0:00

Welcome back to the Product

0:02

Experience Podcast. This week we

0:04

talk to Tricia Price, CPO at

0:06

Pendo. Pendo's seen huge growth over

0:08

the years, so this talk is

0:10

all about how Pendo's product org

0:12

is set up for success. The Product

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200 product tank meetups from New

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York to Barcelona. There's probably one

0:50

near you. Hi

0:57

Trisha, welcome to the product

0:59

experience. Hi, thank you for

1:01

having me, looking forward to

1:03

the conversation today. I know, me

1:06

too, and we've been trying to get

1:08

this in the diary for a while,

1:10

so I'm so glad that we finally,

1:12

finally managed to find time to catch

1:15

up. You're a very busy lady, so

1:17

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with

1:19

us today. Thank you for your patience

1:21

with me. So we're going to talk

1:24

about how you have organized Pendo's product

1:26

org. for success. But before we get

1:28

stuck into that, I'd love for you

1:31

to give us a quick intro to

1:33

who you are and what you're

1:35

currently doing in products and

1:37

how you've got into this

1:40

crazy world that we all work

1:42

in. That we love. We didn't

1:44

love. Sure. I was a software

1:46

engineer out of college and I

1:48

found that I. always gravitated to

1:50

figuring out the business problem

1:52

and a clever solution and

1:55

not so much actually the

1:57

writing code or the actual

1:59

implementation. And so from there I

2:01

sort of naturally gravitated to product

2:04

and. I was lucky enough to

2:06

lead the product and technology organizations

2:08

at Encino for six years from

2:10

early stage all the way to

2:12

a year past the IPO and

2:15

then came from there to Pendo.

2:17

I've been at Pendo. I guess

2:19

it's been about three and a

2:21

half years now. Time is flying

2:23

when you're having fun and have

2:26

had the incredible good fortune to

2:28

be the CPO at Pendo in

2:30

such an important time of growth,

2:32

both from a platform and product

2:35

perspective. as well as from a

2:37

revenue and company perspective. So, and

2:39

obviously being the CPO at a

2:41

company that creates a product for

2:43

other product teams and product leaders

2:46

is just so special. And then

2:48

when you look at the extension

2:50

of that in our investment and

2:52

commitment to overall product community, it's

2:55

just such a great role to

2:57

learn as well as evangelize this

2:59

whole craft of product. It must

3:01

be so interesting, you know, building

3:03

a product for product people. We

3:06

will come back to that later

3:08

as well. I have a question

3:10

around that. But before we go

3:12

there, it would be great to

3:14

kind of understand a little bit

3:17

about the growth that you've seen

3:19

in Pendo, like since you've joined

3:21

and over the last three and

3:23

a half years, just to give

3:26

us an idea of, you know,

3:28

when we talk about the kind

3:30

of success that you're setting up

3:32

your product teams for, like what

3:34

kind of growth are we talking

3:37

about? How has the company changed

3:39

and grown? Now, well, our revenue

3:41

has doubled more than doubled in

3:43

the time that I was there,

3:46

but I'm equally proud of our

3:48

ability to have such good success

3:50

in the enterprise. And when I

3:52

say enterprise, what I mean is

3:54

if you look back in the

3:57

history of Pendo in our early

3:59

days, we were mostly focused on

4:01

technology, SAS, companies, but as you

4:03

know, this craft of product has

4:05

really transformed to traditional businesses who

4:08

are focused on digitization of their

4:10

products and digitization of the engagement

4:12

of their customers. And so, you

4:14

know, part of the success that

4:17

I've seen with Pendo since I

4:19

got here is really our ability

4:21

to continue to serve these highly

4:23

innovative an analytics and guides company,

4:25

right? We had an analytics product

4:28

and a guides in app communication

4:30

and messaging product. And now the

4:32

product truly is a platform for

4:34

product leaders with our launch of

4:36

session replay, with listen, with the

4:39

AI features, with orchestrate, and then

4:41

most importantly, the intersections between these

4:43

products. The thing I think we

4:45

did different as a product organization

4:48

than other companies I've seen. different

4:50

products or modules are all on

4:52

one platform, but there's these magical

4:54

moments, these magical intersections between those

4:56

modules that you can really only

4:59

get the power of this platform

5:01

when you're able to use them

5:03

together. And so that's probably the

5:05

accomplishment I'm most proud of. I

5:08

guess the doubling of revenue speaks

5:10

for itself, you know, the customers

5:12

are coming and they're staying obviously.

5:14

So yeah, big congrats on that

5:16

front. Thank you. Moving into adjacent

5:19

markets, launching additional product lines, you

5:21

know, changing the way things work,

5:23

that doesn't happen by accident. It's

5:25

not something that's really easy to

5:27

do. And we'll get into some

5:30

of all this, but I'm really

5:32

curious. What if you changed or

5:34

introduced into the organization and into

5:36

the way that product management works

5:39

at Pendo that helped make this

5:41

more successful? Randy, I'd probably be

5:43

able to answer the question. and

5:45

what didn't I change these were.

5:47

And why I say that is,

5:50

you know, I did come in

5:52

to make change and there were

5:54

some great things and great people

5:56

and I had this incredible product.

