Fabrice des Mazery - Product = Business. How to balance user value & profitability

[00:00:06] All right, welcome back. So we are beginning the conference of the day after the Sunday keynote. And we'll start with Fabrice and his talk Product equal business. Thank you, Bastien.
[00:00:23] Well, hello. I hope the keynote was great. Uh, so I'm going to talk in English as you as you might have understood. I'm French, so for the questions, uh, feel free to ask the question in French if need be. That won't be a problem. The talk will be 30 minute-ish and afterwards, all the questions you want, please. Uh, feel free to ask them. We'd have to make going in the in the room if need be. Okay.
[00:00:52] Okay, so who am I? Um, I've been doing product for the last 22 years. So I started as a product entrepreneur, crashed once, then I was too burned so I created another one that I sold. I became the first product marketing manager in 2007 in Paris. Uh, a long time ago, so I'm always a bit always a bit weird for me that people rediscover the role of product marketing or have been for the last two years. Uh, created a third company, went to work at Deezer, went to work at Tiga. And I used to be very recently the CPO of the restaurant business at TripAdvisor. So we're going to talk about products equals business for one big reason, not because just I wanted to talk about product. Because there's something, a wave that happened in 2023, so last year, with a big dirty word. Not general T V I, actually, but profitability. Everybody started talking about profitability. Some people rediscovered that the goal of a product was to actually make money. Which is a bit weird, okay. So in that you could just grow and grow and grow without thinking about your P&L. Uh, always seem to be a bit weird for me, especially as I bootstrapped my company, so that was my own money. Not the VC money.
[00:02:23] So I started to ask questions to my product fellows and to engineers and to designers, try to understand why it was a rediscovery for people. Um, why was it so shocking to one day think about money? And plenty of people told me that it was not their fault, you know, it was the stakeholders.
[00:02:48] Because the stakeholders are stupid, they don't get what product mindset is about. When they talk about road map, they actually think we need this plan. They always come with the solutions, so they should come with problems. And they always on the short term, and they always lie about the potential impact of what they want.
[00:03:09] The thing is that when we talk with stakeholders, usually, this is what we do. We say, hey, bring a problem. But they don't care about problems, and they should not. What we do, actually, is not getting them in in motion, we do productsplaining.
[00:03:28] Just mansplaining with product.
[00:03:32] The worst part would be asking your stakeholders, have you read Inspired from Marty Cagan? Okay, last night, thank you Marty for actually writing such a book. But I don't know if you work with marketing or with sales, but it would be weird if the marketing people would actually tell you.
[00:03:53] Have you read Seth Godin or the sales guy, have you read getting to yes. So, we know, hey, by being a bit patronizing, we don't make it accessible to them. That was the first problem. The thing is that if you want people to understand what product is about, and I'm not talking about product management, we're talking about the product mindset, they need to have what we get the skin in the game.
[00:04:19] Skin in the game. So I don't know if you know the fable, the story of the skin and the game. Who who actually knows it? Okay.
[00:04:29] So the the idea to make it simple is that they start to think about creating a business when they would create what we call eggs and bacon. And of course, for a chicken, an egg, it's not complicated because, well, in terms of commitment, you just create an egg. Now, when it comes to the pig, it's a little bit more commitment. Okay.
[00:04:53] So in that story, you could say that the stakeholders are the chicken and we are the pigs. And that that's the first time in your life when you'll be happy to be called a pig, okay? The question is that. Are you sure that we are the pigs in this story? Well, that's the ah moment of the presentation, I'll let you two, three seconds to do ah, please. One, two, three. Thank you. You're wonderful.
[00:05:19] No, it's very cute actually.
[00:05:23] This guy.
[00:05:26] Is the best thinker of the 21st century and maybe of the 32nd century, by the way. Jean-Claude. invented something, which is called the double impact.
[00:05:42] This is Jean-Claude doing the double impact.
[00:05:48] And actually it inspired a lot of the product organization that's the reason to be, the reason to exist of an organization when it comes to product is about generating ROI for the user and the business. So not only the user and not only the business. It must be a balance between the two. If you don't have that, you don't have a product org.
[00:06:14] It means that we can't nor should be user-centric.
[00:06:23] User centricity is just like being data driven. It is good, or it was good at the beginning to fight against so many people that didn't think about the users or were taking decisions based on intuition. Now, I don't think that data can tell you why things happen. They can tell you what. But it's up to you to take the decisions, right? You're driving the decisions. About the same thing for users, being user-centric would mean doing whatever a user wants, which on the business side will never work.
[00:07:00] So of course, I'm playing with words here, but I've heard so many product designers telling me that they wanted to spend two or three weeks more. Just for that little thingy that would be cool for users. And they didn't understand that these two or three weeks could have been invested in something that could have a better impact for that specific user. So it's always about balance.
