Building Zoom with Smita Hashim

Summary

Building Zoom with Smita Hashim

Podcast: Building One with Tomer Cohen
Host: Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer
Guest: Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer of Zoom
Release Date: May 14, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of Building One, Tomer Cohen engages in a profound conversation with Smita Hashim, the Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Zoom. Smita brings a wealth of experience from her illustrious career spanning Google and Microsoft, coupled with her deep-rooted expertise in video technology dating back to the 1990s. The discussion delves into Smita's professional journey, Zoom's product philosophy, the company's unique culture, and the future of collaboration tools enhanced by AI.

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Smita Hashim's Career Journey: From Researcher to Product Leader

Smita Hashim's transition from academia to the tech industry is both inspiring and insightful. With a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Smita began her career as a researcher focused on video compression technologies.

Smita Hashim [00:52]: "Before March 2020, very few people actually knew of Zoom, but that changed almost overnight."

Her move from research to product management was driven by her desire to engage directly with consumers and customers, moving beyond theoretical work to practical applications that have tangible impacts.

Smita Hashim [04:44]: "As a researcher, you actually write a book which is data driven and problem driven... These skills really helped me as I started as a product manager."

Smita attributes her success in product management to the analytical and communication skills honed during her academic pursuits. Her ability to define clear problem statements and develop structured methodologies proved invaluable in her roles at Google, Microsoft, and ultimately Zoom.

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Key Product Principles at Zoom: Customer Focus and Responsiveness

At Zoom, Smita has been instrumental in fostering a culture that prioritizes customer feedback and responsiveness. Zoom's initial success was built on a simple yet effective product philosophy: ensure the core experience works seamlessly.

Smita Hashim [01:15]: "Zoom mainly focused on a simple product that just worked. That's it. No more features, no more sizzle, just making sure the core experience worked."

This foundational approach has evolved, but the essence remains—prioritizing user experience and adapting swiftly to meet customer needs. Smita emphasizes the importance of flexibility in the product roadmap, allowing Zoom to respond dynamically to feedback without compromising on key commitments.

Smita Hashim [17:31]: "We have some things on the product roadmap which are not negotiable... But the rest of the roadmap, we will move it around... it's a shared mindset."

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Overcoming Challenges as a Woman in Tech: Finding Her Voice and Mentorship

Smita candidly shares her experiences navigating the male-dominated tech industry. From being one of the few women in her academic cohort to being the only woman in many professional settings, Smita faced significant challenges in finding her voice and establishing her presence.

Smita Hashim [08:10]: "I struggled with finding my voice. It was very hard for me."

Mentorship played a crucial role in her journey. Working under influential leaders like Susan Wojcicki at Google provided Smita with the guidance and confidence to assert herself and make impactful decisions.

Smita Hashim [11:17]: "With Susan, the feedback was very kind, but they were good examples... This is what I can relate to."

Smita also highlights the importance of staying true to one's values and finding a balance between competence and compliance, which is often expected of women in the workplace.

Smita Hashim [09:00]: "Eventually you have to live with yourself... We have to be ourselves and that's the journey we have to be on."

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Zoom's Culture and Customer Engagement: A Fluid Feedback Loop

Zoom distinguishes itself through its highly responsive and fluid engagement with customers. Smita describes how Zoom's structure allows for continuous and direct communication between product managers and customers, fostering a virtuous cycle of feedback and improvement.

Smita Hashim [28:17]: "There's a lot of comfort with direct conversations... The product evolves really fast, and our customers are also very vocal about sharing their feedback."

This open feedback loop is not confined to a single team but permeates across all functions, driven by leadership that models and encourages active listening and responsiveness.

Smita Hashim [29:13]: "With Eric, with the product team, sales team can reach out to anyone with the customer feedback."

Smita contrasts this approach with her previous experiences at larger companies, where customer engagement was less direct and less fluid.

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Future of Collaboration Tools and AI: Enhancing Productivity and Flexibility

Looking ahead, Smita is enthusiastic about the integration of generative AI into collaboration tools like Zoom. She envisions AI becoming an invaluable assistant that enhances productivity by managing meeting summaries, action items, and other organizational tasks.

Smita Hashim [30:28]: "Generative AI is really a gift and users will be able to do so much more and be so much more productive."

