Kassen Qian

Vision & Strategy: You own the vision, strategy, and roadmap. You know the market, our users, the product, and the competition. You drive alignment: If I ask 5 different people what you’re building and why, I’ll get one answer.

The Walt Disney Company inspired Airbnb’s founders, especially the storyboarding technique used by animators. Airbnb, the product, isn't our app. The product is staying at a guest’s home.

Basic structures cannot be composed into larger structures unless they themselves are internally consistent, and so the creation of software, just like any artifact of language, is naturally incremental.Software is a very verbose, very precise incantation of how an information system ought to behave.

The solution: Figma's product roadmap doc.

1. The Role of Technology: in strong product companies, technology is not an expense, it is the business.

Stripe has a very, very long time horizon. If you know where you’re going over time, you can reason clearly about which specific asks are one-offs vs indicative of emerging trends relevant to many users. We talk a lot about building multi-decade abstractions. That long time horizon comes from the top, and it’s in the culture.

Thinking about team management as a product: - Set up advanced listening mechanisms: help your PMs become better listeners- Keep your feedback loops healthy at all costs: Establish a consistent set of group and one-on-one meetings, ideally early in the week to help set the tone and get the team on the same page.- Your team should have a purpose as ... See more

1. Focus only on what warrants discussion

Execution & Impact: You know what needs to be done now and what can wait, and you focus the team on the key priorities. You define progress and impact, measure them, and maximize results.