Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox)

1. Focus on User Problems First

As a new PM, resist the urge to immediately think about what to build. Instead, focus first on understanding users and their real-world problems to identify genuine opportunities before jumping to solutions.

2. Lead by Influence, Not Authority

Recognize that a PM’s job is not to ‘call the shots’ or ‘make decisions’ through authority, but rather to understand opportunities, pull together possibilities, and edit, primarily through influence.

3. Double Down on Core Lovability

Deeply understand why people love your product and continuously invest in that core concept. Build everything else around this strength, rather than getting distracted by competitive chasing or non-core initiatives.

4. Leverage Core Company Strengths

When considering new initiatives, ensure they align with your company’s strategic strengths and existing ‘wheelhouse.’ Building capabilities from the ground up where the company lacks muscle can be very difficult and may lead to unsustainable unit economics.

5. Validate Unit Economics Early

Don’t rely on ‘magical thinking’ that unit economics will work out at scale. Instead, ensure the unit economics are viable from the very beginning to avoid investing in unsustainable ventures.

6. Push Back with Better Options

If you have strong conviction that a leadership idea is flawed, your job is to say no. Understand the spirit of what they’re trying to achieve, get aligned on the user/business goal, and then propose better, data-backed alternative solutions.

7. Actively Seek Help and Input

As a leader, overcome the intuition to always have the answers. Actively ask for help from partners, peers, your team, and mentors to bring in diverse perspectives, leading to better solutions and preventing you from struggling alone.

8. Acknowledge Knowledge Gaps

Be transparent about your knowledge gaps and what you don’t know. Asking for help when you’re unsure is a core principle that leads to building better products and making more informed decisions.

9. Prioritize Problem-Solving, Not Solutions

When developing products, avoid being ‘solution first’ or ‘competitor afraid.’ Instead, step back to identify the real user problem to solve, rather than immediately implementing a specific solution.

10. Tailor Solutions to Specific Problems

Instead of applying one ‘blunt instrument’ solution to a broad problem, identify specific user problems for particular listings and target them with tailored, cost-effective solutions.

11. Phase Big Visions for Learning

While dreaming big is crucial for innovation, couple it with clear, phased execution plans. Define explicit learning goals for short periods (e.g., 3-6 months) and be clear about the phase you’re in to avoid open-ended, unscalable investments.

12. Set Short-Term Go/No-Go Milestones

To combat sunk cost fallacy, articulate clear success metrics and ‘go/no-go’ milestones for short, defined intervals (e.g., quarter-long). This allows for early course correction and prevents investing years into a failing initiative.

13. Strive for Lovable, Not Just Viable

In a crowded market, strive for a ‘minimal lovable product’ that deeply understands and meets a quality bar that resonates with users, rather than just a ‘minimal viable product’ that barely meets a quality bar.

14. Do Fewer Things, Do Them Well

Instead of building many features to a minimal viable standard, prioritize doing a few things (e.g., five features instead of fifteen) exceptionally well with a high degree of polish to create a more lovable and impactful user experience.

15. Strategically Add Delightful Touches

After meeting basic table stakes, strategically add ’extra pixie dust’ or delightful features in a few chosen areas. This goes beyond user expectations and creates lovability, but avoid over-investing everywhere due to time/scope constraints.

16. Adjust Quality to User Needs

The required ‘polish bar’ for your product depends on user expectations and existing alternatives. If replacing manual, terrible workflows, a lower bar might be acceptable, but for sophisticated users or competitive markets, a higher quality bar is essential.

17. Roadmap as a Strategic Narrative

A roadmap should be a story with clear themes, explaining why certain levers are being pulled and why these investments are important. Avoid merely presenting a spreadsheet of projects with impact/cost columns, as humans crave understanding the purpose behind the work.

18. Document Roadmaps in Prose

Write roadmaps as prose in a document to articulate granularity and themes, rather than relying solely on decks. Link out to actual working artifacts and systems (e.g., Jira) to ensure the roadmap remains current and reflects the team’s ongoing work.

