20Product: Should We Kill the PM Role Entirely | How Does Product Design Change Most in a World of AI | How Do Monzo Build Product Today: What Works, What Does Not | Why Most Product Sucks and What Makes Truly Great Product

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) - Episode: 20Product

Release Date: July 25, 2025

Host: Harry Stebbings
Guest: Fernando Fanton, Chief Product Officer at Property Finder

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1. Introduction to Fernando Fanton

Harry Stebbings welcomes Fernando Fanton, a highly respected product leader in Europe. Fernando has held pivotal roles as CPO at Monzo and Just Eat, led product and tech at Rappi in Latin America, and currently serves as CPO at Property Finder, a leading unicorn in the MENA region.

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2. Early Life and Tennis Background

Fernando shares his extensive background in tennis, playing six hours a day until the age of 17. This intense training instilled in him a mindset of performance and discipline.

Notable Quote:

"I used to play tennis all my life, like six hours a day until I was 17. I realized I'm not going to be as good as Federer."
(02:31)

He reflects on the sacrifices made and how facing limitations taught him resilience and the importance of pushing beyond perceived barriers.

---

3. Vision vs. Daily Improvement

Fernando emphasizes the pitfalls of being overly fixated on long-term visions. Instead, he advocates for continuous, incremental improvements—a philosophy inspired by the Kaizen approach.

Notable Quote:

"Every day, it's a Kaizen idea of every week. You cannot predict what I'm going to be in a year."
(04:42)

He argues that focusing on daily progress compounds over time, leading to significant growth without the constraints of rigid long-term visions.

---

4. Product Management and Team Structure

Discussing the evolving role of Product Managers (PMs), Fernando highlights the necessity of creativity and analytical skills in PMs. He envisions smaller, more cross-functional teams where PMs act as the creative catalysts.

Notable Quote:

"PM is creative... they can really make that team go one notch in creativity."
(17:49)

Fernando dismisses the notion that the PM role is dying, instead suggesting it will evolve to become more integrated within smaller teams.

---

5. Product Market Fit in the AI Era

With advancements in AI, Fernando observes that achieving product-market fit has become more efficient. AI tools allow rapid prototyping and user testing, enabling faster iterations.

Notable Quote:

"We can test it so quickly and so easily. Just let them try it and see if they love it or not."
(28:21)

He notes that AI facilitates quicker validation of ideas, reducing the time and cost associated with traditional product development cycles.

---

6. Design Philosophy and User Experience

Fernando discusses the balance between simplicity and purposeful complexity in design. He praises Monzo's design for its emotional connection and user-centric approach but acknowledges that not all products benefit from being overly simplistic.

Notable Quote:

"It's trying to draw you to understand how your body works and what you should do."
(20:48)

He underscores that great design isn’t always about simplicity but about enhancing the user experience in meaningful ways.

---

7. Leadership and Team Culture

Fernando advocates for a culture of accountability and high standards without relying on fear or pressure. Drawing parallels with elite sports teams like the All Blacks, he emphasizes collective responsibility and self-motivation.

Notable Quote:

"The company should be held accountable to high standards and high goals and high ambition."
(36:12)

He believes that exceptional leaders inspire teams to exceed expectations through trust and shared vision rather than fear.

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8. Handling Product Flops and Team Resilience

When faced with product failures, Fernando adopts a growth mindset, viewing each flop as a learning opportunity. He maintains team morale by emphasizing that no effort is wasted and encouraging continuous iteration.

Notable Quote:

"No effort goes wasted. If you work really hard and you work a lot with customers and you ship something and it didn't work, you learned."
(39:34)

This approach fosters resilience and a culture of persistent innovation within the team.

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9. The Future of Product Teams and Engineering

Fernando predicts that engineering teams will become smaller and more specialized, focusing on high-impact tasks rather than mundane activities. He anticipates a shift towards more creative and innovative engineering roles as automation handles repetitive tasks.

Notable Quote:

"There should be fewer engineers doing repetitive things, allowing more amazing engineers to work on impactful projects."
(16:06)

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10. Influence of External Platforms (AI Models) on Product

Discussing the impact of AI platforms like OpenAI's LLMs, Fernando believes that external platforms will play a crucial role in product development. He emphasizes the importance of adding unique value on top of these platforms to differentiate products.

Notable Quote:

"Can you add value enough that there is value on that layer versus what the models would do on their own?"
(42:00)

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11. Hiring Product People: Skills and Qualities

Fernando outlines key attributes for successful product managers, including creativity, analytical thinking, and excellent communication skills. He suggests assessing candidates through writing exercises to gauge their ability to articulate and synthesize ideas.

Notable Quote:

"If you cannot write a one-pager, what are you doing?"
(45:36)

He also mentions the potential for AI to augment the hiring process by combining creative and analytical talents more effectively.

---

12. Parenting and Personal Growth

Fernando shares personal insights on parenting, advocating for allowing children to experience challenges and learn resilience. He emphasizes the importance of supporting their individual paths without imposing rigid visions.

Notable Quote:

"You should help them along the way because each one, even if you teach them the same things, will deviate quite a bit."
(62:43)

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13. Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

Fernando concludes by stressing the importance of emotional well-being, continuous learning, and adapting to change. He highlights the necessity of balancing ambition with personal integrity and the value of authentic leadership.

Notable Quote:

"I believe what I said before—the value is in growing through the difficulty. It's not all the things you thought were important."
(64:17)

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Key Insights:

• Continuous Improvement: Focus on daily incremental gains rather than rigid long-term visions to achieve sustainable growth.

• Evolving PM Role: Product Managers will become more integrated within cross-functional teams, balancing creativity with analytical precision.

• AI-Driven Efficiency: AI tools enable faster prototyping and user testing, accelerating the product-market fit process.

• User-Centric Design: Exceptional design balances simplicity with purposeful complexity to enhance user experience meaningfully.

• Resilient Leadership: Building a culture of accountability and high standards without relying on fear fosters motivated and innovative teams.

• Adaptive Hiring Practices: Prioritize creativity, analytical skills, and communication in product roles, leveraging AI to enhance team capabilities.

• Balancing Ambition and Well-being: Personal growth and emotional well-being are crucial for long-term success and fulfillment.

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Conclusion

In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), Fernando Fanton provides invaluable insights into product management, team dynamics, and the evolving landscape of technology-driven businesses. His experiences across diverse markets and companies offer a rich perspective on building successful, user-centric products while fostering resilient and motivated teams.

For more episodes and resources, visit www.20vc.com.

Transcript

[Harry Stebbings]

You are listening to 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings. Now 20 Product is the monthly show where we sit down with the best CPOs in the world to discuss how they build fricking amazing products and product teams. Today we have one of the most respected product leaders in Europe joining us, Fernando Fanton. He's held role of CPO at both Monzo and Just Eat, two of the biggest from Europe. He previously led product and tech at Rappi, one of Latin America's most valuable startups and today Fernando's CPO at Property Finder, one of the biggest breakout unicorns from the MENA region. But before dive into the show today, are you struggling to beat model benchmarks or implement Gen AI in your product? If so, you need Turing. Turing is an AGI infrastructure company backed by incredible investors like Foundation Capital and Westbridge Capital and they do two things. Number one, they help leading companies in AI labs like Salesforce, Anthropic and Meta enhance their LLMs with advanced reasoning, coding, multilinguality, multimodality and more. Two, they combine human and artificial intelligence merchants expertise to deploy cutting edge AI systems for awesome companies like Rivian and Reddit. Right now Turing offers a free 5 minute self assessment to help you pinpoint your place in the Gen AI journey. Get tailored next steps to optimize your model strategy and then finally learn how Turing can refine and implement your models for better performance. Take the guesswork out of Gen AI. Visit turing.com 20vc to start your free assessment today and once your Gen AI strategy on point with Turing. Now let's talk about making your product do exactly what you want it to. Whether it's the software you build or the software you buy. Your tech stack should be creating results, not creating roadblocks. Well, Pendo's no code software experience management platform makes your software better with tools to see where users get stuck. Guide them with in app messaging and constantly improving your UI. It's so easy that over 14,000 businesses use Pendo to increase revenue, lower costs and reduce risks. Businesses love the control, engineers love that freedom. Everyone wins. Start for free today at Pendo iO20 product.

[Fernando Fanton]

You have now arrived at your destination.

