Inside Intercom

It’s often said that good product design is simple, and supporting all of the pixels and interactions we create are the simplest element of all, words. John Saito, UX writer at Dropbox and previously the very first UX writer at YouTube, explains how to find and document your product's voice and effectively use words to guide users to success. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nothing will drain your startup's talent pool faster than a bad manager. So what makes for a good one? Kim Scott, author of the bestselling book Radical Candor: Be a kickass boss without losing your humanity, explains how to create a culture of giving and receiving feedback that will help your team do its best, most fulfilling work. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can product makers offer more functionality without making it harder for users to be successful? Andrew Ofstad, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Airtable and former product manager at Google, explains why complexity slowly creeps in, how his team at Google pared down the Maps UI using first principles, how he keeps product simple at Airtable, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Des Traynor, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Intercom, recounts lessons and stories from the early days of the company and explains how they apply to those who are navigating early-stage startup life today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Golden Krishna, author of The Best Interface is No Interface and a design strategist at Google, explains the trap of screen-centric thinking, what hardware can teach us about software design, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Edmond Lau, author of The Effective Engineer and a leader on Quip's user growth and engagement team, shares how engineers can make a greater impact, avoiding the layers of product and organizational complexity that often block them, strategies for prioritizing work, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Monal Chokshi was hired as Lyft's first dedicated researcher and tasked with building out the ridesharing company's UX research team and culture – something she'd done successfully before at SoundCloud and Intuit. She shares how researchers can prove their value, the way she’s structured her teams and why lightweight, guerrilla research – an exercise she likens to dating – is the user research gateway drug for startups. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Colin Bentley and Brian Donohue, Group Product Managers at Intercom and two of our first product hires, reflect on how their roles have changed at scale, what they’ve done to stay close to customers, learning to work with marketing and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everett Katigbak has played a key role in shaping the brands of Stripe, Facebook and Pinterest. In this chat with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, he shares how brand design can support product and spread culture, the story behind Facebook's Analog Research Laboratory, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If your product is going to grow, new users need to find success with it, fast. Behance co-founder and Benchmark Capital venture partner Scott Belsky explains how to design your product’s first mile, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Janna Bastow, Co-Founder of Mind the Product and ProdPad, talks with Intercom's Adam Risman about how to build and scale product roadmaps, say no to feature requests and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nearly five years ago Jeff Gardner became Intercom's first customer support hire. Today he manages a team of 50+, who are handling more than 25,000 customer conversations a month. In a chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he explains how to keep your customer support personal as you scale. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Long before becoming a successful startup founder, Bridget Harris could be found busking Celtic Folk in London. In a conversation with Intercom's John Collins, she explains how her busking days shaped the way she runs YouCanBook.me, why she opted to bootstrap over the conventional VC funding route, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From pinpointing the Job-to-be-Done to creating successful users and knowing when it's time to rebuild a product, we look back at our favorite lessons and insights from past episodes. Guests include Julie Zhuo, Jason Fried, Matt Hodges, Michael Pryor, Sarah Hatter, Bob Moesta and Samuel Hulick. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tina Roth Eisenberg, author of the Swiss Miss design blog and founder of Creative Mornings, TeuxDeux and Tattly, shares her tips for turning side projects into startups, why every founder must get a handle on sales, and how community can raise your startup's ceiling. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.