Sachin Monga: preference

Transcript context

…Awesome. That makes sense. You currently align it around the type of user plus the platform stuff. Do you have a sense of where this might evolve over the next few years just structure wise? Do you think it'll stick to that? Do you have a plan of how this might radically shift as you grow? Yeah. I'm actually kind of shocked that it's lasted this long and stayed consistent. I remember at Facebook, we would change our team structure what felt like every three months or six months and just have a reorg every once in a while. Part of why I think it's remained pretty consistent is exactly what you mentioned, which is 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 customers and solving bit of a timeless customer problem. We'll never be done serving writers. We just started honestly having a concerted focus on serving readers. Growth is never a problem that you check the box off on. I hope that we are able to maintain this general structure. I think as Substack grows and expands, I'm sure we'll have more than three teams. This is where we're at right now, but I really like the focus on a customer and a timeless mission really rather than orienting around what might be a bit more of an ephemeral surface area or product de jour. Awesome. Shout out to the writer team. Thanks for building all the awesome stuff that I get to use. It makes sense why you are more recently investing in the reader team because Substack has this magical advantage platforms have where your supply drives all your demand. I go out and promote my newsletter, people sign up for Substack. It makes sense why there's not initially a huge focus on the demand growth, but makes sense to get there. It sounds like your app is awesome. One thing I wanted to touch on is you're kind of in this interesting position as a head of product at a small-ish company with a founder who's very product sense strong, and that's a classic challenge for a product leader to be in, where it's a smallish company, either a first PM or even a head of product, where the founder's very opinionated about the product. I'm curious what you've learned about how to work in that environment as a PM.…

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