Full-stack product management and influence-driven leadership

Assume new users are lazy, vain and selfish.

Lazy = no time, blow their mind or they bounce; Vain = already have habits, why change; Selfish = only care what's in it for them. This lens must shape onboarding, copy and first-run flows more than core features.

Why: Most PMs over-value loyal-user features and under-value the marginal user who still rejects the product; shifting focus to the rejecting user unlocks growth.

"you have to think about users or modern internet consumers having three attributes. So they are lazy, they are vain and they're selfish."

PMs are in the business of influence, internally and externally.

Influence engineers to build fast, leadership to sign off, marketers to align, and users to change behavior. Full-stack influence is as critical as full-stack technical breadth.

Why: Product success is determined by coordinated behavior change across all stakeholders; without influence, even perfect specs fail.

"we are product managers and we are in the business of influence... you are a full stack influencer and not only an external influencer."

Write the press release first, then the machinery required to make that release true.

A one-pager press release + FAQ forces clarity on customer value, GTM date, pricing, quotes, legal/compliance, and cross-team dependencies before writing any code.

Why: Surfaces hidden disagreements early and turns abstract goals into a concrete contract everyone can negotiate.

"instead of one, you find the other set of all the things that need to come together for the press release to go live is the real value."

Generate three fully-formed, divergent press releases before choosing one.

Each alternative must be complete with customer quotes, business metrics and trade-offs; presenting three shows leadership all considered paths and prevents second-guessing.

Why: Reduces political friction and demonstrates thoroughness while still allowing the PM to recommend and champion the chosen path.

"I actually ask my teams to write three press releases, alternative and divergent... people can compare and contrast, and that's a very powerful leadership tool."

Show the exact user journey, don’t tell.

Create a wall-sized map that starts with a real person (not persona) at a specific moment, traces every screen, word and emotion through the product, then overlays simultaneous marketplace events.

Why: Forces cross-functional alignment and reveals edge cases that abstract specs miss; becomes the single source of truth for stakeholders.

"show don't tell is essentially a way in which the product manager starts ideating with the entire experience... literally each pixel and each copy and each word is going to be in service of that part."

Explicitly allocate effort across four buckets: Brilliant Basics, Bread & Butter, Big Bets, Breaking Bad.

Brilliant Basics = tech debt & hygiene; Bread & Butter = incremental feature backlog; Big Bets = cross-team strategic bets; Breaking Bad = re-imagine company identity. Decide percentages with leadership annually.

Why: Prevents hidden strategic debt and makes trade-offs visible to the entire company.

"these prioritization questions, I don't think are product management questions so much as product strategy questions."

Three-sided marketplaces multiply complexity, not add.

Traditional OKRs and AB tests break because goals for consumers, restaurants and delivery partners are always in conflict; instead use narrative-driven big bets that model trade-offs across all sides.

Why: Linear optimization fails under network effects; holistic bets preserve liquidity while moving metrics.

"it's not as a one plus one equals two, it multiplies... your regular product management and leadership principles start failing."

When results lag, diagnose with three lenses: can’t do, won’t do, not set up to do.

Capability gaps → coach or move; motivation/alignment gaps → address vision or incentives; setup gaps → fix org design, OKRs, processes. 70-80 % of failures are setup issues.

Why: Prevents misattributing systemic problems to individual under-performance.

"there are only three reasons why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader... or they were not set up to do, which is really your problem"