Fuelling product strategy through collaboration, with Gabe Nicolau

Speaker A: The Overall power of TikTok, uh, the power of that overall community commerce. And we're looking to further educate a lot of our advertisers about how to, you know, be present on TikTok, building that organic presence. How do you amplify that with some of the advertising paid efforts and how do you take advantage and leverage, you know, some of these different viral trends, uh, to really help jumpstart your business or your specific campaign.

Speaker B: Hey everyone and welcome to for the Love of Product, brought to you by the product led alliance. I'll be your host, Tiama Hansen Drury, Chief product officer at Mina Technologies and all around passionate product aficionado. Each episode we'll be looking at the head and the heart behind product led growth, the passion and the practice of product. And we'll be picking the brains of seasoned CPOs and heads of product, as well as visionary founders and investors getting their inside stories. Enjoy. Uh, all right, welcome to another episode of for the Love of Product. We are really excited today to have a great new profile joining us, and that profile belongs to Gabe Nicolau. Um, Gabe is the director of product strategy and operations at TikTok Americas. Um, for those of you who don't know what TikTok is, which I'm guessing represents about 2% of our listeners, um, they are the leading short form video platform designed to inspire creativity and bring joy. Gabe in particular is responsible for commercialization and development of TikTok's innovative ad products to North American advertisers both large and small. And prior to TikTok, Gabe was the go to market lead at Google where he focused on core monetization, mobile tools and attribution for Google shopping ads. Gabe has worked with Fortune 500 retail companies as an advisor in their retail digital marketing strategy and is super passionate about supporting advertisers in optimizing their ad spend, improving ROI while driving increased sales, and in his spare time, which I don't know how much he actually has, he enjoys cooking and hanging with his family, playing board games and assembling Legos. Uh, Gabe, welcome to the pod. We're so happy to have you.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker B: Where, where are you zooming in from today, Gabe?

Speaker A: Uh, I'm in New York. Yeah, so representing east coast, where, um, I actually just moved to the New York area, um, last September. Um, originally, um, had been living in Boston for close to 15 years. So this is a pretty big move for.

Speaker B: Nice. And have you been making lots of TikToks to bring your New life to life for your follow.

Speaker A: I'm not super great at making. I've made a few with like my daughter that you know, like just uh, to experiment and stuff. Um, yeah, it's, it's been fun but um, don't. I'm unable to get like super viral views. I'm not getting like a million plus views unfortunately. So I think I gotta work on that a little bit more.

Speaker B: Hey, a tip. Uh, one of our recent interview, um, subjects on the pod was telling us how she let her nine year old take over their TikTok channel for the business. She was a founder, and how it automatically scaled to like thousands of views immediately. So maybe bring your daughter into the creation game. Uh, there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally believe it. That happens a lot with other folks. I talk to other clients where they say like, yeah, you know, like my teenager, you know, like they do this all day long and once uh, they take over like you're suddenly getting like crazy views. Like that's how it works. They understand the culture, they understand what ticks and uh. Yeah.

Speaker B: And what talks.

Speaker A: Exactly. And what talks. Yeah.

Speaker B: Awesome. All right. So Gabe, um, I know one of the topics I was super excited to dive into today is actually your title. Right. Um, so we often have different heads of product, VPs of product. You are you know, the head of digital, excuse me, of product strategy and operations. And I wanted to know you know, a little bit more about what that means at TikTok.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. M. The product strategy and operations um, is actually relatively new, um, for TikTok. Um, I think in a lot of other organizations, um, a lot of big uh, ad tech platforms, this tends to be like a uh, product marketing type function. Um, at TikTok, it's a combination of things. So it's both like it's product marketing, it's helping to define a lot of product strategy and working very closely with our um, engineering team and ensuring that we represent not just the voice of the market, um, but also helping to shape what that innovation is going to look like, um, for um, solving a particular client need, um, and the overall market need at the same time. From an operations standpoint, it's about um, ensuring that we have good technical operations in place to help with dealing with the various different bugs and troubleshooting that come our way. And how do we um, ensure that we put all of that together in a way that um, makes sense for our engineering team so that they understand what the issues are and how we can further innovate on the product. It's a Pretty big scope overall, um, in terms of our overall organization.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it sounds like it would be pretty diverse and rewarding I would imagine to work on all those different aspects.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know it's, it's ah, highly you know, um, cross functional role. Um, you know you got to ensure that you're reaching out and working with um, people throughout the various different organizations as you bring a particular product to market um, and preparing it for the masses. So yeah, so it's great. It's been very rewarding.

