Transcript: Uri Fen (Microsoft MSAI Hive): Focus, Killing Products, and the Value Only You Can Bring

Eyal David: [00:00] Hey friends, this is 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 consulting for a variety 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 gives me great feedback that the podcast is bringing you value, and it would make me very happy. So come on, let's begin. Hi Uri, how's it going? Hi Eyal, all good, how are you? Great, so glad you came to us. Really, really fun. So with us is Uri, who comes from Microsoft, a Senior Product Manager at MSAI Hive. Yes. Did I forget anything? I need to explain what that means, but that's the LinkedIn title.

Uri Fen: [00:53] So what is MSAI Hive? So I'll tell you. First of all, it's important to me to explain the name, it sounds funny, but MSAI isn't Microsoft AI, it's Microsoft Search, Assistant and Intelligence — it's a classic name for a group we're part of. Hive means beehive; we're part of... We sit inside Microsoft Israel R&D in Herzliya, plus a few other sites around the world, and my team is responsible for developing AI products that help users be productive and creative in everything related to planning meetings, managing meetings — before, during, and after. It could be recommendations for the organizer and participants on how to prepare, then getting a summary afterward, or all the tasks and who's supposed to do what. People who also want the meeting organized like that — by topics, by speakers, by chapters, with the ability to navigate. And our product is really cool. I'm not just biased, I'm talking about real data, and yes, there's product-market fit, like we feel it, and we know that... when customers say they stop taking notes in meetings thanks to us, then we've succeeded, like.

Eyal David: [02:05] Totally. So you're basically — I'm trying to understand — you live roughly in Teams, you live in email, there are a lot of inputs that funnel data to you.

Uri Fen: [02:12] Yes, that's our main partner, because that's basically where all the meetings are managed. But we're actually present in all sorts of places in the user's life cycle, where they need to be more productive, because you want to be able to later pull something out of your meeting, to later write in Word — every action there is for that. So there's input, there are insights, and then there are actions. Is that basically what matters? It's life cycles, yes, for example. Like, it could be that you also finished the meeting, and when you come to plan a meeting, that's where it happens. That's where it happens — when you didn't finish what you wanted, when open tasks remained, but we're connected to Microsoft's whole ecosystem. The power of Microsoft. That's the power of Microsoft, yes, meaning, if these are theirs, then obviously it's really, like, easy, right? There's a democratization of this technology, anyone can now build a product, and specifically products of the kind my group makes, but Microsoft's power is very significant, because we're part of the ecosystem, you get us also when you later write the document in Word, and also when you want to create a deck that you'll then use to present something to management, and you want it to be based on the meeting you had, where you had insights above and beyond, and you want the tasks afterward to roll on, even to a private Trello, right? Probably fine, and you also want a one-stop shop — basically, as a business I already have these tools, I have these tools, I already want everything to flow from there — that's money. But the value is that it doesn't just stop at... come on, there are insights from the meeting, let's summarize it the best — because that's already something anyone can do. Rather, what can we do that's part of the whole,

Eyal David: [03:52] of all your work across all the systems there are. How cool — and how long have you been there, in what state did you arrive at the team?

Uri Fen: [03:58] Like, in what state was the product? I came to Microsoft a little over three years ago, after four years as a product manager at another company, about two years earlier, a different location and so on and so on, and I came straight to this team. But I arrived before LLMs, before GenAI, and back then, when I arrived, we literally developed the models ourselves. We wrote the code, trained them, did labeling and everything. At the time I led the feature of action items, and everything was our own proprietary, and while we were rolling this out, like, we have internal environments like alpha, beta and so on, we have our own names, suddenly the LLM arrived, and in parallel we also made a decision to wrap all the group's work around AI for meetings as part of some bundle called Teams Premium, and later also the bundle called Copilot, and one day, you look at everything you've been training for five years, and you say... Holy crap! Here, it already works, it works like this, whoa, it works. And then we did some — it's not that we did a business pivot, but we did what you'd call a technological pivot, where suddenly we become very, very good prompt engineers, and we understand the whole right way to write this thing, to fine-tune in the user experience what they're going to get — totally instead of suddenly building and training models yourself.

Eyal David: [05:32] And these prompts probably change per industry, there are these fine-tunings — how does that work?

