Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD)

People often think that I get hired into later stage companies because I'm supposed to teach them how to operate like a big company. And in fact, I say I'm hired to remind them they can operate like a startup.

Everybody wants this. Everyone's like, yes, move fast, amazing quality. What's an example of that for you?

I communicate to my leaders that my expectation is they bring in the clock speed one click faster. If you think something needs to be.

Done this year, it needs to be done this half. There may be a trend happening here.

Of combining engineering and product. I'm using CPTO for short code of running product and engineering design functionally together. There should be no debates over what's best for product or what's best for engineering, what's best for design should be.

What is best for the organization? You built a tool called ChatPRD. My guess is it's the single most.

Popular AI PM specific tool out there. Is it gonna eliminate PMs next year? Probably not. Are the skills required gonna shift? Yes. Could they shift much faster than we all anticipate? Probably.

Today my guest is Claire Vo. Claire is a longtime Chief Product Officer at Color. Optimizely, and currently Chief Product Officer at LaunchDarkly. She's also been a two-time founder, engineer, designer, and a marketer. She's also the creator of ChatPRD, which I suspect is the most used PM-specific AI product out there, which she builds on nights and weekends. In our conversation, we dig into what PM skills AI will complement and potentially replace in the future, the story behind ChatPRD, and Claire's advice for how to stay ahead of the curve on AI within the PM role. The importance of feeling agency over your career and how to bend the arc of the universe to achieve the things that you want to achieve. Insights into what it takes to be a successful woman in tech, especially as an exec. How she creates a fast pace within larger companies while also keeping the bar very high. The rise of the CPTO role, combining product and engineering under one leader, plus a ton of career advice both for early career people and senior leaders, and so much more. This episode has something for anyone that's in product or interested in the role of product, and I am very excited to bring it to you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Claire Vo.

After a short word from our sponsors.

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Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm even more excited. You're someone that to me has always felt inevitable would be on this podcast and that we'd be doing an episode together. Do you feel the same way or not?

And it's okay if you don't. It's a privilege and a pleasure and I'm glad I'm here. You know, I've been so impressed with your guests and your content. It's been so exciting to see just the wide range of product leaders and thinkers in the space. And if I can be on a list of product leaders and thinkers in.

The space, then I'm doing something good. So thanks for having me. It's absolutely my pleasure. I want to start by talking about career advice. Okay, so I was perusing your LinkedIn and your career path is basically what most PMs probably dream of in their career. So just to summarize, you went from associate product manager to product manager to senior product manager to director to senior director to VP to SVP to chief product officer, and now you've been chief product officer at three different companies. And along the way, you were a founder, you're a designer, you're an engineer. So here's my question. If you had to boil down what you think your secret sauce has been to progressing so far and so quickly throughout your PM career, what might that be?

Yeah, so when you list it all out, you can probably guess underneath it all is a relentlessly curious, impatient, eager to build person at their core. So I just like building stuff and I find it a lot of fun. I think if you find a career or craft that's fun, it's easy to accelerate your growth in that career. So one thing I just, I just love what I do. But, you know, when it comes to career growth and that progression from actually started as a copywriter of all things, copywriter all the way up to CPO or CPTO that runs an engineering organization, you know, it boils down to something really simple, which is know what you want out of your career, be clear and ask for it, and then make it easy for your boss or whoever can support or champion you to get you from here to there. And so I'll take a really specific example from earlier in my career where I had been in management for design and product management, sort of like a senior manager level over product and design at an e-commerce company and worked very closely with growth and marketing. We were just two sides of the same coin and worked very closely and the head of marketing left. and there was this big to do, you know, pretty quickly of like, well, what are we gonna do with marketing and do we need to hire somebody? And I sat for about a half a day and I thought, I think I can help here. Drew out an org chart, put my name on the top, walked into my boss's office and said, this is one potential solve of your marketing organization question. This will bring product and marketing growth together. I can be in this position. Here's how I change the management structure underneath. It's not just where do you put me, but where do you put everybody else? and I think this could work for the company. And this is how I'd suggest we roll it out. And this would be my JD. And I got that job. And, you know, I think when people ask me about career advice, they want to hear, you know, what can I do? Really, like, what do you want? And how do you make it as easy as possible to make the case to your boss to get you here to there? The other thing that I give people advice about is know what you want out of your current role and know exactly what you want your next role to be. And I even know this, and I even say this to my boss, you know, when I was VP of product at Optimizely, I said to my boss, I want to be a chief product officer. Here's how I'm going to get us here to there, and I want you to partner with me on it. And even coming into this role when I was interviewing at LaunchDarkly, you know, my boss, Dan, the CEO of LaunchDarkly, asked me, what do you want out of this role? And I said, I want my next role to be a CEO role. So I want this role. to fill in my gaps, learn, help me elevate my, you know, my experience to get me to that next step. And so I always know what that next role is going to be, and I'm always clear about it. Now, I think there's a fine balance here. There's one thing to be very clear about your goals. It's another to suck the oxygen out of the air about only talking about getting promoted. So these are probably.005% of my interactions with my boss are about my career growth and my path. It's very small. Am I clear? Are we on the same page? And am I communicating as I'm making progress against those goals? High-slip people, I think, get promoted basically as fast as the org can support. I've almost never wished I promoted somebody earlier. I have wished I had, you know, I've seen managers or folks promote a little too early. And so as somebody that's managing their own career, you have to be a balance of, ambitious and assertive and take care of yourself and advocate for yourself. And the work needs to speak for itself at the end of the day, and that's what's going to drive for your career growth. And so know what you want, but do the work and produce the results and you can have a career like mine.

So maybe first to summarize some of the core advice you're sharing is know what you actually want because you're not going to progress towards this amazing future career if you don't actually know where you're going. Otherwise, you'll kind of be pushed in directions that you're not necessarily interested in going. So have a sense of where you want to go to tell people and ask for it. Here's what I want to be doing in the future. Help me get there. And I love the other point you made of just like, don't over focus on that. There's many people that spend a lot of their energy on like, I need to get promoted. How do I get to the next level? I deserve the next level.

Yeah.

And I guess maybe along those lines, is there any other advice you could share of just how to avoid being that person that's just constantly obsessed with promotion, any more advice or just how to find that balance?

Yeah, I mean, one, you've got to lock to the norms, the talent norms of your organization. You should know how those things work and they can work very casually if you're a very small startup and they can work more formally if you're at a very large company. And one, understanding how promotions operationally happen inside an organization can help you have those conversations at the right time, in the right moment, with the right context. So that's one thing I advise, right? We're a slightly larger organization. We do promotion cycles. We have times during which we promote people. And so if you're talking to me four months before a promo cycle, maybe it's top of mind, maybe it's not. I sometimes functionally cannot promote people inside larger organizations. whenever I want. So one is, I think, understanding how to the talent calendar of your team, especially at a larger organization. I think the second thing is really the conversation needs to be about what you being in a different position does for the company and why the company needs it. Often the conversation is, I want to be promoted because I want to be a director of PM because I want to become a manager because I need direct reports. Instead of saying, look, you're span of control, you have nine direct reports, you need leverage here. I have a lot of credibility with this side of the product organization. I think we could be doing more if this position existed, and I think I'm good for this position because of what I've proven A, B, and C. that's solving a problem for the company. That's not solving a career growth issue for an individual. And I think, you know, people who want to be promoted need to think in that orientation versus the, the other, because honestly, especially now, like, let's, let's, let's say post Zerp, like there are not just these rote every 12 months, we're going to give comp increases and merit increases and you get to be promoted. We really have to be thoughtful about the structure and size and organization of teams. Product teams are naturally pretty small, so there aren't just management and director and senior director roles to go around. And if you want to get into a management, for example, you have to prove that you're good at organization design. So I think really focus on why a role is good for a company. were necessary for a company and then why you are the best for that role rather than I want to get promoted.

