How to build trust and grow as a product leader | Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack, Instacart, Zynga, Pixar)

**Fareed Mosavat** (0:00)
You can't do homework, you can't do exercises, you can't do fake stuff. You have to work on real products, at real companies, with real customers, with real data to get better at product management. And so any kind of like training, mentorship, reading, et cetera, that you do is just the layer on top of that. The real acceleration happens from doing it and getting more reps.
There are ways that I think great PMs use to go faster on this loop, but you still have to do the work. At the core is you have to actually execute and deliver great products. You have to do it over and over and over again.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:40)
Fareed Mosavat is the Chief Development Officer at Reforge where he's been for over two and a half years. Before that, he spent three and a half years at Slack, leading a lot of their growth efforts. About a year at Instacart leading a number of their key growth analytics and product efforts. He's a GM at Zynga, his VPF product at RunKeeper, and something that I only learned during our chat is that he spent six years at Pixar doing character simulation, rigging, and building 3D animation tools. In our conversation, we focus on the journey of becoming a great PM, including crossing the canyon from IC to Manager, the importance of expanding our scope, and how to create opportunities where you get more responsibility as a PM. Fareed is such an A-plus human full of so much insight, and I'm really excited for you to learn them.
With that, I bring you Fareed Mosavat.
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I'm excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey, John.

**John Cutler** (3:03)
Hey, Lenny. Excited to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:04)
John, give us a behind the scenes at Amplitude. When most people think of Amplitude, they think of product analytics.
But now you're getting into experimentation and even just launched a CDP. What's the thought process there?

**John Cutler** (3:16)
Well, we've always thought of Amplitude as being about supporting the full product loop. Think collect data, inform bets, ship experiments and learn. That's the heart of growth to us.
So the big aha was seeing how many customers were using Amplitude to analyze experiments, use segments for outreach and send data to other destinations. Experiment and CDP came out of listening to and observing our customers.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:37)
And supporting growth and learning has always been Amplitude's core focus, right?

**John Cutler** (3:41)
Yeah, so Amplitude tries to meet customers where they are. We just launched starter templates and have a great scholarship program for startups.
There's never been a more important time for growth.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:50)
Absolutely agree. Thanks for joining us, John, and head to amplitude.com to get started.
Fareed, welcome to the podcast.

**Fareed Mosavat** (4:01)
Thanks for having me Lenny, I'm super excited to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:03)
So to set a little context for listeners that aren't super familiar with you, can you give us just like a 45-second overview of your career and all the wonderful things that you've done?

**Fareed Mosavat** (4:14)
Great. Hi, I'm Fareed Mosavat. I live in Berkeley, California with my wonderful wife and two children, but I've been a Product Leader across a variety of different companies over the course of my career. Today, I am the Chief Development Officer at Reforge, where I help run all of our content teams, parts of our operations, and our partnerships with wonderful experts like yourself.