Sanchan Saxena

The real genius isn't to dot every eye, to cross every team before you get started. The real genius is, what do you do when shit goes wrong? And I believe rapid recovery is the key to success.

Build a culture in your team where failure of those experiments is actually celebrated. Build a culture in the team where actually people get energized when they fail, because guess what, each failure was a learning that will avoid a mistake for them in the future.

What's highly correlated is that somebody bloody knew what to do when. That is the most important thing. And I call that content. Content means what you do when. Process means how you do the thing.

My advice to people is go get a job which will make you the fastest learner in the field of product management. That is what will help you a lot. No course, no degree, none of those things will help.

My advice to people is go get a job which will make you the fastest learner in the field of product management. That is what will help you a lot. No course, no degree, none of those things will help.

We went into two week planning mode. Greg Greeley, who was the president of Airbnb used to say, 'Look, can't plan for a year, can't plan for a quarter. We're going to plan every two weeks. We're going to react to every two weeks.'

A/B testing at Airbnb is a bad word. You don't go to Brian and say, 'Hey Brian, here's my Excel spreadsheet. I want to run some 10 A/B tests and come back and tell you whether we are heading in the right direction.' You're going to get thrown out of the window.

When you find something that gives you energy, just jump in with both feet. And try to go through that process, and pivot and learn, and pivot and learn and pivot.

Bring in people who know content and teach them process, as opposed to bringing in people who know process and trying to teach them content, because that's a bloody hard thing to do.

Think unconstrained first. Think about a 15 out of 10 experience, design the ideal end state first. Pick one location. But you know how to get in one location a barista who can create coffee, you know in one location how to get the best seats. Build the best possible lovable product first.

My biggest advice to people is, oftentimes the analysis paralysis of dotting every eye, crossing every tee sometimes chokes you out of opportunities.

Hire executives who know how to execute. Let's say Sanchan's entire team disappears, and then I go to Brian and say, 'Hey, Brian, I got to hire this organization, I got to hire these people, and then I'll tell you what to build.' Now I should be able to then crawl up my sleeve and do exactly what my team did.