 Hey, hey everyone, this is Carlos and the CEO at product school today. I'm here with Brian talking Who's the head of product that open door open? There is a huge company So Ryan, why don't you just start by telling us more about your company as well as your role there? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me Carlos excited to be here and chat with you so open doors a online real estate Company and marketplace to buy and sell real estate. We make it super simple seamless and easy to sell your home you go online Answer a few questions and we'll make you an all-cash offer To buy your home and move on your your timeline. So we've been around for about 10 years now in public a few years ago and I'm really excited about the journey and path that we're on to make Real estate easier better And and power people's moving progress. So so very excited about the company very excited to be here and talk to you about it Your your official title is head of product and I know that can be misleading depending on their context Like some companies would call like the only product manager head of product What does a head of product mean at open door? Sure. Yes, and it can mean lots lots of different things and I personally and the company tries to not to get wrapped up in titles too much But in this context, it means i'm accountability For the product organization and the design organization. So I lead lead lead those organizations and at the end of the day Means full accountability across the company for the products that that we put out there and deliver and making sure that it needs Both both customers and businesses How big is the or that you oversee? Uh, so between product and design the org. It's probably about uh, 50 55 people or so All right. Well, um, now we're going to take you back to the beginning because I can imagine your first p.m Job wasn't that big. So how did you get into product? Yeah, um, so I I've I've always loved building things and creating things actually started back When I was in in middle school, my brother and I Founded a nonprofit here here in Seattle called called beams and dreams Um, I didn't know what a product manager was or or anything about a p.m And there was no no software associated But it was just about building something and and bringing something about you into the world and sort of continued that Entrepreneurial thread through the college. Um, one of the best experiences I ever had was running A retail store on campus And then took that experience To uber where I actually started originally on the operations team much smaller company. This was back in 2012 And really wanted to get closer to the technology and have scaled impact and I think Being on the product side really helped you Have that scaled impact across what we're ultimately obviously for the global company touching touching Millions of lives so formally transitioned to the product side there Ran all of uber's carpooling products with the pool being the most notable Through the team out there Had a great five-year run there almost five years And then have been at open door for the last five years focused initially on a lot of our internal operations and tooling products And then sort of over the course of those five years have have done many different product jobs at the company So you move from ops into product Which today it's um, actually a very very common path for for ops for business back in the day wasn't that obvious I can I remember it's still like most of the png would come with a technical background So how were you able to make your case at uber? Yeah So so I came from a quasi technical background or as I call it pretend engineering So I had it enough to be dangerous And so it wasn't a full cold start on on that front But I think I was as fortuitous obviously uber was growing rapidly And there's the sweet spot of being on the operation side You really get to know and understand the business context and and and you actually talk to customers a lot back in the early days Every ops team member did support tickets directly. So the core bones of like Do you know how to build things with technology? I had a little bit of that Can you understand and empathize with the customer? And then can you synthesize information and and coalesce that into bringing something to life? Sort of came together and and uber being a growing company afforded me the opportunity to make that transition And uber is actually one of those examples of an incredible product Yeah, with incredible product team and one of the pioneers who actually had to create this type of infrastructure Global levels like a marketplace with it's between marketplaces So I can see why like op had a lot of impact Like I I still know today that customer success or other ops functions still are underrated and I just know why how it's so important for pms to to really stay in touch with the customer And then we we hear these models around like you have to talk to customers. Yeah, right But like at the end of the most of the pms don't want to do it or you still don't come from this type of ops or or success background so in in your case like What is it that that you see that? That you think I made it so special that made someone at the top to say, you know what? We need to invest in ops people to elevate their impact and may and turn them into products um, I think both both uber and open door have um sort of a unique Some somewhat unique type of product where it's very online offline There's obviously a core digital surface area that customers are interacting with That that is is the bulk of the customer experience that that that people are interacting with day to day But the reality is in order to actually deliver the product It's it's super heavy on the operation side, whether that's in uber's case being able to onboard train retain drivers um, and and actually run and manage the marketplace back then Not everything was automated until a lot of stuff