Smita believes that AI will not only make meetings more effective but also provide users with greater flexibility, ultimately contributing to better work-life balance.

Smita Hashim [31:37]: "AI will help people... smart chapters, quick summaries, those kind of things, I can just get a sense of things that happen."

She also touches on Zoom's commitment to making these advanced features accessible without additional costs, reinforcing their dedication to providing value to all customers.

Smita Hashim [25:39]: "We have built Zoom AI Companion... we decided to include it at no additional cost."

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Takeaways

1. Learning and Adaptability: Smita's background in research equips her with a unique perspective in product management, emphasizing the importance of a structured approach to problem-solving and effective communication.

2. Customer-Centric Culture: Zoom thrives on a highly responsive feedback loop, enabling rapid product evolution and deep customer engagement.

3. Balancing Stability with Flexibility: Smita highlights the delicate balance between maintaining a stable product roadmap and being adaptable to shifting customer needs, ensuring that critical commitments remain firm while remaining open to change.

4. Empowering Users as Team Members: Viewing users as part of the product team fosters a collaborative environment where customer feedback is actively sought and valued.

5. Future of AI in Collaboration: The integration of generative AI promises to revolutionize collaboration tools by enhancing productivity and providing greater flexibility for users.

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Smita Hashim's insights offer a comprehensive look into effective product leadership, the significance of customer engagement, and the evolving landscape of collaboration tools. Her journey underscores the value of adaptability, continuous learning, and the pivotal role of mentorship in overcoming challenges.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of Building One. Stay tuned for our next conversation with the former CPO of Slack, Noah Weiss.

Transcript

[Smita Hashim]

LinkedIn news I've always been curious, always looking for patterns in society, how people navigate and find their way.

[Tomer Coyne]

You always need some level of conflict.

[Smita Hashim]

To initiate that dialogue.

[Mehta Hashim]

It's never a straight line.

[Tomer Coyne]

I'm Tomer Coyne, Chief product officer of LinkedIn, and this is building one.

[Smita Hashim]

Yes, there's a roadmap, but if you say I have a roadmap so no to you customers, then who are we building it for?

[Mehta Hashim]

That's Mehta Hashim, the Chief Product Officer of Zoom. She's telling me about how she balances Zoom's product roadmap against the need to be always responsive to customer needs. We're going to get into that and so much more. So stick around.

[Jessi Hempel]

From LinkedIn News, I'm Jessi Hempel, host of the hello Monday Podcast. Start your week with the hello Monday Podcast. We'll navigate career pivots. We'll learn where happiness fits in. Listen to hello Monday with me, Jesse Hempel on the LinkedIn Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mehta Hashim]

Before March 2020, very few people actually knew of Zoom, but that changed almost overnight. Shortly after the COVID 19 pandemic started, it was hard to find anyone who hadn't used the service. While the need for seamless, high quality video conferencing skyrocketed with the pandemic, Zoom almost anticipated it. Prior to Zoom, video conferencing was quite the pain. It was fictionful and as a result, never became a desired way of communicating. Zoom's initial product philosophy was simple, but quite genius in retrospect, given how cumbersome video conferencing was. Zoom mainly focused on a simple product that just worked. That's it. No more features, no more sizzle, just making sure the core experience worked. When you called somebody, the video quality was there and the conversation was going. Since then, it has continued to innovate, introducing new tools to help people come and work together, but the core philosophy was about making video conferencing easy and simple. Today I'm excited to interview Smita Hashim, Zoom's Chief Product Officer. Smita is a tech industry veteran with deep roots in video since the 90s. She had long tenures building in both Google and Microsoft before eventually joining as the CPO of Zoom. In this interview, we'll discuss many things, including how Smidda has benefited from and continues to nurture a growth mindset, why being extremely responsive to customers is a core cultural aspect of how Zoom builds, and how Zoom works to balance the responsiveness they have with a more stable product Roadmap. That's a really hard balance to get right. Plus, Smita will give us some insight into the experience of being a woman coming up in the earlier days of tech and how finding mentors and role models helped her navigate the space. Let's get started.

[Tomer Coyne]

You started as a researcher, you started as a scientist. You have a PhD in electrical engineering, computer science. That's pretty unique. Kind of curious. What drew you from academia into products?

