Product Talk EP 542 - DoorDash Fmr Sr Product Director on Building High-Impact Product Teams Through Focus and Customer Orientation
May 28, 2025
David Jesse, former Senior Product Director at DoorDash, shares his wealth of experience in building impactful product teams. He dives into disciplined leadership and the importance of customer focus in product development. Jesse discusses navigating growth transitions and the complexities of adapting strategies. He uses sports analogies to assess team health and emphasizes results over mere feature launches. Finally, the conversation touches on balancing AI integration with core product principles to drive meaningful outcomes.
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Fundamentals of Product Success
- Product success requires close customer connection, outcome focus, and teamwork collaboration.
- Early involvement of product, design, and engineering throughout development yields better results.
Focus on Product Bottlenecks
- Identifying and obsessing over the biggest bottleneck in product growth drives major impact.
- Trying to address too many issues dilutes focus and hampers progress.
Strategic and Iterative Prioritization
- Use a vision and strategy to prioritize product milestones and dependencies thoughtfully.
- Deliver iteratively often to measure value and pivot quickly when needed.