Transcript: Daniel Dwek | William Hill 888 | Life Is a Statistical Game

Opening: why gaming is an immediate industry

Eyal David: [00:04] Hi friends, it's Eyal. This time I spoke with Daniel Dwek. Daniel comes to us from William Hill 888. In the episode Daniel talked at length about the gaming industry and his move from marketing into product, and I think the insight worth waiting and listening for is the process he went through of determination and persistence. For half a year he didn't let up and applied to every possible job on the way to his first product role. How are you? All good?

Daniel Dwek: [00:33] All good.

Eyal David: [00:34] Do you want to tell us a bit about the gaming industry, or how you see it?

Daniel Dwek: [00:39] Yes, gladly. So first of all, I've been in gaming for something like 10 years, something like that, and I think it's an industry I'm very drawn to personally. First of all on a personal level, because I really love games. Games are fun, and at the end of the day when you do something that's fun, you feel less like you're working. It's a special industry, the way I see it, because it's very immediate. Meaning, everything you do, you immediately see the feedback from the users. You work on some feature, a day after you release it you already see it in money. Not just in numbers, you really see it in money.

Eyal David: [01:19] I mean, you don't have the whole long cycle of a SaaS company, where until it really gets going, until it has a new version it ships, it's closing ARR.

Daniel Dwek: [01:30] Right, right. There's also the whole thing, if you're talking about SaaS, that it usually runs on subscription, so until you see the users who come to use the feature you shipped, it takes time, until they see the value. And here it's very, very immediate. Also in the gaming worlds you could say you have 365 holidays a year. Basically every day you log in and there's something waiting for you, you know, whether it's special offers or special events. Every day is a holiday, so to speak. Every day you come in and you're directed to some special place, there's some new feature you shipped, so now all the users are pushed to that feature.

Eyal David: [02:15] Cool. Can you describe a bit what you do day to day, what your role includes?

The role at William Hill and 888

Daniel Dwek: [02:20] Yes, so today I'm Head of William Hill Gaming Products. William Hill is a British company that was bought a year and a half ago by 888, which by the way is sort of an Israeli company traded on the London Stock Exchange.

Eyal David: [02:35] Israeli founders? What do you mean?

Daniel Dwek: [02:37] The owners of the company are originally Israeli. So the companies basically merged, it's a process that's still happening, and during that process I moved to William Hill to run all of gaming product. William Hill is a company that specializes mainly in sports, they also have actual physical shops across England where players can come in to play and bet, and there's also the online world. So I'm responsible for the online side, whether it's casino, poker, bingo.

Eyal David: [03:07] How many teams do you manage? How does it work?

Daniel Dwek: [03:09] So I have four product managers under me who aren't based in Israel, each one manages his own development team. We have two product teams on the frontend side and two on the backend side.

Eyal David: [03:21] Wow, sounds really cool. And tell me, was there some moment in your gaming career where you felt that something you did crossed the line, that you actually reached some kind of recognition?

WinZone Free Play and recognition from Liquid & Grit

Daniel Dwek: [03:31] I think in my previous role there was a very interesting product I worked on. It was, let's put it this way, the leading feature at the company I worked at back then, which was Playstudios. The feature was called WinZone, a PvP game, player versus player, a multiplayer game with around 30-32 players basically competing against each other, a kind of tournament.

Eyal David: [03:57] A tournament.

Daniel Dwek: [03:57] Yes, exactly that. Very, very exciting, very immersive, you also see the avatars playing against each other. And we worked on a feature called WinZone Free Play. It was basically the same world, the same tournament, only free to play. Meaning you're enjoying it completely for free, you have something like 10 minutes, a quarter of an hour to play for fun, and you'd enter with tickets. You had to either buy the tickets or earn them somehow in the game. And in the end this thing got an item in Liquid & Grit, which is a company that does research...

Eyal David: [04:38] Right, research... how does it work? Competitive intelligence? Like they analyze all the gaming companies? Is it only gaming?

Daniel Dwek: [04:48] Mainly, yes, yes, mainly gaming. And we got some recognition for this thing, an article, and later a video.

