Mozilla

May'24: Interim SVP of New Products
Oversee the new and emerging product areas at Mozilla, including innovation, safety and identity, and AI.

Feb '24 - May '24: Growth and Product Strategy Advisor
Working with executives at Mozilla to shape their growth and product strategy and translate that into great execution.

Interim - SVP of New Products

FishmanAF Newsletter

Author, FishmanAF Newsletter

20Growth

Investing alongside 8 of the top operators in Growth.

Investor

TrustedHousesitters

Advisor

Reforge

Built Growth Leadership; one of the most popular courses at Reforge with the highest NPS of any program.

Reforge Partner

Executive In Residence

Table22

Table22 helps hundreds of hospitality merchants around the U.S. to build and launch subscription businesses to their consumers.

Board Member

Ziina زينة

Advise Ziina on growth and product - acquisition, growth loops, retention and overall product experience

Manychat

ResortPass

Advisor, Product & Technology

Leading the Product, Engineering, Design and Data functions at ResortPass.

Interim, Chief Product & Technology Officer

Sunroom

Product and Growth leader across both B2C and B2B. I have a 20 year track record of driving major revenue improvements through strategic planning, customer acquisition, retention, conversion optimization, and productized growth with brands such as ResortPass, Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods, WyzAnt, Shutterfly, Kodak, Expedia, Hotwire and more. I cultivate and coach high-performing teams to deliver exceptional results, such as:

- 4x revenue growth at Imperfect in one year
- Growing Patreon to $1B in annual GMV (10x from when joined) and taking the business international
- 1.5x'd ResortPass annual revenue in 3 months
- Starting and leading Lyft's growth org for the first 3 years; taking us from 1 city in 2012 to 70+ cities.
- Building company, product or growth strategy for: Lyft, Patreon, ImperfectFoods, ResortPass, ManyChat, and more.

Currently I help CEOs, founders and other executives with all things growth and product management, including growth loops, acquisition/retention/monetization, onboarding, experimentation, analytics, building durable product strategy and execution, and team management / coaching.

I’m happy to share that after a few months as a product and growth advisor with the fantastic team at Mozilla I’m starting a new position as their Interim - SVP of New Products. 

In this new role I'll get to continue helping shape product strategy for the new and emerging product areas working closely with talented folks like Imo Udom, Sally Richardson, Chris Karlof, Saoud Khalifah, and executive team (amongst many others).

You can see the announcement from last week linked below.

We're looking for talented and entrepreneurial product managers and product designers to help us discover and explore more product opportunities at a rapid pace. If you have a passion and track record for successful 0-to-1 exploration and building, let me know!

Adam Fishman

A company culture that learns through experimentation makes unexpected discoveries.

The key to learning through experimentation is that mistakes are not very costly.  When a Roomba bumps around the room it's not setting fire to the furniture.

But just running experiments isn't enough--you have to coach your team members to be okay with 'taking the L' as my kids say. First by creating a system so that those 'L's" aren't particularly costly and then finding ways to celebrate them.

Limited risk is OK and should be encouraged. It teaches us how to recover and avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Check out all the ways that you can build creativity, experimentation, and structure (with flexibility) into your company culture in today's FishmanAF Newsletter: "Why Play is Important at Work."

Link below!

Calling all innovators! Are you interested in the future of open source and local AI? You should be.

True to Mozilla's roots, we're (re)launching the Mozilla Builders program to fund and support impactful projects vital to the open source AI ecosystem. Selected projects will receive up to $100k in funding and engage in a focused, 12-week program.

➡ Applications are OPEN at the link in the comments. ⬅ 

The inaugural theme is Local AI -- running AI models and applications directly on personal devices like laptops, smartphones, or edge devices *rather* than on cloud-based services. There are huge benefits to Local AI: privacy, cost efficiency, cultural relevance and reliability.

I'm personally very excited about Mozilla's own investments in this area -- like llamafile -- and even more excited to see what the new crop of builders dreams up.