was done manually by the operation team And on the open door side real estate is still an antiquated process There's a lot of magic that happens on on the back end of our systems to make it simple and seamless for the customer But the reality is the best products get built when The ops team who understands the complexity gets married with a digital product team And uh, who can deliver a delightful customer experience? um, excuse me And both uber and open door just happen to be places where that online offline Interaction is is so deeply important that it actually elevates the role of product and operations working together I I agree and I really hope that more companies more product functions Start appreciating the value of ops as well as customer success and and see more readers like you that Bring that background to the table because at the end of the day, that's what really keeps the light on That's what brings revenue to the company and it's not just about building. It's also about Shipping the right way and making sure that your customers are using your product. Absolutely. I agree Another parallel that I see between uber and open door is the marketplace dynamics So and you tell me a little bit more about how that experience at uber helped you then apply to open door. Yeah marketplaces have I'd say one Super unique characteristic of the product, which is many stakeholders who aren't always In in purple on and on what they want and so you have to be able to Build the marketplace in a way that works with all the complex stakeholders whether uber that's Riders drivers cities, etc whether open door That's sellers buyers the larger Real estate ecosystem that that we partner with and play a role in and so I think from a from a building perspective It's really interesting because it's a very multifaceted problem There's not a single customer. There's not a single entity That you're thinking about and so I think you're right that that uber and open door share share similar characteristics there and I think it's what makes marketplaces so Uh difficult to build but also what's so exciting and and what's exciting about trying to build marketplaces in a space that Haven't been disrupted for a long time. Obviously transportation Was was relatively stagnant and the taxi industry and ecosystem and real estate Also hasn't made a ton of progress since sort of the mls came online maybe 20 years ago and so I think it's really exciting to say, okay. How do you bring the combination of software? operations And this complex stakeholder management to come together and in a new better version of a marketplace that looks very cool And in your experience now at open door How is that product team structure to make sure that you are serving the different stakeholders? Yeah, so at its highest level and this actually isn't too dissimilar from Uh from how uber was structured back in the day, but that's at its highest level. Um, there's a team that we called transactions and operations sort of our Building products for our internal operation. That is all about the efficiency and effectiveness of kind of our delivery engine And how we actually deliver our products and then we have a consumer org that is focused on the relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem whether that's sellers buyers Agents or or other partners And so the highest level grouping is sort of internal versus external And then within that external bucket focusing on the individual states And so in the case of open door, you have the the buyers and the sellers and then you you treat agents as a third different stakeholder We we do and we we actually work closely with that community On a variety of different fronts obviously a number of People in real estate still want to engage with representation through the agent community. And so We do and have built specific products for for agents and that that is a team and a Space that we think about As a as a court constituent for open doors I find that fascinating and especially in products that are not marketplaces There's still different personas, but typical to to have a product or a head of product still keeping all those personas under the same team While in marketplaces, I've seen that dichotomy where there tends to be a product team focused on buyer Another product team focused on the seller as you mentioned there might be other personas in this case the agent And then separately there is the internal product like they the core platform that is supporting the operations Yeah, that that's absolutely right. And I think I think that tends to work best because it gives the right space for a product team to be able to Understand their customer navigate the core complexity and deeply empathize with what needs to be built But also have enough space and latitude to be able to optimize for their customer The magic happens when all three of those are all sides of the marketplace come together And and that's what ultimately has to happen For us to be successful or for any marketplace to be successful Is you can't just focus on one side too much. You have to focus on everything And I hear you talk about this as part of your product core. So what is the role that design plays in all of this? Uh design is hugely important. Um at open door We are trying to bring a better elevated customer experience to An industry that that is not known for having better elevated customer experiences and obviously design is at the forefront of that We we think of our value props as simplicity and certainty and convenience And that uh is is not just the core product and the operations and how we deliver that product But also the digital experience that customers are going through so Our pms our designers frankly our engineers and our operators Work super closely together to to to deliver that product and we actually organize around what we call E pods for the the traditional e pd end product and design being end product operations