Transcript: Tsvika Kleinman | WSC Sports | How Do You Build a Product for Sports Fans?

Eyal David: [00:01] Hi friends, it's Eyal. You've reached Product Builder, and here you can listen to the most interesting product conversations. My journey began in 2012 when I learned what product is at my own startup. Since then I've worked in the industry, and since 2017 my company has been advising a wide range of companies. My drive is to help all of us get better as product people. And before we start, if you enjoy listening to Product Builder, please rate us five stars on Spotify. It'll give me great feedback that the podcast gives you value, and it'll make me very happy. So yalla, let's start. Tsvika, what's up? Good morning. Hey, good morning, good to be here. So glad you're here. How are you this morning? Excellent. Great. So Tsvika comes to us from WSC Sports, Director of Product. Are you heading to the office today?

WSC Sports: AI that creates sports content for every fan

Tsvika Kleinman: [00:48] Yes, today yes. Generally Mondays and Thursdays we work from home, but today there's a big celebration around the Olympics that started yesterday, so I'm working from the office. So tell us, what's the connection between the Olympics and WSC Sports? So basically we have an AI-based system that knows how to produce sports content and make it accessible to every sports fan in the world. Every fan, in a personalized way, gets the content that suits them in the sport they love. If, say, you wake up in the morning and you want to watch a recap of the game you missed last night in the NBA, and you watch ten minutes of a game recap, believe me, nobody sat up at 4 a.m. editing that recap for you. We do it automatically. Our customers are basically the biggest sports organizations in the world. Like [unclear]. The NBA, NHL, NFL, LaLiga, the Bundesliga, the Champions League. Literally everything. We're talking about a market that in 2024 passes 80 billion dollars worldwide. And basically that's the business model, beyond sponsorships and so on. The big money is from selling broadcast rights. So basically our customers are the rights holders, it can be the main ones like the leagues and federations, or local broadcasters. Like in Israel there's Sport 5, Charlton, and ESPN are customers,

Eyal David: [02:20] CBS. And basically, is there a difference between these customers in the service you provide? How does it work? No, there's no... transparent.

Tsvika Kleinman: [02:27] Yes. Of course, like in any B2B company there are various tiers, but at the level of the flow and the technology, everyone gets the same magic that happens. So basically the live broadcast, just like you get it on TV, we also get it into our systems. In real time we do visual analysis, what's seen on screen. Audio, what's heard, and cross-referencing with external data that arrives in real time. What data? Give examples. For example, all the statistics, everything that happens during the game, during the sports event, we basically receive in real time. If a player scored, then there are bodies, whether the customers themselves or external bodies, statisticians, who basically log everything that happens in real time. So we get a kind of real-time data stream, and then we cross-reference our visual analysis, the audio analysis and the data, and that same broadcast, say, let's take a basketball game, we break it into 400-500 mini-clips, which are the most interesting events that happened in the game. We edit them automatically in real time, as if a professional editor sat and edited it in Premiere. Meaning, we won't cut the commentator while he's talking, if there's a camera switch I'll take it into account, because if there's an attack in soccer now, a fast break, then a goal, and then the player runs to the crowd and dances with them, we'll capture it from the start of the fast break to the end of the celebrations. So basically we, our building blocks, which is what opens the mind to where we take this, and you can take it in terms of the offering and the product suite itself, so the building blocks are those short clips, perfectly edited, with all the metadata describing each clip. Meaning, if there was a three-pointer just now, then besides the video itself, we know who shot, who guarded him, at what minute, we also generate data ourselves, we calculate, for example, not just a three-pointer, maybe it was a deep three, maybe it was a buzzer-beater that won the game, and each such clip we also give a ranking from 1 to 5, how interesting and significant it was for the game. Is that an engagement ranking afterwards, or how relevant it was within the game? No, in the context of the game. By the way, some things we know live, some things, if there's a free throw now, among the more boring events, that won the game. We might only know a minute later that it won the game. So every regular free throw gets one star, but if it won the game it might get 5 stars. Why does that matter? Because then, when we generate the automatic storylines, we take it into account. And basically for our customers, if we set aside for a moment the fact that we have those building blocks, which are the clips with all the metadata, that's what allows our customers, together with us, to create rules, hundreds and sometimes thousands of automatic rules for content creation. Now, say, the NBA, I can have a rule: if a player scored 20 points in a half, generate half a minute, put the graphics of sponsor 1, 2, 3, and publish it to Twitter. Say. During a game, generate a story for me, story is also a format we do, in real time every time an interesting event happens a new page is added to the story, and in effect a live story, which is one of our leading products, is the only way for a sports fan