Check out the link below for more info and the application process.

Lest you think I've become a shill for Mozilla, it's only because we're building some ridiculously interesting (and necessary) stuff. Much has been discussed recently about the role of safety in AI...

Today we announced the start of 0din - the 0-Day Investigative Network - for keeping GenAI technologies secure. This is a new bug bounty program designed to identify and combat bugs and vulnerabilities in GenAI applications, models, and more. 

We know that securing GenAI is too vast and complex for a single entity to handle alone and we believe that sharing this responsibilities is essential to keeping people safe.

If you haven't met Saoud Khalifah, you should. He's actively hiring a team for 0din along with collecting submissions from security researchers. This Thursday he'll host a Q&A about the program alongside Pedram Amini. You can register and learn more at the link below.

Our hope for this program is to help independent researchers by providing an opportunity to contribute to the development of new security frameworks and best practices tailored for LLMs, attention-based systems and generative models. 

Join us. Link below!

I've been really excited about the new AI updates of the past few weeks. Apple announcing "local" coupled with Private Cloud is an incredible feat of engineering, ChatGPT running on your OS and not the browser... it's all pretty amazing.

But there's a problem. They all require the most advanced hardware that we've got right now. Yes, Apple will release an improved device but right now I can't use their new stuff on anything unless it's an iPhone 15 Pro. And ChatGPT doesn't run on devices without M1 chips.

There is a solution to this that exists right now. And it's based on one of my favorite animals: Llamafile. This is the brainchild of Stephen Hood who leads open source AI products at Mozilla. 

🐪 (<-- not a llama) 
Here's a fun fact I learned about Llamas recently:
Llamas are social herd animals. They can learn simple tasks after repetition and can carry about 25-30% of their body weight for 5-8 miles.

Here's a fun fact I learned about Llamafile recently:
It makes distribution and running of LLMs drastically easier and simpler. You can transform a set of LLM weights in the GGUF format into something that runs on six different OSes without needing to be installed.

The future of AI is local, on-device. Llamafile is the first of many bets that we're making in this direction.

Go check it out. Link below.

Today I released my 50th episode of Startup Dad, an interview with Scott Belsky - Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Emerging Products at Adobe. He's also a Dad of 3, in a dual-working household with a wife who is a startup co-founder.

It's 35 minutes of amazing insight on creativity, how technology will shape our kids futures, frameworks, mistakes, and advice for founders starting a family.

We covered:
💙 How his perspective on building now incorporates his family
💙 Advice to founders who are starting a family
💙 Supporting his wife as a co-founder
💙 Fostering creativity in kids and observing where creativity comes from
💙 Support systems necessary for maintaining busy lives
💙 How AI has already changed the world for kids
💙 What AI is going to do for education
💙 The philosophy behind his wife’s company, Good Inside

If you've ever been curious about what drives creativity in kids, the role that AI will play in the future of education, and hearing a successful *male* entrepreneur and executive talk about what it takes to raise three kids then this episode is for you.

Watch, listen and subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts. Links below!

When you're running a startup and trying to build culture what you say matters a lot less than what you do.

"I think of instilling values in my kids almost like running a startup again. All that matters is modeling that behavior for the rest of your team because they're going to do exactly what they see the founders doing."

In today's Startup Dad conversation with ethan austin we talked about values, modeling behaviors, and making parenting fun:
💙 The time he picked up his oldest kid from school in a taco costume
💙 His life with a newborn
💙 Teaching kids values
💙 Modeling behaviors with your kids
💙 Finding fun in the mundane
💙 How partners can take turns supporting one another
💙 Why every parent is just winging it most of the time
💙 Three important parenting frameworks he’s developed

We also spent time talking about loss. Ethan lost his father as a teenager and that has had a profound impact on how he thinks about time, saying "yes" to things, and living for the moment.

Check it out everywhere you get your podcasts; links below.

The concept of 'first team' means that managers and leaders should prioritize (and be most loyal) to their peer leadership team over the teams they directly manage. 