Speaker B: So when TikTok reached out um, and brought you on and brought you over from Google, what was the main problem that they were trying to solve uh, with you and your role?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, so it's funny how that worked out. Um, so originally a buddy of mine from Google had gone over first. Um, so um, you said goodbye and he uh, basically said I'm going to go scope things out, see how it goes and I'll let you know. I received a phone call um, one evening. Like you got to really give this a consideration. It's like, it's pretty cool here. Like they, they're building a ton of different really cool things um, and could benefit a lot in terms of um, the direction and like how do we, how do we properly bring some of these products to market? Um and so you know I did my due diligence, um, talked to various different um, execs internally um, and you know decided to just go for the interview and see what happens. Um, and uh, I actually got the role. So it's very interesting. Um, um with that um, I had to really make a decision like okay, this seems like a pretty cool opportunity. Uh whereas before at Google I was focused um, very much on just one specific vertical which is basically um, shopping ads and focus on basically E commerce and the retail vertical. Um, there's an opportunity to further expand that um, across various different pillars of products um from branding related products to performance related products that spans beyond just retail, um, as well as measurement related products and creatives. Um, it spanned the gamut and um, so decided to take on a role. It was an opportunity to build a brand new team um, so that we could help support this entire function.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And I jokingly said in the beginning 2% of our listeners won't know what TikTok is. But let's talk a little bit, let's quantify. I mean just when I was checking the most recent uh results I was seeing 800 uh, monthly active users roughly and 315 million app downloads not to Put you on the spot. But that's a huge community. Right? And with the ads solutions that you work on, tapping into that global audience is really in demand. Um, if I'm not wrong, you guys have had some of your best quarters uh, ever recently. Um, is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah, well we can't really comment on a uh lot of the numbers since we're not quite public yet. But I will say that we've um, definitely had a lot of momentum. Um we continue um we continue to um, really draw in um a pretty large audience. I'd um, say that even especially last year throughout Covid, um we definitely benefited from um an acceleration in um downloads as well as in our monthly active users. Um, it was exciting to see just how engaged everyone was uh within the platform. Um, that even um, as we continue to grow and diversify our content and our um users um uh started to also uh, diversify in terms of the various different age groups. This is exciting to see all the various different types of content um, that you wouldn't expect. Um, I personally get a ton of um cooking related videos and recipes. Um then more recently I started getting um, random um uh videos uh, related to uh financial advice. It's like stock trades and um, how to invest. I was like okay, that's interesting. Um, so yeah so I think it's also the uniqueness of the overall TikTok algorithm. Um, uh and because it's short form video, um, it's just able to quickly try different things and recommend different things to you and then um, help to learn you know, what your preferences are. So all of that has helped to really um, you know, feel our overall growth um and uh, continue that overall exciting engagement within the platform.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So the area that you know we were talking about, TikTok ad manager, um, which is under your purview, you know, where was that at when you, you joined TikTok? Um, and what's happened since joining? Right. Give us a little bit of the story.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. So when I first joined our Ads manager was very much in beta and for kind of internal only. It's you know, kind of like a, almost like a managed service that we're doing with large um advertisers. Um, and we were in no way ready for turning it into a self serve product. Um, but then you know I got in um, to my role and then a second month in they were saying like we, we want to basically prepare and get this um, self service launch uh within the next six months. It was like whoa, okay, that's Pretty huge. Um, so we ended up having to uh, basically start figuring out what are all the different pieces that come into play. Um, and then also what happened was um, so that was my second month in February and then by March, um, Covid became huge and then we started running to lockdown and we came to a realization that oh my goodness, you know, like a lot of businesses are going to suffer. Um, you know so many mom and pop shops um, are going to have to close down. Um, and it's going to be really tough for many of these businesses. Um, like how, what is it? What are different ways that we can um, contribute towards the cause and really be able to help here. Um, with us being like a new platform, um, and we have the opportunity to make an impact and make a difference, we really had to go back and see okay, um, what can we do to accelerate our launch timelines um, and start figuring out the different things that we do need to prioritize um, as um, the most important features and what can actually wait. Um, we're trying to um, we basically had to talk a lot within our cross functional meetings um, and figure out you know, um, you know, what, what is the most important aspects and issues that uh, we need to nail down. And so um, uh, I went in and basically have interviewed and kind of talked to our various different cross functional teams because at the time I didn't really have a team so I got to do a lot of these things myself. Um, and, and talking with um, our account managers for example who have been in the product, um, our ads manager the most, um, we identified that there's just a lot in terms of platform stability that we need to handle and make sure we solve for first. Um, because we absolutely, if we're going to make this available as self serve, we can't have a poor user experience. Um, and then in talking with them also it's come um, to realization that like okay, we need to make sure that um, there's also uh, in working with our engineers that there's auction stability. Right. Um, if this is a platform that's supposed to help you with overall advertising that they want to make sure they understand that okay, if I put in a budget that I'm able to actually spend it. Um, uh and then from there that's the core area that we really need to resolve. Um, then from there start thinking about um, the overall onboarding process and what do we need to build there. Um, because we're not going to have account manager set up for every single self serve client that signs up with us. What does that onboarding flow look like? Um, how do we make sure that they don't drop off during the setup process? How do we make sure they're able to handle some of those technical pieces like installing the pixel on their own? Um, then last but not least, in the cross functional uh, conversations it's like, how do we make sure we have a full support team, um, and have that go to market readiness such that um, when there are problems and issues that come about from these SMBs, there's a hotline that they can reach out to. What's our customer service infrastructure that we're putting together? What are all the various different training materials? So this was like a lot that we needed to do and put together, um, within a very short period of time. Um, but it was, yeah, it was kind of crazy but at the same time m. It was a lot of fun. Um, yeah. And it led to us eventually being able to launch in a timely manner at a time that we thought um, was high impact.

