Ami Vora
Chief Product Officer at Faire
CPO at Faire, the largest B2B marketplace startup; was employee 150 at Facebook where she launched the developer platform, headed the $55B global ads business, oversaw Instagram ads, and led product and design at WhatsApp.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Ami Vora shares her approach to strategic leadership drawing from transformative roles at Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and now Faire. She emphasizes the power of emotional metaphors for team alignment, the art of skilled disagreement that prioritizes outcomes over being right, and navigating between local and global optima in product strategy, all while discussing the unique challenges of being a woman in tech leadership.
Leadership Principles
- → It's more important to get to the right outcome than to be right — sublimate your ego
- → Use metaphors and imagery to rally teams — 'what should users feel?' aligns teams better than specs
- → Distinguish between local optimum hill climbing and going through the valley toward the global optimum mountain
Notable Quotes
"I really enjoy being right and then it turns out in the working world, that did not serve me so great. The hard part is sublimating your ego and saying it's more important to get to the outcome than to be right."
— On learning to disagree skillfully and let go of being right
"If we all agree that the feeling of something should be, I'm sitting in Dolores Park with my friends on a sunny Saturday, then people will just naturally build something that feels more consistent."
— On using emotional metaphors to align product teams
"The hill climb is all about the difference between a local optimum and a global optimum. The thing that gets me through the valley is remembering what the summit feels like."
— On persevering through difficult strategic transitions
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