But the concept of first team applies to your household as well. In today's Startup Dad podcast I'm joined by Patrick Thompson -- co-founder of Clarify, three-time founder and former director of product at Amplitude. 

"My wife and I, we're the first team. We need to be aligned. We need to be a unified front. We need to be on the same page around how we communicate, what are some of the principles we operate around, and what are some of the rituals that we hold dear to each other?"

We discussed:
💙 How to manage a young family with starting a company
💙 The differences between his last startup when he wasn’t yet a parent and this one
💙 Having the conversation with your partner about getting back to building
💙 Investing in your relationship with your partner
💙 The concept of “first team” and applying that at work and home
💙 Rituals for quality time with your kids
💙 Recharging his batteries as both a parent and founder
💙 Top tips for airplane travel with an infant
💙 A potty training disaster story

Thanks to Austin Hay for suggesting Patrick for the show!

You can watch, listen and subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts! Links below.

It takes a village. But what happens when 7 sets of friends get together, buy all the properties in a town-home community and then raise their families there? A modern day commune! 

This is happening in the heart of the SF Bay Area.

"The U.S. is going through an epidemic of loneliness. This has been so, so great for that. The small interactions with your friends. Especially during the pandemic, this was amazing. Other people listening to this should consider whether it's a townhome or a cul-de-sac or whatever, America is lonely and this is a great way to address some of that."

In today's Startup Dad I sat down with two of the 14 adults in a modern day commune, Yousuf Bhaijee (Eaze, Zynga, Disney) and Chris Lloyd (Humane, Pinterest, Opera) to talk about their unique living style with the families. There are 15 kids across 7 families living in close proximity to one another.

We discussed:
💙 How this whole modern day commune experiment got started
💙 What it means to live in a modern day commune
💙 The shared rituals, benefits and drawbacks of this lifestyle
💙 The positive impacts on mental health
💙 The benefits of sharing
💙 How gender roles take on new meaning in communal living
💙 The most surprising aspects of a communal lifestyle
💙 Family privacy and parenting styles when you live in close proximity with others

I developed a new perspective for the importance of community, sharing, and ways to rewrite loneliness and transform it into something much more positive.

Watch or listen everywhere you get your podcasts. Links below.

#StartupDad

Been thinking a lot about humility lately.

Between the failure stories that I publish on FishmanAF Newsletter, talking to customers when conceptualizing and building products, taking feedback from team members, conversations with Dads on Startup Dad, and even listening to the most recent Acquired conversation with Howard Schultz I'm always struck by the role of humility in building great products and companies.

Howard talks about this in the context of growing up in the projects, having nothing, and grinding it out as a door-to-door salesman selling typewriters. He had to have 50 "cold calls" a day which was literally showing up at an office and (probably) having the door slammed in his face. That really builds resilience.

There are several summer and part-time jobs I had before I started working mostly with pixels and bits.

The first was managing the archiving of patient records at a doctors office. Before digital files everything was kept in charts and they had to store those charts for 7 years. Every summer charts that were over a certain age needed to be moved to an offsite storage facility to make room for new charts. 

But the charts that were over 7 years old at the storage facility had to be pulled and shredded. And it was more cost effective to have me shred them all by hand then hire a company to do it. So guess what I did? I manually shredded thousands of patient charts *before* moving new ones into the storage facility. 

Bags and bags and BAGS of them. And it was just me and a radio -- no ipods, no streaming music, just AM and FM radio. For months. In the heat.

The second job that really sticks in my mind was in college. In Detroit one of the Big 3 car companies was Chrysler, before it became Daimler-Chrysler and then FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. I worked in a 1 million square foot warehouse that was one of the largest parts facilities in North America. Imagine a giant library of parts with bar codes and locations -- part of my job was to pick, box and ship parts. 

