Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product, Figma) An Archaeological Study of Mahika Kapoor: A Product Management Masterclass This blog post summarizes key learnings from a podcast interview with Mahika Kapoor, a design engineering PM hybrid at Figma. Mahika shares her insights on building successful products and teams, offering valuable advice for aspiring and experienced product managers alike. Introduction The podcast explores Mahika's unique approach to product management, focusing on her strengths and how she leverages them to achieve remarkable results. The conversation delves into various aspects of her work, including vision creation, conviction, empathy, building team culture, and navigating change within an organization. I. Vision: Painting a Compelling Picture of the Future The Importance of Vision: A strong, shared vision is crucial for navigating the messy and chaotic product development cycle. It anchors the team during ups and downs, ensuring that every step feels like progress. Crafting a Compelling Vision: This involves a cross-pollination of functions: User research to understand user needs and feelings. Design and prototyping to visualize the future world. Engineering feasibility to ensure achievability. Communicating the Vision: Visual communication is key. Instead of relying solely on words, use designs, prototypes, user testimonials, and data to make the vision tangible and compelling. The "pain-solution-proof point" approach is highly effective. Example: FigJam's Vision for Democratic Meetings: Mahika shares how the FigJam team envisioned a future where the collaborative nature of brainstorming becomes the norm for all meetings, fostering greater inclusivity and participation. This vision drove the development of features like music, voting, and Kudos boards. Leveraging AI for Prototyping: AI tools are increasingly lowering the barrier to entry for building prototypes, even without extensive design or engineering skills. Hackathons as Vision Sprints: Internal hackathons provide opportunities to test and refine visions, build momentum, and gather early feedback. II. Conviction: Building Momentum and Rallying the Team Creating Momentum: Constantly generating forward progress is essential. Utilize Jeff Bezos's "one-way doors" and "two-way doors" framework to prioritize decisions and manage risks. Developing Conviction: This stems from insatiable curiosity, user conversations, and a willingness to put forth ideas, even if initially imperfect. Iterative feedback helps refine those ideas. "Strong Opinions, Weakly Held": Maintain strong conviction while remaining open to changing course based on user feedback and new insights. Balancing Conviction with Collaboration: Clearly communicate your confidence level in your ideas and actively encourage feedback and dissenting opinions. Create a culture of open and direct communication. Direct Communication: Be direct and honest, but ensure it's a two-way street. Actively solicit feedback and act upon it promptly. The "feedback as a gift" approach fosters trust and collaboration. III. Building Hype: Generating Excitement and Engagement The Importance of Hype: Sustaining excitement around a product is crucial, especially for zero-to-one projects. Different products require different levels of hype generation. Leveraging Company-Wide Forums: Utilize large forums like sales kickoffs, hackathons, and annual showcases to gain visibility and generate excitement. Show, Don't Tell: Demos and prototypes are more effective than words in communicating a product's potential. Emotional Connection: Tap into the emotional aspect of product usage. Make users feel special and valued. Product-Specific Hype Strategies: Different products require different approaches to hype generation. Understand your product's brand and target audience. IV. User Immersion: Deeply Understanding Your Audience Continuous User Engagement: Maintain constant contact with users, both those who use your product and those who don't. Gather insights from diverse sources. Operationalizing User Insights: Use tools like FigJam, Loom videos, and Slack integrations to capture, organize, and share user feedback. Establish a cadence for engaging with sales teams and gathering their insights. Non-User Feedback: Insights from non-users are particularly valuable for understanding market perceptions and identifying areas for improvement. V. Culture: Building a Thriving Team Environment Hot Seat: A team-building exercise where individuals answer questions from their colleagues, fostering deeper understanding and connection. Figgies: An Oscar-style awards ceremony celebrating team members' contributions and personalities. The Importance of Culture: Investing in team culture builds trust, strengthens relationships, and enhances resilience during challenging times. It makes work more enjoyable and fosters collaboration. Bottom-Up Culture Building: Encourage team members to initiate and participate in culture-building activities. VI. Embracing Change: Adaptability as a Superpower Adaptability in Product Development: Be prepared to pivot and adapt to changing priorities and circumstances. Maintain flexibility and enthusiasm. Example: Design Nation: Mahika shares her experience