Sachin Monga
Sachin Monga is the Head of Product at Substack, a platform that I personally use every day, and love. Before Substack, Sachin co-founded an app called Cocoon, which he ended up selling to Substack. Before that, he spent over seven years at Facebook as a PM working on video and camera products, building out the developer platform, and leading the ads growth team. Sachin shares what it’s like transitioning from a large product team at Facebook to a small growth team. He discusses how to work with a hands-on founder and why you must be comfortable with rapid change in a PM role.
Communication Skills
When joining a company with a product-minded founder, act as a facilitator to help the team 'model' the founder's vision and ensure the founder has visibility into team execution.
"I think the first thing was really treating my role in the beginning more as a facilitator than a decision maker when it comes to product... if Chris could have a really good sense of what all the tea..."
Growth Skills
Growth loops can be powered by 'goodwill' where supply-side users recommend each other, creating a decentralized discovery network.
"What if we just ask writers, who do you recommend? What if we just put that in the subscribe flow and just made it as simple as possible?... It created this goodwill viral loop, which was really inter..."
Hiring & Teams Skills
Tailor interview questions to the candidate's specific background to accurately assess 'grit' and the ability to execute in high-growth environments.
"I have found that there's not one question that will get me the signal I actually want given how diverse the candidate's experiences might be... we just need people who can run through walls to accomp..."
Organize product teams around specific customer segments and timeless missions rather than ephemeral product surfaces or features.
"the teams aren't oriented around product surfaces. We don't have a team that's like the app team or a team that's like the dashboard team or the podcasting team. We have teams that are oriented around..."
Leadership Skills
Trade-offs in large companies are often zero-sum feature conflicts, while in startups, the primary trade-off is time and sequencing.
"Facebook may be the most extreme example of trying to solve so many different problems... a big part of the product manager's job in a situation like that is going to be managing trade-offs... In Face..."
Product Management Skills
Use core company principles (e.g., user agency and control) as the primary filter for roadmap prioritization.
"Substack is a pretty principled company... prioritization standpoint and from a strategic standpoint... all things equal, do the one that holds constant this principle of control."
Establish a dedicated 'Product Lab' of power users to provide rapid feedback and co-create features before a general rollout.
"We call it build with writers, build with readers... do it in a way where we bring writers along... We actually have now we've set up something called the Product Lab... an invite only little group of..."