Box CPO on Impact at Best Scale (Part 2)
For me, there are two foundational pillars of building a culture that helps teams launch products that make an impact at best scale.
Building Impactful Product Solutions
The first pillar is being focused on building a product that is 10x better than what is currently offered in the market. For example, if you try to build something that’s only 20 percent better, that won’t give people a good reason to switch over to something new.
Developing Your “First Team”
The second pillar is a deep understanding of your “first team,” which is a group of people that you can trust. This is especially important when your business grows and new people come in. To make sure that your first team is driving impact at best scale, it is critical to invest in your team. For example, making sure they have resources and equipment to make your team as efficient as possible.
You can think about your first team as a “PEAPOD” that is built with people across six different roles:
Product Management
Engineering
Analytics
Program Managers
Online Growth
Design
In summary, the first team enhances the group’s overall strengths and limitations. In doing so you can build an amazing culture and create products that make an impact at best scale.
About the speaker
Jeetu Patel is Cisco’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration. He leverages a diverse set of capabilities to lead the strategy and development for these businesses and also owns P&L responsibility for this multibillion-dollar portfolio. Jeetu combines a bold vision, steeped in product design and development expertise, operational rigor, and innate market understanding to create high-growth Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses. Prior to joining Cisco, Jeetu was the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Box, a role he pioneered. He also created the Box Platform business unit where he led product strategy, marketing, and developer relations – driving products from the incubation stage to mature offerings.