Peter Yang - Why creators should think like product founders!

Like, product market fit isn't permanent. Like, even for, maybe this is controversial, but even for an app like Facebook that, you know, has scaled to billions of people, it's very possible a few years down the line they don't have product market fit anymore, right? As these new incumbents, as new people appear. So you just have to constantly stay vigilant. You can't always rest on your laurels. You have to constantly improve your product based on people's behavior and people's needs.

Okay. Hey, everybody. Appreciate you all for tuning in to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. I'm your host, Sharath. Today we have Peter Yang, my good friend from Twitter, who is a creator, founder, and a man of many things. Peter, welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today?

I'm great. Yeah, it's funny. I think I made more friends on Twitter this year than in real life. So I know that says something, but yeah, it's great to be here.

Yeah, we all do. We all do. Twitter is this centerpiece for everybody's network. So good to hear from that. Yeah. So before I get into the podcast, I do have some questions prepared for you. I want to cover some topics, but I want to give you guys a brief intro of Peter for folks who don't know him. Peter Dietz is a product expert who worked at Reddit briefly as a product lead. Of course, for quite some time, he wrote a book called Principles of Product Management, which has 4.5 stars on Amazon with over like 100+ reviews. He also runs a course called Launch Your Product Management Career on maven.com. Do definitely check that out. Both help you break into tech and build a career as a product person, you know, so definitely do check it out. He also writes a newsletter on Substack called Creator Economy, which blends product, community, and creators. And it has more than what, 35K subscribers? That's amazing. Yeah. One of my favorite articles, I wanna like quote, it talks about community-led product development, which we can talk later in the podcast. And he also co-founded this DAO called Odyssey, which teaches about Web3, which we can cover about that too. You guys won Golden Kitty Award last year in the educational category. So Congrats on that. And last thing, he's pretty famous for shitposting as well on Twitter, which I also want to dive a little deeper into why he does that. But yeah, thanks for joining, Peter. I'm excited to talk to you about all things product, all things Twitter and community.

Yeah, great to be here.

Right off the bat, I want to cover, or let's open the doors. with your, your, one of the articles you wrote about community-led product development wins. Talk about, talk about like why you think— I have an opinion on product and community. I have both backgrounds and I do think they blend with each other. I want to understand your thought process. Why do you think it should, it should be a path or a segue for founders who are building startups in 2023 and beyond?

Yeah, totally. Well, I think, first of all, you know, if you're building a product for customers, you should probably talk to the customers you're building products for, right? So, you know, back then when I was at Twitch, I was talking to the live streamers all the time. I really enjoy kind of working with them to figure out what products to build. Yeah. But then when I came to Reddit, I realized the power of community. And the power of community is not only can you talk to customers, but the customers can talk to each other, right? So if you can bring a bunch of customers, beta testers into a community and get them to like talk to each other and talk to you and your team about the product, it just creates a bunch of like feedback loops that is like really important in terms of actually building a product that people actually want. Absolutely. And it feels like, it feels like you're not like building the product on your own or with your team and like trying to guess And what the customer wants, like the customer's literally right there to talk to you every day. And of course you can't just like, you know, do everything that they want, but it's like a very important channel in addition to like, you know, analytics and some of the other channels that you should consider as a PM.

Yeah. And I think where should people start? Like where should founders start bringing community into the picture in your opinion?

Um, I think you can start like even before you have a product, you know, like I think a really good example is, um, a recent example is Ankur, who, who, um, he started Teachable and now he's working on a personal finance startup. Right.

Yeah, for sure.

And he's just like tweeting his journey along the way and like, uh, sharing stuff and people naturally follow him and like reply to his posts. And, you know, you're not, you haven't officially set up a Discord server, but you're already starting to build community. That way.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Shout out to Ankur. He's a great guy, a phenomenal guy. And the way he's building Ocho, his new, I think, health 401 startup for solopreneurs, I think it's phenomenal. I still feel— I think there is a blend of community and product, and both of the worlds come together when you build things in public. Right. Of course, obviously, you know, when you start sharing your features, when you start, you know, talking about like what you want to build or the vision and the mission, you know, it naturally attracts a lot of audience. So yeah, of course, absolutely. You know, that's a great example, by the way, I think. And being a founder is really hard. It's kind of like a lonely journey and you kind of have to like do everything, right? Like, how do you suggest founders to balance when it comes to building a product and building a community on kind of like a, you know, in a parallel lens? Like, you have to do it both. If you double down on one, you'll lose the other kind of like lane. So Any suggestions, or in your experience, uh, what, what do you think, uh, how do you think founders should balance?