Speaker B: I can only imagine. I mean you're saying you're two months in when you get told like, okay, you're going to launch this in six months, which just. That in itself I think would probably be a fairly um, ambitious target. And then to have this global pandemic hit, like what was going through your mind at these points? Did you doubt your abilities, did you doubt your. Whether this was even feasible to do or did you have confidence the whole time?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I definitely say that I was like wow, these are very aggressive targets. Um, but um, I did have the overall confidence knowing that like, if we put together a very well structured plan and have alignment across uh, with all of our stakeholders, um, that we can work towards um, execution of that plan. Um, and then luckily like um, at that time, uh, one of the people that we had extended an offer to had just joined um, and so um, uh, Ashley on my team was really helpful in um, helping with making sure we're very detailed, oriented on um, working out through all of the different phases of our launch. When we go into uh, we work our way backwards. If we wanted to have a um, end of June type launch, um, what needs to happen for our beta the month before, what needs to happen in Alpha the month before, um, and just going through all of the details of what do we need to do for test and learn with a small group of advertisers and ensuring we have the right product market fit, um, what are the different KPIs we need to consider? Um, during that particular phase so that we are testing enough and fixing and squashing enough bugs that we're ready to scale for that next phase. All of these different pieces were really important to coordinate on the product side, um, so that we feel ready as a product, that the overall product readiness is, uh, ready to go, um, going into our, uh, general availability timeline. Um, then of course, um, all the other pieces that go into place, it's not just about the product and getting that ready. It's also about all those other things to talk about. So, like customer support. What does that look like? Um, who's going to, um, do we do that internally? Do we outsource it? Um, all of the different Help center articles. Um, I did another assessment on that and realized that so many things on our Help center were incorrect. So it's like, okay, we need to start ramping up and fixing that. Um, can we get, uh, some help from our account managers, um, to pretty that up a bit. Um, and then also working with, um, PR and our marketing team, like, okay, once we make this announcement, what's our overall growth acquisition strategy? Um, we got to figure out, uh, amongst SMBs, like, who would benefit from this, um, service the most, um, given the pandemic and given the local restrictions and stuff. Um, yeah, um, and then also following that big splash, how do we make sure we have trainings and webinars in place so that, um, SMBs feel supported and they feel that they're learning a lot on how to get started on our platform. So all these things have been fun to try to get everything together. Um, but overall it was important for all of us to get in. And I remember, I still recall those weekly meetings. Um, uh, I don't know why they were put in as like 30 minutes. Because they always go for 30 minutes. It's supposed to be like a status check on everything from all the different work streams. Ultimately always ends up being like an hour. Um, but those were really good in a sense that we were able to call out all the major challenges and issues that we were having. Um, and then, um, be able to make quick decisions on whether we want to continue to move forward, um, or do we need to take a quick step back and uh, rethink what our strategy is.