Eyal David: [06:39] to consume a live game, other than sitting down right now and watching it. Right, that takes me back to the nineties, I'm that old for the NBA, when I'd wake up. Tell me, how long has the company existed? The company is from 2014. So basically, one second, just let the question finish, and then we'll continue, of course, to you. So in 2014 you probably started with this thing in some constellation, was it a place where basically, you started from there, you started somewhere else, how was it?

The founding story: a tool for coaches and scouts

Tsvika Kleinman: [07:05] So you know, often in Israeli startups there are wonderful stories about founders who moved mountains, so four founders who actually started from a need for basketball coaches and scouts, and the veterans listening to us remember all the stories about watching tapes, coaches preparing for a game or signing players, and then you need to watch all his tapes, his whole history. So they came to solve this crazy inefficiency, that to prepare, coaches who need to prepare for a game basically watch hours of content, and they developed a system that basically knows how to break it down, as I said, into the interesting events, and then for coaches and scouts to focus and now watch a compilation of only a specific player doing certain actions, and if I'm a goalkeeper who needs to prepare, then I get my compilation. Crazy, so basically... that's how the company started.

Eyal David: [08:11] Crazy. So first of all it's amazing that all this technology happened in 2014-2015. The thought I asked about is basically, so obviously when they did this, they created some disruption for whoever was editing those highlights back then. Are you claiming there was highlight editing? I'm claiming they just watched tapes. Right, I'd like to believe there was, that someone sat and moved things around, but OK. In any case, now, with what you do today or in recent years, it's really interesting whether at those broadcasters or those customers you also identified the social people, or the people, the editors who used to deal with this, or whether, because you've been rooted in these companies for so long, maybe they never even had that position and basically they came straight to you.

Tsvika Kleinman: [08:56] Look, I think the go-to-market is a bit different. Because if at the start you went to professional staffs of coaches and scouts in general who are outside these organizations, today our point of contact in the organizations is the content operation, digital, social, anyone who wants to drive fan engagement, monetization, retention, we're getting very, very strongly into the direct-to-fan worlds, B2B2F we call it, and the personas are different, the needs are different, and the value prop is different too. If at the start it was, let's make your work more efficient when you're preparing for a game, if you're a coach or a player editor. Now we enable the customers I mentioned to reach every sports fan in the world, in every language, in every format, across all the social, CMS, CTV, also channels, push notifications. And everything is also much more measurable than before. And everything is measurable, scalability, in a crazy way.

Eyal David: [10:09] Yes, no, I mean the value you provide, stunning. OK, so let's go back to you for a second, so you mentioned there's a product suite,

The Growth group, the SDK and the personalized feed

Tsvika Kleinman: [10:16] basically where do you fit in? What are you in charge of? So look, historically the company, you know, you imagine it, it screams B2B. It's traditional work with the companies I described, and basically giving scale to their content operation. The department I lead is the growth department, which is in the B2B2F mindset. We basically think about new content consumption experiences and trends in sports content consumption and fans. We even have an SDK that sits inside the websites and apps of our customers, the sports media organizations, and we produce both the content and the experience. Explain. Meaning, I mentioned stories, you go into the app of LaLiga, the NBA, NASCAR, the PGA Tour and others, you'll see a stories experience there, say you're a Lakers and LeBron James fan, you open the app, you'll get all of LeBron James's highlights, everything you missed from the Lakers, you'll get pre-game content for the buildup, or during the game or after the game, both in a stories format and in a reels, TikTok format, basically we have an automatic, personalized vertical feed. What's amazing is that we, I mentioned that we collect all the, we have all the metadata of the video, the video isn't, we're not just a player, every second we know what's happening, we know what the plot is. So connect the fact that we know what's happening in the plot of the video of the sports content with the user's engagement, and basically we know implicitly, without you saying you're a Lakers fan, we know you like three-pointers and we know you like LeBron James and we know you like the stories format and that you like post-game and what you've seen and haven't seen, and basically we can create very, very, very