[00:07:31] It means that as product people, and when I say product people, I say people that work on the product, so not only product managers, product designers, product engineers, etc. So for me it's whole teams behind the product. We must be and should be co-responsible of the economic success of our products. We cannot just code or just design, or just do specs, or just ideate. It will not work. Because you have to pay, in a way, your salary, you have to earn it.
[00:08:07] So how to?
[00:08:09] How to respect the double impact law of Jean-Claude?
[00:08:14] Well, there are actually three things that we did at TripAdvisor. I'm not telling you that this would work in any organization, I don't have the silver bullet, I have my own experience, okay? So it's not a promise that if you do exactly that, that would work. I'm just sharing with you how it worked for us. So there are three lows. The first principle behind this is the investment principle. The fact that what we're doing is investing time, waiting for ROI.
[00:08:49] Then what we call the capping principle, the fact that you limit your investments. And the third is a portfolio principle. And of course, the core of the presentation would be going through those principles and saying what they mean.
[00:09:03] So the investment principle.
[00:09:07] This is what product is about. If people asking you why product was invented, it was to do this. For years, technology has been considered as a center of cost and that's it.
[00:09:23] And when people understood that products and building technological products could not only be enabling the business, but actually creating business, could be the core of the business, now that changed everything.
[00:09:39] And this is why so many US companies were built around technology, not technology enabling the org, but being the core of the org, and the rest of the nation actually enabling the product.
[00:09:55] When it comes to team, actually if you take a product team.
[00:10:00] Just like this in the room. Um, what do you think is the cost of one product team in a year? How much?
[00:10:15] Okay, we have 1 million here, 1 million here, 1 million, 1.2. No, no.
[00:10:22] Do you think 1 million is a good, low?
[00:10:27] Actually, that's it. Thank you, Bastien.
[00:10:31] You're spoiled, okay?
[00:10:34] 1 million euros a year, roughly. One product manager, one product designer, five developers, plus everything, 1 million euros a year. I think that if you go back home or back to the office, not tomorrow because tomorrow you'll be there, but I hope on Friday, and if you actually talk to product team and saying, hey, you've been given 1 million euros for the year. How can you prove that you are the ROI? That might make them think a little bit.
[00:11:07] Just a little bit. And of course, the idea of the time is to turn that into not code.
[00:11:15] Not features.
[00:11:18] Not even impact.
[00:11:21] But the right ROI.
[00:11:24] I mean by that, then so many people think, yeah, we can have an impact, but is it linked to our strategic destination? Are we actually tackling the right problems on the right target? We can have plenty of impact, but is it the impact that will actually allow us to build a position on the market that we need now? Plenty of people just forget that part. So yes, you could do these three or four weeks or two months working on this specific feature for this specific customer, but is it a customer that we are actually trying to get or to retain? Is it part of our strategy? And this is the basics of product strategy, actually.
[00:12:07] It's not vision, it's actually making sure that everybody understands what we need to actually build right now to be able to sustain the future. So it's not OKRs. OKRs is a good thing, but that's a compass. That's not the destination, it's just a way to know we're going in the right direction. But I could talk about what OKRs, how OKRs can actually make you be really, really wrong in plenty of situations.
[00:12:41] But that's us. Now when it comes to stakeholders, the idea is to say, if we invest time, if our goal is to find the right opportunities with the best ROI at that moment, what is the role of the stakeholders?
[00:12:57] We don't want them as clients. That was when we considered that technology was actually a center of cost.
[00:13:05] We want them to ask in the game, so they need to co-invest with us.
[00:13:11] How can they co-invest?
[00:13:14] Usually they bring ideas.
[00:13:18] What we did at TripAdvisor, that we asked for pitches.
[00:13:24] Not business cases, not business plans. Because I've never seen a honest business case, ever.
[00:13:34] If you create a business case, there's a tendency of saying, yeah, you know, if we build that feature, we're going to sell billions. And it actually never happens. But if everybody is doing this, even if you want to be honest, you say, yeah, but if I'm honest, and the others are dishonest, my thing will actually never be considered. So it starts to be just gibberish. Now, when we talk about pitches, in the pitches it was, why you think that this would be clever. How many customers complain, how many potential customers ask for that and you actually were unable to close them, and which customers we actually could talk to.
[00:14:21] Because one of the biggest problems that I've seen in my career is having the inability to talk to the people that really had the problem, so I couldn't check if the investment or the opportunity was worth investing. So the second part is really access to customers.