Eyal David: [04:56] We'll definitely put it in the show notes. Amazing, how nice. I'd really like you to look for a second through the eyes of the director that you are, in gaming. What are the product skills you think are most needed in this industry? You know, if a new product person enters the industry now, what are the most, most important skills?

The key skills for a product manager in gaming

Daniel Dwek: [05:17] Yes, first of all I look at a product manager like the CEO of some small startup. In the end a product manager needs to know how to work with development, with creative, with data, analysis skills, also with marketing, with the stakeholders they work with. In the end it's a completely different conversation with every person you talk to from all those areas. It's a lot of communication, assertiveness, lots and lots of communication, lots of soft skills needed here. How you talk to people, how you persuade, how you push things forward. Lots of work on the execution side. You need to be an all-around player.

Eyal David: [05:58] So that means all the skills are needed, there's nothing you see floating above everything? I'd actually expect you to say UX or something like that, because things are very visual, right?

Daniel Dwek: [06:10] Yes, I think it really depends in the end on where you come from and what role you're going into. If we're talking specifically about gaming, then I really think the two main things that usually help a lot to get in can be UX, someone who also really loves games, that will obviously help them. And understanding data. Data is something that's very, very, I think, in every product, but maybe in gaming it's even more so, because of that immediacy we talked about.

Juniors and internal mobility

Eyal David: [06:42] Like with tests, right? You basically need funnels. Amazing. I want to ask, for the juniors among us: at 888, at William Hill, are you looking for juniors now? How does it work with you?

Daniel Dwek: [06:54] So I think it depends on which roles. There are roles that are more senior, where you're basically looking for people with experience, but I've also hired people who aren't necessarily senior or who don't come directly from the field, mainly from inside the company.

Eyal David: [07:09] Internal mobility, basically.

Daniel Dwek: [07:10] Yes, internal mobility, many times from the marketing side, because I know there's a lot of interest in making that move. So yes, that happens too.

The path into product: from a degree project to the 888 Poker site

Eyal David: [07:18] I see. So let's talk now about your entry into product. You also came from marketing, let me describe it a bit: you were in a career, or a first role that included SEO and social, and then you got to conversion, right? That was already a different role. Do you want to tell us a bit where and when you decided that product is what you want to do, or what was the first product experience that got those wheels turning?

Daniel Dwek: [07:45] Yes, so I think there were two main points. The first point was during my degree. I did a degree in communications at Reichman (IDC), specializing in interactive, and there one of the final projects we did was to actually build an app that addresses some need. So we kept doing that refining, of understanding what the need is and which users exactly we're targeting. It was a project in collaboration between communications, psychology and computer science students, and we worked for a whole year to build this app. We built an app called Campool, which was basically carpooling on campus. I don't think I knew at the time how to give it a name, but I realized it was something that really interests me. Maybe in high school I studied a bit of programming, but it kind of connected me to those worlds of how to work on a product, but not write the code yourself. How to do the planning, how to imagine the thing, how it will look, and in the end do the execution, make it happen. In the end it didn't launch, but we really got to a point where there was already a working product, and it was really very satisfying. So that's the first point. The second point, I think, was in my first round at 888.

Eyal David: [09:15] So you worked there twice?

Daniel Dwek: [09:17] Yes, I'm now in my second round, soon three years at the company. I also worked at the company for three years about eight or nine years ago, something like that, when I was in a conversion role. I started in social media, then moved to conversion optimization, and at some point we worked on a new website for 888 Poker. At that time there was an opportunity for me, for the first time, to get into a project of building something from scratch, and as soon as I saw this project my eyes lit up.

Eyal David: [09:53] How did that happen? Can you describe it? Because as you say, you came from conversion. What site was it actually? It's a site that leads to the product, really top of the funnel, like after there's the ad, it's the experience you land on. You have a very big impact on conversion here, and they let you do it.

Daniel Dwek: [10:13] And it wasn't only a landing page, or whatever you call it for the funnel, but more of a content site too, because in the end users who are poker players also really like to read content, you know, strategies, things like that.

Eyal David: [10:28] It's also organic content basically, that gets indexed and people come from Google too, you're saying.

