The Paths to Greatness

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I think unless you know the founders very very very well joining a very early stage early stage company is especially now for the next one or two years it's going to be a brutal market out there. There are multiple paths to greatness but I think the founder and market fit in terms of even the type of company that's needed is very strong. You want a founder and a company culture that are essentially synonymous and founders to be authentic and finally the product itself needs to have some remarkably good things happen door dash by nature is more operational probably the right word to use where product and operational intertwined uber probably the same word so I think every great product it needs to have a lot of word of mouth

Gokul Rajaram serves on the executive team at DoorDash, where he leads the Caviar product line. Previously he worked at Square, where he was also on the executive team and led a number of key product lines, and as a product director at Facebook, where he helped the company transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul was a product director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business.

Gokul also serves on the boards of Coinbase, Pinterest, and The Trade Desk and is a prolific angel investor, having invested in companies like Airtable, Khatabook, and 100+ more.

In this episode, you will learn:

1. How to navigate your next career

- What should you focus on in order to improve your optionality?

- What should you consider as you look for your next career adventure?

- Why join winners in a space?

- Why should people entering the workforce join mid-stage companies?

- Why there are many paths to success.

2. How to build a product development process at early-stage companies

- What does the best product development process typically look like at different company stages?

- What are some common pitfalls when building these processes?

3. Hiring PMs

- When should you hire your first PM? What should you look for?