Chief Product Officer at Wish: Mauricio Monico - Innovation and Differentiation in Tech Product Management
17 Aug 2023 · 30 min
In this interview, Mauricio Monico, Chief Product Officer of Wish, discusses the evolution of Wish’s marketplace from its early discovery‑shopping model to its current AI‑driven product recommendation engine. He explains how Wish achieved rapid early growth through cheap Facebook and Google ad spend, subsidized cross‑border shipping, and low‑price items, but later faced retention challenges due to product quality and delivery issues. Monico describes the shift toward sustainable user‑acquisition focused on return‑on‑ad‑spend (ROAS) and re‑engaging past users, while investing in basket‑building, category curation, and AI‑powered recommendations to increase average order value. He reflects on the competitive landscape, noting the rise of social‑shopping platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and shares insights on product management ownership models at Google, eBay, and Wish, as well as his personal journey from engineer to product leader. Monico offers advice on transitioning to leadership, emphasizing vision, outcome‑orientation, and people influence over process. The conversation also reveals his personal passions for coffee and Neapolitan pizza, illustrating how his hobbyist mindset informs his product‑building approach. The interview concludes with light‑hearted “fun questions” about favorite apps and a note on how to contact him via LinkedIn.
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AI has always been at the core of Wish. Like, it started with AI before everybody was talking about GenAI and all that good stuff. But that's how we got to know which products to actually, you know, expose it to you and how to optimize, how to learn over time, how to ensure that we actually understood your delights and ensuring that you actually could get those things on a budget. That has always been the demographics we play for and the value proposition we have.
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Hello everyone. This week we are excited to have Mauricio Monico, Chief Product Officer at Wish. He's a seasoned product leader with over two decades of expertise in the tech industry. And apart from his impressive professional achievements, Maurizio's passion shines through from perfecting the art of the Neapolitan pizza and crafting the perfect espresso and its broadening latte art. With such a diverse background, he spans enterprise product management at Microsoft, consumer growth at Facebook, and he has skills in various product development domains. We're going to delve into his journey, strategies, and experiences that have helped him be successful. In product growth and innovation. Mauricio, it's so, so nice having you on the show. Thank you for joining me today.
Thank you so much, Maira. It's a pleasure to be here.
Well, let's start about yourself and your role at Wish. Let's start with that.
Absolutely. So I'm an ex-engineer that kind of fell into product in an accidental way. Like Microsoft is kind of my school as product management. When they pitched me the role, I thought that there was an architect role. I had no idea what product management was at that point. And I started my career that way, like on the enterprise world as a product manager after being an engineer. So as far as Wish goes, it's a pretty interesting place. Like it's a marketplace. And by the way, like my career has been very much around marketplaces in one way or another. I haven't ran away from this for a few years, but I always ended up coming back to it. Ended up doing even marketplaces on agriculture companies. But it's been a journey. Like Wish, it was one of those companies that really started a different way of shopping, like very differentiated. They started discovery shopping in 2010. They started completely new industries. Google advertisement, as you see today in products, is really like a Wish catalyst kind of innovation. It's one of those things that, from a product perspective, when I joined Wish, Wish was very much in a situation that they were playing alone on their fields. Like discovery shopping was then and then alone. Amazon, eBay, all working completely different, like search-driven environments. And Wish was really flourishing on that. But as a marketplace, they had their own gaps. They really got the right growth, but how to deliver on that growth, there were significant gaps. Like the main complaints were product quality, time to door, shipping price. Like you probably have seen one of the Wish memes, like I thought about this, I got that. Very, very, very much true for a certain amount of time. And when I joined, I joined as like the merchant logistics person and really try to get that into a viable path again. My focus there was how to bring quality back into the merchant ecosystem, how to make logistics into an acceptable timeline. You're never going to be 2 days like Amazon, but 2 weeks coming directly from the other side of the world, 100% acceptable, especially if you're having like a really good value proposition of the products that you have. So I started that way. We actually fixed a lot of those problems. Now we have very much like a basket building experience in which people can buy everything they need for $2.99 shipping, prices are back on track. A lot of the places that we deliver to deliver under 15 days. And ever since the beginning of this year, I moved into being their CPO, leading product design and operations. And it has been a ride. It has been one of those things that I don't even remember what happened before because it has been a very intense world since the beginning of this year. And now Discovery Shopping is definitely a place that it's very competitive. Like there is a lot of different companies trying to do the same thing. Even TikTok is actually trying to get into that area. So very different world from when I came in, and that was just a year and a half ago.