founding Design Nation, a national nonprofit, highlighting how she adapted her approach when initial plans fell through. High Agency: Take ownership of problems and proactively seek solutions. VII. Building Zero-to-One Products at Scale The Importance of Intrapreneurship: For a company to remain competitive, it must foster an entrepreneurial culture that encourages the development of new products and features. Three Key Elements for Zero-to-One Success: The Right Idea: Based on deep user empathy and alignment with company goals. Securing Buy-In: Rallying leadership and the team around the vision. Spreading the Idea: Generating momentum and excitement within the organization. Early Staging: Putting products on staging early allows for continuous feedback and builds team investment. Summary and Key Takeaways Mahika Kapoor's approach to product management is characterized by a strong vision, unwavering conviction, deep user empathy, a focus on building positive team culture, and an ability to adapt gracefully to change. Her emphasis on building relationships, fostering open communication, and leveraging internal and external hype is particularly noteworthy. Her advice on embracing intrapreneurship and developing new products within larger organizations offers valuable lessons for anyone seeking to drive innovation and achieve significant impact. Her story highlights the importance of finding your passion, understanding team motivations, and never underestimating the power of a good idea. You’ll discover how a simple yet profound team tradition like the 'Hot Seat' can deepen personal connections and understanding among colleagues, moving beyond work-related interactions. You’ll learn how creative and low-cost events, like the 'Figgies' awards, can celebrate individual quirks and foster a sense of appreciation and fun, making everyone feel more connected and valued. You'll understand why investing in team culture is critical: it builds trust and passion for the people you work with, making your team far more resilient and unified when facing tough times. You’ll realize that cultivating a strong culture doesn't always require top-down directives or a big budget; powerful, impactful initiatives can often come from enthusiastic, bottom-up efforts. PMing is a highly collaborative function and to the extent that you have great relationship ship with all the teams that you're interfacing with, that just goes. one is it goes along way in terms of the product. But two, it makes, you know, speaking about passion, like it makes your day-to-day so much more fun. road maps change products change, but feeling a connection to the folks that you're working with, uh, make you much more durable as a team. It means that when times get tough, which they will, um, your gut instinct is to rally together and collaborate together to find a solution rather than to like jump trip or something. What was the primary purpose of starting the 'Hot Seat' tradition at the PM offsite? According to the speaker, what are the two main benefits of Product Managers (PMs) having great relationships with the teams they interface with? What is the fundamental reason the speaker emphasizes culture is important for teams? How does a strong emotional connection to your team, fostered through culture, primarily help during difficult times? What advice does the speaker give to PMs who feel their team is 'no fun' or lacks culture? You’ll discover that creating genuine excitement for your product isn't just a bonus; it’s actually your responsibility, especially when you’re championing a new idea. This clip reveals how to build powerful internal momentum by strategically using big company moments for early visibility and demos, helping everyone truly 'see what you see' and get emotionally invested. You’ll learn that external hype is all about deeply understanding your users and crafting experiences that make them feel special and emotionally connected to your product, tailoring that excitement to your specific brand. It emphasizes that authentic hype can only be built for something you truly believe in, and it comes from immersing yourself in your audience to know exactly what excites them. I think that hype is something that you can't really create hype for something you don't believe in, in my opinion, the only way to create hype is to get people to see what you see. hype as well is like really tied to emotion. So like, to the extent that a person using a product can feel like, oh, um, this thing that is built in, the product was built, like for me, like not to advance the company's goals or anything like that, but like to make me feel special to make me feel happy, I think that's a really key instrument in driving hype as well. What is the primary responsibility of a Product Manager regarding their product, especially for zero-to-one ideas? According to the speaker, what is a highly effective way to generate internal hype and gain early product insights, even for a product that is barely built? How does the speaker suggest products should approach generating external hype, using the FigJam example? You'll quickly understand how turning unexpected changes and project pivots into a superpower can truly redefine how you approach