Becoming evidence-guided | Itamar Gilad (Gmail, YouTube, Microsoft)
Brought to you by Ezra—The leading full-body cancer screening company | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business — Itamar Gilad is a career coach, author, and speaker with over two decades of experience in senior product roles at Google, Microsoft, and various startups. He is also the author of Evidence-Guided: Creating High-Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty and publishes a popular product management newsletter. In today’s episode, we discuss: • What it means to be “evidence-guided” • How to think about your KPIs as metric trees • How to prioritize ideas using the “confidence meter” • The GIST model for roadmapping • Common mistakes with ICE • Advice for using evidence to challenge gut-driven founders Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, and YouTube. Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/episodes/. Today’s transcript will be live by 8 a.m. PT. Where to find Itamar Gilad: • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ItamarGilad • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamargilad/ • Website: https://itamargilad.com/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Itamar’s background (04:35) How his time working on Gmail shaped his philosophy of “opinion-based” development (08:35) Lessons from developing Gmail’s tabbed inbox (13:40) A brief overview of Itamar’s book, Evidence-Guided (14:30) Balancing founder creativity with an evidence-based approach (17:32) Advice on how to push back against founders (19:36) Signs you aren’t as evidence-guided as you may think (21:13) Itamar’s GIST model for becoming more evidence-guided (23:51) How to set overarching goals using his “value exchange loop” (28:45) North star metrics vs. KPIs (33:47) Using “ICE” to assess the value of ideas (37:39) Itamar’s confidence meter (44:28) Speed of delivery vs. speed of discovery (46:14) How to apply Itamar’s frameworks based on company type and stage (49:09) First steps in becoming more evidence-guided (50:21) Next steps in testing (55:41) The task layer in the GIST framework (1:02:54) Thoughts on roadmapping (1:04:56) How OKRs fit into the whole picture (1:07:11) Lightning round Referenced: • Itamar’s presentation slides: https://itamargilad.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Podcast-Slides.pdf • What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-differentiates-the-highest-performing-product-teams-john-cutler-amplitude-the-beautiful-mess/ • Evidence-Guided: Creating High-Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty: https://itamargilad.com/book-evidence-guided/ • The co-founders of Google in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-page-and-sergey-brin • Kanban: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban • Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira • The ultimate guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Stanford): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-okrs-christina-wodtke-stanford/ • Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/ • The ultimate guide to A/B testing | Ronny Kohavi (Airbnb, Microsoft, Amazon): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-ab-testing-ronny-kohavi-airbnb-microsoft-amazon/ • ICE framework: https://growthmethod.com/ice-framework/ • Sean Ellis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanellis/ • RICE scoring model: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/rice-scoring-model/ • Idea Prioritization with ICE and the Confidence Meter: https://itamargilad.com/the-tool-that-will-help-you-choose-better-product-ideas/ • Assumptions Mapping: https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/methodology/phase2-define/assumptions-mapping • What is Dog Fooding, Fish Fooding a Product?: https://matt-rickard.com/fishfooding-dogfooding-product • SVPG books: https://www.svpg.com/books/ • The Lean series: https://theleanstartup.com/the-lean-series • Dreaming Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish • ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/ • Lennybot: https://www.lennybot.com/ Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. You're currently a free subscriber to Lenny's Newsletter. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
Older messages
The Magic Loop
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
A framework for rapid career growth
Thank you for supporting Lenny's Newsletter
Monday, September 18, 2023
Thank you for reading Lenny's Newsletter. As a token of our appreciation, we're offering you a limited-time offer of 20% off a paid subscription for your first year. Redeem special offer Here
Picking sharp problems, increasing virality, and unique product frameworks | Oji Udezue (Typeform, Twitter, Calend…
Sunday, September 17, 2023
Listen now (76 mins) | Brought to you by Jira Product Discovery—Atlassian's new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams — Oji Udezue is Chief Product Officer at Typeform and has
How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, Category Pirates, more)
Sunday, September 17, 2023
Listen now (109 mins) | Brought to you by Mixpanel—Event analytics that everyone can trust, use, and afford | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | Round—The private network built by tech
A guide for finding product-market fit
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Part five of my seven-part series on kickstarting and scaling a B2B business
You Might Also Like
Let's talk about E-S-G
Friday, September 20, 2024
Plus: The French billionaire upping his tech investments; latest deals View in browser Silo flagship Good morning there, Yesterday at one of London's central schmoozing spots a couple hundred
🗞 What's New: YouTube just launched Hype to help small creators get discovered
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Also: Running newsletter ads!
SaaSHub Weekly - Sep 19
Thursday, September 19, 2024
SaaSHub Weekly - Sep 19 Featured and useful products Schedul Threads logo Schedul Threads Boost your Threads following, reach monetization status fast and automate your Threads content publishing for
95 new Shopify apps for you 🌟
Thursday, September 19, 2024
New Shopify apps hand-picked for you 🙌 Week 37 Sep 9, 2024 - Sep 16, 2024 New Shopify apps hand-picked for you 🙌 What's New at Shopify? 🌱 New granular staff permissions for Gift cards Improvement ⸱
[SaaS Club] How firing customers built a 7-figure SaaS
Thursday, September 19, 2024
The SaaS Club Newsletter Hey Reader Here's a quick round up of what's been going on at SaaS Club: In this week's newsletter: 🎧 Discover how firing customers fueled SaaS growth 📈 Turn
The MrBeast Guide
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Today's newsletter is brought to you by LCA. We help companies build their future. From new products to websites, apps, and AI solutions. We work with businesses doing $10M-$10B in revenue. We
Writing Software for Robots
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Tomasz Tunguz Venture Capitalist If you were forwarded this newsletter, and you'd like to receive it in the future, subscribe here. Writing Software for Robots In a few years, most feature flags
KoppieOS, ScrapX, Notch, Magic Inspector, and Entyx
Thursday, September 19, 2024
KoppieOS, where Ai meets Personality. BetaList BetaList Daily Magic Inspector Automate browser testing in natural language KoppieOS KoppieOS, where Ai meets Personality. ScrapX Monitor your competitors
“I’m waiting for the right time”
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Read time: 1 min. 03 sec. "Hey Pat, can I talk to you for a second?" My buddy pulled me aside at a wedding last weekend. I already knew what he wanted to ask... "I really want to do what
Mastering Portfolio Construction
Thursday, September 19, 2024
How to build a strategy that maximizes returns. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