Transcript: Execution Is Everything: Roi Yanai (VP Product, AppsFlyer) on Measurement, Privacy, and Product Craft

Eyal David: [00:04] Hi friends, this is Eyal. In this podcast we dive together into conversations with the most interesting people in the industry. And of course, we'll try to be as practical as possible. This time I hosted Roi from AppsFlyer, we talked about the challenges, the successes, about AppsFlyer and the industry. And lots of things you can learn and adopt, like using writing for precision, and what the most important skills are for him in a product manager. Alright, let's begin. Roi, how's it going? Good, good, how's it going? Great, so glad you came, with us is Roi who comes to us from AppsFlyer. Roi, tell us in one sentence, what do you do at AppsFlyer? So first of all, thank you for bringing me here.

Roy Yanai: [00:50] So I'm VP Product at AppsFlyer, I lead what's called the measurement organization, which is essentially the core product of AppsFlyer.

Eyal David: [00:59] So maybe take a second to really explain what AppsFlyer does. Gladly. AppsFlyer essentially helps

Roy Yanai: [01:05] mobile app developers understand where their customers come from and what they do inside the app. Essentially a measurement tool, a measurement tool for advertising or for the efforts you make on social media, everywhere, email campaigns and so on.

Eyal David: [01:21] So if you're actually in charge of measurement, of a product built around measurement, then what do you do here? What kind of team are you?

Roy Yanai: [01:28] Great question. Look, if we went back five, six years, then essentially, what I lead today was all of AppsFlyer, but since then AppsFlyer has been expanding and growing, and it also engages in more areas; we're very influential and strong in worlds that today, in privacy contexts, have become stronger, which is data clean rooms, something we lead together with strategic partners as well. Essentially because all the data, if I understand correctly, all the data already passes through you, so it's very easy to delete it and to find the part you want to delete with your help — not that I... no, not in that direction. That's an excellent point. If all the data passes through us, it's not about deleting, but rather, without sharing row-level data, without sharing the user's details, you can create more things on top of the data, that sit in the cloud, and then you extract everything in a very anonymous way from the cloud. So how many of you are on the team, actually? What does it look like? So in the product organization there are 30 people in my group — product managers, designers and data analysts — and in the R&D organization there are of course mainly developers.

Eyal David: [02:38] What's the company's goal now, actually — where is the company heading? Because I'll just ask, there was some boom until not long ago, companies hiring like crazy, AppsFlyer kind of held back, I remember, and now they're coming out a bit of that crisis that happened — is that still the direction or is it going to change?

Roy Yanai: [02:56] The answer is yes, AppsFlyer is on the way to an IPO, sooner or later. I'm very proud of AppsFlyer and of the management that chooses responsibly. Not going with some SPAC and not? Not on a SPAC and not on an unbacked run, and I think that in the last three years, since 2021 — a saying of Warren Buffett, that when the tide goes out, you see who was swimming naked. Oh that's excellent. Yeah, yeah. Excellent quote. So yeah, slowly you really see it. Okay. So yeah, and AppsFlyer is a very healthy company, that didn't get swept up in the hype, and we saw the results of that again in the last three years, and we continue full force and keep growing, the business goal is to reach a billion dollars in revenue in ARR. A great goal.

Eyal David: [03:53] Absolutely, good luck. And did something else really happen in these three years? Right. A lot of things happened, but what happened — actually, correct me if I'm wrong since you're from the field,

Roy Yanai: [04:01] at some point Apple came out with its privacy policy — do you want to expand on that a bit? Yeah. I think Apple is one side of a very significant change and evolution of privacy happening across the whole world. We had GDPR, the privacy laws in Europe, and we had CCPA happening in California, and Apple and all these companies actually see themselves as obligated — it's not a matter of whether they want to or not, they have no choice. They have no choice. They have no choice. But Apple also really wanted to remain as a leader. It's right there on the flag of privacy. Privacy is really one of the reasons people choose iPhone, and privacy is security compared to Android, it's a lot of brand things that Apple built over many years, and it essentially changed the entire measurement method, that both AppsFlyer and the whole ads industry are built on top of, and it killed — it killed one of the capabilities that it had actually enabled. Because essentially they kept on their side some data that they used to expose, And how did you bridge that? So that's really — we'll get to talk about it soon, but that's really one of the things I led within AppsFlyer, and I think it was a very dramatic moment in the company, and I really see it as a dramatic moment for the good. Because you came out of it and you're not naked. How long ago was it? Within the last three years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, two and a half years.