But another part of my job was something that they cleverly titled "De-unitizing" -- I think to make it sound more glamorous. The simplest way of describing this is taking something that used to be sold in multiple quantities (like a bag of washers) and splitting it out because it wasn't sold in those quantities anymore. I had a list of parts and locations, a scanner, and an box cutter. I would pull up to a bin of washers in bags, tens of thousands of them, and have to cut open each bag and dump the parts into another bin. For hours and days, and weeks. And it was like 90-100 degrees in this warehouse with giant industrial fans that just circulated hot air all day long. 

I met and worked with all kinds of people at that job. I saw someone get arrested on their lunch break and learned why "smoke breaks" existed. It was certainly different than working in an office in front of a computer.

These were valuable experiences with lessons in humility. 

What are yours?

When I posted a few weeks about how play is an important cultural element to move a company forward I got a lot of reaction. One of those was from my friend Gagan Biyani at Maven.

To build a culture of experimentation, you need *some* structure. It provides safety and allows for a range of acceptable activities. Strategy, hackathons and design sprints are all good ways to provide both structure and flexibility. 

I’m excited to share more about this in my talk with Gagan on Friday.

He has founded 3 companies: Udemy, Sprig, and Maven, and we worked together in the early days of Lyft. We’re hosting a live conversation about all the ways that you can build creativity and experimentation into your company culture, such as:

- How to lead with goals
- How to create structure with flexibility
- How to reward failure and make it less risky for people

RSVP to join us on June 21 (it’s free)! Link below.

maven.com

How to Create a Culture of Experimentation

Just went on air with Randi Zuckerberg on Randi Zuckerberg Means Business for a special #FathersDay episode to talk about Startup Dad!

She's talking to a bunch of interesting Dads today (I'm  the least impressive):
National Basketball Association (NBA) free agent Tony Snell
NYTimes writer and Company Of Dads founder Paul Sullivan
And The Dumb Dads podcast on changing centuries of Dad stereotypes

It's on SiriusXM channel 132 and was SO much fun.

#StartupDad

Building a growth strategy can become incredibly complicated... if you let it. But there's an easier way and I'm sharing it today.

If you're doing this for the first time, follow a more simple, 5-step process:
1. Identify your north star metrics and inputs
2. Map your learnings for each of the inputs
3. Organize and draw insights across them
4. Sequence your opportunities
5. Build your backlog

⭐ North Star and Inputs
A north star is the primary outcome metric that measures the success of a company's overall strategy and product vision. Okay, but what does that mean?
- It's an output metric. If you do a bunch of things right (inputs) you'll see this metric move over time.
- If this metric improves it means that more customers are receiving more value from your product.
- It's not revenue! Revenue maps more closely to the price someone is paying rather than the value they're receiving.
- Pick about 3 of these metrics: one that measure retention, one that measures engagement and one that measures monetization.
- Break each down into their component parts

🗺 Map your learnings
- This involves collecting and analyzing experiment results, research, customer convos, metrics and trends.
- It helps you understand the impact of these inputs on your outputs.
- You want to organize what happened in the past and how that has contributed to moving your inputs forward. It shows you what you've learned.
- It *also* helps you understand where you don't have knowledge, where it's lacking, and where it might be outdated an in need of a refresh.

💡Organize and draw insights
- LLMs are your friend here! They're great at drawing connections across disparate insights.
- You can prompt with questions like, "Analyze this set of insights and learnings to identify major themes." Or "Compare these insights with previous learnings and identify any new or evolving themes."
- When you identify the themes and patterns you want to then connect them to the growth loops that would benefit by acting on these insights
- This may also help you identify a potential growth loop that you didn't currently have!

🏗 Sequence
- This is where the strategy starts to come together - you need the ability to estimate impact even if it's merely a hypothesis.
- Leverage a simplified growth model (link in article) so you can adjust levers based on actions you might take and see the response.
- Sequence using your preferred prioritization methodology; I don't care which one... just pick one! RICE? DRICE? Effort vs. Return 2x2? Great! All good. Just do it in a spreadsheet.