[Smita Hashim]

So I've always loved learning, I've always loved technology, I've always loved sciences and that's why I did my PhD and I was actually working at a really innovative company. Early leader in a lot of video. I've done video for a long time and I really like my research. I used to do a lot of standards works with ITU United nations and I used to work with engineers on the research. Sometimes the research would make it to product, but I really wanted to work directly and work with consumers and customers to build products. So that's where my inclination went. The other aspect was I just love working with people. So as a researcher, you work with smaller teams, but I just loved working with people. So I was like, as a product, I get to work with all these people, get closer to customers, hence the change. And that's what led me to my journey.

[Tomer Coyne]

That's remarkable to think about. Like when you think about the journey from a researcher into the product where you want to go closer to building.

[Mehta Hashim]

When you think about your background as a researcher, is there anything unique that you brought from your career in academia into your new career as a product builder? Something we don't often see in a classic product builder.

[Smita Hashim]

So what happens towards hindsight is 2020 and dots connect after the fact. I think that's true for a lot of us. I was reflecting on it and I said one thing is as a researcher, you actually, you write a book which is data driven and problem driven. That's your thesis. So you go through this process of what is the problem statement? How can I have an impact? How can I make it repeatable and consistent? And how can I write about it so that people will understand it? My paper will get published. So you go through all of that and those are the skills which I think really helped me as I started as a product manager because I could think about the problem from the start to the finish and think about also bring good writing skills and communication skills, all of that into the process in a way right out of school, although it was PhD. So I think that whole analysis and presentation and finding Meaningful problems which people accept is a meaningful problem. That was something which helped me, which is somewhat unique. I think engineers are amazing. I actually love working with engineers and the core technology and the thinking which they bring. But those were some of the things which I felt like if you have a Ph.D. you do more easily.

[Tomer Coyne]

It sounds like the emphasis on maybe being more thoughtful about the hypothesis.

[Smita Hashim]

I mean, really convincing people that this hypothesis matters and what you have said is meaningful. I think that's what a lot of us do with our products. We have to build products which our customers accept. So I think that you learn pretty early in a PhD thesis journey.

[Tomer Coyne]

I'm curious about your take there. I spent time with a really known top researcher and we talked about doing tests together within the industry. And his point for me was it's hard for the academia sometimes to do tests with the industry because industry does not want to test what they know will not work. Yeah, and in the academia you actually would do bad tests. You want to explore the entire space. Do you find that to be similar as well?

[Smita Hashim]

I think it depends. I was always drawn to like practitioner kind of work. So my thesis was in areas of video compression, image compression, but I went into video compression actually in those days I used to work a lot with MPEG and H263 and H264 and meet industry people even then. So this is different from theoretical computer science. You are thinking completely differently. So I was more into practice research. Actually my thesis advisor had three different companies, so it was a more of a mix. So I think that helps. But you're right, there's academia. I mean, I have no PhD researchers who are, you know, we don't care about commercial applications. We just want to focus on the theory and the research. So it just depends on what you like. I always like more practice.

[Tomer Coyne]

I want to take you back to a video that you recorded as an alumni for your university. And this was a whole different place from your career journey. You talked about how being part of a smaller group of women within your institution meant it was quite, quite difficult to feel supported, even welcome. You came from computer science? Electrical engineering. When I did my electrical engineering. Computer science, not PhD, but I did my Bachelor's 90% Maumel, if not more in the room. And it's hard to imagine that that experience ended just with school. I was curious what was it like for you to forge a path in tech?

