Operators Ep 15 Transcript
Olivia Chen - Faire
Delian: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone. My name is, Delian, and I'm principal at Founders Fund, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco. This is Operators, where I interview non-VC, non-CEO, non-founder operators that make the startup world go around. Today I'm interviewing, Olivia Chen, Product Lead at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace. Prior to joining Faire, Olivia spent time interning at Barclays and Bain and Co after graduating from Duke University. I hope you enjoy the show.
Cool, Olivia, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today, excited to have you.
Olivia Chen: [00:00:47] Thanks so much for having me, Delian, excited to chat with you.
Delian: [00:00:50] I don't know if you remember, but I think it would be like three, three and a half years ago or something like that, we like met briefly on a boat. I think it was like Justine's birthday party or something like that.
Olivia Chen: [00:00:57] That is the party where I learned about Faire.
Delian: [00:00:59] That... Oh, is that actually where you learned about Faire?
Olivia Chen: [00:01:01] That is. It is.
Delian: [00:01:02] Oh, my God. Okay, let's dive right into that story-
Olivia Chen: [00:01:04] [laughing]
Delian: [00:01:04] ... Before we talk about... How did you... Did you like meet somebody that worked at Faire or you heard about it from somebody at the, on the boat party or how did that happen?
Olivia Chen: [00:01:11] It was so ran-... Oh, no, Justine knows Max, so.
Delian: [00:01:14] Ah, no way.
Olivia Chen: [00:01:15] Uh, we were literally waiting in line for the bathroom and, um, she said... I- I was already looking for to leave, uh, Bain at the time and she said, "You know, you can come work for me at Open Door or I have a friend named, Max, who's starting his own company and you should check it out." So that party where we met is the party where I found out about Faire.
Delian: [00:01:32] No way.
Olivia Chen: [00:01:34] Yeah.
Delian: [00:01:34] Okay. Small world. Funny, funny, funny. Uh, okay. I guess before we dive into the whole, like how you ended up at Faire and why you chose it, et cetera, let's maybe talk a little bit about Bain there. Uh, will you tell me a little bit about sort of, yeah, after college how did you decide to basically go into consulting? Uh, did you want that like, you know, from, uh, early on? Why Bain, like how did you sort of end up there?
Olivia Chen: [00:01:53] Yeah. Um, I did not know I wanted to do consulting. I- I honestly think it would be rally weird if you were a kid and wanted to do consulting, [laughs] that's, like, pretty strange job choice as a kid. Um, for me I was looking for an alternate to med school. So I actually was premed, I had gotten into med school. But like the more I delved into it, I like was shadowing doctors, doing med research, it felt so wrong for me.
Uh, I just was deeply unhappy whenever I did it. And so, I, it was totally arbitrary. I ended up following my older brother who actually still works at BCG. Um, and then ended up applying to Bain. And I mostly was looking for flexibility [laughs] to help me figure out what it is I wanted to do, um, because I knew it wasn't, uh, to- to go to med school. So...
Delian: [00:02:36] Nice. And so, do you think that breadth kinda helped you with, like, obviously you've only, you know, since worked on Faire, but do you think that-
Olivia Chen: [00:02:41] Yeah.
Delian: [00:02:41] Kinda helped you assess, sort of, you know, where else to go? Or what even other industries to pursue, maybe even beyond just technology 'cause you had so much breadth during those few couple years of consulting?
Olivia Chen: [00:02:49] Definitely. I, I... I, I didn't love consulting myself, to be totally honest. But, I don't regret going there at all. I think it's like this wonderful training ground for people right out of college. And I was also blessed to work in the private equity group where you do every case is two to four weeks. And so it's like different industry.
I was doing IT. I did hospice IT. I did physical security products. I was doing photo book printing. And then I did a few retail cases. And with retail, it just felt much more natural. I thought, I loved how tangible it was. I loved how consumer basing it was. And that's when I thought, you know, I think I would like to land in retail eventually.
Um, and tech was, I, I like tech just because people are very danger and that was the other thing that, um, I enjoyed about Bain was it really taught me analytics.
Delian: [00:03:33] Dangerous things. It sounds like, yeah, you consider a couple places. You know, Justine, in the line to the bathroom wherever, you know, pitch you a little bit on Open Door and on Faire. I guess it was because it's some of this retail experience you'd had while consulting that sort of, like, pushed you towards Faire? Or like, what, I guess, got you, really excited about Faire? Or like, the conversations with Max?
Olivia Chen: [00:03:48] Yeah, so, I, I, um, I would say that I knew Bain wasn't the place for me actually, only in three months in. But I was still learning a lot. But I started looking for other jobs about a year in. And everyone said, you know, don't leave unless it's for something you're really excited about.