Daniel Dwek: [10:33] Exactly, exactly. So we started building the whole thing from scratch, and I was really excited about the idea, I really wanted to be part of it. Obviously because I came from conversion, and they wanted this site to convert as much as possible, an opportunity came up, and I grabbed it with both hands. I led this project with all the relevant departments, whether on the visual side or on the analytics side.

Eyal David: [10:58] I have to ask, who took a chance on you? How did it happen? Who was the champion who pushed you into this?

Daniel Dwek: [11:04] So honestly it's hard for me to remember exactly how that process happened. I remember that my manager at the time, who was supposed to lead it, went on maternity leave, so some kind of opportunity came up, and as I said, it just rolled on from there.

Eyal David: [11:20] And at that stage did you know you wanted to be in product, or did the opportunity just happen?

Daniel Dwek: [11:25] I think by the end of that process I already knew what a product manager is, I already had the name for it, and it was very clear to me that that's also what I did during this project. And I think at that point I realized, you know, when the project ends and suddenly everything you worked on goes out and you see it happening, and then you say: I want to do this all the time.

Eyal David: [11:48] Wow. And is this something you recommend? Broadly it sounds like a side project, like you said, they moved you from what you'd been doing, you worked on this thing, you gained experience. Is it something you recommend? Because it sounds like you did it twice.

Daniel Dwek: [12:04] Yes, absolutely. I think in the end, if someone wants to get into product, they first need to think what interests them in the product world, and go take other roles, even ones that are only nearby, even if not exactly it, but something that gives you the capabilities. Conversion is the role that gave me all the analytical capabilities, I think, and also the UX side, which helped me get into those worlds of product, because those are two very important elements for product managers.

Eyal David: [12:36] Cool. Say, if you now see the CV of someone totally junior, and they have some side project relevant to what the company does, will that give them an extra advantage?

Daniel Dwek: [12:48] Sure. For me that's something that would be very interesting, I'd probably also ask about it in the interview, I'd want to hear more details about it. So I think it's worth putting it in the CV.

Eyal David: [13:00] Probably worth doing. So describe your first job. You described some small startup, right? How did you even get accepted there?

Daniel Dwek: [13:09] Actually it wasn't that small, there were quite a lot of employees at the company. It was called Exagon, and for me it was a dream come true, you know, finally the thing happened.

Eyal David: [13:19] How long did you work on it, trying to get into product? Wow.

Six months of applications: the job hunt as a statistical game

Daniel Dwek: [13:23] I think it was at least half a year, if not more, during which I submitted my CV to every product job that existed in the market. In the end it's a kind of statistical game, that's how I looked at it. You know, I'll submit enough CVs, eventually someone will invite me to an interview. They'll invite me to enough interviews, eventually someone will agree to take me on as a product manager.

Eyal David: [13:47] Totally conversion, exactly like that. And you worked at it. Can you describe for a second what you did on the way there? It's really interesting, to me at least, how it was.

Daniel Dwek: [13:57] So I had a fixed ritual. I had a list of sites I'd go to on a daily basis, every site you can think of, in Israel, abroad, and I'd apply to every product job that existed. There weren't many back then, today there are a lot more. And I said, let them invite me to an interview, at worst afterwards I'll find out it's not relevant, so it will come from me, I'll say maybe it's less of a fit for me. But I said it's worth going to everyone who invites me, I'll gain from it.

Eyal David: [14:29] So really, not only junior positions, which I assume there weren't any of back then, you applied.

Daniel Dwek: [14:34] Yes, every product job, I think, I've ever submitted a CV to. It always says you need some experience, they never tell you "we want people without experience", that doesn't happen.

Eyal David: [14:47] But in the end, what can you do, there are product managers out there in the wild, so somehow they got there.

Daniel Dwek: [14:52] Yes, exactly.

Eyal David: [14:53] That's something that characterizes you, right?

Daniel Dwek: [14:55] Yes, I think for me it's something I do in every area of life. When I want something, I come back to it again and again and again and again, and I never give up until I reach my goals.

Eyal David: [15:07] Because clearly you got a lot, a lot, a lot of rejection in half a year.

Daniel Dwek: [15:11] A lot, a lot, a lot.

