The Product Podcast

How Twitch Captures the Attention of Over 140M Monthly Active Users | Jeremy Forrester, VP Product | E233

• Product School • Episode 233

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In this episode of the Product Podcast we chat with Jeremy Forrester, VP Product at Twitch and a key player in the world of short videos and live streaming. From his work on Vine for Windows Phone at Twitter to his impactful eight-year stint at Twitch, Jeremy offers incredible insights into the challenges and successes that have shaped today’s media scene.
 
Jeremy talks about Vine's legacy and its influence on platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok. Moving on to Twitch, he gives us a behind-the-scenes look at what keeps streaming audiences engaged and growing. We dive into how activities like gaming and DJ sets keep viewers hooked, with highlights like Ibai’s record-breaking streams and Ninja’s celeb collabs. Jeremy also explores the future of live streaming, including mobile game streaming and the impact of generative AI.
 
Discover how Twitch stands out from the crowd and the cool tools that make user experiences better. Jeremy also shares tips on how Twitch’s team structure supports both viewers and creators. This episode is packed with lessons on handling conflicts, continuous learning, and the importance of networking. Whether you’re a content creator or just love streaming, this episode is full of valuable insights and inspiration.

Content

(00:00) 🎬 Intro
(03:00) 🚀 The evolution of Jeremy at Twitch
(07:33) 📊 Key indicators of Twitch’s content
(11:09) 🧑‍💻 How does Jeremy define a content creator?
(13:48) 🌐 Twitch expansion: from community to events
(19:43) 🔮 What’s next for Jeremy
(24:10) 🎮 The gaming scene
(28:37) 🤖 How does Twitch implement Gen AI
(33:54) 🏢 Jeremy’s role as a VP of Product at Twitch


Key Takeaways

  • Learn from predecessors: Vine's influence on platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok underscores the importance of studying and understanding past products. This can provide valuable insights and guide the development of new features or products.
  • Focus on community: Jeremy's role in evolving Twitch highlights the significance of fostering a strong community. Product people should prioritize features that help users build and sustain their own communities.
  • Utilize machine learning for personalization: Implementing personalized recommendations can significantly enhance user engagement. Additionally, features like polls and channel points can create interactive and engaging user experiences, emphasizing the need for continuous innovation in user engagement strategies.


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Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Jeremy Forrester

00:00 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Welcome to the show, Jeremy. This is a random fact that I need to ask you about. So you worked on Vine for Windows Phone. Yes, what is that? 

00:54 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Well, so at the time I was working at Twitter and we just acquired the Vine product and the Vine company before they launched and one of the things I was responsible for there was actually kind of porting Twitch's applications to Windows Phone. So it was my job to take the core Vine product work very close with the Vine team and bring it over to Windows Phone users. It was a fascinating project because I really, you know the Vine team were a really great team. They were based out of New York and you know really great to work with them. But it was always interesting because obviously Vine is a, you know now, a historic product that people often reference that ultimately didn't pan out and you know I was responsible for shipping them on Windows Phone Again, you know a operating system that ultimately didn't pan out. So even though it's like one of the most fun projects I worked on, it's like probably lost, lost to the years now.

01:40 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
I mean we might not know this, but in my opinion, vine was literally that pioneer into what today is the instagram reels or even the tiktok short videos yeah, absolutely. 

02:00 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
I mean at the time, uh, you know, we saw massive growth in. It was one of the first applications that was really focused around sharing video. You know, for people that don't know, they took a six-second looping format, so you're incentivized to create really short videos that looped. People use the format in really creative ways to create kind of very much like you see on TikTok today, kind of, you know, videos that amaze you, that make no sense, that you have to understand how they were made, and a lot of people were using it in very creative ways. I think what we saw after Vine launched is Instagram videos followed. They followed fairly quickly with the, you know, allowing users to share videos to Instagram and at the time also musically was picking up a little bit, which ultimately, you know, became. 

