On Transforming Lives — the Craft of Product Management and the Power of Marketplaces
Adi Thacker — Vice President/General Manager of Monetization, Poshmark
Aditya (Adi) Thacker is a Product Management and General Management executive with experience in building consumer businesses at scale. He is passionate about building impactful products and leading product teams. Currently, he is the VP and GM of Monetization of Poshmark, a Fashion Resale Marketplace in North America. His team is responsible for building products that generate incremental revenue for the marketplace.
Adi lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and two children. In this spare time, he enjoys being active (running, tennis, swimming), reading and exploring new destinations with his family.
Author’s Note: Adi and I have known each other for over 40 years. We went to elementary and middle school together in Bombay, India. As young men, we both came to the United States for higher education — eventually pursuing careers and raising families here. Circumstances had us on opposite coasts — and we’ve almost always been separated by thousands of miles and several time zones. Through the inevitable ups and downs in our personal and professional lives, however, we have stayed in touch. I’m always touched that he makes it a point to visit my parents on his brief visits to India. Most recently, Adi spoke with me very early on Sunday, October 29, 2023. Some highlights from our conversation follow.
What Do You Remember About How We Met?
We go back a long way! We met as toddlers because our families knew each other. My earliest memories of us are just playing as kids when our families visited each other for dinner. I also recall us going on several road trips together — a few families — to destinations around Bombay. And then we went to school together, and were in the same class. I think there were maybe three of us always vying for the top grades in school early on. And because we spent time together — both at school and outside of school — we were “best friends.” I think its amazing that we’ve stayed in touch — in frequent touch, actually — since the beginning.
What Do You Love About What You Do?
I’ve spent the last decade of my career as a product management practitioner in the consumer space. I love being able to create consumer products. It starts with a hypothesis about a user problem, understanding user needs and problems through user research, then building a minimum viable product, then eventually testing it out to validate your hypothesis. Creating something from idea to something tangible that can be used by a person to solve a new problem or — and then scaling that — gives me a lot of satisfaction.
“The beauty of consumer product is that the building process is very iterative and collaborative with the people that you build for.”
It is also very measurement-oriented — you can understand whether problem is being solved by choosing and tracking the right metrics.
What Helps to Maximize the Impact of What you Do?
With consumer products, the end game is to find product-market fit. Building something that a user really loves that drives ongoing and repeat usage. Really understanding customer needs is fundamental to this craft. Even the discovery process or really eliciting what the needs are is an art in itself — talking to users isn’t sufficient because users seldom do what they tell you. You really have to understand their latent motivations. You can’t just talk to 15 or 20 users and get this deep insight.
“There’s no way for TikTok or YouTube or Instagram to have predicted via user research that users want 9x16 aspect ratio short videos. The core latent need is that people want to entertained in short bursts. And they want to do it while they’re on the go — on the train, in between meetings, when they have a few minutes here and there.”
What’s Something Cool You’re Working On?
At Poshmark, we’re building a product called Promoted Closet, and it’s currently in beta. It’s designed to enable our sellers to market their store or “closet” more effectively to buyers on our platform. Some of these sellers want to sell more and sell faster — so we’re going to give them the ability to pay for distribution. We want to meet the needs of all types of sellers: from the sophisticated ones that are familiar with advertising on Facebook and Google to those that will be trying this type of product for the first time.
“The craft lies in abstracting away the complexity into a simple user experience that makes the product usable by all types of users.”
Why Does This Work Matter Now?
Working on a marketplace has always appealed to me because it is fundamentally about creating value — about bringing demand and supply together online. About creating this ecosystem for commerce — done a lot more efficiently that it was being done offline. This is true for AirBnB, for Uber, for Lyft — and also for Poshmark. These marketplaces just didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago. And in that time they’ve added billions of dollars of value to the overall economy. I think we’re seeing a movement that started over a decade and a half ago that’s not going away.
“There is a trend line here — commerce is becoming more efficient and scalable as these activities move online.”
How Might This Change the World?
I believe that marketplaces have the potential to not just create economic value - but impact peoples’ lives in a very real way.
I was traveling to LA for a meeting and I jumped into an Uber and started chatting with the driver. I asked him my standard question— “How long have you been doing this and why do you do it?” It turns out that he’s an artist on Spotify and spends his entire day in the recording studio mixing tracks. So he’s pursuing his passion of becoming a hip-hop artist — and funding it by driving Uber on the weekends and in the evening! Others have told me that their earnings have helped them pay for nursing school, or their family’s medical bills, or helped get them through college. Stories like these aren’t captured in the billions of dollars of GMV that these platforms generate.
“The power of these platforms is that they address a very core human desire… People want to be in control of their destiny — they want control over their lives. These platforms separate out earning a livelihood and make space for humans to meet their need to better themselves and pursue their passions.”
Thank you for reading!
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As the spirit moves you
So I may know that this spoke to you
If only for a fleeting moment.