[00:14:43] So it's not an option, if you push something in a pitch, we need a list of people we can contact. And if you want us to contact them with you because you feel that product people could break the commercial relationship, well, that's bullshit, but still, tell it to us, no problem.
[00:15:05] Organize the rendezvous and we'll be there. So it start to be much more than just pushing an idea on an Excel sheet.
[00:15:17] The third condition is test enablement.
[00:15:22] So if you need to test things, you need to allow us to test. You need to be part of it. As product people, we might lie to the customers, but we'll never be as good as a sales guy or a sales girl to pitch something to a customer. They are better. This is their job. So if they want something done, they need to invest time to pitch that to potential customers. Same thing on the B2C, we can use uh the power of marketing through ads, through CRM or whatever, to actually do tests. And we should not be waiting and waiting to make it possible. So they need to be clear on which resources they will put someone who will have time to do it. Oh, sorry. Go to market, imagine that's going on and we're iterating and actually we need to decide which customers we will actually target first, if we want to do that far better, and then how to make sure that all the sales people, and all the marketing people, and all the communication people are aware that we are going to push that on the market. We cannot do that alone. And we cannot ask product marketing to compensate. So, same thing, there must be communication relays within the organization.
[00:16:50] And what is the most important one is the co-responsibility of success and failure. Too often, when I was doing product reviews, I had to say that we hadn't reached the target.
[00:17:07] Or the sales people, the country managers, or the marketing people complaining that, yeah, that's because the product didn't do X or Y.
[00:17:17] That's why they didn't reach their sales targets.
[00:17:21] Now, because they invest with us, they cannot say that the fault of the product because they have skin in the game. They are part of the factors of success or failures. So they are here with me on stage. Talking to TripAdvisor, talking to our stakeholders and explaining why they didn't do their job to make sure that success could happen. So the involvement is very, very different.
[00:17:52] And it changed drastically the way that we were working with our stakeholders.
[00:17:58] So that's the investment principle.
[00:18:01] Now the capping principle.
[00:18:04] I guess all of you are wonderfully rich, you have millions of euros on your accounts.
[00:18:14] I can sell you my grib if you want. So it means that, well, even if you have 20k or 2k, whatever, uh, considering the inflation, you might have put your money somewhere. But of course, if, for example, you deeply believe that Tesla is going to be big. Would you put 100% of your money on Tesla itself, just Tesla?
[00:18:43] Ever thought of that interesting.
[00:18:46] You try to mitigate your risk. Maybe a bit on Tesla, a bit on Microsoft, a bit on Nvidia, a bit on Bitcoin, not now. But you will never put all your eggs in the same basket, as my grandmother will say.
[00:19:02] But the capping principle is exactly this, it's not about the eggs, it's about the size of the eggs.
[00:19:09] The idea is to limit the appetite considering the ambition that you have.
[00:19:14] So it's basic investment principles, uh, the people from 37signals. A base camp actually took the things to put in shape up, but I was not invited by shape up.
[00:19:29] Considering the ROI that I need actually to deliver at the end of the year with my 1 million euro portfolio, what is the ambition of this opportunity?
[00:19:41] And considering that I have limited time, how much do I want to put on the table for that specific opportunity? And that will actually be on an opportunity, so for us time is money.
[00:19:54] And that will actually be on an opportunity, so if you use cycles, for example, we use six week cycles at the fork.
[00:20:02] We used uh four week cycles at advisor. It means that you're actually investing one or two cycles or something. Okay, so you have a number of cycles you can invest.
[00:19:29] considering the ROI that I need actually to deliver at the end of the year with my 1 million euro portfolio. What is the ambition of this opportunity? considering that I have living to time, how much do I want to put on the table for that specific opportunity? And that would be time because for us time is money.
[00:19:53] And that will actually be on an opportunity. So if you use cycles, for example, we use six week cycles at the fork. We used four week cycles at the advisor. It means that you actually invest in one or two cycles or something. Okay? So you have a number of cycles you can invest. It applies to activities both. So even if you say okay, that's six weeks.
[00:20:22] How would you use those weeks? How many weeks in discovery for which results? And you know that the confidence level that you want will actually never happen. You will never have 100% confidence. It doesn't exist, ever. So, how many of you know the Rice model? Reach, impact, confidence, effort? You know that Intercom invented it? You know that they actually never used it?
[00:20:52] Because the Rice model is very, very solution oriented. But they chose not to get it out of the blog because the marketing people so that it was the best reach that they had. So they're actually telling lies, but that's good for marketing. Which is a good summary of what marketing is about, right? this one is for me is for free.
