Ankit Jaini - Product Manager at WhatsApp, owned by Meta | ProductHooman | S1 E2 🎙️

The ProductHooman podcast guest of this week is Ankit Jaini, the Product Manager at WhatsApp, owned by Meta. He has been working on WhatsApp’s nascent feature, “Business Messaging,” to protect users from spam and low-quality messaging on the platform. He has worked with companies like Twilio, Goomo, AlienAdv, and more.

In today’s episode, we discussed so many interesting insights:

WhatsApp for Small and Large Businesses: WhatsApp is meant for small businesses called the SMB app. The big segment of their user base:

• Small mom-and-pop shops who are single solo entrepreneurs trying to scale up their business. These small medium businesses want to use WhatsApp business.
• Larger enterprises who want to send hundreds of thousands or millions of messages send email or SMS.

Difference between B2B and B2C Product Management

• The big difference between B2B and B2C is just expectations of how a product works and what customers want.
• In B2B space, there are mostly large enterprises, and they have specific requests in how they want the product to evolve. It's very important to understand who is the customer base you're catering to, who is the focus of your product, and who will drive that product forward. And sometimes it's a very hard decision.

B2B and B2C in WhatsApp Business Messaging: As WhatsApp is in business messaging, they get both sets of customers.

• One set is of businesses — they want them to come on the platform and scale.
• Another set is of users — they want to ensure they receive high-value, expected messages.

And that is an interesting dichotomy.

They’re bringing this needle of how they make sure business messaging scales sustainably so that users actually value and get messages they expected and valued so they derive value from it.

The work culture at Meta

• Some of the biggest apps in the world used by the most number of people are Meta apps. It can't be a coincidence. The way Meta builds that internal transparency and the motivation to come in and do the best work has been fascinating for him.
• Meta has the best work culture that any product builder can have as they get the chance to go and execute their ideas. This way they have the leverage to keep innovating in some or the other way.

WhatsApp's principle-based decision-making

• In a fast-moving company like WhatsApp, it’s critical to present ideas in an easily digestible way and make quick decisions.

High Agency in Product Management

• It’s surprising how much being High Agency can leverage you as a person to figure out creative ways to get stuck. Especially when things are stuck, there'll be a lot of time you feel stuck in a PM job, but just showing up on those hardest days goes such a long way.
• Your talent compounds your skills exponentially. Being High Agency is one of the only things that separate good from great.

Having Hard Conversations at Work — Biggest Learning

• Having hard conversations is a skill that needs practice and a lot of effort. The outcomes can be exponentially fantastic. It saves you so much heartburn and anxiety and will increase your leverage manifold.

Listen to the full conversation to know more in detail!

Connect with Ankit Jaini:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-jaini/

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