Eyal David: [05:35] And beyond that, are there other trends that you kind of identify in the industry, that you've been reading about lately?

Roy Yanai: [05:43] Privacy is with us full force. Apple was the beginning, Google is next. We're really leading and working together very well with Google toward their privacy revolution. That's it, that's the whole thing with the third-party cookie, right? That too, exactly, and it's going to happen in Israel as well. So third-party cookies are in the headlines now because it's happening right now, but the same thing is going to happen on Android and it's not in the headlines yet because that's next year.

Eyal David: [06:10] And will it also be by territory, or will it be across the board worldwide? Across the board, across the board, right. Yeah, everyone's scared. I understand. So do you want to maybe tell us what you actually do day-to-day at a measurement company?

Roy Yanai: [06:24] Yeah, definitely. The measurement department, sorry. Totally. So as the product leader of this whole group, and of this whole unit, you can divide my work into three significant different areas. First of all, there are a lot of elements of, call it, strategic projects. Whether it's something that fell on us, or something we want to deal with now, but it's really at a strategic level.

Eyal David: [06:49] I can't give examples. What does it mean, fell on us? Fell on us like a regulation, from a customer? What does it mean?

Roy Yanai: [06:55] Exactly. One of the two. Yeah. Or it could be that, but for example a regulation. That's something very, uh — or something really from the big companies, operating systems like that, iOS, keep dropping on us. Nice bombs. It's a joke. And then essentially — so that's one layer. The second significant thing is strategy. Okay. Where is the measurement organization heading? What does it want to achieve? We talked a bit about the business objective, we didn't talk a bit about our mission, and about where we want to take the company.

Eyal David: [07:30] And about the measurement chapter within AppsFlyer. Do you want to maybe fill in for us just the aspect of the mission? Let's open a parenthesis for a second just so we're...

Roy Yanai: [07:37] Gladly, happily, with love. So I think that the mission of measurement stands very much on the first definition of AppsFlyer's mission, which is essentially aimed at helping the app developer understand what his marketing ad spend is doing. Okay. To help him understand where his users come from, what they do, where to attribute his effort, and I like to call it understanding the Marketing Picture. And essentially I'm trying to understand,

Eyal David: [08:10] so your specific customer, this persona you're aiming at all the time — does it change? There are several parties in the organization that you actually work with.

Roy Yanai: [08:18] How does it work? Right. How does the product work with them? How does it work? So the customers — that's an excellent point, because the very... let's call them... clear customers, for them it's the marketing people, specifically performance marketing, User Acquisition and so on. We also have a very important Stakeholder, who is actually the BI person. A lot of the things they consume from us are actually BI capabilities, APIs and so on, and how it's displayed on their end, because a lot of the companies pull everything to themselves, all the data. Of course. And more very important personas — and this, by the way, is one of our Challenges, we want to reach them — that's the CMOs. Who are actually also the first persona, of those marketers, who need the tools to essentially deliver the numbers and the results, also to those CMOs. Exactly. Essentially everything funnels there in the end. Interesting. And the third thing, of course, is simply managing people. Yeah. It's Growth — I think maybe we said it third, but you could think, I really see it as first. The development and Growth of people, ICs, the managers — a very, very, very critical part of my role. Great, so I have a follow-up question,

Eyal David: [09:36] since we already touched on it. What do you think are the most prominent skills, or the most needed in your eyes, in a product manager?

Roy Yanai: [09:45] Wow. I think one of the things I look for, and look at and think are important, is the ability To Inspire. I want someone I want to follow, I look for someone who succeeds in drawing the people around him after him, whether it's Other PMs, whether it's R&D, whether it's Other Stakeholders, and the customers themselves too. Really, I want to follow. Second thing — it's something that's hard to quantify, and also very hard to measure, but it's — they don't call it Product Sense in interviews for nothing. Product Sense. I also want someone who's not just, I want — he's not just a leader who takes you somewhere; I want to make sure the place is right. That he takes you to the right place. And the third thing too, Communication Skills. It comes a bit together with the first thing I said, Inspiring and Leadership, but I do separate it. Critical, critical, critical.