[00:21:18] I come from marketing, so I know what they do. So the idea of the rice is actually to adapt it to the problem first, saying which are the risks that I'm taking on that problem and what can I mitigate in terms of risk. And then you can apply it on potential solutions, but if you don't start with the problem, you don't start with what is really interesting is it the opportunity and not the solution itself. So if you consider the confidence, what is your target as a team? Do you want to spend three weeks on it considering what is your level of confidence right now or two weeks or ten days? That's up to you.
[00:22:01] When you came to Trip Advisor, we consider that they had six weeks to go from a problem that was not refined to the first iteration design. So in six weeks, they had to actually build to go through the double diamonds and then end up with having the specs and the design for the first iteration they could implement on the next cycle. How they actually organize themselves during the six weeks was not my problem as a CPO.
[00:22:31] This is their problem. They need to make that decision. So the thing that they're going to invest 10 days of problem discovery and after 10 days, I think that they don't have enough, they can invent more. But it means that they will still have four weeks to do the rest. It's up to them to actually consider what is the ambition that we'll get after those six weeks. Their responsibility.
[00:23:03] Everybody knows that Venn's diagram that we use a lot for product planning actually.
[00:23:11] It's actually the product equation in plane sight. This is what product is about. Not just saying, okay, I'm going to explain you what product is about, they want feasibility and blah, blah, blah. The thing is that if you work in trios, product manager, product designer and an engineer, this is their responsibility. And the idea is not to say, you product manager, you're responsible for the viability. Is saying that as a trio, you are supposed to take decision based on that. It's your common responsibility of investing time, ego money, to make sure that you're reaching that. So I don't care if you all three work on viability. This is your responsibility. This is your job to assess the risk on that specific investment, on those three parts. So if at any moment I'm asking one member of a trio, so we have 21 teams, so 21 trios. Why they chose to spend one week or two week in problem discovery and go on a solution part? They need to be able to answer. They need, so the product manager or the product designer or the engineer. I don't want to hear someone in the trio telling me that, I don't know, you should talk to the product manager. Because they are co-responsible of this equation.
[00:24:48] Now, when it comes to stakeholders, what we did on the B2B side,
[00:24:54] is that we had three pillars. Experience, one side which is really touching everyone, so we are in deep connection with customer success and trainers. Second, competitiveness, country managers. The goal is to think about what we call the deal breakers or the churn creators. So anything that will actually harm our ability to concur or retain our customers. Success management with two teams working on the future of what we offer to the restaurants.
[00:25:30] Competitiveness is three teams, three teams, three million euros. And of course, because we have six cycles, six six-week cycles per team, we had 18 cycles. This is all we had to invest, not more, not less. So every time that we had an opportunity that was pitched by someone, it was, okay, if we invest on that one, one cycle, it means that we have one cycle less for something else. So we didn't have a stock pile or infinite backlog of opportunities. We need to decide together, why we should invest in that one instead of another. And it helps having these cycles and this number of investments, just like as a VC. It was the same ticket as someone like Jean de la Roche Brocharr would invest in companies through Kima Avengers. Just to give you an idea.
[00:26:27] It helped because it was, we didn't have to battle with saying, okay, you know, if you put that here, what do you get out of the backlog? I don't ask people to get things out of the backlog. Every two months, I have to invest in three different opportunities. That's it. I'm not even considering one out, one in, just three.
[00:26:53] First, they will building a pitch. So that would come from country managers, they would push something in the teams, build their pitch, list the customers that we could contact to actually de-risk potentially. That's what was the first step. Second step, they needed to talk to the other countries. If you take the fork, not taking Trip Advisor, but taking TheFork as an example, you have 12 countries. So it means that if France is asking something, well, they need first to make sure that it could be interesting for Italy or UK or Spain. Because I would never build something especially for France, only for France. Okay? Not possible. So it was their job to actually pitch that to the other countries and make sure that the countries were interested. So the first barrier were the other countries.
[00:27:57] Then they would get challenged by one trio. Now the idea of challenge is really asking questions to make sure that that could be ready to be actually proposed to what we call the investment forum. The investment forum was me plus some product directors plus the country managers. Investors. So they were not here for example, the country manager of France was not here to defend especially the French market. It was here to make sure that whatever we actually were investing, will actually push us in the right direction in terms of success. So it's a bit different that having the country manager defending investment for his country. He's responsible for looking at all the investments and sometimes just saying no to something that would be pushed by France.
[00:28:52] So we're getting assessed and what we were doing was defining ambition and appetite. It means that anyone in France or Spain or Italy needed to make sure that we were as a group, just like in qui veut être mon associé?
[00:29:18] really, really interested by it and thinking that was one of the three interesting investments that we wanted to do. We were doing that every two months, so for every cycle.
