Work-Bench Hosts NYC’s First SaaStr Social
Why You Need a Great VP of Product
By Jane WangAugust 5, 2014
Last Wednesday, Jason Lemkin moderated NYC's first SaaStr Social with Greenhouse.io co-founders Dan Chait (CEO) and Jon Stross (Chief of Product). The three discussed what to expect from a VP of Product, how to make that hire in the first place, and how the CEO and VP of Product can work together to accelerate operations post initial traction. Below are a few highlights of the evening:
“If you don’t think you need it, you haven’t seen greatness” - Jason Lemkin
For those in the audience who had never worked with a great VP of Product, Jason kicked off the night by diving into the benefits of such a hire. Jason advised startups to begin considering potential VPs of Product once the company starts accruing 1.5 million in revenue. Waiting much longer after that entails the risk of bringing in a product manager unfamiliar with the nooks and crannies your product has developed in its journey to reaching 6 or 10 million in revenue. To those fearful of the price tag, Jason argued that a great VP of Product more than pays for him/herself just by closing one and saving one customer per year. Jon added the caveat that it is best to go without than to go subpar, noting that “the difference in this field between someone who is great and someone who is good is humongous; paying an extra ten or twenty thousand is really worth it.”
VP of Product - Visionary or Synthesizer?
All three speakers agreed that it is a mistake to see the VP of Product as the product visionary. Instead, Greenhouse.io views the VP of Product as someone who can distill the CEO’s abstract vision into a tangible plan, mine feedback from customers on the first iteration, and then prod forward improvements in subsequent iterations. A VP of Product, Jon said, has the skill to “synthesize, clarify, and articulate,” all while balancing the priorities of infrastructure maintenance, customer requests, scheduled features, and more.
How important is domain expertise?
In terms of prerequisites to the position, all three speakers agreed that domain expertise is overrated. If someone can build great consumer software, then it is likely that they can master the programming language you need or build software behind the firewall and in the cloud. Citing someone who builds games (and never talks to customers) as one of the few times a natural athlete doesn’t work, Jason notes, "I don't worry about specific domain expertise, but I worry about hiring people who don't interact with customers." Along those lines, Jason revealed one major interview questions he asks all VP of Product candidates: what do you plan on doing in your first 30 days on the job? Any candidate who does not plan on talking to and visiting the company’s best customers for preliminary diagnostics is quickly eliminated.
Handling the Priority Checklist
As mentioned above, a product team is constantly juggling the priorities of overhauling lagging features, considering new customer requests, completing features that company deals depend on, and more. Dan believes that the saving grace of the Greenhouse.io team is not their ability to precisely gauge priorities, but rather their commitment to shipping features regularly. Noting that that even projects at Google fail, being able to ship software well is a differentiating competitive advantage. “If you’re confident you can ship things every week, then you worry less about getting your priorities wrong. If you can’t ship things every week, then priority becomes important because items only get done if they’re at the head of the list,” Jon said. A company that reliably ships features encourages customer patience, since customers are confident that the gears are constantly churning, even if the feature they requested is not amongst this week’s output. Greenhouse.io also builds transparency into the system by hosting a public backlog list that customers can vote on.
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