02:55 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
TikTok in the end. So they were very much on the forefront but didn't quite make it to kind of the meteoric rise that we have with the TikToks of the world now. So you've been at Twitch for eight years and I'd love to learn more about what the product was when you joined as a technical PM and what's the evolution up until today. 

03:07 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
I think the core of the product has always roughly remained the same, which is, you know, twitch is really passionate about being one of the best places, or the best place for people to, for creators, specifically to monetize live streams. So, you know, when I joined, the fundamentals of the product were there Streamers could stream, viewers could interact with them through chat and, you know, you could subscribe to streamers and give them money. And, fundamentally, the core product is still the same. Like that is still the heart of what makes Twitch great for streamers and viewers. 

03:44
I think some of the biggest evolutions, especially some of the stuff that I've been involved in, is when I joined the company. All of the content on the platform was sorted and ordered by popularity. So we, basically we showed you like what was the stream with the most viewers, down at the bottom to the stream with the least viewers, and at the time it was, you know, perfectly viable ordering, because popularity is a great signal of content quality, but it was exploitable. People could try and exploit the system through using nefarious tactics like viewbotting to try and gain ranking and then gain more organic traffic because of it, but also, in the end, it just wasn't personalized. So I think one of the biggest things that I've worked on in my time at Twitch was, you know, over the course of five years we systematically replaced all of like the discovery mechanisms. 

04:34
We call discovery any kind of feature that allows a viewer to find a stream. We replaced all of the popularity-based discovery mechanisms with recommended-based sorting orders. So I did a lot of work with the machine learning team to really move from you know what is it the same view for everyone to a personalized view, kind of tailored for you, based on your viewing history and your location and many other factors as well. I think that's been one of the biggest changes. And then, outside of you know, the changes to discovery. I think we've spent a lot of time as a company really focusing on giving tools to creators and viewers to kind of deepen the engagement between the two. So allowing um creators to post polls or, uh, allowing viewers to accumulate what we call channel points and spend them um, there's lots of different, you know, features that we've added to really kind of deepen the engagement between a viewer and a streamer when they're live. 

05:29 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Yeah, so let's talk about some of those indicators that tell you that a user is enjoying certain content, so that type of content can be prioritized on their feed. I remember the head of Instagram was talking about how they measure the amount of videos that are being sent via DM to a friend, because that indicates that it's really good, but that goes beyond the classic like or comment on a public video. So what are some of those leading indicators for you? 

05:57 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Some of the leading indicators that the content is good At Twitch we look like the metric we primarily look at is what we call a successful video play. Now, this isn't a leading indicator, but a successful video play is a user clicked on a video and they watched it for at least five minutes of time. That, for us, is ultimately success. That, for us, says that like, oh, this user found a piece of live content that they like a lot. In order to get people to do that, we look at a lot of different metrics. 

06:30
We look at what users click at and then, you know, bounce from. We look at what users kind of don't click on. We look at earlier indicators like one minute plays. Like, did they watch for at least one minute? Um, you know? Especially, we recently launched a feed product which has enabled us to gather a lot more signals in terms of what content people linger on versus what content people swipe past. I think there's a lot of different metrics that we use to kind of evaluate okay is, is, is a viewer going to like this piece of content, especially across their session, as they, you know, and across multiple sessions? 

07:09 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
yeah, because one of the differences that I see compared to vine, for example, vine was had a, had a defined format. They say, hey, it's up to six seconds, so you know what to expect. In your platform I see a lot of length variability. I can see short videos as well as, like multi-hour long videos. So how do you go about ensuring that, even though there's no completion, there is still a good indicator that the user enjoyed what they saw? 