and design And we make sure that those units have aligned mission goals And come together to to leverage everyone's unique skill sets. This is a very amazing product So who's typically included in one of those pods? Um, so so it would be your uh, I think the the traditional end product and design So so an e m a p m and the designer um, the the ad that we would make is an operations counterpart Just because of the nature of the product. Um, but in terms of the uh, that would be the core group and then obviously It's an engineering team to to actually build the product for customers And as you think about like priorities and the different Goals that each of these pods will have but also what is the ultimate goal for you? How do you go about ensuring that that all of these different pods are pushing in the same direction? um, so so we we try to uh The sort of cascade or ladder Our goals are our metrics. It's really important that everybody across the company regardless of their role understands how their work ladders up to the to the broader company mission so We have a couple of pillars across the company and then we sort of decompose that into focus areas that that the teams then Have have goals and visions around and so Basically, it's just a ladder of Of information where we make sure that each each team building the mission or building a set of products ladders up to A sort of a broader group which ladders up to a company pillar Um, and it's it's our job to make sure that at the end of the day if every team optimizes for for their individual um A goal mission that the outcomes are the most that we want so we focus in a lot of time on Inputs and controlling what we can control And then if we do the best that we can for each one of those teams We we believe that will lead to the outcomes that we want for the customer and and for the business And just to follow that thread, we love to learn more from your own experience Defining that cloud strategy and and then what are some of those ceremonies that help you? Keep an eye on what things are happening and then potentially make adjustments So we um have uh, I guess a somewhat standard Uh planning process. Um, so we're we're just going through our 2024 planning process Um, and that's where we align at the highest level. What do we want to achieve as a company? What did we learn in 2023? Um, what do we want to pull forward? What do we want to stop doing? And so I think that exercise of reflection Double down and stop. Um, it's pretty important for setting up sort of an annual plan then obviously once we get into 2024 we decompose that into Half-yearly and quarterly plans, which will obviously Translate into sprints and sort of the actual operating cadence of the company in terms of making sure that we're we're on the right track We have a network of business reviews that are wbr's mbr's and qbr's each weekly business reviews monthly business reviews and quarterly business reviews That make sure that the outputs and the availability metrics are tracking as we expect and then we have a set of product reviews and design reviews That that we do at the team level to have a chance to showcase the work and then discuss the strategy of the product And say is it moving in the direction that we anticipate and expect And uh this planning and strategy season so completely resonate with that um Always something that I find very interesting As I talk with all the product reviews is how they structure their time on a on a weekly basis I know that fires happen every time and you have to put them out But if you spend too much time is putting on fires, it's it's easy to forget like the broader Vision so in your case we love to kind of take a sneak peek into your calendar and learn more about What are some of those major themes? yeah, so, um I spend as much time as possible Either thinking about the customer or thinking about the the product direction And and and where we're going and so my my calendar if you if you look at that is Decomposes into a few things outside of the fire drills that that inevitably come up when it's not planning season they focus on Either one-on-ones in team development. Um, so that's about up leveling our talent making sure that um I'm hearing feedback on what's happening across the company and across the org At the team level and then coaching and mentoring folks across the the org so that people can do their best work at open door or these product reviews monthly business reviews or quarterly business reviews focused on saying, okay Are we heading in the right direction? If not, what edits do we need to make to to the strategy? um, and then the third part which Um, uh, to your to your sort of question earlier um Is listening to customer calls or talking to customers or reading customer feedback? And I think that's something that You know, it's very easy to get away from both as you Progress in your career and as you get further and further from those direct interactions But it's it's it's still deeply important. So I actually have a block on my calendar Every week for customer feedback and listening Where it's either talking to a customer listening to to recorded calls Going through user research or something to make sure they're saying close to the customer Love that. So it's time for your team Do one-on-ones and no better interactions. Thanks for your product through reviews and and then time for your customers Correct Um, what about um recruiting and um, you know, ensuring that you are bringing in the right talent for your Yeah, the the the most important thing for uh recruiting and thinking about the team on that that I've learned over the course of my career is um Whether it's a p.m. Or a designer. It's easy to put in these these broad buckets. Hey, you're you're a p.m. Hey, you're a designer. Um, the reality is The skill sets for for both those roles are so multivariate that that what we spend time thinking about when we recruit Is what