Yeah, so, you know, first of all, I'll caveat that I'm not like a super experienced founder or anything, but, um, I mean, I think, um, when you're getting started with a company or product, you're trying to find product-market fit, right? So like, and like, the faster the feedback loops can be The faster you can find product-market fit. So I don't see it as 2 separate tracks. I see it as, uh, you know, you, you build something or like you even talk about building something and then you get the feedback from the community and other channels and then you adjust and then you keep building it until you actually find product-market fit. Um, now if you're an engineer, you probably need to spend like, you know, 6 hours or something coding. You can't just like talk to communities every, every hour. But if you're someone who is more customer-facing, then yeah, you should be talking to them all the time, just sharing your ideas openly. I mean, what do you have to lose? You know, like, you're just a startup, right? Yeah, the, the challenge of most startups is to get people to even care, to even give a shit, right? So the more you can talk about it, I think the better you'll be. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah, of course, absolutely. I think you, you kind of have to be very vocal, right? Like, you know, and keep them in the loop. I think one of the things you said, which I truly believe as well, is building a community. One of the advantages of building community early on building a product is you kind of have a rapport with them. You identify these early adopters who can give you tight— who can give you like tight feedback loops. And they're the ones who actually vouch for you, and they're the ones who actually kind of become marketers for you. So it's absolutely necessary to, you know, keep them involved right from the beginning. Let's switch gears and purely talk about product. And I have, I don't know, for folks who know, I've, I come actually from product background. I've been product manager for almost like, I don't know, like close to 5+ years working at corporate jobs. So I love, you know, writing, I mean, a traditional way of like product building, like user stories and like doing all sorts of like product prioritization, you and all that shit, like in Agile and whatnot. But I think in startups, it's very— it's basically all over the place. Like, you basically have an intuition to build product. You don't have to necessarily follow process. So I want to hear your take. Like, how do you differentiate, like, being all over the place as a founder and using intuition versus having a process following like certain methodology, like take Agile as an example. And what do you, what do you, how do you see these things, these 2 worlds collide with each other, or what are the pros and cons you think that users can take away from?

Yeah, so I think at big companies, people tend to overfixate on the process. But the process is really kind of like a means to an end. The process is— any kind of process you make should be designed to, you know, help the customer or make an impact on your company, right? And when you're at a startup, you probably have like 10 people or something, so you don't really need a lot of the big company processes. And it's generally a failure scenario if you hire someone from a big company and try to bring all the processes over. Um, but that being said, I, I think there are some like company processes that I think are still very useful for startups. Uh, one that I really value is, um, you know, Amazon's working backwards process. I think, um, Amazon is like one of the few big companies that had a lot of success in starting new initiatives. Like AWS was started from like a retail business. Right. And, uh, yeah, I really like their working backwards questions. So like the questions are Uh, 1, who is the customer, right? 2, what is the problem? Uh, 3 is what's the most important customer benefit? 4 is how do we know that this problem exists? And, and 5 is like, um, what does the product look like? Like if you're drawing on napkin, what does the product look like? And it probably just takes like 30 minutes, an hour to like, uh,

right,

answer these questions. But like, it's really worth the effort even for founders and startups to really kind of think about this because like, you know, you can easily build something that nobody wants, uh, or, or like solve the wrong problem that doesn't have a market. Yeah.

Right. And how often do you think founders should ask these questions? Uh, early on versus like, is there a, is there a set time? Uh, I really like the process. It's not too fixated. It's not too formalized in a way, right? It's just answering 5 simple questions, become self-aware from those questions, keep in touch with the community, and kind of like build from there. So just want to just curiously want to know, in your opinion, is there like a quarterly kind of like review with these 5 questions, or before they hit product-market fit? What's like the cadence of—

So definitely do it before you start like programming or coding something. Like at least take an initial stab at it. But I think for startups, like there isn't like a quarterly or annual roadmap planning. Like at least when you're in the early stages, you know, the minute you learn some new information that changes your answer, you should probably start thinking about adjusting your answers, right? And your plan. Mm-hmm. So yeah, once you get large enough, like maybe just like a quarterly plan or like an annual plan. But in the early days, pre-product market fit, I think it's just about really being honest with yourselves, whether you actually have the answers to these questions or not. Like in the beginning, you probably just have a hypothesis. And then you don't really have an answer until like people actually pay for your product or something, some other signal of product market fit appears.

Right. I love that. And what's your— there are like tons of product-market fit frameworks out there. I think one of the famous ones are from Superhuman. They kind of like, kind of invented, in my opinion, about like this methodology of asking people, would you even live like, you know, without using the product? Or, you know, similar questions, would you refer to others and whatnot, right? Yeah. What's your favorite PMF framework?

That's a good question. Yeah. So I think in the beginning, we don't have enough, we don't have enough customers or data. I think the Superhuman survey works well. But I think ultimately, you know, just as like a big company PM, I want to look for retention curves that go back up. Like if you look at 6 months retention for a product, It doesn't just keep going down, down, down, or like slowly going to zero. Like it will actually, we call it the smile curve. So it's a curve that will actually pop back up like a smile, like a few months down the line.

