Sriram Krishnan & Aarthi Ramamurthy
Partner at a16z / Product Leaders at a16z / Former PMs at Netflix, Meta, Snap, Twitter, Microsoft
Sriram Krishnan is a partner at a16z and Aarthi Ramamurthy is a product leader, both former PMs who between them worked at Netflix, Meta, Snap, Twitter, Microsoft, and Clubhouse. They host The Good Time Show.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Sriram and Aarthi share contrarian product wisdom from working across every major tech company, including Sriram's provocative take that Jobs-to-be-Done is a terrible framework because successful products like Facebook often make one user's experience worse to benefit another (like People You May Know). They discuss Clubhouse's explosive growth from their Elon Musk interview and insights from Netflix, Meta, Snap, and Twitter.
Leadership Principles
- → JTBD is a terrible framework — no successful company was ever built purely on it
- → Facebook made your experience slightly worse to make new users' experience better (People You May Know)
- → Sometimes the right product decision is performing no job for the current user to help a different user
Notable Quotes
"I hate Jobs-to-be-Done. No successful company has ever been built on top of JTBD. Facebook needed to get you to 10 friends in 14 days — they made your experience slightly worse to make new users' experience better."
— On why the JTBD framework falls apart when you consider growth mechanics
"People You May Know was performing no job for you — it was trying to perform a job for the new user who needed friends."
— On Facebook's counterintuitive product decision that prioritized new user activation
Want to know how you compare?
Take the Assessment