Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution | Tim Holley (VP of Product)

[00:00] when the CDC mandated face masks in... [00:03] early [00:04] April 2020. [00:05] That's when essentially we went to sleep. [00:07] One day. [00:08] with our typical April traffic [00:11] Typical April sales. And then it was Black Friday overnight. [00:15] and in part because nobody knew where to find face masks. Our sellers are incredibly astute business people. [00:21] And, you know, if you had been making wedding dresses and you know how to sew and you've got material and you've got a bit of time. [00:28] Making a mask is quite a simple task. [00:31] And so we just saw this huge surge of demand. [00:35] and then supply rising to meet it. [00:37] And we did something that [00:39] far as I know, we've never done an Etsy's past, which is we put out a call to our sellers to say, [00:44] Now's the time. Now's the time to make [00:46] face masks if you can. And so it felt like this is our time to shine, to really help [00:51] Sellers continue to make sales to help buyers find this critical item that they were looking for. [00:57] And then from there, things kept going and we really worked hard to make sure that the story was not just about face masks for our buyers, that they understood that Etsy is a place for so many different categories and so many different items. [01:12] Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. [01:20] Today my guest is Tim Hawley. Tim is VP of product at Etsy where he's been for over 10 years and has helped grow Etsy from around 500 million in GMB [01:28] to over 13 billion in GMV.

[01:31] This episode is for anyone working on Marketplace, or looking for ideas to increase growth, or looking for advice on how to change your internal culture. We get into the big cultural transition that Etsy went through that took them to the next level. Lots of examples of product changes that help them with conversion, acquisition, and retention. Plus how Etsy organizes their teams, thinks about supply versus demand dynamics. How Etsy got started with growing their initial supply and also their initial demand. [02:01] Enjoy this episode with Tim Hawley after a short word from our sponsors. [02:06] This episode is brought to you by ProductRoadmap.ai and Ignition. ProductRoadmap.ai is the first AI roadmapping suite. It helps ensure roadmaps drive revenue by instantly aligning product with your sales and marketing teams to capture upsell opportunities. Built by early leaders from Rippling and Kraft, it automatically identifies feature gaps from your CRM data and your customer conversations, [02:36] loop with sales reps via targeted notifications when feature gaps are closed. As part of Ignition's broader go-to-market operating system, ProductRoadmap.ai can also help create better handoffs and collaboration with product marketing teams by giving both teams the tools to research, plan, orchestrate, and measure the process of building products and going to market. Packed with integrations, AI automation, and communication tools, it's truly a one-stop shop

[03:06] Go to productroadmap.ai and use promo code LENNY to get 75% off your first year. This episode is brought to you by EPPO. EPPO is a next-generation A-B testing platform built by Airbnb alums for modern growth teams. Companies like DraftKings, Zapier, ClickUp, Twitch, and Cameo rely on EPPO to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running experiments is increasingly essential. But there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern growth team stack. [03:36] tools or trying to run your own experiments through a clunky marketing tool. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most about working there was our experimentation platform, where I was able to slice and dice data by device types, country, user stage. Epo does all that and more, delivering results quickly, avoiding annoying prolonged analytic cycles, and helping you easily get to the root cause of any issue you discover. Epo lets you go beyond basic click-through metrics [04:06] and payments. EPPO supports tests on the front-end, on the back-end, email marketing, even machine learning clients. Check out EPPO at geteppo.com. That's geteppo.com and 10x your experiment velocity. [04:23] Tim, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. [04:27] Thank you for having me on, Lenny. Really appreciate it. Looking forward to it. [04:30] I'm looking forward to even more. [04:32] So you've been at Etsy for, I think, over 10 years, although I did notice that you left for a year and ended up leading product at SoulCycle. So first of all, just what is that about? What happened there?

[04:43] Yeah, at the time I'd been at Etsy for... [04:45] over six years and I just had the itch. I wanted to go [04:48] go work on a different product, build different things, experience different industry, [04:54] I've long had a theory that [04:56] working on kind of the proactive side of healthcare, meaning fitness and wellness is how you achieve better outcomes. [05:02] And it felt like SoulCycle was a really interesting way to do that. [05:05] pretty well-known brand, high street presence in many cities. Could you affect change through that? Ultimately realized it wasn't a place that I wanted to spend a ton of time and energy [05:15] And so, you know, through a lot of [05:17] soul searching grown I know I found my way back to Etsy really kind of anchoring on [05:24] on three things. [05:27] One... [05:27] Working on a product that you care about that adds value to other people's lives [05:31] And so what we do every day at Etsy is we help our sellers make sales. [05:35] and that's really meaningful for the vast majority of them. It's reaching an audience that they wouldn't be able to reach [05:42] And so that feels like a really great thing to get up every morning and work on. [05:46] And so that's maybe the kind of the business and the product side. And the other side is people. [05:50] It might sound a little twee, [05:51] But just working with people you can learn from and who you respect and ultimately can have fun working with. [05:57] It matters a ton. You know, we spend a lot of time of our days and our lives at work. [06:01] And so doing it with people who you really value [06:03] It's awesome. I have one memory... [06:07] We used to have an engineer who used to be a stand-up comedian. [06:11] And so that really like pushed the boundaries of what a standup meant.

[06:15] every day and it was always a little fun, a little exciting. You never quite knew what you were going to get. And so just little things like that, they make the work life really, really great. [06:25] That's hilarious. I never thought it that way. I feel like every stand-up needs a stand-up comedian in their stand-up. [06:30] That should be part of Agile. We need to change the manifesto. [06:34] So I've always seen the Etsy journey from the outside. And so there's a few things that I've always wanted to dig into. [06:42] One is... [06:43] I just remember this New York Times story back in the day when your current CEO Josh Silverman joined. [06:48] And it felt like a huge moment in the history of Etsy where it feels like it just kind of transitioned from this... [06:55] touchy-feely, everyone loves each other moments. You're just like, hey, guys, we got to build a real business here that's sustainable. [07:01] And it feels like many startups have to go [07:03] through that transition where it's like, oh, nothing's ever going to change. It's going to be so we're all family here to just like, oh, things have to change. This isn't working. [07:12] I'm curious just what that was like. [07:14] living through that. Yeah. [07:16] I mean, the first thing I'll say is it was a hard transition. [07:19] and I was personally fortunate in the sense that [07:23] And the transition you're speaking of in 2017 also happened to coincide with [07:29] with rounds of layoffs and I was super fortunate that I didn't lose my job so I don't want to [07:33] presuppose that my version of hard is the same as another person's version of hard. [07:38] But I think a lot of us, and myself included, we had a lot of our identity tied up in Etsy and what we're doing, a really deep passion for business.

[07:47] for the mission of the business. [07:49] and what we're trying to achieve. I just mentioned helping small independent sellers. [07:54] And just to be clear, that hasn't gone away. I think that that's something we've been really successful at. [07:59] pulling through as a line that was true 10 years ago and is still true today. [08:04] But it was a time when we were really forced to rethink a lot of how we worked and what we worked on. Just to use a small example, we had... [08:14] had a pretty entrenched consensus-based culture where we would, [08:19] really debate [08:20] a lot of decisions and a lot of features [08:23] On the one hand, I think that that does lead to good [08:27] outcomes right thoughtful products that have a lot of viewpoints really [08:31] baked into the core of the thinking. On the other hand, [08:34] not fast. [08:35] When you have your identity tied up in the company and what you do, and then you're kind of being asked or you realize that you need to change how you're working, it can feel pretty existential, right? That it's really cutting to the core of who you are and things that you hold really true. [08:53] The reality is it's a business and we needed to get faster at [08:57] launching features, improving experience, and ultimately having a predictable way to drive GMS, gross merchandise sales, which is kind of our North Star KPI. [09:06] And so it definitely took some time to work through that, but we got to a good place and [09:11] The results over the last few years kind of to some degree speak for themselves, but it was a testing and trying time for sure.

