Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Building Anchor, selling to Spotify, and lessons learned | Maya Prohovnik (Spotify’s Head of Podcast Product)

September 28, 2023

AI Summary

5 min read

Maya Prohovnik, Spotify's head of podcast product and Anchor's first employee, discusses her approach to product leadership, drawing from building Anchor into the platform hosting over 75% of new podcasts and integrating it post-acquisition.

Dogfooding to Understand Creators

Prohovnik maintains four podcasts herself—covering Stephen King books, Big Brother recaps, a sci-fi book, and parenting—to immerse in the creator experience, from production barriers to community needs. She mandates her team dogfood by starting podcasts, elevating those who do in offsites and stories, and fixing bugs encountered personally, like late-night DMs to engineers. This informs onboarding tips, such as recording with a friend or avoiding scripts, and prioritizes user pain over distant data or feature requests.

Gut Instincts Versus Data in Pivots

Prohovnik treats gut as valid data, backed by experience, user stories, and anecdotes to influence teams, especially in large orgs. Anchor pivoted twice despite positive metrics: from 1.0's retained voice messaging (loved by a niche but too small) to 2.0's content tools, then embracing podcast export after resisting user requests for six months, sparking hockey-stick growth. Key: unwavering mission to democratize audio, 80/20 rule against vocal minorities, killing darlings, and testing small (e.g., export trial) while staying flexible.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:48) **Intro and Anchor's Early Growth Hack**`
2 `* (04:38) **Dogfooding Obsession and Maya's Podcasts**`
3 `* (16:58) **Balancing Data-Driven and Gut Instincts**`
4 `* (20:56) **Anchor Pivots: Killing Darlings for Scale**`
5 `* (29:42) **Unscalable Hacks and "Build Things That Don't Scale"**`
6 `* (36:04) **Spotify Acquisition Success and Integration**`
7 `* (39:34) **Running Startup-Like in Big Co + Post-Acquisition Challenges**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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Maya Prohovnik is currently Spotify’s Head of Podcast Product. She was employee #1 at Anchor, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019 and now powers more than 80% of all new podcasts created in the world. In 2023, Maya was named one of the Most Important People in Podcasting by The Hollywood Reporter. In today’s episode, we discuss:• How Maya operationalizes “dogfooding”• How to balance data-driven decision-making and intuition• Strategies for preserving startup culture in a large organization• Tactical tips to improve at public speaking• How Radical Candor and the Eisenhower matrix transformed her approach to managing people• What’s next at Spotify for Podcasters

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-anchor-selling-to-spotify

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Where to find Maya Prohovnik:

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mayafish

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

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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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