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What AI means for your product strategy | Paul Adams (CPO of Intercom)

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Oct 26, 2023

Guest

Paul Adams

Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer at Intercom, shares his extensive experience in product strategy. He delivers practical tips for integrating AI into organizations, emphasizing its impact on product development. Adams humorously recounts a nerve-wracking keynote moment that turned into a lesson in resilience, alongside insights from his tenure at Google and Facebook. He discusses learning from failures, navigating team dynamics while adopting AI, and the intricacies of pricing strategy, highlighting the need for adapting to customer needs and ongoing engagement.

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Episode notes

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ANECDOTE

Freezing at Cannes

Paul Adams froze onstage at Cannes, a major advertising festival, during a Facebook keynote.
He walked off, cursed (while still mic'd up), then returned and finished successfully.

insights

INSIGHT

Fear-Driven Development

Projects driven by fear, like Google's social endeavors in response to Facebook, often fail.
True innovation comes from a desire to solve real user needs, not competitive anxiety.

question_answer

ANECDOTE

Switching Sides

Paul Adams's move from Google to Facebook during Google+ development was controversial.
Google treated him as a potential spy due to the project's secrecy and competitive stakes.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

From Panic to Perseverance

04:28 • 8min

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Embracing Failure and AI in Product Development

12:32 • 14min

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Embracing AI: Transformations & Challenges

26:46 • 14min

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Navigating the AI Landscape: Challenges, Tools, and Company Dynamics

40:51 • 5min

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AI Integration in Industries

45:53 • 6min

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Navigating Pricing and Product Strategy

51:51 • 24min

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Prioritizing Kindness and Resilience

01:15:36 • 4min

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Savoring Ireland: The Flavors of Guinness and More

01:19:41 • 3min

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It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be

Paul Arden

This book provides a unique insight into the world of advertising and is a quirky compilation of quotes, facts, pictures, wit, and wisdom. It is designed as a pocket 'bible' for the talented and timid alike, helping to make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible. Paul Arden shares his expertise on diverse issues such as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes, and creativity, all of which can be applied to aspects of modern life.

Principles

Ray Dalio

In 'Principles: Life and Work', Ray Dalio shares the principles he has developed over his career that have helped him achieve success. The book is divided into three sections: the first section explains how Dalio's principles were formed from his personal and professional experiences; the second section outlines life principles, such as embracing reality, being radically open-minded, and understanding the importance of pain and reflection in personal growth; and the third section focuses on work principles, including the use of radical truth and radical transparency to transform an organization. Dalio advocates for systematizing decision-making into algorithms, learning from failures, and building a culture where it is okay to make mistakes but unacceptable not to learn from them.

Paul Adams is the longtime chief product officer at Intercom, where he leads the product management, product design, data science, and research teams. Before Intercom, Paul was the global head of brand design at Facebook, a senior user researcher at Google, and a product designer at Dyson. He’s also a best-selling author, a podcast host, and a public speaker. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Practical advice on integrating AI into your organization

• Tips and tools for learning AI as a PM

• Hilarious stories from Google and Facebook

• How to build conviction with skeptical coworkers

• Lessons learned from pricing at Intercom

• How Intercom implemented JTBD

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Brought to you by Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Hex—Helping teams ask and answer data questions by working together | HelpBar by Chameleon—The free in-app universal search solution built for SaaS

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-ai-means-for-your-product-strategy-paul-adams-cpo-of-intercom/

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Where to find Paul Adams:

• X: https://twitter.com/Padday

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauladams/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Paul’s background

(04:09) Freezing onstage in front of 8,000 people

(07:28) Insights from Google+ days

(12:31) Learning from failure

(13:56) Intercom’s “ship fast, ship early, ship often” principle

(15:17) Integrating AI into product strategy

(17:31) Making time for AI learning

(19:37) AI in new-product development

(21:16) Questions to ask about your product

(23:33) How Intercom pivoted after the release of ChatGPT

(25:13) Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin

(26:45) The early impact of AI adoption at Intercom

(28:53) Mind-blowing capabilities of AI

(34:27) How to structure teams around AI products

(37:57) Why all teams should be involved in AI

(39:04) Staying up to date on emerging technology

(42:44) Hurdles implementing AI at Intercom

(45:52) Building conviction around AI

(49:52) Why you shouldn’t fear AI

(50:56) Paul’s “before-after” framework

(51:54) Pricing lessons from Intercom

(54:54) Paul’s “differentiation vs. table stakes” framework

(59:22) What “swinging the pendulum” means and examples from Intercom

(1:05:21) Paul’s “product market story fit” framework

(1:08:23) His take on JTBD

(1:11:01) How Intercom uses the “four forces” framework

(1:12:54) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/

• The New ChatGPT Can “See” and “Talk.” Here’s What It’s Like: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/technology/new-chatgpt-can-see-hear.html

• Fergal Reid on X: https://twitter.com/fergal_reid

• Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin: https://www.intercom.com/drlp/fin

• Mark Zuckerberg: First Interview in the Metaverse | Lex Fridman Podcast #398: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVYrJJNdrEg

• Black Mirror “Joan Is Awful” episode: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20247352/

• Mission: Impossible on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Impossible-Tom-Cruise/dp/B000X4IRE4

• Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• Matt Rickard’s newsletter: https://substack.com/@mattrickard

• OpenAI’s blog: https://openai.com/blog

• The Rundown AI newsletter: https://www.therundown.ai/

• Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

• Google Bard: https://bard.google.com/

• Rewind: https://www.rewind.ai/

• The Three Horizons Framework: https://medium.com/fact-of-the-day-1/the-three-horizons-framework-9d7ac0fbea21

• Sam Altman on X: https://twitter.com/sama

• Tableau: https://www.tableau.com/

• Kano model: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/kano-model/

• The ultimate guide to JTBD | Bob Moesta (co-creator of the framework): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-jtbd-bob-moesta-co-creator-of-the-framework/

• Hot takes and techno-optimism from tech’s top power couple | Sriram and Aarthi: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/hot-takes-and-techno-optimism-from-techs-top-power-couple-sriram-and-aarthi/

• Outcome-Driven Innovation: JTBD Theory in Practice: https://jobs-to-be-done.com/outcome-driven-innovation-odi-is-jobs-to-be-done-theory-in-practice-2944c6ebc40e

• The Four Forces Framework: https://thefourforces.com/four-forces-framework/

• It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-How-Good-Want/dp/0714843377/

• Principles: Life and Work: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/1501124021

• The Bear on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bear-05eb6a8e-90ed-4947-8c0b-e6536cbddd5f

• “Terry (Olivia Colman) and Richie peel mushrooms” scene from The Bear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7D8THR_osU

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change: https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Powerful/dp/0743269519

• Guinness: https://www.guinness.com/

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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