Basically

We should pay our politicians more. A lot more. Here’s why:

1. Politicians should be among our best and brightest.

2. We should incentivize executive and fiscal leadership.

3. They will make money anyway; we may as well account for it.

In the quiet hours of the night, as my girlfriend gently falls asleep and I silence Netflix, I’m left only with the still night air and my thoughts.

My mind wanders into the realms of the unconventional. A world where the reality of human behavior outweighs the soul-sucking distortion of popular opinion.

One thought stands out with a mix of defiance and clarity.

Elected officials should be among our best and brightest. And they should be paid as such.

Pay politicians more. A lot more.

Elected officials at any level should be paid more. Senators should make $1-2 million annual salaries. Mayors of our major cities should make $500k+.

Here’s why.

1. Politicians should be our best and brightest.

Today, the path of a politician is viewed with a blend of suspicion and disdain. Imagine a child no older than 10 telling you they want to go into politics when they get older. What is your response?

Respect? Encouragement? Hardly, I suspect.

Yet, the essence of public service is noble — a calling for brilliant minds to steer the helm of a city, state, or nation through turbulent waters.

Shouldn’t, then, this path have the honor and desirability that attracts our best and brightest? Shouldn’t, then, we pay them as such?

Tomorrow, the path of a politician might be a noble one met with affirmations and applause. Leading a township, city, state, or our nation might be as aspirational as leading a hot startup or a major corporation.

By changing the pay for politicians, we stand to change the culture around being a politician.

2. We need executive leadership.

Today, politicians are masterful. Masterful at spinning the narrative. Masterful at analyzing polling data to inform their beliefs. Masterful at staying in power.

Politicians tend not to be masterful at executive decision-making or financial leadership. Yet, is that not exactly what we need?

Tomorrow, politicians might be masterful leaders pulled away from comparable leadership roles within our most important corporations.

3. They will make money anyway.

Today, politicians make money through the revolving door of board seats post-retirement and by insider trading.

Bill Gurley’s recent talk shares his front-row account at the revolving door. Projects like Unusual Whales and Polosi Tracker shine a light on the seeming criminal returns generated by so many elected officials.

Are you enraged by this? I am.

But, for a moment, let’s suspend our rage to consider the underlying cause.

Pelosi makes ~$225,000 per year in Congress. Would you agree, given her competence and clear drive to win (stay in power), that this is a fraction of what she would make in a legal or corporate role?

I would say her salary is ~1/10th of what it would be in another career.

So, perhaps Pelosi feels underpaid… Because she is. Relative to the stability and leadership she (in theory) brings to the US government and our citizens, I think she is criminally underpaid.

Tomorrow, elected officials might not feel pressure to trade on insider information. They might not feel pressure to join boards of companies to give corporate interests an inside line to legislation.

Maybe, tomorrow, elected officials will be among our best and brightest. And maybe they’ll be paid like it.

Originally posted February 2020 • Shared while giving at talk to students at Duke University

To students to Duke University:

Intro

Hi, I'm Zack. This memo aims to provide a practical introduction to starting a career in product management.

I have to admit, it's a bit ironic of me to write this post. I don't truly aspire to be a PM and certainly do not think I'm great at the job. My personal career goals are as a founder, leader, and investor.

My path to product management was typical in that it was not typical. As a college student, it may be easy to think the only or best path to being a PM is by studying CS, having a 3.9 GPA, and landing the Google APM role. In reality, your career will be much more messy and will require you to be much more scrappy.

Some of the best PMs I've met came from all types of backgrounds. So, if you're reading this and have ever felt like you don't belong in a PM role, I want to assure you you do belong. Or, at least, you have every right to. As long as you relentlessly focus on understanding your customers and lead your team to innovate on their behalf, you will be well on your way to being a great product manager; degree, GPA, or general background notwithstanding.

This leads me to the first step to a career in product management:

1. Know the path to product management may not be straightforward

I'll dive deep into my story — beyond what you'll deduce from my LinkedIn — because I think it’s important to know the story you typically hear isn't the story that actually happened. Revisionist history is far too common. If you compare your unique journey to what others say their journeys have been, you may quickly become confused and discouraged. So here's the real (and messy) story of my path into product management.

I grew up in East Bend, North Carolina, a town of 600 people. As an only child in a small town, the Internet was my window to the rest of the world. I would eagerly participate in the latest dance craze on YouTube, learn HTML and CSS to make my MySpace profile unique, binge-play Runescape with friends, and browse various online communities (all of this circa 2007).

