🤔 Issue #96: Asking The Right Questions And Winning Over Skeptics
Claremont grad and product leader Paige Costello talks about product life and shares her hard-won lessons and career advice for aspiring product managers
💬 Welcome to issue #96 of Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday. If you’ve ever wondered how your favorite app manages to launch the update that you so badly needed at exactly the right time, you likely have a PM to thank for it.
This week, Claremont grad and product leader Paige Costello talked with Lenny Rachitsky about what it’s like to be leading the team responsible for Asana's innovative products. She shares hard-won lessons from years of managing product teams, how she leads people with more experience than her, and career advice for other aspiring product managers. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Paige Costello
Claremont grad Paige Costello (CMC) is a product leader with a reputation as a remarkable coach and mentor. She is Asana's Head of Core Product, leading the group responsible for Asana’s web, desktop, and mobile apps. She was previously the Director of Product at Intercom and a Group Product Manager at Intuit, where she started her product career through their APM program.
Paige sat down with Lenny Rachitsky to talk about product life. Often being the youngest person in the room, Paige talks about how to demonstrate confidence and earn trust from skeptics and why she thinks curiosity and openness may be the most important PM competencies. She also shares her hard-won lessons and career advice for aspiring product managers.
At Asana, what do you work with? What is your team? What do you work on, and what is your team responsible for broadly?
So I lead the product organization that's responsible for our desktop, web, and mobile apps at Asana. The teams are composed of all the people in San Francisco and New York who are focused on creating clarity for individuals, teams, and organizations. Effectively, our goal is to help teams work together more efficiently and drive the outcomes they're going for.
You can think about the feature sets if you're an Asana user like goals, portfolios, projects, tasks, reporting, all of that. But really, we want to help people answer the question at work, "Who is doing what by when, and why?" So that notion of clarity of purpose, clarity of plan, progress, and responsibility are often so painful in people's work lives. When there is certainty there and clarity there, people can be much more efficient in getting the work done. So that's where my focus is every day. I'm a product leader for that group.
You're often the youngest person in the room, and you lead people with decades more experience than you. What have you learned about garnering trust and winning over skeptics, especially when they're more experienced or older, and especially in other functions like execs, designers, or engineers? What have you figured out there?
The thing I would say is to bring the insight. Know thy customer. Know thy market. Know thy competitors. Know thy numbers. Know thy product. If you can be the person in the room who has watched customers use the product and has a point of view about why one tool is significantly better or worse in a given dimension, and you can do that with confidence and clarity, and you don't need to know the other person's functional domain, and you don't need the expertise in what they're experts at, you can bring insight that makes people curious, and trust you, and just immediately believe that there's an opportunity that you're not advocating for that just is true.
But I think that's a really tricky and unique thing… not to pretend like you have more experience than you do, but to be willing to ask great questions and then be curious enough that you're bringing insight to every meeting that people may or may not have, but you're always willing to share.
That's such a good answer because there's not a trick to it. It's just do the work, spend the time to become the person that has answers that people value and obviously, they will respect you, value your opinion, want to hear from you.
Yeah. Our former board member, Anne Raimondi, and now our head of business wrote an article on First Round that was really great about the trust equation, and it really resonated with me. I don't know if you've heard about it, but she said that trust is equal to credibility plus reliability, plus authenticity, divided by or over perception of self-interest.
I think when you're met by someone who doesn't know you, doesn't know your work, your job is to create credibility, and that's where I said bringing the insight is where you can really tip the scales here. Reliability, this is all about your say-do ratio. Authenticity is just being vulnerable, being yourself, and then making sure that people know that you're not in it for some other outcome or cause. That perception of self-interest really can change whether people trust you.
In terms of knowing the insight and knowing thy customer, putting the time, I imagine, is a big element of that. Is that how you do that, or is there anything else along those lines that's just like, "Here's how I get really good at this?"
When you take a new role, become best friends with a researcher, and spend time watching customers use the product firsthand because what they maybe report on or are trying to do a study about might be very different from what you observe. You really just need that front-row seat with customers, and so asking, "How do I actually set up time with customers? How do I compensate them? How do I read the tickets?" Whatever. It's amazing how little you have to do to quickly catch up to understanding who the organization is solving for well and poorly, and how people really use your product versus how your teams use your product, especially in organizations where there are heavy dogfooding cultures.