Speaker B: So you mentioned working with a small kind of active group of SMBs to pilot the solution. Right? Um, did their involvement change your guys understanding, uh, of how to solve the problem, how to build the best solution?

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Um, I mean, you know, like we were able to, you know, test a few key functionalities and also like um issue out some surveys to have an understanding of um you know like how easy was it for you to get set up um and you know if you were running into problems and issues like what were those issues? Um so we were able to get um from that core group um during those alpha and beta phases um understand what were their main key pain points. Um and we're able to actively work that into the overall product development um as well as um ensuring that we're addressing this with the training materials. Because there might be some certain things that just um, may not be as intuitive um for the individual and just requires a little bit more on the training side. Um we definitely could have revamped um certain features and uh make it even easier for that discovery. But then we were also working towards that tight timeline again making those trade offs of um, is it enough to get by? Is this affecting everyone to the point that we need to think about a new feature in place to solve this or um is only affecting like a smaller portion and that we can address this through trainings, um, through having a section in our help center. Um, how do we properly make those trade offs um and post full launch then we can maybe come back and address those other issues and just making sure that we don't forget about that. Um so yeah so it's immensely helpful to have that kind of that user acceptance testing um and ensure that we don't miss anything there.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So in end did you hit your six month mark?

Speaker A: We did uh, see how to part. That was very exciting. Uh it was definitely very stressful um going into it. Um we ended up um, basically launching in late June. Um we were able to do two things. Uh number one was um we rebranded our entire platform to TikTok for business uh and that was announced at um last year's 2020 IAB new fronts. So we were really um excited and really proud of them. That's the name that we have globally. Um, uh so it was under one brand and then secondly um following that the week after. So around early July we made that formal announcement of our self serve platform that is available, um that we're opening it up more broadly now for SMBs, uh and then we also announced our uh TikTok um back to Business program um where we basically committed um $100 million in ad credits to really help SMBs, um to um weather the crisis with COVID um and basically help them to get back on their feet and to rebuild. So that was something that again as a Cross functional team and working with um leadership ensuring that we um, had something that was um going to be really impactful. Um, and that really helps um with not just um, the individual SMBs, but just helping to feel the economy because everyone was really hurting um at that time with the lockdowns.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just thinking, I mean it's an incredible offer that you guys made to the SMBs of the world. And we're now about a year out right from that launch. Um, what's happened since then? What's changed? What's remained the same? What's the next horizon for TikTok for business?

Speaker A: Yeah, great. Um, question. So yeah, so we're continuing to really build upon our original capabilities. So since then um, we've been working with additional partners, um Shopify being one major one and we had another announcement um late last year about it and we continue to really work on that um, partnership with them to bring on more SMBs, um and also helping to feel the overall E commerce growth. Um so that's been a really big strong partnership there. Um and uh, we've had a number of webinars uh where we um, basically co facilitated with Shopify to help them see the potential of um, how TikTok can really help their business. Um and then we continue to also work closely with the Shopify team um to um bring forth some of the new innovations that we have coming for commerce. Um just given especially um one how important commerce is for a lot of SMBs. Um and you know especially during COVID like you know you break down a lot of those borders and you're able to kind of sell um across you know uh, for different states and sell nationally and even sometimes internationally. So you know it was, it's a big opportunity there. Um and also bring forth um more new innovations um uh within commerce that will hopefully help um propel and accelerate their growth.

