Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

How to build trust and grow as a product leader | Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack, Instacart, Zynga, Pixar)

October 23, 2022

AI Summary

5 min read

Fareed Mosavat, chief development officer at Reforge and former product leader at Slack, Instacart, and Zynga (with early roots in engineering at Pixar), discusses the realities of advancing as a product manager. Drawing from his career across creative tech, startups, and scale-ups, he explains why PM skill-building relies on real-world execution and outlines mechanisms for faster progress, trust-building, and leadership transitions.

Why PM development is inherently difficult

Product management lacks upfront training like engineering bootcamps or CS degrees, so no credential reliably predicts or prepares success. Specific knowledge emerges only from shipping real products with actual customers and data—reading, courses, or mentorship accelerate but cannot replace reps. Breaking in is tough without elite paths like APM programs, and intra-company training often stays company-specific, leaving generalization to individuals. Junior PMs start with known problems and solutions (e.g., deliver a settings page), building toward unknowns as they prove impact.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (04:01) **Guest career overview and Pixar origins**`
2 `* (14:28) **Why PM skill-building is uniquely hard**`
3 `* (18:03) **PM learning loop: Execute, generalize, communicate, scale**`
4 `* (24:25) **Career inflections via sponsorship and trust-building**`
5 `* (34:08) **IC-to-manager "canyon": Avoid death spiral**`
6 `* (40:43) **Four types of product work for leadership portfolios**`
7 `* (50:05) **Portfolio careers trend: Advising, fractional, content**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Fareed Mosavat is Chief Development Officer at Reforge, where he leads production, content, and new-product experiences. Previously, he led growth and product teams at Slack and Instacart, was a GM at Zynga, and also served as VP of Product at RunKeeper. Before all of that, Fareed’s fascinating career began in engineering for Pixar, where he learned the art of storytelling and collaboration. In today’s episode, we talk about how his time at Pixar influenced the way he thinks about product, why it’s so difficult to become a better PM, and how to avoid the “manager death spiral.” Fareed shares important insights on how to earn the trust of your manager and coworkers, the four types of product work—and why you need to understand all four. He also provides solid examples of how to generalize your learnings and explains why this will expand your options, make you a better PM, and boost your chances of moving into a leadership role.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-establish-credibility-and

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Where to find Fareed Mosavat:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/far33d

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

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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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