It's really risky to become less sensitive to the needs and behaviors of customers because people think they are their customers, and it also becomes very navel-gazey. So I think the more you get out and break up how people are having conversations about what we should do and why, and what we shouldn't do and why, and it's not about your opinion, it's about asking questions, and then bringing insight can really change the nature of the conversation and build trust.
Are there other pieces of advice that have been really impactful to you?
There are a few ways to think about advice, and my advice often meets some mark when it's for a particular person at a particular time in their career. So I would say the advice I love giving to people who are early in their career is don't self-select because I think it's really easy to say, "I don't have the experience," or, "I'm not X, Y, Z enough," and not apply. I really push people not to self-select, and I try to remind myself where that's appropriate to do the same thing.
Other advice I often give is just to think big and ship small. "Think big, ship small." Since we're trying to ship all the time and in small chunks, let’s not start thinking in small ways because it's really easy to get a little too incremental, a little too wrapped around the axle around optimizing a metric, and miss the bigger picture, and so think big ship small is another piece of product advice I give.
The last piece of advice I would give is more of a way of thinking. This is a little abstract, but when employees join Asana, they get a book called The 15 Commitments of a Conscious Leader. It's led by the Conscious Leadership Group. They also get two-day training on some language and tools for how to effectively work with other people, and it's a really... for me at least, it was transformational because I learned some vocabulary and methods that I could share with my peers.
One of the things that you learn is to be above or below the line, and something that is this concept of like, "Where are you? Are you above the line? Are you below the line?" If you're above the line, you're committed to learning. You're open and curious. Things are funny here, more playful. If you're below the line, you're committed to winning. You're committed to being right. Things are more black and white.
All of us have days where we're having a conversation and we're really in that below line space where it's like, "No, it just is this way. There's no two ways around it." That concept of understanding your personal head space, and then being mindful of how you're operating when you're in that place really was great advice for me and also recognizing where other people were when it related to decisions we were making or context. It also helped me think about rejecting false trade-offs and challenging like... Effectively, there's this notion of how might the opposite be true, and that's a piece of advice I gave myself like this morning.
Check out the full interview to learn how Paige leads her team at Asana to success. 👇
🤝 Claremont Introductions: Will Tachau & Nemo
Claremont grad Will Tachau (PO '14) is the co-founder and CTO of Nemo, a SaaS tool that aims to bring observability to your business. Will first caught the startup bug at Pomona, where he teamed up with a couple of classmates to create "Claremont Munchies," a website that would deliver In-N-Out to campus late at night on weekends (this was before Doordash and Uber Eats were prevalent).
After a decade of various Head of Engineering and Software Engineering roles at places like Coinbase and Metawork, he joined up with longtime friend Ben Echols last October to improve what they had seen as a systemic problem at every company they'd worked at – the inability to observe (let alone communicate and track) the inner organizational workings.
Most companies seem to be operating at about 5% efficiency— getting that to 100% seems like a pipe dream, but could we make it 10%? Could we help companies be successful because of how they operate, rather than in spite of? What if you could get notified when something about your business changes, the same way you can get alerts for engineering systems? If any of that resonates with you, or even if it makes no sense at all, we'd love to hear from you — shoot me a message.
Visit their website to learn more about Will and their mission at Nemo. 👇
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: Ariel Boorstin & Cooper
Claremont grad Ariel Boorstin (CMC) is the co-founder and CMO of Cooper, a startup that supports parents in their journey through parenthood. After completing her psychology degree, Ariel entered the marketing field – working with brands such as Nike, Pernod Ricard, and Voss as their Head of Global Marketing. In 2021, she created Cooper with co-founder Gabby Slome to cut through the increasing noise surrounding parenting. Cooper helps parents face this new chapter head-on by providing a safe space and tools, including hyper-curated parenting groups and resources, live virtual group and 1-on-1 coaching sessions, 24/7 chat support, access to exclusive events, and more.
