DeepSummary
The episode features an interview with Naveen Gavini, who joined Pinterest in 2011 as an engineer and currently serves as the SVP of Products. He discusses his initial motivation for joining Pinterest, which stemmed from his desire to work on mobile development during the early mobile era and his interest in the company's product and mission. He describes the interview process, which was organic and focused on understanding the team's passion and values.
Gavini shares insights into his first year at Pinterest, emphasizing the challenges of working on mobile development and convincing others of its importance. He highlights a pivotal moment in the summer of 2012 when the entire team rallied around building mobile apps, leading to a significant shift in traffic from web to mobile within weeks. Throughout his tenure, Gavini took on various roles, driven by a desire to solve new problems and challenges as the company grew.
Gavini reflects on building a strong culture of collaboration and interdisciplinary teamwork at Pinterest, emphasizing the importance of embracing diverse perspectives and blurring disciplinary lines. He also discusses the company's approach to hiring, prioritizing culture fit and involving co-founders in the interview process. Finally, Gavini shares his decision to leave Pinterest after 11 years to pursue his dream of founding his own company, inspired by the current AI era.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Building a strong team culture and fostering collaboration across disciplines is crucial for success.
- Hiring for culture fit, especially in the early stages of a company, is essential.
- Being open to new challenges and problems as a company grows can lead to personal and professional growth.
- Passion for the product and mission is a key driver for early employees joining a startup.
- Pivoting and adapting to emerging trends, like the shift to mobile, is vital for a startup's success.
- Early employees often wear multiple hats and take on various roles as the company evolves.
- Maintaining a growth mindset and continuously learning are important for career advancement at a startup.
- Founders and early employees can shape a company's culture and values significantly.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I think there's three factors to me, and the first is just the team and the people. And I knew that whatever I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with these people. And so I need to both, like, really respect them from an area of, like, that I can learn and grow from them, and I want to spend that time with them, but then also that they're just, like, genuinely good people that you want to hang out with, that you want to get to know and kind of be friends with.“ by Naveen Gavini
- “And so overcoming that hurdle, and really both on a personal level, both because there's a lot of imposter syndrome of like, hey, what am I doing here? I'm not a designer by trade. I know a lot about design, and I can respect and value great design, and I've learned a lot from the designers I work with. But ultimately, I know that I'm an engineer by trade, and so I'm not fooling anyone that I'm going to out design them.“ by Naveen Gavini
- “But I think if you have an open mind and are open to being presented problems, challenges and then can get excited about them, I think that's really what startups and the dynamic environment is all about.“ by Naveen Gavini
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Episode Information
Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
Sandhya Hegde, Unusual Ventures
6/19/23
In this episode, we are debuting “Bright and Early” — an Unusual Ventures interview series with early hires at iconic tech companies. You will often hear successful founders share how crucial their first few hires are. These early employees help define the company's culture. They need to be both doers and leaders who can prioritize ruthlessly. They often have an outsized impact on the company and wear multiple hats as the company grows. Finding them and empowering them to be successful is hard.
In this episode, co-hosted by Chris Marty and Rachel Star from Unusual Ventures, we hear from Naveen Gavini, employee #10 at Pinterest who joined the company 11 years ago as a mobile engineer and went on a career-defining journey to become their head of product.
This conversation covers
(2:06) Why Naveen wanted to join Pinterest and how he got connected to the team
(4:38) What his interview process looked like
(7:07) The key drivers that motivated him to accept the offer
(9:37) Naveen’s first year as an engineer at Pinterest
(12:41) How Naveen brought the team together to build Pinterest’s mobile app
(15:09) How he thought about managing his career path within the company
(18:06) His approach to team-building
(21:04) Pinterest’s interdisciplinary culture of “knitting”
(24:15) Interviewing early hires, specifically for culture fit
To get notified for new interviews in the Bright and Early series, subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2VKvTTD
To stay up to date, follow us on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/unusualventures/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Unusual_VC
Chris Marty is an Operating Partner at Unusual Ventures and partners with founders to build high-performing early teams. He can be reached at chris@unusual.vc and
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christhomasmarty/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_chrismarty
Rachel Star is Principal at Unusual helping to build and support the firm’s consumer investments. She can be reached at rachel@unusual.vc and
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-star-2948b288/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rachel_a_star
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to help founders find product-market fit and build iconic software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.