So, I interviewed at quite a few places and none really felt quite right to me. Um, and then when I met Max it felt right. And the, the way that I think about it is, you know, they always say for early stage investors you invest completely based on the founders. And, um, I was interviewing at quite a few start ups. I didn't feel like I totally understood what that meant 'til I met Max. And then it just clicked where he, Daniele, and Marcelo were on a different tier than the other founders that I talked to.
And really as an employee you're, you're investing your time and your life. You don't have the money [laughs], but, it, it translates to money at the end of the day. And so, um, I, like, decided to invest my life with them because I complete... I, I was stunned. I, um, I grilled them pretty hard in the interview process.
Um, and they had really, really sharp answers. Very early on, even then. And they were also very transparent with me over what they hadn't figured out, and, what [laughs] would be my responsibility to figure out. And I actually, like, turned in my notice to Bain within a week of meeting them.
Delian: [00:05:02] Fast news-
Olivia Chen: [00:05:03] Yeah.
Delian: [00:05:03] Some pretty strong conviction there. And also it's like pretty damn really, like, I believe they had done, basically, like the summer or the winter, I mean, what was it like? 18, 17 batch. And like they'd only launched in like, March, something like that. And your conversations-
Olivia Chen: [00:05:14] Yeah.
Delian: [00:05:14] With them were like in May?
Olivia Chen: [00:05:15] Eh, yeah.
Delian: [00:05:15] So this is like, what, three months really after YC. And like, I think there was only one other employee at the time? Or-
Olivia Chen: [00:05:21] Yeah.
Delian: [00:05:21] What was the kinda status of, ah, of Faire at that time?
Olivia Chen: [00:05:23] Yeah, so three founders and then Katie, who is the founding designer and a couple contractors. But I was the, the second full-time employee.
Delian: [00:05:31] And then what was like the scope, I guess, that they originally discussed with you? Or like the responsibilities? Like, what did they want you to, like, either start tackling in the early days? If I remember back then it was, like, a pretty, like, "off-line" product where like, all of the retailers got, you know, onboarded entirely, the like phone calls, things like that? Like, were you basically diving in to try and, like, scale up more of their retailer acquisition?
Olivia Chen: [00:05:49] It was the opposite. So my official title was Product Discovery. Which doesn't mean [laughs] much of anything. So, let's call it growth, 'cause essentially growth, but it was supply growth, um, to start. And then it later morphed into retailer growth.
Um, but my job was to, like, identify the brands that would come on board, get them on board, both, like I did... I ran the entire sales motion, as well as, like, managed a team in the Philippines to do their content. And then I was responsible for just like maintaining the content on the website. And the fourth thing was then working really closely with Daniele, who was our data science co-founder on building out the initial recommendation engine, um, and refining that over time.
Delian: [00:06:29] And that's the recommendation engine of, like, which makers to show to particular retailers that come onto the platform?
Olivia Chen: [00:06:34] Exactly. Exactly.
Delian: [00:06:36] So can you maybe talk to, I guess, the like the early days of, yeah, what sales were you looking for? Like, how did you decide sort of, you know, which brands to both on board and then how did you guys think about which signals to look into for, sort of, which brands to recommend to which retailers? Like, what were the, what was like the V-1, let's say of the recommendations system and onboarding system?
Olivia Chen: [00:06:51] Yeah. Um, I think that people probably over estimate how strategic you have to be. You have to pick a lane and just focus in it. And, um, for, for me, I looked at the kinds of retailers that were in SF that we had already gotten, you know, a few orders from. And I just [laughed] backed into what products they were carrying. That's pretty easy.
Ah, and we still joke about it, but originally Daniele was the person who was doing the sourcing. And he was going on Tech Garage. He was buying fidget spinners, which I [laughing] and then I put a stop to all of that. I said, "Daniele, like, you, you got to stop." Ah, we were buying candles. Like, we [laughing] we need to change the vibe of the site. No more fidget spinners.
Um, and so, um, people I also think underestimate how manual you have to be. So, I will say that data science has been there from day one. Like, Daniele, has always had the vision. He understands how to do it. He had a functioning recommendation engine before I joined. But, the way that we would train it was literally we would pick a retailer together and his recommendation engine was fed a 100 recommendations. And I'd manually go through every single recommendation, and score how good of a recommendation it was.
And I did this for hundreds if not thousands of retailers. Just like pure manual scoring of his recommendation engine. And he would feed that data back into his algorithm to improve it over time. And so it was extremely manual, like, I'll give that trading data because we obviously didn't have the retailers buying behavior. And we didn't have obviously enough data to be up the AB test. And so it's completely me driven.
Delian: [00:08:18] And, like, did you, did you just by, like studying their website, understanding their look and feel, visiting in person, something like that, is it just seeing the type of things that they stocked and then just use some, like, product intuition or design intuition to figure out, sort of, like what else they would be likely to enjoy?
