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Lenny's Podcast / episode intelligence

An inside look at how Miro builds product: Lessons on outmaneuvering competitors, team structure, product quality, and moving fast | Varun Parmar (CPO of Miro)

20 Apr 2023 32 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Lenny RachitskyVarun Parmar

Claim mix

belief 20evaluation 5preference 3recommendation 2commitment 2

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

32 published records

02 / belief

I think in terms of one or two things I can ask everyone is that, one is if you are an existing Miro user and you use the product for something interesting, I highly encourage you to contribute it as a template as part of Miroverse.

“I think in terms of one or two things I can ask everyone is that, one is if you are an existing Miro user and you use the product for something interesting, I highly encourage you to contribute it as a template as part of Miroverse.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

" I think once people understand the duality of how they need to operate across those two specific goals, it actually leads to really high-performing teams and teams that actually are able to create somewhat of a magic if they are open and there is trust that has been built in the team.

“" I think once people understand the duality of how they need to operate across those two specific goals, it actually leads to really high-performing teams and teams that actually are able to create somewhat of a magic if they are open and there is trust that has been built in the team.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / belief

Mironeers. So we had Elena Verna on the podcast, who's amazing, and Barbara who I think worked in marketing and everyone I've always met from Miro has been just really smart and really interesting and it just feels like you guys have a really interesting product culture that I haven't felt like has been shared a lot, and so I have a bunch of stuff I want to dig into there.

“Mironeers. So we had Elena Verna on the podcast, who's amazing, and Barbara who I think worked in marketing and everyone I've always met from Miro has been just really smart and really interesting and it just feels like you guys have a really interesting product culture that I haven't felt like has been shared a lot, and so I have a bunch of stuff I want to dig into there.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / belief

There are a few learnings and I would say maybe this is one area where we are working on how we could be doing better in terms of bringing ourselves closer to our high-touch and bringing high-touch closer to self-serve, in terms of how we operate overall. It's a lot of hard work, I would say first of all, basically, to bring both of these organizations together and you have to be very deliberate around the points of intersection and you have to make sure that these organizations don't consider themselves as competition.

“There are a few learnings and I would say maybe this is one area where we are working on how we could be doing better in terms of bringing ourselves closer to our high-touch and bringing high-touch closer to self-serve, in terms of how we operate overall. It's a lot of hard work, I would say first of all, basically, to bring both of these organizations together and you have to be very deliberate around the points of intersection and you have to make sure that these organizations don't consider themselves as competition.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / belief

While communication is an important aspect of how teams come together, where we believe our sweet spot is that we want people to use Miro for collaboration.

“While communication is an important aspect of how teams come together, where we believe our sweet spot is that we want people to use Miro for collaboration.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / belief

Like we describe, it's the AMPED organization, and then we break it up and I would say we have refined it over the period of time, the two years that I've been at Miro.

“Like we describe, it's the AMPED organization, and then we break it up and I would say we have refined it over the period of time, the two years that I've been at Miro.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / belief

I think the performance is huge. It's humorous, the characters are well-developed, so I think overall it's a treat, at least for, me to watch.

“I think the performance is huge. It's humorous, the characters are well-developed, so I think overall it's a treat, at least for, me to watch.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / belief

I would say on top of that, we are a big fan of our community and we believe that community love is what drives us.

“I would say on top of that, we are a big fan of our community and we believe that community love is what drives us.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / belief

We have multiple offices in US, four different offices, and then multiple hubs in Europe as well, and presence in AsiaPac as well. I think by now we have a global footprint, yeah.

“We have multiple offices in US, four different offices, and then multiple hubs in Europe as well, and presence in AsiaPac as well. I think by now we have a global footprint, yeah.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / commitment

Amazing. We will link to all of those. Varun, this was amazing. Everything I expected and more, your team is as interesting and unique as I thought, and I am excited for people to learn from you and we're going to share a lot of links alongside this episode in the show notes.

“Amazing. We will link to all of those. Varun, this was amazing. Everything I expected and more, your team is as interesting and unique as I thought, and I am excited for people to learn from you and we're going to share a lot of links alongside this episode in the show notes.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / belief

I think you can take that philosophy to a bunch of things in life, but I'm going to take the lens of products, which is my core philosophy is every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and you're releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you're making the product worse, but the products never remain same.

“I think you can take that philosophy to a bunch of things in life, but I'm going to take the lens of products, which is my core philosophy is every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and you're releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you're making the product worse, but the products never remain same.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / belief

Without getting into specific numbers and stuff, I would say fundamentally Miro is a product-led growth company and product channels are one of the highest contributors for growth of users.

“Without getting into specific numbers and stuff, I would say fundamentally Miro is a product-led growth company and product channels are one of the highest contributors for growth of users.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / belief

I think the fundamental thing there is that we always had user first approach and reaching out to certain communities that were relevant to what was a key part of lighting the fire, if you will, the proverbial way people start to talk about the product.

“I think the fundamental thing there is that we always had user first approach and reaching out to certain communities that were relevant to what was a key part of lighting the fire, if you will, the proverbial way people start to talk about the product.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / belief

I think the other accelerant in all of this is the templates that we have, in particular the role that Miroverse plays in all of this.

“I think the other accelerant in all of this is the templates that we have, in particular the role that Miroverse plays in all of this.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

16 / belief

I would say with most things we need to operationalize it and we need to make sure that now we are democratizing it and everybody has access to it and so on and so forth.

“I would say with most things we need to operationalize it and we need to make sure that now we are democratizing it and everybody has access to it and so on and so forth.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / belief

The reason for that is that if you consider yourself as an innovation-centric company and you believe that you are building experiences that fundamentally don't exist anywhere else and you're sort of paving the way for the rest of the folks to basically get inspired with how you are building these experiences, speed is the single biggest determinant, in my experience, in terms of who ends up being more successful versus not.