Speaker B: So I'm thinking that a lot of the listeners that we have right on our pod, there's a lot of people who are listening who are both of course product leaders but then we also have people in the VC specifically VC and also founders. Um, so there's a bunch of people listening who might be interested about how does TikTok work for them. Right. Um, you know, in particular at the small, small medium business, you know, give someone an idea of like what the experience would be today if they wanted to and why they would want to go in and kind of use this. I think it helps bring the product to life.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know we with Regards to you know, getting started on um, TikTok, um, I think a lot of folks come to think that like, oh, like it might be a bit scary, um, and difficult, um, because we are video first when it comes to everything. Right, Our overall ad formats, um, you know, we're sound on, um, and it seems like it might be a big lift um, to create and generate a video. But the reality is it's actually pretty easy to kind of get started and set up a campaign. Right. Um, and we have like a lot of various different tools available for uh, different types of advertisers, you know, big and small to help them be successful. Um, you know, the interface is pretty easy when you log in, um, you know, you select what objective you want to do. Um, is this a brand, ah, awareness type campaign? Is it like, are you looking to just generate a lot of traffic or do you want to ah, do an app install, um, or conversion, um, then once you do, um, as you go through the campaign setup, um, we also have a bunch of different tools for creatives that help you to utilize existing assets that you might have, uh, to generate a video. And then the more interesting and cool part as well is we have our own TikTok creator marketplace. And um, that allows you to also tap into this breadth of awesome and amazing creators, um, who are really experienced in building for TikTok and that um, these individuals are able to basically help you to craft your overall brand message in a way that really speaks to the culture and speaks to the various different audiences within TikTok. Um, and that you know, that that essentially helps to really democratize a lot of that creativity, um, and doesn't put the onus on um, the advertisers themselves. Right. Um, and so yeah, so again I think overall the message is that getting started on TikTok, um, can be pretty easy. Um, it's just a matter of trying it out and then also experimenting, um, and putting together your own little business account, um, within TikTok and experimenting with your own videos. As we talked about before, like get your teenager to start creating something, um, you never know. They probably are, are on with a lot of the different trends, um, and uh, embedded in a lot of the different subcultures. So um, they might be uh, really good in uh, helping to test the ground and some of those organic videos and helping to build your organic presence.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I think uh, it's something if you're not thinking about how to bring in the youngest generation, Generation Alpha and definitely Generation Z, right. You're thinking you're missing a trick, as they say here, uh, in the uk.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker B: So as this has been a year out, any great success stories that you want to share from TikTok for biz and how it's impacted your customers? Anything out in the wild that we might have seen or might have experienced?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, I'd say that, um, one of the things that we're seeing um, within TikTok trends themselves, ah, is what we actually call this concept of community, um, commerce. It's really that intersection of shopping and entertainment, um, as well as community. Um, the interesting thing is even organically we're seeing um, these trends where um, users and creators are highlighting and talking about certain products. Um, and there's this viral hashtag that's happening called TikTok made me buy it. Um, and it's very much true, right? And we see these instances of where um, someone made a video featuring um, their leggings and they happen to be, uh, aerie leggings. And everyone was just like, where are those leggings from? Um, like uh, how do I get this right? And then before you know it, um, this product just flew off the shelves, um, offline. Uh, and then also, uh, Ari put together like a big campaign overall, um, uh, across uh, various different channels, including TikTok, and were able to uh, basically drive more sales of it. And now they've basically um, have had to uh, restock and create more of um, these leggings to make available for our customers. And we just started to see a lot of this. Um, Hidden Valley Ranch was another one where they made these custom um, uh, bottles and then um, when they advertise it on TikTok, um again went viral and um, they were able to sell out very quickly. Um, Gap also, um, had something similar recently which was interesting. You know, the old school Gap sweaters from like the 90s. Um, I think a lot of people had that, you know, like the big uh, title just says, yeah, the brown Gap sweater.

Speaker B: I had it.

Speaker A: Right? You had it. Yeah. Um, and yeah, like these were going crazy, um, you know, as people talked about them within TikTok. Um, and it's just an opportunity to um, for Gap to create a campaign around it. Um, uh, and now they're bringing it back, uh, with new colors and uh, new styles. Uh, what was old is new again. Um, it just goes again, the Overall power of TikTok, um, the power of that overall community commerce. And we're looking to uh, further educate a lot of our um, advertisers. Um, about how to be present on TikTok, building that organic presence, how do you amplify that with some of the advertising paid efforts? Um, and how do you take advantage and leverage some of these different uh, viral trends, um, to really help um, jumpstart uh your business or your specific campaign?

