 Hey, everyone. This is Carlos. I'm the founder and CEO at the Product School. Today I'm here with Michelle Parsons, who's the Chief Product Officer at Hinge. Hey, Michelle. Hey, Carlos. Thanks so much for having me on today. Thank you for getting the show. I know you are very active in the product community, and I love that. And I think it's time now to have you with us and learn more about your own experience growing as a leader. So let's start from the very beginning. How did you get your first PM job? Yeah, I mean, I think even before my first PM job, I think I didn't even really know that product was a role, was an option for a career. Kind of going back to my undergrad years, I was pre-med. I was pretty straight in there on that path. And it was my senior year of college that I was kind of having an existential crisis. You know, should I actually go down this pathway and invest a lot more time and money into this field that I wasn't as, I think, passionate about anymore. I still wanted to really help people. But having kind of spent so many years in the summers working in hospitals and with doctors, I started to kind of get a bit jaded, right? There are some pretty big foundational problems with the health care system that really expanded beyond health care and to education and access and other things of that nature. And so I took a step back and I said, well, you know, I'm not sure that I want to necessarily go into medical school now. So let me see what else is out there. What else can I do? I ended up joining Teach for America and I ended up teaching high school science. Like, well, I know science really well. I was an education minor. And so I said, why don't I kind of take this pathway in? And if I noticed that a foundational problem to medical care and access is education. It's kind of a predisposition there, level of education and level of access. How do I help, you know, really teach the next generation of kids? And so I spent two years in the classroom really starting to realize that, wow, there is a lot of gaps here as well. I'm from South Texas. So I was very aware of, you know, underfunded, underserved communities. I grew up in one. I'm from a single mom household myself and, you know, something that I was very much like in my world view. And so I started realizing, hey, I don't have the tools or the resources to actually, you know, move my students in the direction that we're supposed to be going. So I ended up having to just leverage a lot of things that I created. Started searching online, what tools can I use? What exercises can I kind of download? How do I incorporate technology into my classroom since I don't actually have textbooks for every one of my students? It was then that I started realizing, okay, well, now that I have these resources, I'm constantly going online for. How do I actually track and measure whether the things that I'm teaching are actually having the outcomes that I think they're having? And so I started leveraging basically an Excel tracker. I mean, one of the things I think that Teach for America really instills is backwards planning, objective focus, decision-making, and, you know, education really. And so I basically built a tracker. I put every single objective into this Excel tracker with all of my students, you know, aligned every single lesson in question that I was, you know, that I was teaching to these and would weekly look back and say, all right, you know, are my kids actually making progress in movement in this area? You know, if so awesome, which ones aren't? How do I pair these two together? If all my students are not succeeding in this one area, let me like go back and reflect. Maybe it was something that I did. Maybe it was a way in which I was teaching that in that particular day or that objective. And so all of these little things, you know, how do you organize a classroom? How do you motivate a classroom and kids to kind of, you know, do their work and be engaged and be excited? We're all kind of just like little moments where I was like, oh, I like this and I like that. And really when I reflect on kind of products now, a lot of the things that I was doing in that classroom actually have a lot of parallels into what product management is. So it was then right after I was teaching, I was determining, you know, what's my next move? What do I want to do next? And I found ed tech and I said, hey, this seems like a way to actually increase my scale, increase my reach beyond just a classroom of 160 kids. So I joined a small ed tech startup called Alley Upe. That was an incubated startup within Pearson Education, the big publisher. And so it was a really great way for me to first, like kind of get my first exposure product, but also very much step into it. I really started as a content metadata analyst. And so not necessarily on product, but given that we only had 30 people in the whole company, you know, you're very much able to kind of reach your hand into various aspects of, hey, this needs to get done and who's willing to pick it up. Basically you've been doing product management even before they get you the title. I think so, yeah, absolutely. In certain aspects, right? Definitely not the full product manager job, but things around it, you know, customer interviews, spot analysis, working with data scientists and data to uncover different patterns. And so always around it, and it wasn't until kind of my next role after that startup that I was really able to dig in and start working directly with engineers and solving my own kind of areas. I find your story really inspiring for many reasons. One of them, like you following your passion to help people apply to healthcare first, then education, now technology, but always finding ways to connect your skills with your user. And I think that sends a really powerful message to people out there who are trying to figure out what to do next and they might be hearing messages such as, well, you need to have an MBA from this school or you need to have a certain degree from this other school. Well, I'm sure all of that can help. That's not the