[09:19] I'm always curious how these changes play out and what works in making change. [09:24] Is there something that you remember that Josh did well or that leaders did well to help that transition? [09:29] One thing that is just such a standout is having, and I mentioned GMS as our Northstar KPI, just having that, being... [09:37] absolutely front and center being the drumbeat that we talk about in every meeting, the measuring stick that we measure the success of launches against. [09:46] And, you know, maybe it's a bit surprising, but we didn't have that type of clarity in the past. And so rallying everyone around that. [09:53] And you might not pay into it directly. You might pay into it through one or two levels of abstraction, but you're still clearly aligned with what the company is trying to achieve. [10:02] And that was something that was a really stark difference. And I think that helped. [10:07] really, uh, [10:09] It helped the prioritization discussion a lot. You know, if you can't really articulate why this thing matters to driving GMS in [10:16] the type of time frame that we're talking about, be it, you know, a quarter or 12 months out. [10:21] and different projects will contribute in different ways. But that was just one huge standout. And that's been a drumbeat over the years that let's continue to stay focused [10:30] on that as a metric. [10:32] The other thing to me is... [10:35] bringing an outside-in perspective, you know, really benchmarking against your competitors and your competitive set. [10:41] Don't get me wrong, I think Etsy is a unique marketplace, right? Our sellers are independent sellers, they sell unique items. [10:48] The reality, though, is that

[10:50] our buyers are shopping all over the internet. They're shopping on high street, they're shopping in different places. And so [10:57] We have to be aware of the broader context of where they're spending their dollars. [11:02] helps us make better decisions over time. And so on the one hand, there is no [11:06] one-to-one direct competitor to Etsy, but there are [11:10] other businesses and other brands that are competing for eyeballs or wallets that we need to be aware of. And bringing that into the discussion was a really helpful one that helped ground us in [11:21] kind of the overall dynamics of what buyers are doing, where they're spending their money, and how they think about us. [11:28] Is there anything else you took away as a leader from watching that shift? [11:31] that you bring to making change, transitioning people to working in a different way? Definitely focus on a clear KPI that the teams can rally around. That's one. [11:42] The other is... [11:43] And I... [11:44] Mm. [11:44] respect Josh immensely on his ability to tell a really clear narrative. [11:49] and use that consistently over time. You know, the old adage of, [11:53] you need to say something three times before people understand it. I would wager you need to say it another three times before they internalize it. And having that be part of the day-to-day conversation, it seems like such a small thing. [12:04] But it adds up to having clarity on goal, the KPI point, and then clarity on why, the narrative point. If you can marry those two things, I think that's an incredibly powerful combination. [12:15] While we're on this topic, I'm curious what Etsy's values are. I imagine you've codified a few, we call them core values at Airbnb. Is there something like that at Etsy? And if so, I'm curious what they are.

[12:25] We call them guiding principles at Etsy. [12:28] We have a few of them, and I won't go through all of them, but just to give you a flavor, [12:32] One of them is around digging deeper. [12:35] And that really speaks to aiming to really understand [12:39] the why behind a change to really push on the insights that we're [12:43] that we're learning through qual or quant research or other inputs that we might be looking at in order to make the best decision possible with with the information we have at the time. Another example of a principle is minimizing waste. [12:56] it aligns with how we think about product development, which is we want to know [13:00] Is the work we're doing adding value to the customer and the business? And so, you know, something that isn't working out, [13:06] A lot of times in product development, you know, we're wrong. And so being able to say, no, this is no longer valuable. We need to move on to the next thing has been has been something that served us really well. Ultimately, we are quite a small team, right? There's. [13:19] just over 2,000 people in the business. And if you then scale back to engineering and product, we're not big. [13:25] And so we have to be really diligent about how we're investing our time and our resources. [13:29] in order to be successful. [13:31] Awesome. OK, so another big moment as an outsider that it feels like Etsy went through is is during COVID. [13:37] There's this huge transition to e-commerce and I think Etsy was a big beneficiary of that. People wanting to buy more stuff online, go to stores less. [13:44] and it feels like it was a huge accelerant for the business. I'm curious just what that experience was like, leading the product team through that. It was quite wild, I'll say that. [13:54] And to be more specific,

[13:56] We... [13:57] as many or all of us did in probably the world of tech. At least we went home not knowing what the next week's [14:06] or weeks as we thought would bring. [14:08] Turns out years. [14:09] But when the CDC mandated face masks in, I think it was early... [14:14] April 2020. [14:16] That's when essentially we went to sleep one day with our typical April traffic, typical April sales. And then it was Black Friday overnight. [14:26] And in part because nobody knew where to find face masks. Our sellers are incredibly astute business people. [14:32] And, you know, if you had been making wedding dresses and you know how to sew and you've got material and you've got a bit of time. [14:39] Making a mask is quite a simple task. [14:41] And so we just saw this huge surge of demand. [14:45] and then supply rising to meet it. [14:47] And we did something that, as far as I know, we'd never done in Etsy's past, which is we put out a call to our sellers to say, [14:54] now's the time. Now's the time to make face masks if you can. And so it felt like this is our time to shine, to really help. [15:02] Sellers continue to make sales to help buyers find this critical item that they were looking for. [15:08] So it was a very, very exciting couple of weeks while we were kind of adapting to that change. [15:13] And we were... [15:14] We were just really, you know, every day there would be stand-ups. What's happening? What do we need to change? [15:20] I remember distinctly [15:22] we were worried about certain sellers not being able to meet the demand.

[15:26] that they were seeing. [15:28] And so, you know, we did the old fashioned thing of I am not personally, but we called them. [15:33] And we said, you know, [15:35] how are you guys doing? What can we do to help? And some people said, [15:38] "We've got this. Don't worry. This is squarely in our wheelhouse. We can absolutely meet the supply." And others said, "You know, actually, we need a little bit of help. We need to take a pause for a moment while we catch up with all these orders, and then we can kind of come back to taking more." [15:52] And so just getting back to good old fashioned, you know, know your customer. What do they need from you at that moment? [15:57] was just a really kind of powerful, powerful thing that I took away from that time. [16:02] And then from there, things kept going. And we really worked hard to make sure that the story was not just about face masks for our buyers, that they understood that [16:10] Etsy is a place for so many different categories and so many different items. And that was then kind of the next phase of the challenge. We got a huge influx of new or reactivated buyers. How do we keep them around? [16:23] How do we make sure that the product does a little bit more work to retain them? [16:27] and can really, you know, have hooks that bring them back time and again. And so that was kind of the journey that we then went on, you know, mid 2020 to probably the subsequent 18 months or so. [16:38] Is there anything you learned as a leader working in leading teams through that time? It must have been a pretty surreal experience, a lot of stress, people worrying about their own health. [16:46] I was one of the fortunate ones back then, no kids. I worked in an industry that was clearly critical at the time. So I... [16:55] And, [16:56] in awe of how parents worked through that time. So stressful, yes, but not to the extent that other people experience the stress of COVID.

[17:04] Um... [17:05] We just tried a lot of stuff. I remember early on, I think we had [17:09] maybe even daily, but at least three times a week coffee chats with the team. Just like, how are you guys doing? What's going on? [17:15] And at a certain point, we realized all we're talking about is exactly the same things. Nobody wants to be on more calls and more video. [17:22] video chats. And so we just kind of continued to evolve. And [17:25] really try to keep a pulse on what the team needs in that, like I said, given, you know, [17:31] context of being parents or whatever differed pretty dramatically person to person. So it definitely wasn't a one size fits all solution. That's more on the people side. [17:40] I think on the [17:42] On the product side, we... [17:44] as I mentioned, we were really starting to get focused on driving retention, or maybe said slightly differently, driving frequency. [17:51] and that that was a newer topic for us we've we've long at etsy been a really [17:57] and maybe rose-tinted glass is speaking a little bit, but a really great experiment, A-B testing-driven experiment. [18:04] culture. And so when you think about things like retention, you can absolutely test course, not saying can't. [18:09] But you're looking at a different time horizon instead of someone making a purchase in that visit or in a week. [18:15] You're looking at, do they come back in 30 days, in 60 days, in 90 days? And so that forced us out of our comfort zone to some degree in terms of [18:22] how we understand, how we measure change, how long we're willing to wait to see it show up. [18:27] back to the incrementality point on minimizing waste. Is this actually adding value to the business? And so those were those were.