Uri Fen: [05:38] Yes, you can't really do one-size-fits-all, you start from that, and then you slowly learn. That's also the power of Microsoft, right? That there are tons of... yes, we have several groups parallel to us at Microsoft Israel R&D, in Herzliya and elsewhere — financial health, or finance, banks, or education. And there, yes, the recap summary that I'll build for a Fortune 500 is not the same summary of a middle-school lesson in Hebrew that a teacher will need later. So you need to make playbooks here, you need to make adaptations here, and... and that's something you also don't do with telemetry. It's purely, like, getting to know the customers, being in touch with them, and... like, spreading out to every niche you can, to understand what value you can bring beyond what's happening now. Wow, crazy. Tell me — what does your day look like? Like, in product management, every day looks different. I'll take a day, a real day from the week, right? An example day. I wake up in the morning, before I scatter the kids to their kindergartens, I already kind of check what's going on with my team in China, because they're five hours in China. Yes. They're five hours ahead of me, so they've already started working. I just want to know a few things, I devote about fifteen minutes to chit-chat with them, and then continue to the office, look hello to the gym app, want to see if there are cool classes today, if there's room in Pilates, because I forgot to register. Grab a coffee, and then we work globally, so I use my own product for a moment, to go over meetings that happened during the night, US time, to see what I missed. Either I read, or I actually write, like in Copilot, I mention my name, what tasks there are, all sorts of things like that. And then I work sort of horizontally, really with several teams in Israel, in London, several places in Europe. How many teams do you work with, what does it look like?

Eyal David: [07:30] Tons. Because you also support other teams, or do these teams just work with you directly — how do you work?

Uri Fen: [07:36] Like what I said at the beginning, that the experience of the power around meetings, it's not here's Teams, here's your summary. A meeting is one part of everything you do in your day. Like, you're in email and you're in chat, and there was some meeting, and you're editing documents together. And we have tons more products around — of task management and a feed and things like that. So we appear in all of them, in some format or another. Meaning, you take the unique value of someone updating now on all their tasks — let's just take their tasks, with a due date of this or that — like you want to really nail the user's job, so I'm spread across many places. So with all of them I do some sync of the development status of this or that feature, or requirements they have from us, and vice versa — sharing insights and ideas, looking at telemetry, who's blocking whom, like,

Eyal David: [08:30] lots of teams. Cool. And the team — I don't know what the rest of your day looks like, whether it continues to Pilates and back — but tell me, does the whole dev team sit in China, or are there also members in Israel? How is

Uri Fen: [08:42] your team actually structured? All the answers are correct. We — if you look at it in a very pure way — like, we're an AI and backend team. We don't write the client side. But we also have UX Designers in the group, because we do pilots, we do Proof of Concept inside Microsoft, and we have systems that organically gained fans among users, until in the end we created the collaboration with the relevant group and they take the product out. So in the end I have to — what do I mean, have to — I have to and want to and enjoy collaborating with teams all over the world.

Eyal David: [09:16] Wow, it's amazing that there's UX accompanying you, because these are new experiences being created, so you need to give them thought, right?

Uri Fen: [09:22] Yes, it can start from just pure product work of Jobs to be Done and what Opportunities there are here, and what the Life looks like, the User Journey around certain things — really UX actions — and it can get to real prototyping, and 'describe to me what you see here,' and we practice screens and such together with them, and we also give the knowledge, because we have an enormous body of knowledge to give the client, who's already riding on our POC and can really answer from all these insights. There's a lot of validation we did. That's great.

Eyal David: [09:56] And tell me, I'm curious — in terms of the industry, you're Microsoft, and there are all sorts of players trying to bite off, I don't know, specific industries, specific features, certain layers.

Uri Fen: [10:08] Do you watch them? What does it look like? Yes, sure. In general, watching to know the competition, what's happening out there — that's one of them. What does your reader for such products look like? I look as a product manager. First of all, I live on Twitter as a reader, not a writer — you won't find me writing anything there; rather, I consume a ton, a ton. And there's a whole world of technology updates, threads, of what you can learn thanks to this model about new applications you can build with GPT-4o mini, that you can't like — you discover tons of things this way. Constantly interested in it, you don't wait for someone one day to send you a mechanism that sends you... To all the friends and all the chats there are excellent Facebook groups in Israel — Aliyat HaMechonot (Rise of the Machines), SuperTools, all sorts of places like that — around technology, around productivity, around, like — and you can really learn where the winds are blowing, and what's more effective, and personally I experiment with things too, like there are things that are really cool,

Eyal David: [11:14] you have to... what a fun role you have, sounds great. And tell me, earlier you talked about your bio, and we'll dive in a bit to understand more of the context about you, but of all the companies you've been through which do you think is the best? Which do you think is the best? We'll talk about challenges, so don't get too excited, but tell me — what do you think are the most important product skills you see in a product manager today?