[00:29:32] What is good with this? is that we ended up in a situation when we had the people from the countries telling us, well, let's see what the results are of this opportunity before committing to another. Because you know, you don't know. You're facing a certainty. We've seen that. So we are responsible of the success of it. Make sure that we know what's happening. And let's not commit beyond two cycles, okay? But because you don't know what's going to happen on the market. Does that ring a bell?
[00:30:12] That's exactly what we used to say to stakeholders before. You know, uncertainty and we don't want to plan for a long time because you don't know what's going to happen. They were doing product. They're doing now next later without even having to talk about it. So in a way, they were starting to understand what was our role facing uncertainty.
[00:30:42] Now the portfolio principle. I told you about not put this all the eggs in the same basket. Well, we have plenty of opportunities for teams.
[00:30:53] As a CPO, I was responsible of 21 teams, meaning that I had 21 million euros to actually get from my investors, that would be the Trip Advisor group, to invest on the product. So I had a portfolio of 21 million euros multiplied by the number of cycles. Okay, 72 cycles.
[00:31:17] If you take a restaurant product, just like TheFork, you use on one side the potential, on the other side the risk versus uncertainty.
[00:31:27] You have some investments that are low hanging fruits or enablers. That would be things just like you're Livre A, okay? So your bank booklets. Not a lot of ROI. But that's okay. You don't have a lot of risk. You know that if you invest on that part, not a big problem. You should have your ROI.
[00:31:54] And we need to do some lowing in fruits or enablers. Because sometimes the marketing teams need us to do migration to Brazil. Or sometimes we have legal risk.
[00:32:07] Also sometimes we have migrations to do on the technical part. Would that change the business? No. Would that endanger the business if we don't do it? Yes, maybe. So not a good ROI, it's actually protecting the PNL.
[00:32:23] Usually, we start that 20 or 25%. That would mean one to two cycles a year, maximum.
[00:32:32] Because, well, the goal is to make ROI, not only doing fruits.
[00:32:36] So 60 to 65% were really on initiatives. Initiatives is mid-risk,
[00:32:43] mid ROI. Usually, this is what we do in product teams.
[00:32:49] So we have information on some opportunities, maybe 40% confidence. We want to get up to 60 or 70% to go on the solution, etc., etc., etc. This is what will actually should have an impact on the OKRs if you're using OKRs.
[00:33:09] Well, I'll just give you examples that are anything that you could get. what we call capturing the intent is trying to understand what people want to do actually, and when they go to a restaurant, it's interesting for us to understand if you're going there with your friends or with your family or with a business with a date, because we might not propose the same restaurant.
[00:33:34] And then there are the real bets. So I've heard plenty of people talking about bets as if everything that we were doing were bets. Bets by definitions are very high risk.
[00:33:48] When you are a small company, pre-product market fit, everything is a bet. When you are a big company, you tend to forget to do bets.
[00:33:59] So we protected some time, one cycle per year to make sure that we were actually doing bets.
[00:34:06] Those bets were very uncertain, but things that could change the future of the company or could give absolutely nothing. But that was okay.
[00:34:17] Because if you don't take this kind of risk, when you're starting to be scale up or even large group, if you don't do that, you might just die.
[00:34:28] Especially when you're a leader and we think that being a leader is an asset and actually usually it's a liability.
[00:34:40] Your portfolio might vary, okay? When I say 20 25, 60 65, 10 15, it might vary of plenty of things. That's just a guide. That's what we used at Trip Advisor. The first thing is the market conditions. Of course, you have a war, you have inflation. One day from another, your investors that ask not for profitability before growth, trying to say that, well, you need to be a bit positive in a year. Okay, so of course, you're going to change how you invest your money. Just like you would do for your own money. Same thing. It's called dynamic allocation, reacting to the market.
[00:35:25] Depending on your team or tribes. Some people would consider that if you're working on the platform team, you might not do bets because it's more realiability. Okay? Okay, I understand that.
[00:35:43] There are some teams that might be on the part of the business which is newer. So of course, they would make more bets, less low hanging fruits. If you're working on the core business, maybe what you do is a lot of lowing in fruits. You explain improvements, migrations, etcetera.
[00:36:05] Company or product stage. As I told you, pre-product market fit, only bets. Everything is uncertain. When it comes to being a scale up, you have this kind of portfolio. Well, you're a big company, so many teams are working only on low hanging fruits. And this is absolutely normal. Now, if you create a new product, that's the same thing, more certainty, more bets, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. That's really up to you, depending on your level of decision to push more or less bets. But don't expect a big company to have this kind of balance with having one cycle per year only on bets. It will never happen. So you need to be aware of the kind of company you're working on, ergo, on the kind of portfolio that you could get.