19. Qualitatively Define OKR Success

Get crisp on the qualitative definition of success for your OKRs, asking ‘what would make you say, yes, we did a great job?’ This helps avoid fear-driven sandbagging and ensures OKRs guide toward truly impactful outcomes for users and the business, even if numbers are missed.

20. Encourage Ambitious OKRs

Foster a culture where teams are not punished for ambitious OKRs that turn red, as long as they learn from the misses. Green OKRs often indicate a lack of ambition, leading to suboptimal outcomes and a failure to innovate.

21. Chart a Path for Ambitious OKRs

When setting ambitious OKRs, ensure there’s a clear plan and path forward, breaking down the ‘moonshot’ into meaningful, quarter-over-quarter milestones. This demonstrates leadership and a strategic approach, even if the ultimate goal isn’t achieved immediately.

22. Implement Tech Spikes for Complexity

For complex products with intricate tech stacks and interactions, implement ’tech spikes’ early in the process. This helps understand technical difficulty, identify unknowns, and gather details to avoid going down unfeasible paths later.

23. Integrate In-Context Learning

For complex tools, integrate learning resources (e.g., university, AI assistance) directly into the product context. This allows users to learn and take action faster without switching tabs, overcoming activation hurdles.

24. Cultivate a Niche of Excellence

To accelerate your career, identify a specific area where you can become exceptionally good and known for it within your company. This builds reputation, earns more responsibility, and attracts opportunities.

25. Be Known for Getting Things Done

Consistently work hard and ‘get shit done.’ This is a lasting piece of advice for PM success, as ultimately, you are responsible for the outcome, and demonstrating strong execution builds trust and leads to more responsibility.

26. Lead with Empathy, Especially in Crisis

In leadership, especially during challenging times like layoffs, prioritize empathy for your team members. Consider their individual circumstances and provide thoughtful transition plans, recognizing your responsibility for those you hired.

27. Avoid Over-Hiring, Maintain Hygiene

Be very conscious about not over-hiring, especially on the tech side, and maintain strict hiring hygiene. Clearly define milestones and results that unlock further hiring, preventing the difficult situation of laying off a large portion of your team.

28. Rapid Cross-Functional Context Building

In your first 90 days as a leader, prioritize quickly building context by speaking to a wide range of people: direct team, leadership peers, and individuals across various functions and levels to understand the tech stack, day-to-day challenges, and overall dynamics.

29. Build Trust Before Driving Change

View trust as a ‘bank’ where you deposit social capital before making withdrawals. Prioritize gaining trust with your team and peers before pushing too hard or too quickly for change, especially in a new role.

30. Pre-Plan for Absences

If facing an extended absence (e.g., maternity leave), ensure you leave a clear strategic plan for your team. Identify what makes sense to continue, what needs more research, assign research tasks, and set up clear decision points for your return.

31. Flag Gaps to Leadership

Proactively identify and flag critical gaps (e.g., understaffing in engineering) to the entire leadership team and board. Create awareness around these issues and ask other executives to step in and be accountable to address them.

32. Deep Dive into Product Fundamentals

While balancing context-building and team dynamics, make time to deeply understand the product itself, especially its complexity. Hands-on usage helps build trust and provides a strong foundation for product decisions.

33. Utilize Design Sprints

Read ‘The Design Sprint’ by Google to learn a structured process for quickly solving big challenges and testing new ideas.

34. Study People Management

Read Julie Zhuo’s book on managing people to become a better manager and leader.

35. Interview for Ambiguity Navigation

When interviewing PM candidates, ask behavioral questions about how they navigate ambiguous situations. Look for candidates who can structure a path forward, seek inputs, and define milestones to assess progress.

36. Use AI for Creative Ideation

Use AI tools like Midjourney for creative ideation, even with children, to practice articulating specific ideas and bringing them to life, focusing on the creative process rather than just execution.

37. Share Career Challenges for Feedback

If struggling with career challenges, reach out to experts or mentors to share your problems. This feedback helps refine advice and resources for others facing similar issues.