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah, it was. And I was impressed that you found the video. I went to a really prestigious school in India, but there were 10 women and there were 250 or so men. And it was the biggest class of women ever. When we went in, people were like, wow, so many women. And going over there, I felt like the education was fantastic, but it just felt uncomfortable. I think people were well intentioned. I was also inherently shy. I'm a very strong person, but I was shy and it was uncomfortable for all women. So I think it was difficult to just raise your hand. It's difficult to get involved in projects. You know, the men in the class felt uncomfortable reaching out because when you're such a small group, what you do gets noticed by everyone. And that is, that is uncomfortable. And the journey kind of continued for me when I came over here, like so many times, you are the only woman in the room. I actually think that has changed to some extent, but not a whole lot in the tech industry. So I struggled with finding my voice. It was very hard for me. Then I went into a more commercial job with Microsoft and I really struggled with finding role models I could relate to. But then I got very lucky. I went to Google and I ended up working for Susan Wojcicki. And Susan, as many of us know, is incredible. And she had this lovely style where she was very kind, very empathetic, but she was very results driven. And when I looked at how she communicated and how she showed up, I was like, this is what I can relate to. I can show up like this in the tech industry and I can have impact. So I cannot tell you how many times I think of Susan and I thank her because she showed me that path. And from there on, it's been an ongoing journey for me to figure that out. How do I show up? How do I do that? I think women are often expected to be competent and compliant at the same time, and it can be uncomfortable. So one of the things I really had to learn was how to give difficult feedback while still doing it in a way that it felt comfortable for the other person and for me. But you have to, I mean, if you want to grow, you have to go through those aspects of the journey. I learned to find my voice and say, hey, I'm not done yet. I mean, of course you have to read the room. You can't use this all the time. So, yeah, so that's been my journey and I feel the challenges still persist to a fairly large extent. But I'm also very grateful and I have been helped with amazing people along the way. And I do have a learning mindset tomorrow. I think that's something Which I really enjoy. So I also think I like to read the environment and say, oh, this is. I can learn this from this person, this from this person. So that has helped me a lot.

[Tomer Coyne]

It's a great emphasis on mentorship and role modeling as a way to learn. For me, it's probably the best way to learn from others as well.

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah.

[Tomer Coyne]

You mentioned Susan Wiccicki, who was the former CEO of YouTube.

[Smita Hashim]

Yep.

[Tomer Coyne]

Any examples that come to mind when you think of her?

[Smita Hashim]

So with Susan, the feedback was very kind, but they were good examples. And she often brought up her own examples in order to educate and coach. So I was working on a product and she said, you know, I feel like you're being too conservative. You can be a lot more ambitious. And she gave an example. She was running Google Video and she said, look, I was really conservative on Google Video and we acquired YouTube. And in some sense, you know what she was trying to explain to me, like, these can eventually be billion dollar decisions, so watch out for what you do. That really stuck with me. I have so many more stories like that. There was this wonderful woman mentor I had, Anjali Joshi, and she went to my same undergraduate school. She was ahead of me by a few years. And sometimes the business environment feels uncomfortable. I was in a moment like that and I was a little bit lost because it was about, how do I show up. I felt like I showed up from a cultural point of view in a way that wasn't consistent with my values. So I went and I met her and what she told me was, eventually you have to live with yourself. That just stuck with me. It just gave me this clarity, which is that we have to be ourselves and that's the journey we have to be on. Eventually I ended up like, kind of not being in the job. So there were repercussions to being yourself. But I've always really been happy that I could make that decision and have that learning in that moment.

[Tomer Coyne]

The wonderful learnings of both EQ and IQ when you share feedback, but also the idea of staying centered in your own values and what matters most to you. I'm really curious about your perspective, which is when you look back at your career, obviously you're a phenomenal learner. I can already pick that up. But in your product journey, what do you see as your most kind of important skill or quality that you picked along the way?

[Smita Hashim]

I think there are two things which are foundational. One is learning and the other is teamwork. I think all of us need the technical skills. We need the analytical Skills, we need the communication skills. Right. But if you have the learning mindset, then it really helps you connect and learn from various people. It can be anyone, it can be yourself, it can be your data. I love learning in different ways from teamwork or people. And I think the team includes your customers too. These are your users. That's who you're building for. So I genuinely love people, I genuinely love seeing them successful and helping them. So I think those are the two things which are foundational, which I think of as my superpower. I'm also very tenacious, but they also give me a lot of joy in life.

[Tomer Coyne]

The framing of looking at your customers and users as part of your team is a powerful one. It's the first time I'm hearing it. Okay, so let's shift to Zoom a little bit. So you worked across many fields, many companies. You were a scientist, you were a product leader. Google, you were from the early days of Google, I think 2005. Early days, yeah, so very early. And now recently the CPO of Zoom. I'm curious what product principles you wanted to bring to Zoom when you came in, but also vice versa. Zoom was a strong product company already. What you learned in Zoom that you haven't learned in your career, that was pretty diverse and comprehensive before.

