Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox)

**Jiaona Zhang** (0:00)
I think it's really important to become really good at and also known for something.
You could be known for shepherding the most complex launches, because you're just so good at quarterbacking, working with go-to-market teams and cross-functional stakeholders. That could be your thing.
You could be known for working on the most technically complex problems. Find something that you can be really, really good at. And the reason I give that advice is because when you do that, you can crush the projects that you get, because you're making a name for yourself, a reputation. And then you are giving more responsibility. People tend to flock and give responsibility to the people that are known for being excellent at something.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:43)
Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is JZ. JZ is Senior Vice President of Product at Webflow. She's also a lecturer at Stanford, teaching a course on product management. Before this, she was Senior Director of Product Management at WeWork, a long-time product leader at Airbnb, where I got to work with JZ for a number of years. And she was also PM at Dropbox and at a gaming company called Pocket Gems. In our conversation, we dig into the most common mistakes early product managers make in their career, plus JZ's biggest product mistake. We cover the concept of minimal lovable products versus minimal viable products. We talk about JZ's unique frameworks for roadmapping and prioritization and OKRs, and her take on how to structure your first 90 days as a product leader at a new company, plus what she's learned from her wild year at WeWork, also the best advice she's ever gotten around product and leadership, and the story of Airbnb Plus and where it went wrong. I've been hoping to get JZ on the podcast for a while, and I'm really happy that we finally made this happen. With that, I bring you JZ after a short word from our sponsors.
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Today's episode is brought to you by Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard that's designed specifically for teams like yours.
The best way to see what Miro is all about and how it can help your team collaborate better is not to listen to me talk about it, but to go check it out for yourself. Go to miro.com/lenny. With the help of the Miro team, I created a super cool Miro board with two of my own favorite templates, my one-pager template and my managing up template that you can plug and play and start using immediately with your team. I've also embedded a handful of my favorite templates that other people published in the Miroverse. When you get to the board, you can also leave suggestions for the podcast, answer a question that I have for you and generally just play around to get a sense of how it all works. Miro is a killer tool for brainstorming with your team, laying out your strategy, sharing user research findings, capturing ideas, giving feedback on wireframes and generally just collaborating with your colleagues. I actually used Miro to collaborate with the Miro team on creating my own board and it was super fun and super easy. Go check it out at miro.com/lenny. That's miro.com/lenny.
JZ, welcome to the podcast.

**Jiaona Zhang** (4:24)
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.