Uri Fen: [11:38] That's a question whose answer changes every few months, because it's very influenced by what I'm feeling, and what my challenges are, and what I've discovered about myself in one period or another. Meaning, ask me a year ago, half a year ago, I'd answer something different. Also depending on seniority, on the project, so first, as some kind of disclaimer, right? Meaning, ask me in a few years and I'll say something different. But first of all — product, a product manager, is a role that's very prone to FOMO — per Rav Mi-Singer — you want to do everything, you want to get everything done, you want to be in all the meetings, you know you're relevant to everything, that you can bring value to everything, that even if it's a meeting between one engineer and another engineer, if you're there it'll be a better meeting, if you read this document you'll know more, if you write part of this document you're the — so, you can always help. But then, not letting the beat run you is really important, because in the end you have to let go, to be told 'focus,' and to focus. But saying 'focus' is kind of a slogan, 'be in focus' — but when you understand it stems from anxiety — I'm not there, what will happen without me — and you let go, it's like the motivation to let go — yes, yes, it'll happen without you, a lot of things need to happen without you, whether it's a time zone, whether it's because someone else is paid to do something, and it's their specialty, their expertise — meaning, like, dare to let go, and then you suddenly bring your real impact, which connects completely to asking what value only you can bring, because a lot of times, at a lot of companies, unfortunately, the product manager is also a project manager, and a bit of a scrum master, and such — let's manage the cadence, let's see everyone's status, let's check who's blocking you, let's help, I'll go with you to the meeting — let go, like, no one will interview the customers, only you. So no one will sit on the telemetry, at the level of trying to understand whether they went to the screen of recap, how many of them went there because they want to also ask questions in each activity, how many of them are the ones who are comfortable that you served it to them in advance and don't want to ask themselves — that's a very fundamental question in order to segment your product-market fit into different personas. Engineers won't do that, like, they won't do this thing — I, I have to find my unique value, and... who will do evangelism with partners, like, who — who am I trying to reach with research questions, with the data analysts, and I can understand, in this MVP, I'm trying to do validation for something here, only me, like, and it's really easy to get sucked into execution, we all get sucked into execution, almost everything a product manager does is to say 'oh, I got sucked only into execution, when will I do discovery work, when will I look at the business,' so when you mature in the role, you're able to do that, because you're in focus, because you say no to things, because you delegate authority, because you empower the engineers you work with, because you work on fewer features, because you don't want to work on everything, you don't know which feature is important right now for a certain user's retention — all the rest is noise, things like that. And also kind of, to wrap it up — the focus is not on the solutions, it's on the problems, like, solutions are really easy, solutions are easy — everyone, bro, 'I have a startup idea' like, like, everyone has ideas for solutions, for everything, but understanding whether it's even a problem worth it — for the user, for the business — to work on. I've already killed three or four products at Microsoft that you'll never know about, and... maybe it's good that way. Yes, and it's good that way. Good for us that we didn't build them, good that I didn't waste engineers on it, or did a POC, yes, with some, and then we killed it — but at the beginning, when I arrived, within a few months I killed a product already, which was... we celebrated it in email, and in chat, and in an announcement in the channel, in Teams, and, and praises — like, 'I launched a product' — because it was so important. No, people don't understand how much this craving costs, it's really true. It's an opportunity cost, it's this or that, or a feature worth building, and... and when you have the opportunity, not to let the beat run you, to know what you can do, how, what your role is.

Eyal David: [16:01] Okay, good answer, and along the way we also got some challenges, which you actually experience later on. So what are your challenges, Uri? Uh... how are you with focus?