That is such good advice and such important advice that focus on how do you solve problems for your manager and the business, not, Hey, here's what I need for my career. This sucks. My career is stagnating. I love that. And I love so much of your message is empowerment. It's not just here, there's the place you're in and there's not a lot you can do about it. Look for opportunities. to help your manager, help your business. Here's what I can do to move things further. And I think there's an element of timing that you touched on, like propose this at a time when something could happen. Like you shared this example of there was a marketing gap.

Yeah. Yep, exactly.

Is there another example where you did the sort of thing where you kind of presented, here's how I can help the org and that helped another promotion? If not, that's cool.

I mean, it's honestly, how I expanded into leading engineering teams in a technology organization. I was at Color and there was a real need to uplevel our engineering organization. And I knew exactly what to do. I had high confidence. I had the skills, both technical and organizational, to scale the engineering organization in a way that was really critical to the business, both from a architecture perspective and from a team and talent perspective. And so that was one where I knew there was a problem to solve. I knew that problem was important. I knew we had to solve it fast. And I was confident I had this, I knew I could do it. I had confidence that I could help there. And so I'm still doing it today. And at Color, I did, I took, I came in as product. I very quickly began leading the engineering organization, which was fabulous. And then I actually took on some of our non-clinical operations as well, where we had a pretty operational leader. We had some high scale challenges to deal with and it fit my talent set and I knew I could help the company pretty quickly. So, you know, and this is the other advice I might give particular to PMs. PM is such a generalist role. It's okay to go a little left and a little right to go up. And, you know, I took this marketing growth role. That was actually my first director role. It wasn't only for product, it was for marketing. And I had to learn marketing and I had to develop skills there, but it was a foundation on which I could build a broader sort of leadership career. And so I do think also looking left and right outside of your scope of product can be a really effective way to find growth opportunities.

I love that advice. And it, yeah, it leads to so many unexpected opportunities. One of the, I think, big questions with PMs and coming back to your original advice of know where you want to go. There's so many directions a PM can go. You can eventually become a founder, become a GM, become a CEO, something else. And trying these sorts of things often helps you understand, okay, here's what I'm actually excited about. Maybe I want to move into design.

Yeah. And one of the other things that I think people don't understand, and maybe I experienced this as a founder and I really feel it inside companies, is like the universe is bendable to your will. And what I mean is, In most, at least in the stage I operate in, and startups and growth stage companies and, you know, late stage startups, organizations are very fluid. And I like to organize around talented, motivated individuals. And so just because we're organized in a particular way now, just because these organizations are separate or these are different, you know, together, doesn't mean that's necessarily the way they have to be. And so you should think about your career growth in the existing structure of the organization. But as an org design thinker, it's a very important job that I have to do. You also have to think of this system as a living, breathing, you know, entity that can shift over time in particular around highly motivated, highly talented people.

And I think along the same lines referencing this advice you've already shared of just thinking from the perspective of What is my manager and folks above, what are they struggling with, and how can I propose here's a solution that happens to also have me move into a more interesting role?

Yep, exactly.

There's a direction I wasn't planning to go into, but I think it's really important and interesting is people like you that are incredibly good and successful end up taking on a lot. And that often ends up not being what they want.

SOS.

Exactly. any advice on, you know, like the classic, be careful what you're good at advice. Any advice on just how to not end up with everything?

I really believe operating in your zone of genius. I really believe in leaning into strengths. And, you know, if you are in a position in which you're good at things and you've been giving a lot of responsibility, but you have tremendous growth edges and you're spending more time on the things you need to level up than the things you are exceptional at, I think that's not fair for the organization. I think that's not fair for you. So I truly believe defining and understanding your zone of genius, where you are exceptional, where no one else can step into the job and do just as good of a job as you can, and where you derive tremendous intellectual, emotional joy out of the work is what makes it sustainable over time. And so I don't actually think it's about the volume or breadth of the work. It's about sustainability of the work and you know, can you show up every day energized and engaged and excited about what you do? And I think being very aware if you are operating the space or if you're not, and this might go back to, I think I have never regretted promoting somebody too slowly. I have regretted promoting somebody too quickly in that, you know, high slope individuals in particular areas want to get more responsibility, quote unquote, want to have more scope. And I've seen sort of less experienced managers or directors or even people at my level want to give opportunities that put people in a position where they're not, they're neither effective nor happy. And so I think being self-aware of that is really important. And then I also think as a manager, being cognizant of that is really important. individually. I do do a lot, but I do feel like I'm in my zone of genius. And I also know that part of staying in my personal zone of genius is having this breadth of responsibility, but preserving builder time. And what I mean from builder time is like, I have to have time to produce real work that is, that comes for me as an individual, and that means that calendar management. it is quite important time management.

We're going to talk about some of the things that you built.

Yeah.

In terms of finding your zone of genius, any advice for someone that's trying to figure out what it is that is in that zone of genius? I know there's like a TED Talk of yours, how to think about zone of genius specifically.

Yeah. I'm not going to relay it in precision, but one of the tactics that I've seen out there is basically go through your calendar for the last month or quarter, whatever it is, write everything down and basically group them into, I hated doing this. I didn't love doing it, but it was fine. I love doing this. And then, like, I love doing this. And if I could spend all my time on this, I would be the happiest person in the whole world. And, like, literally categorize your, your, the way you're spending your time into those buckets and then the, the bottom buckets away. just focus on that topic and go, how can I be here more? And often that is a true guide to where your really your passion is, where your special expertise is, and where you're going to add a lot of value because you're highly engaged. I think the other thing is really asking yourself, and this maybe goes back to the career advice perspective, really asking yourself, what do I do that no one else in this organization can do. There are lots of things that I do that other people in the organization can do, but what are the things that I do that are, you think about a differentiated product that are hard to replicate, and knowing what that is and leaning into that can drive a lot of exceptional career growth, but also just make you quite happy.

What's an example of that for you?

I think I'm actually quite good at traversing across across and up and down. So what I mean is I have, I'm fluent across product engineering, design, data and operations and candidly revenue in a way that vertical or functional leaders maybe are less so. So I feel like I have a high level of fluency broadly and can bring conversations between functions together against a business objective pretty easily. It's just the way I'm wired. I was a founder. It's just, it's, it's second nature. the other thing that I think I can do pretty well that I find very joyous is traverse elevation. And so, yes, I love to be up here and think about strategy and vision, but I also like to drop into the details to move things forward. And I think that operating horizontally and then being able to spend some time in the vertical up and down, wherever that vertical up and down happens makes me quite Happy.

I think I'm pretty good at it. Amazing. We're going to touch on some of these things you just mentioned, actually. But real quick, you mentioned this idea of essentially an energy audit. There's actually a really good guide that I'll point to in the show notes by Matt Murchari that walks you through how to do this. And we talk about this a bunch on this podcast, actually, this whole idea of just find things that give you energy, do more of that. Find things that sappy of energy, do less of that. Easier said than done when you have a job and you have to do stuff that people are paying you to do. But It's still really helpful, if nothing else, to help you point you where you want to be going in your career long term. Okay, so you mentioned you're a founder and it feels like you're like a founder at Hark, but you've been working at larger companies for a while now. And I hear that you're really good at setting a fast pace within larger companies and maintaining that startup focus while also having a very high bar for quality and product. Everybody wants this. Everyone's like, yes, move fast, amazing quality. That's what But why would we not want that? I'm curious just what you actually put into practice concretely that allow for you to build teams that move really fast and maintain a high bar. Are there like processes you find helpful, values, ways of working?