Eyal David: [10:46] We also talked a bit offline about Writing Skills. Right, and we'll touch on it later. Tell me, and how do you measure these things? Say someone comes to you for an interview, there's a series of interviews, okay, it reaches you. How do you actually measure the...?

Roy Yanai: [10:59] I have, call it, a trick. But, for example, Communication Skills. Let's take that as an example. There's the intro stage, where many people, when you come to an interview for the first time, sit together, and say, tell me about yourself. They ask, where do you want me to start? And I really leave it open. In general, I like to leave things open. To product managers in interviews. Because that's, that's the job. Everything is very open to us. And we have to choose what to focus on, how to focus, what yes, what not. So that's really part of the exercise. And in the introduction, I say, up to you. You decide where to focus, where not. And one of the things I really, really check there is the ability to do a TLDR. To summarize, and to summarize well. Yeah. So you're checking the summarizing ability, essentially. Exactly. I don't want someone who's going to ramble at me now, for minutes, without me understanding what he did, what it is. I want him to tell me the outcomes — I really check right at this point, not what he did, but what results he brought, what it is. I want someone who will impress me.

Eyal David: [12:07] And in a short, concise way. Wow, and that connects so much to Writing Skills — we talked about them — that conciseness and that focus. Exactly, exactly. So essentially, I'll introduce you a bit — the path you took is a bit different. I don't know if different, but it's a bit different from the previous guests who were here. So essentially, you finished a degree at Reichman, in computer science. How was it? Excellent. And essentially, you entered — you entered before the startup, essentially you entered and founded, this is something that will accompany us throughout the whole episode — you were always founding, and doing, and initiating, which is stunning in my eyes, you essentially started Reichman's Hackathon, together with friends. Tell us a bit about it.

Roy Yanai: [12:49] In my first year I came, without a background from the army, and in my second year, in computer science, I really felt that there's also, in the degree, in academia, a lack of the applied. In practice? In practice, and even practice, like, to play a bit beyond tons and tons and tons of academic material, tons of math, in general. I don't even remember. So it was very much like that, and I felt I was missing the moment of connection — the connection between, okay, I know how to write code, but I have no idea what it is to build, again, an application — but the meaning of application here is the implementation of it, not the word application [as in app]. And out of this need, I also noticed that there are a lot of hackathons in the world. There aren't really any for students. No, there were back then, wow. Exactly. What year are we talking about, roughly? About eight years ago. Okay. More. Say ten, come on, nu. Yeah, 2016, 2015. Wow, and there weren't in... No, certainly not for students. There were a few hackathons here and there of companies, depends, and some of them had already died. There was something, for example, of PayPal I remember. At the time I really just researched, you know, the field, I really remember. So there was something one-off. There's nothing permanent in Israel, and I think even today, I don't know if there's something today that's such a deep tradition — again, we're already eight years, nine, that this thing has been running. And I decided to go for it. Come on, let's do a hackathon here. An interdisciplinary thing — I discovered there are ones like that at universities abroad, we learned a ton from them, we just reached out. How cool. Yeah, and they gave us tons of material, tons of that drive of Penn. Awesome. And we founded it, and we raised money. We went to companies — come be sponsors, we're doing this — we had no credentials, but they flowed in. There was really some connection here, this here, there, this, but we raised 40 thousand

Eyal David: [14:41] shekels. How amazing — and I have to ask a question before we continue: was this the first time you raised money? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. What a moment that is. Right. And well, soon we'll get to... No, it's hard,

Roy Yanai: [14:53] it's... yeah. It's a moment, it's really a defining moment. It's a moment. You don't [expect] that they'll give you money. Really. You don't believe they'll give you money, and then they say, okay, come on, let's do it. And now it's on you. Yeah. But

Eyal David: [15:05] actually here, it was very stressful. Just a bit stressful. But, I imagine — but here actually, in this case, there's no, there's no, you know, you don't close the loop with some money you need to pay back,

Roy Yanai: [15:17] right? In the end. No, but you know, you don't wanna fuck it up. Totally. Totally, that's always true. There are many places where this, and there are many, there are many places to be apprehensive, and that people will attribute things and so on, and you're also somewhere a bit exposed to issues, whatever, this, you know. It's amazing, no,

Eyal David: [15:35] I say, it's a great step on the way to raising... Right. So it ran for eight years, and meanwhile also the college became a university and it still exists. Right, still exists. Are you still there... in some role? No, no.