Uri Fen: [16:13] How am I with focus? I know how to manage it, and if I don't look at my task list regularly, then I can also get scattered. It's also really easy for me to be drawn to execution, because it's easy, ostensibly more so. I know how to say, in my product sense, quickly, right? What to do with a screen when I'm working together with a designer and what would be the better idea — I know, uh... I know how to be drawn to these things easily, because I worked in places that were really more of a feature factory — it's a comfort zone. So, to remind myself, to stop, to make time, to rack my brain, to consult with Copilot, to consult with my colleagues, and to try to understand much better what I'm doing, like, in the role. I can write a spec, and after I... and in the end you have to write an executive summary. An executive summary is basically kind of, 'let's distill this.' 'Sorry, I didn't have time to write something short, so I wrote something long' — you have to write something short, so a lot of times I lean on Copilot, not so that it takes the long text I wrote and summarizes it, but to consult with it. Let's do brainstorming together on what the value unique to all sorts of such things is — it's really cool. So the challenge is, first of all, to keep pushing myself toward discovery and validation, because execution is always there. And also to understand the value there is in a big corp sometimes, in processes that are slower — it's funny to say, it's easy to deliver fast things that work less well, that have privacy breaches in them, that you then have to rebuild, but to deliver fast — a fast go-to-market — sometimes has a cost of mistakes and misses, and of rebuilding, and sometimes, when there's this protocol, then there are folks who don't enjoy it, and there are folks that I, say — to me it's clear: why does it happen? Like, I know the mistakes you can make, from personal experience, at companies I worked at, product-wise too, not just technically, right? That we ran very fast — let's give an example. Sure, we all have a race forward. At a company I worked at, we worked with customers from India, that every time they received money from abroad, in India, like, in terms of regulation and how it works, as exporters, they need to also get some approval document from the bank, so they can then submit it to the tax authorities and get a tax credit. This document is important to them, from India. And we automated the process — instead of literally sending an email to a bank account we operated in India, to request the documents with a courier, like, basically in an envelope, to bring to our customers, so they could then go and submit them — we automated it with PDFs, with automatic triggers: the money arrived, the bank immediately sends us, we route it to the right customer, all sorts of things like that, and our customers loved it. Because we put it in some area of their account, where they could download it and submit it with their accountant. And then we celebrated it, I went to present it in India at some conference — come on, where? No, yes, where in India? Where in India? In Delhi, of course. How was it? It was really good, everyone applauded and got excited, it was like, I did a demo and showed it, and also questions from the audience, and for them it's also money they get in the end, it both eased the process, saved a month and a half of time — also documents used to get lost along the way, yes, because it's a courier, things like that. And we did it for free, and we did it, and other competitors of ours didn't do it in time. And then, cool, we're like, looking at the usage, and suddenly we understood something we didn't do product-wise, because we rushed, that's it — what does it look like to submit these credits? You submit everything at once, yes — no, so they needed to know how to download a document, a document, choose a document, download. What a nightmare. Sometimes there are hundreds — six hundred, seven hundred, because they submit it once every half year, once a year, like you with your accountant. We didn't think about the batch, worse than that. Every document had a password. That we didn't foresee. Yes — I downloaded, opened with a password, printed, or transferred, or saved — it's like, it's death. Sure. And then we added the batch, but it's like you... but the taste is bitter, the taste is bitter at first — that's what you're saying. Yes, yes. They applauded me, and then suddenly — ah, shit, we didn't fully understand,

Eyal David: [20:58] and I actually wanted a product example, yes, not... it's...

Uri Fen: [21:04] You're on stage there, some... no, on stage, from their side, everything was fine, just afterward, because you really look at... small customers were forgiving, right? If they need to download 20 of these in... spam them out over a month, fine. But heavy customers, like — wow. Wow, well,

Eyal David: [21:22] okay, that's really a great story. Let's go back for a minute to your problem, give a bit of context, so you actually come from 8200 — a bit of background — you studied psychology, right?

Uri Fen: [21:34] You went to be a QA — where? So the order is, I was discharged from 8200, and like all the guys, 'come on, I'll be in high-tech,' so I went... I was a QA, at really small, cute companies, that made, say, smart systems for elevators, software houses, of all kinds, that also did a mix of projects, like projects with Conduit, so all sorts of tools, tons of things. Well, all in Israel. And then I went traveling, nine months, and I understood that, okay, I have to study something, and I know I'm going to study psychology, I know I'm going to be a clinical psychologist, it was clear to me, so I went to Ben-Gurion to study psychology and management, because management is easier than economics, and I said, management is like my safety net, so that my dear dad would have a kind of feeling of, here, he already has two other kids in high-tech, so at least the third has a backup, and I said, it's fine, but I'm sure I'm going to be a psychologist. And there was, whoever did a psychology degree knows the format — super interesting, you examine yourself a thousand times, you feel like you know your whole life, you start preparing for this track called a master's degree, and the MITAM (the entrance exam), and everything, and all the tension, and then toward the end of the degree you do the MITAM, which is the passage exam, from a bachelor's to a master's, which is like — also the National Center for Testing and Evaluation — just five and a half hours, which is heavier, but while I was studying, together with friends, and with my wife, who is a clinical psychologist too — not too, she's a clinical psychologist, I'm not — so I understood that it's not, like, it's not, it doesn't suit me. Meaning, I had some kind of background, like when you do consulting with an occupational psychologist, of what's right for me — that I have to work in a team. I have to be surrounded by something of collaboration, and the, like, being alone, the soloist, facing the patient — fine, there are supervisions, or a multidisciplinary team, I can't, it's not for me. And suddenly, I felt a bomb of happiness, like, when you're focused, when you know something. That focus we talked about. I did the MITAM, got a great score, took the recommendations, like, from whoever I needed in the degree, in case I regret it, and I went, come on, I'm going back to high-tech — like, it was... and this thing where you discover something no longer suits you,

Eyal David: [24:10] will catch us later, actually — so like, in your career you continued to more companies, you also moved to product at Exagon, right? Yes. And after that Pioneer, and then at Pioneer something happened again, right?