They were recently featured in an article from USA Today about how their company equips parents with accurate child development data, allowing them to enjoy parenthood.👇
💼 Who’s Hiring?: Whoosh & CoRise
Claremont entrepreneur Colin Read (CMC ‘06) is the co-founder and CEO of vertical SaaS company Whoosh, Inc. They’re a modern hospitality tech company focused on streamlining club operations and improving the member experience. With a cloud-based and tablet-focused approach, Whoosh streamlines operations to save clubs 20+ hours weekly in staff time per department. Whoosh is backed by top-tier VC investors, including Craft Ventures, and is focused on disrupting the golf and tennis club industry. They’re looking for a Customer Success Specialist to join their team:
Claremont grad Julia Stiglitz (PO) is the co-founder and CEO of CoRise – a new learning platform where anyone can learn the most in-demand skills in today’s job market. CoRise partners with industry leaders to transform how professionals and companies build technical, high-demand skills at scale. They were also recently listed by Business Insider as one of the 23 most promising edtech startups in 2022. Julia is currently building the founding team for CoRise, and she’s hiring for several positions:
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s top read 🔥
In her recent article, Claremont grad and data scientist Nina Boyko (CMC) wrote about why she thinks studying liberal arts actually makes you stand out in a technical industry like data science. She tries to debunk the misconception that people aspiring to work in technical fields must have a technical background. Nina is currently a Data Science Manager at Meta.
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
Congratulations to Camena Bioscience on their recent $10M Series A led by Mercia. Claremont serial entrepreneur Scott Fraser (HMC ‘76) is the co-founder of Camena, a synthetic biology company providing genes to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The company will use its new funding to continue the development of its pioneering DNA synthesis platform, gSynth™.
This week’s top listen 🎧
Claremont grad Jake Heller (PZ ‘07) was on the Bootstrapped Solo podcast to talk about Casetext’s origin story, how AI is leveling the playing field for smaller firms, the evolution of this type of technology, and the experience of growing a startup. Jake is the co-founder and CEO of Casetext, a legal AI company that recently got acquired for $650M.
Everything else you need to know💡
HMC INQ company Northern Pacific Airways officially went airborne with its inaugural flight from Ontario to Las Vegas last week. Congratulations to Claremont grads and co-founders Josh Jones (HMC ‘98) and Tom Hsieh (HMC ‘93) on this huge milestone.
CGU professor Paul Zak and Claremont alum Jorge Barraza (CGU) are the co-founders of the neuroscience software company Immersion. They recently launched a free emotional fitness app called Tuesday which tracks, compares, and gives users a real-time preview of how certain activities affect their emotional well-being. Tuesday is now the #1 most downloaded wellness app on the App Store.
Congratulations to Claremont alumnus Ross Grossman (CGU ‘76) for being named Keck Graduate Institute’s third Board Chair. He succeeds Jim Widergren, who is also a fellow Claremont Colleges graduate.
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🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🕺 How Our Bodies Predict The Next Hit Songs….. Claremont Professor Paul Zak was featured in several publications for his CGU team’s new study on how AI can analyze cardiac activity to predict whether a song will be a hit before it’s released. Some commentators have suggested this technology could reduce music production costs, curate public playlists, and even render TV talent show judges obsolete. Paul is the co-founder of Immersion, a neuroscience software platform that measures people’s unconscious emotional connection to an experience in real-time.
🤖 Let’s Talk About Responsible AI….. As businesses and organizations accelerate AI adoption, big questions are being asked about business accountability. In this article, Claremont alum Karina Alexanyan (PZ) shares what organizations can do to mitigate the risks better and leverage responsible AI as a value and impact driver. Dr. Alexanyan is the founder and CEO of Humanication.io, a Responsible Innovation/Ethics consulting firm, and serves as Director of Strategy at All Tech is Human, a non-profit building out the Responsible Technology ecosystem.
🚗 Automotive Retailing In The Metaverse….. AI and metaverse company MeetKai recently partnered with BYD Auto to launch BYD World, an interactive virtual dealership experience for customers to interact with the brand and its products in the US. With MeetKai’s advanced AI and spatial computing technology, visitors have the freedom to explore BYD’s digital showroom, complete with 360 lifelike representations of the company’s electric vehicles. Claremont grad James Kaplan (HMC) is the co-founder and CEO of MeetKai.
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