Freelancer Tips

Fiverrcast Episode 4: Interview with a Fiverr Product Manager

By
Fiverr Team
|
September 15, 2015

Transcript

Redd: Hello and welcome to FiverrCast, my name is Redd AKA reddhorrocks.Adam: And I’m Adam AKA twistedweb123, today we are joined by a very special guest, Asaf who is one of the Product Team Managers on Fiverr. How are you today Asaf?Asaf: Hi Adam I’m great, it’s good to be here and answer questions, I can’t wait for it.Adam: Personally I’m very, very excited to have you on today because I’m sure as, same as everyone we have a lot of things that we would love to ask you.Asaf: That’s great, for me and for us on Fiverr, first of all it’s a serious marketplace and we really appreciate all the efforts that you guys are doing, and we really love to help and cooperate with you.Adam: So being a Product Manager of Fiverr, must come with quite a lot of responsibility but also quite a lot of opportunity to work and develop the platform itself. So from that you must have quite a lot of ideas, always kind of rolling around thinking about what you can do. So can you kind of tell us, when you have an idea, what’s the kind of process of turning that into a reality.Asaf: Wow, that’s a good question, we have many ideas, actually we have too many ideas, at Fiverr we have an amazing open culture so basically it doesn’t matter who brings the idea, it can come from a team member, from one of the vice presidents or from the community, like form you guys the ambassadors. When someone from the company has an idea, we really push him to pitch it, as it’s the best thing he or she ever seen and had to create a story board. When you have many ideas, one of the things that are important is to prioritize them and the hardest part of the work is to know how to prioritize them well. We take in all the aspects into it, we take the customer satisfaction, the impact it has on the market and the impact it has on the business.Finally when we have it done, you start at the magic of creation, you create user stories, I prepare wire-frames, I’m working with wire-frames applications and I share it with other product managers to gather feedback. Some of the features we share with the ambassador group, to get a feedback and then we work with our design team. I take the wire-frames to my awesome designer, her name is Keren. Most of the time she just take my wire-frames, that I invested hours on creating, and changes all and make her magic and return a better version of it, then I take to it to my dev team and we understand the steps it requires and start developing it.Redd: From beginning to having the idea pitch to actually making it a reality, how long does that normally take?Asaf: Well, it depends on the size of the feature or of the idea, usually we are really trying to push things really fast in the company, it can take one (1)week from an idea to development and to release but sometimes it take weeks or months.Redd: So how big is the team that you personally work with?Asaf: So in Fiverr the teams, we call it task forces, the task forces are small groups of ninjas, each task force has two (2) front end developers, two (2) back end developers, one (1 ) designer, one (1) QA and one (1) analyst. But it’s rarely finished there, since we are working on metric stuff, which means I work with developers from other teams with different team members on different task, so it’s barely finished with my specific task force, we are really a cross organizational development team.Adam: So talking about crossing over teams, Fiverr has offices in many locations, such as in Israel and in New York, where do you personally work?Asaf: Yea Fiverr has many offices, also in Florida, some offices in Europe, I’m specifically located in the Office in Israel and it’s a great office, and it’s really inspiring work in a company that has many offices around the world.Redd: So, Asaf you must have so many ideas brought to you or so many ideas you personally get invested in. What’s your favorite idea that was rejected that never actually happened?Asaf: Well that’s a great question. You know as a product manager, not only on Fiverr, you learn that you shouldn’t fall in love with an idea or feature. You must understand the reason whether to decide to do things or not, it means when you have an idea that gets push back due to prioritizations, you should respect it and not fall in love with it, and your reason to fall in love with another one so it doesn’t matter.But you know what, when I think about it I remember that eight (8) months ago I wanted to give the sellers the option to send promo codes to their buyers, just give them discounts for a future purchases and so on, but we decided to put it outside from our focus and focus on something else, so we moved on and it is in our back log and I’m sure we will do it in the future.Adam: Is it okay if I fall in love with that idea?