doing things blindly is worse than doing nothing at all. Shipping major changes that could easily get to stat sig in a few days to everyone is just lazy product work. Prefer the scientific method.

How to bridge the divide between stakeholders and users:

Anyone who has built products for a while has done it: shipped something internal stakeholders love, and user's don't. 

It's the "Curse of Knowledge."

This cognitive bias is a psychological classic: The more we know, the less we can relate to others who know less.

So how do you break this down in the product development process?There are 3 important ways to de-risk & build something users love:

1. Continuous discovery
2. Prototype testing
3. Narrative control

This is especially important for features that are large eng investments.

1. Continuous discovery

If you keep your solution focus process trained specifically on providing solutions to user problems, you stay glued to the user. Opportunity - Problem - Solution is the key pattern. This sequencing helps you build something for users, not stakeholders.

2. Prototype testing

Make the rubber hit the road before you go to engineering. Plan far enough ahead so you can put the prototytpe or mock in front of users. This allows you to easily spot views of an animals butts instead of their fronts.

3. Narrative control

The Curse of Knowledge will infect your process if you allow cross-functional and leadership discussion to be focused on design decisions.

Bringing it back to the:
A. Business goal and
B. User problem

Provides a more fruitful discussion with stakeholders. That narrative control helps you evaluate shipped solutions in the context of progress towards the business & user goals. 

Otherwise, despite all the continuous discovery & prototype testing, there will be a gravitational pull towards specific implementations, catered to experts.

The biggest problem I see in recruiting: Writing assignments in interview processes where you ghost the candidate afterwards.

If you asked the candidate for many hours of free work, at the very least have a call for feedback after.

I think a much better strategy is to ask for a writing sample of something they have written. This way, you get to assess their writing, and they get to be efficient with their time. 

An alternative strategy is to pay candidates for the time spent writing at a reasonable rate. 

Asking for free work as a filtering process is bad form. If they put in an investment, you should put in an investment back. 

The top 10 skills of a great Associate Product Manager (APM):

APM is one of the hardest roles to demonstrate qualifications for. By definition, APMs don’t have PM experience! (That’s what’s used to evaluate more senior PMs.) Nevertheless, there ARE discrete skills that matter to becoming an APM:

1. Writing

APMs have to be able to write numerous concise, stellar docs. The best APMs write product requirement docs (PRDs) that are the stuff off A+ final papers. Organization, clarity, data, insightfulness, and thoroughness are all important.

2. Analytical Sense

APMs should understand: 
• randomization & other conditions required for statistical inference
• peeking
• confidence intervals
• generalizability

They should also be able to generate hypotheses and identify north star/ guardrail metrics for experiments.

3. Teamwork

Building great relationships with engineering, design, legal, and analytics is the heart of APM. APMs must be able to work well with different types of people. It’s important to be able to adapt.

4. Product Sense

APMs should be observers of the product world. They should notice what makes the software they use engaging and monetize. They should be able to identify what types of features generate business value.

5. Strategy

APMs must have excellent sense of business strategy. They should not just understand the profit equation, but the drivers behind it. Concepts like having a moat, monopoly, and jobs to be done are crucial.

6. Verbal Communication

APMs must be able to contribute to meetings where:
• They are running the meeting
• They are the most junior person in the meeting
• There are senior executives 

Bringing confidence and concision with oomph is critical.

7. Technical Fluency

An APM must be able to work well with engineers. They’re talking to them all the time. They should understand what engineers are saying at standups. And get in the details to unblock them and regularly.

8. High Horsepower

APMs have a myriad responsibilities. They need to be the type who can handle lots of classes and extra-curriculars. There’s no shortage of work. So it’s crucial to have the horsepower to do it all.

9. Detail Orientation

Despite APMs doing alot of things, they must also do so with detail. APMs are expected to go DEEP on their features. This means understanding every user state, the analytical tracking, and the location of every key CTA.

10. Bend Reality

APMs need to be practiced in getting people to change their minds about things they feel strongly about. Influence is crucial. An APM needs to have their own charisma that creates a force field to bend reality.

APM programs are one of the best ways to break into product. These are the skills they look for. Cultivate and demonstrate them.

GPT-4 would get a 1410 / 1600 on the SAT. That's up from 1260 just a few months ago with GPT-3.5. 

Today's release is huge news.

GPT-4 does even better on the GRE, used for grad school admissions, scoring 99th percentile on its verbal component. That's up from 63rd percentile.

It would even pass the bar! GPT-3.5 didn't do well on the bar, scoring in the 10th percentile. But GPT-4 is at the 90th percentile. 

