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Ben Williams

Published podcast speaker

Claims
15
Episodes
1
Shows
1
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1

Books, apps, and tools

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book / recommends

"How to Measure Anything"

“I have been dreading this question as there are too many. So I'm pick a couple that I've enjoyed reading in recent months. So for product and growth geeks like me, or in fact anyone with more than a passing interest in data, I'll recommend "How to Measure Anything" by Douglas Hubbard. Second up, you had Marty Cagan and he mentioned the book "Sprint" by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky and I love that book, but personally their "Make Time" book. It was something that radically changed my relationship with information and I recommend that to all time staff, product people out there. And for number three, I'm going to say, "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends" by Nicole Perlroth, which gives an amazing view into the world of digital espionage.”

Lenny's Podcast · 6 Nov 2022

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Claim ledger

What Ben said.

15 transcript-backed records

01 / recommendation

Recommends "How to Measure Anything".

“I have been dreading this question as there are too many. So I'm pick a couple that I've enjoyed reading in recent months. So for product and growth geeks like me, or in fact anyone with more than a passing interest in data, I'll recommend "How to Measure Anything" by Douglas Hubbard. Second up, you had Marty Cagan and he mentioned the book "Sprint" by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky and I love that book, but personally their "Make Time" book. It was something that radically changed my relationship with information and I recommend that to all time staff, product people out there. And for number three, I'm going to say, "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends" by Nicole Perlroth, which gives an amazing view into the world of digital espionage.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

The best way I've found to articulate a growth strategy that fulfills the promise of usefully guiding the team's execution, it's the loop based model, Reforge, as specific kind of documentation that I think is great around that.

“The best way I've found to articulate a growth strategy that fulfills the promise of usefully guiding the team's execution, it's the loop based model, Reforge, as specific kind of documentation that I think is great around that.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / belief

Ideally you get to a point there where the growth process is something that's continually refined and iterated on trying to build in more predictability. But what I've found I think most singularly most important in a growth process is facilitating a rapid learning cadence and providing the means to socialize those learnings, surfacing them in the right place at the right time so they can be leveraged and at the context.

“Ideally you get to a point there where the growth process is something that's continually refined and iterated on trying to build in more predictability. But what I've found I think most singularly most important in a growth process is facilitating a rapid learning cadence and providing the means to socialize those learnings, surfacing them in the right place at the right time so they can be leveraged and at the context.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / preference

I actually, I learned a ton of useful stuff there, but also that I had a strong preference for working in smaller, fast-growing orgs verse 350,000 people [inaudible 00:06:55].

“I actually, I learned a ton of useful stuff there, but also that I had a strong preference for working in smaller, fast-growing orgs verse 350,000 people [inaudible 00:06:55].”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / commitment

If we're going to run an experiment on that surface, we need to make sure that everything in that experiment plan is watertight, especially from a scheduling perspective because the last thing we want is a week and a half into an experiment for some change to happen within that surface from the product team unaware that an experiment's happening and completely invalidate the experiment.

“If we're going to run an experiment on that surface, we need to make sure that everything in that experiment plan is watertight, especially from a scheduling perspective because the last thing we want is a week and a half into an experiment for some change to happen within that surface from the product team unaware that an experiment's happening and completely invalidate the experiment.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / recommendation

There's no getting away from that, but learnings is the means. It's the same as, there's a quote that I love from [inaudible 00:56:27] around focus on the user's path to value not on monetization.

“There's no getting away from that, but learnings is the means. It's the same as, there's a quote that I love from [inaudible 00:56:27] around focus on the user's path to value not on monetization.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / preference

Yes, I think because I wasn't looking for a new role when I ended up joining Snyk, when I was first approached by them, but everyone I spoke with along the interview process, just became more and more impressed with not only the caliber of people here, but the vision, the mission for the company, and all those things you mentioned in terms of PLG, community-led growth, focus on developers, the security space, these were all things that if you create a Venn diagram of all the things that I'm really interested in professionally, super interested in, super exciting to me, then kind of Snyk ended up in the middle of it.

