Thread by @shreyas

A common problem & question in fast-growing startups is how a visionary product-focused founder can scale as the product, business & the org get larger & more complex.

A thread on the types of product leaders to hire, the contracts to create, the mistakes to avoid:

Quick recap on the 3 types product leaders:
The Operator
The Craftsperson
The Visionary
(think of them as hats, if you wish)

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1375491623308550144

First, the really obvious point:
As a founder/CEO who is a product Visionary, you will need Craftspeople & Operators around you.

But:
Don’t solely hire Operators in product leadership roles. Remember, Operators tend not to be the best at original product insights & strategy. With just Operators on the product team, it is near-impossible to translate your great vision into a compelling product experience.

And:
As you scale, make sure you also don’t just have Craftspeople. You will need a few Operators to ensure that your org and its processes scale in pace with your product & business growth.

Beyond a certain scale, it is often reasonable for a Visionary founder or a Craftsperson VP Product to hand the reins of the entire product over to an Operator. But who you hire in that Operator role is vital & this decision can make or break your fast-growing product & business.

Specifically, look for an Operator who is aware of his/her own limitations on original insights on product & strategy.

Note that the majority of senior Operator product leaders do not have this self-awareness (in my experience, less than 1 in 3 do).

During the hiring process & immediately after the Operator joins, clarify your contract with the Operator.

Specifically:
1) Who owns product strategy
2) The Operator’s responsibilities
3) How you’ll evaluate the Operator

Let's look at each of these in more detail.

1) In almost all cases, you should still own the product strategy and the highest level product priorities. The Operator can be a co-owner, but is not the primary owner. This is a common root cause of friction between product-focused founders and their newly-hired Operator CPO.

Some Operators want to “own strategy” so that they can grow & improve in this area. This is an incredibly naïve view for a senior exec to have. The company & its business should never be viewed as a guinea pig for senior execs’ personal goals & ambitions. It’s just too important.

2) The Operator’s key responsibilities are to:

- attract & retain top-notch product talent (Operators tend to be great at this)

- ensure that product execution is near-optimal (easy to say, very very hard to do)

- ensure strong cohesion between the product & other functions

3) The key criteria by which you’ll evaluate the Operator:

-product throughput

-customer adoption

-business impact

-tangible progress towards long-term vision & strategy

-new non-obvious insights on customers & the industry

-team satisfaction

-cross-functional cohesion

(Most Operators will steer you towards weighing hitting quarterly & annual targets much more heavily in how they are evaluated. While this may be fine for products in the Extract stage, make sure to not factor short-term results too heavily for products in Explore & Expand stage)

Reference for Explore / Expand / Extract stages:

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1399042781100711945

Lastly, as a Visionary product founder / CEO, you owe the Operator (and the company) Clarity, Patience, and Space to set them up for success.

Let's explore these a bit before ending this thread.

Clarity: You must work hard to translate that beautiful vision in your head into something that’s more tangible for almost everyone else in your company. It might be frustrating for you, but remember that no one can read your mind & “just make it happen”.

How to do this?
Craftspersons are often the link between you as a Visionary & everyone else in the company. Work with the Craftspersons on your PM/Design/Eng team to translate the visionary ideas in your head to concrete documents & artifacts.
(Good Operators can facilitate this)

Examples of such artifacts:

- a short product vision

- a rigorous & concise product strategy document

- a UX prototype of your desired customer experience N years from now

- stack ranked company-level priorities over the next year or 2 (and/or a roadmap)

- product principles

Once you’ve hired a great Operator, creating this clarity & ensuring a superb company culture are probably your most important jobs as a Visionary founder/CEO. Note that both of these jobs require intense ongoing work. You can’t just ship a document and call it done.

Patience: As a Visionary, you tend to be optimistically impatient. Your impatience has great value, but remember to be reasonable. You might genuinely think that your vision should be realizable in 18 months, when in fact it will realistically take 4-5 years. Execution is tough.

Space: After you’ve done all of the above, give the Operator sufficient space to do his/her thing. Remember that while you still own the macro “why” & “what”, the Operator excels at the “how”. So let the Operator completely own the macro “how” and also the micro “why” & “what”.

The Operator will create new processes that you’ve never heard of or don’t initially make sense to you. S/he might ask to create new roles to better support or enable people in existing roles. If you aren’t sure of something, debate it. But once it’s decided, commit wholly.

And finally, as a founder/CEO of a fast-growing startup (and also an employee), make sure you understand the playbook of the Incompetent Leader (IL) and avoid hiring ILs at your startup (this applies to almost any senior exec role, not just product roles):

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997380335128576

Back to the top of this thread:

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1408883558182113280

Wow, it's fun to see that this thread is being consumed by so many folks. As far as my threads go, I was expecting this to be a very low TAM thread (while hopefully being very high value for the few folks who do find it relevant).