07:31 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
yeah, I mean that that's where that five minute play really comes in. I would say that that is one of the fundamental challenges of live content versus, um, you know, recorded vod content. I think with recorded vod content you can gain an understanding through multiple different mechanisms of whether you know let's take a six second vine is interesting or not. You can look at how many people view it, how many people share it, how many people like it. There are lots of indicators to say, oh, this is a nice piece of content. And I think if you look at the market, there are a lot of businesses or there's a lot of you know, apps, social apps that use the early signal from you know 100 viewers who view that piece of content to understand should they found this piece of content out to 1000 viewers or 100,000 viewers or a million viewers, and they use kind of those early indicators from the first sets of users who watch videos to understand how much they can push them. 

08:29
The problem with live content is you really don't have necessarily that understanding that at this given time this piece of content is interesting. So we have to rely on like, how much do we think the viewer likes this particular creator or like similar content in order to get an understanding of do we think this user is going to like this particular stream, and even then we can make a really great recommendation for someone and we can send them into a live stream. But at that moment that live stream may be boring, the streamer may have gone AFK, they may go to the bathroom and there may be no one there. So it does pose a set of fundamentally different challenges from traditional kind of VOD content. 

09:06 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Yeah, and another challenge that I would like to discuss with you in this type of marketplace is how do you define a content creator? I know that Twitch found early success in the gaming category and now it branched out into other types of categories. So what are some of those and how do you treat the different content creators? 

09:22 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, so for us, I think, fundamentally we start by looking at the type of content that works for our format. So Twitch is live streaming, it is community orientated and it is long form. So you know what we look for in terms of what might be successful on Twitch, as types of content are really a couple of different indicators. Is this an activity that a streamer can do multiple days a week? Because building community takes time and repetition. You can't just stream once a month and expect to maintain a community and an audience who wants to watch you. You really have to stream frequently. So is this the type of activity that someone can do multiple days a week without it becoming stale or boring or alternatively, you know, like physically difficult for them? Um, uh, so that's one um is. And then the second kind of thing that we really look for so sorry, we look at repeatability and then we look at inherent entertainment content, like entertainment value. 

10:33
So let's talk about gaming for a second. So gaming is a really obviously important vertical for Twitch. But what makes it really good on Twitch is the fact that you can play video games a lot. You can play the same video game over and over again, especially online multiplayer games like Battle Royales. You can play games of Fortnite for six hours in a row and each one of them is going to be different. And then each one of them is going to be inherently entertaining, because you don't know what the outcome is going to be on the live stream. And then you can play it multiple days in a row and the game developers keep the content fresh. So they are always keeping, they're always updating the games so that there's new content coming in which then streamers can then play or, you know, play and show to their audience. 

11:17
So when we look at other verticals, we try to look at oh, you know, is this something that's entertaining? Is this something that people can do? And you know frequently and repeatedly. So that's why, you know, we recently announced the DJ program. Djs is a great example of this. It's an activity where people can go and have a DJ set every night and they can always make it different and varied and it's always going to be entertaining for viewers. 

11:43 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Yeah, I like that expansion from gaming to entertainment as a whole. I'll give you another example. I'm originally from spain and I know that the spanish-speaking community is huge, like, in particular, this, this streamer, evite right like. He recently hosted this massive event at the real madrid yep stadium yeah oh, my god, right. So maybe you can educate, like the, the English-speaking community on what's really happening outside. 

12:09 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, the Spanish market is a fascinating market, so there are a number of really large streamers, but Ibai that you mentioned is one of the biggest. 

12:17
He recently hosted an event called La Valada, which is a boxing and music event, and essentially he gets content creators across Twitch, across YouTube and other platforms and then he puts them in boxing matches together and then in between each match, he brings on famous artists both from the Spanish speaking world and the English speaking world. This most recent La Vallada, which broke, you know, our records, both the record for the stream with the highest most of concurrent viewers, as well as our site-wide record, um, had Will Smith as an example, performing a musical act in the intermediary and it's just, it's such a big cultural phenomenon there. It's it's amazing to see um um and it's something that he's built up over multiple years. This is the fourth one that he's done and it's been so fantastic to see kind of the success of that event but also the success of Spanish streamers as well. Like Twitch is really a very popular platform in Spain and these creators are really like leading the forefront of content creation and across multiple verticals. 

