FinTech Australia @ SXSW — Product Mavericks: Women Who Build
After a week of back to back sessions, meetings, events, connections and general overwhelm there are number of very clear themes coming out of SXSW. Although almost every other session was about blockchain, the buzz on the street is that AI will be the next big thing. Chris Gledhil tweeted this pic the other day and it summed up the sentiment at SXSW.
One of the first panels I attended on my first day was Product Mavericks: Top Tips from Women Who Build. Although not specifically fintech the panel offered valuable insights for women founders and featured 4 powerhouse leading females who are breaking ground in tech and innovation.
Themes ranged from how to manage teams, to what happens when you fail, to your overall health and well being to how to foster a growing and supportive ecosystem.
Not surprisingly the panellists all felt there was not enough testing with the customer. Stephanie Hannon said she asked the engineers to go knock on doors to develop intuition. They found it very scary.
Fidjo Simo said “I don’t give ownership to my team of the product I give them ownership of the problem. This changes the focus and creates much more empowered and specific outcomes.”
Merci Grace from Slack, who was a stand out on the panel for her candour and passion, discussed how to manage up, particularly in time of flux. “When managing up be transparent and refer to metrics. Be consistent about this and have a thesis as to why they change.” Grace posed the question, “how do I want someone to feel at the end of the ‘story’. If it’s a sad story you WANT them to feel sad at the end. You have to know the end of your story when you start writing or you will get massively off track. No matter what level, exec, director or junior, everyone wants the same thing — they want you to like them and treat them with respect.”
The panel was then asked about how to manage and cope with failure. Hannon shared some personal insights about something that many people considered a failure - Google Wave. She said, “Google chose to de-invest… putting it this way made me feel better. But we didn’t get enough metrics to be a viable product. I’m very proud of the things that worked and also the things that didn’t work. We built a huge integration and swung from big integration to no integration which was part of the problem.” The insight from this was to see what positives come from a perceived failure. As a result of the development of Wave, live Google docs concurrent editing was built and has been adopted in other platforms where it does work. “Even though the overall platform failed there were a number of incredible innovations that were born out if this,” said Hannon.
Grace went on to discuss the views of Silicon valley around failure. “Silicon Valley DOES NOT embrace failure. People do not want to be anywhere near it. I had to lay off my team and close a company after I had raised a few million dollars and I felt it was my personal failure. I fucked up. But no one wants to be honest that they failed because it’s not really embraced.” Grace shared that she could not have gone out immediately and raised more money on the back of, what she referred to as a hot mess. Grace closed by saying, “but there are plenty of men who have had the opposite experience. Men can fail a company then raise more money to fail another company…. Women are only allowed to fail once.”
Simo gave advice to women in tech. “Realise you have more power than you think you do. I led the monetising mobile for Facebook but I thought they were making the biggest mistake in their life by giving me the job. I asked my boss to attend every meeting. After 2 weeks he said he didn’t need to be there. Of course I had the cred and of course everyone respected and listened to my opinion.” Simo said she used to rely heavily on external ways of building confidence like heels, make up, and was always 100% put together. Simo shared what changed her habits. “I got pregnant and was on bed rest for 5 months and had to do all meeting lying in bed.
I finally realised my confidence is not based on how I look but what I’m capable of.”
Grace reminded everyone that you must take care of yourself first and suggested everyone Google cognitive behavioural therapy for tips.
“Take care of yourself first and talk yourself up,” Grace said
All the panelises agreed that you need to have unwavering confidence buft for women that is a double edged sword. Simo said, “confidence is a tricky thing as if you have too much you may be called aggressive. How many women here today have been called aggressive?” 90% of the women in the room raised their hands.
“Others people’s reaction is often about how they view the world and nothing to do with what you are doing.” Grace stated
“There will always be bias but exposure to many different viewpoints will open your perspective,” said Simon
Tali Rappaport from Lyft said they have an economic bias they are sometimes blind to. “We get everyone to work on the support desk in order for staff to work at the coal face and to get to know the end user in order to uncover our own bias.”
The final question for the session was, what is the best product advice from the panel?
Grace had the best quote for the day:
“Build the product then go away and get really drunk. If you can use it then, you will be using like most of your potential customers, and if you can work it, you’re on the right track”
Simo’s final advice was, “grit directly determines your success. Learning to be resilient is super important and make sure you not only take care of yourself, make sure take care of your people.”
“Putting our passengers first and keeping their needs top of mind is our focus. Building really honest relationships with our staff so we are helping build their career,” was the closing thought from Rappaport.
Simo shared a goal that many women I know who are working at making a difference hold as their driving mission.
