Ami Vora is the Chief Product Officer at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace last valued at $12.59b. She has a wide array of experience in tech, having been an early employee at Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. She has also held a variety of roles, spanning product, marketing, and even operating Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund). Alongside her impressive career, Ami writes insightful blog posts about scaling tech products, teams, and cultures, and we unpack some of those posts in this conversation.
 
In today's episode, we discuss:
Ami’s fascinating journey through tech
Tactical advice for forming a product vision and strategy
What product simplicity means, and how to achieve it
Some of Ami’s most popular career and product frameworks
Advice for operating amidst uncertainty
How to optimize your career like a product

Where to find Ami Vora:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amvora/
Substack: https://substack.com/@amivora
 
Where to find Moe Ali:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productfaculty
Twitter: https://twitter.com/productfaculty
ProductFaculty: https://www.productfaculty.com/
 
Referenced: Facebook’s VC fund (fbFund) that Ami operated: https://medium.com/swlh/fbfund-the-investment-fund-youve-never-heard-of-that-helped-start-lyft-bc57ee661162
Faire: https://www.faire.com/
“If I can see a problem, it’s mine to solve” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/if-i-can-see-a-problem-its-mine-to
“It’s not prioritization until it hurts” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/its-not-prioritization-until-it-hurts
“Listen, Document, Decide” blog post: https://amivora.substack.com/p/learning-to-make-decisions-in-a-new
 
Timestamps:
[00:00:59] Ami's background
[00:02:48] The mentality of leaving Microsoft for a temp role at FB
[00:05:06] Advice for forming a product vision and strategy
[00:09:12] What it means for a product experience to be "simple”
[00:10:24] How to create simple product experiences
[00:10:52] The "Listen, Decide, Document" framework
[00:12:23] Ami's attitude to prioritising amidst uncertainty
[00:13:37] Getting comfortable with making wrong decisions
[00:15:48] It's not prioritization until it hurts
[00:16:36] How to optimize your career like a product
[00:18:52] How to make time for career development
[00:20:53] If you see a problem, it's yours to solve
[00:23:03] Leadership and career hack: Upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0
[00:25:30] How to solicit valuable feedback
[00:27:35] The future of PM and how to stay ahead of it