Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Becoming evidence-guided | Itamar Gilad (Gmail, YouTube, Microsoft)

September 21, 2023

AI Summary

5 min read

Itamar Gilad, formerly at Gmail, YouTube, and Microsoft, shares experiences from Google+—a massive opinion-driven failure involving about 1,000 people and years of effort, shut down in 2019—and the successful Gmail tabbed inbox, which used evidence like Wizard of Oz prototypes to validate demand among passive users, now loved by 85-88% of Gmail's 1.8 billion users. He argues companies regress from evidence-guided practices, and outlines the GIST framework (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks) to shift toward decisions informed by data over opinions.

Opinion-based vs. evidence-guided pitfalls

Gilad contrasts opinion-based development, like Google+'s top-down push to rival Facebook despite weak signals, with evidence-guided approaches seen in early Google, Amazon, and Airbnb. Signs of opinion-driven teams include vague goals, output-focused metrics, heavy roadmapping, low experimentation, and disengaged engineers. Evidence empowers mid-level challenges to leaders, as with Steve Jobs adapting iPhone ideas based on demos and trials rather than initial conviction.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:00) **Guest intro and Google+ failure (opinion-based development)**`
2 `* (00:08:47) **Gmail tabs success (evidence-guided approach)**`
3 `* (00:13:33) **Book pitch and evidence-guided signs**`
4 `* (00:21:05) **GIST model overview**`
5 `* (00:25:26) **Goals layer: North Star metric and trees**`
6 `* (00:33:39) **Ideas layer: ICE scoring and confidence meter**`
7 `* (00:50:13) **Steps layer: Validation gamut**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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Itamar Gilad is a product coach, author, and speaker with over two decades of experience in senior product roles at Google, Microsoft, and various startups. He is also the author of Evidence-Guided: Creating High-Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty and publishes a popular product management newsletter. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• What it means to be “evidence-guided”

• How to think about your KPIs as metric trees

• How to prioritize ideas using the “confidence meter”

• The GIST model for roadmapping

• Common mistakes with ICE

• Advice for using evidence to challenge gut-driven founders

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/becoming-evidence-guided-itamar-gilad

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Where to find Itamar Gilad:

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ItamarGilad

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