Right.

Then you kind of know that you found product market fit. And you know, there are like nuances. So like, it's possible that you might find product market fit for like 1% of people who try your product. And yeah, you have product market fit, but that isn't enough to build a valuable business out of it. So there's like a lot of nuances and stuff behind it. It's not like, oh, if I hit 20%, then I have product market fit. You got to think about it. Yeah.

Right.

The other thing that I've observed is that like product market fit isn't permanent. Like even for Maybe it's controversial, but even for an app like Facebook that, you know, has scaled to billions of people, it's very possible a few years down the line they don't have product-market fit anymore, right? As these new incumbents, as new people appear. So you just have to constantly stay vigilant. You can't always rest on your laurels. You have to constantly improve the product based on people's behavior and people's needs.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, I think I kind of do agree on that. It is necessary in the stage of, hey, we have achieved product market fit. We saw the signs. We— people are coming back. People are actually like also spreading the word on themselves. People are referring more people, such, you know, signs. But yeah, to your point, it's kind of, you know, it's all uncertain. At any point, anything can happen, right? I feel founders should not take it too hard. at the same time take it too loose. Like, I think there should be some self-awareness aspect of it. Like, if people are coming back, let's serve them and take it one step at a time. It's not like take it for granted. PMF is not something you take it for granted, like you said. And it's kind of like a mirage in a way, you know, you go there, it feels like it exists, and you go, you know, a little bit ahead, it won't. So, um, Yeah. Let's talk about, you've also touched upon product retention and let's talk about like any particular tips you want to give for founders in like these stages of acquisition, adoption, acquisition, and retention. Like any quick tips you want to like throw away?

Um, so my tip would be to start with retention. You don't want to grow a leaky bucket. And retention also has nuances. There's like day 1 retention versus like day 30 retention versus like 6 months retention, right? And depending on what retention is bad, you have to optimize for different things. So if day 1 retention is bad, then people are not getting to the magic moment of your product. So you probably need to improve the onboarding. Mm-hmm. Or even see if there's a magic moment in the first place. If day 1 is good, but like day 30 is bad, then probably something's wrong with like, they get the magic moment, but there's no like loop to get them to experience it again, again, or like to see some sort of progression in your product.

Or stickiness, right? Yeah.

Yeah, stickiness. Exactly. So yeah, start retention. And then once you have retention, then you can focus on like, you know, activation and acquisition and kind of like go from bottom to top. Um, and a lot of, um, a lot of companies I'm seeing, uh, like on the consumer side, uh, they, they are very careful about like onboarding people. Like they onboard people slowly through invites. And part of that is not to burn people on a product that isn't quite there yet. But I think going back to the community aspect, if you do this onboarding, slow onboarding thing, you can build a really good community of users, and the community itself can also become the moat for your product.

Absolutely.

So a good example is this app called Farcaster. It's kind of like a Twitter-style product on the crypto side, and the founder is very careful, like, onboarding users. And the reason I still use it is because it's just like a really good community around the product. It's not necessarily the code itself, it's It's more like the people on the app are like very high quality and like keeps me coming back.

Yeah. I love that. It's very, yeah, actually I think, you know, it's very clever to say, you know, start with the retention, see how people are like coming back, sticking, you know, sticking with your product and then do all these growth hacks about activation, adoption, like acquisition and whatnot. It's a clever way of taking things up. So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about Odyssey, your DAO you've created, I think 2021. You won Golden Kitty Award. What are some— I think you recently also tweeted about downsizing the community itself. How's the journey going on, number one? Number two, what are some things you've learned in the process? as building this, you know, uh, Web3 Wikipedia, in my opinion, in a way?

Yeah, so, um, so I, I think, uh, what I learned is that, um, building community is very hard. That's kind of what I learned. Um, but, um, uh, just to break it down, yeah, we had some, uh, early success with the Product Hunt stuff and, you know, raising a bunch of funding. And what I learned is that, okay, number one thing I learned is that with communities, you kind of need to start small and be careful about who you onboard. Like a free-for-all community where anyone can join and contribute, unless there's like a really strong mission or, you know, theme behind the community, like norms, it's very hard to scale properly. Like, especially in the Web3 space where there's like a lot of people like scamming people and stuff like that, it's very easy to just have the community devolve. So that's one thing I learned. Um, another thing I learned is, um, you know, as a creator, the thing about community is extremely powerful, right? If you can do it right. And like, there's really good examples out there, like Lenny's community and these other communities that are like thriving. But if you want to make community your thing, it's like an ongoing commitment. Right. And you can't— it's different from like selling a course or something or like a digital product where you can just like put it online and it will just sell copies. I mean, you have to promote it, but it will largely sell by itself. But community, you have to spend, you know, time every day to keep the conversations alive, to host weekly events so people there have value, and, you know, to potentially hire a bunch of moderators to keep the conversation on track. So, um, absolutely, you know, like community is like a hot term, right? It's like a buzzword, right?

