Gibson Biddle

Former VP of Product at Netflix

Former VP of Product at Netflix and CPO at Chegg, now a full-time product strategy teacher who has directly taught an estimated 500,000 to one million product managers through workshops, courses, talks, and his widely read Medium posts on product strategy.

The Scientist The Visionary

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 95%

Execution & Craft 55%

Data & Experimentation 75%

Growth & Distribution 45%

Team & Leadership 40%

User Empathy & Research 70%

Key Themes

product strategy frameworks delight customers in hard to copy margin enhancing ways A/B testing for delight versus margin tradeoffs Netflix product development case studies prioritization through strategy models word of mouth as value multiplier

Episode Summary

Gibson Biddle, former VP of Product at Netflix, walks through his widely adopted product strategy framework of delighting customers in hard to copy, margin enhancing ways. Using detailed Netflix case studies including the Perfect New Release A/B test, he demonstrates how to evaluate tradeoffs between customer delight and business margin, why hard-to-copy advantages like personalization and brand are essential, and how to think about product prioritization through the lens of strategy rather than feature lists.

Leadership Principles

→ Product strategy is to delight customers in hard to copy, margin enhancing ways — all three elements must work together
→ The hardest part of strategy is balancing delight versus margin — A/B testing reveals whether what customers say they want actually changes retention
→ Easy-to-copy improvements are necessary but insufficient — hard-to-copy advantages like personalization, brand, network effects, and original content are what create lasting moats

Notable Quotes

"Reed Hastings did a reference check to a friend of mine, and the only question he asked was, 'Hey, John, is Gib ready? Can Gib delight customers?' That was the only question he asked."
— On how Reed Hastings defined the core job of product at Netflix

"That's great HB, but I'll bet my paycheck that within a week, Blockbuster's going to put a happy family on their couch, too. And this is the problem of doing things that are easy to copy."
— On why hard-to-copy advantage matters more than quick wins

"We set up the Perfect New Release Test. 10,000 people get their new release DVD the next day. The control gets it whenever. We saw a very small change in retention — it went from 4.5% to 4.45%."
— On using A/B tests to evaluate the delight vs. margin tradeoff at Netflix

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