5:58

sitting there to take and expand

6:01

upon. But we really did change

6:03

almost everything in terms of new

6:05

leaders that we brought in, the

6:07

leaders that are now running the

6:10

product organization. None of them were

6:12

here other than Rahul who's a

6:14

founder when I got here. And

6:16

that's because the biggest thing I

6:18

did, Randy, was go out and

6:21

bring people who really understood. outcomes.

6:23

They had a business mind, what

6:25

I call a commercial mind. And

6:27

yes, you have to know how

6:30

to build product and you have

6:32

to understand the craft of product

6:34

management. But if you don't know

6:36

why you're doing it, if you

6:38

don't understand sales, if you don't

6:41

understand customers, if you don't understand

6:43

marketing, if you don't understand the

6:45

different motions, you can build a

6:47

lot of great features that do

6:49

not help you double the size

6:52

of the company in terms of

6:54

to what I call an outcome-driven

6:56

organization with outcome-driven leaders. And then

6:58

you change your processes around that.

7:01

And how is that received? Or

7:03

how, actually, how long did that

7:05

take as well? Because that sounds

7:07

like quite a substantial change. Well,

7:09

I moved pretty quickly, changed the...

7:12

leadership structure and who was reporting

7:14

to me and bringing in the

7:16

new leaders like Brian Walsh and

7:18

Nicole Mays pretty quickly. Definitely within

7:21

six months, those changes happened. But

7:23

for it to really truly become

7:25

the way we work in part

7:27

of our DNA probably took about

7:29

a year to get to a

7:32

point where every conversation every R&D

7:34

review every time we were looking

7:36

at product scope and what we

7:38

were going to build and what

7:40

we shipped in light of our

7:43

goals in light of the outcomes

7:45

we were trying to drive, that

7:47

probably took us about a year

7:49

to truly make it part of

7:52

our DNA. Yeah, I can imagine

7:54

that it would take a little

7:56

while. It does. So a key

7:58

piece of this though is you're

8:00

trying to become outcome-driven. How do

8:03

you know the success of this?

8:05

You need to be able to

8:07

measure the worth of your doing,

8:09

the value, the ROI of it

8:11

all. Yeah. How did you start

8:14

putting that in place? What kind

8:16

of training or support or how

8:18

did you start implementing it with

8:20

your teams? just with natural curiosity

8:23

of asking the right questions. right?

8:25

So the very beginning was going

8:27

into R&D reviews and instead of

8:29

just saying what feature you're going

8:31

to try to build say why

8:34

are you doing that? What are

8:36

you trying to achieve? And after

8:38

that that was kind of the

8:40

start just to introduce it and

8:43

then the senior leadership team of

8:45

product went off site and created

8:47

a true scorecard and created a

8:49

true set of outcomes that we

8:51

were going to measure. And then

8:54

from that we cascaded that down

8:56

to the teams. And then we

8:58

were patient with continuing to ask

9:00

the questions every time, what are

9:02

you going to build? Why are

9:05

you building it? What outcome are

9:07

you going to drive? And then

9:09

the next time when we come

9:11

back and look, did it work?

9:14

And sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it

9:16

doesn't. What worked? Why didn't it

9:18

work? What worked? Why didn't it

9:20

work? And then if it didn't

9:22

work, how does that drive your

9:25

different decision for the future? Does

9:27

that mean you need to try

9:29

harder? creating that culture, teaching people,

9:31

asking the questions, and bringing in

9:33

new folks, like bringing in someone

9:36

like Nicole Mace, who came from

9:38

a PLG background, was really good

9:40

at experimentation, was really good at

9:42

forcing alignment on a North Star

9:45

metric for what we were trying

9:47

to achieve. So it was a

9:49

little bit of mix of new

9:51

people and really clear communication about

9:53

the high level goals, and then

9:56

constant putting it into practice in

9:58

our cadences and meetings. to the

10:00

product organization, you going in and

10:02

reinforcing that with your team, but

10:05

you're an organization that's really heavy

10:07

on sales, you've got a product-minded

10:09

founder and CEO and Todd, I'm

10:11

sure people were coming to you

10:13

and the other product people all

10:16

the time saying, can I get

10:18

this, I just need this to

10:20

close a sale, you know, normal

10:22

stuff for B2B organizations. So this

10:24

was the communication internal to the

10:27

product team, to the product

10:29

company. Well, you're right that I'm

10:31

extremely fortunate to work for

10:33

Todd Olson, who is a

10:35

product person through and through.

10:37

And Todd is very long

10:39

term strategically minded and truly

10:41

thinks about the long term,

10:43

not only the short term. And so

10:45

I definitely had Todd's support and I

10:48

worked hard and spent a lot of

10:50

time with him to make sure we

10:52

were aligned on the outcomes and that

10:54

we were aligned on the way we

10:57

were thinking in the decisions. Now. Because

10:59

we're in enterprise sales, there are times

11:01

we say yes to a customer and

11:03

a commit for a specific customer. But we

11:05

have a process for it. We have a

11:08

document that you have to fill out. We

11:10

have to understand what the opportunity is. We

11:12

look at it and see. Because most

11:14

times when an enterprise customer is pushing

11:17

you on something, there are other customers

11:19

who want that too, right? So going

11:21

in, making that assessment, making sure we

11:23

understand what we won't be able to

11:26

build, and what's the opportunity cost. And

11:28

the few times we've had to say

11:30

no, Todd's understood it and so is

11:33

sales because we were very clear. But

11:35

honestly, more times than not, we're able to

11:37

say yes and still be able to

11:39

drive our outcomes and our strategy.

