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Nickey Skarstad is a Director of Product Management at Duolingo, where she is leading a stealth 0 \u2192 1 product. Prior to Duolingo, she was VP of Product at The Wing, Product Lead at Airbnb, where she led much of the Experiences product team, Product Lead at Shopify, and Director of Product Management at Etsy.

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

\u2022 Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/startups

\u2022 Dovetail: https://dovetailapp.com/lenny

\u2022 Unit: https://unit.co/lenny

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In this episode:

[3:32] An overview of Nickey\u2019s career

[7:39] What she learned from building product at Airbnb

[8:42] How to maintain and operationalize product quality

[9:44] Metrics that help you maintain quality

[20:08] Which company has most informed her product development approach

[21:57] How to structure your product org

[24:47] Should you go GM vs. functional

[27:18] How you set vision, translate that into goals, and then execute on it

[32:30] Brainstorming advice

[35:04] How to use OKRs effectively

[37:57] How to get better at influence as a PM

[41:23] How to know if a decision is a one-way or two-way door

[42:29] Second-order decisions, and second-order thinking

[46:35] Operationalizing principles

[47:17] Getting your team on board with your strategy

[49:39] Designing a product review meeting

[54:08] Tips for working remotely as a PM

[56:44] Lightning round

\u2014Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/nickey-skarstad-airbnb-etsy-shopify\u2014

Where to find Nickey:

\u2022 Newsletter: https://nickey.substack.com/

\u2022 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nickeyskarstad

\u2022 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickeyskarstad/

\u2022 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickeySkarstad

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Referenced:

\u2022 Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows

\u2022 Anne Helen Petersen

\u2022 Superhuman

\u2022 Loom