13:20 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
I mean, they're really becoming celebrities in a way, and I think the other type of celebrities are also participating in Twitch In some cases. I remember the famous moment when Drake donated some money to Ninja he was playing Fortnite. So how do you think about treating those type of VIPs like special content creators, either because they have a tremendous following, or those celebrities that now are getting into the streaming game? 

13:45 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, so we love events like that. There was recently a stream where Kaisa Nat, one of our biggest streamers in North America, if not the biggest streamer in North America recently streamed with Kevin Hart. He had Kevin Hart over on his stream and they kind of just hung out together and that was also a fantastic stream. We look at these moments as being kind of key to to bringing more people to Twitch, to really kind of broadening the appeal of Twitch and and helping people realize that, like Twitch is not just a platform for gamers, um, and not just a platform where just people play video games. It's like really exciting live moments happening all the time on Twitch. 

14:26
And then how we look at the streamers and the audiences, I would say one of the interesting things is where we have found success is collaborations like these, where you have a successful streamer who streams a lot and builds a community and has a loyal audience who watch them regularly, brings celebrities into their world. 

14:46
So, like we had a. There was a stream a few years ago where AOC streamed Among Us with a number of Twitch streamers and I think that's been a really successful format for us. I think what we found when it comes to pure celebrity is. If a celebrity started their own twitch channel and streamed, once they would get viewership, people would turn up. It's always exciting to see someone you you are, um, passionate about live, uh. But the heart of twitch's product is really community, and it's really about building a kind of a community between a streamer and their viewers and the viewers among one another, and that that really takes time and multiple streams, and so what we found is like the people who are most successful are people who are inherently entertaining but also can really lean into the platform and stream frequently enough so that when they build a viewership, that viewership stays with them and becomes loyal fans of their and parts of their community and I'm a big believer in community. 

15:46 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
I actually think it's a huge moat. Um, so I I guess twitch would be one of the first, if not the first uh company that started this type of live streaming movement. And as the market grew and now we see other players in the space, how do you think about positioning your product in a way that allows you to maintain that type of momentum that you created? 

16:08 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, I think the biggest positioning and differentiator for us is one our focus on live streaming as our core product. I think that's what really sets us apart. Now, because, as you mentioned, many of these social platforms have live streaming as an element and they're all viable platforms. Like, if you have a large following on Instagram and you wanted to go live once to show them something cool, yeah you should go live on Instagram. That's great, you can reach your audience there, but it's not their core business, and their core business is photos with your friends, but also real. 

16:44
So let's put that aside, um, whereas for us, live streaming is our core business, um, and we want to focus on making Twitch the best place to monetize live streams. So we want to continue to deepen engagement between viewers and streamers and deepen their monetization potential and the amount of money that they can make per hour of live streaming. So that's our primary differentiator is like that is always going to be our core business, it's always going to be our focus and we're always going to focus on trying to do what's right for streamers, whereas I think, for many of our competitors not all of them, but many of our competitors live streaming is a secondary business or a tertiary business where it's a nice to have they offer it because they should offer it and you, you know you should be able to live stream on the platform, but it's not. It's not a business that they particularly want to grow. 

17:33 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Um, yeah, yeah it's, it's your core product versus, uh, an extra feature for others. I, I get it, and so if you were to break that down into a roadmap, what's next for you? 