[Harry Stebbings]

Fernando dude, it's so good to have you on the show. Now before we dive into all things product, I do just want to start on tennis in your early years. I hear you are fantastic. So can you just take me to playing tennis in your early years and how it shaped your mindset on performance and discipline.

[Fernando Fanton]

I used to do a lot of tennis when I was I Played tennis all my life, like six hours a day until I was 17. I realized I'm not going to be good at Federer, which I got to meet, by the way. It's a different story. And I realized if I know number one, I don't want to play, which is a big mistake, by the way. I regret it to this day that I quit playing tennis.

[Unknown]

Why?

[Fernando Fanton]

The sacrifice is what it is like the sacrifice of the pushing yourself to find the wall and say, I'm not good enough, and then keep going, to me, is not only the best thing for sports, it's best things, like in life, you know what I mean? Because sooner or later in life as well, they're doing great, something's going to happen to you. A love person will have a disease, which is super tough, right? My father died when I was young. And if you don't have that attitude of I hit a wall and it's all about how I rise above it, instead of always being negative and pessimistic. Oh, he's not good enough, right? Oh, these guys are better. Feather wasn't that good, but was, of course, great. But at 16, he wasn't the feather, you know, today. But if you look at the levels he found is the mentality primarily, right? Of course he's talented, but all talented at that level. It's not like Nadal is not talented. It's not like the Ojobic is not talented. They are all like, insanely talented. If you look at the number one players in the world in any sport, it's the mind. Jordan, Federer, Nadal, Ronaldo. You think Messi is chill? They're not chill, right? They're like freaks, competitive. It's all about their own improvement. They see a problem and they improve. My son, now he's 8, is playing football. I got obsessed with him because he has the same mentality. He works so hard and he's like, it's wrong. Do this. And he does it doesn't go complain. Because I was always thinking, I'm not good enough. I don't have the talent. I don't have the money. It costs a lot of money. I'm not going to be good enough. What if I fail? What if I'm not top 10? What if I'm top 100? And instead of thinking all that shit, I would just wake up in the morning and practice.

[Unknown]

It's why I hate visions. You know, everyone's supposed to have a vision. A vision for a company, a vision for their life. When I started the podcast, I had the Vision that I would be an associate at Boulderton Capital in five years time. In five years time, I was managing $200 million with my own fund. Point being, if I'd succumb to my vision, I would have constrained my ability. And actually, my point with you is like, you let your vision prevent your next year's success.

[Fernando Fanton]

I did. And I think it's always the worst thing on your mind because you don't know where it's going to go. The same at work, right? Like you in a company, just make the company better, make the people work better. Every day, right, is a Kaizen idea of every week. That's what I love. This weekly review, right? And says monthly, every week is better. You cannot predict what I'm going to be in a year. It compounds 53 times, right? So if you do it, every day, compounds 365 times. So if you're every day looking at yourself in sports or health and you're trying to be better or at work, the truth is, your vision, whatever you thought you will be, is so far away from where you're going to be in a year or two, that is a bit pointless. You know, in tennis, of course, you said, I want to be number one. But when you're 10 years old, what is the point of that? The likelihood is 0.001% and everybody comes in and says, you're crazy. Don't do that. Because the likelihood of success is so tiny. And instead of thinking all of that is like, I want to be. I love playing tennis. I love doing vc, I love entrepreneurs. I want to be with entrepreneurs. That's all I want to do. I realized that maybe 10 years ago because of the energy, the passion. What I thought is, how can I be better helping entrepreneurs every day? And people say, what do you want to be? This, who cares?

[Unknown]

Do you blame your surroundings for not pushing you more? When you are young and impressionable and believe you're not good enough? Do you believe that your parents should have been the ones saying, you can, you can, you can, you should.

[Fernando Fanton]

To be fair, my mother, right, I didn't have a father at the time, but my mother was super supportive. It was more like my fear of, you know, not being good enough for her because it cost a lot of money. She didn't have money. Right. She worked 100 hours a week for no money and I have to pay for tennis or the guilt that I felt. I felt if I'm not good enough. It wasn't for her. It was myself kind of creating the barrier instead of just enjoying it. But I do believe, of course, that if you look at the most exceptional people, not many come from very stable or amazing backgrounds. Actually, I look at founders and I see a lot of them have some issues with their families. They have something to prove, a tip in your shoulder, right?

[Unknown]

Daglioni always says we look for the broken ones, the misadjusted ones.

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah. The most exceptional people. You won't find as many that are normal. What you find is the guys that have good backgrounds are more emotionally stable. So if you have a good family, good parents, and you then struggle for money, then you're more stable. Emotionally stable doesn't mean amazing people are a bit crazy, right? Jordan is not a normal person. Michael Jordan, Elon Musk is not a normal person by any means of the imagination. A lot of the founders I've met are exceptional in many, many ways and flawed in many others.

[Unknown]

How were you when your father died 7 how did that change you?

[Fernando Fanton]

I don't remember much, but it changes everything, truthfully. Right. Because first of all, you have this beautiful concept of what life is and then all of a sudden it all falls apart, right? Your family falls apart. You see your mother kind of crying and struggling and I remember thinking a few things. The first thing I remember is when people really have bad luck like this, what is the job of everyone else? Are they supposed to help you or should they keep doing their own thing? And you see both kinds of people in that moment. You see the people that they're not mean, they try, but they have so much going on in their own lives, right? And they keep doing their own thing. They come maybe the first week or the first two weeks or the first month. And I'm not saying they're bad, they're not bad at all. They just have their own kids and their own life. And they have a very small amount of people I think by very exceptional that are truly, truly service oriented, that they just want to help with nothing for them, it's just literally want to help. And I think I want to be one of those people because, you know, there's some moments that folks just need some help. And I, in my case were my aunts, which just help nothing for them. They didn't have money, they just helped. And it was like, oh, my aunts are amazing. They just, they just want to help. There's nothing for them. You know, it's not transactional. And the other thing that I learned is that wisdom is much stronger on the pain than on the happy moments, right? So I think you become much wiser when you go through some difficult moment than when you're happy. I think happy is more like, you should enjoy it and it's great. But I don't feel wisdom comes from it, honestly. I think wisdom truly comes where something bad happens and then you realize, oh, shoot, things are not what I thought it would be. Your values change dramatically. I remember thinking, money doesn't have any meaning. Who cares about money that time? So, I mean, you know what I mean? It's a very strong kind of reset.

[Unknown]

The hard thing then, as apparent is if wisdom is born from pain and suffering, how do I make wise children without pain or suffering?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, they should have a bit of pain and suffering, in my opinion. I have that discussion with my wife all the time. I don't want them to go to private school, and she does. And of course they're going to private school because she wants to. But I honestly don't want to. And I send one, sorry, one, two go to private school to go to public school. Because I really pushed for it, and she's not happy with it. So I'm pretty sure they're gonna 4 go to private school soon. But my little son Adrian goes to public school, and one day she got beat up because, you know, party is cool. Nobody cares, right? Oh, I'm like, fine. He all beat up, and then he stood up clean and the next day dealt with it. What is the big deal? You're going to get beat up sooner or later. I think as long as there is no anxiety. Anxiety about money is not good. Anxiety about, do I have enough food for next month? Where do I leave? Do I have enough for rent? I don't think that's good for kids, so just stay away from that. But I think the rest. I don't want them to eat sushi, right? I don't want them to want to be in a taxi. What is the point? Take a bus. This is not a big deal. And then when you take a taxi, you're like, oh, I'm in a taxi. When you have sushi, it's like, I have sushi. And life is all about kind of that staircase. And I met a lot of folks with a lot of money that are, you know, just don't appreciate anything.

[Unknown]

It's funny. My mother asked me on a walk the other day. She says, can you name anything that gets worse with money? Anything at all? And I came back and I said, yes, one thing. Family. I know many billionaires. I know no happy billionaire families. I know Many more poor people, much happier.

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah. And Argentina has very strong family ties. Right. And you know, there are no wealthy people. So everybody's helping each other. So I like, it's very Italian.

[Unknown]

You mentioned like crazy and like outlier people often being crazy. A lot of CEOs like your TS@ Monzo, not crazy. Is there a point where the crazy is no longer a good CEO?

