CPO Mastery Podcast (Product Faculty)

Ami Vora is the Chief Product Officer at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace last valued at $12.59b. She has a wide array of experience in tech, having been an early employee at Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. She has also held a variety of roles, spanning product, marketing, and even operating Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund). Alongside her impressive career, Ami writes insightful blog posts about scaling tech products, teams, and cultures, and we unpack some of those posts in this conversation.

In today's episode, we discuss:

• Ami’s fascinating journey through tech
• Tactical advice for forming a product vision and strategy
• What product simplicity means, and how to achieve it
• Some of Ami’s most popular career and product frameworks
• Advice for operating amidst uncertainty
• How to optimize your career like a product

Where to find Ami Vora:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amvora/

Substack: https://substack.com/@amivora

Where to find Moe Ali:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productfaculty

Twitter: https://twitter.com/productfaculty

ProductFaculty: https://www.productfaculty.com/

Referenced: Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund) that Ami operated: https://medium.com/swlh/fbfund-the-investment-fund-youve-never-heard-of-that-helped-start-lyft-bc57ee661162

Faire: https://www.faire.com/

“If I can see a problem, it’s mine to solve” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/if-i-can-see-a-problem-its-mine-to

“It’s not prioritization until it hurts” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/its-not-prioritization-until-it-hurts

“Listen, Document, Decide” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/learning-to-make-decisions-in-a-new

Timestamps:

[00:00:59] Ami's background

[00:02:48] The mentality of leaving Microsoft for a temp role at FB

[00:05:06] Advice for forming a product vision and strategy

[00:09:12] What it means for a product experience to be "simple”

[00:10:24] How to create simple product experiences

[00:10:52] The "Listen, Decide, Document" framework

[00:12:23] Ami's attitude to prioritising amidst uncertainty

[00:13:37] Getting comfortable with making wrong decisions

[00:15:48] It's not prioritization until it hurts

[00:16:36] How to optimize your career like a product

[00:18:52] How to make time for career development

[00:20:53] If you see a problem, it's yours to solve

[00:23:03] Leadership and career hack: Upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0

[00:25:30] How to solicit valuable feedback

[00:27:35] The future of PM and how to stay ahead of it

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It's not the calibre of people that make great empower teams. It's strong coaching that product managers get at these companies that make them empowered. Empowered product teams don't need less management. They need. Better management let's dig in.

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Tamar, former CPO at Slack and a Venture Partner at IVP, has a rich history of leading and delivering innovative products on a massive scale. Previously, as the Chief Product Officer at Slack, she guided the product, design, and research sectors, witnessing a 10x revenue surge, the company's public listing, and its eventual acquisition by Salesforce. Prior to Slack, Tamar served as Vice President at Google, where she held pivotal product and engineering leadership roles, significantly contributing to flagship products like Search, Identity, and Privacy. In addition to her remarkable career, Tamar sits on the board of several public and private companies.

In today's episode, we discuss:

- Tamar’s fascinating journey through tech - What worked and what didn’t work at Google, Amazon and Slack - Why should we prioritize customer-centricity - Tactics to stay ahead of the trends - How to create a believable and compelling product strategy - How to keep your team motivated - How to manage alignment - The potential of foundational product management in driving growth - Diverse processes that can fit different organizational structures - The best OKRs - Impact of AI

Where to find Tamar Yehoshua: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamar-yeh... Substack: https://substack.com/@tamaryehoshua

Where to find Moe Ali: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productfa... Twitter: https://twitter.com/productfaculty ProductFaculty: https://www.productfaculty.com/

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