[18:34] great challenges to tackle of course on a pretty heightened uh degree of of intensity and and kind of focus from the business but [18:43] Yeah, that was... [18:45] It was an exciting time. Okay, so speaking of that, I want to chat about the marketplace and the marketplace you've built and things you've learned from building. I think it's one of the, I don't know, maybe top 10 marketplace businesses in the world. [18:56] Somewhere in there. [18:57] And first of all, I'm curious just broadly, [19:00] What have you learned is really important to just building a really successful, thriving marketplace? And then I'll dig in into more details. But just broadly, is there anything that comes to mind? This narrative is still there, but I think we really focused heavily on the seller side. So the supply side of the business early on. [19:17] And we really immersed ourselves in [19:21] who sellers are [19:23] what they need and how what they need maybe differs from what [19:26] the solutions that they can find elsewhere, [19:29] Back in the day, we were doing [19:31] studio visits with sellers, we're going to their workshops, we're going to their homes, we're seeing how they make items, we're seeing how they package and ship them out. [19:39] We were bringing them into the office when we were running Hack Weeks to say like, "Hey, we've got this crazy idea. [19:45] Is this interesting to try to involve them in the product development process to the extent that it was reasonable or feasible? [19:52] And so I think that served us really well. We have a very deep and rich understanding of our sellers. [19:59] And then the next phase was really, and the more recent phase has been, [20:04] How do we create a world-class buyer experience that ultimately...

[20:08] drive sales for our sellers, [20:10] Because when you have over 100 million items, all of which are unique, [20:15] you've got a different challenge than when you have 10,000 SKUs that you could find anywhere or on many retailers. [20:22] And so, you know, topics like structured data, topics like how do we help you gain confidence, buyer, this thing will meet your needs from a seller who you may never have heard of. [20:32] They don't have a brand that you've ever encountered before. And so we have some kind of somewhat unique challenges on that front where we need to lean into themes that other marketplaces absolutely touch on. For example, customer reviews play a big role in our experience, but they play a heightened role given the things I mentioned. Unique inventory from a seller that is maybe an independent person who is a single entrepreneur. [21:02] persp... [21:04] So you mentioned that initially the focus is on sellers, which is really interesting because a lot of marketplaces, first of all, need to figure out which side do we focus on? Who do we focus on? [21:11] cater to most. [21:12] And the way you described it is initially it was how do we make sure the sellers that are joining Etsy are... [21:17] most well-served. [21:19] And then later on, it became more of a focus on the buyer side. Yeah, I guess that I'm painting it as a linear approach. It certainly was not, you know, because if you've got supply without demand, then you don't really have a marketplace. If you've got demand and no supply to meet it, then you also don't have a marketplace. So there's this flip flop between, you know, do you have enough to enough supply to satiate the demand you have and kind of.

[21:41] playing that out is certainly, I feel like art, not necessarily strictly science. [21:47] Yeah, so I'm curious how you all think about that, actually. So at Airbnb, there's always this... [21:52] thinking of who do we prioritize if we have to make a decision? [21:55] Is it host or guest and it's shifted over the years at Airbnb? [21:59] How do you all think about that? Is there kind of a here's who we're going to prioritize if we really have to make a decision? [22:05] Yeah, and maybe to your point, that's also evolved at Etsy and... [22:10] the [22:11] The place we're in at the moment is... [22:13] The job of a marketplace, even [22:16] pre the technology definition of a marketplace is [22:21] A seller will go there to make sales. [22:23] And if they're not making sales, they probably won't go to that marketplace. [22:27] And so we really see it as paramount that we have [22:30] a qualified set of buyers who are looking for the items, the type of items our sellers are selling, and that we can help [22:37] then make a purchase decision and therefore a seller-maker sale. [22:40] That doesn't mean that every single team is working on... [22:43] building features for buyers because it doesn't work. [22:46] not least because you have a limited piece of real estate, [22:50] marketplace and if you have [22:52] too many teams working on it at one time, you'll end up getting in each other's way and you won't be that productive. [22:57] And so we, of course, we have a team that's laser focused on improving the seller experience. How do they [23:03] you know, list their inventory, how do they manage their sales, how do they fulfill their items as one example. But really back to the GMS is the North Star. GMS represents a buyer buying from a seller. So it doesn't necessarily say build only for one of your audiences or one of your customers.

[23:18] but it says that that's really the job to be done here, is helping facilitate that transaction. [23:24] That's exactly the same transition Airbnb went through. [23:27] Initially it was... [23:28] focus on hosts, make sure hosts are the happiest people, and do everything we need to make them happy, and then eventually realize, [23:35] Like the business is the customers buying the product. [23:38] and [23:38] You have to make sure that they're the happy people. And sometimes you have to push us to do things they're not as excited to do for the good of the guest side. [23:47] I think it's also the fact that we as the marketplace, and I'm curious if this was true at Airbnb as well, [23:52] we have the insight into information, into data that an individual seller won't. [23:57] And so we can help. [23:59] them make hopefully better decisions that lead to sales. [24:02] leveraging the insights that we have [24:05] you know, [24:05] If you... [24:07] put an item on sale during this time period, chances are it's going to resonate with buyers and you might make an incremental or you might get an incremental sale. [24:15] And so trying to, [24:16] Be really data-driven in how we help and guide sellers to take actions that we really believe will be valuable for them and their business. [24:24] Because they're either a small business owner and so they don't have time to do that level of digging or it's simply not accessible to them because they have the worldview of their business and we're looking at the entirety of the marketplace. Maybe on this thread going a little nerdier, how do you think about supply constraint versus demand constraint? Is that something? [24:43] that comes up. I imagine maybe it's per category. [24:45] At the high level, we have 100 million items, so if you take that number,

[24:50] At face value, you would think we do not have a supply constraint. We have largely, you know, we want to drive buyers to that supply. [24:57] When you dig in at maybe a more... [24:59] category, subcategory, sub subcategory level. That's where we do start to see pockets where maybe we want to increase [25:06] the type and the amount of inventory we have in [25:09] wall decor, seeing something behind you, that might not be the right example. But that's where we then start to focus and say, are there areas where we want to lean in? [25:21] Ultimately, [25:22] really thinking about how do we help buyers choose? [25:25] because that's when you have 100 million items, and even in a sub-subcategory or for a specific search query, [25:32] you still generally have a lot of results to choose from. How do you distinguish one item or one seller from another based on, [25:40] the needs that you have, when is it going to arrive, how much does it cost, [25:44] You know, is it this size or that size? So really trying to lean into those types of things. And again, to some degree, that's Ecom 101. But given the scale we're at, it is a pretty unique challenge. [25:55] What are ways you encourage your sellers to offer the things that you think you're lacking? [26:01] Back to that data-driven point, right? If we can clearly articulate that, [26:04] If you show more photos... [26:08] You will help buyers understand your item in new ways, in deeper ways, and you're more likely to make a sale. [26:14] That's maybe a somewhat reductive example, but those are the types of things where we generally know either through the data that we observe based on activity on the marketplace and or through the research we're doing.