Yeah, it's really exciting. People often think that I get hired into the roles that I get hired into in later stage companies because I'm supposed to teach them how to operate like a big company. And in fact, I say I'm hired to remind them they can operate like a startup. And so I think about it completely differently. There are kind of two things I think about in terms of pace and high bar. From a pace, it's know what your internal pace is and essentially don't let it degrade to the pace of your recurring meetings. I often find that pace of organization locks to pace of the calendar. And so I am really thoughtful that reoccurring meetings do not drive next steps. It's a very tactical thing. But when somebody says, oh, we'll discuss this or we'll decide this in the next meeting, it's, no, we should discuss this now. We should decide this tomorrow. The other thing that I think about is setting one-click faster pace expectations inside an organization. So I tend to come in and love this, hate it. It's what I do, which is if I look at an organization that is operating at a lower pace than I would expect, I communicate to my leaders that my expectation is they bring in the clock speed one click faster, which means if you think something needs to be done this year, it needs to be done this half. If you think it needs to be done this half, it needs to be done this quarter, this quarter, this month, this week, today, like end of day in this meeting, and actually setting an expectation that your natural pace is going to be slower than your ambition. and being explicit about pulling things in, I think can change the way expectations are set and honestly change the energy and momentum in the organization. The third thing on pace is personal SLA. I never want to be the bottleneck for the organization. This is one of the more challenging things about being in my role is you are often a point of decision making, tie breaking, next steps, approvals, socialization. And if my personal SLA is slow, then the rest of my organization cannot be as fast as possible. So I try to be fairly responsive. I try to, say, do both very high rate and also very quickly. It's really hard. Sometimes it's not totally possible, but it's a goal I have.

I love this clock speed concept of just, let's move one iteration faster than we would normally move. How do you actually do that? Is this just like you doing it and then everyone trickles down from the way you're approaching it? Is this like a principal on a team? Like this, is there like a phrase you use?

Yeah, it's, it's kind of a phrase I use and something I asked our leadership teams to do. So I started at one, I'm going to do this and two, my expectation is you look for opportunities to do this. And the reason I think this is effective, it's very tangible and it's very tactical. It just is one of those things that at a moment when you're about to say a due date, you check yourself and you go, is this my, you know, is this right or do I need to pull it in by, by, by an iteration. And so it's a very tactical piece of advice and expectation I give to my leadership team. If they can show up that way, then the expected pace of the organization goes up. And then people tend to rise to the occasion.

And that connects very directly to your first piece of advice is not rely on the meeting cadence to determine your action cadence. I imagine that's a similar situation where you tell people, Here's how I want to operate, and then you actually work that way and that starts to filter through.

Yeah, I just think there's this anti-pattern of we'll make the decision in the next meeting or we'll follow up on this in the next meeting. That is an artificial timeline, you know, introduced by Google Calendar or whatever calendar you use. It's not a real thing. And so I want to put us on real timelines. When can we make the decision? How much information do we need? And that doesn't mean that every decision is made now, today, tomorrow. But it does mean we don't snap to artificial cadences to make our product move forward.

Awesome. Let's talk about quality. What are some lessons there?

Yeah, I think in terms of high bar, there's probably two things that I think about as a leader. There's the talent bar being exceptionally high, and then there's the product bar being high. And I'll start with talent, which is on the talent side, I think you have to define the bar. you have to be really specific. And that means you have to think about pretty deeply, what are your leadership principles? If your leadership principle is bring the clock speed up one iteration, be explicit that that's what you expect to see, and then articulate that and hold people accountable to it. And so I do think it's really important to have a specific and measurable career ladder, especially at the senior levels. I often find that they're very, soft. They're like hires and manages, you know, multiple departments or, you know, takes in cross-functional stakeholder feedback. Like those are just not tractable specific things. And so I think, you know, put on PMs, put on your product definition or OKR hat or whatever, and define some real goals for these levels and be specific in a way that you can look at people and say definitively yes, measurably yes, they're meeting this bar or measurably no, they're not meeting that bar. And so I think that's very important. The second thing I think is you have to normalize feedback. And, you know, Brené Brown, fellow Texan, lover, clear is kind. I think conflict-avoidant, feedback-avoidant cultures degrade. the talent bar. They just do because the expectations are not stated and you're not holding accountability. And I do not think that's kind. That is not setting up people for success in their careers. That is not helping them become the best teammate that they can become. So I really like to normalize feedback and take, as I say, take the temperature out of the room when it comes to opening candid feedback. And that means being very clear when people are not meeting expectations, making it very clear that questioning ideas is not questioning innate talent. and I think that has something that people need to hear to normalize feedback. But I think feedback is quite important. And I think the third thing is, you know, unfortunately, when you're working to build a high talent bar and high talent density, then when folks aren't a fit and it's not working, moving against that quickly is part of the job. And it's a hard part of the job. It's part of the job that most managers really avoid. But I think it's important because it keeps your overall team operating in a really healthy effective, performant way that makes everybody happier, including people that probably weren't a great fit for the org of the role at the time.

Is there an example of you being surprisingly candid to someone or giving feedback, hard feedback to someone about quality, something that's just like, oh, wow, that's what I should be doing?

There were two leaders in my organization. I won't say which one, but I won't say when, but to two leaders in the organization, partners across product and engineering, and they could not get it together. They could not work together. They were having misalignments and priorities strategy. They could not communicate. They were having conflict in front of the team. And, you know, the managers that had managed them were taking this very soft pedal approach of, you need to work on your crossbow. functional stakeholder and like, here am I expecting all this kind of performance management stuff to happen? And I called both of them individually and I said, the way you are operating is not meeting our leadership expectations. If you do not change, you cannot be part of this organization anymore. I believe you can operate differently. I do, and I did. I believe these are very, very talented people who could offer. I believe you can operate differently, but it is your responsibility to do so. And I need to see change starting tomorrow. I wanted them to succeed. And in fact, they did. It like snapped in, they got it. And one of the, you know, turned into one of the most influential, effective managers in our team over the course of probably the next six to nine months. And I think just Clearly saying you are not meeting expectations. You will not be successful here if you continue on this path. I believe you can get here, but it is your responsibility. That is the conversation that is clear and kind and honestly very effective in most instances.

That's an amazing example. Clearest kind, as you said, it reminds me of Kim Scott, who's on the podcast, shared this story about Bob. I don't know if you remember that story at all of just this guy at their company who was just doing a bad job and everyone knew he was doing a bad job, but then they had to fire him and then he's just When they're firing him, he's just like, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't anyone tell me that I was doing? Nobody thought I was doing a great job.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I honestly think saying you are not doing a good job is much kinder than I think you can improve on this aspect or that aspect. Or I've gotten some feedback that you could be better at. Like, that's not kind because it doesn't set somebody else up for success either in your organization or somewhere else.

Okay, let's go in a different direction. Let's talk about Being a woman in tech.

Oh, yeah.

This doesn't get talked about a ton on podcasts like this. I know you have a lot of thoughts. Obviously you've been through a lot. You've had a lot of experiences, probably a lot of stories you haven't shared in other places. So I just want to give you a chance to share what you've been through, what you've seen, and any advice you may have.

