Peter Sellis
Person
Peter Sellis is a product leader known for his work at Discord and Snap. He helps engineers and designers build and ship products.
What Peter Sellis has said on podcasts
21 statements
Snap’s young audience is less valuable to advertisers than Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter audiences.
“Snap's audience is definitively like less valuable from that perspective versus like a Pinterest or an Instagram or a Twitter.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 22:58
Snap faced structural difficulty building a multibillion-dollar advertising business.
“Snap was trying to build a multi-billion dollar ads business very quickly on a lower value audience, a very tough format for ads, and a service that was more utilitarian than consumption oriented.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 24:46
Snapchat Plus has been successful as a subscription product.
“I think Snapchat Plus has actually been quite successful”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 28:52
Instagram’s version of Stories is better than Snapchat’s version.
“the version of it on Instagram is now much better.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 33:00
Product restraint is one of the few ways leaders can exercise product taste.
“Exercising that kind of muscle of like saying no, uh, of restraint is probably one of the easiest, like one of the few like muscles of taste you can exercise.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 36:29
Advertising is the strongest consumer monetization model on the internet.
“ads are, ads are the product market fit for the internet.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 40:41
Consumer subscriptions are generally overrated compared with advertising.
“subscription products and things like that are kind of overrated versus ads from a consumer side of things.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 40:56
Modern advertising marketplaces and auctions are essentially solved problems.
“What drives a modern ads marketplace and auction is essentially a solved problem”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 41:34
A modified VCG auction is the correct mechanism for ChatGPT advertising.
“I do think that the mathematical mechanism, which is essentially a modified VCG, I think Vickrey-Clarkesgrove auction mechanism, this mathematical mechanism is the correct way to build an ads auction in even like a chat environment, in ChatGPT.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 41:43
Maximizing trust likely improves user retention and advertiser value.
“trust maximization will probably be correlated with user retention, if not causal, and with advertiser value.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 44:20
Designing ad formats at OpenAI is an especially important product role.
“one of the coolest jobs right now for a PM, uh, and designer would probably be like ad formats at OpenAI.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 44:40
Network-effect businesses grow more effectively by strengthening existing users’ experience.
“what you can do to drive growth much more effectively is focus on people who are essentially already using or wanting to use the product”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 51:19
Almost every consumer product should optimize for daily active use.
“I think almost every consumer product, maybe it's also a controversial take, like needs to be optimizing for daily active use.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 51:44
Improving Discord’s core gaming experience drove exceptionally fast growth.
“As we made Discord better, as we focused on performance, we were actually able to drive some of the fastest, I think if not the fastest growth”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 55:12
Companies should continually assess adjacent markets for their core strengths.
“you should honestly always be assessing that”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 58:43
A radically superior competitor can eliminate an improving business almost overnight.
“everything's getting better and better and better until something comes along that's literally 10x better than what you're doing and it takes you to zero overnight.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 1:01:56
SpaceX is currently the world’s greatest company.
“SpaceX is the greatest American company right now, greatest company in the world, truly phenomenal on every single level.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 1:02:49
Falcon 9 is becoming obsolete relative to SpaceX’s future launch systems.
“the Falcon 9 is the past.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 1:04:09
SpaceX is willing to replace its successful products with superior successors.
“we're completely willing to build the thing that will compete against ourselves and make the thing that we built irrelevant.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 1:04:35
SpaceX’s current activities were outlined in plans published roughly ten years earlier.
“Nothing SpaceX is doing is not something that they didn't talk about 10 years ago.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 1:06:06
People who repeatedly raise organizational ambition are rare, especially in large organizations.
“the type of people who can do that within an organization, especially a large organization, are pretty rare.”
Open the episode · 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter SellisListen at 1:08:58
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.