There is a huge list of AP tests its would pass as well. GPT is getting smart fast. 

And it's not just writing, math, and science. GPT-4 keeps getting better at coding too. It can complete 75% of Leetcode easy problems, up from 25% for GPT-3.5. 

GPT-4 has clearly lived up to the hype. The advances in generative AI are happening at lightning speed. I can't wait to see how GPT-5 performs. 

***

I cover key tech topics like these in the product growth newsletter. Join 24K+ others who will get it here: https://lnkd.in/e-mefqJv

10 women who are adding amazing value to Product LinkedIn:

1. Elena Verna 
You can count on Elena for sincere accounts from a senior leader at companies like SurveyMonkey and Amplitude. She regularly posts innovative thoughts on careers and growth.

2. Julie Zhuo 
Julie is not only the author of the amazing, “The Making of a Manager,” she also has awesome regular thoughts on product design on LinkedIn. She helps you understand how a founder and former VP of Design at Facebook think.

3. Teresa Torres 
The awesome author of “Continuous Discovery,” Teresa regularly shares great articles. Her taste and product thoughts are invaluable.

4. Ami Vora 
CPO at Faire and former VP of Product at Facebook, Ami shares honest and useful thoughts on growing your career. Her newsletter is always refreshing.

5. Deborah Liu 
CEO at Ancestry and also a former VP of product at Facebook, Deborah’s writings are always filled of insight. Her holistic viewpoints on business are essential.

6. Gabrielle Bufrem 
As a former product leader at Little Otter and Pivotal, Gabrielle shares regular thoughts on product. Her thoughts on interviews and getting a job are gold.

7. Marily Nika, Ph.D 
An AI product leader at Meta, Marily shares regular thoughts on product. I especially like learning more about AI from her. 

8. Cinneah El-Amin, M.S.M 
A former PM at PayPal, Mastercard, and AmEx, Cinneah shares regular thoughts on product and careers. I love her attitude and encouragement.

9. Prashanthi Ravanavarapu 
Senior product leader at PayPal, Prashanthi regularly shares thoughts on product leadership. She has a great wisdom-filled perspective.

10. Janna Bastow 
The founder of now, next, later roadmaps is regularly dropping knowledge and uplifting the community. Each post is can’t miss.

I can’t thanks each of these amazing leaders enough - for regularly uplifting and upleveling us all. I hope you follow them all.

There are tons of other great product creators here. Who did I miss?

3D billboards offer a window into the future of advertising:

• Immersive
• Experiential
• Effective

How did Intel manage to do so badly in an industry with so many tailwinds?

There was a time Intel was worth more than Nvidia, AMD and TSMC combined. Now each of those upstarts is worth multiples of Intel. It’s a great lesson in strategy gone wrong:

1. Losing the technical lead

For years, Intel had a lead in lithography and made the technically leading chips. But since 2018 when Intel was beat to market in 7nm chips, it has stayed behind. It went from two years ahead to two years behind.

In the latest earnings call, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger had an, “embarrassing thing to say.” Intel’s data center technology hadn’t improved in five years. In market-leading semiconductor companies, innovation is critical.

Moore’s law states that the number of transistors in a microchip doubles every two years. It was on that belief he founded Intel. But Intel has fallen far behind that pace in recent years. Moore’s law is dead. At least at Intel.

2. Ceding the mobile & AI markets

Early smartphone chips were low margin and not leading edge. Intel ceded this market to Qualcomm, who worked with TSMC & Samsung to dominate the space. This made Intel miss an entire wave of industry growth & have to focus on high-end PC CPUs.

And Intel has also fallen behind in the next wave as well: AI, which is led by Nvidia. For years, Intel stuck to integrated graphics - long after it was clear most AI jobs were going to GPUs. Wave after wave of additional demand for chips has come, but Intel has missed them.

3. Getting hamstrung by doing it all

Unlike AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm - who focus on chip design - Intel did design and manufacturing. This caused the product strategy to be conservative. Intel fell behind AMD in chip design and TSMC in manufacturing.

News has only gotten worse with Apple announcing its own silicon. It’s moved off of Intel. Whereas TSMC can just shift to the next best design, Intel’s manufacturing is reliant on its own designs. Apple’s entry demonstrates how TSMC enables other players to eat Intel’s lunch.

Things aren’t looking up for Intel. It is predicting a net loss next quarter. The once highly profitable company has had a tremendous fall. While its competition continues to see revenue grow, it does not.