[Fernando Fanton]

That's a great question. Actually. Somebody has started something from zero. And if you are a startup, you basically want to do something that goes against reality in a sense. Nobody thought about it before. Most of the people tell you you're crazy, it's not going to work. Right. You tell 10 people your idea, nine tells you really it's not that smart. And then you go through an insane amount of pain. I don't think people realize, I mean I'm a founder, not successful like these guys. But you know, we have a company we kind of hired by Microsoft, we went there and then I have another company. So we try, try many times with mild success. I'll say. And I don't think people have any clue of the level of pain that you put yourself through. Sometimes I say, like being a founder is like choosing to have a kid and you don't know if he's going to live or die. Right. Which is a very dramatic way of saying it. Right. Because a lot of folks will see the company as close to their child. You have friends in a gap table and everybody early employees that put their life and trust in you. So I see all these founders really struggle most not in person, right. On their own. And I don't think people get how much right. And then when the company gets to a certain size, I think you want somebody who is a bit more risk adverse, which is not a bad thing. You want to protect the value and a little more steady in the ways you improve things, which is a different skill set in my opinion.

[Unknown]

Property finder Monzo Rappi just eat amazing names. Would you say that you're a founder?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, not for those companies. Right. They have a very clear founder.

[Unknown]

Would you say you are founder DNA as a person?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, I would like to think of myself as a founder. Right. That's definitely the highest aspiration. That's the people that I admire the most outside of Roger Feather and guys like that, because I love sports, which I don't think is that different. Actually. I think they're founders of themselves. I tried being a founder and then over time I realized I have kids. I know that the first couple of years of starting a company are incredibly painful. Finding pro market fit looks very sexy on paper. In reality, I don't think people realize you're two, three years with nothing. Some days you feel like you're the worst, most stupid person in the planet. It's not fun. And I have it done at Carvee, which is the Brazilian company. And I've done it in my first company as well. Remember my first company? Sometimes I have money for the bus, so I have to sneak in into the bus. It's not fun. And then everybody goes to a new job and looks at you like, oh, I have this cool job. How are you guys doing? And you're like, well, we're finding product. Market fit wasn't even a term back then, really. You would say, well, we're starting, we're trying. You don't make any money. You feel like the worst. They truly do. Your ego is negative. But I still think it's the most valuable, maybe thing a person can do because imagine how boring the world will be without founders. Lloyds were still the most important bank in the uk. That wouldn't be fun, right? Monsoon is much more fun and exciting than that. Same for all the new companies.

[Unknown]

Do you think that quest for product market fit has changed today? In a world where you can clone and copy so much more efficiently, and we're seeing companies reach 100 million in ARI in a year. Has the quest for product market fit changed, do you think?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think it does. We were just in Property Finder, using a lot of AI tools to prototype, and we're testing it and putting in front of users, like in a day, literally. So I think it's much easier because a lot of companies used to fail, even just to put something meaningful together.

[Unknown]

That's interesting. So what are you doing? What tools are you using and how.

[Fernando Fanton]

Are you using it? So you use either lovable or reblet or auth0. I think it's the latest one from Y Combinator. But there are tools that use for prototyping and some have better code output than others. And what we realize is now we want the tool prototyping tool, whose code output is the closest to what our team actually uses internally. Because now the designer gives it back to the engineer and says, can you reverse engineer this so we can put it live? And I think we just changed like the agent page on Property Finder in a week or two. And it started literally with a lovable design and then sent it back. And the engineer said, no, can you use another tool? Because the Code is not great for us and so try another tool and they send them the output of that tool and they use that to reverse engineer. So if you think about it before you have an idea or a concept and a lot of people even fail to put anything meaningful in front of a user to learn the reaction. So I think that problem goes away and a lot of people will be able much more to test things easily and cheaply.

[Unknown]

Do you think you lose design in that stage? If you think about mock ups for example, as a core, do you actually just skip that entirely and go straight to prototyping?

[Fernando Fanton]

We're seeing a little bit of that. But the exciting thing for me is that the designers were super passionate about it because if you think about it, if you're mission oriented, you just want to job family said make a dent in an area in probably finding we're going to make a dent in property and fintech in the region. We want to change how it's done. So if everybody anchors on that concept, if you do the design or not, or AI does it for you, who cares? It's literally the journey towards that superior solution that makes a difference in the industry and in people that you care about. And I found designers are super happy. Embrace that. And a smaller amount that a bit kind of second guessing like oh, what is my role? My role is to create a figma. What is it? But I think it will move very fast.

[Unknown]

Do you think we will have more or less engineers in five years time?

[Fernando Fanton]

I remember when I was in Microsoft Even like 20 years ago, I used to so many boring things like copying code and unit testing. I always thought, man, I was paid quite well even back then. Honestly thought I am overpaid now. I used to work with John Stroustrup. I don't know if you know him, he was inventor of C that used to be in. Net back in the day. And I went to one of his presentations and he was not being overpaid. I mean the level of abstraction he used to think like languages, meta languages, runtime compiler. It was like seeing, I don't know, Bangkok, right painting. So I remember thinking, oh, I'm grossly overpaid. This guy is most. I don't know how much they pay him, but it's underpaid. So I think everything should move in that direction. So there should be less of the folks that are just doing mundane things and hopefully creativity together with it works more. But if they will do something repetitive, it will go away. So in the sheer numbers I think there will Be more amazing engineers in the new world that do impactful things, but the sheer amount might be less.

[Unknown]

Do you think product teams change meaningfully in their structure?

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah, everything changes. Everything changes. I always thought of engineering teams or teams in a way that you just put the team that you need to be successful. Some cases only engineers. Some cases it might be only data people. Some cases it's 10 engineers and one product person and one designer. And always tell me, oh, Microsoft, it was more engineers, less product manager or the other way around. It depends on the problem you're trying to solve. Right. If having the requirement that everybody has to code adds value to the solution, then you don't have product managers. Now high primaries makes sense. Why? Because you're relieving yourself from that constraint. Well, not everybody has to know how to code in production.

[Unknown]

Do you think we have PMs in five years time? People often say to me, oh, the PM function is dying. Is it dying?

[Fernando Fanton]

No, I don't think so. I think all the teams become smaller and more productive and more cross functional. So everybody does a bit of the prototype, everybody looks at the code. PM is creative.

[Unknown]

If a PM is like the connective fabric between different functions of product, I.

[Fernando Fanton]

Don'T think that's the pm.

[Unknown]

Okay, what is the pm?

[Fernando Fanton]

We have a very simple rule in Microsoft which was if you know how to play chess and play guitar, Yoro would be a great PM because it's the creative side together with the analytical side. Chess is a great proxy for analytical capability and playing instruments is an amazing proxy for creativity. And I always saw PMs as kind of the best combination of that. Right. So if you grab three or four engineers, which some of them don't tend to be turn creative, this person can really make that team go one notch in creativity. I never saw PMs as the ones that do the backlog. And I think it's European thing in my opinion. I never saw it in Microsoft. It was somebody that didn't have to code all the time. Microsoft, everybody knew how to code, but you didn't have to. So you can spend time with the customers more. You can let your brain go out a bit more into a stratosphere and think creatively. And engineers were fixing bugs and doing all the hard work. So I don't think that goes away. But I think of course you need fewer people to create the same output. Now if you look at all the products in the world today, they're mainly crap.

[Unknown]

Why are they mostly crap, do you think?

[Fernando Fanton]

There are many reasons. One Is some of them cannot put together a team to build something decent. Other ones, they put a team, they don't have the capital. That's not a barrier. The third or the most common to me is a lot of them don't care enough. So maybe they think the product, you fix it once and then you never change it. Oh, you fix the product. What are you going to do now? What do you mean? You're obviously always improving the product.

[Unknown]

Which is the reason why I think it's utterly ridiculous that we think that companies will create their own internal products and have 170 internal products and that you won't buy SaaS anymore. Do you remember when there was that statement about, oh, you won't buy SaaS because you'll just create your own version of it and you'll DO maintenance on 170 different products.

[Fernando Fanton]

Now, look, there might be some SaaS stuff that is not valuable, of course, sure. But in reality, if there is valuable, totally, you know, it's not core to what you do. Why would you do it?

[Unknown]

And so they build and they don't think to improve it often enough.

[Fernando Fanton]

Product in itself always should be moving, right? The phone of two years ago is not the phone today. That's what I love. This example, like I was telling this phone from London, you could argue the iPhone is done two, three years ago and this guy from nothing phone came in and they're like, look at me, my son is crazy about it. He has the things on the back. The design is super clean. Somebody cared again. That's what I thought. Somebody cared about the phone users again. To think a better experience and nothing is good enough, right? It's never good enough. It's a good enough concept to me is a very negative one.