Uri Fen: [24:22] So after the degree I went to work first at some business intelligence company, where suddenly my role took on a more technical dimension — kind of half technical — and managerial, and suddenly I discovered this thing called product management. So it sounded baloney to me, right, as I understood it back then. But then I worked there, kind of projects, projects with freelancers, actually mostly external — we didn't have our own dev department, and then I decided, I'll teach myself what product is, and I plowed through everything, like, blogs, whatever I thought — like, a lot of theory. A lot of theory, and I started applying the theory where I could, so I do dailies with my team, trying to break down the features, writing clear specs — that was with the external vendors — and then I gained confidence, and after about half a year, I went to interview, and really, I got accepted to a real role: product manager. And basically, I think it's something everyone can identify with. My move from company to company, each time was influenced by... what else can I get as a product manager? Like,

Eyal David: [25:34] is there something more here for me? So it's something you defined, basically before you started looking, and then you started looking for companies that would answer that — how was it? No, at first, at first it was... no, it's clear. Let's put it this way.

Uri Fen: [25:46] Later? Later it was — the more you specialize, and you have some ideal of what the role looks like, then... then you measure your... a product manager is also that... it's... it's driven. Like, how can I be better? How can I succeed more? Not in the sense of advancing, but doing my job better, understanding better what the right steps are. And you get into obsessions of reading, and of sharing with colleagues, and of that, and you try to improve, improve, improve. And at the first company I was at, suddenly the penny dropped for me — that it's very sales-driven. There's a super strong sales department. And I was really proud of myself back then, because I was a really good product manager, and we built really cool features, and we did all the right things. The company — did it work well? Yes, the company was profitable, but suddenly you understand it sells because of sales. Meaning, your ability to move the needle is limited. And then I said, okay, I'll move to a company that'll be a real school for me. And then I moved to Pioneer. And at Pioneer, it's a company that was a real school for me. And finally it was like working with teams, in a completely different way, like. And it's a company with lovely people. And I was also there almost four years — I moved in management, I moved to work more on data, like, on data products and all sorts of things like that. And there too, at some stage, I said, okay, I've hit the ceiling, like, what will I manage to get? Now, what does 'hitting the ceiling' mean? I had a very clear ceiling. I started at the time some journey — again, call it academic — of understanding what power products are. So, to read, I said, Cagan, to read Shreyas Doshi, if anyone knows him on Twitter, to listen to Lenny's, of Yuval Samet — suddenly you get some ideal of a different way to work, that's less feature factory and less... Kind of what happened to you with psychology, actually. Yes, I understood what I want and what I don't want, what suits me and what doesn't suit me. And there are folks who... there are many folks who I think go through this process, too — I think it was already more common, back then, to really understand what power products are, and read Inspired etc., it was like... now I think everyone reads it, they should hand it out at the entrance, in the role, whether you're a junior, whether you're a senior, you can always learn something — but... and really you don't really need your top ten books to read — no, you need two, three, and that's what I'm saying, good enough. And a lot of experimentation. Yes, because when you would really go back to the basics of what you really need to do as a product manager — they're written down, and if you just keep going back to them all the time, then it's good enough, like, it fine-tunes you, you get something new each time from these things. So basically all of this prepared you for Microsoft? All of this prepared me for where I can work on power products — and the list is short. Meaning, there are a few startups in Israel, there are a few big-tech companies, like Microsoft, and I knew — I'm not, now, I'm not applying to whoever I feel like, I'm not under pressure, I have to nail it, I interview the companies I'm going to now, I want to hear how they work there and understand how the decision-making is made, what ability I have to move the needle, how many things are top-down, how much is bottom-up — and it was also very clear to me where I didn't get enough in the toolbox as a product person, like, I still don't feel that I'm — call it — whole, and also when I was, I felt I was missing more. You really defined the criterion. Yes, because as an IC — as an individual contributor — I was missing more things, in order to say I'm a good product person, really good, or by my ideal already. And what was that tipping point? Like, when you'd gone some way at Microsoft, what is it actually... at Microsoft it happened really fast. This thing where, I think, this thing where you basically canceled this feature. It was amazing. It sounds amazing. I remember when I entered the role, we talked back then a bit in reviews, say, and then my boss goes to me, in the upcoming review, you don't have to work with engineers on anything, because I don't expect you to deliver, you're in discovery mode, because it's fine, like, we're not... There's this concept of, there's starvation among the engineers, and you have to give the engineers features, they have nothing to work on. Fine, they have nothing to work on — what to do? Like, you need to work on something for a moment. You don't need to like ship features that have no impact. And if we're not settled on what will bring the impact, then we don't want to give them just anything. And he already told me, I'm giving you a metric — think about two or three of... about Microsoft, research they did, that we found out there. I looked at telemetry, interviewed customers, and understood what won't light them up. That's so much the power of a big company, versus a startup, which has to run forward, and there's always this starvation, because always... that's probably exactly what you were looking for, and found it. No — if you ask the engineers at my place, they will tell you, I have no room, I'm understaffed and I don't have enough of anything, and we need more people, and where — doing everything roughly — they'll always tell you that. No, sure, but I'm saying, now, to give a product manager this grace of a couple — two or three months. I was in shock. Yes. He says, you don't have to deliver. You need to like deliver value. That's what I expect from you, that you finish this review with a recommendation to advance. If you've already done POCs, if you managed to do something that also requires a developer, and like you brought someone in to demonstrate what a feature would look like or to test it on internal users — cool, if that's what you need. But you'll explain to us how you proved your hypothesis.