Eyal David: [12:21] special and personalized experiences. So what trends do you see in this world? Basically now that you've started working closely with users. So the trends are very interesting.

Trends in sports consumption

Tsvika Kleinman: [12:28] First, the industry itself is fascinating, I think it'll take me a few years before I can presume to say I understand it. The whole world of sports rights is very, very complex, there are all kinds of rights, there's live broadcast, there's social, there's archive content, there's this kind of digital, another kind of digital, betting, there are many, many shifts in this world in terms of budgets, and YouTube TV that one day got the NFL and paid billions for it, and so on. In terms of consumption trends, we see less and less viewing of full live broadcasts, more recaps and games that are basically without the ads and without the interruptions. We see more and more content that's around the game, all the celebs, a coach blowing up at the players, press conferences, crazy outbursts by players, all these things are often more interesting than the game itself. We see trends where often the player himself or the athlete himself is more interesting, he's the actual story, you even see search trends of Steph Curry versus the Warriors and LeBron versus the Lakers, and there are many, many storylines that are interesting at the player level. A whole lot of vertical content, and Gen Z's expectation to get content on the platforms, you know, Instagram and so on, and TikTok, where they are, in short form, in a cool and engaging way, versus sitting down and watching the live game now.

Eyal David: [14:20] We see a very, very big exodus from cable, and many, basically many homes don't even have a TV. So what, so you're saying basically that this campfire around, it's pretty clear basically in this generation, basically the tribal campfire around the TV is disappearing.

Tsvika Kleinman: [14:37] It's disappearing, factually. You really see, you really see all the trends, and this is where we come into the picture. Because basically we make it possible to create all these experiences at scale, in every language, and GenAI and all the buzzwords of recent times, on every platform, for every fan, and tailor to that. Cool. And how many competitors are there in this space? Do you see competition? Look, there's competition on small nuances of what we do. A company that really provides an end-to-end package like us, I don't, I mean there's currently no dominant one. And you see that in terms of the... the proof being that really the biggest organizations

Eyal David: [15:26] are with us, over 450 of the biggest sports organizations in the world. Yes, it's crazy that you're so deeply rooted. And tell me, is there room to grow in terms of territories, for that matter? Say, are you big in Asia?

Tsvika Kleinman: [15:37] Yes, so it's less about territories, we really are in all sports. The customers are there too. Yes, but sport is international. It depends, right, because there's, sorry to interrupt, say in India I have, what's it called, cricket, exactly, one of our good customers. Yes, we support, we support 40 different sports. How many in the world are dominant?

Eyal David: [16:01] You know. How many dominant sports? Define dominant. That have enough size, above, I don't know, say X million viewers, that we can define, you know.

Tsvika Kleinman: [16:10] I won't attempt that calculation, but just in cricket, which we talked about. Crazy, right. You have billions. So in the end we're talking about whoever loves sports. I think most of the world's population, if you look at our TAM, it's sports fans.

Eyal David: [16:27] We create experiences for sports fans. My question was whether there's still room to grow, probably yes, right? There's a lot of room to grow.