[Unknown]

What do you think is great design?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, Monzo is definitely great design. Volcort chief designer is I think one of those creative brilliant people. When you met her, you just know there's some people you meet and you know, just think differently. And in the case of Monzo at least was that connection to the emotion.

[Unknown]

Is simple always better?

[Fernando Fanton]

I'm not sure I love Whoops. The device. I don't think it's simple the UX at all. But in that case, you want to draw the person into the complexity, right? You want it to get into the details. So I don't think simple is always better, but unnecessarily complex. Definitely not the solution I like because I think it's complex but with a purpose. It's trying to draw you to understand how Your body works and what you should do.

[Unknown]

Do you think beautiful design and speed of execution are at odds? And what I mean by that is you're right. Monzo is a beautifully designed product. But in the same time, Revolut out shipped the shit out of Monzo on new products.

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah, we're getting to that point. No, I don't think so. I think it's different and I don't know the Revolut example so much, but I think Monzo, in my opinion and from the outside now, it's the most principled company I ever seen. Why they're principle. Right. So when I came in, I was a little more traditional. Like, you know, ship things and you know, let's not break things, but ship things and learn and iterate over time and improve it. And I think that you look at it more about trust and emotion and only do things when you truthfully can back it up 100%. And you're so proud about the solution. I think banking has an extra value because some of the products are not built for you and me. They want to trade some weird thing or. A Meme Coin is really about people financial lives. And most of the people really have not that much money. Right. I'm not saying most in general. So the bank, you need to trust it. It's a very important part of your life. The payments go through it, your balances are there. The way I like to think about it, imagine that you should be able to cross sell anything you want. If you make a product, you should be able to cross sell any product and be very proud of what you're selling. So now imagine in a banking scenario, you want to cross sell something to any user and some of these users is a mother with two kids and struggling to find a job. Will you cross sell all the things that some other competitors have? Will you cross sell Meme Coins, stuff like that? I wouldn't. And if you put that bar of not failing to even one customer and doing something that is not in their best interest, I think that the bar of where a principal company is rises quite a bit.

[Unknown]

Do you not think that is arrogant to assume that you should be the arbiter of justice on what is in their best interest versus what is not. There will be a single mother who wants access to that Meme Coin and will make money from that Meme Coin.

[Fernando Fanton]

Correct. And they will find the tools to do that. You will find some product out there that sells Meme Coins. You would. But the bar is higher. Right? The bar of what you're offering to people, somebody has to hold the bar really high and what doesn't meet it, somebody else will offer it. You will find a lot of financial tools or toys that you can buy meme coins all over the Internet.

[Unknown]

But I think it's arrogant to not allow crypto but to allow stock investing. For the majority of people, they don't know shit about stocks, they don't know shit about crypto. It's the same. It's a gamble.

[Fernando Fanton]

It's one way of looking at it.

[Unknown]

Does product change when you're building with trust as a paramount principle and if.

[Harry Stebbings]

You think about the different products you've.

[Unknown]

Worked on, which is amazing variety. So like a just eat versus a Monzo or even a Rappi versus a Monzo, as you said, trust at the center. With Monzo versus a Rappi, not so much at the center, is it?

[Fernando Fanton]

No, it's true. Each product is different, right? And there's ones that have a high emotional connection, a high level of trust. And that's the product itself. If you think about what is a bank, a bank manages risk. So the financial system of Europe or the UK has a regulator and has. Banks are a part of it. The money is with the banks, it's not anywhere else. So the whole idea of you manage risk, of course, you manage risk in a very compelling and smart way. So that's what banks are in the end. And Monzo was the first and only one maybe that said we're going to do that and be good for customers and have values and be trustworthy because all the other ones were not. Which is amazing to think that that was innovation, but that was the innovation. It's a bank that is a win win for people, for the people. And it was such a novel concept, which is amazing to think about in the food delivery space, which I've done before. You just want the food to get in there on time, be hot and if there's a problem to get your money back, it's simpler. Right? So because it's just food, but it has aspects of trust as well, right. That you have to have folks with five good hygiene and all the things. So there's always equality. But I think it's the levels for sure.

[Unknown]

We mentioned the crypto and the stock and the on the new product side, as a product leader today, when you think about what to build versus what not to build, how do you determine between attractive we should do it versus attractive, but not at core. It's a distraction.

[Fernando Fanton]

Two things. First, the mission. So to give You a property finder. The mission is to make living great for the region. It's a beautiful mission. I think missions are very important. There's a lot of things to think about. A product, it has to be easy to use, easy to understand, it has to scale and then at the end it has to be sustainable financially. Right. So it's all kind of the levels that you have to think about. But the most important one is does it make sense if it works and might not work for the mission? As simple as that. That's how I think about it. At least if it's truthfully worth pursuit to fulfill the mission. I would like to try it in small scale first. Right. Because the scale comes later and profitability comes later. And try it and just see what the users say. Is that meaningful for the users as we thought it would be? And if it is, then you scale it. So let the users make the decision. I try to let the users make the decision as often as I can. Where you going to go with that? Let's say in areas that are less regulated, for sure. And then you scale it up and to make the first decision, just go after the mission, just pursue the mission aggressively because that's really the only reason the company exists before we actually do.

[Unknown]

That testing and letting users guide us. I had Gustav from Spotify on the show and he said talk is cheap and so we should do more of it. When you think about internal discussion around new product build, how do you think about the effectiveness of dictatorship? No, we're not doing that. Versus the importance of having discussion.

[Fernando Fanton]

Wow, that's a great point. I would agree more on the discussion bit. I think it's a false dichotomy. Right. If you make a decision, what is the cost of having a conversation for three hours about it? Very low compared to building anything. So what I always like to tell people is, well, look, if anybody disagrees, let's sit down, I'll talk to you the entire weekend and they might convince me. In many cases it happens. Or as a team, right? It's not me, it's a team. And more of the cases this works because people should want to be listened to. And sometimes really the conversation is the values like the intelligence you're creating throughout the conversation. I think the most amazing thing is the opposite. A lot of people make decisions or don't talk about it at all. So what is the point in that really? What is the quality of a decision if you don't like at least two opposing views to have a conversation? And what Is the cost of speaking in a group for three hours for a new product like zero, it's nothing. Developers will go and spend months building it. I like to think it's always sports. I'm a big fan of the All Blacks and the famous rules of the All Blacks. And I do think to me, the best way to run any company is really close to what the best sports team does. All the rules that all Blacks have about empowering, about being humble but raising the bar and about treating everybody the same, but being decisive, they apply. So I think dictatorship. Somebody has to make a decision in the end, which is different than being a dictatorship.

[Unknown]

You said let users guide you. How do you think about the Henry Ford? I build what people want. I build faster horses versus I'm going to tell you what you want because you don't see it yet.

[Fernando Fanton]

When I say people guide you, it's not they telling you what to do. It's putting them in front of them and let them try it. Let's see if the impact in their life is as big as you thought it would be in the case. I'm pretty sure at one moment Henry Ford gave their car to somebody and they loved it. Get somebody to drive the car as quickly as you can. Back then you need those visionaries because building a 4T assembly line I'm pretty sure was quite an investment. But for us that now with AI you can test it so quickly and so easily. Just let them try it and see. They will tell you if they love it or not.

[Unknown]

How quickly do you know when a new product is a flop?

[Fernando Fanton]

I'm not. I think it depends on the case. It's a mistake sometimes to drop it too early because iteration sometimes does make a difference. You know, it's a flop when you deliver exactly what you wanted and just doesn't resonate.

[Unknown]

What's the most prominent flop that you've been a part of?

[Fernando Fanton]

There's a lot of products we launched in Carvey or in Rappi that we thought were going to be amazing and didn't.

[Unknown]

What in Rapi did you think would be amazing?

[Fernando Fanton]

That wasn't the super app concept of we can do this and that and that. So awesome. And people are like, well, I can use three different apps for it and I'm fine. And I think we were missing the glue between them. And I still see a lot of super apps making that mistake again. Most likely Rappi fixed this by now. If you make three experiences and not connected, the fact that in the same app doesn't mean anything. So there has to be more to the experience than just having the experiences in the same UX or the same customer support.

[Unknown]

What would you have done differently than knowing all that, you know now?

