Ludo Antonov, VP of Engineering @ WhatNot, shares how eng leaders can better operate from their organization’s first principles. He defines the concept & what that looks like for WhatNot through their values of listening to customers, moving uncomfortably fast, and more – plus what happens when optimizing for one principle conflicts with another! We also cover Ludo’s leadership journey, how he navigated the transition from a business model focused on discovery & matching to two-sided marketplaces, and challenges / lessons learned from working within the social, community, & marketplace space.
Ludo (@ludo_antonov) is the Vice President of Engineering at Whatnot. He has an extensive background in building engineering teams at fast-growing startups including Hulu, Pinterest, and Lyft. He led the Pinterest Growth team as the company was going through hyper-growth up to IPO. Prior to joining Whatnot, he served as an engineering executive at Lyft, overseeing the company’s core rideshare products including the rider, driver, marketplace, and growth organizations.
"That's one of the important parts is it allows for common language to fall back to whenever these problems actually happen because they tend to be more and more complex and take more and more nuance in order to get right and sometimes, especially like it's very powerful to take it back to first principles and say, 'How would we do this if we have to be ruthlessly prioritizing? Are we moving comfortably fast in thinking of our approach?' And then everyone understands because it's part of our vocabulary and it takes repetition to build that.”
- Ludo Antonov
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SHOW NOTES:
- Ludo provides a status update on recent milestones @ WhatNot (2:40)
- What operating from first principles looks like within an eng org (4:08)
- Strategies for going back to your founding leadership principles (6:35)
- Overcoming product challenges by leading through listening to your customers (8:34)
- How the eng team pivoted their approach based on that first principle (9:40)
- Deconstructing “moving uncomfortably fast” & its impact on operating systems (12:13)
- Incorporating first principles with WhatNot’s international strategy (13:35)
- When optimizing for one value is in conflict with another (15:32)
- Frameworks that aid in ruthless prioritization (16:41)
- Assess impact, likelihood of success & effort during prioritization conversations (19:05)
- Lessons learned from building Pinterest that Ludo applied to WhatNot (19:57)
- Ludo’s transition from discovery / matching to a two-sided marketplace (23:40)
- How Ludo applied two-sided marketplace elements to WhatNot (24:53)
- Working business model aspects into an engineering context (26:23)
- Ludo’s favorite seller experiences (28:30)
- Engineering approaches to & impact on two-sided marketplaces (30:18)
- Recommendations for eng leaders operating in a new business model (31:57)
- Rapid fire questions (33:39)
LINKS AND RESOURCES
- The Upside of Stress - Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits.
- Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A. Moore’s bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets—now revised and updated with new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing.
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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