The first job as a product manager

Eyal David: [15:12] Wow. And describe a bit the first job, how was it? How long? After all, they suddenly drop you into being product. You weren't product, you built that site, but suddenly you're responsible for a team, for results, for learning the new industry. How was it?

Daniel Dwek: [15:28] Yes, so first of all, when you come from outside you say "what is this, nonsense, I know what this is, I'll get into it in a second". And then you sit in the role, you get the title, you're pleased with yourself, and then you get the first slap in the face, of, you know, you need to learn. And a lot. Whether technically, how to write user stories, how to plan features. You also understand that you can't do everything you want, you need to prioritize things, learn to prioritize. You need to learn the conversation with the developers, and really with all those parties we talked about, but mainly with the developers. You also need to understand that not everything you think is necessarily right, which is something that isn't easy to accept. It's not easy and not natural, because you're sure that everything you do is the best thing in the world. And then in the end, many things, first of all, you don't do, because you discover beforehand that maybe users don't want them at all. But there are things you do, and you ship them, and you run some A/B test and discover it doesn't work.

Eyal David: [16:33] And it did nothing.

Daniel Dwek: [16:35] Yes, it did nothing, maybe you even hurt something along the way.

The first three months, storytelling and MVP

Eyal David: [16:38] What do you remember being the biggest challenge? How long did it take, let's call it your product baking time? How long did it take? A long period in that role, let's say?

Daniel Dwek: [16:51] Yes, I think within maybe three months it took me to really settle into the role, to understand its essence, how I work, what the rituals are, the ceremonies, things like that.

Eyal David: [17:05] Doing ceremonies, what, standup and so on? Or something personal of yours?

Daniel Dwek: [17:09] No, no, ceremonies. Yes, the standup, the retrospective.

Eyal David: [17:13] Because you didn't actually have that at 888 in the previous role.

Daniel Dwek: [17:17] No, I was in a conversion role before that, so there was no standup there. Maybe something similar during the project, but not exactly that. Basically there are those three months where you're really in a learning process, and only afterwards do you start to deliver some work, you start really working on things yourself, writing, presenting. That's also something product managers do a lot, present, so you need to know how to do that too. In the end you need some storytelling ability, you need to know how to get the story across. And sometimes when you're new you approach the story from the middle, and then people don't understand what you want.

Eyal David: [17:58] Or the story is too long, or it touches on things that aren't important enough or don't move the other side.

Daniel Dwek: [18:06] You also need to know what audience you're talking to, because sometimes you're talking to senior management, and they don't want to hear the bits and bytes of the feature.

Eyal David: [18:16] Did it happen to you? Do you have an experience like that you remember?

Daniel Dwek: [18:20] I think so. I was very detail-oriented, to this day I'm very detail-oriented, and I'd go into lots of irrelevant details with senior management, and then they kind of cut you off: "we want to hear the high level, stay at the high level".

Eyal David: [18:39] Okay. So what are the things you remember most that you took from your first job?

Daniel Dwek: [18:44] So basically the whole foundation of product, that's what I got. I think my first manager was tough on me, probably nothing personal, but he basically, I think, built me into the product manager I became later. Not missing anything, being very precise about what you want, defining the goals and touching only the goals. In the end you set yourself KPIs and you need to meet them, that's the goal, and not scatter in other directions. And knowing how to cut. You have some big feature, how do you get to its MVP, how do you bring things down to the most basic level needed to measure it, to see that it works. The scope that's wide enough while still being the narrowest.

Advice to his younger self: don't give up

Eyal David: [19:31] And let's move on. If you now look back and want to give advice to the Daniel who was in that place, looking for a job in that crazy half year, what advice would you give him?

Daniel Dwek: [19:43] I'd tell him: keep going, don't stop believing. I think it's something that to this day I need to remind myself of every so often. When you want something, don't give up, keep going again and again and again, even if they tell you no, tell you you're not a fit, you're not this and you're not that. If you believe in yourselves, if you do something with all your strength, let's put it that way, then in the end nothing can stop you.

Eyal David: [20:13] How great. I really enjoy hearing that, because I'm like that too. You know? Arnold Schwarzenegger has the 6 rules, he has a speech that's exactly this: set a big vision, work, work your ass off, don't listen to the naysayers. It's very similar, I really believe in it.