[Fernando Fanton]

The way I think about it now is whatever experience you add should improve the retention of the whole. So let's say you're doing, I don't know, like Bolt or any of these guys. You're doing mainly taxi and then you're adding food. Karim does this as well, and many others. And you keep adding stuff, right? Because you want to get really more output from that users or create more value or whatever you want to say. The more things you add, the more you should retain that user. Right? And frequency should go up. What that means is that each experience have to be good enough for the experience to be additive to the platform instead of subtracting. So you say I use it for a taxi and now I order groceries. Oh my God, why did I do this before? You know, I should have always done this before. It shouldn't be like, that's a big crap. Nobody gives you a price because you do cars and groceries at the same time. There should be something special, you know, the user better, the experience is better because you have the drivers. You know what I mean? There's something that the user should discover, oh, I should do it again with them. Loyalty. Because it's amazing sometimes you used to do things and look, all the things we can do, look at me. And the user is like, good for you. But doesn't really translate to their experience.

[Unknown]

What moment has been the single biggest change for your product mindset from an experience?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think the beautiful thing about product is that it's a bit closer to the user. We do a lot of research and you kind of know it's hard to estimate if you're in a niche or if you are in a big market. And for me it was a bit the opposite in the case of Monzo, was when we did this $0.01 campaign at the end of the year, which is if you Enroll, you have 1 cent the first day, 2 cents the second day, 3 cents the third day, and is 600 pounds by the end of the year. It's an automated way of saving, right? And we have some extra things. I thought, cool, that's going to do well. But you know, I didn't think it was game changing. And then the success he had, it was ridiculous.

[Unknown]

Why when you study it?

[Fernando Fanton]

Because I think, in my opinion that's my own assessment is when you do something that has a few things Together one is something that the users feel is good for me. Right. It's truthfully a good habit to create, like going to the gym and then you do something to help them break that kind of laziness. They had to do it. So, for example, they don't want to save because it's just too much time and effort. And you do an extra kind of lottery at the end of the year or something. Right. They can earn some money. You're kind of pushing them, helping them to do something that is good for them. So it's almost like you're doing both things. This is something good for you. And now I want to be your help you to actually do it. You know, like your trainer goes and says, do this exercise every day and it's good for you. And then he gets you to do it and then you realize it's good for you. That's so much more impactful when they're combined. So to me, that was a huge realization of, wow. It can be so much more impactful than whatever the numbers predicted because of that emotional component. When you're seeing somebody that is truthfully helping you to be better, do you.

[Unknown]

Think about how do I bring emotion into product?

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah, all the time. You do, all the time.

[Harry Stebbings]

How do you do that?

[Unknown]

So I think about it a lot in marketing and in social copy. Obviously, I'm a marketer. VC is a glorified market. As me on steroids. I think about very much the words that I use and the tone that I use them in to convey emotion in marketing. How does that work in product?

[Fernando Fanton]

In product is similar. Right. I think you want to have some sort of like the equivalent of haptic feedback when somebody's good for you. Right. Monzo was a famous case of the, you know, the things that pop up, all these kind of things that are telling you is a good thing for you, like immediate feedback. One thing that I always notice with traditional fintechs, I know you've seen it, you know, I won't name them, but the classic, you get an email and you're afraid. I know it happens to you, but I get an email for traditional banks or traditional credit cards. I feel literally anxious because it's a fraud. It's not fraud. Want my money? What is it? Right? And everything, the tonality of it is off. The messaging is off, is for them, not for me. You know what I mean? Like they want me to something for them, not for me. And of course, property finder now and months of before, it's the opposite. Clearly the emotion is always we're here for you and the emotion is always a positive one. Something bad happened. How are you going to get back on track? That's why I love the health apps, because your health goes up and down. But let's say you stop training for a month. I come back and say let's get back on the horse. So it's always a positive feedback. I think Whoop again. Does a good job at that. It doesn't hit you in the head. You haven't slept yesterday. I know, right? I have four kids. I haven't slept. But it's like, oh, if you do three hours today, you're going to be back on track. And you know, you're. It's always that kind of emotional support to some extent because we're emotional beings in the end.

[Unknown]

I think you mentioned fitness several times. I think it's important is like consistency. You mentioned weekly reviews earlier. How do you structure weekly reviews? They the same time who comes, who sets the agenda? What do you want to get out of them? What makes a good one?

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah, I love the doordash angle which is a bit what took into Rappi a few years ago. Right. What they took into Rappi and I learned a lot from them. And it's really a combination of transparency, data and weekly rhythm. The basic concept is imagine you have a startup. You say there's one thing you remember the classic startup. There's one thing we can do and only one thing. It's classic and the founder says it and everybody does it and you feel like a rock star. And then you have a corporation and they managed by proxy okrs which I'm not a big fan of at all. It's a whole different conversation. Or any proxies you might like the business plans and the Excels with prioritizations which I never do and all these proxies and because they don't know how to communicate is more than one thing. WBR is what are the 1020 things that matter to me? Your objectives. Who is responsible called dri Direct Responsible individual. And that's the actual person doing it. Is not the executive three levels up. It's the person who knows what they're talking about. And then they will write what's happening? Why is it happening? What are we doing about it? And if one of those things is red, what is our job? Help them. It's not hit them in the head. Which is the other thing I dislike the classic company corporations will spend years hitting in the head somebody and then oh, it's not good. Let's fire them and bring somebody back. And then 10 years passed and nobody's accountable. Everybody's accountable, right? So if it's red, it's my fault? Is the CFO fault? Is the CEO fault? It's everybody's fault.

[Unknown]

Do you not want one person to feel more accountable?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, the ERI obviously will feel more accountable, but it's not. It's always a company. It's like the All Blacks, right? The All Blacks lose the World cup and what do you say? What is the value of saying, hey, it was you, dude, it was you. Blacks lost. Argentina won the World Cup. France lost. Right? It's just the team lost.

[Unknown]

Do you not think it's important to feel pressure? And it's like Ian Nick from Revolut. I love Nick. I think he's a great leader. There are different ways of leadership, by the way. TS I think is a great, great leader in a different way. Do you not think fear and pressure are a great way to lead in terms of effectiveness?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think that truly superb people don't need fear and they put more pressure on themselves than anyone else.

[Unknown]

Do you think Nick is a truly great leader?

[Fernando Fanton]

I don't know Nick as well, if I'm honest. I think what Revlo has done and what Monzo have done are both 0.111% on the same.

[Unknown]

People say Monzo is too nice a culture.

[Fernando Fanton]

That's a bad thing. If that's the worst thing to say.

[Unknown]

About Monzo, then let's say intellectual and nice. It's comfy.

[Fernando Fanton]

No, Look, I work in investment banking in Goldman Sachs, so I get your point. I don't think that the best companies in the world require that. I think the best people are self motivating and they're the harshest critics of themselves. I think the whole company should be held accountable. To your point, I think the company should be held accountable to high standards and high goals and high ambition. I don't imagine Tony Nadal saying to Rafael Nadal, like, dude, I'm going to make you fear that you're going to lose the final for Angel Ross. He didn't want to lose the final of Roland Garros. Nobody had to tell him. The more people you get like that, they are the harshest critics. I do believe the company itself should put a high bar for the company. Right. I just don't believe on the, you know, hitting on the head. I think that's more for average companies.

[Unknown]

What did you believe that you now no longer believe?

[Fernando Fanton]

I used to Think about individualism a bit more. When I moved to the U.S. in the 2000s, when I moved to the U.S. it's a very individualistic country. And you always think, I can do whatever I want. It's just up to me. If I work hard enough, if I study hard enough. And then Argentina is much more of a communal thing. It's what we do, it's everybody together. So when I moved to the U.S. i thought, oh no, they're right, it's all about me and what I can do. And then you realize that it's not true, right? It's both things. I have to be the best that I can be myself. Going to the gym, study, work hard so that I can contribute more to the team. And then the team output is higher. And if I happen to be in a great company, the company will be higher. And I would take a benefit from that. I think this idea that we live in a vacuum is a bit naive. It's nice to feel it on their 20s because you feel like that, and early 30s, you will feel like that too. We all feel like we can save the world on our own. And then when you get older, you realize that you depend on many more factors and people and the government and the companies you're in.

[Unknown]

What do product builders not see about leading product that they should see?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think for me it's much more about the energy that you're bringing to the company. You should always grab what you're doing and try to raise it. Now if the company is doing 8x, you want to see what is that next level in the product, in the energy of the individuals. And you feel this, you feel people are motivated, energized, and their head is going like crazy and they are self motivating and they're doing things on the weekend because they want to, not because you're forcing them. And you see it, right? And then magic happens a little bit. And we've all been part of teams like that, a small team. You're like something magical happening here that everybody, the summation of all of us is higher than even what we thought it could be. So to me, product is always a bit of that, right? You have to be ensuring that everybody rises and the product rises with it well beyond what you can think on your own.

