Lessons on building product sense, navigating AI, optimizing the first mile, and making it through the messy middle | Scott Belsky (Adobe, Behance)
Scott Belsky, former Behance founder and Adobe CPO/CSO, shares hard-won insights on building product sense, navigating the "messy middle," and the transformative impact of AI on product development and the world. He emphasizes customer empathy, ruthless simplification, and leveraging AI to unlock human ingenuity.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Deciding When to Persevere or Quit a Venture
Scott Belsky's Role and Responsibilities at Adobe
Developing Product Sense Through Empathy
The Critical Importance of the First Mile Experience
Building Durable and Successful Consumer Products
The 'Do Half the Things You Want' Philosophy
Optimistic Outlook on AI's Impact on Humanity
AI's Transformation of Product Teams and PM Roles
Adobe's Approach to Leveraging AI Tools
Advice for Product Managers to Stay Ahead in AI
The Power of Writing for Crystallizing Thought
Navigating and Enduring the Messy Middle of Ventures
Key Attributes Scott Belsky Looks for in Founders and Products
Resourcefulness Over Resources in Challenging Times
Adobe's Strategic Focus Areas and Future Path
Lightning Round Questions and Insights
5 Key Concepts
First Mile Experience
This refers to the initial onboarding, orientation, and default settings a user encounters when first using a product. It's the critical first 30 seconds where users are lazy, vain, and selfish, seeking quick success without a learning curve. Optimizing this phase is crucial for building lasting customer relationships.
Do Half the Things
A product development philosophy advocating for radical simplification by only implementing half the features, offering half the options, and targeting half the market initially. The goal is to optimize for the problems you want to have (customers asking for more features) and ensure the core value proposition operates at maximum velocity.
Collapsing the Stack
This concept describes the trend where individuals within an organization can perform more tasks themselves, reducing the need to rely on specialized roles like data scientists or analysts. AI technologies are enabling this by empowering people to answer their own questions and get things done more directly, leading to flatter, more efficient teams.
Golden Gut
This refers to the intuitive decision-making ability of an experienced product thinker, particularly in design. It involves making micro-decisions to reduce cognitive load, simplify flows, and make trade-offs (e.g., confusing 10% of users to speed up 90%) based on a deep understanding of user psychology and product goals.
Messy Middle
This describes the volatile, uncertain, and anxious period in the middle of any bold venture, whether a startup or a turnaround within a large company. It's characterized by lows, anonymity, and the need for endurance to overcome natural human tendencies for constant rewards and affirmation.
8 Questions Answered
Product managers can build product sense by developing deep empathy for the customer, observing them in their daily context to understand their mentality, and focusing on the psychology behind user experiences, especially in the 'first mile' of product interaction.
The 'first mile' (onboarding, orientation, defaults) is crucial because it determines whether users quickly find success and value, which is essential for building a lasting relationship. New customer cohorts, especially pragmatists, are less forgiving of friction, making continuous optimization of this initial experience vital for growth and retention.
Durable consumer products often succeed by offering a unique insight into consumer psychology, building network effects, and having underlying business components that tilt the market in their favor. They often provide a sense of 'magic' or unexpected delight rather than just meeting expectations.
AI will empower PMs to explore a much wider surface area of possibilities in less time, similar to how a director uses AI to brainstorm scenarios. It will allow PMs to be more cross-functional, doing more design, engineering, and data analysis themselves, potentially shifting focus towards ingenuity and creativity.
The best way for PMs to stay ahead is to 'play' with AI technology, trying various generative AI tools, writing with them, and pursuing every curiosity. This hands-on experimentation helps overcome ingrained habits and understand the capabilities and implications of new AI developments.
A founder should consider quitting if, after knowing all they know, they have less conviction in the problem and solution they are building than they did at the start. While not making a decision on a single bad day, a general dissipation of core conviction suggests it might be time to pivot or move on.
He values founders who are introspective, listen, learn, want to shake things up, and prioritize their mission over money. He is wary of 'promoters' and prefers leaders who are optimistic about the future but pragmatic and somewhat pessimistic about the present challenges.
He looks for a clear 'object model' way of thinking about the product that ensures scalability and intuitive navigation. Every screen should clearly answer: 'How did I get here?', 'What do I do now?', and 'What do I do next?'.
26 Actionable Insights
1. Assess Founder Conviction
Before continuing a venture, honestly evaluate if you have more or less conviction in the problem and solution, knowing what you know now; if conviction is lost, consider pivoting or quitting.
2. Develop Customer Empathy
Prioritize understanding the customer’s suffering problem over being passionate about a solution, as empathy often reveals the true solution.
3. Prioritize First-Mile Experience
Focus on the initial 30 seconds of user experience, ensuring it’s effortless, successful, and requires no learning curve, as this is critical for activation and retention.
4. Ruthlessly Simplify Product Features
When building an MVP or adding features, aim to do only half of what you initially plan, constantly considering what can be removed or replaced to focus on the core value.
5. Build MVPs for Desired Problems
Optimize your Minimum Viable Product to solve core problems, intentionally leaving out features so customers will ask for them, indicating engagement and value.
6. Integrate Design Earlier
Bring designers into customer research and value proposition debates upstream in the product development process to give them a “golden gut” and improve experience quality.