Everybody wants—

but

yeah, yeah, everybody wants to be—

but like, uh, but there's plenty of communities that have just like died out and like devolved. So,

right,

uh, before you start one, uh, make sure you actually have time to make that commitment. Yeah.

And when do you think, uh, a founder or a creator, in your opinion, have reached community market fit? Like just product market fit. Now it's an engine. I can take a step back a little bit. I'll be still involved, but I'll take a step back. I have advocates who can take the engine forward, move the engine forward. Is there a sign for, just like how PMF have certain signs, is there a sign for community I don't want to call community market fit, but I just want to, for the sake of the conversation, just want to like put these 2 pieces together. I mean, just to compare with each other, right? For listeners, do you think there is a stage or a phase founders can get a sigh and say, oh yeah, you know what, we've reached there and it's on autopilot?

I think no matter what stage a community is in, you have to have a few individuals who really care to drive it. Like, I actually don't believe in this whole— I don't really believe in this whole, like, decentralized autonomous thing. Like, at any stage of the community, from, like, a 10-person community to, like, a community on Reddit that has, like, millions of people, there are a few key individuals that are driving the community, that are keeping the community safe. Yeah. So as a founder, you can potentially— like, if someone else in the community wants to step up to drive the community, you can let them do that. But I think there's always going to be a few people who really matter in a community or keeping it alive. Yeah. At least that's what I've seen.

What do you— yeah, absolutely. I do agree. I think take Product Hunt as an example, right? Ryan Hoover still is kind of attached to Product Hunt in one way or the other way. He interacts with the community, he comments, you know, he attends events, kind of like, you know, he's still is present even though he's not like fully attached to the company, but he's attached to the community. It's absolutely true. I do agree. What are some things that you think— again, like, let's literally like, you know, take a step back. You said, and I do agree as well, is everything— everyone is talking about community. Everyone wants to build a community. You know, if you are in startups, if you're doing some creator work or anything, YouTube, TikTok, whatever it is, you should have a community. That's like the 101 these days. But as to your point as well, not many stick to the end, or not many have long-term goals or fruits. What are some quite common mistakes like you observed in your experience working at Reddit or Twitch? Even on Twitter, like, you know, or observing like these communities rise and fall? What— why do they rise and why do they fall?

Um, I think, uh, um, I think my number one tip for building community right now is you kind of need to, in my opinion, feel the need, the pull of your audience, that they want a community before you start doing it. Like, yeah, it's super easy to set up like a Discord server or like some sort of Circle community. But I actually think you can build community just directly on social without actually officially creating a community, right? Like going back to Anchor.

Okay.

I mean, he doesn't have a community or maybe he does, but like for all intents and purposes, the people who interact with these like building public posts are part of his community on Twitter. And maybe at some point he gets enough replies and interactions that he needs to set up like an official community. But like, my advice would be like, just start by engaging your followers on social media or whatever channel you have. And then if you feel the pull that they actually want to be part of a community, then you can set up an official community and like go down that path if you want to. Yeah.

It feels like going back to building product, it feels like what you said is slightly relevant to Don't build the whole thing. Just launch a landing page and test the waters and see how many people are craving for the actual MVP or a product, like in a similar way, right? Like don't build, don't bring everybody or create a Slack channel or like whatever, Discourse, whatever, Discord, whatever it is.

Yeah.

Before doing that, like start testing the waters. That's also like a clever way. But do you think, uh, where do you think the line exists, like, between audience building and community building?

Um, yeah, that's a good point. So, like, um, uh, you know, it's probably like, you know, there's like the 1,000 true fans, right? So, like, you know, if, if you have like 100,000 followers, probably only 1,000 people are like your true fans who really care. And, um, I guess the question is Are those true fans getting enough value from you by just engaging with you on social media? Because if they're not, and if you see a way to build a closer relationship with them and potentially like also make a living from your true fans, then you should think about maybe doing a community, starting a paid newsletter, or some other way to kind of like have them opt in to a closer relationship. Yeah, I love that.

I love the aspect of bringing the core members, like call it true fans, call it your believers, adopters, like whoever it is you want to call. I think you aim to build that group and scale that group, not like the 100,000 audience per se. Like in your 100,000 audience, there is 1,000 people community, you know, in a way, because they root for you. And also, like, they kind of talk to each other as well in some way, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah, and you recently are teaching a course on maven.com. Congrats on that. And let's talk about that a little bit. And one of the things you also are touching on is creator economy, you know, that's a that's a different world. How do you think people should apply— creators should apply product thinking when they're in the process of creating content, doing these videos, irrespective of the format? How do you think they should apply that product-level thinking in it? Like, be it iteration, be it the process you mentioned before as well.