11:41

And I think that's because number

11:43

one. When you force the rigor

11:45

of looking at individual requests

11:48

and putting some homework on the

11:50

sales people and you have a

11:52

conversation between product and the prospect

11:55

before you make the commitment a

11:57

lot of times once you share

11:59

with your roadmap and all the

12:01

other things you're trying to work on,

12:03

they're like, oh, I don't want that

12:06

thing. I'd much rather you spend your

12:08

time on the 10 things you're already

12:10

thinking of. And so that's another part

12:12

of the culture that we were able

12:15

to shift is you put these really

12:17

great product leaders in front of customers,

12:19

and sometimes they're like, we buy into

12:21

your vision, right? You mentioned a minute

12:23

ago about how you came up with

12:26

this scorecard and worked with the leadership

12:28

team on that and then kind of

12:30

brought that to the teams and then

12:32

cascaded their sort of objectives down through

12:35

that scorecard. That sounds really straightforward, really

12:37

sort of simple. But I'm guessing, you

12:39

know, there's some complexity in actually how

12:41

you create the scorecard in the first

12:44

place. and then how you share that

12:46

with the rest of the organization, how

12:48

they then take that and turn that

12:50

into something like tangible that they can

12:53

work with in their sort of day-to-day

12:55

work? What does that process look like?

12:57

Yeah, well the idea of coming up

12:59

with a score, Kurt, and what to

13:02

measure on the scorecard is kind of

13:04

the easy part. I mean, it's not

13:06

that easy, but we have a company,

13:08

we have a very OCR-driven, taught as

13:11

OK-R-driven, we get together as a C-sweet,

13:13

one supporter, we get together as an

13:15

executive team, one supporter, and decide on

13:17

our OK-R. So that behavior and thinking

13:20

about what to measure is pretty natural

13:22

for us. And we can debate things

13:24

like, is retention the most important thing.

13:26

Right? We can debate is an MPS

13:29

score important. Is an MPS score important

13:31

only within a certain segment, right? So

13:33

we can debate those things and is

13:35

there a perfect measurement? There's not. But

13:38

you can align them. If we're getting

13:40

ready to launch our new session replay

13:42

product and we were in beta, the

13:44

goal might just be, do we have

13:47

an oversubscribed beta? Then once you get

13:49

into the beta, are people coming in

13:51

and using it and are they using

13:53

it with frequency? And then you get

13:56

into what is the... feature that we

13:58

feel is a value metric, where the

14:00

customer is actually getting value from the

14:02

product. So then you go to measuring

14:05

that, right? And those kind of individual

14:07

metrics move as the product matures, and

14:09

you go through the cycle. But they

14:11

are all in support of one outcome,

14:14

right? Which is the success of our

14:16

new session replay module, which then is

14:18

going to be around ARR for our

14:20

session replay. But if you wait to

14:22

see that ARR is growing, it takes

14:25

too long or it's too late when

14:27

you're not achieving it and so for

14:29

us it was about breaking those things

14:31

down and so it is hard to

14:34

do but it you know if it

14:36

becomes part of your culture and just

14:38

the way you work and the way

14:40

you make decisions you can make it

14:43

work. In that process as well how

14:45

involved do you get with kind of

14:47

breaking that down into the sort of

14:49

like the smaller pieces and guiding the

14:52

teams at the sort of tactical level

14:54

on what they should be focusing on

14:56

versus them coming to you and saying,

14:58

okay, in order for us to meet

15:01

this goal, these are the things that

15:03

we need to be measuring. So it's

15:05

a mix. I will say like, for

15:07

example, the session replay product that we

15:10

were just talking about. the amazing product

15:12

team, crudeie and her team, they came

15:14

up with the value metric, right? They

15:16

came up with the fact that, hey,

15:19

we know if people are sharing the

15:21

sessions or saving the sessions that they

15:23

watch, that they got value on them.

15:25

Just coming in and watching sessions, I

15:28

mean, that's helpful if they're not coming

15:30

in, you got a real problem. But

15:32

unless they're getting value out of the

15:34

session and they were able to find

15:37

a session that actually applied to what

15:39

the problem was that they were trying

15:41

to solve. They're not truly getting value.

15:43

So that metric, that was something that

15:46

crude came up with and that product

15:48

team knows that way better than I

15:50

do, right? They're the ones talking to

15:52

customers every day. They're the ones in

15:55

the weeds with this product and so

15:57

they were able to come up with

15:59

it. Now what I would do. is

16:01

talk about the success of the session

16:04

replay product with the team. And hey,

16:06

how are we measuring value? How do

16:08

we know with the beta is successful?

16:10

How do we know when we're ready

16:13

to move to GA? What are we

16:15

looking at? And then I'll go in

16:17

and I go in dependo and look

16:19

at my dashboards every day to see

16:21

how it's how it's moving and how

16:24

we're progressing. But actually what that value

16:26

metric is, the teams are way better

16:28

at that than I am. So I'm

16:30

sure not every team hit on the

16:33

right metric. straight away. So can you

16:35

give an example of a time when

16:37

a team was focusing on something and

16:39

said, yeah, let's let's evolve that? Yeah,

16:42

actually our analytics team, we put a

16:44

lot of investment into our data explorer,

16:46

which is our sort of complex query

16:48

engine for analytics. You can do ad

16:51

hoc analytics on your product usage. And

16:53

our data explorer team had this metric

16:55

of North Star metric of reports run.