[Smita Hashim]

So Zoom is an amazing product company in terms of the skills that I brought in. This concept of really being user focused and building a product cross functionally with product and UX partnerships are foundational. But I also think like marketing, sales, all of those are really important too. Working together in order to figure out the problem, solve it, build for it, being data driven, listening to feedback, you know, and I strongly believe product managers really care about the go to market and go to market can vary a lot. So bringing all of those skills was really important to me. When I got to Zoom though Tomer Zoom has such a massive product portfolio, you know, it was already, I mean I love video and so when I came to Zoom, one of my biggest thing was, oh, I really want to understand the video architecture. Why does it work so well? Because it's so different. But setting that aside, Zoom grew so much. I mean it was already growing. But during COVID Zoom really helped the world connect in every way. And you can see it in the customer diversity, the depth of features. So it was go, go, go. And it's a phenomenal team that builds really fast. Engineers are really amazing. But at this stage it was really about managing the platform and the multi product portfolio and figuring out how to set it up. For scale and strategy and for the next stage of the journey. That's the reason why they brought me in. I've managed a lot of different products, but what I learned in Zoom was the amazing amount of customer focus, the amount of customer love I've seen at Zoom I've not seen anywhere else. You know, the customers would show up and they say, you did the things we asked you to do. You helped us get through Covid, you saved our business. But Zoom is also very responsive to customers, which means you have to be flexible in your notions of things like product roadmap. Yes, there's a roadmap, but if you say, I have a roadmap so no to you customers, then who are we building it for? Now, those were some of the things I looked at it, I learned and I'm like, wow, this is amazing. This is such a fun way to build because you're also talking to customers, but you need to be flexible in your thinking. You have to say, these are the things which I'm absolutely committed to. These things I will shift around as I go forward.

[Tomer Coyne]

You mentioned something which really interesting. You're leaving quite some space in the roadmap for reacting or following up on customer feedback. Is this the thing? Like in the roadmap there's a specific gap inherently built for following up on requests or bugs or stuff like that.

[Smita Hashim]

So the product roadmap is very full. There are some things on the product roadmap which are not negotiable and oftentimes they are also customer and partner commitments that we have made so we understand what is absolutely critical. But the rest of the roadmap, we will move it around, the product managers will move it around. And that is also an expectation. It's also a cross functional agreement. It's like we are being responsive to customers, but the product roadmap will shift because of that and we will be thoughtful in how we shift it. So, you know, so that's how we operate and we build a lot. Tomar.

[Tomer Coyne]

Yeah, it feels like there's two ways to respond to usually the team to an extent, complaining about kind of switching costs and switching context where the product roadmap is chatting. One is like, okay, sorry, we're going to try and like do a better job at like managing the roadmap better so it doesn't move as much. And the other way of responding, which I'm very aligned with, is, yeah, it's changing because we're learning fast.

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah. And I think that's some of the value we can Bring as leaders, C suite leaders, but also as leaders of our team is to get that shared view of how we are cooperating. So it feels comfortable and it feels fun rather than stressful. And I think I've been able to bring some of that also as part of the Zoom to Rado journey.

[Tomer Coyne]

Any examples of when recently in Zoom you shifted the roadmap for something, but probably in Google you would not have done that.

[Smita Hashim]

Every company has a set of market customers and they try to be responsive but Zoom does a lot of that and very effectively. But I mean, you know, success is financial. So currently immediate example is quarter closings. We work with the sales team all the time, but we actually do proactive outreach and say other things we can help you to close the quarter. And sometimes they come back and they say I need this feature accelerated. I need something on Zoom Contact center accelerated. Customer is looking for a commit on this type of VDI platform. Are they looking for these kind of capabilities or these particular APIs? So those are some of the things. Even though sometimes we might not have a clear path and these are enterprise customers, we actually say yes because we talk to the engineers and we say okay, we can figure out a path. So this is a shared mindset between me and my development partner, the Chief Development Officer, and we take that approach and we say we know we can do it.

[Mehta Hashim]

We're going to take a quick break but don't go anywhere. When we come back, Smita shares about Zoom's unique culture and how they deeply encourage and benefit from customer feedback.

[Smita Hashim]

And Zoom process is less important than the responsiveness and the feedback. So finding that balance is different. Here.