Yeah, so I'll tell you how I got started. I started my creator journey like 3 years ago. It was very difficult for me to become a PM. Like I failed for a couple of years and finally became a PM. So I started by writing a book on like product management, that book that you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. And it took me like, it took me like almost a year to write the book. And then I put it out there. And thankfully it's like a pro— it's like a topic that people, you know, really care about, like product management. So it still sold like a few thousand copies. But like, you know, that's not the right way to do— that's not the right way to start the creator journey, right? Like, it's not— if you're starting a company or building a product, generally speaking, you don't want to work on it for like a year before talking to customers at all about it and see if they actually want your stuff or not. So I think creators are basically like products themselves in some way. And I think if you want go down that path, start by kind of like really understanding your customers' needs, understanding who your customers are, what problems do they have. And also pick a niche that you personally feel curious about, because if you don't feel curious about it, you're not going to be able to keep going on that

niche.

But yeah, like start small and just start like publishing little pieces of content here and there and like try to understand if people actually care about this stuff. You can look at your analytics. And then once you see some signal, again, see some signal of like, I don't know, creator market fit or product market fit or whatever you want to call it, then you can start doing larger pieces of stuff. Like I see a lot of creators who are building courses when they don't have an audience, they haven't validated what the need is. And their course is like this 8-hour huge course. that they spent like a few months building. So it's like very risky, right? If you're gonna like do such a huge product without actually validating the need.

Yeah. I love that. And it's very interesting what you said about, in a way, creators are themselves products in iteration, right? They're never-ending product themselves. They create a video, for example, Take Jack Butcher, right? He created his build once, sell twice. He didn't end up like, that's it, I'm going to like, you know, just like product. Like he comes up with a new course or new resource or something that's kind of like an iteration on top of his previous version. So in a way, you know, what you said is absolutely true. And you also said keep them in the loop. I like that a lot as well because ultimately it's for them, right? Even though you're doing this for yourself, for supporting yourself financially and all that, but ultimately they are the ones who consume, who kind of amplify your work. Again, you talked about the signs of creator market fit. What are the signs you observed after writing that book and given you're on Substack doing a lot of Odyssey and all that, it's more of like it's in the process, it falls under the creator economy bucket. Most of the things you do, even your Twitter, right? What's the sign? What's the sign if people don't have— is there a sign like I'm getting more followers is a sign about sales? What's your take on that?

I think for most creators, at least for knowledge creators like myself, it's probably about if they're willing to pay for something, right? Like with the Maven course, I put it out there for people to buy before I even made the course. And if not enough people bought the course, I probably would not make it. So it's probably— so before you do that, obviously you need to have some sort of credibility and like some audience so people can actually discover it. But the next step would be to like just put it out there, see if people are willing to buy it. And then if they are, then you actually make the product. I think that's how I would do it. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's kind of like litmus tests. You say that you have legitimacy, you have credibility, you say that you want to do something. If you see this the sign is like, okay, they're buying it without even experiencing the actual content. That's a sign. Yeah, I think I'll take on that. Okay, let's talk about completely like, you know, a different thing which you are really good at. And I can't, I can't, I'm an absolute amateur, or I can treat myself as nowhere near to you. Let's talk about like shitposting on Twitter. First thing, what is shitposting and when did you identify it? Or what is the power behind it?

Yeah, shitposting has its pros and cons. Shitposting comes from, my shitposting comes from like, you know, just like working on these big companies and like all kinds of stuff. There's like a bunch of inefficiencies that you observe, right? And it's kind of like an outlet for me to kind of like poke some fun at some of these inefficiencies without being too direct about it. So that's kind of what I do. For example, the one about scheduling Zoom meetings and canceling it and then giving people a dopamine hit. I think— Right. I think a lot of people just like feel the same way. They don't say it, but they feel the same way.

Right.

So that's great. And yeah, for some reason, People really like this shitposting. And the good thing about it is it's gonna be a ton of like, you know, followers. Some of these tweets have been seen by like 8 million people or something, something crazy like that.

Wow.

So it gets a ton of followers. The bad news is that the people who follow you for shitposting are not necessarily the right people who are gonna actually care about your newsletter or like buy your info, info products, right? Like if I'm following you for, right, because you're funny, uh, I probably won't pay for your PM course. Yeah. So unless the building is free. Yeah.

Right. Maybe you'll do, right? I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think, you know, you're, you're gathering wrong audience or wrong niche. Right. And

yeah.

