Jiaona Zhang (JZ)

Reader feedback for my latest post about how to use AI and my PRD template to never have to write a PRD from scratch again. Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/eJjVXJUJ

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Ever since we launched SHAKTI, every quarter we write a letter to our LPs = Each letter includes an update on the portfolios, the GP's (our) view on the zeitgeist, an interview with a portfolio CEO and an interview with a TITAN = So far, we have 16 such letters = it's been on our "to do" list to share these publicly (i am lazy) = then Google comes along to save lazy people like me (thank you NotebookLLM) = here's a 10 min podcast summarizing our journey since Dec/2020 with the 16 LP letters as source = if you wanted to know what we are about, this is a pretty good place to start = https://lnkd.in/db7K2TrT cc SHAKTI

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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We had Linear event for founders in SF last night, and as part of that I had a fireside chat with Patrick Collison from Stripe. We covered some topics like the importance of craft, product management, good leaders, etc. Some highlights: The importance of craft: At Linear we see the craft as the requirement for quality. People who care about their craft, almost automatically produce quality. Patrick: "We want to employ really good people. Really good people just don't like working on kind of sloppy things. There's just a deep spiritual aspect to that." Power of small teams: In my experience in companies, some of the best work was always done by a small, focused team, most features at Linear are built by 2-4 team members. Patrick: "The original iPhone software team was 20 people. The kernel, the apps, the browser, the touch interface, like the whole thing. So when people are telling you that they need 40 people for some project, you can explain to them how the iPhone was built with 20 people. So how big would you consider your project in multiples of the iPhone?" How Stripe still builds products in a startup way: Patrick: "There is an internal recipe for this which first guides you to figure out the right user for the product, then the team should go talk to some of those people. Then you should get some of these people into the Slack channel or some other channel where you can get them to try it, get more feedback or try the product. Once you have 5 excited users for something, you can scale it to 100. Then you can start looking at some metrics, but again you look at things like is it actually solving their problems etc."

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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Hi everyone! I don’t share too often on here, but we’re at a very exciting moment at AptDeco, and I wanted to let you all in on it. AptDeco opened a community investment round and the response has been incredible. We’ve raised over $2M so far from institutional investors, customers and supporters. Nothing is more validating than customers doubling down with their own capital. And now, I’m inviting you, my network, to be part of our journey. When we started AptDeco, we set out to make buying and selling furniture easier. Over the years, many of our competitors have come and gone, but AptDeco continues to thrive. Why? Our technology, logistics and branding continues to set us apart and that's why major retailers including West Elm, Pottery Barn, La-Z-Boy, Article and 30+ more have partnered with us. The beauty with this investment round is that anyone can be an investor. Learn more and invest directly at wefunder.com/AptDeco.

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Hiring your first Product Manager One of the hardest roles to hire for young companies (10-15 engineers), is their first PM. Every founder wants a unicorn candidate: an experienced IC PM with 5+ years of experience in the same/adjacent domain. The challenge is that most top candidates: (a) don't want to take a career risk working at a no-name company, and if they do, (b) want to come in as Head of Product or lead a team from the get-go. It's a source of endless frustration for founders, but it's the reality. I recommend accepting this reality and evaluating four alternate paths / archetypes to hiring your first PM: (a) "Failed founder": Find a failed startup in your space (or in an adjacent space, or even in the same broad space, eg B2B SaaS or DevOps) and hire the founder as your first PM. These people have shown the agency to manifest talent and capital, build a product, get some customers, and do this all scrappily. These are the attributes you need in your first PM. (b) "Junior PM": Sacrifice your desire for product experience and target PMs with ~2 years of product experience. Offer them the opportunity to become the first product person at your company and work closely with you, the founder. This has a higher success rate than going after more experienced candidates, but the risk is they might flounder after joining your startup. (c) "Second year MBA": There are many PMs with 2-3 years of experience, who are in business school, getting their MBA. Bring on a second year MBA (with prior PM experience, or maybe even prior Engineering, Design, Marketing or Analyst experience) as a Product Intern, several months before they graduate. They might have the same inexperience risks as path (b) above, but you get a chance to try before you buy, and can slowly ramp them up over a few quarters to build trust and take on fulsome projects. With top b-schools having an employment rate of ~40-50%, this could be a powerful option. (d) "Existing Employee": Convert an existing employee (Engineer, Designer, Marketer, Business Analyst) into a PM. Here's an article I wrote on this option: https://lnkd.in/gXYN5ETj tldr Founders of young companies need to think different when trying to hire their first PM. Just going after the ideal candidate will likely not work for most startups. FWIW, my order of preference among the alternatives above is (d) > (a) > (c) > (b).

