Posted on 17th April 2024 by Luca
Vickie Peng is a Product Partner at Sequoia and one of the co-creators of Arc, their company-building immersion programme for pre-seed and seed stage founders. Prior to Sequoia, Vickie was a product manager at Polyvore (acquired by Yahoo for $200M) and Instagram, where she grew SMB advertising from $200M to $1BN.
In Today’s Episode with Vickie Peng We Discuss:
1. Lessons from 15 Years in Product
- How did Vickie make her way into the world of product?
- How did Vickie turn a small side business into a massive revenue machine at TrialPay?
- How did Vickie scale Instagram SMB ads to $1BN? What were her takeaways?
- What was Vickie’s business model at Polyvore that eventually led to the $200M acquisition by Yahoo?
2. Early-Stage Founder Advice
- What does Vickie believe are the biggest mistakes early stage founders make when telling stories?
- Which 2 components does Vickie believe every great product mission should include?
- How should pre-product-market fit founders set their north star metric?
3. Perfecting Product Strategy
- What was Vickie’s biggest product mistake? What were her lessons?
- Why does Vickie think the best product people build less product?
- What is Vickie’s advice to product leaders starting their first day on the job?
- What are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring product teams?
4. Product-Market Fit Masterclass
- Why does Vickie believe product-market fit is a journey not a destination?
- What are the biggest reasons founders fail to get product-market fit?
- What are the 3 types of product-market fit?
- How does Vickie advise founders to differentiate themselves in competitive markets?
- What is Vickie’s framework for competing against incumbents?