Later, I studied business at UNC (Go Heels 🐑) and interned at two large financial services companies — Wells Fargo and AIG — that I now never mention when telling my story. I chose to intern at those places because I gave in to the pressure to do what my peers saw as prestigious (or as close as I could get to their ideas of prestige). As a consequence of not chasing areas I felt passionate about, I was unhappy during my time at both companies. I wasn't doing what I loved. I wasn't creating.

So, on my last day interning at AIG, I took a picture of the sea of cubicles in my office and swore to myself I would never return to that life.

Big Break One

As I embraced my love for startups going into recruiting my senior year, a hot new social app called Yik Yak captivated a good portion of the UNC student body. I applied cold for a role being the invisible hand in our 200+ college communities — a role called "Community Manager". A few interviews later, I was sleeping on my friends couch in Atlanta so I could start at Yik Yak immediately. We were a team of 15 supporting millions of users and were #2 in the US App Store. I was helping build something people loved. I could not have been happier.

But I wanted to be more in the trenches of building. I wanted to more directly decide what experience our users would have. So, soon after joining Yik Yak, I eagerly confessed to our newly-hired VP Product my desire to one day be a PM. Skeptically, he noted my desires and that was the end of our conversation.

I spent the next several months unhappy in my role and without the discipline to outperform what was expected of me. Due to my underperformance and lack of technical background, our VP of Product (and, thus, the executive team) didn't support my move to product. At one point, a senior "advisor" to Yik Yak sat me down in a room, looked me directly in the eye, and said: "Zack, you will never be a Product Manager here." I Ieft that meeting with complete clarity that it was time to leave.

Big Break Two

No more than 48 hours after that meeting, due to wild and unforeseen reasons I will not get into publicly, our VP of Product was no longer with the company. The main obstacle preventing me from becoming a PM at Yik Yak was gone. I pounced.

With the support of multiple engineers I had worked with on ad-hoc products and an enthusiastic boost from a Technical Project Manager at the company, I went to our CEO with a proposal: "Give me a chance. If I don't outperform every expectation, I will resign immediately."

He agreed. I moved desks to sit with the product team the next day as Yik Yak Product Manager #2.

While my time at Yik Yak was generally great, it's clear my path to product management was ugly at best. Politics, scrappiness, and luck all played a large role both in me not being a product manager for a while and in me eventually landing the role. The things I want to note here:

• Cultivate scrappiness in your skillset. The working world, especially the startup world, is much more of a choose-your-own-journey adventure compared to college. No career counselors, no graduation requirement checklist, and no resume drops for on-campus recruiting. You are responsible for determining your path and making it come to fruition.

• Be so good they can't ignore you. Observe the level of output around you and try to double that. Your personal reputation at your company is everything. Produce the highest quality work and make your manager's job easier (make sure he/she fully supports you).

I hope you will learn from my mistakes — but don't be surprised if your path is messy. Generally, everyones is.

2. Develop an informed opinion on what product management means

Josh Elman defines the responsibility of a PM as helping the team (and company) ship the right product to users.

You may also hear PMs referred to as the CEO of the product, but this overstates the role's authority and influence. Being a PM is much more like being an Editor. You have to know your customer (audience), prioritize features (stories), plan roadmaps, keep multiple stakeholders consulted and informed, and generally communicate with humans every single day.

But product management is a relatively new career so its definition changes with time and varies greatly between industries, companies, and teams. How you define product management will also evolve over time. The best way I've found to develop an informed opinion on what product management means to you is to ship real products solving real problems and read about product management (a lot).

2.1. Ship real products solving real problems.

By "real products" I mean you get people to use your product (at least for some period of time) and by "real problems" I mean you identify a need and make sure the product directly addresses that need.

Shipping products will help you discover whether or not you even like building software. I liken interacting with software vs building software to watching a movie vs making a movie. Watching a great movie or show is fun — but even the most outstanding productions are made through a series of long, tedious, and mundane days and sets. I can almost assure you the best and most exciting software products you've used were built in the same way. To love being a product manager, in my opinion, you must find joy in what can be a long, tedious, and mundane process that is software development.

If you find you do enjoy building software, this step should also help you understand which role you most enjoy. I've seen more than a few current or aspiring PMs clearly enjoy solving design problems more than product problems; but, perhaps due to pedigree clouding their vision, they were reluctant to pursue careers in design. Reflect on what you do and do not enjoy, where you excel and where you struggle, and what feels like work to others but a hobby to you. This more wholesome approach will help you determine whether or not product management is the right role for you.