16:57

How many reports were run? But the

17:00

problem with reports run is if you

17:02

don't get the answer that you were

17:04

looking for, you have to run something

17:06

three different times to get it. The

17:09

other problem with reports run, and you

17:11

could debate, this is a good thing

17:13

or a bad thing, is once in

17:15

Pendo, you take a data explorer report

17:18

and you put it onto a dashboard,

17:20

then it's running every time someone goes

17:22

and looks at the dashboard. Well, maybe

17:24

that's a good thing, right? Isn't that

17:27

the goal? People looking at dashboards and

17:29

being able to see the data. But

17:31

there was some funniness to that metric.

17:33

And you can understand the spirit of

17:36

it, right? At first glance, of course,

17:38

we want people to use data explorers.

17:40

So the reports run. But if getting

17:42

the criteria right and the query right,

17:45

you had to run it five times

17:47

instead of once, that's probably not the

17:49

right metric. So. So you've talked about

17:51

quantum metrics quite a bit. I'm curious

17:54

about qualitative or let's talk about big

17:56

quant metric first is NPS ever a

17:58

good metric? Uh, yes, it is a

18:00

good metric. I am not a hater

18:03

on MPS in context. I think if

18:05

you use MPS alone as

18:07

a metric to define

18:09

whether your company or

18:12

your product is

18:14

successful, that is not

18:16

a good thing. But if you

18:19

use it as a metric

18:21

along with other things. And

18:23

we can talk about other metrics,

18:26

value metrics, usage, metrics, retention, metrics,

18:28

win rate for your product is

18:30

a great metric. I think that

18:32

it can be helpful. I actually

18:34

go look at our slack channel

18:37

every single day and look at

18:39

our MPS verbatims because we have an

18:41

integration into our slack channel and

18:43

every time somebody does an MPS

18:45

and writes something, it goes into

18:48

that channel. And you know. It is not

18:50

a good idea to overreact every single

18:52

time you see a negative MPS score

18:54

or a comment, but it can be

18:56

a little bit of the canary in

18:59

the coin. And like keeping an eye

19:01

on it and feeling that frustration or

19:03

that feeling of happiness that your users

19:05

feel by reading what they say. And

19:07

then now we use AI to synthesize

19:09

it and tell us quarter of or

19:12

quarter trends and how they're progressing and

19:14

not just the score, Randy, but. what

19:16

they like and what are promoters talking

19:18

about, what are the tractors talking

19:20

about? And then you combine that

19:22

with, well, are your promoters first time

19:25

users? Are they the ones who've been

19:27

around forever and know your product? And

19:29

then you can start to realize you

19:32

have a problem with first time users.

19:34

So you have a problem with this

19:36

one persona. So I think when you

19:38

combine it with all the other

19:41

metadata and pieces, it's a great

19:43

thing. It's a great tool. I

19:45

think I agree with you. how

19:47

it's used and how it's misinterpreted.

19:49

I love customer satisfaction measures. I

19:51

just don't like, I think NPS

19:53

has gotten a bad label and

19:55

people use it poorly rather

19:57

than anything else. So when

19:59

you're doing. sentiment, when you're reading

20:02

sentiment analysis and measuring that, what

20:04

are you looking for? You talked

20:06

about promoters, what are the kind

20:08

of signals are you looking for

20:10

in the noise? Yeah, I'm really

20:13

looking for the patterns of metadata

20:15

combined with the satisfaction, right? So

20:17

are the people who are happy

20:19

with your product or your company?

20:21

Are they people who have longevity

20:24

and are experts or are they

20:26

first-time users or is there a

20:28

particular persona who like the engineers

20:30

hate us because when they come

20:32

in dependo they're tagging right and

20:34

then you can start to go

20:37

ha Well, let's focus on that

20:39

part of the product and why

20:41

they hate it and what that

20:43

does. So for me, I think

20:45

any kind of customer satisfaction can

20:48

be really, really valuable when you

20:50

can get to the meat of

20:52

segmenting the feedback and finding the

20:54

places of delight that you're driving

20:56

and the places where you're driving

20:59

frustration. Does any of this ever

21:01

go wrong? You know, Randy asked

21:03

earlier about like bad measurements, but

21:05

do you ever have a moment

21:07

where you're, you know, the process

21:10

is being followed or, you know,

21:12

you're following them, the metrics and

21:14

you're coming up with the good

21:16

measurements and stuff, but it's just

21:18

not really giving you the direction

21:21

that you were expecting? And maybe

21:23

the answer is no, it just

21:25

always works. And I don't think

21:27

a process, it's people over process

21:29

for me. Our process is actually

21:32

really late. It's more of a

21:34

cadence and it's more of a

21:36

culture than it is a process.

21:38

And I think processes can absolutely

21:40

go wrong. And, you know, just

21:43

a good example I'll give is.

21:45

things like AI and disrupting your

21:47

roadmap and throwing it out like

21:49

you can't just keep going and

21:51

say like we're hitting our outcomes

21:53

we're hitting our metrics the scorecard

21:56

looks good I mean because they're

21:58

are going to be new companies

22:00

and new entrants that are going

22:02

to threaten you and the speed

22:04

of which these companies can come

22:07

about in today's world utilizing AI.

