Sarah Tavel

Guest: Sarah Tavel - Partner at Benchmark. Sarah is a seasoned venture capitalist with a strong background in product management, having been the first product manager at Pinterest. She is known for her strategic insights into consumer and marketplace startups. Key Takeaways: Hierarchy of Engagement: Focus on identifying and optimizing the core action that defines an active user in your product. This is crucial for understanding user engagement and retention. Retention Strategy: Ensure your product gets better the more it is used, creating a mounting loss for users if they leave. This is key to building a retentive product. Self-Perpetuating Growth: Develop mechanisms within your product that allow it to grow organically, such as network effects and viral loops, to reduce reliance on paid acquisition. Hierarchy of Marketplaces: Start with a focused, constrained market to achieve product-market fit before expanding. This approach increases the likelihood of tipping and dominating a market. Market Dynamics: Look for markets with currents—dynamics of change that can pull your company forward, rather than just large market sizes. Topics Covered: Hierarchy of Engagement, Core User Action, Retention Strategies, Self-Perpetuating Growth, Hierarchy of Marketplaces, Market Dynamics, Product-Market Fit, Tipping Markets, Dominating Markets, Consumer and Marketplace Startups.