Yeah, and I'm happy to talk about this. I know a lot of people don't want to be defined or consistently asked about being a woman or a mom in a C-level leadership role. Let's not have women in tech panels anymore. But I've been reflecting a bit on this lately because I just came from a few years in healthcare, which from my experience, it's a lot more women in leadership roles. I was a little spoiled even in our technology organization. And now I'm back in startups and tech where the ratios are completely opposite, especially in roles like engineering, which is a team that I run. And look, this is just, it's math. I think Carta said that 13 something percent of founders last year were women. It's declining year over year. FEMA led founded teams rate at least 2% of venture capital. Women hold 30% of senior leadership org or roles. Women are 30% of software engineering teams. Like this is just math. We're just facts. We're not in the room in equal proportions. And as somebody who has, despite kind of the numbers, had a fairly successful career so far in technology, I feel like I owe it. to the industry to say it hasn't been easy and it's still not easy even at my level. And what I want to be clear about, because it gets talked about a lot in forms like this, is this is not about imposter syndrome. How could I have any right to imposter syndrome? I've proven myself. I've been a founder, I've raised venture capital, I've had a successful exit, I've been, as you said, a CPO across increasing large teams. I get to invest in rad companies. I'm on boards. I get to be on this podcast. I'm a TikTok influencer. This is not about feeling like an imposter. It's really about, it is hard and it is different. And the numbers pencil out in a way that is not favorable to women. And as you said, there's been a lot of stuff in the past that, you look at me now and you say, oh, she did associate and all the way up. But I had to fight for my all-girl school to carry computer science at the same rate that the all-boys school had it naturally. I grew up in teeny-tiny startups in the early aughts. Like, I saw some nonsense. You know, I had VCs tell me, Don't get pregnant when I was like, these things happened. And yet, like, here I am, and it's fine. And I'm not complaining. I just think, you know, I think what people also don't understand is that stuff still happens. I, you know, I don't need to litigate who it happens with where it happens. It still happens. I've, I have arrived, and it still happens. And the reason I bring this up is I think it should be a point of reflection for industry, and I think it can be a really effective point of reflection for women who want to get into leadership roles. And the way I approach it is I'm just very curious. I wonder what is structural about technology that creates these things happen. What is cultural? What is external? What has happened to me or happens around me? What is internal? What do I bring into the room that doesn't serve me? And so I try to stay very curious and then constant product thinker, what are the points of leverage I can I can use to move things, not just forward for me, but for the industry broadly. How can I influence thinking? Where can I not? Where can I walk away from things? And then as for the internal aspect of it, I think this is also a very powerful thing, which is I try to stay in empowered, in empowered space. I know, you know, my value and I have no time for imposter syndrome. It's not a, it's not a constructive thing for me. But I do think knowing that, as I said earlier, the universe is bendable to your will, there are things we can change. I don't think these numbers are not tractable. And so my recommendation and what I'd love to say to the industry generally, to women in particular, is curiosity and empowerment have been my path to joy in this sometimes complicated industry. And I think there's a lot better we can do, but There's a little bit of ways to go.

Is there a story that you could share if you're comfortable of just something you've gone through or been through that maybe people are like, oh wow, I see what stuff she's dealing with or other women are dealing with that I had no sense of.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this one, which is I consistently get asked if I'm technical enough or if I'm not, not even if I'm technical enough. Let's put enough aside if I'm technical. And it's fascinating to me because I was the technical co-founder of my startup. I wrote code for the first 12, first 12 months solo. It was the kind of like, led the engineering team there. That code is still in production in very, very large environments. I have run multi hundred people engineering teams for many years. And I spend my Saturdays and Sundays shipping code. Like, this is what I do. And truly, the first question most people ask me is, oh, well, you're not technical though. You're a product person. And I've been really trying to unpack where that is coming from. It's hard for me to imagine somebody else that looks different, that has a different name, that's a different gender, getting that question with my background. And so that's one of those things that has really been spinning my head. Again, it's not about imposter syndrome. I don't have anything to prove to people. but I am quite curious where that orientation comes from. And if it comes to somebody like me who has really had some proven success, I know it's happening to other people and I'm hoping that I can do something from my position to turn that a little bit.

And this connects to what you shared, the advice you had of just trying to get curious about why it's happening, which is exactly what you just said. Is that just a mostly to help you not get upset and frustrated. Like, let me just understand. Why is this happening again?

One, it's, I do think sitting in your power is very effective. And so curiosity means that I'm in control, and I do think I'm in control more than, more than I'm not. So that's one, one part of it is, I think. And the other thing is, I think a lot of this is. It's complicated. It's structural. It's cultural. It's what you see and what you don't see, not just in the workplace, it's what you see and don't see in media. It's, am I reading my seven year old and my four year old books of my grandma's a software engineer, you know, books are called the Mont Test, which I actually think is like a great book, but it has this underlying presumption of who is technical, who's not, who understands things, who doesn't. And that all bubbles up into how individuals experience an industry that's driving tremendous economic Here, at the end of the day, it's about economic participation. It can be about individuals and aspirations, but it is also about economic participation. So the reason I'm curious about it is because I do think it's complicated. And I do think you can be successful, but I don't think we're being successful at the rates I would love to see. And I, I think we're missing a lot of innovation and a lot of economic growth by not having incredible, technical, capable women start companies and lead organizations. And so I think we're all missing out for that, and I'd love to see more of it.

And is there an answer to how do we do this better? Anything you think you've seen work to help get us past this?

I think normalize seeing it. So thanks for bringing me on this podcast. But I do think normalize seeing it is one of the simplest ways. If you close your eyes and imagine a software engineer, my dream is you imagine A diverse set of folks, you don't imagine a very specific archetype. And so I do think you can't believe it unless you see it. And so the more that you can provide platforms for diverse voices to talk about their journey in technology, expose that there are leaders out there that come from different backgrounds, technically, culturally, all those things, the more the, the, the industry can imagine different types of leaders and different types of And so, you know, I just want to see it more. I want to invest more and raise the voices of female founders. I want to call out their amazing female CTOs out there, all those things. And I think if you can see it, you can start to unlock these very, very embedded concepts of who is and isn't, is and is not a technology leader who is and is not technical.

Awesome. I love that advice. It's something I try really hard to do with this podcast. this episode is brought to you by Vanta. When it comes to ensuring your company has top-notch security practices, things get complicated fast. Now you can assess risk, secure the trust of your customers, and automate compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more with a single platform. Vanta's Market leading Trust Management platform helps you continuously monitor compliance alongside reporting and tracking risk. Plus, you can save hours by completing security questionnaires with Vanta AI. Join thousands of global companies that use Vanta to automate evidence collection, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/plenny. That's V-A-N-T-A.com/plenny. Lenny. I know you have a fun story about when you were very pregnant selling your startup to Optimizely. Can you share that story?

I haven't actually- yeah, yeah. This was a fun one. Again, this is like the universe is bendable to your will and lean into your power, which is, I had been running Experiment Engine, which was a platform for enterprises to run high scale experimentation programs. So not necessarily the underlying A/B testing technology, but all the stuff around. hypothesis gathering, insights, aggregation, operations, like keeping things on track. Because I really know, as you do, that high skill experimentation programs can be very impactful to businesses. That being said, it was like a niche inside an industry as opposed to a large TAM problem. And so I think we just fundamentally hit a TAM ceiling here. We had a great product. for a great market that was very narrow. And, you know, three years, four years into running the company, I knew that to be true. And I knew that we would be better served by being part of a, a larger organization. And one of those organizations could be a large testing company. And so I remember that was, like, noodling on my mind, but we were also really trying to sell to Enterprises, and I heard that Microsoft, who was one of our biggest customers, was doing a experimentation day with Optimizely. And I knew Optimizely was a natural acquirer. And I knew I had to get into that room. So I called Microsoft and I said, Hey, friend at Microsoft. I'm going to be up in Seattle seeing our other customer, very large Seattle company, this week. Week of experimentation day. Could we stop by? And they were like, oh yeah, sure. Well then I went to other, you know, other big Seattle company and said, Hey, other big Seattle company, I'm going to be up visiting Microsoft at their experimentation day. Would you be so like, I got these two meetings to, to manifest against each other. And then I walked into that experimentation day and I eyeballed the CFO of Optimizely and I sat in front, in front of him and started pulling up the product and coding at the same time. I was just like, I'm going to sit in front of him in a row and I'm going to do this. we have my screens. And then I went up and did a demo. And I'm not saying that's the thing that made it happen, but I will say very quickly after that, we became very close partners and ultimately they acquired me. And I give this advice to founders because one of the things that founders and PMs, one of the things that I really hire for is scrappiness. I think you have to be able to do a lot with a little. And I think you have to know where you're getting and you know, come hell or high water, figure out a way to get there. And this was a very fun example of, of working my way into the right room, setting myself up for the success that I wanted, and, and, and having the backing, the good job, the great product, the, the outcomes to earn it. But you also have to get yourself in the room.