“The reason for that is that if you consider yourself as an innovation-centric company and you believe that you are building experiences that fundamentally don't exist anywhere else and you're sort of paving the way for the rest of the folks to basically get inspired with how you are building these experiences, speed is the single biggest determinant, in my experience, in terms of who ends up being more successful versus not.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

19 / belief

I think that framework, it actually drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of what you're doing and what the impact is going to be.

“I think that framework, it actually drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of what you're doing and what the impact is going to be.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / belief

I think having this motto of great customer value faster with high quality, just the simplicity of that and it's actually part of our evaluation rubric, it's part of how we measure ourselves and stuff.

“I think having this motto of great customer value faster with high quality, just the simplicity of that and it's actually part of our evaluation rubric, it's part of how we measure ourselves and stuff.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / belief

" I would say that's an area where we're still working on and more recently we put more focus and energy and there's a product manager who's now leading that particular charter.

“" I would say that's an area where we're still working on and more recently we put more focus and energy and there's a product manager who's now leading that particular charter.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

22 / belief

Now there's a whole plethora of capabilities and apps that are available as part of the platform that allow you to have your entire team conduct your team rituals in Miro and you can automate certain things, you can streamline things, you can do certain things in async and then do the rest in synchronous ways, so I think that's been a big update as well.

“Now there's a whole plethora of capabilities and apps that are available as part of the platform that allow you to have your entire team conduct your team rituals in Miro and you can automate certain things, you can streamline things, you can do certain things in async and then do the rest in synchronous ways, so I think that's been a big update as well.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

23 / preference

I'll talk a little bit around how we are structured in the product organization so that it's a cross-functional perspective we bring to everything that we're doing because we believe the best work happens when we bring different diverse perspectives to the problem and then co-create the outcome that the customer is looking for.

“I'll talk a little bit around how we are structured in the product organization so that it's a cross-functional perspective we bring to everything that we're doing because we believe the best work happens when we bring different diverse perspectives to the problem and then co-create the outcome that the customer is looking for.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

24 / evaluation

Unlike a screen grab, you never have to go update it because right there on the Miro board, it's always updated and you can refresh that, so you basically have this experience where Miro acts as that single source of truth for a lot of the teams across the entire journey of product development where a single Miro board is meeting the needs of multiple use cases there.

“Unlike a screen grab, you never have to go update it because right there on the Miro board, it's always updated and you can refresh that, so you basically have this experience where Miro acts as that single source of truth for a lot of the teams across the entire journey of product development where a single Miro board is meeting the needs of multiple use cases there.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

25 / evaluation

I would say lastly, as Miro has sort of scaled the spectrum of companies all the way from a team that might have two or three people and might be taking out their credit card and using Miro for their own team all the way to a large corporation that might have 50,000, 80,000 employees, all of them are using Miro.

“I would say lastly, as Miro has sort of scaled the spectrum of companies all the way from a team that might have two or three people and might be taking out their credit card and using Miro for their own team all the way to a large corporation that might have 50,000, 80,000 employees, all of them are using Miro.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

26 / preference

On top of that, obviously we use Miro a lot, I would say for a lot of our things, especially on the product and design side of the team.

“On top of that, obviously we use Miro a lot, I would say for a lot of our things, especially on the product and design side of the team.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

27 / recommendation

I would say getting reliable data, and then because we have some things that are going through meetings and there are some things that are going through Slack, we could do better on some of those dimensions, but all of this data is available and we provided it openly and folks can benchmark themselves against that.

“I would say getting reliable data, and then because we have some things that are going through meetings and there are some things that are going through Slack, we could do better on some of those dimensions, but all of this data is available and we provided it openly and folks can benchmark themselves against that.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

28 / commitment

What we do is we have a rolling six month roadmap that gets updated every three months and the first three months of that roadmap, we have a 80% position level, which means that 80% of the things that we claim to be on the roadmap will get done.

“What we do is we have a rolling six month roadmap that gets updated every three months and the first three months of that roadmap, we have a 80% position level, which means that 80% of the things that we claim to be on the roadmap will get done.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

29 / evaluation

I think the reason why in some cases we are not able to move fast is because of roadblocks that we run into and those roadblocks can manifest themselves into technical challenges, they can manifest them in cells of organizational challenges, they could be priority challenges and so on and so forth.

“I think the reason why in some cases we are not able to move fast is because of roadblocks that we run into and those roadblocks can manifest themselves into technical challenges, they can manifest them in cells of organizational challenges, they could be priority challenges and so on and so forth.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

30 / preference

I really like this discussion, especially because often the advice is, "Don't worry about the competition, just focus on the customer, it's going to be fine.

“I really like this discussion, especially because often the advice is, "Don't worry about the competition, just focus on the customer, it's going to be fine.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

31 / evaluation

Next day in the morning one of the engineers from this core team that was exhibiting at Miro Connect looks at the poll request, reviews the code and says, "Yes, something that would have taken three months for this core team because they didn't have the expertise literally got done in three hours because there was another engineer that ran into them and said, "I know how this is done.

“Next day in the morning one of the engineers from this core team that was exhibiting at Miro Connect looks at the poll request, reviews the code and says, "Yes, something that would have taken three months for this core team because they didn't have the expertise literally got done in three hours because there was another engineer that ran into them and said, "I know how this is done.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

32 / evaluation

I think what's unique about our product, and we can talk about the capabilities and roadmaps and use cases that we are investing in and we already have as part of the product, is that we take a team-centric lens.

“I think what's unique about our product, and we can talk about the capabilities and roadmaps and use cases that we are investing in and we already have as part of the product, is that we take a team-centric lens.”
Speaker
Varun Parmar
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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