Daniel Dwek: [20:33] By the way, Schwarzenegger also reached his goals in the end.

Eyal David: [20:37] Three, I think, right? He has three different careers, incredible. Also world champion,

Daniel Dwek: [20:44] Yes, he was in bodybuilding, he was governor of California, and also an actor.

Eyal David: [20:50] He also has a lot of not-so-good things that probably happened there, but yes. Okay, let's move to something else practical. You wanted to bring up some theory or method you usually work with.

The Fun Theory and the trigger-reward loop

Daniel Dwek: [21:03] So yes, I think one of the things I became aware of during my degree, and it accompanies me in some way and also connects very much to the gaming world, is something called the fun theory.

Eyal David: [21:15] Okay.

Daniel Dwek: [21:16] Which is basically a theory that says if something is fun, people will do it. It's not necessarily only in gaming products, you see it today, gamification is something that exists in many, many other products, sometimes it's even done inside organizations themselves. There are also examples on YouTube, if you search for fun theory, where they take all kinds of situations. They want to get people to wait at the traffic light and not cross on red, so just one example of what you can see there: they put some animated character in the traffic light that dances. And people stand at the crosswalk dancing and dancing, and then in the end it switches and shows you that you can go, and people are bummed that they have to cross. But it shows you that you need to wait patiently, and that connects really strongly to product management.

Eyal David: [22:09] You mean from the gaming world, I assume, right? That you want people to complete tasks. I assume not only for gaming, because you're talking about it in the broader sense, but do you use this in your work, in the features you ship?

Daniel Dwek: [22:26] Sure, all the time. First of all in gaming there's a loop you always work on, which starts with some trigger, some hook that brings the player in, whether it's a push notification you send, or an email or something like that. Then they enter the platform, and then you want them to take some action, whether it's playing, whether it's learning.

Eyal David: [22:49] Right, learning on Duolingo for example.

Daniel Dwek: [22:51] And in the end there's some reward, some rewarding mechanism of giving something back.

Eyal David: [22:58] Totally Pavlov, right.

Daniel Dwek: [23:00] Exactly, to reinforce that action. And then, as you say, the next time you get the notification you're already drooling, because you know the reward is about to come at the end of that action.

Eyal David: [23:13] Right. But you're talking here about something that doesn't have to come with a reward. It's basically some fun experience, with the goal of teaching the rules, kind of.

Daniel Dwek: [23:23] Yes, you could say that. In the end you want your users to take some action, you're always trying to steer them somewhere.

Eyal David: [23:31] Yes, you can put up a popup with no way out of it.

Daniel Dwek: [23:35] And you can do it with fun. You can do it with fun, and if it's fun you'll probably do it again, because it was a good experience, you got something good. In the end it works, it works with kids and it works with adults.

Eyal David: [23:50] Wow, I love it, I'm glad you brought it up. Because I once actually saw an example of this, where they took a toothbrush and put a small screen on it, and every time the kid brushed his teeth, he could watch the character on the screen progress because he brushed his teeth for the right amount of time. And they showed, I don't remember where it was anymore, that kids really brush much more with it. Totally, totally fun theory. Okay, so of course we'll put a link about it, Daniel will give it to us. And we're getting close to the end. Daniel, you gave advice to young PM Daniel, or before he was a PM. Do you have another piece of advice for young PMs? You can repeat the same advice, but if you have something more concrete.

Advice for young PMs and wrap-up

Daniel Dwek: [24:38] So I think we pretty much summed it up here. If you want something, take other roles. Obviously the best thing is to go straight into product, but that's not always possible. Sometimes in your first role you need to do something else, but it should be in that direction, something not far from the role you're aiming for. And don't give up. Once you get there, give it everything, go all the way, until you reach the goal.

Eyal David: [25:03] Amazing. And along the way you also gave advice about a side project, which is also related, and will probably help you land your first role, whatever role you try for. So with this optimistic attitude we'll really wrap up. Daniel, thank you very much.

Daniel Dwek: [25:16] Thank you very much.

Eyal David: [25:17] And see you in the next episode, bye bye.