Tsvika Kleinman: [16:35] You didn't mention the English league, I noticed along the way, so I'm asking. There's a lot, a lot of room to grow, in the end in B2B worlds too there are tiers. We have tier 1, where we're really in a good place in terms of the industry. We have a lot to grow in terms of our offering for smaller teams and leagues with lower budgets, few viewers, little engagement. And actually some of the things sitting in my group are basically creating for them the ability to monetize better and to reach their fans wherever they are. So those are basically the places where, in terms of our product suite, we have a lot, a lot of room to grow, and new models. Because if I mentioned that we started from models that are more B2B SaaS, then what's in growth is already rev-share models and monetization from ads, affiliation and so on. Now we have a player, an SDK, and because the audience is product people, I'll allow myself to be a bit geeky. Imagine you have a story with a CTA, a call to action. We know if the game is live now, we know, because it's an SDK, whether this user is a subscriber or a guest or whatever, wherever they're from. That CTA can drive action: come subscribe if you're not, or if the game is live it can be a CTA to tune in to the live broadcast. And all the, all the context, all the languages, the whole storyline, basically can be tailored to the state of the user and the state of the game.

Eyal David: [18:19] Cool, really good. Let's pause on one more tiny thing that popped up for me, and then we'll talk a bit more about the specific work of your team, your teams. A question: you mentioned that basically you'll now probably want to aim at markets, not at smaller markets but at smaller organizations, basically at lower tiers. So basically, I don't know, is it even feasible to do something like self-service in a space like this, or do you always need that handshake with some salesperson, how does it work, how do you imagine it?

Self-service and the vision: connecting every publisher to sports content

Tsvika Kleinman: [18:52] It's a combination. Look, in the end there are some hardware-level connections we need to make. We need to receive the stream, the live broadcast, we need to connect to the data, there's a whole setup here that needs to be done per customer. That's something that won't be self-service, and to some extent we also don't want it to be self-service, because there are very, very big nuances there, and many companies whose whole business is making sure the broadcast reaches you properly. Where there is self-service, where there's very big potential here, is basically the whole experience, everything that's fan-facing, the whole monetization operation. Those are things we're definitely heading toward, and listen, there's a market failure here, and one of the layers of the vision is to solve it. You're a publisher now, say in Israeli terms, say ynet, you write an article, set aside that someone actually writes the article, which is completely unnecessary, because in the end we know what's happening at every given moment in the game, so basically we can write the articles. But say you have a reporter who writes an article, you published the article, you, what's your goal as ynet? You want to bring as many viewers or as much engagement as possible in order to monetize from ads. Ideally the article will also have video content that's fresh, near real time, related to the context of the article. As ynet today you have no way, almost automatically even, you have no way to put that content in the article. You don't. So the vision we're looking at is basically, and we're in, I think, the best place to solve this failure, is basically to connect all the publishers in the world to all the sports content in the world, and automatically both generate the content and do the enforcement in terms of geo-restrictions, age, monetization and so on.

Eyal David: [21:02] And probably also in a model that will be relatively very worthwhile and simple for them. OK, sounds good. So just break it down for us for a moment, basically, how many teams are you, how many PMs are on the team, how does it work?

How the product org is structured and what Tsvika looks for in a PM

Tsvika Kleinman: [21:13] So under me there are, we're basically three product groups. One group is content creation and gen AI, the second group is content management and all the back-office processes under the hood, and the third group is the Growth group, which I lead. I recently got another group under me, which is the most special and interesting product group I've met in the world, that's the sports group. Imagine a bunch of PMs whose product is sports. Wow, you hit the jackpot. Each of them is responsible for a few sports, knows all the bits and bytes of those sports, basically builds the whole rule engine, which basically creates all the different storylines with the logic of what goes in when and in what format, all the tools that support it.

Eyal David: [22:11] So that also goes in, so that's also with me. Stunning. Does that person have to come with that knowledge from home, or how does it work?

Tsvika Kleinman: [22:19] Look, whoever will enjoy it most with us, and that's why we also call it the mecca of sports fans, is someone who loves sports. You walk around our corridors, I just don't know what's left. You hear the corridor conversations,

Eyal David: [22:33] you really don't know whether they're excited about last night's game or talking about work. I just don't know what's left, what other titles you still have open in terms of sports that you could... wait, are you hiring now? We're hiring a lot of people, planning something like 50 open positions by the end of the year. So tell us, what product skills are you looking for most today in a PM?