*laughs*Yea I think I might like that ideaAsaf: Yea, yeaAdam: I’m going to fall in love with it for the both of us, okay and I’m going to hope it comes, that is what I’m going to do.Asaf: Yea, I think that one of the things that makes me fall in love in products or features is that, the fact that the sellers are falling in love on features and product, so yea- I mean we should create, and we are going to release something soon that will give you the opportunity to give more power to your ideas, like a wish list on Fiverr or so. I think this will be the dream list of the service.Redd: Oh coolAdam: That sounds fantasticRedd: So what idea or feature have you created that you are most proud of that you were able to make happen? Like what’s your favorite one that you did?Asaf: I think that I’m proud when features improve the sellers’ experience, the customers’ experience. When we release the quick responses, “You remember like four (4) months ago”, we thought that it will help us to achieve our goal for better communication and it did, basically it did. But the feedback we received from the sellers was more than expected, was like really improve their daily work in Fiverr, so I think this is something I am proud of and I’m proud of my team that created it.Redd: I have to completely agree, the quick responses have, it’s reduced my work load so much and it’s made me so much more consistence as a seller, it’s been a really, really great feature so I would whole heartedly agree with that being an amazing, an amazing thing.Asaf: YeaAdam: I would have to agree as well *laughs*Asaf: Yes thank youAdam: So I understand that Fiverr hold an annual hackaton. I remember, I talked it about at the London event with one of the developers. So what was your entry this year for the annual hackaton?Asaf: It’s kind of hard for me to answer that question because I was in a festival in Belgium. So, basically my entry was a lot of beers and music.Adam: Shall we just talk about that? How was your holiday in Belgium?Asaf: Wow, it was amazing, it’s a great country and the festival was really huge and inspiring. I get a lot of inspiration to continually work after this festival, was really good. But talking again about the hackaton, it was really amazing, I came in the middle of the hackaton, and right now I’m helping one team to push their product which is Fiverr Synch, it’s the ability to synch your to do list with a Google character. I think that we will release it in around months from now, something like this.Adam: That would be a fantastic feature, I only recently really adopted Google calendar and to have that, the app or to take it away so easily with the notifications and everything as well would be, I think a massive benefit to the sellers and the buyers as well.Asaf: Yea can’t wait to release it.Redd: So Asaf, have you yourself ever sold on Fiverr? Have you ever produced any work on it?Asaf; Yes I do, actually right now I have four (4) orders in queue.Redd: Oh cool, what do you do?Asaf: Yes I am doing product reviews, most of the time for mobile and desktop apps, and to tell you the truth being a seller on Fiverr really helps me to better understand the challenges of the sellers from inside. I think that for a Product Manager in general it’s amazing to have the opportunity to use product as a customer. It’s something that I’m not sure you have that opportunity as a Product Manager in other companies, that’s great that you can use your own product, that’s really, really awesome.Adam: I think they call that secret millionaire in other countriesAsaf: Yes*laughs*Redd: So do you find yourself since you are also a seller and you have work in your queue, do you find that, that impacts your customer service decisions, like how do you approach challenging customers as a user of Fiverr and as a Product Manager? Do you get ideas from your orders?Asaf: You are talking about my experience as a seller?Redd: YeaAsaf: Being a seller on Fiverr really helps me to understand some pain-points or challenges that I can’t see it from outside. I can say that the dashboard for example, is something that was created as a part of a challenge I faced when I tried to understand where is the main place I should go as a seller and right now I have in my mind many ideas to change main funnels in the product and I’m pretty sure that in the next half year you will see many improvements and one of the things that I want is feedback, I want to hear all their stories.Adam: So I was going to ask you, touching upon on what we discussed previously, how do you handle or react to the community feedback? But being a part of the community as well by selling yourself, it must be very rewarding to handle that feedback because you’re also dealing with how you are going to process orders in the future as well.Asaf: Feedback is something really important for me as a product manager. Recently we release the new buyer instructions feature and you kind of notice my small face in the right corner, that’s a tool we use to get feedback, and I received around three thousand (3,000) different comments in one day, more than ninety thousand (90,000) sellers just watch it in like about a week. I can tell you that I read all of those three thousand (3,000) comments and I replied to about half of them, sometimes I reply with a smile so don’t get it too personal than the capacity to really answer but I really hope, the feedback is important not only for me but my amazing team as well, my developers.That gives them the power to continue with the hard work they do all the year, so we get the feedbacks, we have a meeting, we read the feedbacks, we prioritize the request that we get from each feedback or from each feature, that kind of feedbacks. And we have another type of feedback, the other type is the wish list requirements, we grab those feedback from many channels: from the forum, from meetings, from the ambassador’s groups and we read them every week in our weekly meetings and we see how we can add them to our road map and trying to prioritize them as I explained before.Redd: Well that sounds really cool, it seems like there is a lot of different places that you guys and monitor and pull from in order to get community feedback, and I think that’s absolutely awesomeAsaf: Yes and keep them coming, this is our re-fuel to continue in improving the market place because we have our ideas and we have it, from our experience there are many employers in Fiverr that are also sellers and the good ones. So they bring their feedbacks it’s really important for us but the community, the