It's interesting. So I think, you know, Wish is such a success story in terms of growth, and people think about like a company that grew really fast. So what do you think are the things that drove the growth in the early days? What are some things that Wish did well? And then, you know, the follow-up is, you said the industry is very different now. What do you think is driving growth and how do you think about growth today? But let's start maybe with the story because I think it's also very interesting.
Yeah, and I'll give you the story with the caveat that I was not here. So Wish was founded by this ex-Google engineer, like Peter. And when he came out, he basically was working on advertisement at Google. He came and founded Wish and he was looking for ways to expose and grow the products that they were bringing to the platform. And the interesting thing about those products is that they were not the type of things that people would usually search for. It's a new gadget for your kitchen. You don't know it exists. How are you going to search for that? Right. So you work through Google, you work through Facebook, and the way you see most people advertising for products today really started with that Wish ecosystem. And at that time, the product listing ads and Facebook actually advertising your products was extremely cheap. And not only that, shipping from China to the US was very subsidized. So you could actually ship one item for less than a dollar and you would pay cents to advertise and get a user into the site. So you could actually have very heavy investments on product listing ads, bring a user into the site, getting them to pay for a $1, $2 item, ship it from China for a dollar, less than a dollar most of the time, and still be profitable on that process. Even if that person never came back again, churning through users that way. And they did it extremely well. They were for many, many years, Facebook and Google's biggest spender. And we're talking like billions. That was being spent per year. So that world, that model worked really, really, really well until retention catches to you, which is you have touched billions of people and a lot of them have had like a less than stellar experience because at that time, like our attention to the product quality or attention to time to door or attention to the overall delivery experience wasn't there. It was like one of those cases that growth was really well taken care. The magic source of that was there. But the continuation out of buying the second product and continuing being like a Wish loyal user 100% happened for like a chunk of users, but a lot of users would actually have a bad experience. So the entire focus there was really like, how do we revert that? Like, how do you actually do this in a way that you present the right incentives for merchants to actually have the right quality of products? The merchants that keep their promises and ship on time and all that good stuff being raised in terms of ranking and exposure on Wish and ensuring that that health was in place. So their NPS and retention scores and everything else starts going up and this becomes a lot more of a healthy marketplace. Now you look into today, very different world. It's literally impossible to sell a $1, $2 item, ship it from China and be profitable in the process. It's just not a business model that can exist. If you look into Amazon, that was like, they do straightforward, like everything comes into FBA, they have thousands of those products and then they ship on their own. Warehouses. On our case, we're still a cross-border trading company. And what we focus on is how do we help a user build a basket of things that they love? What are their delights on a budget kind of thing, right? And our entire experience is really focused on help you find one product that you like from that one product, all the recommendations, all the AI that we can build to kind of help you find things that are on the realm and build a basket that's $10 or more. So that we can actually help you really find a deal because otherwise, like the subsidy does not exist anymore. It has to be one of those things that we're using technology to minimize the cost, but it needs to come with a warning. The marketplace, the macroeconomics have changed and Wish is adapting to that.
Very interesting.
That's really cool.
When you think about new user acquisition, you talked a lot about how the industry has shifted, but I think the prices and acquisition has also become more expensive and harder than it since when you guys started, how do you think about new user growth? Are you still focusing on it? Are you focusing on like just activating older users?
