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
I'm blue
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Hey, tl;dr – I've decided to delete all my Twitter posts, lock down my account, and leave the platform. And I'm going all-in on Bluesky, which (in the last month) has become 1000x more fun
🚀 Globalstar to the Nasdaq
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Plus $RKLB CEO becomes a billionaire, DIRECTV $SATS debt deal called off, TEC's $160M Series B, and more! The latest space investing news and updates. View this email in your browser The Space
Theory Two
Friday, November 22, 2024
Tomasz Tunguz Venture Capitalist If you were forwarded this newsletter, and you'd like to receive it in the future, subscribe here. Theory Two Today, we're announcing our second fund of $450
🗞 What's New: AI creators may be coming to TikTok
Friday, November 22, 2024
Also: Microsoft's AI updates are helpful for founders ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
behind the scenes of the 2024 digital health 50
Friday, November 22, 2024
the expert behind the list is unpacking this year's winners. don't miss it. Hi there, Get an inside look at the world's most promising private digital health companies. Join the analyst
How to get set up on Bluesky
Friday, November 22, 2024
Plus, Instagram personal profiles are now in Buffer! ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
10words: Top picks from this week
Friday, November 22, 2024
Today's projects: Remote Nursing Jobs • CopyPartner • Fable Fiesta • IndexCheckr • itsmy.page • Yumestudios • Limecube • WolfSnap • Randomtimer • Fabrik • Upp • iAmAgile 10words Discover new apps
Issue #131: Building $1K-$10K MRR Micro SaaS Products around AI Search Optimisation, Fine-Tuning Image Models, AI-…
Friday, November 22, 2024
Build Profitable SaaS products!! ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
(Free) Trial & Error— The Bootstrapped Founder 357
Friday, November 22, 2024
Today, I'll dive into the difference between a trial user and a trial abuser and what you can do to invite the former and prevent the latter. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
💎 Specially for you - will never be repeated again!
Friday, November 22, 2024
The biggest Black Friday sale in Foundr history...but it won't last forever! Black Friday_Header_2 Hey Friend , We knew our Black Friday deal was amazing—but wow, the response has been so unreal