Tsvika Kleinman: [22:54] Look, I think there are skills I look for in PMs in general, and there are things I look for as Tsvika that suit me. So I think for PMs, of course, the topic of soft skills and leadership and getting people to follow you is very, very important. Very, very important, I think, is the analytical side, in the end PMs who come with strong methodological and analytical thinking to prove their hypotheses, to prioritize by impact, you can't, like, can't beat them. I think stakeholder management and communication is something very, very, very important, which connects to defining areas of responsibility and who does what in order to drive processes, especially in large companies that are cross-cutting, where you move things that cut across departments. And I think something very, very important, I don't know if in all companies, but in all the companies I've worked at, is the PM's potential, meaning, where else they can grow and the ability to enter new territories compared with what they've done. I always, and, well, this is already a segue to what I'm looking for that suits me, so basically it's very, very important to me, fine, the skill set of what the PM did in the past, but mainly because both today at WSC Sports and in general I like being at companies where you don't know what the next product will be, by design they do a lot, a lot of innovation on new things, so I look for people who know how to enter new territories and go all in on them and lead a product in a domain they have no clue about and haven't touched. So that's why potential is very important to me. I very, very much believe in the word manager, as in product manager. I think it's very underestimated, people say PM or product manager, but the word manager is very, very important, both in managing relationships, processes, stakeholders and so on, and also in self-management. Wow. Meaning, if you're a good product manager, if you're good, you never clear your desk. There's always something to do, there are always explorations to do, there are always analyses to do, there are always user interviews, to look at them. Managing focus, what's the priority now? That's how I feel all the time. Totally. That's true regardless of the product. Right, and basically managing what not to do. Because the list never ends. I think self-management is something very, very important that I look at, and it also suits me very much. Because I'm not a micromanager. I like people who have, who are a racehorse that needs to be reined in, who have fire in their belly with very, very strong self-motivation, and I help with the fine-tuning, and in many ways they also manage the relationship with me. That's what suits me as a manager. There are those who are more micromanagers and actually want the control. So I think it's a combination of what I said plus what suits my DNA. Great. So along the way you also touched on this,

Eyal David: [26:12] so tell me, what are your challenges today, as Tsvika?

Tsvika Kleinman: [26:16] As Tsvika, the challenges at WSC Sports, as I said, and you've probably understood, both the industry is complex and the product suite too. The pace is very, very fast, 30 product people. I've been at the company less than two years, the challenge, my one challenge is basically keeping up with the pace of the industry and what the company does, and knowing how to master the details, because I really like connecting the edges of the puzzle and the strategy, and if I have a blind spot about what we're doing and capabilities, then I feel it stops me from delivering value in my role. And on the other side, we're also at very, very large scale with the Growth org, which is B2B2C, which is a mindset and skills the company is less familiar with, because it's oriented toward more traditional B2B. So the setting up of all the areas of responsibility and the work processes that basically support that scale.

Eyal David: [27:23] So today you're basically also designing the processes, if I understand correctly, and you also need to receive lots of signals and lots of data to stay up to date, and that's probably why you mentioned it in what you look for in a PM, if basically

Tsvika Kleinman: [27:36] you want to receive all those signals. Yes, but I'd also add that many of the experiences we create have no benchmark, nobody has done them. This whole topic of live story, of a sports event that updates in real time, and its storyline, I don't have any data to look at someone who did it well and say let's do it better. We're literally inventing experiences and setting trends in sports consumption worldwide. By the way, I told you about the trend of basically less consumption of live games and watching the condensed game and highlights instead.

Eyal David: [28:12] If we weren't in the world, maybe that trend would be less significant. Most likely. You know what's charming though? True, you don't have benchmarks like that, but you do have benchmarks around the industry. You see lots of organizations in lots of places, in lots of territories, and you know how to compare between sports, you know where to aim. Actually in that respect it's very hard to catch up with you,

Tsvika Kleinman: [28:30] it's important to say, in terms of competition. And the fact that we basically do it end-to-end, and don't only generate the content but also publish it to social or through our SDK, means we also close the feedback loop of the data and the fans' engagement. So basically we know what works, what doesn't work, what the trends are, we know how to feed recommendation and personalization engines.