2.2. Read about product management. A lot.

You'll find that many PMs on the Internet write about product management. Cutting through this noise can be tricky so I've listed a few resources I have found helpful in the last section of this doc. [link](<https://www.notion.so/Starting-a-career-in-Product-Management-5f1a7361bf8344eaaa0e59091378ceac?pvs=21>)

The goal of this step is to form an opinion on what product management is at a fundamental level. This may mean diving into the history of the role, what PMs are responsible for at different companies, and what traits engineers and designers look for when working with PMs.

It's worth mentioning "read about product management" does not mean read about agile, scrum, and other forms of project management. While this is certainly part of product development, the best PMs don't obsess over it. Instead, they focus on deeply understanding the customer, aligning and inspiring the team, communicating across all levels and orgs within the company, and generally doing what it takes to ship a winning product.

3. Land the job

The last step breaks down into three sub-steps: become hirable, differentiate your application, and nail the interview.

3.1 Become hirable.

The best way to be hirable is to show you're beyond capable of doing the job and you're coachable. You'll find a few actions helpful in becoming and showing companies you're beyond capable:

Ship products. A repeat of step 2.1.

Document everything. While you and the team build, document everything. The process of shipping product won't be straightforward — it almost never is — and that's ok! Document it through screenshots, pictures, videos, user interview recordings, and writing short reflections.

Create cohesive stories. Soon after you ship (ideally once you've had time to determine whether or not the product is a success), write a case study. Include your documentation. Explain the story of building without focusing too much on process. Don't shy away from including the funny/quirky/unique parts of building the product — they make the story interesting!

While in recruiting mode, you should be able to walk someone through the latest product you've shipped at any given point — ideally in ready-to-pitch time intervals of 15 seconds, 1 minute, and 20 minutes (the 20 min story should include visuals to keep the interviewer's attention). Be sure to include who you worked with, timeline, your role, problems you were aiming to solve, how you discovered and validated those problem, how you defined a winning product, interesting and unique challenges you faced, unique insights you gained, how you aligned and inspired the team, results of the product, and a short reflection.

3.2. Differentiate your application.

In the last four months alone, I've reviewed over 2,000 inbound PM applications at Loom. I spend no more than 8 seconds on each application before making a yes/no decision for a phone screen — I simply cannot give more time.

A critical skill for a product manager is empathy and I beg you to empathize with the hiring manager of every role to which you apply. Generally speaking, every hiring manager is looking for two things: (1) someone that can do the job and (2) someone they like being around. You won't get a chance to show you're someone people like being around until you actually get the interview. But you can show the hiring manager you can do the job.

A pre-interview project is your attempt to anticipate the problems a company is having (or an opportunity they are missing) and proactively solve those problems before you ever even apply. For example, let's say you want to be a PM at Robinhood. Knowing they are growing their product team, you anticipate the needs Robinhood may have in the coming months or years. One that comes to mind, inspired by a dear friend of mind, is "how might we keep customers on Robinhood when the economy turns sour?"

Dedicate 8-10 hours over a week to think through this problem. Interview a range of Robinhood users to understand their mindsets (perhaps a mix of people that traded stocks in 2008 and those that did not). Make assumptions and build a compelling case for a solution. You may find it helpful to double-down on what you uniquely bring to the table — the perspective of a college student / younger consumer. Make a pixel-perfect deck or perfectly-written memo — summary the insights you gained, solutions you explored, and where you would take the project next. Go all-out on this to maximize the "wow" factor.

Next, get your pre-interview project in front of the right person (hint: hiring manager, not recruiter). Stalk the Robinhood product team on LinkedIn and install a free email address hunter to get their respective emails. Record a Loom for each person you find on the product team quickly introducing yourself and introducing your pre-interview project (don't call it that). Send a personalized Loom and email to each of them. Invalid email address? Try again. No reply? Follow-up. Polite persistence, not annoyance, is key.

If you do this right, there is a high likelihood the Robinhood product team (and possibly executive team) will eat it up. They will have no option other than to bring you in for an interview.

3.3. Nail the interview.

It's a bit ironic of me to include this step — I'm not a particularly good interviewer. But a better version of me would do some form of the following.