Intel is a cautionary tale for product & business leaders:

1. Never stop innovating
2. Don’t discount new waves of demand
3. Pick your battles

Why is the release of GPT-4 a big deal?

It’s actually NOT the pictured chart. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it “complete bullshit.”

Training on more parameters doesn’t necessarily make LLMs better. That’s a form of data ‘maximalism’ only 14% of AI experts believe.

But there is one huge reason to be excited. Microsoft’s Germany CTO Andreas Braun spilled the news at a recent AI event.

“We will introduce GPT-4 next week, there we will have multimodal models that will offer completely different possibilities – for example, videos”

That’s a huge unlock for the system:

1. Images

Image generation has traditionally been the realm of tools like Dall-E, the first generative AI tool hyped last year. This represents GPT’s progress to becoming an “everything” AI.

It’s going to be much more than Dall-E.

Based on a paper Microsoft published, GPT-4 is expected to be able to READ images. So you will be able to ask it to OCR an image, or decipher the attitude of a painted face. Think of the power of a transform prompt like “age this person 10 years.”

2. Audio

It’s expected that GPT-4 will be able to have voice interaction as another modality. It will be quite fun to compare to Alexa and Siri. 

I expect it will fare very well. 

And unlike them, you’ll be able to ask it to write a song or transcribe a podcast.

3. Video

As Andreas mentioned, GPT-4 will be able to read videos as input and build them as output.

One could imagine an entire show being made in GPT-4. Or YouTubers quickly editing their videos.

Tons of visual & audio jobs are going to be affected by GPT-4. It will not just be the writers anymore.

The really crazy thought is: what about GPT-5? Or 10? GPT-3.5 has already passed the Turing test, Lovelace test… you name it, in our AI criteria. Who knows how powerful the next versions will be.

Prompt engineering has gone from esoteric to essential for PMs.

4 skills you need to know to up your game:

1. Writing documents
2. Building tables
3. Understanding users
4. Analyzing competitors

Our tool of choice today is going to be Bing AI. Unlike chatGPT, it's FREE. 

But - it's different. You can't submit really long prompts; there's a character limit. And, you can't continue the conversation after 10 back & forths. So, Bing prompt engineering is a skill of concision. 

1. Writing documents

Bing can be your first draft's best friend. It will put down all the basics for PRDs, vision docs, strategy docs, team charters, and memos. It can save PM's time writing virtually everything important.

However, there's an art to getting its help. Telling Bing to write a type of document - eg, "Strategy Doc" - will push it to a generic template. Instead, YOU specify the key sections & details.

Here's my template:
"Write a document to add X feature to Y product for Z reasons. Include the following sections: A, B, C."

Tips:
· Use creative mode
· Ask it to 'Continue' if it stops
· In followups, ask for more data and supporting evidence

2. Building tables

Bing can build you a table with information really quickly. It helps you "think" in 2x2s and multi-variable equations. It's a great method for communication.

The problem with Bing and tables is many will fail if you ask for difficult information. It will just say, 'Sorry.' So one of my tricks is to focus on searchable info.

Here's the template:
"Build me a table comparing X on A, B, and C."

Tips:
· Make X what it searches for
· Choose comparison variables it can easily find
· Ask for information it can search for and is available

3. Understanding users

Bing can help you quickly read through user research, especially if yours is a product people talk about online. It's a good first pass on users before deeper research.

The trouble is getting it to give you quality versus surface-level. Asking it to give you user quotes is one way to get to testimonials.

Here's my template. Try it yourself:
"Describe with user quotes the top reasons X"

Tips:
· Use follow-up prompts to ask for more quotes
· Consider building a table to get dimensionality
· Don't expect it to things that aren't easily searchable

4. Analyzing competitors

As a PM, it's hard to have time for every competitor move. For certain one's, you want very specific information. 

Like tables, the hard part is keeping Bing confident. So specify things like pictures and user quotes. 

Here's my template:
"Include pictures and user quotes to cover the top elements of X Company's Y move in Z time"

Tips:
· Use balanced mode
· The pictures currently land in the citations
· Use follow ups to dig into details you need

Bing AI can help you as a PM reclaim time & focus. It's a competitive advantage for PMs. You can minimize time on low impact work to focus on high impact stuff like discovery & making good decisions.

The 5 skills that make a great Group Product Manager (GPM):

1. Strategic

A great GPM helps position the team in a business problem that matters. They understand the overall business strategy, and how a specific product area can contribute to it.

2. Execution-Maniacs

Great GPMs help their teams ship features that succeed in their hypotheses or advance the team towards a learning agenda. 