Eyal David: [28:57] So that's very interesting. Good luck to the broadcaster that tries to push you out. Basically, around all the value you provide. Tell us for a second, along the way, how you got into product.

How Tsvika got into product

Tsvika Kleinman: [29:10] Yes, that's what's so lovely about the product world, there's no standard path. So first, I had some aha moment at advanced stages of my career when I realized that what I love doing and had been doing for years is called product management. What did you do until then? All kinds of roles. So it started, let's say, my bachelor's degree was in industrial engineering and management. The first half of the degree was managing bars and student jobs. The second half was already grown-up work, I worked at a consulting firm that worked mainly with startups, startups and also large organizations, entrepreneurs, also business and marketing plans, go-to-market, financial plans, work processes, role definitions. So that's also an industrial engineering and management hat, but also that whole side, the business model, marketing and working with startups, you could say it's product exploration, without my even knowing it. So basically I joined a software company in business development, and later I managed it, a software company that basically serves startups and entrepreneurs. And with them too I mainly worked on their product as a consultant. Also after that, when I made an attempt that didn't succeed to set up a startup incubator and an entrepreneurs' competition, which was crazy, maybe we'll touch on it later, that's basically product work. And also later at Real Commerce, where I led digital projects for companies, in hindsight I understood, that's where I had the aha moment that what I love doing and do as a service is called product management, and the penny dropped,

Eyal David: [31:05] OK, you're doing product management, but what bothered you all those years is that you did it sitting on the fence.

Tsvika Kleinman: [31:12] You dance around it, yes. Exactly. And how deep you go depends on the customers and their dictates about their products, and then I realized that what I'm looking for is called a product manager, and it needs to be at a product company. And where did you start? I started at Paragonix, basically a company that does online trading, forex, stocks, indices and so on. It turned out that also, actually also at Paragonix and at other places too, it turned out I got keys to build new things from scratch, so there we developed an actual crowd trading platform that recommends to traders, to traders who, well, don't know, recommendations basically to trade according to what the market leaders are doing.

Eyal David: [32:04] So basically, wow, it's amazing how your whole history built you for this moment, at least in terms of bio, basically you danced around product from business angles, even from management angles, you said, you consulted, and everything eventually also funnels into product, probably, because that was the driver for making companies succeed. So OK, you finished there, and basically, long story short, at some point during COVID you also got to Avo, right? You also passed through Check, I remember, right?

Avo: building a product org and lessons from the shutdown

Tsvika Kleinman: [32:30] Take us there a bit. To Check or to Avo. To Avo. So Avo, yes, Avo, for those who don't know, who didn't have the privilege of knowing it, is basically a service that leverages concentration of demand, whether it's an office tower, residential buildings, where there are, well, a thousand, two thousand people a day maybe in the same place, basically leverages that concentration of demand to bring a delivery service for whatever you want, services, products, groceries, repairs, you name it, same-day, with no minimum and no subscription. Literally, that's the service. So I joined Avo basically as VP Product and to set up a new department, which is Product Experience. Right, so there too you came in to build. To build, and listen, Avo, I have, for those who don't know the story, I didn't get to be there long, the company shut down, I think, six or seven months after I joined. I managed to build a product organization from A to Z, UX, product, analytics, everything, and basically the attention was toward product experience. I think one of the reasons Avo isn't around today is basically because we did, Avo did the whole delivery operation end-to-end. All the logistics, the warehouses, transport to the drop points, everything, everything was proprietary to Avo, and a lot, a lot of resources, both development and product, were invested in the operational side and less in the customer experience. An example, just something I was surprised to discover when I joined: if you were now, if you were a new Avo customer, you got 10-20 shekels in Israel, 10 dollars in the US, here, go wild, no minimum, no delivery fee, same-day, take 10 dollars, order chewing gum, same-day. Over 50% of the users who arrived didn't even add to the cart. The rental. Money, free, take it, order, 20 shekels, go wild, they didn't even add to the cart, no fine print. Meaning, there was a very, very big challenge here in the messaging of the value prop, in this different concept, and that's what I planned to solve, I didn't get to. What started was basically the trend of, in general, healthy growth of companies, and as a company where every order is, by the way, by definition, according to all the models we were supposed to reach break-even after a few months, and we still hadn't, but factually every day we bled a lot, a lot of money, and that's why it was decided to shut down the company.

