Making an impact through authenticity and curiosity | Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG)

Boz, the CTO of Meta, said something about you. Working with me, she could have the most profound disagreement in the world, and she would respond, Fascinating. You have to tell me more why you think that. I really enjoy being right. And then it turns out in the working world. That did not serve me so great. I think the hard part is sublimating your ego a little bit and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right. I love this very tactical piece of advice. When you're trying to come up with a metaphor or analogy, think about what you want your users to feel when you're using the product. If we all agree that the feeling of something should be when sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday. Then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent. There's also this metaphor about the hill climb. For me, the hill climb is all about the difference between a local optimum and a global optimum. You're standing on top of the hill, you're looking down, you can see rolling hills, the sheep, the grass, whatever. But then way off in the distance, you can see like a mountain. And the thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like.

Today my guest is Ummy Vora. Ummy is Chief Product Officer at Fair. Which connects independent retailers and brands around the world, and I believe is the most successful and biggest B2B marketplace startup out there. Prior to fair, Ami was employee one hundred fifty at Facebook. Where she launched the first Facebook developer platform and was later head of product for the$55 billion global Facebook ads business. She also oversaw the introduction of ads on the Instagram platform, and most recently she led product and design for the largest messaging app in the world, WhatsApp. In our conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including building your strategy skills, how to disagree with people skillfully, being a successful woman in tech, using metaphors and imagery to rally your team and get your point across, setting up effective goals, plus a bunch of jokes in the lightning round that you don't want to miss.

This was a really special and authentic conversation that I'm very excited to bring to you. With that, I bring you Ami Vora. Ami, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast. Oh thank you, I was so happy to be here. So when I asked you about your goal for our conversation today, you said the most amazing thing, which I love.

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