[Unknown]

When you have a product flop, what do you do to prevent really dejected teams?

[Fernando Fanton]

This beautiful phrase of no effort goes wasted. So if you work really hard and you work a lot with customers and you ship something and you didn't work, you Learned. And sometimes I tell you, well, let's say we do something and we realize it's not the answer. Well, it's not the answer for us. It's not the answer for the competitors either, because it's not a thing. So great. Now we know that's not the answer. Let's go and find where the answer is.

[Unknown]

What was a product flop from Monza and what did you learn?

[Fernando Fanton]

Pretty much most of the things we've done. Monza always been successful.

[Unknown]

Really?

[Fernando Fanton]

I can't think of one myself. You have to invite somebody else to tell you, but honestly, I cannot think of one.

[Unknown]

Do you think you tried enough?

[Fernando Fanton]

Then should I ts that question? Look, there is a process to it. You could always argue you can do more. I still believe that Monzo is the best niuang experience in any country. Personally, I'm biased, of course, but better than Nubank in Brazil and better than Revolut in the uk. Obviously it's just in one country now, but when the world sees it, I still believe it's the best proposition out there.

[Unknown]

Personally, do you think Monzo will be a $100 billion company?

[Fernando Fanton]

I hope so. I don't think the reason why not to, but time will tell. Too many variables to judge.

[Unknown]

Do you believe the future of banking in that case will be like very few neo banks that rule across continents or we continue to see regionalized winners?

[Fernando Fanton]

I'm not the bank expert here, but there is a lot of steps to get to a level of Monzo or Revolut or Nubank. It's not easy. It's not easy to get the scale. Being so savvy with regulators, with the processes, capital. I don't think you have a hundred like that. So I think over time there is a reason for them to expand.

[Unknown]

When you have real scale, you often have slowness, apathy in some cases. How do product teams slow down?

[Fernando Fanton]

I don't know if product teams, but I think risk aversion is a real thing.

[Unknown]

What's that? Risk aversion?

[Fernando Fanton]

No risk.

[Unknown]

Ah, Risk aversion.

[Fernando Fanton]

Risk aversion, right. Is a case where the more you have, the more you have to lose. The startups, you have nothing. And you see this in big companies. $100 billion company, a $40 billion company. There is a lot to lose all of a sudden. So I think it's human nature.

[Unknown]

How do you remove that?

[Fernando Fanton]

It comes from the top.

[Unknown]

In general, you say it's okay to fail. Let's go fucking big.

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah. And you put the processes to ensure. Look, banks Cannot fail. So it's a different definition of failure. But you have to draw the line to say that we need defining what the future is and the future is not the same as now. You have to do something different. So it's a little more of not being content to where you are and always trying to be the one defining what's next.

[Unknown]

Does the world change a lot in product when the quality of the customer experience and the output of your product is determined by a third party? And what I mean specifically by that is you mentioned a lovable earlier, fantastic product, amazing outputs. The quality is determined by the quality of the model. When Claude 4 was released, it went significantly up. That is a fundamental change to product. Can you imagine if I said to you, hey, there's going to be some externality and for your Monzo product, it's going to get way better and it's got nothing to do with you, so good luck. But I'll tell you when it's released sometime in Q3, Q4. Q does the world of product change in that way?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, I think there have always been platforms like LLMs now, and I think the difference is that LLMs are a bit more full stack than before. If you think about it, OpenAI can be both iOS and Google Cloud or Amazon services together. And I don't think we've seen how many years you have to go back to feel that way. A product depends on iOS, right? For the experience, if you use the face recognition. So there's always that platform angle that hopefully elevates everybody. And iOS did that, right? There's a lot of things you could do with iOS that you couldn't do on the web. And that's why everybody moved towards the native app experience. Remember, it was a big thing a few years ago or 10 years ago. The same with the cloud, right? Cloud always initially was like, it's going to be cheaper. And it wasn't cheaper, but it was faster, much faster innovation by developers when they did it. Now, combine the two and I'm a huge believer in OpenAI would be massive, personally, because I think it's full stack. You have B2C. This is a very, very powerful combination. And it will be both now, right? It will be iOS plus Amazon Web Services. So everybody will depend on that platform and it's the right thing to do because you couldn't do it on your own. You cannot build OpenAI, the LLM model on your own. So I don't think it's a dichotomy in that sense. I believe that the question will be, can you add value enough that there is value on that layer versus what the models would do on their own? That would be the question for all these companies as they come along. I will ask them, and I don't know. What are you actually doing? What are you actually doing? Is it user experience? Is it learning? Is it fine tuning? Doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. So what is it? What is the secret sauce? And why do users prefer lovable versus Courser or all the new ones that will pop up? There will have to be something.

[Unknown]

You're hiring a product team, okay? It's fucking hard to hire product people. And most CEOs actually don't know how to hire product people. If I start with your advice, to me, you're an angel in my company, number one, what questions do I ask in a product interview? What do you want to know?

[Fernando Fanton]

I can feel it almost right away.

[Unknown]

Why? What do you feel?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think the first thing I look at is you have to do a little of what, like light on their eyes. Ideally, there are some people that there's no light on their eyes. Like almost like no excitement. Not kind of. I do want to see some sort of creativity or, you know, the lights of excitement of what you can build. For a good product manager, you need to have that. And then you want to again the creative side and then you want to check the analytical, very simple, which is just make sure that they're not just purely crazy creative, although you want some of them, but also can actually have to break down a problem in steps, the way consulting has done it for many, many years. So can they abstract thinkers, can they think in abstractions and then quantify it and break it down and say, okay, you do this, you do that. Now, I think with AI, maybe you want to be more outlier based. So like a crazy creative and then a mathematician make more sense because you can glue them together more easily with ChatGPT and all the things. So that could be an outcome.

[Unknown]

Do you need to be an amazing writer? Quite a few people have said on the show that you need to be a great writer to be great at products, PRDs, clarity of communication.

[Fernando Fanton]

I don't think I ever done a PRD myself, except the first few years in Microsoft, if I'm honest. But I do believe you need to be able to communicate your thoughts. And writing is always the best test. So if you cannot write a one pager, which is what I get my folks to do, is just write a one pager, what are you Doing why and what is the plan. And if you cannot do that, and now ChatGPT can do it for you, but you should be able to articulate your thoughts, ideally because you have to communicate to engineers and the designers. So I do believe that's important. We'll see if it continues to be as important as before. But it's a classic thing, right? The PM has to be able to synthesize a bit what the customers needs are, what are the hypotheses are for solving them and what the plan is to, to get there.

[Unknown]

It kind of makes me think of like great leaders are able to bring people along with them for a journey. Where are you not great as a leader?

[Fernando Fanton]

I'm married with four kids, so, you know, it's a long conversation.

[Unknown]

I'm not asking your wife, I'm asking you.

[Fernando Fanton]

It will be a whole day of podcast. I think personally being fully honest, I have ADHD very clearly myself, right? So like very, very clearly. I think I'm more accepting of it now. But some people get mad because how.

[Unknown]

Has your acceptance of it changed the treatment?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think it's good to say it because a lot of people used to get really pissed off with me, hey, you see this person? You left the room two minutes before it finished. And I have no recollection of myself doing that, right? Or you know, somebody say hi and say hi back. And I have no recollection of seeing that person or forgetting something, for example. And what I noticed for the idea is people take it very personally because it's emotional and when you say I didn't remember it, you think it's bullshit because if it was important you will remember it. So it was really hard before because people don't understand. I think it's bullshit when you're telling them, no, I truly forgot. So now I think you try to be more open because at the end there is no value in hiding things, right? So you say, look, I forgot and I left the meeting two minutes before because in my mind we were done. In my mind I was done and I wasn't having the awareness, the social awareness of people still in the meeting. At the end, the most honest you are, the better. I have more confidence in myself now. You know, when you're younger, you're trying to kind of hide your flaws a bit more because you don't want to be judged. As you get older, have some success, you're like, whatever, this is me. And the most honest I am, the better.