[26:27] that this will be valuable. [26:30] The challenge is often we have so many things that we want our sellers to do. What's the most important thing for them to do right now? [26:36] And that maybe changes somewhat seasonally, right? We're slowly starting to get towards the holiday season. [26:42] And that just has a heightened purchase. It's a heightened time of purchasing and contrast that with, you know, [26:47] when it's around Mother's Day, maybe different type of inventory works really well. And so we need different inputs from our sellers. [26:55] Because ultimately they're [26:56] They're business people. They have limited time in the day and they want to spend time making. [27:00] So how can we make sure that the time they spend on Etsy managing their inventory, offering customer support is as valuable as possible? [27:09] So essentially in product messaging and recommendations and [27:13] that you're showing to the sellers is the way you communicate to them. [27:16] Yeah, and to some degree, we... [27:18] we use the buyer experience to kind of signal what matters, right? [27:23] when we're clearly highlighting photos, then that's obviously a very overly simple example. Sellers just notice. Here's what the search experience is highlighting. [27:32] As an example, yeah. And then really thinking about some of the... [27:37] the kind of signals or the snippets of information that we highlight, what goes into that. We know that great customer service, a seller will be providing, they'll be responding to, we call them combos, but messages on our platform, they'll be responding really quickly. And that's something that we then highlight in the experience. And that if you're meeting that criteria, then we can start to signal to a buyer that yes, this person offers really excellent customer service and you should

[28:03] We can set your expectations accordingly. [28:05] Awesome. Yeah, we saw the same thing at Airbnb. One of the things that I worked on, [28:09] That was one of the bigger shifts in the marketplace was shifting Airbnb to an instant. [28:13] buying experience, [28:14] And, [28:15] Many hosts didn't want that because they really wanted to. [28:18] vet the guests and make sure they are happy with them. But it ended up being so important to conversion that we just [28:24] Encourage them to turn it on and one of the ways [28:26] that worked best is exactly what you shared where in the search experience, [28:30] When someone came and searched, we just defaulted the search results to only show you instantly bookable listings. [28:36] and Ho started to realize, "Oh shit, this is where things are going. I think I gotta really take this seriously." [28:40] Yeah. And that worked really well. [28:42] Yeah, interesting. [28:43] Pulling that thread a little bit more, I'm curious what you've seen as some of the bigger conversion wins on the buyer side in terms of experiments you've run that have had some of the bigger... [28:51] impact. [28:52] I won't say we're consistently because that suggests that we don't know what we're doing. We do [28:57] We're often surprised by what works in an outsized way and what we think is going to be a knock it out of the park success ends up being. [29:05] of minimal value, [29:07] But coming back to maybe some of the themes I alluded to earlier, [29:11] Reviews have long been really important. [29:13] And when you're reviewing an item, like I said, that's unique, that's from an independent seller, [29:18] The type of information that another buyer is looking for is maybe a little different than other marketplaces or even platforms that they might be shopping on. [29:27] And so really trying to lean into, well, what does it look like in a buyer's hand, in a buyer's home? Maybe that gives the next purchaser a bit more confidence that it's the right size, it's the right color, whatever it might be.

[29:40] And so that's long been a track that has been very fruitful for us and continues to be something that we iterate on, that we focus on. Just to understand that, essentially it's... [29:49] recommending to sellers, here's the photos you should have on your list. Rather, no, collecting from buyers. So a seller will give us the photos that they're... [29:58] that they're going to take. And then we can augment those with, we call them buyer review photos, but ultimately the experience the purchaser is having, either through photo or video, is super, super valuable. [30:12] Great. Okay, cool. So adding specific photos that you find help. [30:16] Buyers convert. Keep going. [30:18] And then the other side is really leaning into maybe more [30:22] quote-unquote behavioral economic tactics of [30:26] just helping buyers make decisions. Signals and nudges is how you'll see it referred to in literature. And we've seen great success in elevating little snippets of information that [30:35] really help a buyer understand [30:38] Oh, there is actually only one of these. [30:40] Well, that's good information to know. [30:43] It's something that then fits into their decision-making process that might have otherwise been buried. [30:48] And so really, leaning into the quick summaries, the easy glanceable information that enables a buyer to gain enough confidence to say, yeah, this is out of these hundred million items or. [31:01] the results for this search query, this is the one that I feel best about buying. [31:06] We've seen lots of success on that track as well. [31:09] There was a trek at Airbnb as well. One of the ways they did this is they called it a rare gem, which is something that's available right now that's very popular.

[31:17] And they created this kind of iconography for it. And, uh, [31:20] Engineers on the team ended up for Halloween dressing up as a rare gem. It became like a whole thing at the company. [31:25] And what's funny about it maybe is every home is a one of a kind, like there's only one left always. [31:29] And there's always jokes about we should always be like one left. You better book now. [31:34] We had a great... [31:35] I believe it was introduced... [31:38] I don't believe. I know it was introduced as a [31:42] Is sure a bug. [31:43] But we ended up showing four stars and the fifth star, [31:48] when it was a half star got rendered as a horse emoji. [31:52] and so for a second there on Etsy we had four stars and a horse showing up for some of our review ratings and that spawned [32:02] a huge amount of internal fun. And then back to your point around Halloween, we had a few teams being four stars and a horse. It was amazing. [32:14] Pretty interesting. Was it like five people where four people were a star and there's a horse person? Yeah, exactly. [32:21] Today's episode is brought to you by OneSchema, the embeddable CSV importer for SaaS. Customers always seem to want to give you their data in the messiest possible CSV file. And building a spreadsheet importer becomes a never-ending sink for your engineering and support resources. You keep adding features to your spreadsheet importer, but customers keep running into issues. Six months later, you're fixing yet another date conversion edge case bug. [32:44] aren't built for handling messy data, but One Schema is. Companies like Scale AI and PAVE are using One Schema to make it fast and easy to launch delightful spreadsheet import experiences, from embeddable CSV import to importing CSVs from an SFTP folder on a recurring basis. Spreadsheet import is such an awful experience in so many products. Customers get frustrated by useless messages like error on line 53 and never end up getting started

[33:14] customers don't have to spend hours in Excel just to get started with your product. For listeners of this podcast, One Schema is offering a $1,000 discount. Learn more at oneschema.co.au. [33:25] slash Letty. So going down this track a little bit more, one of the biggest wins for Airbnb's search experience was this very small idea of just what if you open each listing? [33:36] in the search results in a new tab. [33:38] and ended up converting like 1% [33:40] Like increasing conversion by 1%. Is there anything like that that you remember that you've done or just like, holy moly, that was so simple, but such a big win? [33:47] Yeah, we have similar learnings around that exact example. Oftentimes, I think about kind of effort and reward. [33:55] So, [33:56] It might be a small-ish GMS win or conversion rate win. [34:00] But it was a one line text change. [34:02] We've seen those where we add a small snippet of maybe we feel like it's almost marketing copy, [34:10] and it ends up having an outsized impact. We had one example where we added some text to the cart experience, and we just saw [34:19] huge uplift that we really, really didn't expect. [34:23] It was more us communicating our values as a business and it was something that really seemed to resonate with our buyers. [34:29] And so that drove conversion. We've got examples where it's a one-line copy change and it's [34:34] quite shocking the impact that that can have. I'm curious with that, [34:38] change actually was the text change that had that much impact, if you can recall. We've longed and continued to invest in sustainability, and the text change was in our cart where we call out, "Etsy offsets carbon emissions from every delivery."

[34:52] And just adding that simple line of text was something that, like I said, really resonated with our buyers and the type of customer that comes to Etsy and really drove conversion. [35:02] at Ronnie Cohabi on the podcast who's [35:05] I want to lead experts on experimentation. [35:07] And he had the stat that 80% of experiments fail at each company on average. [35:13] Does that sound about right in terms of how you guys find experiments working out? Yeah. [35:18] Awesome, okay. [35:19] What is your just general philosophy and experimentation? Does everything run as an experiment? [35:24] Do things sometimes not run an experiment? How do you think about that at Etsy? [35:28] Right now, the vast majority of our changes do. [35:31] And to be perfectly candid, I think that's one of our growth edges as a product org and maybe even as a company is. [35:39] It's bringing in different ways to validate changes. [35:43] Because to some degree, or maybe the way I think about experimentation, that's the highest bar that proves with. [35:50] near absolute certainty that there's a causal relationship between the change you made and the KPI that you want to move. [35:57] But I think that that is, it maybe misses the point in some ways [36:02] some changes or some areas where you're working towards a bigger, net new thing, or this specific change won't really be indicative of the greater whole you're building towards. [36:13] So we've... [36:15] Like I said, I mentioned earlier, we've long been a very A-B testing driven organization, not least because Etsy's [36:22] kind of background in history has deep, deep roots in an incredible engineering culture.