type of p.m. What type of designer would be super successful for this specific role? Obviously, there's a cultural aspect to open door and what would make anybody successful but um a person who is on our consumer seller team Should have a very different archetype than the person who's doing more operations and systems design as as a p.m. Right and so thinking about okay What what is the role? What is this person's role this specific role? And is this a more technical p.m. Is this more systems focused p.m. Is this a more design focused p.m. Is this a more business focused p.m Um and same thing on the design side So I think for us recruiting is all about identifying Especially for a product as as large as a multivariate is open bore Identifying really the specific skill set for the specific role. Um, that's how we think about recruiting and um I'm very excited about this topic helping people Get into product Then as well grow as as product leaders and so curious to know What is your career ladder or competency model? How you think about helping people grow and what are the different options? so Like engineering on both the product and design side There's a management path as well as an ic path. I think Over over the years the engineering ic path for continued career growth has been a little bit More mature and robust and well documented in the industry than than the product and design path But I think it's just as important To have those on the product and design side And what that ultimately means and I'm happy to talk about the ladder and the competencies and and what we value But at its highest level Excuse me. It is what is the complexity of the problem? And what is your ability to identify it and solve it independently? And if you can increasingly solve harder and harder problems with increasingly more and more autonomy That's the way to work your your your way up the product ladder So what that means is when you're first starting out It's very likely somebody else will be defining most of the strategy You will primarily be learning the ropes of how to execute how to ship how to get things out in the real world and what the iterations are Of of shipping a product as you get, you know a next the next step might be The strategy is defined, but you independently define the projects that ladder up to that strategy The next step might be you independently identify this or define the strategy for an unknown problem The next step might be hey you actually identify problems that nobody else in the company is even thinking about And so I think the more that you can handle that complexity that ambiguity and really be like This is the kernel of truth. This is what we should be focused on because I've looked at all this data both quantitative and qualitative both from Analytical prowess as well as talking to customers and here's the real opportunity I think the more the more complexity and the more ambiguity that you can handle That's the way to go your career whether it's as an ic or as a as a manager And I've seen that as the career ladder for product matures and there are different options Some people can continue growing as an individual contributor that that is not A bad thing that doesn't mean that you are less of a p.m. Than the pms that decide to start actually managing people I'm curious to know What you found your experience that is Making successful pms on strategy because I've seen very successful pms execute somebody as a strategy But sometimes executing executing strategy better doesn't necessarily make you a better strategist Sure. Yeah the the The reality is as pms we we sit at the center of a lot of different information Whether that's technical information from the engineering team on what's feasible customer information while that's talking directly to customers ourselves or the cx team operational constraints market research and and industry news and competitive positioning Finance and the business dynamics that we have to operate in and the constraints of the broader market And so there's it can feel like a cacophony of information And I think the key to the to a great strategy Is to simplify to think about what is the kernel of truth? What is the thing that really really matters to the customer and the business? And how do I stay intensely focused on that and build only towards that otherwise it feel it can feel like you're in Sort of an ocean getting sloshed around of a bunch of information I think the best strategies have room for flexibility, but are proactive Not just reacted to the last piece of information like that have heard And so I think that's that's the difference as you develop in your career I think an unfortunate strategy is to really think about what is true? And what do I believe will likely continue to be true? Not what did I just hear about yesterday or last week that will wholesale share my strategy I would love we just permission. I would love to Probably that with you as originally the head of product as you think about the future. What is true? and How are you thinking about expanding your product portfolio? So for for open door for real estate. I think what's true yesterday true today and and and Will continue to be true is that Customers will continue to demand simplicity and certainty In a transaction that that's just not that today 99% of transactions still happen the traditional way, which is fraught with uncertainty around price on timeline will my home sell? and I think well, well that's The reality of how things have been have been done for for decades It's not the future that customers are demanding everything else around us has modernized and so I think um, if we can can stay focused on how do we deliver a simple certain and effective Real estate transaction. I think customers will continue to demand that And bring it online bring it digital make it easier make it faster That's the way our world has been heading and and will continue to head and I think