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Nan Yu

1 episode

Episodes

Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product)

Jan 30, 20251h 21m

Guest: Nan Yu - Head of Product at Linear. Nan Yu leads product at Linear, a rapidly growing and highly acclaimed B2B SaaS company known for its beautifully designed and efficient project management tools. Key Takeaways: Speed vs. Quality: There's no inherent trade-off between speed and quality. High-quality work can be done quickly by competent teams. Aim to have a workable version of a product within the first 10% of the project timeline. Prioritize ICs Over Managers: Focus on features that enhance the experience for individual contributors (ICs) rather than middle managers, especially avoiding customization requests that complicate workflows. Emotional Hooks: Identify and address the emotional pain points users experience with current tools to create products that resonate deeply. Extreme Prototyping: Test extreme versions of product features to explore the full possibility space and refine towards the best solution. PM as Go-to-Market Role: Product managers should actively engage with sales and marketing to ensure messaging aligns with customer language and needs. Topics Covered: Speed vs. quality, feature prioritization, emotional design, extreme prototyping, product management collaboration, effective job hunting strategies.

Notable Quotes

β€œThere's not actually a trade-off between speed and quality.”

Speed vs Quality

β€œMy goal is to feel bad in the same way that customers feel bad.”

Customer Empathy

β€œThe thing we talked about earlier where if by the time that 10% of the time has elapsed, you have a working thing, you can now spend the rest of the time deciding whether or not you want to do another iteration.”

Iterative Process