🚀 Marketing & Community Leader: Laura Mesa
🚀 Marketing & Community Leader: Laura Mesa
Vice President of Marketing & Community @ Product Hunt
In This Edition
📚 What you can learn from taking a project from 1-2
🧡 The power of sharing your performance review with your team
👏🏽 Why you should consider starting meetings with “Kudos & Learnings”
About Laura
Laura is currently Vice President of Marketing & Community at Product Hunt. She has 15 years of experience in product marketing, community building and brand engagement, previously working for Sequoia Capital, Facebook, Yahoo, and Mozilla. She is a wife and mother and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
What inspired your career path?
I think one of the reasons I enjoy and find so much meaning in my work as a community builder is that I grew up moving every two years — I lived in very different places with very different cultures — Indonesia, Dubai and London to name just a few. And so, from a young age, figuring out for myself how to build a community and operating structure in these new locations was always a part of my life.
When I went to university, I came in thinking I wanted to be a Psychologist to help people. But, as I spent the required time in the lab, I quickly realized that I just didn’t enjoy the work. However, it did allow me to meet an incredible mentor, Professor Cassie Mollinger Holmes who is now at UCLA. At the time, she was very focused on studying the psychology of choice — what makes people choose certain products and why. I loved learning about this field and it opened my eyes to the possibilities in the world of marketing.
When it came time for internships, I applied for hundreds of opportunities to explore marketing, but I only received a call back from one company — Apple! The timing was incredible as they had just launched the iPhone. It was a Corporate Communications internship where I worked on everything from opening and responding to fan letters to Steve Jobs to helping execute the PR strategy for the iPod.
Within weeks, I realized that I wanted to be in tech. But, PR didn’t feel like the right fit, so I decided to explore Marketing as I had gotten to know that team and what they did at Apple. Ultimately, I joined Mozilla. Then, Facebook, where I connected the dots between Community and Marketing and focused on Product Marketing. Now, I have an amazing role where I’m leading both Marketing and Community at Product Hunt!
Can you tell us about your role at Product Hunt?
Product Hunt is one of the few places where we try to deliver on the idea of a meritocracy: if you have the idea, it doesn’t matter where you’re based or who you know, if the idea is good enough, it can get the attention it needs to become known by some of the biggest tech influencers through our Products of the Day.
Product Hunt started as an email newsletter sharing cool products. In the ten years since, there’s no one else who has created a platform for makers to announce their product, get feedback and grow their users from day one.
I joined about a year ago. I focus on everything from launch consultations to building out content to help makers grow their communities on Product Hunt. It still boggles my mind that companies like Figma, Loom and Notion got their start on Product Hunt! It’s even cooler to see that Figma and Notion still come back to us to launch new features and products.
Now, Product Hunt is becoming more than just a place where to launch, but instead a place where makers connect to and grow their customers.
As you look back, what is one project you are proud of creating over the years?
I’ll share a story that’s not that common in the tech industry because we’re always so focused on what's new. People can forget what it takes to help something evolve. Just because you're not starting it from 0 to 1 and you're going from 1 to 2 — it’s sometimes even harder than 0 to 1 because you have so much of the past to sort through.
This experience takes me back to 2012 when I joined Yahoo. Marissa Mayer had recently come on board as CEO. I was asked to come on in a product marketing capacity to help look at all of Yahoo’s products to determine which had a good mobile use case.
I went through years and years of documents and research to try to determine the original genesis of the product and then try to reverse-engineer it for 2013! We spent a lot of time deciding which products would be sunset and which ones would get additional investment. There was so much history and so much context I was trying to balance while also trying to get the alignment and build the business cases to move forward.
We were able to turn a lot around — Yahoo Weather was born and Yahoo Mail evolved a lot from this work. Our tech culture is always so focused on building what’s new, that not a lot of people appreciate the effort and work it takes to help something evolve at a mature company.
How do you approach communicating internally with your team?
When it comes to internal communications and collaboration, I try to be as transparent as possible. There are a few ways that approach this mindset.
First, I just want to make sure that I am not creating artificial barriers that don't have to be there. I have this framework where I work through how and when I share information with others. Internal communications and team communications is a dance where you’re trying to balance company needs, team needs and how the withholding of certain information can affect someone’s ability to do their role. My general bias, however, is to share as much as I responsibly can and to share often.
Second, I share my review with my team every single year for a couple of reasons. I want them to know what a review in a leadership setting looks like and it's one of those things you just don't know if you don't see it — I want to help reduce the mystery behind the review process. I also do it because I want my team to hold me accountable and give me the feedback I need to continue to improve.
I think people do their best work when they feel safe and creating that space of safety is also showing that leaders have flaws and are working to fix them. If you’re not willing to share your opportunity areas with others, how can you expect others to be willing to give you that feedback? Being open to hearing feedback is so important — these comments have helped me become a better manager and a better person.
Third, in every single weekly meeting, we start with “Kudos & Learnings” and it can be everything from “I forgot to turn my spell check on” to a huge learning about a best practice. I try to share every single week because I want to show my team that I’m human.
What skills are essential for someone to succeed in your field?
Most of my work falls into three buckets — communications, analysis and relationship building with the icing of embracing a learning mindset.
For communications, it’s the ability to write — not creative writing, but it’s articulating ideas thoughtfully. For analysis, the majority of my work is taking data and trying to make decisions from it — being able to analyze and synthesize together is really crucial. A great Product Marketing Manager is excellent at both of these areas.
In addition, as we work with different types of people, it’s having the perseverance to partner with many personalities and situations. It’s the ability to make friends and find commonalities with people, especially those who are different than us.
Finally, when it comes to learning, it’s critical to be aware that no one knows everything and that you always have to keep plugging at it and keep learning no matter the subject, even if you think you know everything, I guarantee you do not!
How do you continue your own learning journey?
I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts! I have three focus areas — biographies, sports and product! These are totally different topics, but I learn from each of them in unique ways.
I listen to historical memoirs of people, mostly women, who inspire me. There’s so much to learn from them. Sometimes if I'm having a rough day, I am just in awe of someone like Eleanor Rosevelt when I realize how much adversity she faced, but was able to accomplish at a completely different and challenging time in history.
For sports podcasts, I listen to a lot of football because I get so much motivation from how people analyze game plans and personnel strategies afterward. It’s thinking through the strategy of pieces that can help me get unblocked when I approach a problem like NFL football does. It helps me think through challenges in a way that I wouldn't have thought about otherwise.
I like listening to product podcasts because I’m always trying to think like that team as I try to get alignment from their perspective. Learning from someone like Lenny Rachinsky puts me in the right mindset. Also, Acquired is a great show, especially the historical content.
Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every interview edition is based on a live conversation and personally written by me — Julia Levy. Learn more about why I write. Review the Index of past posts.
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