Olivia Chen: [00:08:31] Yeah. I mean, I think it's just like, frankly, I think a lot of people could do it. Right? You just go into a store and you just... I, I think that a person can do better than, like, a recommendation engine until it's in, like, a top 20% almost of its performance. Right?
And so you don't have to get that scientific about it. If they're selling a mason jar candle you can bet that they're gonna sell other candles that kind of look like it. Or a nice soap. Um, and what we did do, though, was, um, I started layering on, I think categories are very important. Right? If you don't sell kids clothes you're probably never gonna sell clothes. We're not gonna recommend kids clothes to you.
Um, secondarily, there is an overlay of the aesthetic. Right? Are you rustic chic? Or you minimalist? And so I actually remember this really distinctly, distinctively because it was my, ah, it was my Christmas break. But [laughing] we went through the exercise of, I worked with, um, one of our first sales people and we categorized every single retail and brand in our database by category and aesthetic, um, to create a matrix that then also fed into the recommendation engine. And that, like, created a pretty large improvement in the recommendations.
Delian: [00:09:35] And so that's like on the, let's say the retail recommendation side. And then would you basically, like, look for gaps in the catalog to figure out, sort of, the types of the cursory job to? Or, like, what were they like, let's say, early, like, strategies around which makers to reach out? Do you know how to contact them, get them onto the platform?
Olivia Chen: [00:09:49] Yeah. So that was a lot of, um, again, you, you just find a lot of the websites of the retailers that you want to target. So, this is all demand driven. Or it's demand driven in the sense of they determine what supply needs to be on there. And then it's supply driven in the sense that the more supply you have you'll be able to fulfill the demand. So growth ultimately comes with the supply.
So, I would do a lot of reverse things like that where I worked with Daniele, why, like, 'cause Daniele created the scraper. I'm not technical. So [laughs], I would figure out all the retailers that, um, we would want to target. And he would scrape their websites for me. And then I would work with a vendor to get contact information and just send out mass emails asking them to join Faire.
Again, at some point, like, every brand is incremental. You don't have to care too much about gaps. If you only have a hundred brands [laughs] every category is a gap. Um, but I, I would check it monthly. Right? Like or we're really low on jewelry. Are we really low on bath? And I would do like little sprints where I would focus on one category at a time.
Um, but it, you know, like even now. Even when we have 10,000 brands. Like, certainly some are more unsaturated but over all, like, more supply is almost always better in a marketplace.
Delian: [00:10:57] So I feel like one of the, ah, you know, running jokes at, ah, Faire board meetings is, you know, Max will at some point, you know whether it was in year one or now, whatever, you know, year, year three, four, uh, Max will bring up, you know, some problem and say, okay, here's kinda where we're struggling. But don't worry. We have people working on it.
And then, you know, Keith or somebody like that always asks, that's okay. Who do you have working on it? And like, Max' answer, like, nine times out of 10 was always like, Olivia's working on it. Ah, whether it was like product, her row, I think at one point you were, like, maybe the warehouse down south. Like, that's like, what do you think sort of led you to have this, like I guess, if, I, I think pretty phenomenal and incredible role, you know, trusting relationship, ah, you know, with Max has allowed you, you know, jump, you know, to almost every aspect of the company whether it's been, yeah, you know product t-...
You know, product growth all the way through to, like, you know, managing, you know, a warehouse? How do you think that sort of relationship came to be? And how do you feel like you, ah, you know... How did he come to trust you to, to be able to be like, basically solve almost any type of problem that the company's going through?
Olivia Chen: [00:11:49] Yeah, um, I, I think the number one thing you have to be is you just have to be reliable. Right? So, if I say I'm gonna do something in a day, I'm gonna do it by, like it's going to be done at that date, at a quality that I will put my name on. And if it isn't I'll communicate it very clearly and have a good reason why. Right?
And, and I've always been like that. I take immense pride in that. And that's just the number one thing. Right? And then the second thing is a concept that we discuss. I don't know if you've heard it, like barrel versus shotgun? Right? Um, so I think I'm like more of the... But I'm more of the shotgun type. Right? So it's like point me in the right direction and I'll be able to walk in that direction and, like, you know, navigate general obstacles. And I can come to you to unblock.
But, some people, I think, prefer or work much better in a much more structured environment. Whereas, I tend to, like, enjoy the process of detangling. And then once something's very clear then, um, like, I'm probably like less well-suited to the final, like, mile execution. Right?
Um, and so that, that... And you're right, combined with consulting. Right? Where I had to thin up on so many new industries so quickly, I think that gave me the confidence of knowing you don't actually have to be an expert in something to be able to add value or do better. And I think the other thing... I used to get asked by my old friends in consulting whether I found my new job really stressful.
And in a weird way I found Faire less stressful than consulting. Like, I didn't have deadlines, you know, this deck has to be done by midnight and if there's a mistake on the slide, some partner's gonna find you. And you're gonna feel so sad. Right? I didn't actually feel that where the bar for me was someone not doing it. [Laughs] And that's actually an incredibly low bar.