17:53 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
so my organization is really focused on growing the platform and our focus areas for the next couple of years are really kind of three major spaces. So one is continue to invest in our mobile application and make our mobile experience better. I think for many years Twitch has been a predominantly kind of website, pc based platform, and that's primarily because we're very heavy on interaction, we're very heavy on long form sessions and therefore it actually makes sense that, like web, is one of the best places to consume Twitch content, because it's very easy to chat and it's very easy to watch for multiple hours. Um, but you know, we have obviously, as many people have seen, more of a shift towards mobile and it's now becoming, you know, uh, while it's not where the majority of consumption comes from, it is where the majority of viewers are. So, um, well, we've always had mobile apps. It's like we've never had mobile apps. We're really invested in trying to make those experiences better. So we recently launched a feed product and we're kind of we're redesigning the app to make that the default experience. 

18:52
Our feed is a little bit different from, you know, tiktok's feed, our feed, the purpose of our feed is not to. It's not to get people just consuming the feed and just swiping forever. Our feed is really meant to help viewers find a stream that they want to watch for a long session. Uh, part of the reason for this is because, um, there's, you know, discovering live content is hard. There's a lot of friction in that experience and that traditionally has been a lot of friction in that you have to in order to actually understand, like you know this, this thing that's happening right now, that's live, and do I want to watch it? You really have to consume, you really have to actually start watching it. To answer that question, there might be some indicators that say I don't, I'm not interested in this one. Maybe a streamer you like is playing a game, you don't. But for most cases you really have to go into the stream and consume a little bit of it to understand is this stream for me? Does this vibe kind of fit what I want? Does this match my? You know what I'm here to watch? So, from the feed, we're really making it easy to consume and try out a bunch of live streams before deciding which one you want to watch. 

19:58
So that's focus area number one. Number two is really helping streamers take derivative content from their live streams and share it out to other social platforms. So about a year ago, a little over a year ago, we launched what we call the clip exporter, which allows you to take a clip which is a up to 60 second snippet of a live stream and just export it straight to well, edit it to be portrait and then export it straight to YouTube or TikTok. We're going to keep focusing on that. We want to improve our tools that make it very easy to, kind of, when an exciting moment happens on Twitch, make it really simple for creators to just share that out to their following on other platforms or export it to their drafts in their TikTok so they can go and, you know, edit it later in TikTok and add more features to it and share it out. 

20:49
But how do we just increase the amount of and well, increase the amount and decrease the burden, uh of sharing content out, um to the world so that you know all of the exciting moments that happen on Twitch multiple people see and then and then the last focus area I'll be quick is, uh, is uh, increasing the diversity of creators on the platform. So, continuing to invest in things like djs, continuing to invest in in areas that allow um non-traditional or non-gaming creators, I would say, find success on the platform. 

21:27 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
One thing that I didn't hear you talk about, which makes me curious, is the connection to external devices such as PlayStation or Xbox, whereas a lot of the gaming that happens outside the traditional laptop display. So how much of a focus is there? And also making it easier for those type of gamers to then share some of those experiences back to a social media network? 

21:51 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, it's still an important focus for us. 

21:55
We have applications on Xbox, we have applications on PlayStation, on many of the smart TVs, and we work very closely with the you know the manufacturers of those devices to actually allow people to stream directly from them as well. 

22:08
So it is a big source of creators for us. 

22:11
Lots of people, you know, the first time they go live maybe from their PlayStation, because they don't have a PC and an expensive setup and microphones and cameras, but they do have a PlayStation, you know, maybe they have a webcam and for many people that was how they started on Twitch as they went live from those devices. 

22:27
So it will continue to be a focus for us in terms of making sure that that experience is great and making sure that people can watch streams on those devices. But in general, there's not a lot more to be done there, given that people can go live from the device, they can attach a webcam, they can stream, they can attach a microphone and they can have a good experience. Hopefully they can build a community, you know, around those live streams, and then a lot of our other tools that we're building, you know, come into play. So it's the same, you know, if you're creating live content, regardless of where you create it from, we want to make it very easy to create that derivative content and share it outwards, so yeah, and another thing that I see a lot of opportunity on is a mobile gaming. 

23:15 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Well, with the launch of Apple Arcade, in general the use of gaming on mobile devices, I still haven't seen an easy way for those type of gamers to live stream. Is that a thing that you think will happen in the future? 