Speaker B: Taylor Swift said on one of her uh, Covid albums or lockdown albums, uh, she comes back stronger than a 90s trend. So she saw coming. You guys just need tapping Taylor's brain I think.

Speaker A: That's right. That's right.

Speaker B: So, okay, um, we're coming up uh, on a place where I'd love to ask you a question that helps paint a picture about what product at TikTok is like for anyone who's listening. Right. We might have people out there who could be your next ah, Ashley, right. You mentioned a woman on your team who could be super beneficial. What's it like? Um, you know, product at Ah, TikTok. Is it, is it pretty similar to the process that you've explained to us thus far? Is there, you know, if you had to give an elevator pitch for what the culture is like, you know, what would it be?

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Um, I'd say that you know, um, overall um, we are quick and fast at innovation. Um, you know we set very um, aggressive targets. Ah, we, we have OKR setting um, uh, on a bimonthly basis. So we really hone in on. Okay, what matters most was it that we want to launch, um, and then uh, work towards getting those products launched in a timely manner and getting adoption within the market. Um, so yeah, we were very um, ambitious and uh, open to a lot of new ideas. Um, and so as we um, bring on new people and um, people have ideas uh, and thoughts um, based on their overall market knowledge and where the industry is headed. We take a lot of that feedback really to um, try to shape up what that next generation product innovation is going to be. Um, we welcome um, people with that type of experience, um, that type of thought leadership. Um, and even again, um, we're also very operationally driven and so people with strong operations experience as well. How can we um, further improve the overall operations within our company? Um, I want to say that we're like a really big startup. We keep growing and then a lot of operational processes that were relevant maybe three months ago, um, may uh, not be relevant anymore. So we're constantly iterating. Um, so having people with that type of mindset um, is also important so that we can really scale a lot of our products effectively and efficiently.

Speaker B: Yeah, Absolutely. And you know, when we speak to you and your Persona versus the founder Persona, we often have kind of these assumptions that we like to test which is that the product leader is much more likely to identify with the head versus the heart because the founder is someone who is putting their whole, you know, life into building a business around solving a problem. But I'm interested how you feel about that working at a company that joy and creativity is at the very heart of everything you do. Is it, you know, do you identify more with the head or the heart or is it a mix of both?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, that's a really great question and I'd say um, it's kind of a, it's kind of a mix. Um, and here's how it kind of breaks down. Um, I'd say that from a day to day standpoint and I think through helping the team with figuring out the overall product strategy is very much ahead because we got to be strategic, we got to figure out what are different problems that we're solving for, um, and how are we going to help with hitting our various different targets, um, especially revenue targets, um, and really understanding what the true prioritization should be to help us to achieve our okrs. Um, so that's very much, I'd say like head driven, very strategic, um, very um, scientific, um, if you will, to the best of our abilities reflect the assumptions that we make. Um, but then at the heart of it though, um, no pun intended, um, it is very much um, some of the execution um, for our advertisers especially and how it ties back to our ad solutions and is very much at the heart. Right, um, because of the fact that we are video first. Um, and so with video compared to a static imagery there's just so much room for creativity and that joy that you just talked about. Um, and so it's the traditional methods and thoughts of um, how people um, evaluate success of creatives on. At Google for example, it's like it's very easy to kind of like this, do this kind of like ab testing on like search ads and the same thing with like Facebook on like display ads and such. But it's like a totally different ball game when you're talking about videos, uh, and you're leveraging creators. Um, so you know the, that overall, um, that overall getting uh, the um, last mile of how to make that ad work very well is very much focused on the creativity is very much focused on um, that overall heart. So yeah, so it's a blend of both um, and that's what makes this very interesting?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a really fun place to work. So, uh, you know, those of you listening, don't hesitate to hit up. Gabe. Um, Gabe, hopefully we don't flood your LinkedIn. So Gabe, I mean, when businesses are thinking about this, like, you know, does uh, does my Poke bowl shop downstairs have to do like, you know, dance videos on TikTok to use it or what should they be thinking about? How do they use TikTok for their business?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that's, it's, it's kind of a misconception now about um, that TikTok is only teenagers and dancing videos. Like certainly, you know, like the Gen Z has figured it out, um, and understands, uh, what is highly engaging. Um, but at the same time, the content on TikTok has diversified so significantly, um, that you see various different areas of interest, um, and cultures and a lot of subcultures that have been forming, um, that um, you'll be surprised by what you actually find within the platform. Right. Um, uh, you know, there is a number of various different types of content, uh, that would fit your various different needs and your interests. Um, um, just looking at my own, um, timeline of videos and how much that has evolved. Um, it originally, um, did start with just dancing videos and then quickly evolved to a lot of travel videos, uh, different cool places to check out in like Switzerland and like, you know, upstate New York, um, to um, uh, evolving into um, different restaurant reviews and different places to visit, um, in cities, um, to actual cooking and recipe videos, um, all the way to, you know, finance and like, uh, book reviews, um, uh, and even like health and wellness and exercise. So there's just so many different, um, new verticals and sub verticals that have popped up, um, and a lot of people creating um, their own viral videos for those particular topics that are highly engaging and um, get a lot of people to participate. Um, because sometimes people put out a challenge and they'll say something like, tell me something that's uh, super cool, super interesting about your line of work. And then people would stitch that together and it starts creating these new groups, um, um, for all those out there, um, looking to uh, get started on TikTok. There's just such a diverse, um, array of content, um, definitely invite you to be part of that, um, and that it also brings forth a lot of new, uh, advertising opportunities as well.