22:09

So you can't just set a

22:11

scorecard and set and forget it.

22:13

Absolutely. And I'll give you an

22:15

example of a time where in

22:18

spite of our cadence and spite

22:20

of our culture, in spite of

22:22

our process, we didn't deliver

22:24

and that is we had this idea that

22:26

We have all this usage data,

22:29

right? And we should be able

22:31

to take machine learning and build

22:33

a model that is specific to

22:35

each one of our customers and

22:38

tells you if you can get

22:40

adoption of these particular features, your

22:42

users will never leave. Okay.

22:44

So this is not like

22:47

a churn model of your

22:49

users coming back to your

22:51

product, right? A retention model,

22:53

really. And so we had a model

22:56

that produced pretty good results,

22:58

but we could not figure out the product,

23:00

the whole product. Meaning, what's the interface?

23:02

How can you make sure that the

23:05

results of the model change enough that

23:07

they're interesting? Because if people come in

23:09

and they look at it and then

23:11

they come in a week later and

23:13

it's the exact same thing, are they going

23:16

to keep coming back? But if they change

23:18

all the time, how can it change all

23:20

the time? It shouldn't change all

23:22

the time, should it? And if you

23:24

just say something like, if everyone comes

23:26

to the login page, that might be

23:28

what the model puts out, right? Yeah,

23:30

no duve. If people come to the

23:33

login page, you know, that's great.

23:35

So it was a very tricky

23:37

product for us that regardless of

23:39

the quality of our discovery,

23:42

regardless of the fact that

23:44

we had clear outcomes we

23:46

wanted to deliver, quarter after

23:48

quarter, we were not delivering

23:50

on the outcomes. And I mean, we did

23:52

and we eventually got that product

23:54

to GA at this last Pinemonium, but

23:57

it took us probably a year longer

23:59

than we were. into and you know

24:01

not something I'm super proud of

24:03

but it's factual that no process

24:05

is going to perfect creating great

24:08

product. Although definitely sounds like a

24:10

problem worth solving like I literally

24:12

don't know any business that wouldn't

24:14

want to know what activities that

24:16

he uses need to do in

24:18

order to be retained on their

24:20

platform so yeah. And we kept

24:23

at it and we still are

24:25

keeping at it. It's just an

24:27

example of like measurement is great

24:29

because measurement helps you focus and

24:31

not just sort of do feature

24:33

feature feature and not really know

24:36

if those features are aggregating to

24:38

help you be successful or not,

24:40

but having outcomes and having goals

24:42

and measuring does not ensure success.

24:44

Okay, that's a great setup because,

24:46

you know, we've got all this

24:49

data available to us these days.

24:51

Everyone is trying to look at

24:53

it and synthesize it and figure

24:55

out the best way of looking

24:57

at it. Are we at the

24:59

point where it's easier or where

25:01

it's possible really to just throw

25:04

this all into some AI tooling

25:06

and say, hey, what should our

25:08

goals be? What is the right

25:10

data? What are the right dashboards

25:12

and metrics and metrics for us?

25:14

So I'm going to answer that

25:17

in two parts. I absolutely think

25:19

AI can help us identify the

25:21

right goals. At Pendo, we have

25:23

a great data science team. They

25:25

go in and they look at

25:27

Pendo usage. They combine that with

25:30

our data from sales force and

25:32

they help us look at things

25:34

like risk list of customers, great

25:36

customers to come back and upsell

25:38

new products too based on what

25:40

they're doing using, how they're engaging

25:43

with. revenue forecasting. So they absolutely

25:45

were at a point where AI

25:47

can help us sell business goals.

25:49

We also were using AI quite

25:51

a bit in Pendo to help

25:53

us understand customer sentiment, to help

25:55

us understand the feedback. You probably

25:58

saw that. this past summer, we

26:00

did an acquisition of Zelda. And

26:02

that's all about going out to

26:04

external data sources, going and looking

26:06

at things like your support tickets,

26:08

and not going to your support

26:11

team and saying, what do you

26:13

want us to fix? But going

26:15

and looking at your support tickets

26:17

and saying, A. I. I. Is

26:19

telling us that these are the

26:21

top things that frustrate the heck

26:24

out of your customers. Go focus

26:26

on them. person who's making a

26:28

lot of noise. And so I

26:30

absolutely think AI is at a

26:32

point where it can help us

26:34

know where to focus and help

26:36

us set business goals. But I

26:39

don't think it replaces good judgment

26:41

and intuition and leaders who know

26:43

their product and know their business

26:45

in and out. I think it's

26:47

a tool. If you've only got

26:49

one salesperson making a lot of

26:52

noise, you should count yourself lucky.

26:54

I have many. Yeah, I went

26:56

to one of the Pendo parties

26:58

there. They're a rowdy bunch. They're

27:00

great. In the funnest possible way.

27:02

For sure. And speaking of which,

27:05

and I know Randy sort of

27:07

mentioned this earlier, but in terms

27:09

of being very sort of measurement

27:11

led and outcome led, how do

27:13

you make sure that that's how

27:15

like the whole organization is working

27:18

and not just the product of.