So, like for example when I, like, started paid marketing I was a little bit scared. Like I had never done it before. But, um, the bar for me doing paid marketing was someone not doing paid marketing. So I had a really, really large band. [Laughing] Um, and, like, when... When it started working it was wonderful. But, I, I think people need to keep that in mind when, um, they get a little bit... When they get stressed out. Especially in a start up environments.
Delian: [00:13:52] Can you talk a little bit about, maybe, like the diversity of projects that they've, like, had you at various points in the company lifetime, like, work on? Like, I know a handful from sort of afar. But it sounds like, yeah, paid marketing, which you had no experience in, what are other, let's say, like areas that they threw you into that you didn't technically have experience in, but you kinda, like, solved on the fly? Then, yeah, what was your process, I guess, for solving on the fly? Maybe we can start with paid marketing and then the other examples that you bring up.
Olivia Chen: [00:14:12] Yeah, so my, my first role was, um, when I discussed with brand onboarding in sales. So sales was the part that was completely foreign. And I really don't identify as a sales person, and still don't. And I actually, am like fundamentally introverted. I hate talking on the phones.
Um, but it was probably, like 50, 60% of my job when I first started. And, um, the... In terms of how you learn, you, you really need to just find people who are good at it. And ask pretty pointed questions. And so, I mean, some of our first hires were sales people. So I just shadowed all of their calls. Um, got a sense of it.
And the other thing that is nice is that when you're selling a good product it doesn't really feel like sales. And because, like, also, other parts of my role were rolled into, like, product improvements and things like that I felt like every sales call was actually a customer interview. And it made the job a lot more interesting to me.
Um, after that I did do, ah, customer support. And so, like help set up, our, like zen desk system. Um, answered tickets for quite a long time. Um [laughs] very long time. And then, um, also did paid marketing. Um, similar thing. Right? Where you just reach out to a bunch of people, read a ton of articles online, and then you just start experimenting. You know, putting a $100, see what happens. Does or doesn't work. You try...
I, I found it, like, generally intuitive and some parts of it are very very not. But, um, for those parts then you just, again, come with a list of questions and you ask an expert. And I found that after a few, um... It only took like maybe four or five sessions with someone who like understood it for me to, like, generally get the hang of it.
I did hit my cap after about three to six months where it was clear. Like, Max, you need to hire someone who actually knows what they're doing. Like, I [laughs], I, I need to enjoy this enough in order to keep going.
Delian: [00:15:57] [Laughs]
Olivia Chen: [00:15:57] And you're not going to get incremental improvements. But, um, I, I think it's just about asking for help. And a lot of people I think sometimes have the sense of I'm an entrepreneur. Like, I have to figure it out on my own. Um, there aren't a ton of great resources online for a lot of these things. Or, what I should maybe say is there are can be, but when you don't actually know how to do something you can't tell the bad content from the good content.
And I think it's actually sometimes dangerous to read a lot of that online before you understand that. So, you just have to reach out to your network and ask.
Delian: [00:16:30] Right, right, right. You don't even, like, know the right questions to ask. And then... How... Did you ever like help with the actual, like, back filling process of, like, you know, as something like basically started to work, ah, and you felt like you know, you had scaled out of it. Were you the person, sort of, helping actually bring somebody in? Or did you mostly like hand off that process?
Olivia Chen: [00:16:45] I, I worked with Max on for let's say, paid marketing. Um, it was something where like I worked with him to find agency and would, like, vet candidates. Ah, so we did an agency for a bit. And then I, like, was part of the interview process for the candidates. Um, and then would do a s- a short transition period.
But usually there was, like, some other priority project, um, to work on. And so the transition periods were relatively, were relatively small.
Delian: [00:17:09] I know that, like, one of the big growth channels for Faire has been, ah, the sort of, like, dual side of the referral process where it's like the retailers referring makers. Makers referring retailers. You know, also on the same side retailers referring other retailers. Can you talk about some of those, like, you know, early referral loops? How those, like, kinda came about? Um, and sort of how Faire was able to convince people to, like, sort of bring these, like, pre-existing relationships, like onto the platform?
Olivia Chen: [00:17:30] Yeah. I'll talk about the, the brand to retailer one was probably the most important product I've, I built for Faire. So, I at the time I was actually transitioning out of paid marketing and into product. Um, and um, I was still doing support tickets, as well [laughing]. So, um, I, I got a really interesting support ticket.
And basically, this woman was asking me how our sales team worked. And I, I honestly said, well, let's talk for fun. Like, why, why do you ask? And she said, well, I have this list of retailers that I would like to buy my products. And I would like your sales team to call them. And I was like, well, this is interesting. Like, we're, we're not really your sales reps. But, um, I gave me your...