Eyal David: [31:49] And is that something you met still at Microsoft, or is it this specific manager? I meet it a lot in my group.

Uri Fen: [31:55] We're a group that does a lot of experiments, a lot of validation, a lot of people — it seems very Israeli, not to work for nothing, like a kind of saying, I want to make sure I'm not wasting my time. Is that very Israeli? It's very Israeli to say I don't want to waste my time, I'm not a sucker. Like I'm not... I want something to come out of it, I want impact. There's kind of some hunger in our group of, I'm not willing to waste my time on features for nothing.

Eyal David: [32:25] Yes, no — actually when you talked earlier about shipping things that are half-baked and running really fast, I said to Samir, wow, that's so Israeli. To run and, like, impact, yes — maybe it's a matter of recent years, right, that people are kind of more focused, getting... so you also — I'll jump for a second — you also do more things beyond Microsoft. Do you want to tell a bit about the side projects you're involved in?

Uri Fen: [32:45] Gladly, yes, I'm really proud of them. First of all, I highly recommend side projects. It's already — I'll start this from the end — and also I'm very lucky in what I'm dealing with here right now.

Eyal David: [32:58] So, outside of... I have to ask something. Yes. How do you find time for side projects? You make time. You don't say — you don't go to some board and say...

Uri Fen: [33:07] And you're a dad and everything, like. I'm a dad, of two kids, a six-year-old girl, a three-year-old boy, I have a dog who's crazy, everyone, everyone who listens to the podcast knows her. And even so you manage to really find time, in addition to... Yes, I'm also learning Arabic now at Microsoft, in a class we have — a course we have that's kind of super professional, I'm also now in the framework of an instructors course at Microsoft, to build a product course for product managers at Microsoft. Well, cool. Not just for juniors — everyone needs to improve, right? In something — so I'm building it now on discovery and validation and these things, so, like, there's always... I do a lot of things, but... but you don't... you have to do more, in order to do more. Like, you... time creates itself. It's like how I have room in my heart for another kid — there is, the heart grows — so your time arranges itself around it. Because... and in the end, around the passion — yes, you won't do an external project that doesn't interest you, it doesn't work. You'll fade out and tell them 'no thanks' and you're out and you match — I've matched, like, people who suited my projects that didn't suit me, fadeouts of mine that didn't suit, and to tell them, 'this will work well together, enjoy.' So you find time, you make it. So tell a bit about the project — it's related to psychology, right? Yes, yes, yes. A little over a year ago — so a good friend, Yuval, our older daughters were in kindergarten together — he's a psychologist, and he's crazy about artificial intelligence, and he started — like, the clear connection, that I already worked on them and so on — and he started pitching me all sorts of ideas about how this thing can serve his work in mental health. So it started kind of over a beer, and then you basically started doing ping-pong on it — what did it look like? Yes, every time we'd meet at playdates, or that, then like, it was like your conversation over — and he also formed a connection with a few more folks, like, therapists and researchers. And suddenly a kind of group formed that he called The Artificial Third. For the sake of it — you and I are in a therapy session, one, two, who is the third? The artificial intelligence. It rests on a concept that always, when you talk to someone, there's always someone else in our head, right? And why — why did it intrigue you? Why did you get into it? First of all, Yuval is a very charismatic person. I once told him — this is the biggest compliment I can give a person — 'whatever you tell me, I'll say yes.' That's what you don't usually say to people, right? That it's full trust — I'll go on wonderful adventures with you like this — if you go out, you arrive at wonderful places, of Dr. Seuss, so... and his passion was really cool, and I said, I have something to help with here. At first it was kind of, good, I'll be happy to talk to you about it and enjoy the panel you're doing, and then I understood that I'm the panel he's doing, and it became a conference — we built a conference — where also some of the psychologists and researchers each demonstrated, or research they literally did on ChatGPT, in terms of biases or in terms of what personality traits it has and all sorts of things like that, or the philosophical discussion around it — of someone you talk to like a human, what its role is in our life — suddenly it kind of becomes some mind fuck like that, and I gave a lecture on writing prompts — the right way to write prompts, or the not-right, better way to write prompts, and everything was examples from the world of mental health. I showed it to my wife, she's a clinical psychologist, I went over it with Yuval, I went over it, and out came an excellent lecture, really fun.