community is the best place to get feedbacks though, as I said, “Keep them coming.”Redd: So speaking of the community, I think we should probably talk about the community questions that we have today, what do we got Adam?Adam: We got a couple today to look through, one of them I think is a great question and I think one that both myself and you can answer it, which is “How to enhance productivity at home?”Redd: Oh yea, that is a great question. I think a lot of that depends on your particular set up and work environment. I go through phases where I’m really super productive and really not but I had this really interesting thing happened about a month ago, my internet at home stopped working one day, like it was gone I had nothing. So all I could do, because I needed to get obviously all of my work done, so what I was doing was, I was recording all of my orders, but I was on my phone to pull up the scripts so I had my computer for recording and then I just had the script to my phone and I had no access to email, no Skype, no nothing like- And in that period, and then what I was doing, was going to a coffee shop to upload everything, and in that period of time, I don’t think I’ve ever worked faster because I had absolutely zero distractions, I didn’t have, I wasn’t constantly checking my email or looking on Yahoo news or, you know talking to people on Skype, I was so focused.So I think, if you ever have a time when you really, really need to enhance your productivity, I’d say cut out all the background noise and just let yourself be present in your task and that can really, really help. And when I have more time to do my orders I’m a lot more okay with going and checking email or talking to other people but if you need to be super productive I say just narrow in on what you’re doing and don’t let the outside world distract you.What about you, what helps you enhance your productivity, other than coffee which is my other big thing?Adam: Actually it’s quite similar; I originally try to enhance my productivity at home by making it almost like an office environment. So I try to make sure that I start at a certain time of day, I finish a certain time of time and I kind of clocked in and clocked out. But what I actually notice when I try to do that, was I was more clock watching and checking emails, checking Skype and I wasn’t actually getting that much work done at all and especially in the home with my young family, I was always back and forth as well.So the best that I actually found to make my time more productive was to make sure I only worked during a certain time where I could make sure there was no distractions. So I would, rather than set a whole kind of day to do something, I would say right “Tonight at this time everything is going off, I’m concentrating fully on work,” and I would get so much more done in say, a two (2) to three (3) hour period than I would trying to work a 9-5 and replicating a kind of office environment thinking I would be more productive.Redd: Yea I think a lot of it does depend on your environment and how do you work best, so I know what works well for me and I know what works well for you but, there may be other people who, the task that they have like they actually welcome interruption or welcome distraction, it’s really different for everyone I think.Adam: The problem I have is when I become distracted for five (5) minutes, I procrastinate for about twenty(20)minutes after that and before I know, an hour is gone and that’s the issue I have, it’s mainly procrastination stops my productivity.Redd: Yea and I would definitely say that “I’m not necessarily advocating the idea of breaking your internet just to get work done because the amount of time that I then spend on the phone with the cable company was not great.Well that’s where all the time went, there is that, so let’s see what else we have, oh this is a good one Adam, from Joetune “I was getting tons of order and suddenly business over the past two (2 weeks came to a holt, now what? Do I make more Gigs maybe?”Adam: Well I would normally say in this situation, kind of give it time, have a look at what you can improve, maybe see if there is something you can do to make it better, but we have Asaf on the show today and he knows a lot more about this than I do. So I’m going to through the ball to him and get kind of the inside scope of what is the best way to precede here.Asaf: Well I think that this is great question, that I see that comes a lot in our forum. I think that improving your current Gig should be your main focus. Improving a Gig can be done with improving their description, I see many descriptions that can be improved by little adjustments like really describe what your service is about, but, so you know what Adam I think that’s a really interesting topic and I think that we can create a new podcast and talk only about it.Adam: I think that would be a great idea, I think there’s a lot to mention with that.Red: Yea definitelyAsaf: Sure let’s do it guysRedd: Well if you guys have any other questions for Asaf, you can always reach out to him or we also have the community questions right on the forum so if anyone out there has any more questions they want us to answer or if they have any questions pertaining to this podcast you can always get in touch with us there on the forum we’ll be happy to help.So I think that’s about all we have time for today so thank you for listening, thank you so much to Asaf for joining us, we really, really appreciate your time. Our jingle was created by Custom Drum moves we were edited today by Dansha, thank so much and we’ll see you next week.Transcribed by: alleshalennon

Fiverr Team
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