Yeah, so the traditional way that players are acting right now on this marketplace is that you see a lot of those new marketplaces spending a fortune to acquire users, like subsidizing products, subsidizing the cost of shipping, subsidizing everything. To be honest, we kind of did that, but we're not subsidizing. Back in the days, like, it was just cheaper And what we're taking is a little bit more of a conservative approach on this. Like we're trying to make sure that our return on ad spends are actually sustainable and not just like a burn cash to grow users kind of things. We're much more focused on ensuring that we have tons of users that we have touched in the past. Some of them we have given them a bad experience. How do we convince them to try us again? Showing them a lot of those things that were actually a problem 2, 3 years ago are no longer a problem. That actually is a much easier avenue for us, but it doesn't mean that we're not investing on user acquisition, but we're being focused and being much more conservative on how we actually look into ROAS. The things that we are doing is that we're looking into the funnel and we're trying to figure out like what are the things we can do on the funnel for one, get you to give us a try knowing that we have like millions of products. How do we quickly get you to some products that you love, remove the transaction barrier, for you to get those first products out with first purchase incentives and so on, and make sure that the funnel for you to actually get to checkout is very streamlined for you as a new user. The burning money strategy is no longer a strategy we're applying.
Got it. I think that makes a lot of sense. It's working.
It's definitely a challenging environment right now. Like, if you look into the environment they were in and the competitors that came into this, like, they are committed to spend a significant amount of money. Right now. And we just had our earnings yesterday. Like, the thing I would actually say is that us doing exactly what we have been doing, making small improvements to it, it's not a winning strategy. We need to find ways to innovate ourselves and differentiate. That's really how we win on this market. What you have seen is Wish started, lots of competitors did exactly the same thing we have done, exactly the same playbook. Playing the same playbook and just being in a fight for whoever is spending more money on user acquisition is not going to be a winning proposition for us.
And what are some of the ways you are continuing to innovate and working on the product in the next year or two?
Yeah, so there is a few things that are really, really interesting. So first of all, AI has always been at the core of Wish. It started with AI before everybody was talking about GenAI and all that good stuff. But that's how we got to know which products to actually expose it to you and how to optimize, how to learn over time, how to ensure that we actually understood your delights. And ensuring that you actually could get those things on a budget. That has always been the demographics we played for and the value proposition we have. Now, some of the things that we're investing on is, one, we're trying to make sure that when you move away from just buying one product, you have to buy like a variety of products. There is a friction that actually happens in there. It's obviously a lot easier for you to show you the product, have a very quick way for you to get to checkout, out you are, right? When you try to build a basket, simplifying that, being really smart in the type of recommendations you can give on how you actually make the— I added something to cart, I'm going to continue that journey as if it was a natural next step— has been another thing that we have been investing pretty heavily on. The other thing that we're actually really focused on is have a very clear understanding of what are the categories that we do really well, how to have a high-touch management of those categories and those products to ensure that we have the right experience for those users when they come into them. Because at the end of the day, like your interests, your delights, your hobbies, They're going to be connected to a variety of categories. And we need to make sure that the products we have are at the right price over quality level. It is fresh. It is the things you're looking for. And are there things that we can actually expose it to you when you come in? I know that.
I think that's really cool. And I mean, I think if shopping can be that way, you use the word delight earlier, and I love that because I think that's not true for all shopping experiences, right?
Shopping is evolving. Like, it's evolving very, very drastically. I was actually in a meeting yesterday in which we're actually looking into shopping in China and how it's evolving. There. It's incredible to see like the dominance that Alibaba in your traditional search-driven world has. Then you get JD, which is very much like Alibaba. You get Pinduoduo, which is also in that area. But then about 30% of e-commerce in China right now, and I might have this figure like a little bit ballparked, but it's really what they call interest shopping, which is TikTok-like or the Little Red app in a way that it starts with your desires and then it gets to products.