“Yes, I think because I wasn't looking for a new role when I ended up joining Snyk, when I was first approached by them, but everyone I spoke with along the interview process, just became more and more impressed with not only the caliber of people here, but the vision, the mission for the company, and all those things you mentioned in terms of PLG, community-led growth, focus on developers, the security space, these were all things that if you create a Venn diagram of all the things that I'm really interested in professionally, super interested in, super exciting to me, then kind of Snyk ended up in the middle of it.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / evaluation

I think the significant change that happened there, it was a transition from a simple freemium approach to a holistic and well-coordinated PLG strategy. It's much more common to start earlier, much more common to start at a smaller scale than we did at Snyk, but it worked for us because of this kind of perfect storm of where we had a product with that bottom up growth built in from the beginning.

“I think the significant change that happened there, it was a transition from a simple freemium approach to a holistic and well-coordinated PLG strategy. It's much more common to start earlier, much more common to start at a smaller scale than we did at Snyk, but it worked for us because of this kind of perfect storm of where we had a product with that bottom up growth built in from the beginning.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / preference

I don't know if it's too far off track here, but I have a vision and mission framework that I like to use that leads to I think, great simple statements of an imagined better future state and your role in getting there.

“I don't know if it's too far off track here, but I have a vision and mission framework that I like to use that leads to I think, great simple statements of an imagined better future state and your role in getting there.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / evaluation

That momentum was just constantly building and it's that momentum that has ultimately fueled the sales led business as we've gone through the years. But it was just those few things I think that I mentioned earlier in terms of stumbling blocks that needed to be overcome because when those first sales and marketing hires did join us and we started having conversations and we also tweaked some of the things in the product to meet, had some breadth, had some additional languages, ecosystems, building those table stakes features, then it really unlocked and it was rocket ship time from then.

“That momentum was just constantly building and it's that momentum that has ultimately fueled the sales led business as we've gone through the years. But it was just those few things I think that I mentioned earlier in terms of stumbling blocks that needed to be overcome because when those first sales and marketing hires did join us and we started having conversations and we also tweaked some of the things in the product to meet, had some breadth, had some additional languages, ecosystems, building those table stakes features, then it really unlocked and it was rocket ship time from then.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / evaluation

It's changing all the time, but there's still a long way to go there. But the reality is that I think in most companies, developers have to care about security because their companies need to be secure.

“It's changing all the time, but there's still a long way to go there. But the reality is that I think in most companies, developers have to care about security because their companies need to be secure.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / recommendation

First, I think if we're talking about PLG and the story with Snyk, I actually like that definition of product-led acquisition from Julian Shapiro when you spoke with him, and beyond that maniacal focus on finding product market fit for your product, founders really should be thinking about how their product is going to grow, and that's important of course as you think about taking that next step.

“First, I think if we're talking about PLG and the story with Snyk, I actually like that definition of product-led acquisition from Julian Shapiro when you spoke with him, and beyond that maniacal focus on finding product market fit for your product, founders really should be thinking about how their product is going to grow, and that's important of course as you think about taking that next step.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / commitment

At the beginning we just focused on acquisition and activation, intentionally deferring any investment into specific monetization initiatives around the self-serve revenue channel until we felt confident that A, we'd built the necessary growth muscles to scale, and B, we'd figured out some of the more pressing issues that were present earlier in the user journey. It was important that we felt really confident about our ability to effectively connect developers to Snyk's value in such a way that introducing and optimizing a self-serve revenue channel would make sense.

“At the beginning we just focused on acquisition and activation, intentionally deferring any investment into specific monetization initiatives around the self-serve revenue channel until we felt confident that A, we'd built the necessary growth muscles to scale, and B, we'd figured out some of the more pressing issues that were present earlier in the user journey. It was important that we felt really confident about our ability to effectively connect developers to Snyk's value in such a way that introducing and optimizing a self-serve revenue channel would make sense.”
Speaker
Ben Williams
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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