Eyal David: [35:36] Wow, I'd dive now into the working assumption you had, and what you'd change there, but I think we'll put that aside. So basically, what's the very clear-cut B2C you did, basically it's B2C when you worked, basically its customers were mainly the buildings, right? In the end office and residential buildings, no?

Tsvika Kleinman: [35:54] It's B2B2C, we also have the B2B side, which is with companies and with management companies and building committees, and the B2C side is in the end the resident or the employee whom you want to order as much as possible every day with a bigger basket.

Eyal David: [36:13] So it's both B2B and B2B2C, and before that at Check it's only B2C. Right, you were very consumer-facing, and now basically at WSC you're doing exactly the opposite. Half. Half, but that's the thing, you don't communicate, I think, you don't really communicate with one specific end customer, you also don't know many details about them, so how is that?

Tsvika Kleinman: [36:31] First, this topic of contact with fans is something that we, the company too, is less used to, and it's something we're putting emphasis on now, all the more so in terms of data, because really now, with the experiences we provide with the SDK, we're right at the valve of the data and know exactly what works and doesn't work and what's in the experiences. I think in general it's a discussion, I think it's easier, in quotes, to be in a customer-centric B2C mindset, which is my "natural" go-to, of being the psychologist who thinks about the persona and where it comes from and what it wants to achieve and how it measures success and why it would even come to your product, and you know, what's in it for me. I think it's easier to start from there and translate it to B2B worlds and do a kind of top-down castling of it. Rather than the opposite, being in a hardcore B2B mindset with dozens or hundreds of customers and not thinking about the micro of the micro of the end user.

Eyal David: [37:40] Quite a challenge. So can you expand on that, what basically you do around it, what thought processes you go through around it in order to really start understanding these users, since again you start from B2B and in the end you come to serve the organization itself, and now you're working down to the fan level, what processes do you, I'm trying to pin this down more. Several product people sit there, several product people, several people in the company, it sounds like everyone also loves sports and understands the field. They see themselves as fans, they start making assumptions. How do you, what thought processes do you go through, how do you run those brainstorms, which I assume you do, what does it look like? So that's true, first, we do a lot, a lot of dogfooding. Listen to how much fun it is to work at your place, we'll leave details afterwards on how to get in touch with Tsvika.

Tsvika Kleinman: [38:23] Yes, I know I'm biased, but really, if you're a sports fan, come look at the open positions, it really is the mecca of the sports world. So we do a lot, a lot of dogfooding. Most of the company's employees are users of our customers' products, of our own, we even have an internal app where we're our own customers, and we also measure engagement, but obviously it's not a representative sample, but we have a lot, a lot of internal feedback. We have an unusually close relationship with the customers. We have an amazing account department and business development that basically created very, very intimate and close relationships with the customers. They invite us to all the sports events, we're in weeklies with them and QBRs, we're at the very heart of what's happening in their content world and their contact with the fans. So we have a very, very, very close relationship with them, with their research bodies. We have actual innovation programs with customers like ESPN and the NBA where, together with them, we create new experiences and test them. We finished an NBA season not long ago, we did a channel, a new product, a TV channel in quotes, inside the NBA apps, that accompanied All-Star. An automatic channel with all the content flowing in, and it was a pilot together with the NBA to see how it works, how the experience is, what the fans' feedback is, and we'll probably scale it.

Eyal David: [40:10] So let's really connect this to some process, because you're a process person, so what's something that basically came up in that QBR or in that meeting where you sat with the NBA, you said hey, there's an opportunity here, someone on your side said, how was it, and then you took it, you broke it down, how was it? Look, we're at...