You know, you mentioned that TikTok is going to the space, and I think just social shopping and influencers are so big these days. How do you think about that? It's a growth channel for you, but also, as you said, the market is evolving, and instead of like going to Sephora, we see someone putting makeup on on TikTok and we buy the things that they use, right?
That's exactly it. Like, my daughter would only decide what she's going to buy depending on what she saw on TikTok today, but it's a very nascent area. How this is really going to play out, it's still to be seen. And I think that it's going to be a variety of different things that are tried, from live shopping, which hasn't really taken off in the West world, to how to merge that entertainment to taking actions to shop on something, which is where a lot of those social players have an issue. Like, that transition has not been easy. And actually, that transition is usually counter-profits on their ads world. Like Google has tried to kind of create a marketplace. Instagram has tried to create a marketplace. TikTok is in the process of creating a marketplace. Like I was part of Google, we tried to put a marketplace at Google. It's just the DNA that's required for marketplace and the margins of a marketplace in e-commerce is much lower than ads.
They're very competing if you think about Google and they make their money from like eyeballs. As soon as you take someone away from the eyeballs, I've clicked things on Instagram and I've, let's say, bought something. Once I buy that thing, I no longer go back to continue watching. So I can imagine the team that does the, oh, I want more eyeballs, they see that those experiences are taking away. And also the shoppers, do they want something like, you know, the experience of a shop on Instagram? I always, oh my God, this shop sucks. Where's the actual website? And then I completely out of it. They're very competing goals. And I think it's hard for a company to go after competing goals because then you don't go either, right? Right. So it's much better one mission. You're like, actually get a good experience with it.
That's 100% right. On the other side of the house, when you go to an e-commerce site, right, you usually see the products. You don't see the inspiration. You don't see how people are going to use it. You don't see the why they're going to use it. What are the other options? All of this is not there. So you get this division between those two worlds. For example, at Google, it was pretty obvious from anybody that worked at shopping that said, hey, like the world that people come to Google search for a product when they do do research and then they find ads on the top and they click on that ad and they go to a page that they have never seen before and they have to enter like payment information, their address, and they don't know if that's trustworthy or not. We knew that that was a problem. We knew that that was not the desired behavior anymore. And that's why Amazon was growing so much on that world. But at the same time, for a company that size that only has so much, exactly as you said, so much eyeballs on those listings on the very top of the page when you search for that product, when you have to kind of divert traffic from ads to you're going to transact at Google and they're very different value propositions internally is a conflict. And actually on the business model is a major conflict.
Yeah, exactly. And it's an organization that is very hard to provide optimal product. 'cause you don't have one north star, now you have two, which one's more important?
That's 100% right. And then you ended up giving budgets to each other and that's usually how you go about that.
I totally agree with that. And I think it's a very interesting way of looking at it. And that means that you guys are actually still in a much better position. We talk on this podcast both about the company's growth and I think it's been really interesting to hear what you guys are thinking on, but also about your own personal growth. So you kind of said that you went into product, I was listening last night to, I can't believe it took me so long to get to this book, but The Hard Thing About Hard Things, this whole thing about like what makes a good product manager and Ben Horowitz had his own opinions, but I'm curious about your opinions. You obviously fell into it, but you've had a really successful career. You got promoted to be a CPO of a very hot, cool company. What do you think makes a good product manager and what do you think helped you become a leader? You know, I think it's one of those industries where it's really hard to make the transition from product manager to a leader.
That's actually very true. Like, obviously I didn't even know that was hard to make this transition. I made the transition, but like once it became hot, yes, it was one of those places that that's actually really hard to get in. So there's several ways to look into this. And by the way, like there's no one definition for product manager. Like when I was working enterprise and granted it was a long time ago, like a definition of a product manager was very different than what I consider product manager is at Wish right now. When I worked at Facebook, Facebook and Google are reasonably similar in what they expect of a product manager, but they still had their differences.
Tell us the differences and how did they think about it and how is it different today?