27:20

Well, lucky for me, you know,

27:22

and maybe it's not luck, maybe

27:24

it's where I was attracted to

27:26

to work or part of why

27:28

outcomes became such an important part

27:30

of the product team is that

27:33

Todd and our entire company's cadence

27:35

is very OCR driven. And Todd

27:37

also has a firm belief in

27:39

alignment of goals and outcomes over

27:41

process, cadence over process. So we

27:43

have very strict cadences. So we

27:46

have very strict cadences. that

27:48

we all come

27:50

to to spend

27:52

time together. And

27:54

we have a

27:56

clear set of

27:59

goals and OKRs

28:01

when we come

28:03

out of those

28:05

as a company

28:08

and then those flow through to product.

28:10

And so for me, it really wasn't

28:12

about going out and trying to convince

28:14

everybody that this is the right way

28:16

to do things. It is a part

28:18

of our company culture. Now, I will

28:20

say there was change in terms of

28:22

the product team and

28:25

how they fit into that, right?

28:27

While we had OKRs overall, the

28:29

product team didn't have sort of

28:31

the maturity of pushing that down

28:33

into the day to day that

28:35

they do today, but the company

28:38

is very outcome focused. So that's

28:40

been helpful. The biggest piece for

28:42

me that I also changed was, I

28:45

don't know if this has ever happened to other product leaders,

28:47

I'm guessing it has, but I would

28:49

come in and I would say, where is

28:51

feature XYZ? Is it done? And the

28:53

team would say yes. And I say, great. And I

28:55

would actually go into Pendo, my own instance of Pendo

28:57

and try to play with it and I couldn't find

28:59

it. And I'm like, what do you

29:01

mean it's done? I don't see it in

29:03

the product. And so, well, the Jira ticket's

29:06

done. Who

29:08

cares that the Jira ticket's done? Well,

29:10

why isn't it on in the product?

29:12

Oh, well, we haven't enabled sales. Oh,

29:14

well, customer support doesn't know how to

29:16

support it yet. So we're leaving it

29:18

turned off or we only have it

29:20

turned on for a very small group.

29:22

I'm like, well, then the feature is

29:24

not done. And so more to your

29:26

point around alignment with sales and marketing.

29:28

And my product team was less around

29:30

having to get everyone rallied around outcomes

29:32

and it was more around understanding whole

29:34

product and that you're not done with

29:36

the feature until customers are using it

29:38

or sales and selling it. You

29:41

just need to ask if it was done, done,

29:43

rather. I'm sorry.

29:45

I know. We thought

29:47

that you talked a moment

29:49

ago about the cadences

29:51

of the organization. You've talked

29:53

about going from pilot

29:55

to programs to GA and

29:58

the process that you

30:00

have for that. How do

30:02

you balance things so

30:04

that the... teams have

30:08

the

30:13

But there's a couple of things when you do have to

30:15

hire the right people that you trust. and

30:17

you do have to have clear

30:19

aligned outcomes. to

30:21

move what they plan

30:23

to ship next time.

30:25

And that helps me

30:27

stay aligned if there's

30:29

something I'm uncomfortable with.

30:31

Typically if I'm uncomfortable,

30:33

it's because I saw

30:35

one team doing something

30:37

and another team doing

30:39

something and they really need to talk.

30:41

It's less about they're doing the wrong

30:43

thing and more around coordination between

30:45

teams. But I do have opportunities

30:48

to do that. There's some really

30:50

cool things we've done around autonomy.

30:52

Just a couple weeks ago we

30:54

had our company kickoff kickoff kickoff

30:56

and we. aligned on what the product strategy

30:58

was for the year and then we put

31:00

people into teams and they used some of

31:03

the new AI tools like Bolt. and

31:05

within a matter of hours had incredible

31:07

working prototypes. And they were their own

31:09

ideas. And so maybe, you know, we

31:12

shared with them the strategy that we

31:14

were trying to achieve, like what's the

31:16

new persona and what problem are we

31:18

trying to solve, but nothing about what

31:21

feature to build. And these individual teams

31:23

were able to come up with these

31:25

incredible new features in working prototypes that

31:28

they could already show to customers and

31:30

work with engineering to make real in

31:32

just a matter. of hours. And so

31:35

that's an example of like, hey,

31:37

there's a problem we're trying to solve,

31:39

you guys go solve it. And then being

31:41

able to celebrate the winners publicly in

31:43

terms of the people who were

31:45

able to come up with the best ideas.

31:47

That's a really nice segue to one of

31:50

the other questions that I had around, you

31:52

know, I think building teams up for

31:54

success and high performing teams.

31:56

It's really important that you

31:58

do celebrate and encourage. innovation

32:00

within your team. So how do

32:02

you do that within Pendo? So

32:04

we do regular hackathons where product

32:06

design and engineering get together in

32:08

teams. We celebrate the winners at

32:10

company kickoff. We actually did an

32:12

AI hackathon on the stage. I

32:14

got to be a judge which

32:16

was so fun to celebrate in

32:18

front of the whole company. These

32:21

folks who went out and solved

32:23

a problem using AI. And it

32:25

was fun. We even had a

32:27

team that was not product and

32:29

engineering. build something and compete. And

32:31

so there is a lot of

32:33

recognition within the product team. We

32:35

also do MVPs each quarter. And

32:37

if you know, Pendo and our

32:39

dinosaur, they get a dinosaur that

32:41

they bring home and have or

32:43

they can leave on their desk

32:45

if they're working in an office.