[Unknown]

I can't remember who said it. I can't remember if it was Jony I've or Steve Jobs or one of the greats, but they said that focus is saying no to even really great opportunities. What really great opportunity did you say no to that you think about most a lot?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think one of the ones I thought a lot was Mercado Libre 14 years ago. Opportunity to join Mercado Libre 14 years ago in a really good position. You know, I get to Marcos and I thought this is an amazing team. The best team I ever seen from Stanford, smart, driven, great culture in Argentina. I'm like, my God, this is the best job ever. And just didn't work out because at that time I still wanted my family to be in the US or Europe. And I said no. And obviously then I thought it would be successful. But I remember I bought $50,000 or something or some number, not small number and I kept it and it's 40 times until today. So I'm like, shoot, that was a great opportunity. There are not many like that 40x and also wish I was invested even more. Even though at that time I thought, okay, that's a big investment for this small company Latin America. Now I'm like, my God, should have invested a bit more.

[Unknown]

What is a great product for a user that you think is a bad investment? So like Twitter as a user, I think it's a great product, phenomenal shit investment. I would not like to be in it as a business.

[Fernando Fanton]

That's a great point. I mean everything that cannot achieve scale struggles to monetize. Of course, right? You could argue Twitter could be more aggressive, monetizing if you wish. So I think there's always if a great product is there, I will argue should be able to be a good investment. Unless the value is just for society. I struggle to think of one, to be honest. Maybe something too niche. Like I really hope these guys from nothing are successful, right? Because it's hard to make a phone at scale that is great and not expensive. So I don't know if it's going to turn out or not, but it's definitely a great product.

[Unknown]

How important is time to value? You have a new user for property finder. How important is it that hey, within 30 seconds they get value versus no, no, no. We will get a questionnaire, we'll understand them, we will create a curated experience for them. But we need to understand them first.

[Fernando Fanton]

I think it's super important time to value, right? I think it's important because people are quite lazy and not in a bad way. I'm saying is we obsess about our products. Right, whatever. You're obsessed about your company. I obsess about, you know, Rappi Monso, property finder. I think about it all the time. And users just have a purpose, a reason to use it. They're not thinking about your product all the time. So the time you have to make an impression is very little. You can't miss it. It's a huge cost to miss it. I believe that you want to have value very quickly and then build from that. Right. I think the mistake is not. Is to not build from it. You know what I mean? When I have your attention and I show you value very quickly and now you know who I am, have I invested enough over time to take it to the next level? I think that's where the problem is. I think it's very obvious that you don't have that many chances to make a first impression with products and you better deliver value as soon as you can.

[Unknown]

I think Time to Value is a good litmus test for need of customer. What I mean by that is Noom, and if you're Noom, the weight loss management app, it is one of the most successful weight loss apps. It provides kind of curated diets and fitness plans and everything in between. They literally have 50 questions that you have to answer before you can even sign up. The time to value is appalling. The investment required is shit. But it's a conviction and litmus test for the consumer need.

[Fernando Fanton]

It pays off and obviously what they will have is a funnel which marks more drop off very engaged users. Right. So it might actually work. I think Whoop is similar in the sense to use the same example. Like, it takes seven days to see any. Any result. It takes seven days to build. The advice, let's say the baseline, but they do a really good job getting you there. And to your point, you're feeling that, okay, it's worth the wait.

[Unknown]

People don't like Whoop for the reliability.

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah, look, I'm not trying to sell Whoop here, but whoop's a really interesting.

[Unknown]

One because it brings up a fantastic product principle that's very difficult to understand, which is, how do I create a product for super users, amazing athletes like Cristiano Ronaldo, but also my mum and me and just normal people.

[Fernando Fanton]

It's a great product and you have to again, get the Cristiano of each one of us. Right. So what is it that relates to you that will make you do that investment?

[Unknown]

So my question is, how do you create a product for power users? That can also be for more normal users.

[Fernando Fanton]

There's two opposite things. First, you said if you have 50 questions and you deliver the answer, I think that clearly you're going through a segment of people that would put down effort and actually, as they're going through, they like the depth of what you're going through. And it's similar to, I don't know if you ever go to a doctor or something. And there's one that comes very cautiously. I say, oh, you're fine. And they leave and you're like, they didn't even know what I had. And other ones that, you know, take the time to really ask you questions about your life, your private life. Now, you react well to the latter because for you it's very, very important. So you're looking for that, actually. So the product to some extent is the questionnaire. So the fact that they're taking the time to ask you 50 questions is kind of the product because it's the same time of when you meet a great mentor and you can see they invest time on you and you really care about it. You really like the fact that they're asking deep questions. And so I think it's part of the product itself to go 50 questions, sure.

[Unknown]

But how do you create, forgetting the question, onboarding that. How do you create products that amazing, amazing product lovers will love as well as everyone? There will be property finder and there'll be people who have 50 properties and know everything about property buying and you need to create a great product for them. And me moving to Dubai for the first time and buying my first house.

[Fernando Fanton]

In Dubai, it's a very difficult problem to solve. Right? And what I think people confuse sometimes is there's the argument sometimes you fulfill the needs of the hardcore customer and you don't really have to do much more. They're already there. And then when you go to what is called the adjacent customer is you make it a bit easier for that person to even go through that journey. And the way I think about it is, let's say you are deep in property management. It's part of your Persona, your personality. What do you do? I have 10 properties and I manage them. And you feel really good about yourself. So if you have a person that just want to do one, you still have to get them in that journey. And you see great products do this, you buy one. Hey, you. Did you know Duolingo does this, right? The person that first starts at rank, number, whatever, and you still don't know anything about the language, but they make you feel like you're in that journey. Right. To be the person that can say, I speak five languages. You can visualize yourself, oh, I want to speak two languages. Now if I only continue to duolingo for the next, who knows, one year or two years. So I think that journey applies to both. The error is to give the experience are super complex to the person that's just getting started. Right. So it's progressive. Right. There's a concept of progressive onboarding or progressive. So I think the progressive experience is an important one. Unless you want to shut them down, which is. I don't care about the casual person that goes to Dubai, just really want the 50 property. And then you should be very opinionated about that, which is a bit. Your example before. Just don't want the casual user. There's no way the casual user will put the effort of somebody who manages 50 properties. But if I want to get them in that journey, I need to give them a taste of what that feels like.

[Unknown]

Just Eat has obviously been outplayed, hasn't moved with the times. What's a lesson from that? From a product perspective for you or from a business perspective?

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, I've been out of Just Eat for many, many years, sure.

[Unknown]

But working in Rappi as well, which is kind of the next generation provider in many respects.

[Fernando Fanton]

Well, I think that the ambition of Rappi was always bigger, which is a bit of what I noticed in Latin America versus Europe. If you tell me now, right. Like if you pick somebody in Rappi or Ifood or Mercado Libre, the energy and the passion of those people is, in my experience, 2, 3x is no more of what I see in. In the average here in Europe. Right.

[Unknown]

Wow.

[Fernando Fanton]

And you see it, it's not just a culture because Brazilians are more, you know, happier people. But I think it's a. It's a mix of being proud and humble and appreciated more the opportunity, you know what I mean? Like in Latin America you don't have that many opportunities to be in a company like that. So you see that the people that are there, they have the T shirt on. You can see it, they're so proud of that company. And what you don't realize is the effort. Companies decay or products decay because the interest wanes from within. You know, the passion to do the effort, the really difficult things to fix it. Just nobody cares anymore. If nobody's looking at your performance management, you cannot replace that with passion. And then you see the other team, they're like passionate and they want to be the best. And they're proud of what they do and they know that. They're so grateful of the opportunity to be in Mercado Libre or Ifood or Rappi. That is a different motivator. They love it. They are there and they're proud of what you're doing. They're not like, well, it's a job. And my career, I hate when people talk about titles. I find it a lot in Europe or in the uk, like, what is my title? How many people you managed? That's clearly the wrong proxy. Conservative passion of what you're doing is, okay, have a title and jump in the career. I get a bit of more of a salary. And you know, to Europeans work the least.

[Unknown]

You've seen Latam, you've seen Dubai now.

[Fernando Fanton]

And you've been in trouble. You can generalize, right? There are people here that were like crazy and amazing companies and so forth. In average. Obviously the joke a little bit is, you know, it's a beautiful continent, Spain, south of France. And you know, people like to enjoy it. And I think he's been a bit wealthier. The difference in America has been third world for many, many years. And there are not that many opportunities in those countries. I think there's still more here. And you're also poorer. I was quite afraid of being poorer when I was in Argentina. There's no safety net. There's no safety net in Brazil. If you don't have money, you're really in a bad place. If you don't have a good job, truthfully. And you see that.