So let me give a quick example here. Like at Google as a product manager, you own your product completely from go-to-market. Like you're going to work with the marketing team and so on and so forth. But like you own it end to end from ideation to implementation to go-to-market, right? You look at a company like eBay, those roles are completely separated. You have what they call like the business units. EBay, which is the people that own the problem. And then you have the product managers, where the people that own the solution, they're going to go and figure out how to build this, work with the engineers, figure out how the UI is going to look like, and finally deliver. And that the vision of like, what's the industry looking like, what is the macroeconomics looking like, what are the strategies that we're putting in place for eBay, is owned by a team. And then there is a separate team that basically thinks purely about the solves and how you're solving that issue. So like, Again, a bit of a differentiation of what is the scope. When you think about, for example, Wish, Wish follows very much like the Google model, which is obviously a much smaller company, but I have APMs on the team that own scope that there would be 15 people at Google only. It's a very different level of ownership. Like you obviously have a much broader scope, a much lower number of people, but it's still like what you focused on is the understanding of your customers, the understanding of the problem area that you're trying to solve. What are all the different ways that you can solve that? Like, should you even solve that problem? Is it important enough? Do people care enough? Or is there something else that people care more about? And then obviously, like, how to solve it. And then you go into, like, all the different stages of understanding the solution that you have actually solves the problem for the people that actually have that problem, right? Which people tend to get lost on that more often than not. Even if you know what you're doing.
I love that. I think it's interesting how different companies look at it. And do you have an opinion between these models?
I do think that there are reasons why eBay did what they did back in the days. And in some companies, like for example, when I was working on this agriculture startup, they're going to hire a bunch of tech people that have no idea how agriculture works. I, for one, like, have no clue. So I got hired to lead their product team, but no idea how commodities worked, no idea how farmers work, no ideas like how any of this works. Like grain buyers, what do they buy? It was completely foreign to me. I never stepped my foot on a farm before. It was just like I had no clue. Healthcare is kind of similar, by the way. Like when you get into areas that being the owner of knowledge, like the expert on that area, it's really, really, really complex and you can't expect the product manager to really understand that end to end. Then you kind of require a business unit. Like you require somebody that's like Maybe not into tech, but they're specialists on that. I think back in the days, maybe commerce was kind of considered that. I don't think so anymore. Like, I don't think it's that much of a specialized area. They require like the MBAs to come in and have the real deep understanding of that business. And then you have the tech people just execute. But there are some industries that that's needed. When I joined that company and like I really spent the time to understand my customers because I wanted to make sure that I could make decisions as a product owner. That allow me to solve the problem directly, not through the interpretation of somebody else. So I spent a lot of time with those experts. I spent a lot of time with those farmers. I would spend a lot of time going to co-ops. I read about commodities trading, how that works, and why do they need to care. So as a product manager, you need to kind of become an expert if you're really trying to solve the issue. And some areas are easy to get in, some areas are a little harder to learn. And I think agriculture is harder than you think. No, I don't.
I agree with that. I think it's really interesting. The funny thing is, before marketing, I really thought I wanted to be a product manager. Manager, and I got to be a product manager, and then I was like, I suck at this. This is not my thing. I am not like detail-oriented enough. I think it's a very challenging job, right? There's parts of product management that I think I could be very good at, like designing the product and being strategic. It's like one of those roles where you need both to be strategic and visionary, but also be very detail-oriented. And I think it's hard to find both. It's hard to find good product managers who have it all. And I think depending on the role, like the way you've described it, if you're only owning the solution, maybe you're going to be as strategic and you're more important. So I think there's no size fits all in product management. Like a product manager who's really good at an eBay might not be the right product manager for a company like Google, right? So let's maybe move to the transitions where a leader, right? Like what do you think it takes for a product manager to move in that leadership position? And do you have any advice for people who are looking to make that switch or even looking to move on their next career product manager since there's no size fits all?