challenges, rather than getting discouraged. This section truly highlights what 'high agency' looks like in action, showing you how to take ownership and make things happen yourself, even when initial plans fall through. You'll discover the surprising power of persistent outreach, like using a simple email to connect with influential people who resonate with the problem you're trying to solve. The clip provides a great lesson in being incredibly adaptable with your resources, showing you how to re-prioritize and find new ways forward when faced with a lack of traditional support. you pivot with grace and enthusiasm when things change and priorties, Chang projects are killed, projects are spun up. don't underestimate the power for a. EDU email address. hi, agency it feels like you just consistently just like I will makemake this happen myself. What core trait is identified as a 'superpower' for success in the segment? What was the initial obstacle Mika encountered when trying to establish the national design conference within an existing organization? What unconventional method did Mika use to secure support and funding after her initial plan failed? The speaker notes Mika's 'high agency.' What does this term imply about her approach? Beyond 'capital D designers,' who else does Design Nation aim to include? You’ll discover why having a crystal-clear product vision is absolutely essential; it's the anchor that keeps your team moving forward, even when things get messy or you have to pivot. This section really drives home that you can't build a great vision in isolation; you need to deeply involve users, designers, and engineers from the very beginning to ensure it's both compelling and achievable. You’ll learn why simply talking about an idea isn't enough; the best way to get buy-in is by making people feel the problem and solution through compelling visuals, prototypes, and real-world proof points. You’ll see how creating a single, collaborative artifact for your vision, rather than separate documents, helps everyone on the team feel incredible ownership and passion for the shared goal. in order to ensure that moments like that are not discouraging, but rather sort of learning opportunities for your team. it's so important to be anchored on that singular vision because then any step along the way feels like forward progress. words will only get you so far are. So when I put together a vision with my team at Figma, it's all about like not just your traditional, like, okay, here are pain points. And then here are solutions. And then here is the timeline and costing. but rather, how can you bring all of those things together? And how can a vision pitch effectively be like paino solution, proof point, paino solution proof point. What is the primary benefit of being anchored to a singular product vision, especially during the chaotic product development cycle? According to the speaker, what is essential for crafting a truly compelling product vision? When communicating a product vision, especially in a detail-oriented and visual culture like Figma, what method is emphasized over traditional word-based pitches? What does the speaker identify as a key characteristic of Figma's unique approach to getting a project greenlighted and investing in a vision? Based on the FigJam example, what core insight did the team leverage to expand the product's vision beyond just brainstorming? You'll grasp why it's absolutely crucial for large companies to stay entrepreneurial and foster a 'run with it' culture, often fueled by incredible bottom-up initiatives like hackathons. You'll resonate with the idea that pushing a new product is like being the 'keeper of the flame' – it's your job to both nurture that idea and make sure it spreads like wildfire. You'll learn the three vital steps to turn a groundbreaking idea into reality: ensuring it’s the right idea (user empathy and company alignment), securing enthusiastic buy-in, and then letting it truly spread across the organization. You’ll understand how involving your colleagues early in the product's development, almost like a beta program, doesn't just get you feedback, but actually makes them feel personally invested in its success. I kind of think about the person or the team or the group of people who are pushing a zero to1 idea as being the like hastas or the keepers of the hearth, and it is your job to like stoke the flames and the embers if they are at risk of dying out. I think the key to being successful at zero to one is to honestly have optimism. that border is on delusion. you need to have in almost like reality distortion field where you don't hear the word no or at the very least, you translate it into a not yet. Why is it crucial for companies to maintain an entrepreneurial spirit to stay competitive? According to the speaker, what are the three essential steps to successfully bring a new idea into existence? What are the two key elements for a product manager to have the 'right idea' for a new product, according_to the speaker? What is the crucial mindset described by the speaker for successfully securing buy-in for a zero-to-one idea? What is a significant benefit of putting a product on staging (dogfooding) early, beyond just getting direct feedback?