[00:36:57] Budget structure. If you're working in a studio. So as product people, your customers are really the countries or the divisions or the brands. This happens quite a lot in big companies.
[00:37:14] It's not your money. So you need to act as a, not as an investor, but as an investment advisor. So imagine that you're rich. I know you are.
[00:37:28] And so you're talking to a banker or someone that would actually help you invest your billions of euros. But you've heard about this specific company, Tesla. And say, okay, is it interesting for me to invest in Tesla? And your advisor would tell you, well, depending on the market, currently, I would say it's a high risk for the next two or three years. So, should you buy, keep or actually sell? But this is what we should do. So if a company, a new company, a division comes and talks to you and tells you, well, we have 500k, we want to build the new Netflix.
[00:38:14] That's why DFI is trying to do.
[00:38:18] again, they actually want a CPO which is not on the comex level and it's a ten people team to be Netflix. Good luck.
[00:38:33] Okay, 500k.
[00:38:36] My role as a product team is to tell you what is the level of risk you're taking. So what are the odds of success considering what you are telling me today? And then if you want to go on, no problem, but I've done my job. I'm giving you an advice, which is, you might lose your 500k with no results. If you want to listen to me, well, the good thing is product is all about de-risking. Everything that we know, every framework that we have is to lower the risk. So we could have a plan, adaptive plan, okay, but that would just limit the odds of you failing, of you losing your money. Then it's their money. So if they want to go on, say, no, no, I want 500k, I want 500k, we can beat Netflix. Up to you. But if in six months, you go back and you say, it's not working, we've done our job.
[00:39:34] So in a way, it's not because it's not your money that you should not say anything, but your positioning should be a bit different.
[00:39:43] Now, maybe the most important one. everything that we know, every framework that we have is to lower the risk. So we could have a plan, adaptive plan, okay, but that would just limit the odds of you failing, of you losing your money. Then it's their money. So if they want to go on and say, no, no, I want Fabri K, I want Fabri K. We can beat Netflix, up to you. But if in six months you go back and you say it's not working, we've done our job. So in a way, it's not because it's not your money that you shouldn't say in the thing, but your positioning should be a bit different.
[00:39:42] Now, maybe the most important one.
[00:39:47] You might watch documentaries on Netflix or Apple TV. You might listen to speakers, you might read books. On so many successful products, so many people that would give you frameworks around what you should do, what product is about. Okay, that's actually depends on you. Not everyone is made to create a company for scratch and face this kind of certainty. And you might be ready to do that when you're 25 and when not when you're 40. That's up to you. That's the same thing for people in your teams. Some product managers or product engineers or product designers don't want to take risk. They don't have the skin to do it and that's absolutely okay.
[00:40:39] You need to be aware of that because some people are not self-aware when it comes to this. So it's really, really important to make sure that the people that you're putting in the team and pushing them to do bets and not only low hanging fruits can face that.
[00:40:56] Else, you risk the burnout.
[00:41:00] And it happened to me at Trip Advisor, not to me, but to someone in my team, because that pushed her to take responsibilities of a portfolio and she was not ready for that. But this is my fault as a manager.
[00:41:15] And as a manager, well, it will always be better than her because she's in a burnout, but I feel deeply responsible of not being aware of her limits in terms of risk tolerance. So just like with your own money, some people might put money on Tesla and Nvidia, some people might put money on startups in seed being business angels and some people would just put money on the BNP.
[00:41:43] And that's okay, really depends on you. So there's not one way to do product, there's not one way to invest.
[00:41:53] If you follow those three principles, you should have product teams and stakeholders take responsibility for the use of resources. Not saying that we have all the time in the world, no, you have one budget, one million.
[00:42:09] That's it. There's no more, no less. Every week that you're using for something is a week you cannot use on another investment. So if you actually use more than one cycle, you might use 200k, it means that you have only 100k for another opportunity. But it's up to you.
[00:42:32] And they will seek maximum returns on investment depending on what your target is. So of course, it's not only business, it would be business and user because else, you're harming the sustainability of your growth.
[00:42:49] And if you do that, you actually should reach a double impact. I need to wait for the little.
[00:42:57] And actually I would not do it on stage. Thank you a lot. Do you have questions?
[00:43:11] I'm keeping that one not the gift because else you will look at the gift for the rest of the presentation.
[00:43:20] If you have a question, Bastien is here with a mic.
[00:43:21] Test test, thank you. If you have any question, just raise your hand, I will give you the microphone.
[00:43:36] Hi. Um, so, uh, I actually had a question on how you manage delays because you're talking about risk, you're talking about investment, but that's only, well, like planning. How do you handle, um, real life issues on a daily basis?