23:31 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yes, I think so. I think there's a couple of things that we'll continue to see that I think will continue to make live streaming of mobile games kind of more valuable. One is kind of the shift in the gaming market on mobile itself. So as I personally look at it, as I use, I play mobile games a lot as well. As I look at it, over the last couple of the years well, not last couple of years, last 10 years say, mobile games have gone from like really simple games that are primarily offline, that are monetized through ads, to more complex games that are offline, that monetize through kind of in-game mechanics, to now I think what we see is a lot more online multiplayer games that kind of like really have much longer engagement cycles where people play for multiple years. I'm thinking games like Clash Royale or Marvel Snap or you know some of the COD mobile and some of the Battleground Battle Royale games on mobile Like. 

24:33
People play these for multiple, multiple years and I think that shift is making the content more interesting to viewers on Twitch. Some of it is these games have larger audiences and those audiences want to watch other creators play them or they want to watch other people play them so they can learn to get better, or they just are interested in consuming the content. And then coming back to what I was saying earlier, particularly for these online multiplayer mobile games, yeah, they are replayable, they're repeatable. You can play, you know, a Marvel Snap for six hours on live stream and every game is going to be different because the aspect of playing against someone else brings in that level of unpredictability. That kind of makes a live stream exciting. 

25:20
So I think the evolution of mobile games, we're getting to the point where they are games that people want to watch. So now it's like what are the tools in order to help them stream? We do have products allow you to kind of live stream directly from your phone mobile games. But I think what we see for most successful creators is they're still streaming from a PC. They are just plugging their phones into the PC and using that as a surface, you know, using that as a content source in order to, you know, elevate that as a content source in order to, you know, elevate their stream and make it even better. 

25:51 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
I'm surprised. We've been going deep into different parts of product strategy for over 20 minutes and still haven't mentioned the magic word AI, so I need to bring it up. How are you thinking about Gen AI? Is there any interesting use cases? That either for you as the platform, as well as for some of the content creators? 

26:10 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, I think for content creators I'll start there I think there are a bunch of different interesting use cases, but I think a lot of it is making it easier for them to create content, making it easier for them to kind of elevate their content. So I see, you know, vtubing today is a great example. Like, that is not Gen AI, but I can easily see a bridge that says, maybe in the future, you know, you have generated AI models that are actually animated. You know, through generated AI, you know Gen AI underneath them in order to actually look, feel, behave, human. And I see a lot of, a lot of startups who are focused on building products that kind of enable this kind of functionality, not necessarily for streaming, but just in general. Like how do I, how do I, how do we have a generative AI avatar that speaks and acts and looks like a person? So I think that's kind of one evolution of like I still always think there's going to be a human somewhere, but I think it enables more people to stream because it's like, just like VTubing enabled more people to stream, streaming is generally better when you're on camera, because viewers can see your reaction. It feels more human, you can build more of a connection with that person and the advent of VTubing and digital avatars really kind of opened up the aperture of who can feel comfortable streaming. They can still feel on camera through their avatar, even though they're personally not the person on screen. And I think, taking that layer back, I'm sure there are more people who aren't even comfortable with you know it being their voice. So you know that I think Gen AI just kind of helps open up the aperture there in terms of who can stream and what does it mean to be a streamer and what does it mean to be creative on the platform, because I think in a few years time we'll see some really interesting use cases come out of that For us as the platform, because I think in a few years time we'll see some really interesting use cases come out of that For us as the platform. 

28:12
I think we're looking at all the standard things, we're investing in all the standard places. I think you know moderation is one area where I think generative AI is going to be a fantastic benefit for us, because you know we have billions of chats sent and an ever-evolving lexicon of words on Twitch and I think Generate AI can really kind of improve our moderation models and improve our ability to tailor moderation on a per-channel basis. And then I think we're also looking at tools in which we can make creators' lives easier. So, going back to how do we make it easier for you to find exciting moments in your stream, to share them to a TikTok or a YouTube Shorts? I think AI could play a role in that. And are there other places in which we can reduce the burden on streamers by giving them more tools which are powered by LLMs and generative AI? 