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Gusto Empowers Non-Tech Staff in AI Development Edward Kim, Gusto's co-founder and head of technology, challenges the prevailing notion of replacing existing teams with AI specialists. In a recent discussion, he emphasized the value of non-technical team members in AI development, highlighting their deeper customer insights over conventional engineers. Gusto, a payroll startup boasting over $500 million in annual revenue by April 2023, innovates by involving its customer experience team in creating AI solutions. One notable outcome is "Gus," an AI assistant designed to interact with customers based on "recipes" written by these non-technical members, marking a significant departure from traditional software development paradigms. Kim illustrates this transformative approach with the story of Eric Rodriguez, a former customer support team member turned influential software engineer, thanks to his self-taught AI prowess. Rodriguez's creation, a CoPilot tool for the customer experience team, streamlines workflows by providing instant, accurate responses sourced from Gusto's internal knowledge base. This example underscores Kim's vision of leveraging non-technical employees' domain expertise to enhance AI applications, making software development more accessible. Gusto's strategy of empowering non-technical staff to contribute to AI development without coding knowledge reflects a broader shift towards a more inclusive, bottom-up approach to technological innovation. By providing tools that translate their domain knowledge into AI functionalities, Gusto not only democratizes AI development but also aims to improve efficiency and customer service. Kim criticizes the industry trend of hiring expensive AI specialists, arguing for the value of upskilling existing employees to advance AI applications, a philosophy that promises to reshape the company's workforce composition and operational dynamics in the face of AI integration. https://lnkd.in/dQkKDZVk Platform: TechCrunch Author: Anthony Ha #technology #ai #artificialintelligence #gusto #techindustry #techstartups #aidevelopment #techstaff

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ENOUGH WITH THE FRAMEWORKS! If you've worked with me, you've probably heard me say that. Product teams should be focused on driving outcome and impact, not falling in love with the process. And that's something Peter Yang from Roblox knows all too well. We had a great conversation on Next Gen Builders about how the PM role is evolving, how to use #AI to focus on more important work (like talking to customers), and more. Tune in to our conversation: https://lnkd.in/dY-AZh2s

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One of the fun parts of starting a new job is getting to ask “Why” a thousand times a day.* Why is this our strategy? Why is this our target customer? Why choose this problem? Why do we believe this market is big enough? Why do we believe our solution is differentiated? Lean Startup Canvas is a handy tool to remind ourselves of the kinds of questions to ask. If there are questions about revenue model, market size, or similar “what needs to be true for this to be big enough, and how confident are we that those assumptions can become true one day”, I like to model out all of those assumptions, and then see which we need to de-risk.* If there are questions about what customer we want to target, what Jobs To Be Done we want them to hire us for, what would make us a differentiated solution, I like to turn to generative research. This starts with recruiting 6-10 people who 1) have no prior relationship with me or anyone at the company, 2) are likely to represent the kind of customer we would focus on. Then, we should interview them with open ended questions that stay within the context of our focus area. And don’t sleep on the power of ethnographic research, diary studies, card sorting exercises, etc. Let them take us to where they want to go, what’s on their mind, what feelings do they have. What we’re hunting for are flare ups of emotion that can reveal a worthy pain point. These are subtle — an edge to their voice that lasts half a sentence, a big sigh or rolling of the eyes, a shaking of the head. We’re fully present during these interviews, because these moments are easy to miss. When we see those moments, we pounce. “Can you say more about that?” “How does that make you feel?” “How do you deal with that today?” These are the nuggets of gold that can lead us to a problem worthy of Product Market Fit, if we can validate that the problem is 1) wide spread enough, 2) solvable in a differentiated way, and 3) can be monetized sufficiently. What we absolutely must not do is pretend we’re doing generative research but actually we’re user testing solutions we already have in mind. Evaluative user testing is a great and under-utilized tool, but it’s not the same thing. If we go looking for proof that we are right, we’re pretty likely to find it because human brains are great at confirmation bias. Don’t: “What if I presented you with this solution, that could do x, y, z. Would you use it?” Do: “You mentioned [problem hypothesis]. Tell me about the last time [problem hypothesis] happened. What was it like? What did you do? How did it make you feel?” We’ll get to the solution design soon enough, but until we have confidence and clarity about what problem we want to solve, any solutions we do build are hard to evaluate.* —————— *If you’re interested in reading the footnotes as well as my work-in-progress thoughts (today: “good and cheap” > “great and expensive”), sign up for my free newsletter: https://lnkd.in/g44P3_rB

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Thank you, Lenny Rachitsky, for hosting such a fantastic Lenny's Friend Summit! The density of talented product professionals and high-quality discussions made it well worth the long journey. Here are a few ideas to make future summits even more impactful: 1. 🔮 Personalized Networking: With so many brilliant people attending, networking could go one step further with a feature that provides each attendee a personalized list of connections, matched by LinkedIn profiles and individual summit goals. This would make networking more targeted and beneficial. 2. 📊 Deep-Dive Workshops: Adding smaller, focused workshops on specific cases and experiments from top companies (e.g., how AI implementations boost core user metrics) could give attendees even more actionable insights, in addition to the main talks. 3. 🌐 Roundtable Details: Roundtables were fantastic. Adding more details, such as key discussion questions, could help attendees select those most relevant to their current challenges. Looking forward to seeing this summit continue to grow and evolve! #LennyAndFriendsSummit #productmanagement

