Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Be fundamentally different, not incrementally better | Jag Duggal (Nubank, Facebook, Google, Quantcast)

May 16, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Nubank chief product officer Jag Duggal explains how the company grew to surpass several major US fintechs combined, with 80-90% of growth from word of mouth, by prioritizing products customers love fanatically. Operating in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia with more customers than Bank of America, Nubank focuses on deep pain points in banking, a culture of extreme customer obsession, rigorous product testing, and clear strategy.

Culture of fanatical customer love
Nubank's five values—customers love us fanatically; hungry and challenge status quo; strong diverse teams; smart efficiency; owners not renters—shape daily decisions. Founders instilled bias toward customer delight over short-term tradeoffs. This drives word-of-mouth growth, as seen in high NPS (70s-90s, peaking at 94-95 in Mexico) and low churn, avoiding "leaky bucket" products.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:05:02) **Nubank Scale and Word-of-Mouth Growth**`
2 `* (00:06:24) **Culture of Fanatical Customer Love**`
3 `* (00:12:52) **Product Development Gates and Metrics**`
4 `* (00:21:27) **Iteration Examples: Payments Assistant and Rewards Card**`
5 `* (00:30:42) **PM Ownership and User Research Tactics**`
6 `* (00:43:35) **Strategy: Clear, Focused, Fundamentally Different**`
7 `* (00:53:10) **Category Design and Expansion**`

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Show Notes

Jag Duggal is chief product officer at Nubank, a decacorn neobank founded in Brazil. It’s valued at over $30 billion, is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, and SoFi combined, has 100 million customers (more than Bank of America!) while only operating in three countries in Latin America, and 80% to 90% of its growth comes through word of mouth. Prior to Nubank, Jag was a director of product management at Facebook, a senior vice president at Quantcast, and a product leader at Google. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How Nubank builds a fanatical user base

• Tactics for driving word-of-mouth growth

• Measuring customer love through the Sean Ellis score

• The importance of strategic clarity

• The role of category design in creating successful products

• Why companies should strive to be “fundamentally different,” not “incrementally better”

• Nubank’s vision for an AI-powered banking future

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/be-fundamentally-different-jag-duggal

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Where to find Jag Duggal:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagduggal/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Jag’s background

(04:34) Nubank’s remarkable achievements

(06:01) Nubank’s product development process

(11:23) Nubank’s values

(12:16) Building products people love fanatically

(15:21) The Sean Ellis score

(21:27) An example project using the Sean Ellis score

(25:07) Picking up the phone and calling customers

(28:20) The importance of starting small and iterating

(30:42) Pushing back effectively

(34:10) Uncovering pain points through customer research

(37:53) An example of setting a clear hypothesis

(42:01) Developing a strategy

(52:16) “Be fundamentally different, not incrementally better”

(53:10) Category design

(57:37) Nubank’s f