[00:43:54] Well, when you're working in cycles, the good thing is that by definition, you don't have delays. because you say that there's a wall here, so if actually you're taking six weeks to do something, it's not it's not a tunnel six week, okay, it's not you start and after six weeks you start to see something, okay. Is that you're supposed to do iterations.
[00:44:20] If the iteration is taking more than six weeks, you need to stop.
[00:44:26] And it's really up to you as a team to manage that. We will not give you more money because you have other opportunities to go up. That that's really a principle. Now, sometimes you have investments that are worth more than one cycle, it happens. When we do this, usually we say, no problem, what, what can you achieve in one? So that after one, we can assess, okay, theoretically, we want to to invest two cycles, now we see that if we want to have an impact, it should be maybe three, are we ready to invest three? If we're not, we stop and it goes in the trash, and everybody accept that. So it's a bit harsh, in a way. But that's the only way to make sure that you're having a good investment thesis in a way in what you do.
[00:45:20] But it needs authority and of course, if your system doesn't allow you to release something at least every two weeks, it's getting harder. And if it's every six months, you cannot use that. This is what I told you, I'm not giving you the perfect thing that would work in every situation. That worked for us. Thank you. Pleasure.
[00:45:51] Uh, I'm here. Uh, thank you for sharing. And I'm very curious abouttion and selection process because you mentioned pitching, but pitching is also always connected with charisma of person who make it, who delivered it. Uh, do you have any criteria or parameters for priorization and selection of topics. Thank you.
[00:46:16] Yeah, so you're using three kind of criterias. The first thing is, who are we talking about, which kind of customers? So you're using segmentation a lot. Segmentation is not only about business segmentation, okay, it's not only about big companies versus small companies, it could be, is it new users or former users? that users that we use that part of the product or not that part of the product. So every time that we're talking about pitches, we're waiting for segmentation. And that was a big part of what the Trio was actually doing at the third step is, okay, which segments exactly? Because if we know the segment, we know that it's easier to test, we know that the benefits would be easier to understand. That that's the first one. Second one was the impact.
[00:47:06] The idea was, okay, if we do that, how is it connected to what we want to do? If it's not connected at all to a segment which is interesting and a metric that is interesting, we just don't do it. Not because it's not interesting per se, is that considering what we want to achieve, not the thing. So it's not stupid, it's not a bad idea, whatever.
[00:47:28] It's not what we want to do as investment. The third part was really the confidence. We had pitches and we didn't have any information because yeah, two customers told me that. Okay, considering the other potential opportunities. It was not enough. So they was really, we're using debate the rise system but applying that on the problems. Okay. Just to give you more information about the metrics.
[00:47:59] We're using that. So that's what base C is called a product metric tree. We'll always on top a business KPI, that could be LTV, for example, in 2023. Second part is the product KPI that we need to build. So adoption for us, for example, at the Fork, that was the percentage of first of new users that went at least twice using the Fork and left one review.
[00:48:29] And then all the variables that you see are variables with a team behind that. Every team is responsible of one variable and of the all equation.
[00:48:41] So when we were considering pitches on the B2C part, the idea was to say, okay, how is it actually pushing us and which variable and how that would actually impact the KPI. If we didn't have that, impossible to not to have this, okay, the one that's going to yell is going to win. So in a way, we put rationality in the process.
[00:49:09] Sorry. You can go. Okay.
[00:49:17] Yeah, question there.
[00:49:23] Hi. Um, I have a question um about you you talk about uh co-decision and co-responsibility.
[00:49:31] Yes.
[00:49:32] Um in my conception um responsibility is uh to be accountable for your decision and so what are the consequences for a failure or a success uh in in term of responsibility uh concretely.
[00:49:54] So concretely, we look at the success uh on a daily basis. Because sometimes an investment doesn't work just like you thought it would work, not because you did it badly, but just because certainty happens. Just like with your investments, sometimes you're behind, sometimes you're better. Okay. What we would condemn is not really the result saying that, okay, you wanted to do 9% more of engagement of whatever segments and you reached 8.5, is really how you make decision and where you're responsible of the failure or success. So I'll give you an example.
[00:50:41] On the success management part, we are a new feature that would actually allow restaurants to understand what's the impact of promos. So I don't know if you know La Fourchette, the Fork, but some restaurants are using promos in certain moments, certain service, in a certain day in a week.
[00:51:03] And we had no information whatsoever to provide to the restaurants saying, is it really allowing you to be better in terms of business, which is what they want at the end of the day, okay? So we build a new product and we use a lot of sales for that, because we knew that they were going to be the one pitching. We didn't reach the target because the sales guys didn't want to pitch it.