only way. And there's a lot of things that someone can do today now and you are a clear example. And obviously now we continue discussing your career, but I love how you actually got started. No, yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that's spot on. There's no one clear path into products management. And I think as a field and as the industry has really taken off and more and more people become interested in it, I think there are some avenues that you can kind of put yourself into to gain that experience more quickly. But I definitely have heard a lot of interesting stories from, I was talking to Ravi Mehta who's the former CPO of Tinder who said he showed up to Microsoft one day thinking he was doing a software engineering interview and he ended up in a product manager interview and it was totally by accident that this happened. But that kind of set his career off in product. And so I think there's many unique stories for how people can get into product for sure. It's funny because Ravi shared that his own story on the podcast and not so long ago. And I was looking at your professional career and you worked at other amazing companies such as Kayaks, Spotify, Netflix. Now you're the CPO at Hinge. And it happened in a relatively short period of time compared to when you started applying your official product management title. So kind of what happened there? How were you able to grow so fast in your career? Yeah, no, I think that's definitely true. It's always a question I get asked like, why did you do this? Look, I think there's a couple of things. So I don't wanna downplay the role of mentorship and advisors and people in my life around me who have really helped me when I have questions when I come with ideas to really support and enable. I think, as I mentioned, I'm from a single mom household. So the first person in my house, my family to go to college. And I really had to advocate for myself. I had to have like the gumption, the dryer to go out there and just knock on doors. Figuratively not literally, but reach out to people and just try and get advice for, hey, this is what I'm thinking I want to do. How should I go about it? Or here's how I'm thinking of going about things. How have you done it before? And I think that all of those things have equipped me with the baseline skills of just asking a lot of questions, which I think is directly tied into what makes a successful product manager or product's leaders. You have a lot of curiosity tied in with the ability to actually execute on that, right? Taking all those different pieces of information and then transform that into a plan and a vision and then execute upon it. So I think that's the initial, the other piece of product that I really love and gravitated toward was the balance of art and science as somebody who is infinitely curious and always daydreaming and always thinking about like the what ifs and the problems to solve. I tend to be very practical and pragmatic in my approaches to things. How do I take controlled risk and not just kind of go wild? But I think those two things that my science background coupled with just the insatiable urge to ask a lot of questions and then take all that input and then go put it into action has definitely helped me in my career, especially early on when you really need to showcase that you're able to execute and get things done, right? You want to build trust in you and I think that's really important and early on I was able to gain that trust. And I think that looking for help, whatever type of help it is that shows your first curiosity in growing but also certain level of vulnerability to say that you are here to learn and that also creates a deeper connection. So on the topic of mentorship, is there anything in particular that you would recommend for people who they've heard this kind of advice before but they don't really know how to find that mentor or group of mentors or whatever that might be that is really going to be a thought partner for them? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's no one, you know, stop shop or one way to find mentors. I mean, there are a lot of programs out there. So I think that's one, right? You can go into a variety of different already established paths into finding mentors, finding advisors. I think one of the things, you know, those are more restrictive though, right? Cause there's a lot of people applying into those pathways. So one of the things that I did is look for people within my organization. So back when I was in that startup, we were nestled within the larger Pearson Education organization. So I just started looking at people who were in that, you know, in leadership or enrolled maybe one or two steps above me and saying, well, these people seem to be in areas that I want to gain some knowledge and skills in. Can I set up a meeting with them? Right? With very specific questions that I wanted to get to know or learn about. But also I think the key thing that really opened up the door for me with those individuals. So when I identified, I really had a very established, you know, agenda. Here's what I want to learn. Here's what I'm interested in doing. Here's how I'm going to apply it. The thing is really critical when you're dealing with how do you get someone to spend their time on something they don't know, right? They actually want to know that you're going to take this insights and go apply it in some way. Then I would follow up, right? Thank you for your time. And here's how I took all this information and here's what I did with it. Here was the outcome of that. Because I think it really showed people that I was listening and wow, if they invested their time in me, that could pay dividends, right? Maybe not for them as individuals but for the things that I could then go do and go impact. So, you know, that to me is really critical when even when people come to me for advice or mentorship, I really am looking for like, is this time well spent? Is this person coming prepared? Are they coming with questions? Are they coming with ways that they're going to apply this? And then what's that follow-up look like? Because follow-up is actually the hardest part of all of this. Once you've gotten that, do you maintain that relationship and do you add value back and forth, right? Across the table. Yeah, and you come from a teaching or an educator background, which you appreciate what it is to be on the other side. And now that you are a chief product officer and I'm sure you're also mentoring other people. An example of that is what you are doing right now sharing your story. Other than like, how do you go about picking the right mentees? Because I can imagine you have very limited time. Is there any advice you would give to people to find the right mentor and make sure that when that mentor receives that proposal, they pay attention. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think, A, it's like, well, when a person comes with an ask or a request with some questions, like, am I actually able to help? Do I have the skill set in the background and the experiences to add meaningful value here? Or do I know somebody else in my network who is maybe better equipped to help in this space, right? There might be things that I am stronger in and things that I'm not strong in, right? Like actually just having picked up this role here, I realized I actually haven't done a lot of like peer monetization work. I spent my life really in my career and consumer and search discovery, very much front end facing explore experience type of roles. And I was trying to get a handle on the whole world of monetization and how that works. I'm like, wow, I really don't know anything. So I have to go out there now and look for, for people who can actually help, you know, answer my questions and guidance. So I think it never stops, right? I'm looking for people who just have that spark and who are really able to articulate very clearly what they're looking for and what their plans and goals are. That to me is of critical importance. I think my mind is just wired that way. What's your outcome? Like, what are you doing or what are the areas you think you need to like grow or develop in or, you know, where you're struggling and then how can I then really discreetly, you know, pick where I can actually add value. It was just a really big amorphous. Like, I'd love to get into product but that's really hard for me to work with. I don't know kind of where you're starting or what areas you need to level up or refine in. Yeah, I see that all the time. This thing in Silicon Valley would say, but other people say yes. So if you've messed up enough, someone would say, yes, I'm going to grab coffee or a virtual coffee with you. The reality is the mentor also needs to perceive that this is a true interest in next steps. So there's actually another coffee and another coffee. And I think it's important to recognize that it's better to go deep with a few people and build that relationship and make sure there is a value exchange there rather than just having a first-time coffee with 25 foreign people and really just scratch the surface. Absolutely. In your case, I like that you recognize you're also learning. You mentioned it now. And I think it's also good to recognize how mentorship or the mentor role can change. Like maybe someone who was really helpful for you at some point in your career, now you're at different stage and you want to find different type of help, different type of mentors. That's okay. I think it's part of lifelong learning. You don't have to commit to the same person for the rest of your life as if it was a marriage. Absolutely. No, I think that's exactly spot on. And oftentimes those people in your network and your sphere can oftentimes recommend other people. And so that's been the case with me. I've recently had to dig in a little bit more around internationalization. How do we do that? And there's people who are in my network who can have introduced me to other people who have been invaluable and just my own knowledge. And so I think that that's really important just to continue to develop and build in those relationships for sure. So Michelle, for people who are not in the dating market and are not aware of Hinge, what does your product do and please give us an scale of the users? Yeah, absolutely. So Hinge is a mobile dating app. We are kind of in the same sphere as Tinder and Bumble and kind of the other apps that are out there. Our goal is really to drive meaningful connection. I think what sets us apart from other apps is our mission, our goal and our vision really is to be the dating app designed to be deleted. And that might just seem like a catchy tagline on the surface, but we really live, breathe and act with that motto in mind, with that tagline in mind. What does it mean to be designed to be deleted? Well, that really predicates that. We have ways to measure what deletion means and positively. So we wanna ensure that we are getting our users out on well-intentioned, great dates. So purposefully, our onboarding flow is much longer than our competitors, right? We purposely don't have a swipe mechanism that is very popular in other apps. We really make sure that you're taking time to get to know the person on the other side of that profile so that by the time that you do hit yes or no, you're excited about potentially getting to meet that person. And so we are, yeah, I mean, we've been growing exponentially. And so we're very excited about kind of our trajectory. I think that especially with the pandemic and everything that we've been going through as society in the past two years almost, it's crazy to even say that people, I think are looking for more authentic, more real ways to connect with each other, whether that be virtually or in person. And I think that we just have so much opportunity in this area to continue to press on that particular piece, right? You know, where you think about 10 years ago in the era of like Facebook and Instagram and just continuing filters curation and, you know, the facade almost, right? I think we've gotten really accustomed to that. And I think the past two years have like really