Noah Weiss, former Slack CPO, shares his favorite Slack features like Cmd-K quick switcher and custom sidebars, three baby-gear picks including the Nanit monitor, and his wish for fully capable self-driving cars. He reads Techmeme and Stratechery daily, and advises future product people to build critical thinking and pursue passions across domains.
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LinkedIn News.
Hey, it's Tomer. Last week on the show, I interviewed Noah Weiss, the former CPO of Slack. We went into how curiosity has served him well as a product builder and a leader, how the quest for product-market fit needs to evolve over time, why Slack tries to appeal to teams over individuals, and how Slack succeeds in a crowded field of collaboration tools. This week, I get a little lighter with Noah with some fun rapid-fire questions. I was curious for you if you have your own favorite Slack feature that you're like, hey, this is my go-to, or alternatively, is there like a feature that you wish more people knew about because it's actually an amazing productivity accelerator or Delight accelerator, but you would wish people actually used it more kind of thing.
I'll give you both quickly. My personal favorite feature is what we call the quick switcher, which is when you hit Command K in Slack, it's like search as you type and you just type in and it's incredibly fast. It's all client side of like type in anything and you'll get back people, channels, files, whatever it might be immediately. And pretty much every SaaS product now has taken that design pattern and applied it, uh, which is great. Because you might as well borrow from other folks. Uh, I think the thing that people do not utilize enough that is game-changing if you're a heavy Slack user is that you can create these custom sections in your sidebar. And so you can create an unlimited number of, if you're on a paid plan, an unlimited number of sections. Each of those sections is collapsible. You can sort them in different ways by alphabetical or recency or even, you know, ML-based. And then you can change notification settings based on those sections as well. Okay. The point of that all is in your email inbox, the priority is always the last person who happened to want your attention. In the Slack sidebar, you can create something where the priority, the ordering of your sidebar is curated to how you view what's important to you, and you can organize it in the way that you see fit. It's not who raised their hand last. It completely changes how you use the product, and we've done a horrible job at making people aware of how to do it.
No, I can see you doing a newsletter on how to boost your productivity with just a few steps, uh, on a weekly basis.
Maybe in the future.
A lot of us have a lot of non-software products that we cling to. What's a favorite of yours?
I mean, my headspace is completely in the baby gear world because I have a 5-month-old daughter at home. Honestly, it's like a whole new world of amazing non-software products I've been exposed to. But to plug, I don't know, my 2 or 3 favorites, I would say the Guava, which is like a travel pack-and-play/crib/bassinet that compresses down to something you put as a backpack on an airplane. Unbelievable. And it's basically a hammock for babies. Uh, the Nanit, which is kind of a Nest camera, but with like AI-enabled tracking for your baby. So a little bit of software, but also just peace of mind. That's amazing. And then we have this like UPPAbaby stroller system car seat thing where it's honestly just incredible how simply it's been designed, where everything just swaps in and out, clicks in and out. So yeah, that's some of my favorite gear in the dad space.
That's very cool. This resonates with me. I was always looking for the gadgets within the parenting world.
Yeah.
And then what about a product that doesn't exist yet that you wish have existed? And no constraints, physical laws do not apply here. Something that you really wish existed.
I mean, something that feels like it's been on the verge of existing for 10 years, but probably is going to take another 20 or 30 is actually self-driving cars that can work under any condition and don't have to go 25 miles per hour in San Francisco. You know, Tesla's probably pushed the vanguard there as much as anyone has, but still it's like, it turns out the last 10% really matters. And I'm hopeful that, I don't know, when my daughter turns 18, she will not have to get a license, but I'm not going to be holding my breath.
Yeah, from my understanding, it's that left turn in a crowded junction that Yeah. That is still trying to get solved.
Especially in the middle of Manhattan.
I think their claim would be that, hey, if all the cars will be self-driving cars, we would have it yesterday. But because we're dealing with humans, it's much harder. For yourself, being curious and learning a lot, is there a favorite source that you go into, a book you recommend, a podcast, whatever that is that you find a lot of insight from in the past?
I would say a couple, just rapid fire, because these are all good. I mean, just for keeping abreast of what's happening in the industry, Tech Meme is basically the one place I go to every day to just see a bird's eye view. SureTechery, I mean, it's clichéd to say, but I think it's the best kind of meta industry analysis from Ben Thompson. Lenny has this amazing like product-specific newsletter plus community plus podcast I'd really recommend. And then a podcast that maybe most product folks don't listen to, but it's called Invest Like the Best, which sounds like it's very financey, but actually is just really great long-form interviews. with business and technology leaders. I think it is pretty phenomenal. And then books, my top 3, Innovator's Dilemma on business, Radical Candor on leadership, and Creative Selection on design. That would be my top 3 recommendations.
And then lastly, we talked about how in school you did a lot and you were trying to kind of figure out what, you know, what gave you joy, what you're excited about. If Now you have a 5-month-old. If she goes to college, what would you recommend her to learn if she wants to pursue a career in product?
Honestly, I mean, we'll see if the advice changes, but I think focusing on the subjects that teach you how to critically think, be creative, and actually build things, the interdisciplinary mix of those in areas that you're passionate about, that's what I would do. So if I I don't know if she's passionate about biology and engineering and genetics, then like, you know, go do biomedical genetic engineering. I'm sure there'll be a major in 20 years. And then, I don't know, find the space. And product manager to me is more of a role than it is a domain. So you can turn into that role in almost any domain. So find the domains you're passionate about, do a real mix of Types of coursework. Don't be overly myopic in what you focus on and figure out what energizes you. And if you can make work not feel like work, then that's a good formula for the future. So do that with a lot of different internships and figure out which one feels the least like a job.
Tune in next week for our new interview with Alexandria Streed, the CPO of mental telehealth startup Cerebral.