Uh, I, I asked her to send me over the list. And she sent me over something that I mean, it was... I knew something interesting immediately. It was so beautiful. It was an Excel sheet with a retailer name, their city, their phone number, and their email address. And having worked in growth for a while, that was like the Holy Grail. That's what we paid money to get. Right? Was this perfect list of, like, ah, vetted retailers that we knew would be a good fit for Faire with full and complete contact information. And a warm intro.
So, I was like there's something here. She only had 30. But, um, I after that, I actually called a couple more brands and I asked, you know, like, like what would you want essentially for this? Like you have something I, like, we want. What do you want in exchange? And I think with referral programs, too, it was never something on the road map because people don't think like a B to B business is, as being conducive to our referral programs are actually aren't like any very successful examples that I've ever read about.
Um, and I think that's because the concept of a referral program and most people's minds is far too limited. They always think about it as a give time, get time that you see on like the apps or whatever. Right? I, I really don't think that's what a referral program. A referral program is like your user has something that you want. You have something that your users want. And there's some kind of exchange of that information. Right?
And so that's how, um, our referral program came to be. Right? So like, they have contact information of a user base that we want. What they want from... What they ended up wanting from us was waved commission, which was fair, help with the sales commission, and um, and then we threw in as subsidized fair, a fair subsidized discount to accelerate the loop.
Um, but, ah, it actually, like, took off pretty quickly. I started just by doing again completely manually, no product work where brands would email me their list. I'd send emails from my personal email to all the retailers they sent me. Um, and we did this for the first, like, five or ten brands. And saw like several people order. And then we decided to productize it. And it was, I think it was like 40 or 50% of acquisition within its first three months.
Delian: [00:20:08] That's crazy. Yeah, did, did-
Olivia Chen: [00:20:09] Yeah.
Delian: [00:20:09] Like that was the moment where, like, you felt like Faire was gonna work? Just 'cause you sort of discovered it was like this, that goldmine that was underneath your use, that, like, basically only you guys had access to? 'Cause like the goldmine was literally already in your marketplace and it helped the marketplace grow? Or like, do you remember, I guess, your favorite moment of like when you felt Faire is clearly going to work at this point? Was that that moment?
Olivia Chen: [00:20:29] I don't know that I had a moment. What I always felt, and it was also one of the reasons I joined, even from day one was that it was a company that was going to work or the team that was, gonna die trying [And, I love that about, the founders.
there were definitely early days, points that felt less secure. But never did I feel like this company is going under. Sometimes I reflect on our old metrics. I pulled them up the other week, actually. We were growing month over month for the entire... for almost the entirety of Faire minus some, seasonality.
that's pretty incredible. Right? even with paid marketing, it wasn't widely successful in the way that say, these referral loops were. But it was fairly successful. I was shocked. I was like at the cost of acquisition I was able to get, with a fairly un-optimized process. So it meant that there was product market fit. And you could hear that in sales calls.
Delian: [00:21:23] And so since then I think you mostly stayed focused on product. Right?
Olivia Chen: [00:21:26] I have.
Delian: [00:21:27] So sort of developing that referral loop. Ah, can you talk a little bit, I guess, about, like, how Faire thinks about product in terms of like what is within the product scope? It's also interesting that you guys kinda have a, ah, I think, you know, most of your products are in San Francisco. But engineering is all, you know, remote. How does that type of interaction work? How do you communicate effectively with that type of like remote engineering team? Um, yeah, would love to hear about all that.
Olivia Chen: [00:21:47] Yeah, so product, um, especially earlier, I think it's changing as we scale. But, it, it followed closer to a geometric model where the PM really is supposed to do anything that it takes to make the product successful. And we didn't really have phys ops. We didn't have product analysts. We didn't have... Actually, we didn't have engineering managers when I first transitioned. So I was managing the engineers myself.
Um, so, ah, you had to do, like, the full end to end. Um, and then work with the design. Then on top of the traditional work with the designer engineer to make products launch. Now, obviously, as we've hired more things have become a little bit more siloed and specialized. But, I think Faire maintains a sense of like the PM owns the metric. And you still need to at least coordinate and own the coordination between all the functions to drive towards that metric. Um, and that's different by every company, obviously.
In terms of working with engineering, it, it is hard a little bit with remote. It, it's always throws a little bit of a wrench. But, um, it's also, like, you get used to it pretty quickly. So I think, um, what remote does is it requires you to be so much better at communication than you have to be in person. Um, and it also forces you to learn to really trust your colleagues and, er, like and understand them.
And so when you don't have this, like, you don't have facial cues, you don't have all these other, like, soft signals of how people are feeling, how they're doing. You just have to ask. [Laughing] And then, then, you'd be surprised by how much richer the information is when you put in that effort. And similarly, when there's an update instead of just saying something you actually have to write it down and explain it.