Roy Yanai: [15:47] I come to judge every year. Whoa, dude. Yeah, they invite me and I'm always happy to come. It became a tradition that passes among the computer science students — every year there are the organizers, who pass the baton to other organizers, and there are tons of volunteers from computer science; it's also in collaboration with the student union of Reichman University. Wow, that's awesome, well done. Right, right. It's really a project, and they always bring people who are very serious, more serious than me, to judge at such a final stage. But cool — your chair there is

Eyal David: [16:17] saved, so you can meet cool people every year. Totally. So from there you essentially continued after the degree, you opened a startup right away — how was it? Right, so at Reichman there's a program

Roy Yanai: [16:29] that many know, many don't, an entrepreneurship program called Zell. So in the third year of my degree, the applied one — and it's an entrepreneurship program that's really an amazing program.

Eyal David: [16:41] A program you come to with an idea already? You're kind of supposed to come with an idea, but its goal is mainly

Roy Yanai: [16:47] for there to be something to work on during the ideation, during the exams. It's not that you necessarily have to stay with it — and that's also what happens, almost no one stays with their idea, the one they came with. So essentially something like 20 people are accepted from the whole university. Wow. Yeah. And it's a really, really amazing program — they bring the most significant people from the whole high-tech industry and unicorns. And we learned a ton, and you can also, by your choice — you have to work on a startup, at your discretion how serious you are with it in the end, want to take it further, don't want to take it further, continue with your life.

Eyal David: [17:27] How does it look, just — we'll really touch on it in a moment. How much time, out of you being a student, third year of computer science — how much time do you actually invest in this thing, in terms of a workplace? Yeah. They really,

Roy Yanai: [17:39] call it, insist that you don't work while doing it. Understandable. And they also recommend doing a fourth year. Did you? No, I did it in my third year, but there are those who really do it in their fourth year, instead of, like, after they finished the degree, but they stay another year in order to do Zell, and even to the level that sometimes they give scholarships to people instead of them working. Amazing. Yeah.

Eyal David: [18:03] So essentially this startup lived for about two years, right? Yeah. And during it, what's the smartest thing you took with you, that you learned from this process? Execution is everything. And now you've applied it ever since, right? Yeah. So from there you essentially continued to AppsFlyer, you decided at some point that you want to be a product manager, and you applied for a position of what, exactly? You closed the startup and decided on product? Just like that.

Roy Yanai: [18:27] Just like that. And I also very much targeted AppsFlyer. Really, why? It's a field I really love — it's like, it's not a fortune, but it's marketing, technological marketing, it's the measurement of things, and I think it's, rightly, a mission critical product, it's not nice to have. It's a strong product, and I felt that... I joined AppsFlyer when there were fewer than, say, 180 people, today there are 1500. Yeah. I felt that it's on the right track. And you actually, if I understand correctly,

Eyal David: [19:03] in the startup you had a mobile app? Yeah. So you actually moved to being who the customer is, so you also knew all the use cases. No. No? Where? No, because we weren't at a scale that requires using

Roy Yanai: [19:15] AppsFlyer at that level. So you knew those products. But yeah, I knew them from this world, but we weren't really a customer. And how was your idea there? How was it — was it easy? No. It wasn't easy. I think they took an aspect from their side. I think that's usually how it is

Eyal David: [19:33] with a first role in product. Exactly, it's like an entrepreneur, but it's — and he's also

Roy Yanai: [19:39] not so, not long ago, [out of] university, and so on. Seems to me

Eyal David: [19:45] it paid off. Seems to me too. So which role did you enter? Product manager,

Roy Yanai: [19:51] in the data areas. That's it, an area, because it's very much a case of let's see what he can do. What happened from there? A domain. So within AppsFlyer I grew, I developed, I learned a ton. You were there seven years. Right, seven years. Important point. So how many

Eyal David: [20:09] roles did you actually go through along the way? Or how many areas, more accurately? Exactly. Areas — that's

Roy Yanai: [20:15] I think at least five, at least six. Do you want to tell about one of the experiences

Eyal David: [20:21] you had along the way? Some achievement? Yeah, I think that... you talked a bit about the entrepreneurship element