[Jessi Hempel]

From LinkedIn News, I'm Jessi Hempel, host of the hello Monday Podcast. In my twenties I knew what career success looked like in midlife. It's not that simple. Work is changing, we're changing and there's no guidebook for how to make sense of it. So come figure it out with me on the hello Monday Podcast. I've been a journalist for two decades writing cover stories for BusinessWeek, Fortune and Wired. And now every Monday I bring you conversations with people who are thinking thinking deeply about work and where it fits into our lives. Like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on growth.

[Smita Hashim]

Mindsets, the Learn it All does better than the Know it all.

[Jessi Hempel]

Or NYU Professor Scott Galloway on choosing a career.

[Tomer Coyne]

I think the worst advice you can.

[Smita Hashim]

Give a kid is follow your passion.

[Jessi Hempel]

Or MacArthur genius winner Angela Duckworth on talent versus grit.

[Smita Hashim]

Your long term effort and your long term commitment are supportive. Surprisingly Important.

[Jessi Hempel]

Each episode delivers pragmatic advice. For right now, listen to hello Monday with me, Jessi Hempel on the LinkedIn podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mehta Hashim]

All right, we're back, and I'm talking with Smita Hashim, the Chief Product Officer of Zoom.

[Tomer Coyne]

Curious from your perspective as the Chief Product Officer, looking towards the future, like, what do you think is that ideal work environment? Or is it that we're not trying to guess the future, we're gonna try to make sure it's adaptive? I was talking to somebody that used to work for many years at Apple, and Apple tried to dictate the future. This is how the future would look like versus they also worked at Google, and Google was trying to adapt to the future. How is your perspective there?

[Smita Hashim]

You know, the depth of features where I think Zoom really excels, or your added modalities? For example, we are working on how do you connect rooms to people who are virtual so that it feels like a great experience through bringing each and every person in the room out individually through products like intelligent directors. So to answer your question, we are not here to dictate how people should work. We are here to support them and provide solutions. And that's a mindset we are seeing in our customers as well.

[Tomer Coyne]

Yeah, Hybrid is the most complex, right, from a product perspective to build for. Because if it's all remote, it's easy. Everybody's looking at the screen. If it's hybrid, you know, we used to do this for a while. It was just really hard. When you bring your laptop into the meeting, there's folks around the table and you're trying to like, do you look at the computer? Do you look across the table? And you could see that kind of awkwardness.

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah, I hear you. And I think that's a huge problem. So the product intelligent director, you can have three angle cameras in front of the room, and it does an amazing job of picking up people who you might not even see if you are standing in the front and bricks them into the individual frame and you are able to then at least see them clearly. If you want to start now chatting while you are there, then you have to pick up a device of yours and start chatting. So I think these kind of technologies have to really keep evolving over time.

[Mehta Hashim]

We talked about how Zoom is unique.

[Tomer Coyne]

It was unique in how it was built. It's unique in how it makes decisions, but the space is so crowded. Any examples of decisions that you're proactively deciding to build, that is different. It's almost like Taking a different bet.

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah. Our foundational principle is it has to just work. So we spend a lot of time thinking about no hidden logic. Does it just connect? Does it work? And it does. I think you can get on a Zoom call easier than you can on anything. That's one of the reasons it became so popular. So while there's a great user experience, we also really believe in providing great value. So one decision that we took is we have built Zoom AI Companion, which is a generative AI assistant. So you can summarize meetings, you can ask in meeting questions. But we decided to include it at no additional cost. We want our customers to always feel like they're getting a great experience along with this cost effectiveness. And we could do that because right from the beginning we went with this approach. It's called a federated approach. What we can do is we can work across a variety of models from small to large. Using that approach. It helps us manage our cost. Of course there are costs involved, but we think from both of those angles. And then the third thing, we are constantly just evolving the product so fast based on customer feedback. Some of the other things which are in our favor is it is a modern product. I mean, it was built from the ground up to be hybrid. So that's why some of the call quality, some of those things are so good. These are the kind of things which help elevate the platform. And a platform goes all the way from the employee experience to the customer experience, contact center events and webinars. So you take these foundational elements built for hybrid, really easy to use and connect multimodal like phone calls. You can do all of those things and then you apply it to a variety of scenarios. It actually leads to pretty differentiated and I think energizing products for customers. So that's the approach that we take.