Focus on product, not process, when walking through your past work. The number one mistake I see inexperienced candidates make when walking me through their past work is focusing too much on process. Focusing on the product you built includes all-the-people-things — understanding constraints (timeline, team, finances, etc); understanding your customer and the market; uncovering and validating problems; ideating and testing solutions; aligning, inspiring, and motivating the team; defining a winning product; measuring success; iterating post-launch; and any random tidbits that stand out and make the product or project unique — are all part of product-building and should be the primary points of your walk-through.

Show you are coachable. Listen intently and make it clear you want to learn. Show humility and confidence.

Be yourself. It's easy to let nerves get the best of you or to go into character to fit who you think they want to hire. But people value authenticity; and those who don't probably aren't the people you want to work with.

Come prepared with thoughtful questions. Interviewers can smell a canned question from a mile away. Avoid them at all costs. Thoughtful questions that cut to the heart of the company's unique business and product strategy stand out in an interviewer's mind. If, at the end of your interview, the interviewer is on the fence about whether or not to move you to the next stage, great questions will push you into the "yes" zone. This has proven itself time after time in the interview debrief process at Loom.

Resources

Links

• Josh Elman's take on PM

• Josh Elman (again)

• A day in the life (Pivotal)

• A day in the life, again (Pivotal)

• PM definition (Pivotal, based on Josh Elman's definition)

• Nikita Bier's Twitter (a PM skeptic but good entrepreneur and product thinker)

• Andy Johns (now VC; strong career in growth and product at consumer companies)

Whiteboard interview framework

The most common mistake I see candidates make in whiteboard or group exefcise interviews is not using a framework to guide the exercise. If it resonates with you, use this framework to guide group exercises or whiteboard sessions to keep you on track and let your interviewer know you're thinking holistically about the development process.

Miscellaneous thoughts

• Chasing someone else's idea of pedigree/success will, at best, only lead to short-term happiness. Spend time reflecting on what makes you happy and what you hope to achieve in life. Then pursue that whole-heartedly. For me, it's building something people desperately want but never knew they wanted.

• Reflecting on my childhood has played an important role in understanding there areas in which I feel passion and, thus, can produce my best work. For me, this tends to center around communication, online communities, and what I will call Internet culture (e.g. memes).

• Struggling to find a product to work on? Think of problems in your daily life with an observant eye. Write an exhaustive list of those problems. Think of ways in which software may help solve those problems. If it helps, externalize these problems and solutions to friends (talking through them may help you better understand them). But don't let your friends identifying risks or "gotchas" discourage you from building. You're shipping product to understand product management. Not to raise venture funding.

Originally posted January 2021 • Link to Twitter

TL;DR

The best UGC platforms reduce the friction to become a star and key in on one's innate desire to get paid, laid, or made. Examples include TikTok (reduces the friction to be a YouTuber), Onlyfans (reduces the friction to be a pornstar), and Substack (reduces the friction to be a writer).

Let's start with a few definitions.

• UGC (User-generated Content) platforms rely on user-created content at the core of their product. Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Clubhouse and many of yesterday and today's most popular apps are UGC platforms. They are distinct from proprietary content sites like The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and the like.

• Stars we will simply define as something one wanted to be as a child or adult. Stardom, in this sense, may not come with a ton of fame (astronaut, radio host) but would come with a huge sense of fulfillment (teacher, real estate agent).

• Paid is one's desire to improve economic status and provide for ourselves and loved ones.

• Laid is one's desire to improve the likelihood of having sex.

• Made is one's desire to improve social status. Eugene Wei's Status as a Service and Julian Lehr's Signaling as a Service go into depth on how I will define becoming "made."

Examples

The table below covers examples of today's and tomorrow's products, the stardom they reduce friction to achieve, and the human desires they tap into. The way to read the below table: TikTok is reducing the friction to be a YouTuber (an occupation only recently legitimized). Being a YouTuber keys in on one's desire to get paid, laid, and made.

Originally posted January 2021 • Link to Twitter

The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity -- to pursue their dreams." "...even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation. When a platform is self-service, even the improbable ideas can get tried, because there’s no expert gatekeeper ready to say “that will never work!” And guess what – many of those improbable ideas do work, and society is the beneficiary of that diversity.

Jeff Bezos

TL;DR

In the same way YouTube disrupted media of the 2000's, TikTok is disrupting media of the 2020's (including YouTube). Interestingly, TikTok is beating YouTube at its own game — reducing friction.