Eyal David: [36:43] Is that something you did before — apart from the previous companies where you got on stage — do you usually lecture?

Uri Fen: [36:49] Yes, yes, at every job I was at, then... so it's not your new thing? No, so I always had, also, to lecture or instruct or be a mentor or deliver all sorts of trainings and such. For me it's like one of the most fun parts of the role, always. Cool — to build a product and that, yes, but you scale up if you also build an army of product managers who can work well, like. In short, this thing became something serious — there's a Facebook group of almost 5,000 people. Wow, how much, over how long? Over that same year this thing grew and swelled, there were several conferences, all were free, right? Wait, this happened over the past year, actually? Yes. Basically since October 7th. Before October 7th. But since then, apparently, on steroids. Since then, yes, there were several projects that are specifically around — it's also... it branches out a bit. Let's give an example of something that's not with an LLM, but really interesting — Telegram — he uses the effect of EMDR, whoever knows EMDR, it's a treatment method for trauma, for anxiety, and such things, with eye movements — it's kind of something visual like that, it later developed into something like taps on the shoulders, right-left-right-left, and something in this stimulus, the bilateral — bilateral stimulation — allows the brain to process things differently. Let's call it that, sort of. I'm telling you — not in that direction — it's related to the two lobes, just the... Yes. Ah, okay. Yes, and because you keep getting it on a different side, so you stay attentive. A bit like speaking Japanese — I use both lobes. I don't speak Japanese. Cool. In Arabic I use the same lobes as Hebrew. And he's basically going to an audio model. Say I'm now talking with you on a podcast, people will listen to the podcast — there's mono, right? There's like one channel. But if we do panning on it, I move from right to left, from right to left — you still hear the podcast, but you'll feel this movement, and it'll keep you [attentive] each time. And this thing, he saw it has a good effect. He also used it at a resilience center of the Eshkol Regional Council, like, during October 7th. And he's now kind of doing research around it too, building an app around it, where the goal isn't to make money, but the goal is — come on, also, I'll now record for you a library of calming or natural sounds, which is also, in itself, an idea — but take what you're already doing: you're listening to Eyal's podcast, you're now listening to a song on Spotify, you're... be... to that — a side idea. And you'll already do this panning, it'll already do you good. And suddenly, if it can also improve attention and concentration, regardless of anxiety and trauma and such. So after October 7th you say, okay, I really want to deal with a side project of this kind, and my work as a product manager can super contribute this thing. And you can't — my ability to recruit engineers, and the understanding of go-to-market, and the decisions on it, and what to do first, an app, to make it vibey — like you have a whole lot of product decisions that aren't related to...

Eyal David: [39:53] the net effect and what impact it has on the patients — for that you need the professional facilitator in this context. So tell me, what other projects do you have there? Something maybe you're also kind of involved in and maybe want to promote? Sure, sure, I'll brag.

Uri Fen: [40:08] Another project called Gaslighting Simulator — and I don't know if that'll be the final name, but the goal is clear. You enter, and you basically enter a simulation conversation with a partner who's a Gaslighter — meaning, performing on you, to a certain degree, manipulation, shifting responsibility to you, shirking responsibility, making you feel crazy that you're like making things up, all sorts of things like that. So... And all of this in Hebrew? Yes, yes. Thanks to GPT-4, so we already — the Hebrew is good. And also when you, you know, what you write in the prompt,

Eyal David: [40:46] and you collaborate and do tests on it together — that's also usually something you lead — so you still feel like shit during the conversation.