[36:26] And so that's kind of really tried and true. [36:29] So the vast majority of things are tested in that way. [36:32] We're expanding how we think about looking at cohorts over time. I mentioned retention earlier. That, to some degree, necessitates a different type of test. [36:41] When we look at our SEO work, [36:42] You can't think about it in exactly the same ways, but the through line is, [36:47] Is the change that we're making adding value? And that's what we want to try to understand. [36:52] A/B testing is a great way to do that. There are others, some of which we're starting to employ, others that we'll continue to investigate and think about how we can leverage. [37:02] Is there an example of anything, and if there's not, that's totally cool, of something that you shipped that was maybe negative on an experiment results, or you just didn't want to run as an experiment? [37:12] When we're collecting inputs from sellers, we just simply don't feel it's appropriate to not [37:18] either show or honor, right? Like we talk about a tried and true practice of sales and discounting. If a seller offers something on sale, [37:28] then we need to show that. [37:30] We're really curious about how that actually drives buyer behavior. And there's ways that we can kind of construct pre post analyses and things like that to try to understand the impact. But ultimately, those are the kind of areas where we we are on the side of looking at our data in different ways. And so we have maybe a slightly different degree of confidence. [37:50] in the value, but we're still confident that it does help the marketplace as a whole. It's a great example. [37:56] Yeah, I'm not sure what I do there. That is tricky.

[37:58] So we've been talking about conversion. I'm curious in terms of acquisition, what you've seen work and just generally how do people find Etsy? How do you drive top of funnel for Etsy? This is two sides to Etsy, right? There's the seller and the buyer getting in the wayback machine [38:10] On the seller side, we would be at craft fairs like Renegade and other places where our sellers were selling in person and really letting them know that Etsy exists. [38:23] And so that was very, you know, boots on the ground. Let's get out and try to acquire... [38:29] acquire sellers into the marketplace. Some of that predates me to some degree. We were probably doing it on the tail end when I joined. [38:37] And then we have a lot of great word of mouth through our sellers, right? A seller probably knows other people who are similarly inclined to be incredible craftspeople who want to sell their items. And so we've seen some success with our, we have a teams platform where sellers can come together, ask each other questions and kind of the word of mouth. [38:53] type of growth through that. [38:55] On the buyer side, [38:57] We really leverage the fact that we have a ton of inventory, and to some degree, it ends up being quite a long tail of inventory where we can meet really niche and specific needs. [39:08] And so that lends itself really well to thinking about SEO, lends itself really well to thinking about Google Shopping, where someone is not on Etsy, but is often looking for something. [39:19] either somewhat or very specific, and we can really meet their needs in a really meaningful way by showing them not only just a single item, but maybe that and then other options that they might find that are of a similar vein in a similar sub sub.

[39:33] sub categories in some cases. And so those have been long tried and true areas that we've invested in and we've seen really great success in driving [39:42] and driving new buyers to Etsy. [39:44] I've researched and written about that story of how Etsy started with sellers and craft fairs, and so that's a really classic story. [39:50] And I think there's also an element of the early sellers drove the early buyers because they're just like advertising their listing page here is where you could go buy. [39:59] which is a really unfair, rare opportunity to... [40:01] kind of grow the marketplace by just focusing on sellers. I mean, yes. And a seller is a buyer. [40:07] Right. And so if they're making something that they've poured their heart into, [40:11] Chances are they will value that [40:14] exact same behavior in someone else. And so if they're selling an item, they're looking for other things in maybe not their exact category, but in adjacent categories, and they become buyers. So it is a nice dynamic when that starts to work. [40:28] Yeah, so many natural advantages to getting this marketplace off the ground. How cool is that? [40:32] You mentioned word of mouth is a big part of how Etsy started spreading. And imagine even today, there's a lot of just, hey, you should check out Etsy. [40:39] Is there anything you've done that accelerates word of mouth or builds on word of mouth? [40:43] Referrals comes to mind. Is there anything along those lines? [40:46] Yeah, we dabbled with referral programs a while ago, probably eight some years ago. [40:52] What we saw, it was a different time, and so I think we maybe didn't [40:56] value a new buyer, for example, in the way we do today, because to some degree, right, you're unlocking future value. They make a single purchase and then the bet is over time they'll go on to make subsequent purchases. We didn't necessarily have that as deep an understanding then as we do now.

[41:12] So our buyer referral program ultimately wasn't a huge success, but on the seller side, [41:17] This was back in the days of Dropbox referral program being a huge, huge driver of their growth and the whole give-get. [41:24] concept that was really prevalent back then. On the seller side, one of the things that we really leaned into was on Etsy, for those who aren't familiar, it costs 20 cents to list an item. [41:36] And that may seem like a very small financial outlay to get started. [41:40] but it's a little bit of a barrier. And the more we can do to remove those, the higher chance that someone will either become a seller or list more items. So we really leaned into that as the currency for the seller referral program. [41:55] And coming back to what I said around Teams, [41:57] That was a really great way to kind of supercharge some of that activity that was [42:01] was either happening but could be more of it could happen or really like helping a seller understand like, oh yeah, there is a hook here. If I offer this person, if I refer them, they'll get some listing credits. It'll be easier for them to open their shop. And then when I need to list more items, I also have credits that I can apply. [42:19] So that was one small area. I wouldn't say it was a huge driver of growth, but in certain markets, in certain pockets, we saw it work pretty well. [42:27] Awesome. That also helps with fraud, which is a huge problem with their fraud programs where the money isn't like the credit is just you can list on Etsy. It's not like you can steal a lot of money away from the business. So that's clever. [42:38] Yeah. [42:40] Okay, I want to talk about one other part of the funnel, retention.

[42:43] Is there anything you've learned that has been really effective to help with the retention? [42:46] We have long had features that are [42:50] kind of [42:51] retentive in their nature. [42:53] things like, on Etsy we call them favorites, you know, that might be liking or a similar action on other places. [43:00] But how do we think about the habit loop? [43:02] of [43:02] If you take an action, [43:04] What's the trigger and then what's the reward? [43:06] And so using a favorite as an example, [43:10] You favored an item. [43:11] That's a pretty... [43:13] strong-ish, of course, adding it to your cart or maybe purchasing it, that's the strongest of signals, but you've shown intent. [43:21] So what can we do with that information? We can then say, [43:24] The seller put it on sale. You should come back and check it out. [43:27] This is selling out. There's only one of this item left. You know, you showed some intent. You might want to come back and get it. [43:32] That's just one example of trying to close those loops and that's where [43:36] We've worked on things like we call it the updates feed, essentially a feed of activity that you've taken that we're demonstrating how it's changed, what's new, and then pulling in the tried and true tactic of push notifications to make you aware of that. [43:50] such that you're using your phone all the time, you see that show up, that's a pretty great notification to get. The thing that I really liked is now on sale. [43:59] I want to check that out. [44:00] And so those are examples where really leaning into that habit loop framework has helped us understand [44:06] We've got a lot of this activity, how do we close the loop? How do we make it really valuable for our buyers? [44:11] Zooming out a little bit, it's kind of wild that Etsy,

[44:13] can exist in a world of eBay and Amazon. [44:17] And I'm just curious what it is that you think the founders and the team did early on to carve out the space of like, I know you could buy things from people, you can buy things on Amazon really quickly. [44:27] to create a world where Etsy builds this massive business that continues to thrive. [44:32] What do you think was done so well to carve out the space? [44:36] I think the... [44:38] to some degree, resolves [44:40] down to, and maybe that's little... [44:43] to Xtreme, but a key component is the brand. [44:47] The brand stands for something in people's minds. [44:50] And that helps... [44:51] understand you're not going to get [44:54] the same inventory on Etsy. You shouldn't expect the same inventory on Etsy as you might be looking for [44:59] on eBay. It just doesn't make sense to our buyers. The items that our sellers sell are unique, [45:07] And so I think that [45:08] That is kind of the core nugget [45:10] combined with [45:11] how we think about policies and our way to [45:15] to some degree maintain the integrity of the marketplace, those two things combined do set us apart. And I think if you ask many people, [45:26] certainly here in the US, [45:27] what they think of Etsy, a very specific image will be conjured up. [45:31] That may be one that we want to evolve and build on. [45:35] but it feels quite distinct. [45:37] And it's not the same as eBay and it's not the same as Amazon. And I think there's real deep value in that. [45:42] Anap. [45:42] I think