real estate is no different And so if you think about Some of the products that that we're building and we're developing it's of that that similar theme One product that we we spent some time and launched this year It's called list with open door. And so this is okay traditional listing processes You list on the mls. You don't know when you're going to get an offer You don't know if you'll get an offer. You don't know how much that offer will be for there's a lot of uncertainty and emotional difficulty for for customers there especially at a time in their life where Something is presumably prompting the move that thing often tends to be stressful And so we said, okay, how do we make that experience simpler and more certain for customers? And the reality is we have this product a cash offer which delivers incredible amounts of Certainty and convenience. You get to know exactly how much that offer is worth you get to pick your close date You get to align your moving dates And you can remove all the stress How do we marry these these two options where I can list on the open market? And see what someone someone might offer me for my home while having the safety the security The convenience and the certainty of a cash offer in my back pocket And so that's what list with open door is is you get to hold our offer for 60 days where you list on on the open market And so we said, okay, I feel very confident that customers want simplicity and certainty What they probably also want or some wants is to be able to say Hey, what will someone else besides the open door pay for my home? And I'm willing to to bear a little bit of inconvenience to find that out How do we bring those things together for a magical product for customers? But thank you for role-playing this with me Because I think in product it's a lot of these things that It's very important to define the statement or the problem statement or what is the current situation? In your case, what's true is that it's a lot of uncertainty like the real estate market is kind of like a black box for For many, right? You don't know how much your house is worth and What is in my opinion not that obvious is that a lot of people will feel comfortable selling or buying houses Online in some cases without even seeing that house at least being in that in the house And you come from uber which I can imagine the average ticket average ticket price in the u.s Would be like sub ten dollars and now your average ticket plus is probably more than a hundred x So how do we it creating that ease for the customer and let them you know Use online for something as important as buying or selling their house. I think it's absolutely incredible Yeah, absolutely for both uber and open door actually trust is is deeply important. Obviously uber has grown Very very large at this point. And so there's an inherent amount of trust in the system But back in the early days, you know, there was getting in the car with a stranger like that How do you solve that trust problem? Right and and that's That's something uber had to overcome and and open door obviously doesn't have the stranger problem But but does have the yes, this is life's biggest transaction and it's hard and it's it's difficult and it's stressful And so how do we bring trust to the customer when they are transacting in a new way? That that maybe they're maybe their neighbor didn't transact in or the parents haven't transacted in and sort of Trust is is deeply important and how we use both the digital and operations to build trust I said 100 x but I think it's more like a thousand x and in some cases even 10,000 x the price of an uber, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. And I mean The price almost doesn't matter. What matters is that for a customer. This is the for many customers This is their largest financial asset the largest financial transaction for most customers for all customers That's not true at uber. So so yes, um, you know, whether it's a thousand x 10,000 x 100,000 x What what what matters is that for a customer? They'll do this once every seven years and it's the biggest thing that they'll do financially for many of them in their lives and that's not true at uber. So different problems But it doesn't change the fact that trust is deeply important for both products And how are you thinking about AI in terms of helping you accelerate? intervention um, so 2023 Obviously, it's been a big year for AI LLMs Uh buzzword buzzworthy and noteworthy All year long We have been using machine learning sort of a predecessor if you will to AI as well as AI For quite some time almost since the beginning of open door on our pricing engine of how do we deliver online prices and actually price price homes effectively So we've had a lot of the infrastructure And actually practice doing this on on our pricing side What's changed and what we're continuing to look at last year and into next year So how do we use that and the new technologies around LLMs? Across the stack. So there are massive applications on the consumer side We we recently rolled out An assistant for people to help answer basically use some of our proprietary insights and data To be able to answer real estate questions that they may have early in the process when they're thinking about is now a good time to sell Should I sell? Which is my home more of those types of questions They can they can now get easy access by a text to be able to get answers to those questions And then on the internal side, how do we use AI whether that's textual or visual audio, etc To be able to not make not only make our operations more efficient, but actually more consistent and effective How do we have Sort of internal co-pilots that that help our teams do their jobs better and so we're spending a lot of time to gain about both those problems basis Ryan it's been a pleasure to learn from you. Thank you so much for the time Carlos, thank you so much for having me really appreciate it