almost like jolted us to say, wait a minute, like I'm not okay always and my life is not perfect. I'm not okay. And it's finally become okay to just say that. And I think what we're trying to do and what I'm really excited about is, you know, hinge is really well positioned to really own that intention space where we make it okay for you to just express your authentic self and not this curated set of six photos and, you know, et cetera. So that's what kind of we're doing right now. And I'm very excited about, you know, our future here for sure. And how did your roadmap change during the pandemic? Yeah, I mean, well, so I actually joined remotely. So I was a fully remote employee having to figure out everybody in this whole organization and what we were doing and how we were working and really the team had gone through. It had doubled in size during the pandemic which is pretty phenomenal if you ask me. And certainly maintained its core fabric, its core culture, which I found just inspiring and impressive, you know, the roadmap changed in that, well, our goal is to get people out on in-person dates. And that came to a halt, right? And so we really quickly had to pivot and figure out, okay, well, what can we do to still ensure that people are connecting? No one wants to sit on text forever. So we really quickly had to integrate video and audio as just a core, you know, foundation in our app. And then through that, we're also just learning a lot about what people are looking for, how hard it is to make connection, especially when you don't have really any other avenues outside of your close friend group or family since the pandemic has really, you know, closed down a lot of those avenues that otherwise it used to be available. So I do think that, you know, we've now taken it upon ourselves to say, okay, well, given this and given all the things people are going through, what can we do to actually help not just connect people, but it really improve connection. And so we're really focusing on a lot of these types of concepts and opportunities, more authenticity, more accountability that we do that. So yeah. I'm really impressed with how you were able to turn the situation into an opportunity, grow the team, grow usage of your product and still maintain those core values, as you're mentioning authenticity and making sure that this is a really high quality connection between two humans. At the same time, one of the unique things about this product personally is that you are part of a portfolio of companies, a mass group. And most or at least the ones that I know are also in the online dating space, correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, no, no, you're correct for sure on that one. So. I think team there is one of them and there are many others. So as a chief product officer, how do you go about making sure that you are delivering a unique experience for your user persona while maintaining certain consistency across the entire portfolio companies? Yeah, well, I don't know if consistency really is the goal here. So I think that was one of the things that when I first joined Hinge and I started kind of learning about the acquisition that happened in 2019. So it hasn't been that long. It's fairly recent for all intents and purposes, fairly recent. I know three years can feel like now, like a lifetime. But the goal really is for every single app has their own unique value prop, their own unique audience, that they're the thing that they're really trying to deliver on, right? I think for Hinge, our goal and our audience is coming to us for intentioned dating to find a relationship. Every app has their own spin on what their user are coming for. Bumble is women make the first move. Tender is more recency, more active, quick connection. So we maintain our uniqueness and our goals by focusing on our users. So the benefit though that I've actually seen and have experienced firsthand is I'm able to just ask other people and other parts of our brand, how are you solving this problem? How are you thinking about X, Y and Z? Are they able to share insights? And of course, we had different audiences and different end goals. And so every insight might not be as relevant in that same context, but it's another data point that I can use and my team can use to make more informed decisions. And so, I think that's been one of the benefits. But ultimately the goal really is not for consistency. It's keep on delivering on your core value prop and do that exceptionally well. Yeah. That's a really unique expansion strategy for me because most of the product leaders, most of the products that I know, they start very specific with a feature, a certain use case and they expand. They try to become a platform with covering multiple use cases. In your situation, you're so clear on your specific user persona. And based on what you're saying, your goal is not for people to now, go to other apps even within the same group, right? Sure. I mean, I guess our users and a user can really change depending on the day, their experience from last week on kind of what they're looking for. So I do think that we do see generally people are, there's some data out there floating around, I think on two or more dating apps. And so that is common behavior. I guess the question is like, what's your primary app, right? What are you primarily engaging with and looking for? And so again, I think what we just try and do is deliver on our core value prop, ensure that every decision that we're making from product to design to engineering is all laddering back up to that core mission, which is we want our dating app to be designed to be deleted. And so we wanna make sure that everything that we're building, every decision that we're making ladders back up to that. So that, A, we build user trust, but we also can deliver on that promise for our users. I mean, I tend to use like the traditional jobs to be done, right? And if our user are coming to us for a relationship and for meaningful connection, well, what can we do to deliver on that? And that's the same way that that guys is like, where are we failing at that today? And that will also help us uncover really unique opportunities that we might not be focused on otherwise. If we're constantly chasing competitors or constantly trying to integrate this or that or that new technology, right? There are things popping up all over the place every single day. But again, I think if you are true to what you're trying to deliver and your users and your customers see that, they'll build that trust, they'll build up that rapport with you and they'll come back. So we're just trying to continue to do that for sure. Love that clarity, because it's so easy as you grow, right? To think about different expansion opportunities and lose a little bit of the focus that brought you here. And some cases it might work, but in others they lose the entire experience. So kind of looking inside your own product organization, how do you structure your own product team? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I actually think organizational strategy and structure is not an easy thing. It's actually one of the things you constantly spend a lot of time evaluating and thinking about, honestly, in my own role. That's where I spend a lot of my time. Are we set up the right ways? We have the right tools. Do we have the right processes and throughputs? So, our organization is structured in that. And I literally took a lot of my experiences from Kayak and Spotify and Netflix and kind of said, what do I like and not like about each of these structures? And how might that then be applied to hinge? And I think one of the things that really resonates with me is, I really want to ensure that we create teams that feel fully empowered to come up with the ideas that they think are the most important to leverage and lean into the insights, take all of that and then work collaboratively with their team without a lot of like hierarchy of top-down leadership delivering on what your objectives are, what OKRs you need to go hit. So, I really try to structure the teams with a lot of scope and autonomy. And so, what that means is that you're not oriented around a specific surface or a button or a particular feature. I really try to organize around outcomes. What are we trying to deliver? And what do we think are the really important, big opportunities or big outcomes and big bets that we want to continue to invest in both from a product perspective and from an organization perspective? And then form teams around that. Of course, the objectives in OKRs and problems they might be focused on could iterate, could change as more data and more insights come in. But really, their purview is to solve things around profile innovation and really understand how do we bring people to life and at the core of that, there's so many different ways you can bring people to life. What does that mean? But you have one person who's really able to lead that through and through and really feel empowered to create a long-term vision, a long-term roadmap around that versus here's a feature. Well, what happens if that feature ever hits its lifetime? Then you're gonna have to figure out, well, where do you put that team and that person? So, structurally, I really try to empower the team. I think that I take something from previous organizations where we really treat the PM as the informed captain. You are both responsible for the direction of your ship, but also ensuring that everyone's working together and everyone understands where you're going. And so, that's really the organization there. And then again, one of the things that I've always really has urged me the wrong ways, bring people into an organization and you don't have any staffing for them. That is something I've experienced before personally and it is really hard as a product manager to get your job done when you don't have staffing. So, when you don't have support, when you don't have partnerships around you that can help you really execute on that vision and those objectives. So, that's the other thing is really ensuring that before we bring on new people or open up new areas of opportunity, that we have a plan for how we're gonna fund those because there's nothing worse than being onboard into an organization and then just sitting there, trying to like beg, borrow and steal to get somebody else to roadmap them. Yeah, I know because Spotify is actually very famous for how they were thinking about structuring teams in the squats and tribes. And I know that Netflix is another work-class organization. So, it's always interesting to see how it's product leader thinks about structuring their team and then how it changes because whatever it's working for you today might not be the same formula six, 12 months from now. Absolutely, we're already, we're going to this again, right? So, as we look for 2022, okay, we're gonna keep on growing, keep on scaling, how do we need to reorganize to actually ensure that it can become less about the individual team then. It actually comes about the cross team groups, the cross the organization, right? How do we start to get information across to marketing to our support teams to brand, et cetera, right? And how do all of the teams work together? What processes and principles do we have in place? And so, that's what we've been saying a lot of time now is do we have the right visibility? Do we have the right communication tools to really unlock and enable us to do our best work? Well, Michelle, it's been a pleasure to learn from you. Is there anything else you'd like to add? No, I mean, I think this has been a phenomenal conversation. I mean, and people can feel free to link with me on LinkedIn and I'm always available for questions or thought starters. I love product. I think that that's my biggest takeaway from my past, my careers. I really just love to like dig in with people and solve problems and it's been really fun to be able to do products, you know, a variety of different companies all serving, you know, that direct end consumer. It's really where I drive my passion from. Perfect. Well, thank you for your time. Absolutely. Thank you, Carlos. Bye-bye.