[45:44] I wasn't here at the very beginning, but it's certainly something that was there at the very beginning of Etsy that is still kind of like a through line to where we are today. [45:52] That makes absolute sense to me. On the other hand, I also don't know how that happens. [45:57] Is there anything that you think about of how the team did that and how they built that brand? What are some of the important elements? Is it like a specific aesthetic? [46:05] Is it a certain type of supply that you stuck to? What do you think was so important to building that brand? I think it is the supply. If you think about [46:15] the marketplace, the vast majority of content is maybe what we might consider UGC. It's either [46:22] The item is from the seller or as I was mentioning before, the buyer review is from the buyer. [46:28] And so just being really clear about what's okay to sell and what's not okay, I think does [46:34] does really differentiate us. [46:37] Um, [46:38] I also think over the years, our brand and our aesthetic and how we position ourselves has evolved, will continue to evolve as it should. [46:45] But to the point where we are now, our [46:49] the statement we have is keep commerce human. [46:52] And that feels really simple, super pithy, easy to remember, but has lineage when you go all the way back to kind of where we started in terms of really valuing the unique, valuing the handmade. [47:05] And so that does permeate kind of decision making, how we show up, the type of features we work on, the things we would prioritize. [47:11] maybe never say never but like [47:13] an item getting dropped off by a drone and a person never touches it, that doesn't

[47:18] That doesn't feel very Etsy. That's not something that we might lean into. [47:22] It's interesting how many parallels Etsy has to Airbnb because Airbnb is the same [47:26] general idea, it's people's homes. [47:29] people making things. And then also, I think the tagline for Airbnb early on was travel like a human. [47:34] This was actually a really similar concept, which... [47:36] Touches on a question I wanted to talk about, which is, [47:39] Many marketplaces, as they grow, become supply constrained, and then there's this pressure to add [47:44] different types of supply like in in airbnb's case it was we should add hotels [47:49] We should add... [47:50] Property Management. [47:51] Vacation rental companies on here. We should have everything people want to book because we're losing business. They could book anything here. [47:56] They should be able to [47:58] But, [47:58] The tension is then we become like everyone else. And then what's, what is Airbnb anyway? What is Airbnb in that case? [48:04] And I think... [48:05] Etsy went through that experience where there was a lot of cheap [48:08] products from overseas and was kind of being flooded. [48:12] Is that true, I guess? And then just how do you think about that limit and where you draw that line? [48:16] Yeah. [48:17] I think it does come back to some degree to the brand and the policy point from just before. [48:24] And we take enforcing our policies really seriously. It's not an easy job at our scale. And that means we need to continue to invest and continue to make sure that only the best items, the most relevant items are on Etsy. [48:38] That job is never done. The team that does that works super, super hard and is always kind of looking for new signals to understand, you know, what maybe doesn't meet. [48:47] are our criteria.

[48:48] Generally speaking, supply is something that we have in spades for the most part, back to the point we talked about earlier. [48:56] One of the things that we grappled with, [48:59] was around how can we help sellers scale? [49:02] They sell great inventory, but maybe they just don't have enough of it or they can't meet the demand because they're making everything by hand. [49:10] And so one of the things that there was an evolution was leaning into [49:14] what today we call production assistance, [49:16] And the way I think about that is, [49:18] you still need to understand the provenance of your item. [49:20] If you're saying, I have this design, I'm just going to throw it over the fence to a manufacturer that I've never met, that I don't know, I don't understand their processes, I may not agree with them. [49:30] That doesn't meet our criteria. You need to understand how it's being made, who is making it, have a relationship with the person who's helping you scale your business. [49:40] But that's something that we saw from people who maybe gravitate more towards being designers than being able to actually make the thing. They have this excellent idea. They just can't. [49:50] see it come to life. [49:52] And so they need some help. [49:53] And that was something we leaned into to be able to, like I said, help [49:56] help sellers that maybe weren't able to make a thing and sell it on Etsy or for sellers who were [50:02] reaching the limits of what they could supply, really take it to the next level and make more items such that they can make more sales. [50:10] So it sounds like there's essentially this just like evolving definition of what else supplies allowed on Etsy, a team that stays on top of that. I imagine there was just like a hard decision at one point of just...

[50:19] we will limit supply, and here's what supply that we want on the platform. Everything else, we're going to take off. We would limit the type of items, the supply, the number of those items. That, as we talked about, there's a lot of them, but really having that clear definition. In some cases, it's easy, right? Some things are just... [50:36] They violate [50:39] legal [50:40] definitions and those things are that's the easy stuff to think about it's where it's a little more gray that it gets a little trickier [50:47] That reminds me, so my wife is actually a designer. [50:50] And she produces these hilarious charts about life stuff. [50:53] And people take her designs and just sell them on every platform on Zazzle and probably Etsy, but everywhere. And she's always trying to hunt them down and get them to... [51:02] take them off, but it's such a pain for a small designer. It's not an Etsy problem, it's just a general internet problem. [51:08] Yeah, and back to the, you know, we have teams hard at work thinking about IP. [51:13] and how to police it, how to enforce it. It's tough. Not a domain I will suggest. I'm an expert in really, really tricky stuff, but [51:21] We've got to be beyond that. [51:23] Yeah. [51:24] Another, I think, problem that's sort of unique to Etsy, something that I think people call the graduation problem, [51:30] which is where you join Etsy, [51:32] things start to grow, you become really successful. [51:34] And then you're like, why am I paying Etsy all these fees? Why don't I just make my own website and just sell it directly and not pay any fees? [51:40] And I think you guys went through that. [51:43] Yeah, and so if that's true, is there anything you've learned about just how to avoid [51:46] getting people to want to leave. I think the [51:48] The core thought there is our fees are generally low and highly competitive.

[51:54] So, [51:55] From that perspective, there's... [51:57] There's reason to stay on Etsy. [52:00] What we've seen and what we know [52:02] Our sellers are really smart business people. [52:05] And so if they can distribute their products through another channel, [52:09] That might be their own website, another marketplace, in person. Probably going to try to do that. They want to make more sales. Many of them, not all, but many of them are wired to want to grow their business. [52:21] And so, [52:22] really understanding the role that we play in that kind of construct of distribution channels to make it a little reductive. [52:30] is really helpful to understand and [52:32] To some degree, we want to be the place that not only they make sales on, but they love to sell on. [52:38] because our tools are really catered to the needs that they have. [52:42] So there is some degree of stickiness. I mentioned teams earlier. There are places where sellers go to kind of congregate, share ideas, share ideas. [52:51] grievances in some cases, but ultimately support each other. [52:54] And so there are reasons to kind of stick around. [52:56] I'm sure there are certainly sellers who scale out of Etsy or realize I want to [53:00] I want to build my own website to the example you cited. [53:04] The reality is that's neither cheap nor fast. [53:06] it's hard work it's hard work to build hard work to maintain expensive to drive traffic to [53:11] And so that may be a part of their kind of [53:14] the way they want to take their business, but oftentimes Etsy still does play a role in how they're thinking about where they make sales and ultimately where they're going to see growth from.

[53:24] A cool thing that I saw online about you is that you built... [53:29] a marketplace essentially within Etsy called Etsy Studio. And I'm not sure if that's around anymore, but I'm curious just what the story there was and what you learned from that experience and what's its current status. [53:40] Yeah, well researched because no, it is no longer around. The white space we saw with Studio was essentially saying, [53:48] On the one hand, you've got [53:50] Pinterest fails, right? You've got all these great inspiring items or projects on Pinterest, and then you have people who have no idea how to make them. [54:00] and they get so frustrated. And then on the other hand, you've got a marketplace like Michael's or these other places where you might go for craft supplies. They have stuff, but they don't necessarily have inspiration. [54:11] and how can we play in that intersection of the idea and the items in the tutorials to see that idea come to life? [54:20] So kind of the genesis of the idea felt from a brand perspective, super aligned. You know, we stand for creativity. We stand for makers. [54:27] And so we saw it as a big opportunity. [54:30] The launch happened to coincide with the kind of pivot in 2017 to really focusing on the core marketplace or refocusing on the core marketplace, maybe I should say. [54:41] And so it became clear that, you know, when we laid out what we're optimizing for, which is [54:46] driving sales in the short term, [54:48] marketing dollars being as ROI positive as possible [54:52] Having teams focused on the core marketplace, it didn't check any of those boxes.