Speaker B: And don't be scared that you have to dance in order to use the platform, because that's outdated thinking.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: Great. We're at the time of the show. That's my favorite time. I want to ask you my favorite question. So say there was a museum dedicated to the most important products in the world. They don't have to be the best, they don't have to be the most performing, but they contribute, contributed to the discipline, um, in an important way. What do you think should be in there? And it can't be TikTok. Okay.

Speaker A: Um, that's a good question. I would say, especially in light of, um, this past year, especially, um, I would say it would have to be E Commerce. Um, this one's interesting because it's like, maybe it isn't like one, ah, specific creator of E commerce, but I guess E Commerce as an overall industry, I'd, um, say has, um, been very important for our overall economy and the overall growth, um, of, uh, SMBs and um, the contribution to overall GDP. Um, with E Commerce, uh, we find that all stores, physical, retail, they're no longer bound by their physical boundaries. Um, it becomes like another channel for them, um, and it allows them to really spread, um, their message, their brand message, uh, and, um, really share the news of their unique product, um, all over the Web. Right. Um, and that's in the. And that's some of the things that, you know, is very encouraging to see that I constantly discover and find new products that, um, I otherwise would not have experienced, um, if, you know, I had to go drive all the way to Illinois or something or like, or to Georgia just to be able to find that particular product. I can have that in my hands in a few days.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So I'd say E Commerce is big.

Speaker B: Yeah, strong answer. Yeah. I mean, I can't build on that enough. Like, the ability to support these businesses around the world that I could not have done before has been great. And that Shopify, uh, valuation has also helped my personal wealth.

Speaker A: So that's great. That's great to hear.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's go with that. All right, well, Gabe, it's been such a pleasure to have you today. Congrats, uh, on being a year out. And, um, from all the things that you've said, it sounds like it's been a really successful launch, uh, of TikTok for business. And for those of you listening, check it out. Um, it doesn't mean that it's just about dancing videos. You can use it for your business to connect with your target audience as well. So thanks for joining us today, Gabe.

Speaker A: Thank you so much.

Speaker B: All right, uh, thanks for listening to the podcast, guys. Be sure to share the word of Product Led growth far and wide and let your colleagues, friends, friends, family, neighbors and anyone you think who would like to know that there's a kick ass product podcast on offer from the Product Led Alliance. If you haven't already, don't forget to sign up to the Slack community and check out all our other great content, upcoming events and other ways to get involved@productledalliance.com and let's come back again next time to talk more about the Head, the heart of production.