And so, what I was pleasantly surprised by was it put a higher bar on the communication that you had to put out to get your point across. And in some ways I think this actually leads to higher rigor. Right? And so you can't just like point at something vaguely and tell an engineer to build it. You have to be quite specific with them.
Um, and they have to ask you, again, very specific questions. And, um, because there's also even like a time gap where they, say, their day ends three hours earlier than ours it just like makes you, like, structure your day much more strictly. And I think, like, wastes a little bit less time.
Delian: [00:23:56] And do you feel like because you sort of had already built that muscle, ah, the product, you, in particular, was maybe able to transition into, like, the COVID remote world maybe better than other teams that didn't deal with the, ah, sort of pre-existing, let's say, like, remote communication and time zone issues?
Olivia Chen: [00:24:11] I definitely think so. It didn't feel jarring. Like I, I have several friends in product in other companies. And I think, um, many of them went through, like, these negative spirals, especially when COVID first hit where a lot of the team members are depressed and they don't know how to work.
We didn't hit that. Um, if anything, people were like really invigorated because COVID had hit and we were worried for our brands and retailers. Um, what I will say, though, is that there's never replacement for an in person interaction ever. Um, I flew up to Waterloo once a month, especially when I was first developing relationships with the engineers. And that still is a struggle. Um, and it's also m- much harder to rally a team around a big idea remote.
Um, and the other thing that I think is missing is the personal connection with customers. And so, it's really important to me, um, where I would bring the engineers of my team to trade shows and things like that to make sure that they always feel connected to what they were building. And nothing does it remote in the same way.
And so I will still be very relieved [laughs] when COVID is over, as I think more people on our team.
Delian: [00:25:13] Yeah, I imagine. I imagine everyone will be. Um, so you talked about as the product team, or as a team as a whole sort of scale. But in particular end product, you guys started to like specialize. Can you tell me a little bit about, sort of, you know, which areas of the product team, like, were clear that you sort of need to have specialized? And then, ah, what were sort of the skillsets or how did you start to sort of like hire for those as opposed to the more, you know, PM/GM, true ownership type model? As opposed to, like, you know, starting to, you know, break out individual, let's say, skillsets?
Olivia Chen: [00:25:40] Yeah. I mean, ah, the, the really clear ones are the things that I think aren't critical to building the great product in the sense of like something a PM can do. And so, like, one example is like more of this project engineering management function. Right? Like I don't really need to learn how to do that in order to create, like, be able to create great product.
Another example, though, that I am more hesitant to just spinoff, like we are going to hire for it, is like user research. Ah, we want that, but at the same time I believe a PM should always be extremely involved. And I am like personally reluctant to like, just like offload that to someone else. Right?
Another one's like analytics. Um, you definitely need to hire for that and we have. Um, but if Faire has a point of view and I share this one that it doesn't mean that now the future's launched and I get to like, turn to my analyst and say, okay, you've got this, right? Like, they're for specialized projects that I don't have time to do. But, like, I still expect myself, I still do this for personally, right, those sequel queries for like features that I launch up to at least a level of complexity where it truly becomes not worth it.
But there are some aspects that I think that, like, doing the grunt work yourself increases. First, your appreciation of your team is just really important. And then also your understanding of what's going on.
Delian: [00:26:55] And, I guess, in a role like this where it's like, yeah, I think you know the word PM sometimes is like difficult to define 'cause like PM's at different companies can be so widely different in terms of scope, responsibilities. Some are more, yeah, just pure project management. For something at a place like Square, the PM's are truly like the ones sort of like, almost like leading, like new business lines, ah-
Olivia Chen: [00:27:13] Yeah.
Delian: [00:27:13] Either where it's like category expansion or some of these referral loops. And so, I guess can you talk about, ah, like, how many sort of PM type roles are there at the company? Or how, what's that, like, ratio between let's say, PM to maybe like analysts, user researchers. And then PM to actually like number of engineers in the team? Like, people have so many different philosophies on sort of like, how many per type of role to have. I'd love it if, sort of, how Faire thinks about that.
Olivia Chen: [00:27:34] Yeah. Um, because the PM takes on more... Like, so I would say what we currently have is not the ideal. So we're, we're light on analytics. Um, and we're actually like light on product. Like, we're always hiring for these roles. But, the ideal ration in my mind is probably anywhere between six to 10 eng to PM. So, like, I think about, like what, what is the unit of a pod is probably the best way to think about it.
And a pod, I think of, is like one PM, one to two designers, one product analyst, and anywhere from like five to 10 engineers. And an engineering manager depending on I would say how early the product is, um, and how complex it is. And so I actually think in earlier stage product you want fewer engineers to product to PM ratio because I might not know what should be built next week [laughing]. I'm like learning on the job. I'm doing interviews every single day. And so I don't want to have to feel like I have to feed and like feed 10 engineers. Right?