[54:57] Really, really. [54:58] Really tough decision and hard to manage through, but that was ultimately the right call for the business to say, this no longer makes sense given the new constraints that we're operating in, given the new goals that we have. [55:10] Makes sense. Also, something that happened to Airbnb a lot, trying new things that they didn't work out and tend to move on. That's how it goes. [55:17] Yep. [55:17] Shifting a little bit to just product leadership and running the product team and just a few more questions. [55:23] What's something that you've found to be really important to [55:27] having a productive, well-run [55:29] while executing product team. Yeah, one of the things that's certainly not completely novel, but I think we have a pretty unique interpretation of, [55:38] is how we collaborate between functions. [55:41] You'll often hear the three legs of the stool where you've got product and engine design. [55:46] We've evolved that. [55:48] to five legs of the stool. I fully recognize that a five-legged stool probably is not a very stable thing, but go with the analogy for a second. I think it could be even more stable, right? Is that the most stable stool or is it less stable with five legs? You probably need a really flat surface. That makes sense. Regardless. [56:05] is, you know, of course we've got product eng design and we've got [56:08] our insights partners so research and analytics and we've got our marketing partners really working in [56:14] in a tight team to build the best products possible. And so I think [56:19] That is, [56:20] you know, [56:21] we can continue to get better. Absolutely. At how we make decisions and how we bring the various viewpoints together. So to some degree, it's not like,

[56:29] It's not the easiest path. [56:31] But it's the best path, I think, where you're really incorporating different viewpoints, different constraints, different considerations into the features and the products that we're building. [56:40] And treating that as kind of the core leadership team, I think, is really valuable. [56:44] And maybe that's partly because generally we don't, [56:48] We don't subscribe to this idea of PM as the mini-CEO. [56:52] you're up there directing from on high that we're going to build that feature and we're going to do that. [56:56] And that's just not the type of culture that we have. And generally speaking, from what I've seen, doesn't lead to good [57:03] good decisions or the best features or product being built. [57:06] And so collaboration is something we really value and that we try to live through how we structure our teams, how we make our decisions. [57:13] Is it perfect? Like I said, absolutely not. I think it's the way that we've found being really successful building product. [57:21] Do you give the PM like just a little more say in decision making and ask? Because with five people in the leadership team, you talked about how back in the day it was like, [57:30] too consensus driven maybe and I [57:32] I wonder how you navigate that with five decision makers. [57:36] We're always looking to... [57:38] clarify or reclarify or restate [57:41] who ultimately is accountable, and in many cases it is the PM. [57:45] You are the one who Nick, our CPO, likes to say, "You don't have to have the best ideas, but you have to choose the best ideas." [57:54] And so really figuring out how you're selecting what you're going to build and then living with the consequences.

[57:59] Of course, ideally successful in many cases back to your 80% stat that experiments 80% of experiments don't work. [58:06] owning what's next, right? Okay, did we learn from that? If we did, what are we going to do about it? That definitely does fall to the PM. It doesn't give you [58:14] the permission to ignore other viewpoints or make decisions in a vacuum is certainly not that. [58:20] But ultimately, when we need to move forward, it is the PM that is on the hook for those things. [58:25] Awesome. So essentially the PM can make the call if there's an unclear consensus. [58:30] And given we're so... [58:32] Many places are, but we're so heavily led by the insights, either qual or quant, [58:37] The decision in many instances is clear. When it's not, that's when we need the product person to step forward and say, [58:45] we're going in this direction. [58:46] Don't know if it's going to work out, but we'll certainly learn and we'll move forward. Awesome. And then just to... [58:52] go on this topic a little bit more, your teams are cross-functional, [58:55] dedicated teams, I imagine. It sounds like there's these five leads for each team. [58:58] Is that roughly how you organize? [59:00] Yeah, and the fifth leg, if you will, of marketing, that might be product marketing in some cases, that might be brand marketing in others. And so there's kind of different flavors that we... [59:11] of marketing that we pull in based on the specific needs of the project. [59:15] But that's generally speaking how we try to structure our teams from kind of the group level all the way down to the individual squad. [59:24] We can't always have a dedicated research and a dedicated analyst and a dedicated product marketer to every single team. So it's certainly not perfect, but that's what we aspire to having at least coverage on those roles.

[59:36] Got it. So most teams have dedicated marketing person or a product marketing person. That's crazy. That's really rare. [59:42] Some teams. Some teams that I imagine are most in need of [59:47] marketing support. [59:48] Got it. [59:49] Are you able to just paint a rough picture of kind of the way the teams are laid out at Etsy? Just like imagine there's a buyer side and a seller side. [59:56] How does that look for people to do access? Yeah, the way that we think about the structure right now, [1:00:01] And, you know, [1:00:02] the org design [1:00:05] should ideally follow strategy and if your strategy is always evolving then your org design is always evolving [1:00:10] We call it the product stack. [1:00:12] And so, [1:00:13] We've got our core customer teams who are unsurprisingly thinking about buyers and sellers. [1:00:20] And so they're the ones on the front lines with the customers. [1:00:26] Then we have our, we call them our partner teams and so they are [1:00:31] working directly with the end customer. So think an organization like Payments, where they have clearly a way to [1:00:38] capture payment from a buyer to remit funds to a seller. So they're really on the front lines with the customer. They also have other constraints working with [1:00:46] the payment networks and card providers and things like that. So they just have a slightly different model. [1:00:51] So core customer partner teams, enablement teams that are really in service of helping deliver the best possible experience that might be. [1:01:00] through our recommender systems or through our design system in order to make [1:01:05] developing just that little bit easier, a little bit faster, a little bit more standardized in some cases. And then the foundation of it all sits with infrastructure and the teams that you might expect that are much more technical in nature that really, without that, we wouldn't have a website.

[1:01:20] When you're hiring product managers, is there anything that you found to be really important or interesting or maybe like a unique insight into hiring teams? [1:01:28] The three things that I... [1:01:30] come back to time and again is one the collaboration piece that we talked about earlier [1:01:35] not only a willingness, but a real excitement to do that. It's not everyone's bag. I get that. [1:01:41] Some people just want to be in a, you know, make fast decisions and move forward place. We aim to make fast decisions, but you need to consult. [1:01:48] That's one, two, [1:01:50] is being decisive. We have tons of data. [1:01:52] but it's not always clear exactly what to do with that. Or we're using a new input, maybe back to the point mentioned earlier, looking at competitive insights. [1:02:01] let's make a decision, let's move forward, let's ideally learn. [1:02:06] Even if we're not making progress against our goals, we're at a minimum learning. [1:02:10] And then the third point is just curiosity. [1:02:13] Because we're a relatively small organization and everyone says, if only we had more people, but we are quite small. And so there is a lot of change. There's a lot of new priorities that crop up. And that means there's a lot of opportunity for the right folks. If I want to be in this space and only this space and this is my specific domain and I just want to be in it forevermore, [1:02:34] that might be a little more challenging because you might be asked to work on something net new. And so just having that curiosity mindset of saying, or maybe said differently, growth mindset of, okay, there's something to learn from the thing I'm being asked to do. [1:02:45] Let me really lean into that. [1:02:47] And to some degree, I'm not describing anything that's atypical of great product people overall. But I think we have either a slightly different flavor or we need it in a slightly different way here at Etsy.

