Product Thinking – Episode 202

Transforming Product Teams into Investment Partners with Fabrice des Mazery
Date: December 18, 2024
Host: Melissa Perri
Guest: Fabrice des Mazery, Product Leader and Former CPO at The Fork (TripAdvisor Group)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Melissa Perri sits down with Fabrice des Mazery to explore how product teams can move beyond traditional process thinking and start operating as strategic investment partners within their organizations. The discussion covers how to foster an investor’s mindset in product management, building stronger partnerships between product and stakeholders, prioritizing investments, and the challenges and cultural differences in approaching product strategy.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Fabrice’s Journey into Product Management (06:11–08:24)

• Accidentally entered product management after founding a legal tech startup while still a law student.
• Failed first venture drove him to seek understanding in product, design, and engineering.
• Realized after several years—and reading foundational books by Marty Cagan, Alan Cooper, Don Norman—that his passion aligned with product management.
• Quote:

  "It took me more than… seven years before understanding that I had a job which called product manager, thanks to Marty, actually the first edition of his book." – Fabrice (06:56)

Challenges & Achievements at The Fork (08:24–10:20)

• Joined The Fork (TripAdvisor Group) as CPO to drive business model transformation from fee-based to a sustainable marketplace.
• Focused on delivering real, lasting value not just to the business but to restaurateurs—helping them succeed in high-failure, hospitality sectors.
• Used technology and data to better define competitive sets and success metrics for restaurants.

Shifting from “Builder” to “Investor” Mindset (10:20–14:00)

• Cultural differences: Product management in the U.S. seen more as a business function; in Europe, it often emerges from IT, causing business impact misalignment.
• Urges product teams to move from internal “product speak” (process and frameworks) to clear business language—especially around risk and ROI.
• Quote:

  "Forget discovery, think about what it means for the people in front of you. So you talk about risk. Everybody understands risk." – Fabrice (11:28)

• Argues for explicitly calculating the true cost (including time) invested in teams and linking it to business payback and margins.

Making ROI Real for Technical/Platform Teams (15:15–18:07)

• Advises platform teams to consider their work as “insurance” against failure—quantifying the cost of outages and risk mitigation as a form of ROI.
• Encourages developing multipliers—how improvements for developers (e.g., cutting wait times) cascade into broader organizational value.
• Quote:

  "ROI... I'm here to make sure that we're not losing money. That's kind of ROI." – Fabrice (16:12)

Linking Team Efforts to Business Outcomes (18:07–21:12)

• Highlights the importance of cross-functional work and collaboration with finance to accurately model business value.
• Suggests using customer outcomes as proxies for business impact when direct financial value is challenging to prove.
• Encourages teams to articulate the “cost of not acting” to stakeholders.

Turning Stakeholders into Co-Investors (21:12–25:17)

• To align stakeholders, frame decisions in terms of risk, investment, and payback—treating colleagues as co-investors, not just requesters.
• Suggests making opportunity assessment collaborative, including realistic go-to-market costs and shared accountability.
• Quote:

  "Play as if you were a financial advisor… My only responsibility as a financial advisor, it tells you what is level of risk and what are the odds." – Fabrice (23:07)

Practical Prioritization & Investment Forums (26:45–30:29)

• Favors “pitch” style proposals over detailed business cases for prioritization.
• Introduced “investment forums”—cross-country, cross-functional discussions to democratically select initiatives, share responsibility for outcomes.
• Created cultural shift: Teams felt true ownership (and accountability) over both successes and failures.

Building Internal Relationships and Empathy (30:29–32:59)

• Stresses internal empathy: Understand every stakeholder has targets, often hates uncertainty, and prefers clarity over process talk.
• Urges product managers to adopt the language of their stakeholders and focus on targets and business-specific outcomes.
• Quote:

  "Use their own language, don't use yours. That's really the best thing that you could do to make people understand that you understand them." – Fabrice (31:45)

The VC Mindset & Building a Balanced Product Portfolio (32:59–37:23)

• Evaluates product investments akin to venture capital: strategic bets, low-risk optimizations, “moonshots,” and balancing portfolios for optimal annual returns.
• Encourages product leaders to recognize varying team risk tolerances (startup vs. enterprise, platform vs. feature teams) to avoid burnout.
• Quote:

  "If you try to push people from big companies that are attached to their level of security, asking them to act like a pre-PLS startup, it's never going to work." – Fabrice (36:10)

Managing Risk, Burnout, and Psychological Safety (37:23–40:21)

• Assesses teams’ risk comfort by observing intrinsic curiosity, openness to challenge, and comfort with ambiguity.
• Leaders must be explicit about the scale and ambition of investments, accept variance in performance, and shield teams from “perfect outcome” expectations.

Cultivating Profitability-Centered Product Skills (40:21–44:39)

• Top skills to develop:

  • Business Curiosity: Deep engagement with sales, customers, and operational constraints.
  • Reality-Checking Optimism: Actively challenge personal and team optimism bias; model best- and worst-case scenarios.
  • Process as Multiplier: Value decision velocity over process rigor; be comfortable with imperfect information to foster acceleration.

• Quote:

  "It's not the quality of the decision that really matters, it's the velocity of the decision that really matters." – Fabrice (43:45)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On shifting the conversation:
  "We've been, I'd say, battling against the profitability call with what I call product explaining... and we need to stop doing that." (11:23)
• On real ownership:
  "If it fails, they are on stage with me… they felt responsible of the success and responsible of the failure." (29:51–30:13)
• On leadership empathy:
  "We empathize a lot with our customers, but sometimes people are not thinking about, internally, the stakeholders or the leaders." – Melissa (32:23)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:11] – Fabrice’s entry into product and learning moments
• [08:24] – Transformation and business model innovation at The Fork
• [10:20] – Moving from “builder” to “investor” mindset
• [15:15] – Calculating ROI for platform/technical investments
• [21:36] – Stakeholder management and treating partners as co-investors
• [26:45] – Practical frameworks: pitches and investment forums
• [30:29] – Building empathy and internal relationships
• [32:59] – Product portfolio as a venture capitalist
• [37:23] – Preventing burnout & psychological safety in risk-taking
• [40:21] – Developing profitability-focused product skills
• [44:39] – Conclusion and where to find Fabrice online

Takeaways for Listeners

• Transitioning from a process-driven to investment-driven mindset in product requires new language, closer ties to finance, and explicit business ownership.
• Product managers add most value not as deliverers of features, but as stewards of business outcomes, ROI, and strategic risk-taking.
• Real partnership between product and stakeholders is built on empathy, transparency, and shared accountability—not just agile ceremonies or frameworks.

Find Fabrice on LinkedIn and access more resources and talks in the show notes at ProductThinkingPodcast.com.