Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, we do have annual planning cycle, but I have to say that our annual planning cycle is the baseline. We often do a lot of iterations in the middle of the year and also on a quarterly basis that we're able to pivoting really nimbly to really catering to the things that we see in the market. Some of the longer term strategy won't change, just like the platform we want to always creating, inspiring and also frictionless and immersive experiences for users. This won't change, but anything into the core of how do we realizing that you're always a consistent experiment over there. I cannot speak for the user product side, but at least from advertising product side that this is always the approach we're taking. And for the go-to-market part, that's also creating a very different behavior for us because oftentimes if we have a solid and kind of a static product roadmap, you can do go-to-market relatively easy, I would say, because everything is planned. But with a environment like that that basically make the go-to-market and also the product feedback loop much more short and faster. So there's a lot of, I would say, pressure or actually put it nicely, there was a lot of innovative things that on the go-to-market side. Also on the sales side, the company or the teams need to actually do to make sure that we're able to catering for that. But again, this is a teamwork rather than only one side of the work. So far so good, I would say. A lot of things that we've been able to achieve within the past couple of years has been already proven that this approach has been working for us, but not necessarily they're always is perfect already, always room to improve, to make sure that we have more structural approach as well so that the market able to keep the pacing with us. We don't want to overwhelm our advertisers or our users either. So that's also the other part that we need to continue optimizing, too. Okay. Let's talk about a different topic which is being successful on TikTok. So the way I think about it in my head is, there's how to be successful is just a regular human creator person. How to be successful as a business, trying to just create viral content and then being successful as an advertiser, which I know is where you spend a lot of time. So let me just ask, is there a tip you could share for someone to be successful, say aka go viral on TikTok? I imagine your answer will be just produce something people love and want to share and like. But I guess is there anything that could be tactically useful when you're creating content in TikTok to help you go viral? I think if I know that I definitely will already become a very successful creator, I have to say. Our system is very much smarter than I am. I cannot trick the system, but I have seen a couple of good cases. So number one thing is that you have to really be unfiltered. I mean, you don't really need to be perfect on this platform. I mean that's the beauty of it. You can be yourself, you can really share the things that you like. And if you're really master at one thing that you're really, really good at and you want to showcase, this is the platform for you to shine because not necessarily that we are fully saturated and also all algorithm distributing the content in a very different way. Some of the other platforms they are, I would say like a people-based or friend-based. I think for us it's purely based on actually you're creating something that everybody want to see. So let's see if we can distribute it more. So I think continuously to bring new content to this platform and testing and finding your own competitive edge going to be very important as a successful creator. And most of our creators have been doing that. And I can see some of our biggest TikTok stars, they're literally practicing this every single day. And I do think that creativity and that part of, I would say, getting the nuances is the key part that to be more successful on the T TikTok community. And the second thing is it's including also for brands as well, because I consider brands as our creator as well. They really need to embrace the culture and the community here to really listen and understand what are the user behaviors on the platform to understand what do they like to see. And also the messages or the presence could be very different from your other media channels, or as a creator, it could be very different from your other, I would say, platforms. So that's the other thing that it's going to be challenging because for them to shift in the mindset. But I do think that definitely was trial. Some of the, I would say, our early adopters has already been proven that when you do embrace the culture here, you're able to acquire a ton of different kind of a user or the audience to your channel and you can show a different side of yourself as well. So yeah, I've been trying to do that. I have not really finding my competitive edge I have to say, but I'll keep trying.…

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