[1:02:58] Awesome. [1:03:00] Last question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. Is there a framework or a process that you find really useful that you find yourself coming back to that you think listeners would potentially find really valuable? [1:03:11] I won't pretend to know whether listeners find it valuable, but the thing that I do a lot that we do as my team, [1:03:19] that others do. [1:03:20] do to some degree is a simple exercise of weekly focus. [1:03:24] What are you focused on this week? [1:03:26] And then reflecting on, did you get done the things you were focused on last week? [1:03:30] Seems super simple. [1:03:32] but just the exercise of thinking about what matters, writing it down, and having a little bit of social proof or like articulating it out to others. [1:03:42] creates some degree of accountability. It's something that is very, very easy and simple to do. [1:03:48] And if you do it consistently, you start to see some really great patterns of like, [1:03:52] Those types of focus areas take me longer than I think. I should budget more time. [1:03:56] Or these are the type of things that crop up at this time of year. I might need to start thinking about making some space for them. So I just found that to be really, really, really helpful in the day to day. [1:04:06] I love that. How do you operationalize that? Is it like a Slack channel people post these in? Is it a doc? Yeah, like in our buyer experience product channel on Mondays, everyone's kind of sharing what they're focused on, how last week panned out, you know, was it done? Is it still in progress? Things like that. It's very, very lo-fi. [1:04:23] but it worked pretty well. It's kind of like a stand-up that happens once a week and it's higher level essentially is what it sounds like. Exactly, trying to think about the

[1:04:32] Priorities and not tasks. And that is a blurry line. I fully recognize that. But anchoring in those, I think, is certainly for me personally more helpful. [1:04:41] And as the comedian person in these and sharing funny things. [1:04:45] in the stand-up stand-up. No, unfortunately, well, or fortunately, he is now actually a comedian. [1:04:51] Are you serious? He's doing his thing. He's a full-time comedian. That's amazing. And with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [1:04:58] Hit me. [1:04:59] What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? [1:05:03] Couple that come to mind. Uh... [1:05:05] Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal. [1:05:09] has been, I think it's just, A, a really fascinating read and B, [1:05:14] uh, [1:05:15] Hey. [1:05:16] Helped me think a lot about how you trust teams and how you think about kind of disseminating decision making to the right folks, you know, tech language, push decisions to the edges. But thinking about it in the context that he describes there is really fascinating. And it just shows that it can work even, you know, in the... [1:05:33] the most kind of egregious world of military, which you think is top-down command and control. [1:05:39] shows that there's a different way to approach problems. [1:05:42] There's actually a fan favorite at Airbnb also. [1:05:45] Oh, cool. [1:05:47] Other is back all the way to the top, to what I love to do, surfing and being outdoors, Let My People Go Surfing by Yvan Chouinard, the Patagonia founder. [1:05:57] Incredibly fascinating read of someone who just had a deep, deep passion, turned it into a business.

[1:06:03] struggled, [1:06:04] iterated, came out the other side, really successful. [1:06:07] So the business side, but also just how they think about treating their employees and the culture that they've built. [1:06:12] I think is to me personally really inspiring. There's a theme here around trust and [1:06:17] and kind of how you [1:06:19] how you engage with people to make their day-to-day work lives is really, really fulfilling. [1:06:25] So that's another favorite. And then in a super different direction, Power Broker by Robert Caro. [1:06:31] That is an absolute tome. It is huge. It took me probably an entire year to read because I'm an extremely slow reader and or I fell asleep a lot. [1:06:38] but. [1:06:39] It is so fascinating, especially living in New York, of how one human had such an incredibly outsized and probably terrible impact on the city. [1:06:49] access to waterfronts, [1:06:50] really thinking about communities and tearing them apart. Just such a fascinating read. [1:06:56] I have that book and I've never read it. It's very long and intimidating. I think it might be back there. I would chunk it out. Do like, you know, a couple of chapters at a time. Otherwise, it feels insurmountable. It's like Infinite Jest where you just never... [1:07:09] You're intimidated. [1:07:10] Amazing. Okay, next question. Favorite recent movie or TV show? [1:07:15] So my wife and I talk about this a lot. I think we're Western files, if that's a thing. [1:07:20] I'm from Europe, and so it's a whole new world, different world for me. We've loved Yellowstone and all of the [1:07:27] I guess their prequels. They've been, yeah, just really, really fun, fun to watch for people who are like,

[1:07:33] curious about that culture in that world. [1:07:35] Awesome. It's been hard to find where to even watch it. It's on the weirdest channels. [1:07:40] It's one of those where the old world of we cut all our cords and we only needed Netflix. Suddenly, you need all these really random providers of content that you're like, "I have to subscribe to that now to watch this show?" I don't understand where this even is. I just take my money. [1:07:55] Favorite interview question you'd like to ask candidates? I'm a big fan of case studies, live case studies. I think you learn a whole boatload about how someone thinks on the fly, [1:08:06] how they react to constraints. So we use those. I've used those a ton. We use them pretty heavily in product interviews. [1:08:13] So I love those modulated for like [1:08:16] the type of business you're in, what you're actually trying to understand. [1:08:20] The other one I like to ask is around something that people have taught themselves. [1:08:24] uh, tried to gather the growth mindset. I think Julia, uh, [1:08:27] who was on the podcast a while ago, said something similar. [1:08:30] But you... [1:08:31] You get a ton of insight into someone. Ideally, you get a bit of passion. [1:08:34] and you often get something to go research. She's like, I don't know anything about that topic. I want to learn a little more. [1:08:40] What is a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you love? [1:08:43] You as a new parent maybe resonates when... So it's not new because our kids too. [1:08:51] But, [1:08:51] When I was looking, being a product, of course you want to track data. [1:08:56] And so I was looking for apps that would be good at doing that. And they nearly all look like hideous medical charts where I just don't want to engage with that.

[1:09:06] I found this one app called, I think it's called Nara Baby or Nara something. [1:09:10] Super simple, allows both parents to enter information, probably grandparents too. We only tested it with two people. Seamlessly syncs, really easy to use. So at 4 a.m. when you can't see and you just want to say like, I fed the baby, you can do that really easily. Just really, really simple, like fit for purpose product. [1:09:29] So that resonated with me. [1:09:31] I'm going to be downloading that right now. I've been using Huckleberry, which is both awesome and not awesome. And so awesome tip. Great. [1:09:38] What is a favorite life motto that you like to repeat often or share with other people either in work or in life? [1:09:44] One of the things I talk about, maybe internally more than anything else, but all or nothing. Go all in. Go do the thing. In German, ganz oder gar nicht. [1:09:54] I grew up in Germany, so that's something I say to myself a lot is, [1:09:58] If you're going to do it, do it properly. I think those are [1:10:01] often [1:10:03] Helpful words to live by. [1:10:04] I love that. [1:10:06] Final question, what's a favorite item you recently discovered on Etsy? [1:10:10] I recently bought an engraved whiskey decanter. [1:10:15] for my wife and myself or for the home. [1:10:20] Super beautiful, so cool. [1:10:23] Got it personalized with our names. Just such a cool, cool item that, yeah, I wasn't expecting to find that kind of thing. Not even sure exactly how you engraved. [1:10:33] a whiskey decanter, but it was really, really cool.

[1:10:37] Yeah. [1:10:38] I'm always on the lookout for greeting cards. If anyone has great greeting card seller recommendations, I'm all ears. [1:10:45] I love giving out physical greetings cards to folks, so... [1:10:48] That's another always-on Etsy favorite of mine. [1:10:51] Tim, we've talked about growth, culture, surfing, cabins, leadership. [1:10:56] Thank you so much for being here. I'm downloading the NAR app right now as we speak. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and maybe learn more? And how can listeners be useful to you? [1:11:06] Yeah, yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. That's probably, well, not probably is my most professional platform. [1:11:11] Instagram, like I said, is a... [1:11:14] is a farce. And being useful, yeah, send me things that you're excited about in the Etsy product, send me feedback. Always really keen to learn how folks are experiencing the things that we build. [1:11:26] Amazing. Tim, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me, Lenny. Appreciate it. [1:11:30] Bye, everyone. [1:11:53] See you in the next episode.