That's very true. And by the way, I advise a lot of people that are either like engineers or even HR at one point. That really wanted to get into product management and tried to figure out how to do this. And exactly what you said is when I got into product management, I honestly thought I sucked. And to be honest, for the first 3 months I probably did. It was not like an immediate fall in love kind of situation. I hated my life for 3 months. I really wanted to go back to engineering. I was like, this is not worth it. But then after a little while, like you kind of learn and enjoy the learning process and the impact you can have as a product manager. It's much higher than what you can do as an engineer that's actually solving those problems. Enjoy being an engineer. Like on the side, I do some things once in a while just for the puzzle part of the house, but you can't have this kind of breadth. You can't have this kind of truly thinking through like what are the problems you're trying to solve? How do you go about solving those problems and scaling yourself that way? So I think that the main thing that I actually talk to people when they're trying to go into leadership roles, right? It's that there are two things to focus on. Again, this is my opinion. I don't know if this is the well-accepted version of it, but it's not by focusing on being a manager. Like, I think that there is a component of my time that's actually being a people manager, but like the biggest component of my time is independent of the fact that I have an organization under me. It's actually influencing people on a vision, it's actually influencing people on a strategy and getting people to buy into it, which by the way, you do this as an IC at a much lower scope, but you do this as an individual contributor anywhere. So your focus needs to be on, first of all, like what's your passion on this? Like, why do you want to be in a leadership position? Why do you care about that? And if you truly care about people management, that might be one component of it. But a much bigger component is scaling how much you can do and how much impact you can have to a team. And there's certain things like every transition for me has been like a learning experience. When I moved into management was one of those things that a lot of people that have done their job and they think they do that well, they tend to look into their team and really focusing on the things they wouldn't like it to be focused on them, which is like you focus on the how to do it., and not what is the outcome. So when I was at Microsoft and actually became a leader for the first time, my manager came to me and said, hey, like, you have this bar on your team. You shouldn't care this much if they're actually doing their PRDs exactly this way. If they're doing XYZ exactly the way you do it, you need to care more about the outcome because I was going to drive a lot of people crazy. And that was really, really good advice that I took to heart. Focus on that. Don't obsess on the how, obsess on the outcome.
I love that. I mean, it's a really good management. I think it took me some time to learn that as well when I transitioned to management. I think it's a hard one, especially if you are, I've seen with myself, but also with many others at Branch, I think sometimes the people who are very good individual contributors have a really hard time coming back because they are so focused like, well, I was very good. I did it this way. And it's so hard to understand that others may not do it the same way. Very cool. You know, I think one thing that was very interesting about her background is your obsession with crafting food and coffee. And I think learning about you as a product manager, it's like all those things are also products, but where does it come from? How is that tied to your professional, if at all? Yeah.
So it's interesting because I'm Brazilian and coffee in Brazil is an obsession. Like people drink coffee up to 9 PM and like, honestly caffeine doesn't have an effect on me at all. Like I can drink coffee at 9 PM and go to bed at 9:30. Like there's no impact whatsoever. But I personally didn't like coffee until like I was in my mid-30s. And then I started learning and tweaking and trying to play with different types of coffees and start liking. And then there was like an obsession of trying to get that perfect espresso shot. My friends would look and say like, everybody gets a coffee in 3 seconds, put it in espresso press above and you're done. You're there like playing with the powder for 10 minutes to try and get it 100% leveled. Like, I don't play golf. I don't play any of those things that people are actually like into perfecting that sports. I like perfecting food a little bit. Like, so coffee is one of those things that just getting a little better every time is a thing for me. It's kind of almost like a meditation, to be honest. In between meetings, you take 10 minutes and you go to a coffee, right? The pizza side of the house is really in São Paulo, where I'm from in Brazil. Honestly, people are going to hate me for this, but they make the best pizza I have ever eaten in my life. It's really good pizza, very different types of toppings. Like, the crust is just amazing. And then I moved from that to Chicago, which they do have a pizza, but it's more like a lasagna than it is a pizza. So moved around, moved to Seattle. Seattle also was not really well known for that. So I decided to kind of start trying this myself and I would buy the dough and try to make it at home and just using the toppings that we use in Brazil. And that didn't work. So I was like, okay, let's take this to the next level. Let's learn how to do this dough. I tried a New York style type of dough, which is very similar to the Brazil one. And then finally I found the Neapolitan recipe, which is really like, it's complex as it gets. Like it takes 72 hours for you to have the dough in a place that you can do anything with it. Again, it's like very similar to the coffee ecosystem. Like I always perfected a little bit more and get it a little bit better next time and do something a little bit different. And if I'm doing the same thing over and over and over and over, I get very bored. I don't do it anymore. But now it's like with the pizza and the coffee, they're both, it's always a tiny bit different, a tiny bit better. My wife hates it because she's like, it was good last time. Stop you with this. But it gives me a little bit of pleasure to get it, get to the next level.