And so the other thing I see, the con I see, yeah, there are some pros, like it's funny, you're on top of your wit. It's kind of like, you know, it's engaging in a way, right? Like, you get like more attention, eyeballs. That's, those are all, I think, the pros of shitposting. I think the only single complaint I have is Don't you think it damages your reputation? Like, you're credible, you're building, you have some serious set of intentions about what you do. Not just you, I'm just talking about in general. Like, take Elon Musk, for example. He has this insane mission of navigating people from Earth to Mars, like starting a civilization there. You know, his own— that's a, that's an all too different level.

Yeah.

But due to his shitposting or whatever the things like he posts, like memes and all, do you think it damages the reputation? A. Number 2 is, and in a way, kind of like people lose respect, right? Like in a way. Uh, how, how do you, how do you see that?

Yeah, I think, um, depends on the type of person, right? So like, I, I think, um, some people really find the shitposting really, uh, funny and, and really enjoy it. Uh, well, I mean, the fact that a lot of people like it means that people do enjoy it. But yeah, like, in terms of a traditional career, like, some people really don't like that kind of stuff. In fact, you know, probably just like being a creator in general is not the best for a traditional career, you know? Um, so. Mm-hmm. There's definitely a drawback to that. Yeah. So you gotta, you gotta like, you gotta think carefully about that because yeah, people in the companies you work for or like, you know, people who you might want to get respect from, they might enjoy your shitposting or they might think it's like a total waste of time.

Yeah. And where is, where is like the line again? It's like, it's a healthy, you know, criticism, right? I take it, I kind of compare shitposting to stand-up comedy, you know, in a way. There is kind of like a limit there too, right? You make something funny, you deliver it in a way that, wow, you know, I never thought about this in this way. Like, take the Zoom meetings that Dopamine Hit mentioned, and, or you're one of the famous posts about Forbes 30 for 30, like, you know, you said these are, these are 5 things, you know, I mean, I actually have like a screenshot of it. Just had a call with someone on Forbes 30 Under 30 list, came away really impressed. And he suggested like, these are the things you need to do, right? Like 4:30 AM cold showers and dads own a tech company. That's like a punchy way of like delivering something that's so obvious. But what's the line? You know, question is like, what's the line in your opinion?

What's the line? I mean, I think when I do shitposting, I try to see it as like, there's shitposting that is like more lewd and more inappropriate, and I try to stay away from that stuff. Obviously, like shitposting about any other companies that I work for, I don't do any of that. So it's hard for me to say what the line is. But honestly, there's not a ton of thought that goes into it and probably should put more thought into it. But I will say, like, you know, again, going back to my point about some people will like it, some people will don't. Even at the companies I work for, like, I like to crack jokes in Slack and like, you know, some people really find it really funny and the highlight of their day. And then some people was like, what the hell is Peter doing? Like, this is not fun. It's not funny at all. Right. So, um, yeah, it depends on, depends on, um, who your audience is and like who you care about. Like, um, if that makes sense. Yeah.

How do you, how do you process that? I'm just, okay, let's talk about like your, uh, I just, I'm just curious about this because I, I don't have one process or I never thought of like you know, shitposting.

Yeah.

Just like writing, I assume that there is some set of ideas you have. You kind of like convert them from a raw idea to what it is, which is take Forbes 30 for 30 posts, right? Like, how do you process like, you know, a shitpost? You know, is there an inception? Is it inspired from someone? Where do you see there is a funny angle to it?

Hmm. I get a lot of inspiration from like, obviously Twitter and Reddit, a lot of shitposting on Reddit, right? And some of the other shitposters that I follow on social media. I mean, I think the best shitposting has a hint of truth to it. Right? So people laugh at it, but like, people also realize that there's like a hint of truth that like, you know, the Zoom thing, that there's clearly a hint of truth to that.

Right, yeah.

Or some of the other stuff that I do, you know, people feel a certain sense of belonging to it, for better or for worse. So yeah, so I think the best shitposting and memes actually communicate something. It's not just like for humor. It communicates something in a humorous way. It's still trying to make a point about something.

Yeah. Yeah, you're true. Yeah, I do agree on that. I think that, you

know, you can argue like, is like something about Zoom like worse or better than some of the people on Twitter that share like Excel shortcut tips or something? Like which one is the real shitpost? Like, right. You can make the argument there. Yeah.

All right, so enough about shitposting. I want to like cover about some more questions on product side. So you've worked at, well, like, you know, different companies like Reddit, Twitch, so on and so forth. What are some— these are all big corporations like you mentioned, right? What are some lessons that early-stage founders can adopt from these big corporations except like the hierarchy. Those are all, I think, you know, it's not necessary. There's like so much hierarchy once you go join a bigger company as a PM.

Yeah. Yeah.

