Building your product strategy stack | Ravi Mehta (Tinder, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Outpace)

Jan 19, 2023 1h 21m 17 insights Episode Page ↗
Ravi Mehta, former CPO at Tinder and co-founder of Outpace, discusses product strategy, leadership, and the differences between big tech and startup roles. He shares frameworks like the product strategy stack and product management competencies.
Actionable Insights

1. Practice Selective Micromanagement

If you lack confidence in your team’s direction, tactically and temporarily micromanage to guide them towards the correct path, then pull back to restore autonomy. This prevents teams from going in the wrong direction and fosters understanding.

2. Define Strategy Before Goals

Establish your company and product strategy (the destination) before setting specific goals (the miles driven) to ensure efforts are structured and aligned with the ultimate purpose. This prevents teams from optimizing for goals that might undermine the true strategic direction.

3. Leverage Product Strategy Stack

Use the Product Strategy Stack (Company Mission, Company Strategy, Product Strategy, Product Roadmap, Product Goals) to define strategy top-down or debug issues bottom-up, ensuring all product decisions are aligned and value-driven. This framework clarifies how different elements of strategy connect and inform each other.

4. Visualize Strategy with Wireframes

Include conceptual wireframes in your strategy documents to create clearer alignment on the product’s visual implementation, as words alone can lead to varied interpretations. PMs should learn sketching or use tools like Balsamiq to develop this critical skill.

5. Focus on Startup Latency

For startups, prioritize “latency” (how quickly you can test an idea and learn) over “velocity” (quantity of work), enabling rapid iteration and validation of hypotheses. This allows for quick course correction and learning.

6. Embrace Conviction-Based Decisions

In startups, where user data for experiments is limited, cultivate a conviction-oriented approach to decision-making. Gather enough data to form informed conviction, then move forward rather than getting stuck in analysis paralysis.

7. Cultivate Early-Stage Networks

If you plan to start a company, actively build a network of early-stage builders, freelancers, investors, and angels now. This provides crucial connections and knowledge distinct from larger company networks.

8. Align Goals with Understanding Frontier

Assess your “frontier of understanding” (understanding, dependency, execution, strategic risk) before setting goals. If you don’t know how to move a metric, set a goal to increase understanding, rather than committing to an outcome you can’t reliably influence.

9. Proactively Seek & Reward Feedback

Proactively invite your manager and others to give you real-time feedback, emphasizing your desire to improve. Always respond with enthusiastic gratitude, even if the feedback is difficult, to encourage more feedback in the future.

10. Self-Assess PM Competencies

Use the 12 PM competencies (Product Execution, Customer Insight, Product Strategy, Leadership) to rate your own performance and ask your manager to do the same. This provides a structured way to identify growth areas and facilitate deep feedback conversations.

11. Give Exponential Feedback

Provide feedback that addresses underlying behaviors and root causes, rather than just symptoms, to enable compounding returns on personal growth. This helps individuals diagnose their own performance more effectively over time.

12. Talk to Users, Especially “Whales”

Regularly engage in one-on-one conversations with users, especially high-spending “whale” users, to understand their psychology, value perception, and specific use cases. This can reveal surprising insights and inform product development.

13. Offer Premium Tiers & Enhanced Features

Introduce premium subscription tiers (e.g., Tinder Platinum) and enhanced, higher-priced features (e.g., Super Like with a note) that break core product rules to cater to users with intense use cases and higher willingness to pay.

14. Resist Filters for Serendipity

Consider resisting extensive filtering options in products designed for discovery to foster serendipitous connections and prevent users from narrowing their options too much. This can lead to unique user experiences.

15. Frame Product Cost as Alternative

When pricing or understanding user spending, consider how users frame the cost relative to alternatives, not just other subscriptions. Tinder users framed app spending against the cost of traditional dating, revealing a higher perceived value.

16. Ask “Product You Love” Question

In interviews, ask candidates to describe a product they “love” to understand their values, product sense, and engagement. Follow up with questions about why they love it, what they’d build, and how they’d measure success.

17. Leverage AI for Amplification

View AI as a tool to amplify human capabilities and efficiency, rather than a replacement. Use AI to provide starting points or suggestions, allowing professionals to tailor and refine the output.