20Product: Slack CPO Noah Weiss on How to Master Product-Led-Growth, The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling Into Enterprise & What Needs to Change with your Product, Team and Processes when Scaling From PLG to Enterprise
Noah Weiss, Chief Product Officer at Slack, shares his impressive journey from Google to leading product strategy at Slack. He discusses the art and science of product management and warns against common pitfalls founders face when adopting product-led growth. Noah emphasizes the importance of clear product principles and how to balance short-term enhancements with long-term innovation. He also delves into the challenges of transitioning from SMBs to enterprise clients, highlighting the need for domain expertise and a strong understanding of customer needs.
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insights INSIGHT
Google's 70-20-10 Model
Google's 70-20-10 model allocates resources to known, new, and experimental product areas.
This model promotes a balance of incremental improvements and ambitious, large-scale bets.
insights INSIGHT
Renewing Product-Market Fit
Product-market fit isn't binary; it requires continuous renewal as audiences and the world change.
Companies often design for themselves initially, making it hard to adapt to evolving market needs.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Slack's Enterprise Expansion
Slack's initial target was small to medium-sized teams (5-50 people).
They later realized smaller teams within large companies were using Slack, leading them to expand into the enterprise market.
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Noah Weiss is the Chief Product Officer of Slack, overseeing the product team’s strategy and development. Over his seven years at Slack, Noah has led various parts of the product organization, including the self-service SMB business and product-led growth; the Virtual HQ team that launched huddles and clips; and the search and machine learning teams. Prior to Slack, Noah served as SVP of Product and Analytics at Foursquare. He started his career at Google leading the structured data search team and working on display ads.
In Today's Episode with Noah Weiss We Discuss:
1.) Entry into Product and Road to Slack CPO:
How did Noah make his first foray into the world of product with Google?
What are 1-2 of his single biggest takeaways from his time with Google and Foursquare?
What model did Noah learn at Google that he applies to product today?
2.) Product 101: The Foundations:
Is product more art or science? If Noah were to put a number on it what would it be?
What are product principles? What makes good vs bad product principles?
What are the biggest mistakes that founders make when instilling product principles?
What are some of Noah's biggest lessons on how to master PLG?
What are the biggest mistakes Noah sees early stage founders make today when going for the PLG approach? How does he advise them?
When is the right time to move into enterprise? What needs to change?
How do you change who you build product for? The buyer or the user?
Why does Noah believe product speed will always be the most important thing in product?
4.) The Internals of Slack:
How does Slack do post-mortems today? Who comes? Who sets the agenda? How has this changed in a world of remote? What does it take to do them well?
How do Slack do product testing pre-launch of new products? Do they know when something is going to be a hit? What did they think would be a massive hit that turned into a flop?
What does Noah believe is the biggest near death product experience for Slack? What happened? How did they get through it?
Why do Slack buy other companies? How do they think through the decision of buy vs build?
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