But at the same time, certain— they do certain things and that work really well, and that can be adopted by, you know, people who are just getting started. So what are some things you want to, like, uh, in your experience, you observed these are the things, these are 5 lessons or like 3 lessons or 3 things early-stage founders should take, and they should at the same time— these are a few things early-stage founders should avoid.

I think, uh, let's go through some of the companies I worked at. So like, um, again, let's start with Amazon. I think, um, Amazon's very good at the working backwards process, is very useful for founders of any stage. I think Amazon's writing culture is very important. Like at an early stage company, it's probably like a lot more chaotic than a big company. And, you know, new people join and like don't know what the hell's going on. So just like documenting stuff and writing stuff down, I think is like really important. At Facebook, what I learned is that execution really matters. Facebook, when I was there, was like really world-class at executing. And the leadership there is willing to pivot and like make big changes to kind of like capture market opportunity, right? And like, of course, as early-stage founders, you should be open to that too. And then, I mean, I read it, I think Uh, what I learned is, you know, just like the power of communities. Um, like, um, and like one thing I learned about communities is that even, even your team is like a community, right? Like, you know, and you should— if you're like the founder, you should be thoughtful about how you solicit people's feedback. And, um, just like not surrounding yourself with people who only say yes to what you want. You know, you should just surround yourself with people who are willing to challenge you, who are willing to say the hard things so that you can improve as well. I think if you just surround yourself with people who just like say yes to whatever you want, then you are basically just like doing all the thinking yourself as opposed to leveraging your team. And that's not— that's usually going down the wrong path.

And any things that people should avoid? like early-stage founders that avoid that these big corporations, they do?

Avoid is obviously be very careful who you hire, right? Because like when you have like 10 people, the 11th person really matters. Hire people who care more about the mission of your company than titles or whatever they want for their own career. Second thing is Second thing I think is, it's very important to focus and prioritize. Usually when it comes to strategy, even these big companies have like a lot of resources. Like if you're focusing on more than 3 things, it's probably, it's usually not a good thing. And this matters even more at early stage companies. Like you really have to probably just focus on doing one thing very, very well. You know? So that's, of course you have to find what that thing is. So like community, product development and everything else that you do. But once you find that thing, like try not to get distracted too much. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, focus, focus on one thing and only one thing. So last question before I jump into a segment I call Rapid Fire 5, I do have like 5 questions, you know, some Some interesting takes, whatever comes to your mind, just shoot it out. But last thing, how do, how do you think product-minded founders should handle rejection? So the reason I'm asking this question is a lot of these times they assume that this feature works or it benefits their users and they have this gut feeling. And at the same time, they also like check in with a few folks like, hey, have you, do you think there's value in this feature, or do you want to use it or pay for it? Some say yes, and with that validation, they build these things and they fail. So how do you suggest them to go from there? Like, they kind of like sometimes they kind of lost their faith in community and like, and they just like feel hopeless, right? How do you— is there a process for you, or do you Have you ever encountered in working these companies about things you've built that didn't work and what did you do from there?

Yeah, in some cases, like a product, as I mentioned before, can work very well, but it works very well for only like a small segment of users. So it doesn't actually make an impact on the overall company, you know? And so in those cases, it's a lot harder to make a decision than if the project completely fails and like doesn't have any product-market fit at all, you know. So I think, um, I think it's about like being honest with yourself. Like, uh, you're like at a company, you want to grow the company, right? You want to make the company succeed and, uh, not give in to the sunk cost fallacy. Uh, just because you spend like, you know, 6 months building this thing doesn't mean that You should keep it around and just being really honest about what do you think actually will make an impact on the company moving forward? Is it like keep iterating on this product or trying something new? And also just do a retro about what went wrong and like what are some assumptions that you had that were proven false? Hmm. Actually, it's good to do this retro before you even build a product. So this is like a pre-retro where you just meet with the team, maybe with some customers, you talk about all the different ways that the product can go wrong and the assumptions that are not validated. And a lot of times you can kind of realize the issue before you even go down this path. But if you're already down this path, then it's time to just have an honest assessment with your team.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you're already there. Just like accept. Acceptance is, I think, the most incredible superpower I feel like for anybody, like for a founder, product person. Awesome. Yeah, it's been a blast, Peter. And I do have like this segment, like I said before, I'll just shoot like 5 questions. You know, it's pretty, pretty, pretty simple. Who's one product-minded Twitter account you think people should follow? If you want to give like a shout out.

I guess I'll give a shout out to Shreyas. I mean, most people already know him, but Shreyas Dohoshi, I took his course recently and was actually very helpful. I like his career path where he's not just like going up the ladder to VP or whatever. He actually charted his own career. And now he's helping other PMs. So, so yeah, I really like that.

Yeah, I've bookmarked many of his Twitter threads about product. Like, he's phenomenal. What do you think, in your opinion, a superpower for product folks? Like, in your opinion, this is like one exact one quality or One thing that, you know, product-minded folks should have or carry?