But at this, on the other hand, um, there are... Our work streams where I know the road map for the next year, no problem. I can like rattle that off to you. At that point it's like fairly trivial to have like two designers and 10 engineers on something like that. So, it, it does depend on the lifecycle of a feature, as well as the lifecycle of the company.
Delian: [00:28:45] And then how do you think about, um, when companies just sort of be like, you know, doing their first, like, higher like this period and growth? I mean obviously Faire did it pretty damn early on. Although, Max is a pretty strong, like product background himself. So I imagine he could have, like, you know, punted it off for longer.
But, like, what do you think is like the right time to, ah, you know, do that higher? And then what do you think are sort of the ideal, you know, skillsets or traits that they're looking for? Like in the... If a future founder of an equivalent type of, you know, marketplace is thinking of hiring their first Olivia, like, you know, how do they think... How do you think they should be interviewing? What should they be looking for? You know, or what mistakes should they be avoiding?
Olivia Chen: [00:29:15] Yeah, yeah. Well, you're... You're absolutely right that Max was the acting PM for the first nine to 12 months of the company. And so I was more brought in as like a generalist to work on growth-y things. Um, and I wasn't a product hire. And, um, so if you're gonna be a product forward company I think one of your founders has to be a, a product person.
Like, or you're, you're first hire. Right? That just makes sense. And that means that then the question of when you hire the next person, or like for when Max transitioned me over into product, it was when the business was stable enough that he didn't feel like whatever the next product you build is existential. Right? Because when I first transitioned I, I had no idea what I was doing. Right? And so you can't take that kind of risk if you think the next product you're gonna build could make or break your, ah, business. Right?
So there was a point where we had passed that phase. And Max needed to start thinking about not the next product we're gonna build or which engineer is gonna do it and how. But, like, what is the next phase of the company? How are we gonna hire because we were growing. And that's when he made the decision to transition me. But it did take several months for me to ramp. I had no idea what product was. I didn't know what a wire frame was. Um, I had never been with engineers before.
So there was definitely a ramp there and you need to have some cushion to, to afford for a ramp like that.
Delian: [00:30:30] Right, right, right. Makes sense. And it sounds like, ah, this product manager role in particular, I mean you talked about like some of these pods that are very multidisciplinary-
Olivia Chen: [00:30:35] Right.
Delian: [00:30:36] But you talked a little bit about, like, the various other functions. Like I'm sure that you, yeah, you obviously, you know, ah, even in product I'm sure, you still, you know, talk with the marketing team on, you know, what the, sort of, you know, funnels look like, the onboarding process for, you know, retailers and makers. Um, I'm sure you talk with like the finance teams or the budgets for those and things like that. Or like the, you know, maybe, ah, total referral bonuses and things like that key, that you can put in.
Can you talk a little bit about how, sort of, like, you partner with each of these various functions? And, ah, what you find to be sort of the most effective communication strategies with each?
Olivia Chen: [00:31:04] Yeah. Ah, it all comes down to understanding what the other team is goaled on, and making sure that whatever you pitch to them somehow contributes to the goal, or explains my, might harm their goal, even, but is good for the business. And I think the classic mistake I see is PM comes in, or whoever comes in and says I have this great idea. And they pitch it to another team. And they're like, what does this have to do with me? Or, like, do you just want me to do your work for you? Is like a reaction if you don't pitch it in the right way. Right?
And so if I'm... If I say, you know, we need to change our sign up flow. Um, when I go to the marketing team I, I will understand that the thing they're goaled on is, like cost per sign ups. I'm like, wouldn't you like to drive your costs per sign up down? This is how. But I won't, like, talk about my, like grand vision for how a sign up flow will change, I don't know, like a retailer's journey on Faire. Like they are just not as relevant to them. Right?
Whereas, if I talk to a sales person, um, that might actually, like... Or, I'll talk about the actual design because they're going to be the ones walking through the final flow with a retailer. So you just have to change the conversation to your audience. Um, and so that's like one key thing. And, and if you do that, I find that, again, if you're working with logical people, everything just works.
And then there's ever a few... Like if you're not working with logical people [laughing], but I think... Wait, that's just like, that's something else. Yeah.
Delian: [00:32:20] It sounds like you, ah, deal mostly with logical people at Faire.
Olivia Chen: [00:32:22] Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Delian: [00:32:24] Um, I feel like one of the things that I especially, like, early employees will struggle with is, especially at a company like Faire, where like the growth is just so monumentally fast. Right? I mean I think you guys went from, you know, sort of like zero to a billion dollar valuation in like two and half years total. Or something like that.
Olivia Chen: [00:32:38] Yeah.
Delian: [00:32:38] And it seems like you've done a really great job of sort of like scaling up with the company. Right? Whether it's, you know, learning about, you know, a discipline you didn't know about at all. Right? Like you know products, sort of from scratch. Ah, you know, if there were somebody else, that let's say, was an early employee at a company that was scaling super rapidly. Like, what advice would you give for them?