32:47

And so it is important for

32:49

us to celebrate their wins and

32:51

give people the recognition and excitement.

32:53

And I think Honestly, our hackathons,

32:55

which are a very public event

32:57

for the whole company and there

32:59

are awards, is probably the one

33:01

that people get most excited about.

33:03

And it's incredible what folks do.

33:05

You mentioned MVPs there. Did you

33:07

mean the minimum viable products? Yeah.

33:09

No, I mean like most valuable

33:11

person. So yeah, sorry. Thank you

33:13

for asking. So once every single

33:15

quarter, we meet and we do

33:17

a product all hands, we discuss

33:19

how we're achieving our scorecards and

33:21

goals and we talk about our

33:23

updated product strategy and what's our

33:26

focus for the quarter. and we

33:28

do a bunch of accolades in

33:30

that meeting. The first one is

33:32

the most valuable person, the most

33:34

valuable product manager or designer in

33:36

the team, and that's voted on

33:38

by their peers and nominated by

33:40

their peers. I only get to

33:42

vote if it's breaking a tie

33:44

in terms of nominations. And then

33:46

we also go around and we

33:48

do callouts and appreciations of each

33:50

other and cool things that people

33:52

have built or taught other people.

33:54

And then as a company in

33:56

our slot channel we have something

33:58

called panks which is like pink

34:00

thanks because you know pendo pink

34:02

and that's a chance to also

34:04

call people out for living our

34:06

culture and just, you know, especially

34:08

maniacal focus on the customer. That's

34:10

one of our most important core

34:12

values. So when people go above

34:14

and beyond to take care of

34:16

a customer, that we make sure

34:18

we call it out and slack

34:20

for the whole company. So lots

34:22

of excitement and no, most valuable

34:24

product person. Love it. That's much

34:26

very than a minimum viable person.

34:28

Let's go. So is this really

34:31

focused on the product development organization

34:33

or product design, dev, etc. Or

34:35

is this something where customer success

34:37

and sales and marketing, do they

34:39

get involved in these things as

34:41

well? So when our hackathons tend

34:43

to be. product and engineering or

34:45

product demo organizations. This last one

34:47

at company kickoff, customer success, actually

34:49

our team in Japan had a

34:51

team and they put together this

34:53

really cool chatbot of Todd and

34:55

you could ask Todd any questions

34:57

and it was really and they

34:59

had trained it really well on

35:01

Todd's book the product led book

35:03

and that was really really cool.

35:05

So this last one at company

35:07

kickoff other teams got involved and

35:09

sometimes you'll see that. But mostly

35:11

that's the hack of are the

35:13

product organization. But the panks that

35:15

we do in slack is the

35:17

whole company. Awesome. We only have

35:19

time for a few more questions

35:21

so I was just thinking of

35:23

all the questions that I have

35:25

where to go next. What's your

35:27

kind of take on what the

35:29

best culture for product teams looks

35:31

like for you? It sounds like

35:33

it's an amazing culture at Pendo

35:36

and kudos to you. You're obviously

35:38

like creating this this amazing space

35:40

for everyone but yeah, how would

35:42

you summarize like the best culture

35:44

for product teams? Well I think...

35:46

The number one is that their

35:48

customer obsessed, right? I think they

35:50

have to be outcome focused. I

35:52

think they have to be innovation

35:54

focused, but they have to be

35:56

customer obsessed. And if your customer

35:58

obsessed and your end user... is

36:00

your North Star metric, and their

36:02

success with your product with what

36:04

you're doing, the other things will fall.

36:06

So to me, that maniacal focus on

36:08

the customer as part of our core

36:11

value is the most important part of

36:13

our culture. If you're building a

36:15

product and you haven't talked to

36:17

customers, if you haven't done customer

36:19

discovery, you know, I think that's a

36:22

scary place to be for sure. Is that

36:24

something? Is that like a learned trait

36:26

or is that something that just comes

36:28

naturally for people? I think some people, it

36:31

comes naturally, but I can also say that

36:33

some people can get too bogged down in

36:35

discovery. Now I don't think you can get

36:37

too bogged down in being customer obsessed, but

36:39

you can get too bogged down in discovery

36:42

and trying to iterate and trying to get

36:44

the perfect solution when now you can just...

36:46

go and create things and do it

36:48

and then get customer feedback and

36:50

iterate on it. But I think

36:53

that it's just a culture. It's

36:55

just like that's what's important kind

36:57

of constantly asking the questions and

36:59

rallying around when there's a customer problem.

37:01

I have an example where I was

37:03

at a event for one of our

37:05

investors and the CPO came up to me

37:07

and said, when are you going to

37:10

fix your product? And I was like, oh,

37:12

what? Sorry. He said, actually, like, let me

37:14

just get you in touch with, you know,

37:16

the one of my main users, a pendo.

37:18

And I got on the zoom with her. And

37:20

the first thing she did was say, I'm not

37:22

going to talk. I want you to watch this

37:25

dashboard load. And the dashboard took several

37:27

minutes to load. And she sat there

37:29

and made me watch it. And it

37:31

was incredible, like, thank you. And I

37:34

said to her, this is a gift.