Um, I think, um, I'm gonna go with, uh, customer obsession. You know, I, I think a lot of people say they have customer obsession but don't actually have customer obsession. Like, like, if I forced a PM to make a trade-off between building something that's right for the customer versus like moving some number and getting promoted, Most people would pick the latter, you know. But, um, customer obsession I think is really important. I, I think, um, I've— okay, I'll give you an example. So I tweeted something, um, some negative feedback about Notion, and then the CEO of Notion reached out to me like, hey, let's do a one-on-one call, I want to understand your feedback. Wow. So if the CEO is willing to do that stuff with something random like me, then as a PM you should be able to have that kind of obsession and really care about improving your product. Yeah,

I love that. I love that. And of course, you know, Jeff Bezos famously said about— they've been carrying— Amazon been carrying their principles on customer obsession first mindset for like a very long time. And, you know, look at them where they are. Who's your favorite shitposter? You have to— we have to, like, you know, you have to give a shout out.

I mean, I think Alex Cohen is pretty, pretty good. Yeah, he, uh, he, uh, I think his most famous one is like where he tried to boil his chicken breast in, um, like a coffee machine, and he did it as a joke, but like it got picked up by the press and everything. So, so I think he's pretty funny. Yeah, he's pretty good.

Awesome. Uh, any, any recent recommendation about your favorite book you read recently or any thread about product management?

Yeah, I've been reading this book called Build by Tony Fadell. Tony was the co-creator of the iPhone and Nest. And, you know, like one big tip about like leadership books and business books is like read books from operators who have actually done something as opposed to academics, you know? So like, yeah, Tony's book is like just filled with like really good nuggets. Because it's actually being through like the whole journey of like, you know, the ups and downs of being an operator. So I really enjoyed that book.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, love that. We'll definitely put that and every other resource in the show notes. So last question, tell me about one crazy story you've encountered as a PM or a product, like, you know, lead in your experience at Reddit, Facebook, like the companies you worked at, like this actually was bonkers and I went through it. Like, what was that one insane crazy story that you never shared with anyone you want to share with our listeners?

Wow, that's a good question to close on. One really crazy story. Let me think. One really crazy story.

It can be like, let's say you said about Facebook, about like Execution, right? Like, it can be, wow, this, this actually totally surprised me. We actually went from point A to point B, that type of a thing.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, um, okay, so like when I worked at Reddit, um, I worked on the audio product. And, you know, like, um, Chris Hadfield, uh, the Canadian astronaut, is kind of like a hero of mine. So, so I really wanted to get him to speak, speak at an audio uh, like, uh, you know, like an r/spacetalk. And I just kind of reached out to him randomly on his website, and somehow he responded, and I negotiated like a fee with him to speak. And it's a very reasonable fee. It's like a lot lower than I thought. But, um, yeah, he came on and, um, it's like, wow, it's like one of the most inspiring things I've ever heard, you know. So,

oh,

just kind of really proud of that. Yeah.

Awesome. That's amazing. Yeah, we'll drop that link too. And yeah, once we figure that out, all the show notes. Peter, this has been a blast. Thank you for hopping on the pod. I love talking to you. I love your shitposts as well. But I think more importantly, you have a knack for 3 things I really admire. One is product, of course. The other thing, community. And you really care about creators and you're yourself a creator. So you're trying to blend in your newsletter, in your course and your book and whatnot. So really appreciate you for taking time. And yeah, where should people find you? Or do you have any closing thoughts?

Yeah. Yeah, like, I don't know what's gonna happen to Twitter as a platform. So you can find me, you can go to creator economy dot creator economy dot so to subscribe to my newsletter. And closing thought is, I'll just kind of share like the advice that Chris Hadfield gave in this talk. And the thing that really I remember is that his advice is like, just follow your curiosity and keep heading in the direction that you want to go. Mm-hmm. And even if you don't achieve your goals, like, as long as you're heading that direction consistently, you probably end up somewhere that you like, you know. So, so, so, so yeah, so like, keep— I think that's like a really good takeaway because like a lot of people think like, hey, if I don't achieve my goals, then like, you know, all my hopes or dreams are crushed. But that's not true. It's about going in that direction, celebrating the small wins. And then probably end up somewhere good, even if you don't achieve your ultimate goal. Yeah.

And you become more content because you've chosen that path. So yeah, that's an amazing, you know, I feel like that's on that high note. Let's close it off. Thank you for listeners for tuning into this episode. You know, I have like more guests in the pipeline. We'll have more, much more deeper conversations about like product founders, startups, investors. VC and whatnot. So stay tuned for future episodes. And yeah, thanks again, Peter. And thanks for tuning in, you guys. Appreciate y'all.

Okay. Thanks, Arun.