3. Great at Solving Problems

Many of the problems that come up with a team are people and organizational. The team isn’t getting enough analytics support. Another team is blocking. GPMs have to be able to go into these problem areas and solve them.

4. A+ Coaches

A great GPM must be able to bring the best out of each and every member of their squad. That includes not just the PMs that report to them, but each and every member of the overall Engineering - Analytics - Product - Design task force they work with. 

5. Upward Management Savants

While the downward elements of the above skills are important, equally, if not more important, is driving alignment with Directors and VPs. GPMs must be able to evangelize the roadmap, the work, and the impact to everyone. 

Different companies have different GPM roles, but these 5 skills always matter.

So, you want to become a PM. But, you haven’t coded, and you didn’t go to a brand-name school. You’re not sure you can do this.

Are you curious and hardworking? Then you can.

Here’s your process:
1. Develop a long-term plan
2. Put in the extra work
3. Develop PM experience

1. The first thing you need to do is develop a long-term plan. Start with a realistic, strong goal: You are looking for an entry-level PM role at a growing tech company.

Now, ladder back from that goal to yourself. What are the gaps in your skillset? PMs must have:
– Tech chops
– Business knowledge
– Product & design sense
– Teamwork skills
– And EQ

Many people coming from alternate backgrounds are strong in teamwork and EQ. Emphasize that in interviews! But, the long-term plan is about filling the gaps. To fill in the gaps, you have to put in the extra work.

2. Let’s start with extra work for tech chops. You should start reading the top tech newsletters: Not Boring, The Generalist, and Stratechery. You should also start building things in code. Start with something simple you are passionate about.

Then, there is extra work for business knowledge. You should begin learning about the marketing, analytics, and user research concepts you are weakest on.

Finally, you should improve your product sense. Read product newsletters like Lenny’s and mine. Then, go about asking yourself in normal life: Whom is this product built for? What is the job to be done it has solved?

3. Now that you’ve spent 6 months building your skills, it’s time to put a bow on the efforts with an experience you can put on your resume. Build a product, start a company around it, and list yourself on LinkedIn as the founder and product person.

Spend 6 months PMing that product. If you can, funnel its revenue into contract developers and designers. Write vision, strategy, segmentation, roadmaps, and specs for it.

You have now invested a year in becoming a PM. Now, you’re ready to get to applications. Make a list of 10 growing tech companies you want to work for. Create a separate note for each company, and begin to fill in research.

Then, use LinkedIn to find all posts from PM hiring managers at the company. Message all of those hiring managers with a very short message stating:
– You saw their post and are interested in their role
– You have been doing PM at your startup that achieved X
– Something unique you researched about the company

Simultaneously during this outbound process, practice interviews. Do mocks on YouTube. Pause before the right answer is shown, and do yours.

Now, put everything together. You have experiences, interview practice, and interviews. Make your way through as many processes as you need.

If you rigorously critique and improve yourself after every rejection, you will eventually improve your interview skills and experience presentation.

Then, you will move from dealing with the stress of getting a PM job to the stress of doing one. I’ll be here to help.

What you need to know about the top shopping app in the US, with more downloads since October than Walmart and Amazon.

It’s called Temu (“tee-moo”). Temu is the brainchild of Chinese giant PinDuoDuo (PDD). PDD is known for “social shopping,” where if more people buy something, it’s cheaper. Temu doesn’t focus on that. It relies instead on:

1. Being Cheap
2. Peace of Mind
3. Heavy Marketing
4. Optimized Funnel

PDD spent big on this orange TV ad to “Shop like a billionaire” in the Super Bowl. These four elements are why it thought it could.

VECTOR 1: BEING CHEAP

Temu is much cheaper than Amazon:

• iPhone Charger: $8.98 vs 14.99
• 6 in 1 Lip Balm: $2.69 vs $9.99
• 20w Charger: $4.98 vs $11.99
• Surge Protector $12.48 vs. $15.99

It’s operating in the deals space: it’s more like Wish than Amazon.

That means it’s price > quality. The app has a mere 3.1/5 out on TrustPilot. The reviews:

• “It’s junk”
• “Products misrepresented”
• “Cheap and sizing is way off”

A search for “Nike socks” reveals $2 off brand socks. Temu operates more in random deals than necessities.

VECTOR 2: PEACE OF MIND

What is the barrier to users trying a new e-commerce site? Shipping and returns. Temu offers both for free. This helps provide peace of mind for users. Even if the product is junk, they can always return it. This gets people to try.

You can even buy one $2 item - and get free shipping! There is NOWHERE else on the web you can do this. Most e-commerce sites have $25+ order minimums. By covering shipping on a small order, Temu is losing money on that order in the hope of keeping you for future one’s.