Roy Yanai: [20:27] and something like that, and I think you can really see it also within AppsFlyer — we talked now about the world of measurement. And AppsFlyer in mobile does measurement by something called last click. Meaning, whoever had the last click won, and all the credit goes to it. Now, this is a very effective method, and it has problems. Let's really explain for those who don't know —

Eyal David: [20:51] we touched on it a bit earlier, but what does it mean, all the credit goes to it? I advertise, I advertise my app, because I want to know, essentially, from which ad, from which channel, the click that led to the download comes. Yeah, now, what if the user made several clicks? What if the user saw a commercial on TV, and then clicked on the computer, and then also clicked on mobile on an ad of X, and then in the end on an ad of Y, and then downloaded the app. Who's the factor? Who gets the credit?

Roy Yanai: [21:21] In the end, we in the world of measurement want to understand who caused the incremental effect — meaning, who really brought the user to make the purchase, and supposedly it sounds like you can measure it, but you can only in ways that are very not easy. Today the mobile world really goes by last click, meaning, whoever was associated with the last click wins, takes the whole pot. Now, it's clear to everyone, to all our listeners, that it's not an ideal method. Its advantages are that it's very scalable, and it's very simple. And as a product manager, I really saw here a bit of the opportunity to measure in a different way. Now, I didn't invent this, but there's what's called measurement that's called incrementality. Maybe say just in two words before —

Eyal David: [22:19] you identified this opportunity, and you identified — I hear in this — you identified two things, and correct me if I'm wrong. One, you identified some gap there that your competitors probably don't do, and the second thing you identified is that you can probably do it, and it will give a ton of value to your customers. Did you know at that moment that the customers want it? Yeah. Yes to everything you just said. And this eureka

Roy Yanai: [22:43] moment — is it essentially something that crystallized over time, how was it? Yeah. So that's what I'm saying, I didn't invent the... it's not that I'm now some data scien... genius data scientist about something — it's something that had been floating around as a buzzword for a long time in the industry,

Eyal David: [23:03] and we had the ability to develop it. And here came Roi Yanai and said, come on, let's lift this up. So how did you convince... Exactly. How did you convince the company, the CEO, okay, to go and invest the time, the resources in such a thing? Great, so that's really a good point for the listeners, and something I think is right.

Roy Yanai: [23:21] It's never... I didn't come to him with some investor deck — it never works in the form of, okay, we want to start project X, and I need five people here, and this, this, this. It was a lot, and this connects exactly to the points I mentioned earlier about the strength of a PM that I look for — a lot of rallying, a lot of inspiration, developers for whom it wasn't their day job — let's take a bit here — I convinced their group lead, not something they'd do against their Jira tickets. It was agreed by everyone that we do some check here, a lot with analysts, a lot really...

Eyal David: [23:57] Roi, and what role were you in at that point in time? Product manager, Senior PM. And then you essentially started to kick off this thing, scraped together what you scraped together, made it happen, and then what? I showed success. Quick.

Roy Yanai: [24:09] Stunning. Yeah. I created a dashboard with analysts who worked on things behind the scenes, Google's Data Studio, if you know it, based on the data, and we came to a customer or two, they said, wow, you really went to customers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's your data according to the incrementality report, they said, wow, this is excellent, insights that we kind of don't have... where do we sign?

Eyal David: [24:33] Amazing. Something like that. And is this something that at your company is... like, is it a common thing? That a product manager now takes the flag and runs, essentially, in pursuit of something?

Roy Yanai: [24:45] There's very great freedom of action. Very. Initiatives are welcome. And again, if you manage to show success with minimum effort, then... then yeah. It's common to the extent of the caliber of the people who do it. And we push them to do these things. I will say something, actually on the side, to the contrary — you need to be careful, not too much. We also have our main mission, and we have our existing customers, and we have a lot, lot, lot of value to deliver on our current product. Not every PM

Eyal David: [25:27] needs to take the flag. So as a manager, do you measure on these things? Do you limit the...? How do you actually enforce this, in case it's still, like, don't know what, going to happen? I encourage, and I examine.

Roy Yanai: [25:39] So I really encourage doing these things, and bringing them to the table. Again, when there's no cost, then the ROI is infinite. Therefore, let's start from the idea.