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Why'd I make the jump to fractional from full-time? Here's a bit about how I thought about this jump myself: 👍 1 - Saying “yes” to product: After a career building products at Airbnb and early-stage cos, I still fundamentally loved the craft of product management. So continuing to build products and teams in some capacity was a no-brainer. 📕 2 - Learning from new products, industries & teams: I'm a curious guy. I wanted to work in a capacity that enabled me to work on, and ultimately learn from, a diversity of teams, products, and industries. And after having spent 5+ years at Airbnb, I was also eager to get back into early-stage product and company building (which is ultimately what attracted me to a career in tech and what led me to work on the founding team of my first startup during college). 📈 3 - More impact: My career has spanned building products and teams across growth and early-stage cos and in product & non-product roles. Given this, I felt uniquely positioned to drive product and business impact for cos at the earliest stages. And doing this in a fractional capacity, where I would be able to work simultaneously across multiple products and cross-pollinate the learnings from one company to the next, would enable me to deliver even more impact than I otherwise could have. 💪 4 - Increased autonomy, control: I also wanted to experience a relationship with product mgmt that afforded more autonomy. I wanted more control over what I worked on and how I spent my time. Through this, I wanted to develop even more control over my career and my trajectory. 👨‍💼 5 - Scratching that entrepreneurial itch: After having worked in growth-stage tech for more years than I (tbh originally) anticipated, it was time to re-tend to the entrepreneurial bug (that's always lurking). I wanted to get back to being an owner and building something from the ground up.

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The biggest mindset shift most senior PMs / Designers / Eng Mgrs / TLs who are building customer-facing products in midsized & large companies must make: Your main job is to make your product win. While it may seem like this Job # 1 should be obvious to all, it really isn’t. Here are some other leading contenders for Job # 1: - Main job is to make my manager happy - Main job is to make execs happy - Main job is to keep stakeholders happy - Main job is to keep team members happy - Main job is to build excellent systems - Main job is to get promoted - Main job is to launch as promised - Main job is to create user delight - Main job is to create customer value (some people LOVE saying this one) Now, I understand that we live in the real world and that there are “good reasons” why the above contenders are at least worthy of consideration. But I am saying what I am saying precisely because we live in the real world and because I think you should do your best to improve your odds of *long-term career success*. You see, as a passionate & ambitious product person who builds the mindset of making your product win as your Job # 1, you will do things & learn things that most of your other peers are not doing & learning. And by doing that over the long arc of your career, you will position yourself to reach closer to whatever is your optimal success potential. This is clearly not the only possible path and it may not be the right path for some / many (no single path can be). But it is at least worth considering if it seems to feel right to you. Most people spend years / decades in mid-sized & large companies and yet are never even told that this is an option they should consider for their long-term career success. If that is you, I want you to view this post just as a possibly helpful pointer. If it doesn’t resonate, that’s totally fine. But if it does resonate, you might over the long-term see yourself becoming a more competent, a more effective, and possibly even a more happy product person.

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After 10+ years working with early-stage startups it’s fair to say I’ve seen I’ve seen some things (& some things I will never unsee), learned some things, earned some stripes, some scars, and some measure of expertise (one hopes) helping more than a dozen startups find product-market fit. While I’ve enjoyed year-long runways at well-funded startups that were eventually acquired, or went public, or very publicly imploded—what really taught me the real meaning of Lean startup was working with self-funded founders who had ten compelling concepts but resources to build one. When you don’t have a year to be wrong; you learn to get it right very fast. If you are a founder facing your own set of high stakes decisions & tradeoffs; we can help. For free. You can book a 1 hour chat with us to talk through all the things racing through your head. We know what’s involved in getting something tested, validated, and built; this is what we do every day all day. We might not have all the answers but there is a good chance we can give you some clarity, some calm, some options. Call us at 1.844.4FLAGRANT or DM me. And if you want to get a sense of what we are like as hoomans- check out our Delightful Reveal series. It’s all the things we have been reading, watching, listening to, & enjoying. https://lnkd.in/gfrz9tQS #startups #entrepreneurship #socialentrepreneurs #innovation

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The newest issue of The Pragmatic Engineer found a surprise uptick in eng hiring in the typically slow summer season - I'm curious to see how the macro environment impacts this uptick as we head into the fall, but I remain hopeful. I asked Gemini to give me the tldr of the article to share with my team (sorry, Gergely Orosz) and found it missed one of the most interesting pieces of the article. Gemini's highlights - Unexpected surge: Tech recruitment has seen an unusual spike in June and July, contrary to typical trends. Increased demand: Startups, especially AI-focused ones, are driving the hiring uptick. Global phenomenon: This trend isn't just limited to the US; Europe is also experiencing increased recruitment activity. Reasons for hiring: Companies are backfilling positions, investing in growth due to improved financials, and responding to increased VC funding. Challenges remain: While the job market is improving, finding qualified candidates and offering competitive compensation remains difficult for many companies. What I found most interesting - The nature of the backfills: the article finds that a lot of new headcount are actually backfills of folks that were "over-slashed" during rounds of layoffs. Not entirely surprising with the "trim the fat" and "rebuild lean" mentality, but interesting nonetheless. Either way, the uptick is encouraging (and don't always rely on Gemini's tldrs). #hiring #startups #VCbacked #softwareengineering

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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