Exploration, discovery and design partners

Tsvika Kleinman: [40:25] We don't just, we really communicate with them, they know what our roadmap is. At the start of every year we do an exploration with them on what we think the right hypotheses are, we get feedback both on the content and on experiences. Our customers are truly part of it, in the end they live the day-to-day, we too, at one remove, it's their customers, what we develop, if there's no buy-in from them, hey, we want this content, this experience for our fans, it won't happen. They're a big part of the process. Often, we usually come with our innovation and our hypotheses and the experiences we create. There's an exploration process with customers, basically to get feedback from them, after we've also gotten internal feedback, because really there are many people who understand the industry who are part of WSC Sports. So basically we do a classic discovery process, which is basically one level below, at the scoping level, the experience itself. If exploration answers questions, both discovery and exploration in the end are processes whose definition of done is answering research questions. The output isn't necessarily a product in the air. So in exploration the question is whether there's a need at all, whether we'll do it, whether they'll pay for it, and in discovery it's whether we cracked the right experience. The right scope, whether we broke it down correctly, and whether the go-to-market is ideal. And then we basically go into execution mode, and here too we put very, very, very strong emphasis on design partners to start with. Most of our customers are happy to be first design partners. Often what drives them is being the first to create a certain experience, and then we do the design partnership with them, run for a period, collect data, feedback,

Eyal David: [42:26] and then do some scale as an offering for everyone. Great model. Very cool. So do you feel, as Tsvika, that you've basically closed the circle in that respect? That if before you danced around the product campfire, now you're also really checking that it has content, that it has validity, sorry,

Tsvika Kleinman: [42:42] but also bringing it down to earth? I, yes. Actually, a few years ago I already settled it, I realized my destiny is product. I was CEO of a company, supposedly from there it could have developed into bigger companies, more senior roles, but that doesn't interest me. I found my sweet spot, that's the product world. As much impact as possible, as much contact as possible, contact with users and creating experiences, that's the passion. Cool. OK, next time you come, and I hope you'll come,

Eyal David: [43:13] we'll also talk about what you mentioned earlier in the context of the accelerator, it was stuck in my head and we just didn't get to it.

Tsvika Kleinman: [43:20] What do you wish Tsvika in another 10 years? To keep doing product, to keep doing product that I love, that I'm passionate about, to do it maybe even as a hobby and not for the payroll, and honestly that's it, at least, you know, health and all that, but on the professional side,

Eyal David: [43:46] to keep doing what I love. Cool. Do you have any recommendations for people who want to get into product?

Advice for breaking into product

Tsvika Kleinman: [43:55] In Israel it's less common to hire junior product roles. I don't hire junior roles either. The added value of a senior product person, who from day one gives it their all and manages themselves and leads the domain, is many times greater than doing a year-plus of onboarding to grow a product person. Abroad it's more common. So whoever's looking for a first product role will find it very, very, very challenging. And my biggest recommendation is to start in adjacent roles, whether that's QA, project management, operations, of course developers, the easiest, to target organizations you're passionate about working at, to get in through those roles. There's a very, very big thirst for product thinking and product work in every organization. If you have product DNA, you'll be able to do product in any organization, nobody will stop you, everyone will be happy. Sit at lunch with the product managers, be part of the product work, be on your organization's OKRs, come with initiatives, learn all the theories, take on product pet projects after hours, just do product, that way you'll both learn and build a track record. And at our company I think half the product managers are people who didn't start as product at the company. Meaning, they started, they grew from within. Totally grew from within, and then if there's the product DNA plus the company's specific know-how, that's a perfect combination. Right. At your company especially, understanding the domain is a very valuable commodity.

Eyal David: [45:53] OK, Tsvika, we had such a great time. I... have a great day. Thanks, I really enjoyed it. Bye friends, bye bye. Hi friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe and follow us, of course, for more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other app. Of course, if you didn't find us on some app, I'd be glad if you wrote to us. We'd really appreciate five stars on every platform and for you to follow us, so more listeners can discover us and find the podcast. You can also find the previous episodes on every app or on the YouTube channel, we have links in the description. So until next time, yalla, be efficient, and bye bye.