I love it. Well, this is really fun. I feel I learned a lot, both about product and about you. But I think we always end with these 3 fun questions. And I know you said you listened to my podcast before, so, you know, I haven't changed that since day one. Okay. Question number 1. What is one app that if you had to delete all the apps on your phone, you would keep?
So this one is going to be a funny one, which is Google Maps. The reason I'm going to say this is that I'm so directionally challenged. I can't get to the corner of my house without Google Maps. Every time I would go for a walk, like on the days that we used to do walking one-on-ones at the office and everybody was at the office and so on and so forth, the first thing I would say is like, you're going to pay attention to where we're going to go because you have to bring me back here. I would get lost so easily. I grew up on the days of MapQuest. Without the MapQuest, I wouldn't get anywhere. Nowadays, without Google Maps, I'm done.
I love it. Okay, an app that allows you to talk to an animal or type of animal.
What would that be? So we have a dog. I have zero interest in talking to my dog because he'll chew the magic and all that stuff. Like, I know what he thinks. It's better that way. But my daughter got like this tiny Schnauzer. This thing's crazy. I would love to be able to talk to that dog just to understand what it's thinking, right? Like, for starters, every time he needs to go number 2, he finds a wall and he puts himself against the wall. And he goes on the wall. It's almost like he's trying to paint and sees every wall as a canvas. Like, I don't know what's going on with that dog. So I'd love to understand what goes into that dog's mind. That would be a great use of trying to speak with an animal for sure.
That is really funny. Okay. And the last one is what's an app that maybe your family, friends would be surprised that is on your phone?
It is an app called Plantion. It's basically, it helps you look at your garden, see what's wrong with it, uses AI and the images and try to figure out instead of you buying like a ton of chemicals, It just says put some sugar in it, put some coffee in it, do something that's actually balanced the nutrients on it. And the reason they would be kind of amazed with this is because I'm not the gardener type, but like if I have 15 minutes here and there, I do like to go and distract with taking care of something in the garden. It might be arranging the flower bed. It might be like seeing what is wrong with my grass, right? I actually now live in the New Hampshire side of the house, which like you get land here and you have to kind of see what's happening with your grass. It's a neighborhood obsession. So that became one of those apps that people that know me would never even guess I would actually have on my phone.
That's funny. I love it. I love it. Very cool. I'm going to try out the app for the plants in my place. Well, Mauricio, this is so fun and thank you so much for your time today and for being on the podcast. And if people want to find you, get a hold of you, what's the best way of reaching out?
Absolutely. So by the way, thank you so much for this. It was great to be here. I have seen your show so many times. It's actually amazing to be actually part of it. So I think the easiest way to get ahold of me is LinkedIn. I'm fairly active for somebody that's not actively social, but LinkedIn is the best way to get to me.
Okay, awesome. Well, thank you again, and it was great having you on the show.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please leave a review wherever you listen to this and share with someone trying to grow their career. Until next Until next time, keep growing.
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