[Unknown]

What does that actually mean?

[Fernando Fanton]

It means whether it's education, all the services, education or health care or where you live is much more dangerous, right? So you're left to your own devices much more. And you get exposed to things that obviously are not great. So you will see more energy for people to get out of that situation. I think Europeans, it's a bit more. The Delta is not so strong, right? It's always like, oh, I'm doing well. If I put much more effort, what is the return, right? And it's still doing fairly. Okay. You don't have that in Latin America.

[Unknown]

There's a safety net here.

[Fernando Fanton]

There is a safety net. And I think the historical wealth that the problem people don't realize that thing doesn't last forever. Argentina was very wealthy 100 years ago and it went away.

[Unknown]

Did Rappi raise too much too soon?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think Skip the Dishes, which is a company we have bought in Just Eat with great founders which are now in Nio. Financial. They were so good because they did Manitoba in Canada. I remember we bought the company because nobody was able to travel there from anywhere else because nobody got to the plane that was a turboprop to Manitoba. So nobody bothered to even go and meet them. And we did, we just did. And we. David. And they were amazing. And they never raised money. So they were so efficient. And they have thought every single little cranny of the onboarding experience for partners and drivers that at the time, and I think it's true, it was the best we've ever seen, including in my opinion, everyone else. And it was really because, you know, the need is what drives innovation, right? You don't have the money, you better come up with an idea on how to do it. Anyways, I think money always creates a little more laziness, right? Because there is always a way to buy something. Obviously the problem is when you have the. When people give you money, you most likely take it. But I'm not so sure that a lot of money is a good thing. I haven't seen it myself.

[Unknown]

When you look at Dubai in 10 years, is it a financial technology center as they plan? Is it a Miami which is a fleeting place for taxes? What does Dubai look like in 10 years?

[Fernando Fanton]

Look, I've only been there for two months, so you know, big caveat. But I think it's much more than in Miami. I think the energy, the way, how progressive the government is in the plans for the future. To me it's like a city that is or a country that is a startup. The customer are the people that want to live there. I think I mentioned before, like you go to get your license, it's a happiness center. I don't know anybody in any other country you go to get a license and feels like a happiness experience. And I love it because I'm one of the people that thinks everything is a product. We're all users of a product. And I think pretty much everything is a product. With few exceptions. Country is a product. If you think about it, particularly if you think in their case that immigration is free, right? So you can choose to go there and get a visa. It's a product, right? So what is the value proposition of the country? And they seem incredibly self aware of that and treating you as a customer. And make sure that the experience is truthfully delightful. And they're always thinking for again two months in what is ahead, what is the future. And you can see again that kind of excitement about the future when you talk to the people anywhere. It's always the future is better than the past, which to me is mainly the only reason to be alive. Right. And you don't see it everywhere. Like, future is going to be better and we're going to do all these amazing things and we have all these ideas. So to me, it's like a startup and a city startup. And I personally very foolish about where it goes from what I've seen.

[Unknown]

Dude, I want to ask you a quick fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your thoughts. That sound okay?

[Fernando Fanton]

Yeah. Who.

[Unknown]

Which product most recently was like a wow consumer moment for you? For me, Duolingo. The beauty of haptics for them and how they integrate that and the vibrations with new levels.

[Fernando Fanton]

There's something about the kids, right? Because these two products like Duolingo, my daughter is a fanatic of it and she learned Spanish much better than I could ever taught her. And I know Spanish. My son is a fanatic of nothing. Right? And then you think, okay, why are the kids react so well to this? And there has to be something about the less bias towards the past, more open to true innovation. I remember my daughter bugs me to give her the phone for Duolingo to not miss this trick. Like, she's like that. Anomis is my streak. I'm number three, my friend is number five and this is number seven. And she drives me crazy until I give her the phone and do it. And my son drove me crazy to get him the phone. I believe that they're less biased and they can experience amazing products sooner than us because we are still stuck on. I learned Spanish the old way and I use a traditional phone.

[Unknown]

You've been at Property Finder for a couple of months. Couple of months. Monzo Rappi. Just eat. Which one's the best CEO?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think all successful companies have amazing CEOs in my experience, and you can't compare them. Truthfully, you can't.

[Unknown]

They're so different if you can invest in one.

[Fernando Fanton]

Oh, I think Simon is one of a kind for sure. In Latin America, there are not many people like him.

[Unknown]

What's your biggest parenting advice? My brother just had a new baby, his first baby. What would you advise him having his first?

[Fernando Fanton]

Oof. I can really talk about this one. First one is to enjoy it, particularly when they're young, because it goes really quickly. And the second one is that you cannot predict how the kids are going to come out or how they're going to behave or their personality or whatever you do. They will choose their own path. You should not have A vision of who you want them to be but rather just help them along the way because each one, even if you teach them the same things, will deviate quite a bit and chart their own path very quickly.

[Unknown]

What would you say to someone graduating university today, entering the workforce, take advantage.

[Fernando Fanton]

Of the first few years. I'm hiring a lot of grads now in poverty finder. They're not expensive, they don't need the money really. So they should live within their means and learn and just learn. And these three, four years does the.

[Unknown]

Value of a CS degree go up or down?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think physics to me always goes up. Physics, yeah, always felt that way even for cs. I always felt that physics and math are the cornerstone of computer science. Like JavaScript is great but I don't feel that I think that's an implementation of something. Whether physics and math I think change your brain quite a bit. So I would still suggest people to learn as much as they can, either the creative side or physics and math.

[Unknown]

Would you encourage your children to go to university?

[Fernando Fanton]

No.

[Unknown]

Why?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think that by then I encourage them to learn and if university happens to be the way, great. And if it's not, there might be new ways of doing it that traditional universities that are very stuck on the past don't provide.

[Unknown]

Final one. What do you believe that most around you most vehemently disagree with?

[Fernando Fanton]

I think what I said before, right. That the value is in growing through the difficulty. It's not a success. It's not all the things you thought were important. You forget very, very quickly. If I think my career path when I first went to Microsoft I thought oh my God, I made it. Nobody cared after that. But taking care of myself health wise or my friendships or my family with my mom is much more important because you literally never know what's going to happen. And I think we are all too much in the milestone game and only when you get older you realize doesn't make sense. But it's one of those things like it's, it's very useful. You're never going to do it when you're younger and when you're older it doesn't matter. So I don't know if people will follow that or not.

[Unknown]

Dude, I so appreciate you joining me. I love the way this show didn't actually have an intro. I don't know if you noticed but there was a moment at the beginning where I was like this is too good. I'm just going to keep rolling. So thank you so much for joining me man.

[Fernando Fanton]

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

[Harry Stebbings]

My word, I so enjoyed that. One of my favorite things about doing the show is just the very natural conversations that unfold without the schedule, without planning. It makes it so much more special. Fernando was incredible there. Just loved having him on. You can find that episode also on Spotify. If you'd leave a review or a five star rating, it makes a huge difference and we'd so appreciate that. But before we leave you today Are you struggling to beat model benchmarks or implement Gen AI in your product? If so, you need Turing Turing is an AGI infrastructure company backed by incredible investors like Foundation Capital and Westbridge Capital. And they do two things. Number one, they help leading companies in AI labs like Salesforce, Anthropic and Meta enhance their LLMs with advanced reasoning, coding, multilinguality, multimodality and more. Two, they combine human and artificial intelligence expertise to deploy cutting edge AI systems for awesome companies like Rivian and Reddit. Right now, Turing offers a free 5 minute self assessment to help you pinpoint your place in the Gen AI journey, get tailored next steps to optimize your model strategy and then finally learn how Turing can refine and implement your models for better performance. Take the guesswork out of Gen AI. Visit turing turing.com 20vc to start your free assessment today and once your Genai strategy is on point with Turing. Now let's talk about making your product do exactly what you want it to, whether it's the software you build or the software you buy. Your tech stack should be creating results, not creating roadblocks. Well, Pendo's no Code Software Experience Management platform makes your software better with tools to see where users get stuck. Guide them with in app messaging and constantly improving your UI. It's so easy that over 14,000 businesses use Pendo to increase revenue, lower costs and reduce risks. Businesses love the control, engineers love the freedom. Everyone wins. Start for free today at Pendo iO20 product. As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode with Martin Casado, one of the best AI infrastructure investors from Andreessen. Coming on Monday.