Eyal David: [25:51] Let's start from the... you know, The Bezos Way, the PR statement of what comes out at the end? Oh, that's an excellent method, maybe tell about it in two words.

Roy Yanai: [25:57] Yeah, we talked a bit about writing skills and everything — I very much encourage my product organization to write. Period.

Eyal David: [26:03] That's it, you told us about... okay, I'm being judged. So about Bezos — really his approach, back then,

Roy Yanai: [26:09] was essentially to start from the PR, and then to work backwards, backwards, backwards, essentially in the story, until I actually reach okay, what's the feature and what am I actually doing, and translate it into work. But, in the context of writing skills,

Eyal David: [26:21] we talked about it before, and I said to you, what? But there's GPT today, you'll surely let it generate for you everything, you don't write anything — so you actually told me that you sit, you practice writing, and you also push your employees as well to distill ideas. Do you want to tell about it in a few words? It's — I magnified... really, yeah.

Roy Yanai: [26:39] I very much believe in writing, because I think it serves us — you can read it two ways — it serves you with yourself. In my eyes, it's a kind of feedback mechanism. A lot of things that sit in our heads and seem very clear to us — the moment we start to write them down, we're like, and then we read something small, and we're like, what? No, wait. That's not what... oh, wait, wait, I'm writing something here that's vague, unclear, I have to — wait — distill this. We talked about the TLDR. Right. That's the first thing. The second thing, it's also vis-à-vis other people. It's already come up quite a few times that... I asked a product manager to come and write clearly, no doubt — but wait, what does the product want to achieve. We talked about it before, it's not the first time that this happens, and suddenly when he wrote it, I... wait, really, this is really something else from what I understood you meant when we talked about it. And suddenly there were a thousand refinements, and refinement

Eyal David: [27:39] is something really important in product. So essentially your method is to write some brief at the end of the day — do you want to tell a bit, to distill it for someone who's never done it? Okay, I now have some idea, it's running around in my head. How much do you aim for? For what? For a paragraph on the thing? A page on the thing? A One Pager

Roy Yanai: [27:57] in my eyes is the best. By the way, look, come on, I'm not strict and no one here is strict. Again, the goal is actually first and foremost for yourself, and after that for me to go over it. And there's nothing strict here. I think a One Pager should be enough. It should define the mission, the problem statement, the solution, and from there there's also interpretation for competitive or segments and so on. That's it, and maybe also complete it with how much it costs, right? If we already want to understand how to bring this thing down to the ground.

Eyal David: [28:41] I want to go back for a second to your abilities — so we really felt your entrepreneurial story here throughout your whole career. Is that something you still kind of use, and how does it look today? Yeah, all the time. Where does it come to expression, essentially, as a

Roy Yanai: [28:59] product manager? Even now — we talked earlier about my roles as manager of the Measurement product group, and also now when I'm on strategic projects, so it's really it. I initiate a new project, and examine our options going forward. Where do I take the measurement company? It's a company. 30 product people and

Eyal David: [29:23] 100 developers is a company that's not even small. But you're no longer with deals between your teeth, scraping,

Roy Yanai: [29:29] or still? No. I'm not, but I operate in similar ways. I too am committed to myself to write for a moment, and I have here in front of my eyes some One Pager I created two weeks ago. I too am really committed to these standards that... I think they're critical — again, I do them for myself. Yeah, for example, part of the Initiatives that are now on our table, on my table. There's a big opportunity in the market. Again, we talked about the revolutions that iOS keeps providing us. Actually it's not iOS itself, it's a new EU regulation, what's called the DMA, which essentially forces — the Digital Markets Act — forces Apple to open iOS to new app stores. Now, this is a crazy earthquake — only in the EU... Tell us in a sentence just what it means, essentially, to open? Today on iOS, iPhone, iPhone users can download apps only from Apple's App Store. Okay. Ahhh. As of now — and there's really, really a global mess, so to speak, there are new companies, wow, what an opportunity! Amazing, crazy. Is AppsFlyer thinking of opening a marketplace? No, no, no. AppsFlyer is in the world of measurement. We don't... Focus, clear. Exactly, and also all these app stores are in the advertising business — whether it's how to bring users to the app stores, or whether it's advertising inside the app stores. AppsFlyer is very loyal to the unbiased principle, meaning, we will never deal with advertising. We are measurement, and therefore we can never deal with advertising. So it's a crazy opportunity, but all these companies, all these new app stores — will they need measurement? Is there better measurement we can collaborate with them on? And more than that, there's also suddenly measurement that's cross-channel,

Eyal David: [31:20] which on iOS didn't exist yet, essentially across several channels. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So a significant user base is going to grow for you, I understand.