29:11 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your product org For a product that is a marketplace. How are you structuring your team internally? 

29:20 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah, I'll take one step back and say kind of how Twitch structures its organization from a product perspective is we have three main product organizations. So one is our monetization org who are responsible for all of the revenue generating products on the platform, so it's kind of ads, subscriptions and bits. And then we have another org which is responsible for all of the trust and safety and moderation tools on Twitch, so all of the ways in which we keep streamers safe, we keep bad content off of Twitch and we give them tools to moderate their own communities. And then we have my organization which is responsible for primarily growth In my organization. I kind of I split our features up into three. I would describe them three major areas. 

30:04
We have kind of the pure viewer facing features. 

30:07
This is primarily discovery and how viewers find content. So this is kind of search and following and recommendations, but they're really features that are predominantly the only customer is viewers. Then on the other side, we have the purely creator-facing products and features. This is things like the creator dashboard and the analytics we provide them to understand how their stream is performing, or the streaming tools and the stream manager that help them manipulate and control their stream while they're live like. Those are really purely creator facing features, um. And then in the middle we kind of have what we call interaction features, which is um, which is kind of any feature where basically it fits both sides of the marketplace and both customers, and these are features that really are features that allow creators and viewers to interact with one another when they're live. So predominantly that's through chat on Twitch and we built a bunch of different features around chat, but that team is really responsible for building out new features that either allow streamers to enlist engagement from viewers or allow viewers to get the attention of streamers. 

31:10 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
And I see that, starting this year, you went from VP of product to VP of product and engineering. I'd love for you to expand on that and tell me more about how engineering is part of your product org. 

31:23 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah. So I'm currently running an organization that spans kind of product and engineering as well as TPM and a couple of different other functions as well. So you know we basically we map, we map, we. You know we try and map very closely product engineering and design together at every layer of the organization. So design is not part of my specific org but we have a central design organization that we work very closely with. 

31:53
But at every level we try to say okay, do we have a product manager, an engineering lead, an engineering manager and a designer coupled together, working as a team, and then, as they ladder up, do we have a product director, a design director, an engineering director working as a team in one of these areas? And then, as that ladders up, you get to my level where I have a. You know, I have a VP of engineering who I work very closely with, as well as a VP of design and we work very closely together on the problems at our level. So at every level through the organization we try to have kind of the three-legged stool in order to really have those functions work tightly together and then that ladders up through every layer of the organization. 

32:40 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Well, one of the things that I can imagine is the amount of different opinions that you are going to be getting as your team and your scope grows. So consensus is one of those, or politics, depending on how you want to call it. So how do you go about creating that type of alignment with your team and still being able to move forward? 

33:03 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
Yeah. So I see kind of the role of product managers as trying to build consensus around the right decisions, using inputs from peers, using inputs from data, from research, from their own product sense, and then trying to build consensus as quickly as possible. And I think that's always one of the difficult parts of the job and it varies a lot from organization to organization because I think in some companies, you know, you know whatever the product manager says, everyone else does, and in other organizations it's it's a lot more set of diverse opinions. So I do feel in that as being one of the biggest I wouldn't call it bottlenecks, but I think it's one of the biggest areas of potential slowdown within a project. It's like, how do you build consensus quickly? 

33:56
The tool that I like the most, that I think is one of the most effective tools, is in this particular case, is actually escalations. Um, I'm a big fan of escalations. I'm I'm definitely trying to build an organization where people don't feel bad about escalating um, and it's part of the culture, rather than it feeling like you know a dirty word um, and we always try and do um, clean escalations, what we call co-escalations, which is like oh, if there is a disagreement between two parties. You know they write a doc together, a short document together, laying out the problem and the different sides of opinions, and they escalate it up to the next level and then you know, maybe it gets to my level. I work with my peers across design and engineering to make a decision and if we can't reach a decision we go up to the next level. 