VECTOR 3: HEAVY MARKETING

Temu makes heavy use of marketing channels like push and email. On the push side, reviewers complain of “notification overload.” Same with email: “So tired of receiving 3-4x emails per day.” Temu is a heavy marketer.

It all comes down to the LTV / CPA equation. Temu paid a high Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for users with ads. So, to compensate, it increases the Lifetime Value (LTV) of those users. Channels like push and email help it get there.

VECTOR 4: OPTIMIZED FUNNEL

Temu uses every shopping app’s growth funnel optimizations. Some of the highlights:

• Logged out experience
• Marketing SMS pop ups
• Time-limited deals
• and Expiring cart

Each one of these compounds to improve the conversion rate of visitors.

Only time will tell if Temu’s Super Bowl ad will pay off. Many of last year’s advertisers are not doing well:

• Coinbase: stock down 66%
• FTX: massive ponzi
• Carvana: stock down 92%

Neither is Wish, with its stock down 97% from the IPO price.

PDD’s betting Temu’s being cheap, peace of mind, heavy marketing, and optimized funnel will help avoid the fate of Wish and prior Super Bowl advertisers.

1 dollar invested in Berkshire Hathaway when Warren Buffett took over in 1964 would be worth $3,787,464 dollars today.

7 takeaways from his 2022 shareholder letter that came out yesterday:

1. Efficient market hypothesis is dead:
“Efficient markets exist only in textbooks."

The prices of stocks and bonds are often "truly foolish." There are times when Mr. Market comes knocking that are great opportunities to buy or sell.

2. Make & stick to a few great decisions:
"Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years"

It's more powerful to make a few truly good decisions and stick to them than make many okay decisions.

3. Own some of the truly great blue chips:
Of the S&P 500, Berkshire is "the largest owner of eight of these giants: American Express, Bank of America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, HP Inc., Moody’s, Occidental Petroleum and Paramount Global."

Great companies generate long-term returns.

4. Maintain a cushion:
"Berkshire will always hold a boatload of cash and U.S. Treasury bills"

Berkshire has leverage from its insurance float, but it also has phenomenal diversification into stocks, bonds, and cash.

5. Berkshire has been made by America:
"We count on the American Tailwind"

Berkshire tends to invest in primarily American located companies, because of the dynamism, rule of law, and prospects for the future.

6. But there is reason to fear US treasuries:
"During the decade ending in 2021, the United States Treasury received about $32.3 trillion in taxes while it spent $43.9 trillion"

It's hard to predict what will happen, but the bill for 10 years of money printing will come due.

7. Find a great partner:
"Find a very smart high-grade partner – preferably slightly older than you – and then listen very carefully to what he says"

An easy way to make better decisions is to have a partner to make them with.

“They came back with an offer, but it’s at a lower level.” 

7 reasons you got down-leveled:

Many jobseekers have recently come to me with this conundrum. The joy of an offer is paired with the frustration of down-leveling. I’ve sat on several hiring committees where this was discussed or done.

Here’s why:

1: It’s a bigger company

When you move to a bigger company, the experience and pay bar for a certain title, like “senior” or “director” is higher. This is probably the case in 65% of situations. “It’s not you, it’s them.”

2: It’s big tech

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, & Amazon are notorious for this. They beat compensation even at lower titles. So, once they hire someone with X years of experience at a level, hiring committees compare to them. And you have the situation now, where directors get hired as ICs.

3: Your patience

It’s not always because of the company. It can be you. Junior roles are more common. Some job seekers are simply not patient enough for a role at their level. Sometimes, you have to wait for a role at your level that you can score.

4: Too narrow of a company list

Similar to lack of patience is being too selective with companies. There are SO many companies out there. If you want to maintain upward trajectory on your level, sometimes you have to go outside the target list.

5: Your years of experience

An alternative “paper” reason you may be getting down-leveled is your years of experience. Your prior company may have promoted you due to your accomplishments. But to the market, your years of experience are at a lower level.

6: Your gravitas

It could also be your interview performance. If your presence felt junior or weak, the hiring committee may be worried you couldn’t hang at the hiring level. In these cases, they often reason they are doing it “for your good,” come performance review time.

7: The altitude of your examples

A final reason you may have gotten down-leveled is the way you responded to questions. If it feels like you are more comfortable at the lower levels, they are likely to put you there. VPs work with VPs.

Being a product leader is great. But it doesn't help anyone to glamorize the role.

These are the harsh truths you need to accept to succeed:

***

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