And how many months pregnant were you?

I was extremely present pregnant. A, a ticking time bomb of a belly is a really good negotiation tactic to stick in a deal. I think I remember When we were negotiating the final term sheet, I was 34 weeks pregnant, something like that. And they said, Can you fly out to San Francisco? I was in Austin at the time. And I said, Literally, you can fly me out today and back tomorrow, and then I'm not allowed on planes. And that's how, you know, I got it. It was very fun. It was fun. And what a happy acquisition.

I can talk all day about how that was great, great experience. And I love it's another example of the phrase you've been coming back to, of bending, I don't know if it's bending the world, to the universe towards your will. The universe even bigger. I love it. It feels like a recurring theme here is to take agency and control of where your career and life is going. And that's such a good example of just like finding a way into this room that would be very hard for someone to get into.

Yeah.

You've touched on the CTPO role that I haven't heard much about. And I know that this is a big Topic for you and I feel like there might be a trend happening here of kind of like combining engineering product. Can you just talk about this role and why you think it might be merging?

Yeah, I get asked about it a lot because it's, it's not super rare, but it's not super common either. And I think it could potentially be rising. And so I believe that the CP, and I'm using CPTO for short credit code of like running product and engineering design functionally together. It's very different. I've done both. It's very different than a pure product or a VP product role. And so first, you know, I talked a little bit about how I got into this role. I do think you have to be technical to do a role like this. I think a lot of people look at my professional background and think that I use my broad leadership skills and the leverage of a great SVP to keep engineering team going. But no, actually I spent quite a bit of time on the engineering side because as somebody who is responsible for the business outcomes of the product, One of the best ways to drive value is having a highly performant engineering team that works on a scalable platform. And so I, I spend a lot of time making sure that we're building the right architectural decisions, that our infrastructure meets the needs of our team, that our edge team is operating in a way that drives velocity. And I just don't think you can do that job if you don't understand how software gets built on a technical level. So I'm the kind of person that when we're doing a product review, I have like the PRD up and get github up and I'm like comparing both because I think both sides matter. I think the other thing that's different about this role is it's quite operational. And so you really have to know about operations and organization design. And teams are by nature much larger than product organizations. Like, if you just think about the classic ratios, there are more people in engineering than there are in product. And the talent change challenges are significantly different in engineering, whether it's the, you know, high volume of recruiting culture challenges are different. You have to really think about org design. And so, you know, you have to have a different level of mindset around organization design and operations when you're in a CPT role and you have to, you're in pager duty, right? You're getting paged at one in the morning if a service, you know, if there's a set zero and it goes down, that is not what it's like to be be a product leader. So you got to know what you're getting into and you have to be technical. And then the thing I would be remiss to say about this role is the P and the T get a lot of air time. Product and engineering get a lot of air time. Design, data, these are such functional, very important organizations. And why these roles get, so that's kind of like what the role is and how you could be good at it or whether it would be a fit for your skills. Question of why have this kind of role and I think there's two reasons. There's the obvious strategic reason of like, they're all the same thing, right? They're all building capital P product. They're all builders. They're the same types of folks. They're all builders. And bringing them under one house allows you to optimize for the whole as opposed to optimize for the function. And if you can find a leader that is effective at that, I think you can get a lot of value out of it. And honestly, the second thing is it provides a tremendous amount of leverage to the CEO in many ways. At the end of the day, R&D is a very expensive and complicated investment the company is making. And having a single person responsible for R&D investment at the executive level is quite important, especially when you're candidly spending a lot there. And so I think it's those two things. It's these are one team, there should be no debates over what's best for product or what's best for engineering, what's best for design should be, what is best for the organization at whole, what do our customers need and what do our business needs? And then it's the accountability candidly of this quite meaningful investment against business objectives and having a singularly responsible individual to care for that investment.

Hmm. Sounds wonderful having one person to deal with across all these functions.

It is what it isn't. I'll just say like, I've done both, right? I've, I've been a CPO next to an SVP of Eng. I've run both together. Founders can play this role. And again, this is why I sort of say you have to optimize around talent in your organization. If your CEO can, has the skills, bandwidth, et cetera, to do this. they can do this. You can keep the organization separate. They can hold that. If they have a different area of expertise, if they've never done that before, if it's just not working operationally, they have broader areas of focus, then bring it together under someone. I don't think there's a perfect organization structure. This has just been one that's worked well in the shape of organizations that need someone like me.

Yeah. And along the same lines, designing an org around the person. I imagine there's not many very engineering background experience, people that are also really good at product and can do design. I guess how deep do you need to be in each of these functions to be successful in this role? Because it feels really rare.

You know, start a company and then you have to do it. In some ways, I mean, I think this is, you know, I've worked for both, and they've told me, I've worked for two. They go, I'm not a founder, but I'm the CEO. And I go, that's fine. I'm an operator, but I'm going to bring a founder mindset. And so I think as a founder, especially early stage, you do all this. You see how all of this is one person because honestly, sometimes it is one person and sometimes that person is you. And so I do think working in a small, very small startup gives you the opportunity to experience a breadth of functional skills and develop a breadth of functional skills that can set you up for this kind of role much further, further down the line. So I do think early stage startup experience is one of those, one of those shortcuts to getting, getting visibility here. You know, I think the other thing is, again, I said this earlier, so many people get siloed into like, I am a product manager and so my job is this, but it's not that. And I can only do this. And if designs are needed, I am blocked and I will just wait. I just give permission for people to make, we have a leadership principle inside our team that's like, there are no lanes. So like, our lanes are dotted, they're not solid, and that you can shift over and pencil out a design. An engineer can write a spec, all those things are fine, they're natural, they're normal, and I actually think they're quite healthy. And it's that kind of thinking that probably is going to breed the type of leaders that could do this. this type of role.

Awesome. Reminds me at GitLab, I just interviewed their head of product or CPO, and they have a core value of short toes. Don't worry about stepping on people's toes. Have short toes. Don't worry about people getting into your stuff. It's all good.

Yep.

Okay, you mentioned AI. Amazing segue to my next topic that I want to spend some time on. You built a tool called ChatPRD. My guess is it's The single most popular AI PM specific tool out there other than like some big companies tool, like, I don't know, Sprig or Figma or something like that. Okay. So first of all, just what is ChatPRD and then why did you, why did you build it?

Yeah. So ChatPRD comes out of, again, pace setting. And I'll actually tell you the real genesis of ChatPRD, which is at previous company, we had a quite technical product we needed to build. We're scrappy and resource constrained, and our platform PMs were working on something very important, but this was critical. We needed to get it done. We didn't really have a platform technical PM to spec this thing out, and it was quite complicated. And I raised my hand and I said, all I see this, I think I know what we need. And between the beginning of the meeting and the end of the meeting, I had used ChatGPT and a prompt to come up with very serviceable PRD spec for this very technical product. And I took that prompt and that long running ChatGPT thread and crafted the Claire version of a product leader or a product person that could, with really solid consistency, output product stacks, give good feedback, build out plans, build out tracking mechanisms and goals. And so while I say, like, she may just be a prompt, but she is my prompt. This was lovingly crafted over several months. And so when the GPT store came out for my team, I just said, hey, you all know I've been writing PRDs with chat party or chat GPT. I created as a GPT and just gave it to my team. I was like, here, you can use this if you want it. and they really liked it. And other people started asking about it. And I eventually ran into the monetization and access wall that is the GPT store right now. And so I've also been having a lot of fun coding again. And so I thought, this is easy. We're just gonna stand up a standalone app and wrap, come on, it's a wrapper, wrap some of this capability. It started as a wrapper, wrap some of these capabilities and just Publish it and put a fairly reasonable price tag on it and see what happens. And now I have thousands of people using Chat PRD every day. People are creating dozens of specs and PRDs every month. It's everything from I'm an engineer on a team with too few PMs and I get blocked. So I'm going to build my own requirements too. I'm a solo founder and I need to put some structure on my thought for my team to, I'm a PM and this has saved me truly hours of work. to get the basics of my product requirements done so I can spend time on the details. And then I've added on more functions and capabilities than the standalone app. So it is my personal product co-pilot that I've released for the world.

