An inside look at how Miro builds product: Lessons on outmaneuvering competitors, team structure, product quality, and moving fast | Varun Parmar (CPO of Miro)
April 20, 2023
AI Summary
5 min readMiro's CPO Varun Parmar explains the company's product operations in a competitive visual collaboration market. With 1,800 employees and over 450 PMs mostly in Europe, Miro structures around cross-functional AMPED teams (analytics, marketing, product, engineering, design) focused on personas like enterprise admins or developers, enabling team-centric innovation across industries from tech to manufacturing.
Cross-functional culture and structure
Miro emphasizes internal empathy and teamwork to bridge global hubs, using questions in reviews to uncover insights from GTM teams. Product streams target personas (e.g., enterprise, platform) with horizontal groups for growth, infrastructure, and AI. AMPED integration ensures holistic views, with product marketing addressing positioning gaps. Enterprise checklists and org-wide visibility on work (Slack channels, reviews for high-complexity items) maintain consistency despite persona focus.
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What you'll learn
- 1 **[00:33] - [04:13] Episode Intro and Miro Background**
- 2 **[04:13] - [07:45] Miro's Core Culture: Empathy and Teamwork**
- 3 **[07:45] - [12:45] Building Empathy: Questions and Design Sprints**
- 4 **[12:45] - [17:20] Outmaneuvering Competitors**
- 5 **[17:20] - [23:25] Product Org Structure and Consistency**
- 6 **[23:25] - [31:52] Product Philosophies: Competition, Constant Improvement, Speed**
- 7 **[31:52] - [47:43] Execution: Motto, Metrics, and Product Process**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Brought to you by Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life | Braintrust—For when you needed talent, yesterday | Linear—The new standard for modern software development
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Varun Parmar is the Chief Product Officer of Miro and has over two decades of experience in the tech industry. Prior to joining Miro, Varun held executive positions as Chief Product Officer at Box and Syncplicity (acquired by Dell EMC) and spent six years in product management at Adobe. He also co-founded Doculus, which was later acquired by Box. In today’s episode, we discuss:
• The importance of empathy and how to foster it
• The “AMPED” structure for cross-functional product teams
• How to move fast and stay ahead of the competition
• Powerful product and design rituals
• How Miro acquired their first 1,000 users
• How Miro successfully added a sales motion
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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/an-inside-look-at-how-miro-builds
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Where to find Varun Parmar:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vparmar230
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vparmar/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Varun’s background
(04:08) How Miro operates as a cross-cultural product team
(07:22) How applying empathy helped Miro build Miro Talktrack
(11:51) What makes Miro stand out
(17:08) Miro’s AMPED structure
(22:57) The benefit of having product marketing as a part of the cross-functional team
(25:24) How competition affects growth and product strategy
(31:43) Why speed is so important and how to improve it
(34:21) How Miro ensures that their products meet quality standards
(37:19) How to remove blockers
(47:22) Miro’s product development process
(53:34) How OKRs work at Miro
(55:55) The product stack at Miro
(1:01:20) Big bets vs. maintenance and bug fixes at Miro
(1:03:44) The “three horizons” framework
(1:04:30) The importance of accountability
(1:10:46) How Miro got their first 1,000 users
(1:12:33) Other growth levers at Miro
(1:15:53) Adding a sales motion
(1:18:08) Miro AI, and new
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