Lessons Leading EPD: Mindset, decision-making, 80/20 product strategy & pivoting for leverage/speed w/ Farnaz Azmoodeh #219

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May 6, 2025

Farnaz Azmoodeh, CTO at Linktree, shares her journey from Google to leading substantial projects at Snap. She discusses the necessity for engineering leaders to shift mindsets from delivery to discovery. Farnaz emphasizes the power of data-driven decision-making over anecdotal evidence and the art of pivoting strategy for fast, efficient cross-functional teams. She also highlights how AI is reshaping the collaboration between product, design, and engineering, and the emergence of trends in technology and proactive medicine that enhance user engagement.

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INSIGHT

Discovery Drives Monetization

Linktree had a broad user base from novices to celebrity-level users with vastly different needs.
Despite offering sophisticated features, poor discovery hindered monetization and user engagement.

ADVICE

Small Teams for Fast Bets

Use small, focused cross-functional teams with complementary skills for fast experimentation and better collaboration.
Large teams tackling complex problems with human complexity create inefficiencies and slow progress.

ADVICE

Balance Ownership and Team Size

Balance team ownership and team size: smaller teams innovate faster but must own end-to-end experiences.
Coordination pain grows with team size, slowing down innovation and causing inefficiency.

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When Farnaz Azmoodeh (CTO @ Linktree) stepped into her new role, she unexpectedly took on product & design just three months in—owning all of engineering, product, and design during a critical period of change. In this episode, Farnaz shares hard-won lessons from that transition, including the mindset shift from delivery to discovery, balancing data vs. intuition in decision-making, knowing when to pivot your product strategy, and building small / fast-moving cross-functional teams. We also cover applying the 80/20 rule to simplify complex product surfaces, her favorite frameworks for pattern recognition, and how to reset assumptions when pattern-matching can backfire. If you’re navigating ambiguity, expanding your scope, or evolving how your org builds product, this episode will help you lead with more clarity, speed, and strategic focus.

ABOUT FARNAZ AZMOODEH

Farnaz is the CTO at Linktree, the leading social platform for creators and small businesses. Linktree enables its users to unify, curate, and monetize their online presence. Farnaz started her career at Google, focusing on the ad tech space. Farnaz then joined Snap, leading Snap's AR monetization team before scaling to run Snap's Platform and product engineering. Farnaz earned her bachelor's degree in computer science from Sharif University of Technology before moving to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Southern California. After fulfilling the credits for a master’s degree, she decided to enter the tech industry where she could contribute to human progress by bringing products to millions of users.

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SHOW NOTES:

Taking on product & design 3 months into a new role (3:01)
Going from delivery to discovery: mindset shifts for eng leaders (5:58)
Identifying the current state of engineering, product & design (10:59)
Decision-making based on anecdotes vs. data (12:50)
Pivoting strategies to optimize for small, fast teams to improve cross-functional collaboration (15:04)
Signals to pivot your product approach & ****make different bets (16:59)
Complementary skill sets for rapid iteration (19:14)
How to avoid silencing critical input & transform team frustration into product insight (20:41)
Applying the 80/20 rule to complex product surfaces (23:46)
Case Study: Reprioritizing the LinkTree product w/ 80/20 approach (25:46)
Bringing on a strategic product partner & kicking off org change (27:28)
Be honest about your knowledge gaps (29:09)
How Farnaz’s experiences at Snap inform her leadership as CTO (33:21)
When pattern matching fails: frameworks for checking assumptions (35:22)
Where EPD Is headed: cross-functional evolution in the age of AI (38:10)
Rapid fire questions (38:58)

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

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