I mean you talked a little bit about like the relationship that you have with Max and being reliable. But, like, how do you think you sort of, you know, guaranteed to your... It's probably you can't quite scale at the rate that the organization is scaling? But at least like close to it so you can, sort of, increasing your skillset, scope, responsibilities, et cetera.
What do you think is sort of the best, you know, sort of strategy for that? Or, ways to sort of ensure that you're able to scale up with the company?
Olivia Chen: [00:33:16] Yeah, the best advice I, I have was something someone else gave me. But it's understanding that there's actually a breakage point in terms of the skills that get you to a certain point at a startup, versus the skills you need to scale. And so, for example, in the beginning what made me successful was I was willing to do absolutely anything to help unblock other people.
I would do hours and hours of manual work. I, like, tagged these things for Daniele. I was like I had no shame in doing those kind of things. Right? And that, that made people happy to work with me. But at some... What was a difficult lesson for me was learning when, um, to actually start delegating those things. Right?
It used to be a point of pride. Like I'll do anything for my team. And then I had to become, you know, I will not do anything that anyone else can do even if, like the quality's slightly worse. And that transition was quite difficult for me of just letting that go.
Um, and the second thing I would say is learning how to be even more structured in communications. So I discussed that working remote helps with that. But at the same time, I'm... Someone who's intrinsically less process oriented. I just, I'm am like, oh, if you do work the work will show. The metrics will show it all works. I don't have to communicate it as clearly.
Um, it took me like an embarrassingly long amount of time to do something simple like a launch announcement. It just doesn't come naturally to me [laughing]. Um, but as you scale, again, communication is going under... We're in a room and you say it out loud. Um, you start have to think about processes to get buy in. And that was... That took me several months to figure out, to like understand that that transition was happening. And if I wasn't the person setting up that process I was going to be left behind.
Delian: [00:34:54] And how do you think about, like, you know, as something is sort of arrives on your plate, hey, this is like high priority, how do you think about when are the times to, like, delegate versus not? Like, do you have any particular, like, structured framework of, like, hey, this is the thing that Olivia need to do herself? Versus this is something that, you know, I'm gonna explicitly pass on to my team even if it does mean that, like, it takes a little longer? Maybe a slight lower quality? But at least that person is, like, learning a new skillset. And they, themselves are sort of becoming, you know, more powerful, which makes my whole team more powerful?
Olivia Chen: [00:35:18] Yeah, at this... At, at like my specific stage of the companies that I'm managing, um, five PM's and it... First, the very simple thing is, does it fit easily in one of their road maps? And if it does it, like, seems likely that one of them should do it.
The second is like whether they're at the level where I know they can handle it. Um, and the third has to do with, like, how... It has to do with like how much buy in already exists. And so especially now, like, my role, ah, if something... If something doesn't have total buy in or it's just like people... Or people aren't clear on whether they should do it. It's just kind of an out there idea. Um, like, I have more capacity to spend in, like, meetings and like rallying people around that alignment.
And so that's how I think about that. But then, again, the execution, ideally, should be going to someone on my team.
Delian: [00:36:02] And then, ah, how has the transition been from, like, you know, it sounds like in the early days it was more, like, you know, managing let's say, like, you know, engineers, product handles, et cetera. Versus now it's like, managing to people that manage the engineers, et cetera. And I'm sure you're teaching them how to think about managing engineering in their own, like, you know, structured communication and things like that.
How have you, I guess, like, created a playbook for, like, you know, ah, bringing on the next PM and maybe the sixth and the seventh, and the eighth one, onboarding them, teaching them all these various skills? Like, do you have a, sort of like onboarding playbook that you run, sort of the new PM's through [laughs]?
Olivia Chen: [00:36:30] [Laughing] Not, yet. And so, is, it's a work in progress, definitely. Um, for the first [laughing] many PM's they didn't get an [laughing] onboarding playbook. We like, threw them into the fire a little bit. And, um, it's something that we're improving more and more on, um, as we scale. And it's something I'll, I'll look to do in the next six months is to create more of that playbook.
Um, but still early days for that kind of process.
Delian: [00:36:54] Well, Olivia, I really appreciate you taking the time to hop onto the podcast today. It was really nice chatting with you and, ah, you know, hearing about Faire from the inside.
Olivia Chen: [00:37:02] Thanks, Delian. It was lovely chatting with you, as well.
Delian: [00:37:10] Thanks for listening everyone. If you'd like to support the podcast, please sign up for a paid sub-stack subscription, which we use to pay for transcripts, mics, and other improvements. If you have any comments or feedback on what kinds of questions I should ask, who should come on the show, or anything else, please do let me know.
Have a great rest of your day.