Roy Yanai: [31:29] In the end it's... the end users are the same end users. We can have strategic collaborations.

Eyal David: [31:36] And they'll bring a lot. A lot of companies that until today worked, weren't inside Apple's closed garden, and suddenly they have entry.

Roy Yanai: [31:43] Right, right, right. That's a lot of the Chinese market, the Asian market, I'm guessing. There's a good question here. There's also a good question here about the apps that the app store outright forbids

Eyal David: [31:52] from entering. Yeah? Ah, I can understand. Yeah. Roi, so we're approaching the end of the episode, and I'd like — if you have any recommendations for PMs?

Roy Yanai: [32:00] Yeah, excellent. I think that if I summarize things we also talked about here and there, then first of all, communication skill — to be concise, to make the person standing in front of you understand what you want from them, and fast. Do you have some way that... I always ask this,

Eyal David: [32:17] do you have some way that you improved this ability further in yourself, or is it something innate? Writing. Writing — writing worked well for you, okay. Writing. Hosting a podcast is also not bad. Yeah? I haven't tried yet. What else do you recommend?

Roy Yanai: [32:33] sense of product sense, I think that... It's tricky, because I don't have advice. I don't really have advice. I do think a lot of product managers, especially former developers, look at a lot of things as a solution, as a problem that needs to be given a solution. And that misses the point, in my eyes. I look for creativity, I look for... when I ask a product sense question, I'm not looking for them to give me a solution that... I look to be interested. Product people — again, I think we product people really need to... again, I'm kind of, to inspire, I feel like getting excited. I feel like getting excited by the answer. Because maybe also what you're looking for in an idea is someone who will validate you. Someone who will come out...

Eyal David: [33:20] Really, I look to be inspired. Exactly. Stunning. And do you have some advice for someone who wants to...

Roy Yanai: [33:29] be a product manager, and really doesn't know, comes from development, comes from another area? Yeah. So I divide my answer into two. One, assuming you can and want to make the transition within the company, which is the most accepted way today. And then my recommendation is to show these skills, to show that you have these skills, find a champion within the product organization, whether it's a product lead or director, or someone who's a bit more in management positions. Yeah. In champion positions — and declare these intentions. A lot of people are afraid to declare their intentions, and I think it only does good to declare intentions, the chance of it hurting is very low — I won't say it doesn't exist. It's very low, and everything's fine, and I know quite a few people within AppsFlyer who transitioned, declared it, and their current managers really understood, and it didn't prevent them from continuing in the role, as long as they continued in the role.

Eyal David: [34:30] Yeah, I too think that, as one who took this path — and I too declared — but if you don't declare, especially if you come from development it's very hard, to give up on you, especially if you're senior, I really think — so I understand you were also a champion, quite a few times. Right, right. So that's an excellent recommendation. Recommendations — reading, or something like that that you have? Yeah.

Roy Yanai: [34:52] So one of the books I loved the most was Good to Great — what a good book. Yeah, an excellent book. There are the Obvious Ones, I think, that I also really love, but still highly recommend, which is Inspired, and there's Lean Startup — maybe it's less, maybe it's less standard among PMs, and more among entrepreneurs, but I think it's really a must for every PM. Right, right. And not just to understand the ABCs of ROI, for young PMs, it's so important. Exactly. And also those same things we talked about earlier — how do I do it, is it something MVP, is it something small, how do I not now build a project that will take me two years to understand whether it was right or not — the way to do it is, again, it's so important in every company, and it doesn't matter whether you're an entrepreneur or work in corporate. Yeah, it's very impressive, when you do it within the company.

Eyal David: [35:45] Well, Roi, it was a pleasure, really a pleasure to host you. Where can people get in touch with you?

Roy Yanai: [35:52] So first, I'm available on all platforms — first, LinkedIn.

Eyal David: [35:59] Also the AppsFlyer blog, right? Right, also the AppsFlyer blog. So we'll put some link in the show notes, and thank you very much, Roi, it was fun. Thank you, thank you.