📖 Backlog Building
Strategy creation really ends with the sequencing, but without your backlog you won't be able to execute so get crackin!
- This is where you put the oars in the water and start to row.
- Break down the sequenced opportunities even further into their component parts--experiments--to test the hypotheses contained in those opportunities.

Check out a deeper dive in today's FishmanAF Newsletter! Links below.

We could all use a little more "play" in our company cultures.

Play-based education is rooted in the idea that *kids* learn best through active exploration and discovery, rather than through formal instruction and rote memorization. Play helps children develop problem-solving skills, creativity, social skills, and a deeper understanding of the world around them.

The parallels between this and successful company culture are many:
🎨 Emphasis on creativity and innovation
🔬 Learning through experimentation
🤝 Social development and collaboration
🤸‍♀️ Structure with flexibility
👩‍💼 The role of leadership

In today's FishmanAF Newsletter I break down each of these and how you should think about them in your company's culture.

🎨 Creativity and Innovation
Inside of a company this is the difference between saying 'go build this exact product' vs. 'figure out how to solve this problem for our customers.' Here are some principles you can apply to better emphasize this "play" skill:
▶ Lead with goals
▶ Allow for wider brainstorm, with constraints
▶ Reward innovation

🔬 Experimentation
A company culture that encourages learning through experimentation makes unexpected discoveries. But you have be be okay with 'taking the L' as my kids say. Here are some ideas that can help you with experimentation in your culture:
▶ The rubber rat award
▶ The all hands trophy
▶ Experimentation tools
▶ Recurring failure share out

🤝 Collaboration
Every company job description has an emphasis on a collaborative culture. But not many can achieve it. Here are two ways you can:
▶ Shared goal setting
▶ Make your knowledge easy to access

🤸‍♀️ Structure with flexibility
You need *some* structure. It provides safety and allows for a range of acceptable activities. Strategy, hackathons and design sprints are all good ways to provide both structure and flexibility. Here are three more ways you can improve in this area:
▶ Provide autonomy, but back up with clear and measurable goals
▶ Being clear about everyone's role and expectations
▶ Internal rotations and interviews for teams

👩‍💼 Leadership
In play-based education, when adults are involved the play becomes less 'free' and less beneficial. Here are some ways you (as a leader or a team member) can set the appropriate level of leadership:
▶ Bring decisions and ask for feedback
▶ Volley a decision right back (if a team member is asking you to decide)
▶ Practice situational leadership and awareness

Read today's newsletter for a deeper dive into all of these. I'd also love to hear what practices of "play" you've introduced in your company.

Failure in product management often brings to mind botched product launches or failed experiments. But not for Ben Williams.

"Product launches and experiments that don't deliver the results we hypothesized - those things are just part of doing product and growth and the built-in learning cadence. My flop was something more; it hit me like a gut punch."

In today's FishmanAF Newsletter I tell the story of Ben's biggest failure and the lessons he learned that made him a stronger product leader. It's a story of Imposter Syndrome and how he failed as a first-time head of product when he thought he was doing everything right.

Ben entered his first head of product role with a strong track record as an individual contributor and lower-level PM leader. He had earned respect from his peers across product, design, and engineering teams

Beneath this surface of confidence, Ben was grappling with intense imposter syndrome. He had yet to learn how to channel this self-doubt into something constructive. 

Instead, he tried to overcompensate by having all the answers.

He started to micromanage all the product decisions. He built strategy in isolation. He wasn't open to suggestions and feedback. He thought he'd be judged negatively if he didn't have all the answers.

Read today's newsletter to see how Ben turned this around and transformed his embarrassment and failure into a constructive force. Link below!

Where does creativity come from? What is AI going to do to education? What creates the ability for the most successful people to regulate themselves?

In today's 50th Startup Dad podcast I'm joined by Scott Belsky of Adobe. He's had a front-row seat to how creativity happens *and* how his own kids have learned it.

We answer the questions above and many more in our conversation which you can listen to everywhere you get your podcasts.

#startupdad

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