34:46
And I think what's really important there is getting good at learning when you're in a productive conflict versus an unproductive conflict, because a productive conflict is you're working through problems, you feel like you're actually moving forward and you probably are going to get to a good resolution. An unproductive conflict is like you're not actually moving forward and if you spend weeks going back and forth with one another on an unproductive conflict is like you're not actually moving forward and if you spend weeks going back and forth with one another on an unproductive conflict, you may still not reach resolution. So I think a skill which I try and impart on people is like how do you recognize an unproductive conflict so that you can use a tool like escalation, maybe in different businesses. It's something else um to to actually kind of break through that barrier as quickly as possible I like that. 

35:32 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
At the same time, I I have ptsd, you know thinking about different scenarios in my own life where situations get escalated and still there is there's no consensus among the the executive team and a decision has to be made. Right, I found myself calling those shots and trying to clarify the team that the fact that we're trying to build consensus doesn't mean that we need to lead by consensus. I think that's an important difference there. Ideal scenario yes, everybody feels good about something and goes for it, but also it's kind of suspicious, right, that a bunch of really really smart people all think exactly the same way. 

36:08 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
No, I agree with that and I think obviously Amazon has a leadership principle. 

36:12
It's fairly famous around disagree and commit. I like a little twist on this one, which is disagree and champion, which is ultimately a decision will get made somewhere and maybe it's, you know, at the executive level, when the CEO says this is the decision we're going to Like ultimately, at that point it's everyone's job to get behind that decision and actually champion it within the organization to ensure that we can have a success. And I agree, sometimes, like sometimes you can get to a bunch of smart people who just disagree on things. But it's important to know when. You know when to disagree and commit or disagree and champion, when to continue kind of pushing back what are the strength in your convictions, what are your beliefs that are loosely held versus strongly held, and like really trying to define, you know, like understanding yourself, really trying to define, like how much am I going to fight for this particular decision or am I going to put my best argument forward and if my boss comes back and says, no, we're going a different direction, make sure I get behind that. 

37:16 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
Jeremy, one of the things that I'm passionate about is learning. And I believe that learning never ends. So, in your case, as I see your career, what are some of the ways that you love learning and how do you manage to to invest time in yourself? 

37:34 - Jeremy Forrester (Guest)
yeah, I. So I'm definitely, uh, I, I definitely I don't have the patience for, uh, reading um books around you personal development and learning it's just not something I've been particularly good at. Like, I've bought some of the books recommended by people. I can remember one time at Twitter, jack Dorsey bought, you know, a book for the entire company that he wanted us all to read. Like, I read the first couple of chapters and I just couldn't do it anymore. 

38:07
I'm definitely more of an on-the-job learner. I like learning through doing, which I think is one of the strongest ways to learn. I don't think anyone's going to disagree with that. But then how do I make time to ensure that I am continuing to learn? For me, it primarily comes from, like, seeking diverse perspectives and making sure I spend time with those people. 

38:25
And making sure I spend time with people that have opinions other than mine or doing roles different than mine I'm really, you know or tackling problems different than mine. I'm really understanding and spending time with them and trying to, you know, learn from them. I think that's always been one of the best opportunities to learn outside of just my day-to-day job. It's really like, oh, someone over here is doing something interesting that I know nothing about. How can I go and spend time with them? How can I meet with them? How can I have coffee with them To really understand, like, what are the problems that they're trying to solve in their part of the business? Yeah, and you know, hopefully learn from them and hopefully take some of that knowledge forward. And you know, if I ever, you know if I encounter their work, you know I have a different perspective on it when I next see it. 

39:12 - Carlos - Product School (Host)
It's been a pleasure to learn from you in this case. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much for having me.