37:36

This feedback is a gift. And it

37:38

was this weird edge case, which is

37:40

why our performance tools weren't catching it,

37:42

which is why we didn't notice, because

37:45

it wasn't happening to most

37:47

of our customers. It was very

37:49

specific to something this particular customer

37:51

did. But our teams rallied around

37:54

it and not just fixed it,

37:56

but followed up weekly and made

37:58

sure it stayed that way. I'm

38:00

not ashamed of the fact that

38:02

we had a mistake and we

38:04

had a problem. I'm proud of

38:06

the way that the teams rallied

38:08

around the particular customer to make

38:10

it successful. I'm gonna reference one

38:12

of our old episodes when you

38:14

said about teams getting stuck in

38:17

discovery. We talked with Faith Forrester

38:19

a while back and she has

38:21

this great matrix of risk versus

38:23

opportunity. And when the level of

38:25

risk is low and the opportunity

38:27

is well understood and big enough.

38:29

Ship it and learn was is

38:31

that that's the whole quadrant and

38:33

yeah people there are definitely times

38:35

when you need to be more

38:37

careful go through a stage gate

38:39

process or really go through reviews

38:41

but there are times when you

38:44

if you can make the risk

38:46

a low enough Shipping it is

38:48

the fastest and most expedient way

38:50

of learning anything so it is

38:52

funny when we were getting ready

38:54

to launch our session replay product

38:56

we had a number of customers

38:58

we were allowing into our beta

39:00

and I'll never forget Todd came

39:02

in and he said Tridget triple

39:04

it. And I was like, oh,

39:06

but what if, what if? And

39:08

he's like, what if? It's a

39:11

brand new product. Go, go. And

39:13

he never would have had the

39:15

success we had as quickly as

39:17

we had with that product if

39:19

we hadn't been able to take

39:21

that risk. And he really pushed

39:23

us to get out of this,

39:25

what if something goes wrong mode

39:27

and get into this, what if

39:29

things go right mode? I think

39:31

we've got time for one last

39:33

question and we wouldn't be doing

39:35

our job right if we didn't

39:38

ask you this one. So you're

39:40

in an enviable position in that

39:42

your customers, you've got great customers,

39:44

but a lot of them are

39:46

product organizations or represent product organizations

39:48

and other companies. What have you

39:50

learned from talking to them? What

39:52

kind of give us one or

39:54

two lessons that you've taken back

39:56

to Pendo into your own practice

39:58

from talking to other customers? I'm

40:00

so fortunate because I get to

40:02

spend time with some of the

40:05

most sophisticated products organizations in the

40:07

world and organizations that are really

40:09

just now transitioning from sort of

40:11

B A business analysis project management

40:13

to this product mentality and I

40:15

learned from each and every one

40:17

of them and you know I

40:19

was spending time with what I'll

40:21

call like a traditional business or

40:23

a traditional organization That's in the

40:25

middle of this transition recently and

40:27

they said to me like Tricia.

40:29

It's great. Your dashboards are amazing.

40:31

You showed me all these widgets

40:34

that you you create for your

40:36

team, but like we don't know

40:38

where to start We don't know

40:40

what to measure. Like we're getting

40:42

ready to do a product launch,

40:44

we're trying to approve retention, we

40:46

don't even know what dashboard to

40:48

go create, right? And you're sitting

40:50

here and you teach us how

40:52

to use Pendo and you talk

40:54

about all these things, but like,

40:56

what do we go create the

40:58

dashboard of? And you have this

41:01

learning moment of realizing, product managers

41:03

and product leaders. are on a

41:05

different journey of sophistication and on

41:07

a different journey of what's important

41:09

to their organizations and to kind

41:11

of like take a moment and

41:13

realize that. And it's actually what

41:15

drove our dashboard templates feature. I'm

41:17

really curious now to know what

41:19

percentage of people are on different

41:21

levels of sophistication. Yeah, you know.

41:23

It's probably like most bell curves,

41:25

right? Like you've got a very

41:28

few that are just incredibly sophisticated

41:30

with their cadences with sort of

41:32

their operating models with how they

41:34

do discovery, how they do innovation,

41:36

and how quickly they can move

41:38

and drive proper outcomes. Because you

41:40

can move quickly. not double ARR,

41:42

right? And, you know, then the

41:44

people who are just starting out,

41:46

but most people are somewhere in

41:48

the middle, right? Most people understand

41:50

great product management processes and what

41:52

they're trying to achieve, but we're

41:55

all trying to get better at

41:57

our craft all the time. And

41:59

I think AI is changing. good

42:01

looks like and what sophistication looks

42:03

like right now too. That's a

42:05

very good point. Tricia, it's been

42:07

so great talking to you today.

42:09

Thank you so much for sharing

42:11

such a deep insight into how the

42:14

Pender product world works. Thank

42:16

you for having me and I

42:18

so appreciate what you all do

42:20

for our community and for our

42:22

craft, so thank you. Thank you. The

42:34

product experience hosts are me,

42:36

Lily Smith, host by night,

42:38

and chief product officer by day.

42:40

And me, Randy Silver, also host by

42:43

night. And I spend my days

42:45

working with product and leadership teams,

42:47

helping their teams to do amazing

42:49

work. Luan Pratt is our producer, and

42:52

Luke Smith is our editor. And our

42:54

theme music is from product

42:56

community legend Arnie Kitler's band,

42:59

Pow. Thanks to them for letting

43:01

us use their track.