By making it easy to remix existing content, TikTok reduces the friction to create new content. This is what I call Open Source Content — breaking out individual components of a piece of content and using them as entry points for viewers to create new content.

It may be helpful to picture traditional content as flat vs Open Source Content as 3D.

• Flat content is a single file and single stream. Take, for example, watching a YouTube video. The YouTube video is available to you in one format and one format only. Curious what song or special effect was used in the video? You're likely out of luck.

• 3D content is comprised of multiple files and multiple streams of media. Take, for example, watching a TikTok video. The TikTok video's components are shown in plain sight as you view. Curious what song or special effect was used? It's right there on the screen. Want to use that song or effect? Two taps and you're recording.

Open Source Content represents an incredible opportunity for UGC platforms to turn viewers into creators. Platforms adopting this model are more likely to enjoy much better engagement than the standard 90-9-1 ratio, like Musically's 25% creator ratio reported prior to the TikTok acquisition.

YouTube reduced the friction to be a Hollywood star

In the 2000's, YouTube disrupted entertainment by giving the common person a platform. What once required moving to LA and trying to impress a media gatekeeper suddenly only took a camera, computer, and internet connection.

Top media executives of the time ignored YouTube as a threat. From a Wired article in 2005:

"There is not that much talent in the world," Diller (CEO of IAC) said. "There are very few people in very few closets in very few rooms that are really talented and can't get out.”

Wired Magazine, October 2005

Early viral YouTube videos like Charlie bit my finger and The evolution of dance were authentic captures in low-fi. But, over time, the war for attention of viewers led to more polished productions, sharper visual effects, more thoughtful stories, and more shocking video titles. And, for any chance of making money at your craft, YouTube demanded long-form content... An awful lot to chew as a creator and an awful lot of friction to get started.

TikTok reduced the friction to be a YouTuber

TikTok beats YouTube at their own game with its ability to dramatically reduce friction to both create and consume content. From my notes on an interview with Musically (now TikTok) Co-founder Alex Zhu: If you want to build a user-generated content platform, the content has to be extremely light — both content creation and content consumption need to happen within seconds, not minutes.

A high-level key metric for every UGC platform is the percentage of users creating new content. The reasoning is simple — the more users you have creating new content, the more content you have to show. The flywheel spins! In a perfect world, 100% of a platform's users that consume content would also create new content.

Musically, part of the predecessor to TikTok, once saw 25% of its active userbase creating content — a stat incredibly high relative to comparable UGC video platforms that typically aspire for 1% of their userbase to create content.

(Part of) TikTok's secret sauce

TikTok makes video creation easy by isolating the individual components of content and making them available to the viewer.

I like to think of this as Open Source Content — a way of breaking out the component tools used to create content (music, filters, visual effects, etc) and making those easily available to the viewer. Let's look at an example (video here).

In this flow, I am two taps away from creating content with the effect that I see being used. The same goes for using audio templates, visual effects (wavy videos, face filters), reply functions (stitches, duets, etc), and more.

One of the beauties of Open Source Content is the ability to fork content. See a piece of content that you like but think you could do one part of it a little better? Go back in the content's history and insert your unique creation into the piece's lineage. Your piece — your lineage — just may win the war for attention.

Possible frontiers for Open Source Content

Memes. By definition, memes are examples of remix culture. The most popular memes are almost always derivatives of a meme that came before it. And it, before it. And so on.

But memes are still somewhat high-friction to create. Today, the best memes are typically made with professional-grade photo and video tools. Tomorrow, the friction to create high-quality and niche memes will be reduced through Open Source Content a la isolating individual components of an image or video and making it easy for viewers to remix.

Instead of editing a flat image or video of a meme, the content comes alive in edit mode. Individual components of an image or video are easily changed or removed. New components are ready to insert. And memes become easily personalized to niche and small groups with tools to let you swap faces for friends.

Music. The stars of the music industry have changed in an interesting way over the last ~10 years with a special emphasis on music producers instead of just vocalists. The desire to be a star is certainly there, and Open Source Content represents an interesting way of achieving that stardom.

Today, people listen to "flat" songs — songs that are professionally produced, remixed, and listened to in a single audio file. Fancy remixing a song or creating a new one altogether? You'll have to have knowledge of complex tools like Abelton or FL Studio to do so.

Tomorrow, in an Open Source Content world, new platforms will expose the individual elements of a song to make it easy to remix and create new songs.

Subscribe now