Okay. So first of all, where can people check this out? Is it chatprd.com?

That AI, come on.

That AI, of course.

Yeah, chatprd.ai.

I saw some sad about that the country that has.ai is just making so much bank right now.

So much money.

All these domains. Okay. Then in terms of the stack, just to be clear, so it started as a chat GPT prompt, custom prompt, you kind of evolved. Then it became a GPT, a custom GPT, and now it's your own app that is using the OpenAI APIs behind this.

It is, yeah, it's using the assistance APIs. And what's different about the standalone app versus the GPT is every person that uses the standalone app gets a customized assistant. So it learns from their specific content. It learns from their role. It learns from their company. So if you use the GPT version, you're not getting that customization. When you use the standalone app, you are getting that customization. And then I've layered on a couple different capabilities. So in addition to having the chat format, it will actually create the document for you and iterate on the actual doc for you and then working on some additional tools and integrations in the future.

Okay, great. What are the most common use cases again, just so people can get a sense of, oh, let me use this these things?

Yeah, about 60% of people use it to put in an idea and get a PRD out. So just like get the specs of what are my objectives and user goals? What are user stories? What is out of scope? Walk through the UX. I have in our standard template, I have what's called a narrative, which is like, how do you pitch this product, which I feel like is a thing product managers miss a lot, which is like how to position and pitch it. sequencing and milestones, measurements and goals, all those sorts of things. Now, that's the out of the box template. As I said, you can actually customize what your PRD template is in chat PRD. So if you do something different or want something different for your company, so about 60% of people are using it for that. 30% of people, I would say, are using it to put in a spec or a PRD or a strategy doc or a roadmap and improve it. And then the rest are using it to brainstorm ideas, internal PM work, like how do I come up with a good agenda for X, Y, and Z? That kind of stuff.

Amazing. Okay. So I wrote a post recently about how sharing a bunch of examples of how people are using different GPTs specifically at work. And I think it's spurred a lot of people to experiment with this stuff. If there's one tip that you could share for someone that's trying to build a GPT or their own custom app using OpenAI, APIs, any advice?

Prompt matters. Like, you know, we went through this, this whole cycle of like, prompt engineering is a thing. It's not really a thing. Fine tunes, like prompt really does matter. And like a good, like a good PM, I do competitive analysis. I use the same input and look at different, I look at like GPT or chat GPT. I look at the GPT store version. I look at other PM tools that do this. And I look at my, I think mine is actually better. And then, you know, I'm getting into a mode now where I may do some model experimentation and tuning behind the scenes. So it might not be open AI, it may be other things, but it matters. The instructions matter, the context matters for the quality of the output is something that I would say when building these kinds of products. I think the other thing is there is no solution right now for monetization, you know, knock on wood, open AI, and we'll figure it out. if I had more time, maybe I would create a platform out of what I've created for chat GPT to let other people sort of monetize their GPTs and add-on capabilities. But that is not, it's not out of the box yet for folks. And I think there's probably, there's a lot of work that I had to do to get it from here to there.

And are you making real money with this thing? And is the idea that this becomes the thing you do someday, maybe long term?

So my original goal, and I said this out on X. Some original goals, I just want to buy like a nice glass of wine a week. That was my goal. I can buy like cases of wine now. This is very exciting. Exciting for me. It's making what I would consider real money. Is it a venture scale thing?

No.

Does it need to be? No. I have a goal around my kids' education expenses. I would love for this to cover a little bit. So I have a ambitious but not audacious goal. for chat PRD. The other goal that I have, which is, is let's put monetization aside, is this is my joy space. Like zone of genius, joy space. And my goal with chat PRD is it has to be a hundred percent fun for me. Like this is my hobby. So I'm not doing anything that makes it not fun. It is a pure bliss space for me. I get to code on the weekends. I get to do customer support at night and I get to build things that I would use, I get to learn new technologies. I want to keep it in that space because it provides a lot of joy for me. So like put money aside, I just want it to be fun.

Love that. Okay, so some people listening to this, especially PMs, may be like, Claire, what the hell are you doing? Are you going to replace product managers in a year or two? This connects to something I'm just generally been thinking about and that's come up a bunch is just over time which skills and jobs of a product manager will be greatly enhanced by AI and which will be completely replaced by AI if any, so that people can understand which skills they should be investing in, which maybe are less important. So I guess just broadly, do you have a sense of just here are skills that are going to continue to be incredibly important and AI will not take these skills and jobs off your plate versus, okay, these are going to be the less and AI will do these.

At the highest level, I tend to be very short term pessimistic, although I'll frame that short term pessimistic and very long term optimistic. So I am a big believer that technology has made society generally much more, much, much more affluent, like wealthier, happier, healthier. Like I am a big believer in technology, and I am optimistic about its impact on the human race. There are lots of things that are not going well, but I really do believe that innovation and technology, like I'm excited for my kids' future. I'm not afraid of it. Now, that being said, I am of the mind excitedly that this is going to change stuff in companies incredibly quickly. And part of building ChatPRD is I hold myself to the bar as a technology leader. I need to be leading the league on understanding what this can disrupt, using these tools to make a better team, and actually shifting the size and shape of my organization in response to the technology around us. So is it going to eliminate PMs next year? Probably not. Are the ratios between PMs and other teams going to shift over time? Yes. Are the skills required going to shift? Yes. Could they shift much faster than we all anticipate? Probably. So I think there's a lot of change coming and I want to be prepared for it. Now, what do I think this replaces and what does it not replace? Like, it was really, I was reflecting on this question and like, communication lowercase C, I feel like is one of the places that it's going to be replaced. You know, there's, and I call it lowercase C is like the functional trading of information that allows other people to do jobs. Like, I think that these language models and these tools are really good synthesizing information, putting together communication and can coordinate who that coordination goes, communication goes to and get it out in, in many modalities of, of content. And so I'm really thinking about, you know, the PM as the keeper of cross-functional relationships and communication. is really, I think, potentially going to change now. But capital C communication of, are you influential? Are you convincing? Are you bold? Can you get this system of humans to follow you down a path? That's, I think, going to be much, much harder to replace. And so I'm thinking about the edges of, of communication and where they'll change.

And what they'll all. That's really interesting. I did a poll on Twitter and LinkedIn asking people of between communication, execution, strategy, and product sense, which skills are most likely to be basically taken over by AI. And communication was number one by far. I have a contrarian perspective, and strategy was the least, least voted. I feel like, so strategy work is essentially here's everything we know, about the world and competitors and the market and our advantages. Here's a plan to win in the market essentially. I feel like that's what AI is incredibly good at.