[00:51:32] So clearly after that, we are in a room trying to understand why they were not wanted to do the pitch. And the sales guy, what has been built is not aligned with the benefits that we want to provide to our users. This is not how we're going to talk to the restaurants. So we tried to understand did we miss something on the product side, the product designer did spend time enough, for example, to try to understand how restaurants would actually think or not.
[00:52:05] At the end, it was a bit of a mixed thing. The consequence was clear, the sales guys had less variable than what they were supposed to have. And on the product design side, because we knew that there was a problem here, they actually didn't get the raise that they were expecting. So you have a direct impact on your money, personal money. This is what usually when you think things not going in the right way, we always not look for someone guilty, but trying to see if we did a mistake, how big was the mistake.
[00:52:46] And is there a way to correct it? So every cycle, we will look at what is the result of the past investments and try to understand if we can do actions to compensate if we're not getting in the right way, or if we have a big attraction, what should we do to organize. But if people are really not doing their job, they will have a problem with us at the end of the year. We had one designer who didn't want to talk to sales guys. Ever, he wanted to talk directly to the restaurants and we had to push him to understand that, well, the restaurants may have needs, but still it's the sales guys who are going to talk to them, so the sales guys need to have the right pitches, the right decks to actually push the value. So he had to, if he didn't want to, he was not doing his job well, and then there would be consequences at the end of the year.
[00:53:43] Also, it's real, real responsibility. The second responsibility, you have to assume in front of everyone that you don't reach your target. It's not shaming, it's really trying to understand what didn't work. And everybody understands that sometimes things don't work, sometimes certainty happens, sometimes just there was not enough versus what we had as an information right at the beginning. What we ask the team is that if they see that during a cycle, they need to raise the red flag. Don't wait for the end of the cycle if you know it's not going to work. That was really a condition, it's really important because shit happens. And we need to we need to be understandable, have understanding when it comes to this, and we need to react if need be.
[00:54:37] There was another question here, I think.
[00:54:47] Thank you. Um, just a question regarding the co-responsibility because in my point of view, this is one of the keys here. Um, how did you manage practically uh to um change the the mindset of the different teams, so of course the product teams but as well in the countries to really embrace this co-responsibility because this is very often one of the, you know, friction points which is very, very strong.
[00:55:11] Definitely. Um,
[00:55:15] When we decided to invest, then we need to assign people from the teams to do the job.
[00:55:27] Which is not, okay, we might help you if you need something and then you have no one to talk to. So we really expected people to be there for one or two cycles working deeply with the team. They went they had a weekly every team with that stakeholder, so the stakeholder was just was not only here to say, I'm part of the job, part of the team, but really, okay, how can I help you? And if he doesn't or she doesn't answer, we can get directly to the investment forum with currently all the country managers and me, etcetera, and saying we have a problem there. So everybody knew that if they were actually assigned on that, they would they needed to do their job and their bosses, because of course there might be plenty of layers, were okay with that, and they actually couldn't push them to do two jobs at the same time. So we we managed to compensate a little bit financially if they were sales people, because of course they would spend time on that, they might sell less and they should not be condemned if they want to invest in the company further than just selling. So it really made things a lot simpler and a lot sa because people didn't have two priorities at the same time. Then when it came really to responsibility and saying that people would do their job, the fact that we had weekly, the fact that we were actually gathering information from the Trio if things were not working, and that the country managers had to be in front of the Trip Advisor group. And Liberty Media every three months, and they were here to actually answer questions to say, okay, we get that the product was working, we did what you did what was supposed to do, and why can't you sell it? So in a way, it comes of stress.
[00:57:22] It was very different to just waiting for, yeah, product is doing their little thing and sales we're talking about the figures. Trip Advisor understood what we were doing and they understood that sometimes it was on the sales side and on the marketing side that they were not doing their job. So in a way, because they had that stress and didn't want to be no, just like when you're at the pupil and you have this impression that your professor is actually yelling at you, which is something that everybody hates, well, they did what they had to do to make sure that it couldn't happen. So this is how we handle things. But really plenty of small things, but it couldn't work if we didn't have people assigned, it couldn't work if we didn't have all the information about customers and it didn't work differently if people were in a way punished on their salary if they were working with us. It was not easy to negotiate, by the way. I did. Yes. Another question?
[00:58:30] Well, thanks Fabrice for your presentation.
[00:58:32] My pleasure.
[00:58:35] And sharing with us.
[00:58:38] Good reflection on how to do product.
[00:58:41] Yeah, hope so.
[00:58:42] Now, now is the lunch break happening where you get your coffee this morning. And the next, the next talk in this room will be about engineering management and team performance by Arnaud Portari.
[00:58:59] Thank you.
[00:59:00] Thank you.

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