Inside Gong: How teams work with design partners, their pod structure, autonomy, trust, and more | Eilon Reshef (co-founder and CPO)

Jan 2, 2025 56m 42s 11 insights Episode Page ↗
Elan Reshev, co-founder and CPO/CTO at Gong, shares secrets to their success, including their "pod model" for product teams, working with 6-12 design partners per feature, fostering autonomy, making quick decisions, and building AI products.
Actionable Insights

1. Work with Many Design Partners

Have every product pod work hand-in-hand with 6 to 12 (sometimes up to two dozen) design partners on new products and features. This approach leads to a near 100% success rate for features being used by a significant number of people, as customers know what they need.

2. Empower Teams with Autonomy

Give teams significant autonomy and trust, allowing them to bring their full selves to their work and decide how to progress on their agenda. This approach leads to much better short-term and long-term results, higher motivation, and engagement.

3. Make Quick, Decisive Choices

Optimize for making decisions quickly, even large “one-way door” decisions, rather than overthinking or waiting for all information. Many decisions are 51/49, so making a choice and moving forward often doesn’t lead to radically different outcomes, saving time and mental energy.

4. Retain In-House AI Expertise

Don’t assume LLMs solve everything; retain core AI competencies and expertise within the company (e.g., data scientists, prompt engineers). This ensures understanding of what’s doable, proper measurement (e.g., using Elo system), and operational rigor to advance beyond V1.

5. Replicate Cross-Functional Pods

Organize product teams into “pods” consisting of a product manager, UX designer, fractional writer/analyst, engineering team leader, and 5-7 engineers, giving them autonomy to solve problems and work with customers. This structure helps in scaling and ensures reasonable direction.

6. Hire a Research Coordinator

Employ a dedicated research coordinator to manage the logistics of connecting product managers with design partners. This person handles outreach, identifies target customer profiles (ICP), and schedules meetings, freeing PMs from coordination stress.

7. Interpret Customer Feedback Wisely

Product managers should develop the core skill of discerning “must-have” requests from “nice-to-have” feedback, aiming to move customers from a 6 to an 8 or 9 in satisfaction. This ensures products are built for the broader customer base, not just one-off requests.

8. Trade Visibility for Velocity

As a leader, be willing to give up some visibility and control over every feature to empower teams with more autonomy. This trade-off can lead to higher velocity, increased morale, and ultimately better products.

9. Use Spiral Method to Learn

To quickly learn complex topics, use the “spiral method”: talk to one person, then ask them who else to speak with, and continue spiraling through conversations until you hear nothing new at your desired level of understanding. This helps confirm learning and efficiently gather diverse perspectives.

10. Start with a Narrow ICP

Begin by targeting a very narrow Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) with specific constraints (e.g., selling in the US, English, over video, specific software value). This creates a “small pond” where customers talk to each other, fostering viral effects and making it easier to achieve product-market fit and scale.

11. Apply Handel’s Razor

Adopt “Handel’s razor”: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” This mindset helps avoid misinterpreting others’ behavior as malicious, instead assuming they “didn’t know, didn’t care, weren’t trained,” which can improve interactions and understanding.