What can an unconventional career path in tech leadership look like? In the Product to Venture series with Mighty Capital Managing Partner SC Moatti, the path from product leadership to venture capitalism is discussed. In this episode, IVP Partner Tamar Yehoshua speaks on her journey in tech leadership and her current career in venture capitalism. Tamar holds a wealth of product knowledge from her experience in product management to leadership roles at companies like Google, Amazon, and Slack. She talks about her transition to venture capital investing, her views on trends in AI, and where opportunities lie for entrepreneurs.
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Show Notes
- Bringing order out of chaos through active listening and synthesizing information is an important leadership skill.
- It’s important for product leaders to cultivate senior individual contributors, not just managers.
- Givw teams autonomy while providing guardrails.
- Prototyping is essential to understanding products – ideas need to be felt, not just discussed.
- Focusing on solving real customer problems is key to building great products.
- Transitioning roles provides opportunities to learn new skills and domains.
- Network and experience are transferable assets when changing careers.
- Sales skills differ from product skills and require adjustment for operators becoming investors.
- AI is a transformational technology that will take time to realize its potential.
- Short-term AI wins include customer support through natural language interfaces.
- Medium-term opportunities lie in improving model quality and customization capabilities.
- Data quality and personalization will unlock more AI applications.
- Solving problems inaccessible to large companies is a path for startups.
- Flexibility and ownership mentality are hallmarks of great product managers.
- Strategy, people/culture and processes are all important for CPO roles.
- Hands-on apprenticeships are the best way for PMs to learn from top practitioners.
- Customer empathy is crucial for understanding needs and impact.
- Iterative prototyping is necessary to understand products fully.
- Focusing on specific use cases is smarter than aiming for general AGI.
- Mapping evolving landscapes helps investors identify opportunities.
About the speaker
About the host
SC Moatti is the Founding Managing Partner of Mighty Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm, and chairs the Board of Products That Count, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps everyone build great products and inspires 500,000+ product managers. SC earned her reputation as a product visionary and technology investor during the mobile era, when she built products that billions of people use at Meta/Facebook and Nokia, won industry awards and nominations from the Wall Street Journal and the Emmy's, and wrote an award-winning bestseller on what makes a great product. She has been called “a genius at making products people love” and named a Top Voice in venture capital on LinkedIn. SC frequently speaks to product and investing trends, including a recent keynote at TheNextWeb, a fireside chat at Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, featured articles in the Harvard Business Review and TechCrunch, and interviews on NPR (Tech Nation) and CNBC (Closing Bell.) She serves on the boards of public and private companies, lectured on product and investing at the executive programs of Stanford and Columbia Universities, earned a master’s in electrical engineering and a Stanford MBA, and is a Kauffman Fellow and member of YPO.