7. Actively Experiment with AI Tools
To stay ahead in the evolving AI landscape, dedicate time to playing with various AI technologies, writing, and pursuing curiosities to understand their possibilities and implications.
8. Leverage AI to Collapse Stack
Utilize AI to empower individuals to perform more tasks independently (e.g., data analysis), reducing reliance on specialized roles and fostering flatter, more efficient teams.
9. Prioritize Resourcefulness Over Resources
In resource-constrained environments, focus on refactoring processes and leveraging new technologies like AI to solve problems efficiently, building stronger, more adaptable teams.
10. Communicate and Merchandise Progress
As a product leader, continuously share the narrative of progress and celebrate micro-goals with your team to maintain motivation and combat the uncertainty of the “messy middle.”
11. Design with Clear Object Model
Ensure every product screen and experience clearly answers “How did I get here?”, “What do I do now?”, and “What do I do next?” to create a scalable and intuitive user flow.
12. Embrace Pragmatic Optimism
Cultivate a leadership mindset that is optimistic about the future vision but pragmatic and somewhat pessimistic about current challenges, fostering transparency and problem-solving.
13. Observe Customers in Context
To build deeper empathy, spend time shoulder-to-shoulder with customers, watching them go about their entire day, not just using your product, to understand their broader context and mentality.
14. Optimize for Unexpected Delight
Design products to include “magic tricks,” mysteries, or features that users wouldn’t expect, as these surprises drive conversation and build a stronger relationship with the product.
15. Re-evaluate If Conviction Dissipates
While avoiding rash decisions on bad days, if your core conviction in a venture generally fades over time, be open-minded to pivoting or exploring other opportunities.
16. Cultivate Intuition for Simplification
Develop a “golden gut” by making micro-decisions that reduce cognitive load, even if it means confusing a small percentage of users, to accelerate the majority through the process.
17. Use Writing as Forcing Function
Leverage writing as a discipline to clarify your thoughts and ideas, using it as an excuse and a forcing function to crystallize complex concepts.
18. Practice Ruthless Writing Prioritization
Dedicate specific, non-negotiable blocks of time to writing, even if for short periods, to ensure consistent content creation and idea development.
19. Continuously Capture Ideas, Sketches
Maintain a “back burner” of captured glimpses, ideas, and sketches, as these seemingly insignificant notes can become invaluable content or crucial insights years later.
20. Adapt Onboarding for New Users
Recognize that as your user base grows and changes (e.g., from early adopters to pragmatists), you must reimagine and re-optimize your onboarding process to meet their evolving needs and skepticism.
21. Understand User Psychology
Ground product experience design in an understanding of natural human tendencies and primal moments, especially during initial product interactions, to create more effective and engaging solutions.
22. Build Products with Underlying Power
For durable consumer products, seek to leverage untapped capacities, unique psychological insights, or strong business components (like network effects) that create lasting value beyond momentary interfaces.
23. Foster Creative Confidence with AI
Utilize generative AI tools like Adobe Express and Firefly to empower users to feel more creatively confident, enabling those without traditional skills to engage in creative endeavors.
24. Use AI for 10x Exploration
Leverage AI to augment creative professionals’ work, allowing them to explore a 10x larger surface area of possibilities and find better solutions more efficiently, rather than replacing them.
25. Drive Personalization in Products
Focus on developing products that increasingly meet users where they are, offering personalized marketing, commerce, and content experiences based on individual preferences and data.
26. Seek Extraordinary, Embrace Exception
Remember that truly amazing ventures are exceptions to the norm; while learning best practices, be willing to defy conventional wisdom and pursue transformative ideas that others might deem “crazy.”
6 Key Quotes
If you've lost conviction, you should not be doing what you're doing in the world of entrepreneurship.
Scott Belsky
One of the biggest mistakes that teams make is they become very passionate about a solution to a problem they're trying to solve, as opposed to do everything they can to develop empathy for the customer that's suffering the problem.
Scott Belsky
In the first 30 seconds of using a new product, you are lazy, vain, and selfish. You want to get it done super quickly. You want to look good to your colleagues or to your friends. You want to feel successful very quickly by engaging in this product.
Scott Belsky
If you want the problem of customers getting through your funnel, feeling successful, using your product and getting value and then saying to you, oh, but I need it on this platform or I need this capability or I want to be able to share this. I mean, you want those problems. So don't do those features now.
Scott Belsky
I've always found that resourcefulness, you know, brings you further than resources, despite the fact that over the last seven to 10 years, we've basically thrown resources at every problem.
Scott Belsky
Nothing extraordinary is ever achieved through ordinary means.
Scott Belsky
2 Protocols
Deciding When to Continue or Quit a Venture
Scott Belsky- Assess your conviction in the problem and the solution you are building, knowing all you know now.
- If you have more conviction than ever, despite failures, recognize you are in the 'messy middle' and stick with it.
- If you honestly feel that if you knew then what you know now, you would not have started, then consider quitting or pivoting.
- Avoid making bold decisions on a single bad day, but if conviction generally dissipates, be open-minded about other options.
Product Review Questions
Scott Belsky- How did I get here?
- What do I do now?
- What do I do next?