[Tomer Coyne]

Any other foundational principles that you can share with us?

[Smita Hashim]

Customers tell us we love Zoom because it makes me look smart. And I think that's important. We really, really try hard to not have any hidden logic in our products. What I mean by hidden logic is that we don't change things on you without you knowing about it. Users should have access to the features before they should be able to tell exactly what it does, especially as the tool set grows. So they know what they're doing and they are in control of it. So that's another principle. And part of it just works is also quality. So getting great video quality requires a lot of work. Sometimes you have to do a lot of client specific work.

[Tomer Coyne]

Just curious, do you feel like it's like full circle with you doing your PhD in MPEG and HT 64.

[Smita Hashim]

Oh, my God. Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. I feel so lucky because I always loved video. Always. And then I went to Google and we actually worked on their video. Then I went to Microsoft, and then Zoom was always this North Star for me. And then they reached out to me that I feel like Covid was so, so hard on so many people. But the gift from COVID was it normalized, hybrid work. I just love the concept of hybrid. Also women, I think it gives more options, it helps you tap into talent, it helps people with different lifestyles to connect. I mean, you know, women with young children, responsibilities. I know it's changing. Men are doing more, but still women do majority of the work. I think everyone wants to do a great job. If we can meet them flexibly on the way they want to do it, what's better than that? I mean, it's the best of everything.

[Tomer Coyne]

Could not agree more. I think some people would be very focused on the customer love aspect of Zoom. Obviously, it's cultural for the company, but there's some inherent processes that the company is doing. Like, for example, at LinkedIn, we talked about role modeling so early on. Remember When I joined LinkedIn, our former CEO Jeff Winner, used to go on the feed and respond back to members. This is before it became a trend on Twitter as well, and so on. And then obviously Ryan, who is our current CEO, was doing the same, and people felt like they could reach out, and I started doing the same as well. That was like one way for us at LinkedIn to feel connected and get feedback. And I read every piece that gets sent to me. I'm curious given how this is so cultural to Zoom any unique processes or practices that you have around being connected to the customer or having that interaction model of learning a lot so you can adapt your roadmap accordingly.

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah, it is such a fluid conversation between people who are working with customers. With Eric, with the product team, sales team can reach out to anyone with the customer feedback. I'm directly connected to so many customers. So many of our product managers are directly connected to customers. This, by the way, is in contrast to my prior roles where you didn't have this kind of engagement or fluidity. But there's a lot of comfort with direct conversations. I think that's amazing because once we have that, then the conversations just move really fast. The product evolves really fast, and our customers are also very vocal about sharing their feedback. With us because they know that Zoom will respond and they tell us that. So they oftentimes come with that mindset and we work together. So what makes Zoom unique is this level of fluidity and conversations and engagement.

[Tomer Coyne]

And culturally, they know that they're expected to bring the feedback, and they also know they're going to be listened to.

[Smita Hashim]

Yes. If you listen, you invite that conversation more.

[Tomer Coyne]

So if you want to bring feedback, the product team, the R and D team, will listen to it. And they might not act on it because of many other things, but they're going to definitely consider it.

[Smita Hashim]

Yeah. And if we don't act on it, we think about it hard. By the way, and Zoom, one mindset, which I've had to really shift coming from much, much larger companies, is process is still important, but at Zoom, process is less important than the responsiveness and the feedback. So finding that balance is different here. So the building products feel very human, which I enjoy.

[Tomer Coyne]

Yeah, Smita. I want to end on just kind of the future today. When I think about AI with the power of collaboration tools, it feels like it's really trying to help the meeting be better, the interaction be better, with notes or action items or tips along the way. I'm curious, where do you see this headed, even if it's not for Zoom, for the industry? Do you see AI becoming like an active project manager in every meeting, that that is responsible to move the meeting forward, or making sure there's like an action item? Like, how do you see this moving in the next three to five years?