I agree with you. I totally agree with you. I think, and again, this comes to like synthesis, good decision making and communication. Like if you can synthesize, distill it into a plan and communicate that plan, I found these tools exceptional. Use ChatPRD and give it a try. Now, I think it's sort of the human aspect though of boldness, seeing the future in a way that a thing trained on priors cannot. Those things I still think, and then charisma and attracting, all those things to actually make the thing happen are pretty hard to replicate, which is why I love using chat purity, right? I'm not going to come up with the most genius way to do data export for Snowflake for some like, that is a solved area that we should just scaffold up. I should customize it to what we do, and then we should ship it. Like, that is not a place where my, you know, my magic skills as a human are going to impact. And, but I don't think a lot of PMs see it that way. I think there's this real identity shift that's going to happen where PMs think that their value is coming from their, you know, ideas that they manifest into the world and how they individually manifest them. And I think we're going to shift to like, are you, are you building the right stuff? Are you building it quickly? And is it, is it delivering no matter what the tool tool tool chain is? Yeah, I think your point about getting.

Buy in and getting everyone aligned, that's, I don't know how an AI bot does that unless everybody's got their own little bot and they're all like talking to each other. They all just get along. We're in, we're in. Now let's purchase this a little higher.

Yeah.

I actually made this list. I feel like this could be the entire podcast. But I made it like a quick list of here's the jobs of a PM. And it's interesting, and this is just, I don't know if this is a really question, but it's just interesting to think about which of these will some chat PRD maybe do in the future. So what is the job of a PM? You're writing PRDs, you're setting goals, proposing a roadmap, aligning a team behind a roadmap, developing a strategy, developing a vision. Communicating timelines, finding blockers and unblocking people, getting buy-in from upon high, getting budget resources for your team, giving feedback on product and design. Those are just some of the day-to-day jobs. I'm so curious just which of these AI can actually just do and not have to worry about.

A lot of them AI can do. And so the question is, which of them do you want to hand the keys to an AI tool and which of them are going to be much more valuable as a tool that an individual or a team's intellect can use to do a better, faster, higher impact job. And so I think, again, I believe in technology and I think this stuff, what's interesting about this moment right now is every week I see something that I would not have in a million years thought was possible three years ago. Every week something new comes out where it just changes my mind of what's possible. So I believe all of those are 80% good, functionally tractable. The question is, is 80% good, functionally tractable the best way to do that? Or can we take a certain type of person with a certain skill set backed by a purpose-built toolkit and make it 3x better, 4x better, 10x better? I think that's the more interesting question.

I think on the point of Amazing things are happening every day. Like we had SpaceX launch the Starship and it was barely mentioned anywhere. Like we have the spaceship that can take us to Mars now.

Yeah. I'm like, meh, we don't need to talk about that. I mean, you know, we get the kids up and stream it on YouTube. Oh, that's awesome. I think it's just, it's magic. Like we live in this magic time. I think it's so fascinating.

But I agree, we're getting spoiled by innovation. You said that there's this ratio that might shift with product managers, engineers. I'm curious which ratio, because engineers are also getting more efficient. and so it's interesting if the ratios will be consistent as engineers become more efficient, PMs get more efficient.

I wonder if whole roles get eliminated and replaced, and then ratios aren't even the right way to think about things. You know, there's the ratio of this PM role to this many, you know, 1 PM to 7 to 10 engineers or 1 EM to 7, like there's those ratios. I also think there's going to be this interesting shift of as a manager, as a leader, how you allocate budget against tools and people, I also think is going to shift. And one of the, and I saw something where somebody said that every role that they got asked to open, the team had to spend a week trying to automate it before they were allowed to open the JD. And it's just this very interest, you know, and in my mind, you know, people think that's scary and it's going to reduce jobs. Yes. And I do think there's also potentially other jobs that open up. Um, that could become very interesting. And so I don't know how it's going to pencil out. I really don't. What I do know is things are going to change. And I, as a leader and a person that cares for people's long-term careers, want to be much more forward thinking than, close my eyes to, to what the, the possible maybe dramatic changes are in our industry. So I'm thinking about it. I'm experimenting with things and I'm hoping that, you know, in our team at LaunchDarkly, we're leading from the front here, as opposed to on our back foot.

I'm thinking many people listening are like, okay, I need to get on top of this. I need to stay ahead. I want to follow Claire's lead. Is your advice simply create GPTs, play with ChatGPT? Is there anything else there to help people?

I also think PMs need to be thinking about building product skills, particularly around these like non-deterministic products. It's been quite into part of why I built ChatGPT is not just to stress test how is or ChatGPT is not just to stress test how these sorts of things are going to change the product function. It's literally like, this is a new type of product built by a new type of technology and it's moving very fast and learning how to build these kinds of products. If you can do that, I just think back to like when mobile happened. If you're a PM that jumped on mobile, You had the pick of the litter when it came to jobs in very interesting startups. And so I think we're in the same moment here where if you can ratchet down and specialize and learn a new technology, you actually can get into very interesting positions. So those are both of my motivations on chat BRD is, is understand how it impacts the function that I lead, but also understand how to build a great product with these underlying technologies that are just much different than the technologies that I've personally built on before.

And so for someone that's, say, not super engineering oriented, I guess how do you recommend people on your team explore this sort of thing? Is it?

Yeah, I do think studying products that are out there is quite interesting. You know, I love these, this idea of doing outside in product teardowns. Like, what is good about this? What is bad about this? How would I have written the PRD here? What would I be measuring? how would I think about error states? How would I think about if this is a great product, a good product, or an okay product? I do think doing that sort of crit on an external product can be a really accessible way to start to stress test your own skills around this and figure out where there are gaps. So that's one thing I think you can do too. I think there's a lot of no code, low code stuff you can play with. So even if you can't put your hands on keyboard and write code. You can certainly stitch together things and try some no-code tools. So that's another way to do it. The other thing is find where it's fun. I think, how fun is Midjourney? How fun are some of these more creative tools? And so find where there's something fun and build art out of it as a mechanism for learning. It doesn't always have to be commercially driven. It doesn't have to be part of work, it can just be find a space that you're personally interested in and play with what's out there.

Awesome. One last question about Chad PRD. So with Copilot, there's all these stats. It's making engineers 50% more efficient, whatever percentage. Do you have any sense of efficiency gains so far with Chad PRD?

So I have qualitative feedback from product managers who have used Chad's chat. PRD who have said, this has saved me dozens of hours I would have spent on writing documents. And another person said, I am a single PM on a team that's growing, and I don't think we're going to have to hire another PM now. So, like, you know, there's, like, both the people, like, there's both the individual aspect and the hours aspect, which is it's. It's helping individual PMs get higher leverage or costs, you know, a broad engineering or building team, and that it's helping them spend their time more effectively.

Many people don't want to hear that they don't need to hire PM. There's many people looking for jobs right now.

It's true. Like, but we can't, I mean, I think we saw this in the last couple of years, inefficiently hiring and building unsustainable costs into a company. leads no one to success. And if that's a lesson that I can teach anybody, it's sustainability in organizations is the responsibility of a leader. So, yes, I would love to give everybody positions. They're not positions to have. And the best I can do for the people in the team is be really responsible and really thoughtful about that, because that helps me grow their careers and helps me sustain their careers long term. So it's incredibly complicated. But also on the flip side, this is a very small startup. They can't afford another PM and they're extending their runway to build something transformational by not growing the team. And so, yes, people are teams and have these jobs and, you know, startups can't afford it and they still have great things to do in the world.

Great answer. To start to wrap up our conversation, I have these two segments, failure corner and contrarian corner, and we can pick which corner you want to head to. Would you like to share a story of your career where you failed and something you learned from that, or something you believe that most people don't believe, which corner sounds more interesting?

I'll take contrarian corner.

Let's go for there. I need some sound effects for these corners. do share.

