Story behind Instagram Shopping, scaling product teams, leadership lessons from resurgence of Airbnb | Sanchan Saxena (ex-VP Product Coinbase, Head of Product Airbnb, Instagram shopping)

Sanchan was most recently VP of Product at Coinbase. Before Coinbase, Sanchan was Head of Product and GM at Airbnb, founder and Head of Product of Instagram Shopping, Director of Product Management at Yahoo, and Lead PM at Microsoft.

In this episode we talk about :

1️⃣ Story behind Instagram Shopping - Hypothesis, Pitch and Execution, Decision making frameworks

2️⃣ How Sanchan built the Product Org at Airbnb - scaling from 40 PMs to over 200

3️⃣ Airbnb COVID-19 war story and leadership lessons from the experience.

This episode is absolute :fire. @sanchan's one of the best story tellers I know.

[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:02:18] Sanchan's Product Journey
[00:07:00] Story of Instagram Shopping
[00:11:09] PM Qualities to look for in Zero to One projects
[00:15:20] How do you track execution effectively?
[00:17:12] How do you impart clarity to your teams?
[00:22:04] Difference between Strategy and Innovation
[00:24:28] Managing stakeholders as Head of Product
[00:28:44] Anti-patterns to cross-functional alignment
[00:33:15] RAPID - Decision Making framework used at Coinbase
[00:35:12] How Sanchan scaled Product Org at Airbnb
[00:41:17] What to look for in hiring Product Leaders?
[00:45:32] COVID-19 Airbnb War story
[00:53:05] Rapid Fire Questions

Where to find Naveen

- Linkedin : https://linkedin.com/in/naveenpitchandi

- Website : https://numberlock.me

Where to find Sanchan

- YouTube channel - https://youtube.com/@therealsanchan

- Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/therealsanchan/

- Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/therealsanchan

- TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@therealsanchan

References

- How decisions are made at Coinbase : https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-we-make-decisions-at-coinbase