[Smita Hashim]

I feel like generative AI is really a gift and users will be able to do so much more and be so much more productive. You still have to be thoughtful in how you use it, because it has limitations. But we are seeing step changes already from a customer point of view. We are seeing really large consulting companies saying they can tell their consultants to focus on the meeting because they don't have to take notes anymore, but the quality has to be really, really, really good for them to get to that level of trust. I think the possibilities are amazing. I think the task is to also realize it's a moment in time, so people have to be just thoughtful. They have to actually start using it and evolving it. But I do think it evolves into a better and better assistant for you, and it helps you focus more on creative work. Some of that thinking went into our mind when we said no additional cost, because we were like, everyone should get access to it, but I think it'll help all of us do much, much better get even more flexibility in our lives and have better lives overall. So I'm super excited. One aspect is this collaboration but like think about teaching, think about coaching, think about healthcare. Like you know, I think the possibilities are amazing.

[Tomer Coyne]

Do you think we'll have less meetings or more meetings in the future with AI?

[Smita Hashim]

I would prefer less meetings and I do think AI will help people. Not really feel like this. This fomo I have to be in every meeting. They can be flexible, they can catch up.

[Tomer Coyne]

It's a great point.

[Smita Hashim]

You read the meeting summary? Don't have to even I never watch recordings. I tell people I'm not going to watch a recording, don't ask me to watch a recording later. But like smart chapters, quick summaries, those kind of things, I can just get a sense of things that happen.

[Tomer Coyne]

Sounds like both the yield of the meeting in terms of being more effective and as well as reaching out to people could be a lot better. And I love that that notion.

[Smita Hashim]

Yes. And those things are near term, they are happening now, but I think the possibilities will be much more like how many thousand chat messages when you wake up in the morning? How can you get great summaries and act on them? How can you take all of the meeting and chat and like whatever content and create strategy memos out of it or plans out of it? Like we actually have a bunch of those things already planned out, several in the market already.

[Mehta Hashim]

Thanks again to Smita for joining me. As always, here are some takeaways. This time they all have a similar theme, Learning and Growing with Feedback First, Smita's adaptability and learning mindset shine. Throughout her career she was able to apply her research capabilities to practical market driven applications, something you don't always see. She compares writing a research thesis to managing a product lifecycle, noting that both of them require a clear understanding of the problem, a structured methodology to address it, and then ultimately effective communication to share the results. She also continuously seeks feedback, just like a researcher, whether it's from mentors or from customers, about how she or the product can improve over time. On a related note, Zoom as a company is deeply committed to learning and being responsive to customer feedback. I can't emphasize this enough. This is a core aspect of Zoom's culture. The feedback loop happens across all functions and teams of the company. It's not just one team like the R and D team that is responsible for feedback. And it starts at the top with Eric Yuan, the CEO and founder of Zoom, who role models this daily. This brings us to another key takeaway how do you balance stability with adaptability in your product roadmap? Zoom's responsiveness materially affects how they build. They actually prepare themselves for the fact that some elements of the roadmap will shift, while others require complete commitment. This requires a great deal of flexibility and extreme clarity on what product commitments are set in stone, so you can actually avoid creating too many fluctuations. Lastly, I love what Smita said about considering her users as part of her team. It's the first time I heard a product leader talk about it this way. And Zoom doesn't just take user feedback into account. It's one thing to just be responsive to customers, but it's a whole different thing to set up a whole virtuous cycle where your customers actually feel empowered to reach out with feedback and requests. And as Smita says, if you listen to them, you actually invite that conversation more and more. Can you recall a time when you materially change your product or roadmap based on customer feedback? Let me know. I'm Tomer Coyne. Thank you for listening. I learned a lot from this conversation and I hope you did as well.

[Tomer Coyne]

We'll be back in two weeks with the former CPO of Slack, Noah Weiss.

[Smita Hashim]

The product market fit you get with one audience, especially an early audience, is not necessarily the thing that's going to fuel you to get to the next level of scale.

[Tomer Coyne]

Can't wait two weeks, then tune in next week for our rapid fire question round with Smita where we get to know her better.

[Smita Hashim]

I have an amazing global community and global family.

[Tomer Coyne]

Building one is a LinkedIn editorial production. Our host is Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's chief product officer. This episode was produced by Max Miller and Lolia Briggs. It's engineered and mixed by Assaf Gadran. Enrique Montalvo is our Executive producer. Dave Pond is head of news production. Courtney Koop is head of Original programming. Dan Roth is the Editor in Chief of LinkedIn. Thanks to Alicia Mann and Jenna Kaplan. If you know of a product leader we could all learn from, send us a [e-mail].