I'm sharing this because you just released your podcast with Marty, Kagan. And I am a sales led product apologist unabashedly, which is, I think that it is okay to listen to the market and to be commercially oriented in products in ways that probably would make some folks in some types of product organizations squirm a little bit. And the reason why I believe this is I think there are tremendous businesses built on sales motions, and I disagree with the fact that that means you do not care for the craft or the experience of users. I think it can be the best of both worlds. So I love sales. I say if I was not in this role, put me on a quota and make me Enterprise West. I love, I love to sell. Um, but I think product teams, this like opposition we have sort of industry wide with sales led. I'm not convinced it's healthy in every organization. And I was listening to the podcast and I think you all were talking about, you said, you know, you know, SAP is like this and who wants to be SAP like Man Alive. There are a lot of companies out there that would love to be SAP now with a better product, with, you know, with better experience. with more love from the industry maybe, but like what a powerhouse company. And I think we as PMs turn our nose up to powerhouse companies too often because we want companies to be product-led, not sales-led.

Amazing. I'm gonna not go deeper into this topic 'cause I don't wanna be speaking on behalf of Marty's perspective, but I love there's so much debate that came out of that episode and I love that it trickles to more opinions being shared about ways product can work. So I guess just to understand your takeaway here is sales led companies can be awesome. They can build amazing businesses and it can be great to be a PM at a company like that.

Yeah. And they can build great products.

Great. Claire, is there anything else that you want to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

I will say, because we've been talking a lot about AI and replacing PMs. You know, I love to sell. I love to help people get jobs. So if there are ways that I can help people find great fit companies, it's one of the things that I get a lot of energy out of. So I just want to say that in the world, it's something that sparks a lot of joy. I get a lot of inbound, you know, can you help me get in here? Can you help me get there? But if there is a tractable way that I can help you get to a connected to a company or a role that you think is great for you, like that's fun for me and.

I'm totally open to it. How would people reach out to you to try to help you get them. Yeah.

So I am, I'm of course on LinkedIn. I'm on X@clairvo all one word. And then if you really want to go into the archives, I have a very fabulous TikTok where I am Chief Product Officer. It's all one word. Amazing.

So we'll link to all these in the show notes. Okay. And we'll refresh these two facts at the end of the podcast anyway, because I always ask this. Anyway, before we do that, Welcome to our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?

I am so ready.

Okay, first question. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

High Growth Handbook. I love and I like scaling people. So these are two books that the reason why I recommend them to people is because they have solid playbook answers to like 80, 90% of kind of everyday leadership scaling people questions. And so they're just like great reference books for what I think like great leadership inside startups can look like. And they solve some of the things that you don't need to solve novel, no, and then one on the fiction side that I've been recommending is Cersei, which is a retelling of Cersei's story from her perspective. And I, I, it's just, it's like a great read. And everybody I've recommended it.

She really loves it from Game of Thrones.

No, Circe from the Odyssey. So Odysseus sent... She turns men into swine.

Like a culture.

It's great. My kids are very into Greek mythology, so this is me meeting them on my side. Amazing.

The first two books are both Strike Press.

Shout out to Strike Press.

Yeah, Strike Press. And I have both books in the back there, and my laptop's actually sitting on the scale. Next question. What is a favorite recent movie or.

TV show you've really enjoyed? I have kids, so I don't get to go see movies. I mean, movies are like, that's an adventure. It's basically a vacation. So I haven't seen, I saw poor things, which if you like capital W, weird capital A art, highly recommend poor things. You know, the show that I recommend to people and to, I love Mythic Quest. You know, like, everybody references Silicon Valley, but Mythic Quest gets at some of, I was in gaming once, gets at some of my experiences in the, in the technology organizations got Technical female lead and think it's quite funny. So I like that question.

Do you have a favorite interview question that you'd like to ask candidates?

I like to ask candidates how they would improve our business model. I think so many PMs come in with a point of view of like the product and the target market, but like don't actually understand the underlying mechanisms of how we make money and what our unit economics are and how that could be improved. And the candidates that do come in and have a strong point of view on business model often are pretty successful in my organization.

And what do you look for in a good answer that's like, oh, wow, this Canada's great.

It's sort of thinking along the chain of value to, from how do we identify people in the market? What does our pricing model look like? What could they hypothesize our underlying unit economics or cogs are? And then where are their points of leverage along that whole funnel? So it's really, do they have a mental model for thinking about a business model? Have they thought at all about how we make money? either top line or margin. And then can they identify places where they might improve it?

Awesome. Basically understanding the business really well. Great. Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really like?

Okay, I'm going to make you laugh because you've gotten all these cars, right?

I have such expensive cars.

Oh, you've got expensive cars. I, it's not new. I love my minivan. I am a big fan of my minivan. As my friend says, it's like driving around your living room. And when you have two kids, you know what I want to do? I just want to drive around my living room, like Bluey included. And so, you know, no Rivian, no Mercedes-Benz, but I really love my Pacifica.

Okay, I was going to ask.

But the actual car product that I really love, I love Waymo. You know, we're in San Francisco. We've got these autonomous vehicles. It is top to bottom just a lovely product experience from the app to when it shows up. The sound design is great. The cars are comfortable. The displays in the car are great. Like it is now every time a tourist comes in, a friend comes in to visit San Francisco, I make them take a round trip ride in a robot car. So and then even I've had a customer service experience with the Waymo team where my friend left an iPhone It was very thought and customer experience was great. 24 hour service, like top to bottom, great product design, great service design.

I just got into Waymo actually in the wait list and so I'm excited to actually try it. I was actually treated as press early on to ride in a Waymo with like a person from the company just to experience it. And then I never got access to it after, so now I finally can try it.

Enjoy. It's so nice. It's my preferred mode of travel.

The future. We've talked about a lot of ways the world is changing. That's another great example. Two questions to go. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family they find useful in work or in life?

Fast beats right. Like every time when debating between, do I like noodle this for a thousand years and try to come to the perfect solution, or do I make a decision and get executing a direction I have conviction on? I always, I consistently see and believe that fast at the end of the game and at the end of the day wins. So fast beats right.

Final question. You mentioned TikTok. You put a bunch of awesome content out on TikTok. Any advice slash is there a tip you could share with someone that is trying to be successful on TikTok from your experience?

I've been neglecting my TikTok for a little bit with, with new job and winter with sick kids. This is my advice. And I think you know this, consistency drives audience growth, which is when I was on TikTok posting every day, you would get followers and engagement and the algorithm would, you know, bless you. And when you don't, you don't. So I think consistency in almost all things wins. The other thing that I I think is a really good advice for any quote unquote creator of whatever scale of whatever ambition is I think thinking about content creation as documentation, not creative generation is really helpful. So I just like to talk about what I think about at work, and I like to have an interesting meeting or interesting interaction, document why I thought that was interesting or what could be done better, and that becomes the basis of a very natural flow of content for me. So It's a tactic that's worked really well for me and helps me do stuff in my free time. Amazing.

It might be time to start exploring Instagram also with all this TikTok news.

I know, I know.

Yep. Claire, before we started this podcast, I asked you what your goal for this was and it was to be helpful to people. I think we've 100% done that in so many different ways. Thank you again so much for being here. Two final questions. We already covered these, but just to refresh people's memories, where can people find you online? they want to reach out and then.

How can listeners be useful to you? So LinkedIn X, I'm Claire Vo all one word. And then on TikTok, you know, get me back into it. Give me a follow. Maybe I'll start posting some of my.

Excellent content, but it's Chief Product Officer. Awesome.

And then how can people be useful to you? Help each other. That's, that's what I want the most, which is I do, I do really see it is a tough time in tech right now. And there are a lot of people looking for jobs. So one, I think help each other. And then the other, That other thing that I really, if I could ask your audience anything, is if you have a job where your job is typing into an internet box to create products out of nothing, really acknowledge the like privilege and joy of that job and try to have some fun because a lot of people want to sit where you're sitting. So have fun, appreciate what you have, enjoy it, enjoy each other.

Great and important advice to leave people with. Claire, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenniespodcast.com See you in the next episode.