Uri Fen: [40:55] You really feel like your partner was cruel on the side, and you feel like a victim. It really works. Now, why would we do such an unpleasant thing on the face of it? Because it's proven by research, that like in combat training, for the sake of it — that it hardens, it inoculates — to actually do these things in the safe and calm environment, in order to, together... like a flight simulator, basically. For the sake of it, yes. At the moment of truth, you'll be more prepared for the situation. You're more resilient, and it's also literacy in general — like, knowing what gaslighting is. So we're doing it in collaboration with an NGO called No to Violence Against Women. And I... put it now into a hackathon we're doing in September, at Microsoft, in order to really get the technical team like this — thanks. Something like a task force, where people come randomly and want to join, and I'm very proud to raise such a thing, yes.

Eyal David: [41:51] Are there more things you're kind of working on, and that maybe also opened your mind — at home — from side projects? Like, there are many more examples, yes. I'll take this: again, what's the best thing you learned from the side projects you work on?

Uri Fen: [42:06] Wow. The sentence I said earlier — if you go out, you arrive at wonderful places, to go out, right? Like, you work at your company, you're at some peak of a field, like — like in the NBA, everyone's tall, you're no longer tall. Like, you're surrounded by people, you don't know how good you are, how much value you can bring beyond — like, you bring value at work, but you don't understand that in other places it's much, much more with impact. And then the conversations with the folks, researchers, psychologists, in the whole group of the artificial mind — we didn't come from the same place. And suddenly the encounter with a product manager, for the sake of it, is very significant. I suddenly felt my ability to quickly validate an idea, or to disqualify an idea, to talk with them about what go-to-market looks like. Everything I know how to say around AI in general, and also responsible AI — how to manage this thing ethically, how to manage it responsibly, which problem that I... suddenly maybe the legal body that... protects you. On the contrary — the legal body taught me a lot of things that I then have to take with me everywhere. I don't say, come on, next time, it's fine. No, I don't have 'fine.'

Eyal David: [43:16] How do I say it? I think... I don't know if I said this here already or not — that your work as a product owner is de-risking.

Uri Fen: [43:23] You're constantly... managing risks. Yes, but it's funny, because it's a very negative framing of the role. I'm here to manage risks and reduce risks,

Eyal David: [43:31] not to promote, you know. There's maybe another thing here you learned that I hear between the lines. You also learned, I think, that when you don't work with technical people day to day,

Uri Fen: [43:40] then you basically bring it down more to the ground, you distill more the things you say in a simple way — yes, it's a huge joy. Meaning, I also said that during my work over the years I got to instruct and give lectures. In most cases it was to friends from the workplaces I was at, obviously. Once, once, once, I was also at a university, once — say it's a university project where you work with disadvantaged populations who don't have access, who, like, they enter academia, and for them it's — they arrived, they got, like, something unbelievable, that they were even allowed in at all. To that extent the disbelief — how far it is from them. But yes, to succeed, to explain something complex in a clear way, to use examples that are relevant to the people you're talking to — first of all, that's supposed to be a product manager's skill set in general, ostensibly. And it's just a place to practice that, so to speak, and to bring value with it — it's really fun. Wow — so first of all, the time went really fast, I really enjoyed it.

Eyal David: [44:41] I also noticed, you gave a ton of recommendations here, to a ton of materials. You mentioned twice the Dr. Seuss book, which is excellent, for whoever's making changes in life, I really recommend it. I have a question we tend to ask here. What do you wish for, Uri, in ten years? In ten years — to travel the world, with family. Yes, is there some destination you're kind of dreaming about? No, because we don't decide, we experience everything.

Uri Fen: [45:12] But almost anything will be perfect, right? With the family it's... I want to collect postcards. My parents were on relocation several times; for them it's kind of clear that a person needs to experience something different, and it's like — if you go out, you arrive at places. Exactly. It's become part of this story for me too. But to receive things and give my kids experiences, to be proud of them, in ten years my daughter will be 16, that's insane. My daughter is 13. No, no, don't take it to dark places, come on. No, in a... in a cool sense, how cute it is. Almost — it's cute [now], it won't be cute anymore. 16 isn't cute. Not cute. It'll be cool. And what do you wish for parenthood, personally? I'm there only like a grandpa, yes, but I want to be proud of them and proud of myself. Like... I'm proud of myself now, I hope it'll be more of the same. How optimistic. Cool. So I had a lot of fun.

Eyal David: [45:59] Again, I say, and I'm glad you'll come to be interviewed again. In the past. Come on, so bye for now, see you in the next episode. Bye bye. Bye bye. Hey friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe, 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 happy for you to write to us. We'd be very happy for five stars on any platform, and for you to follow us so more listeners can be exposed to us and find the podcast. You can also find the previous episodes on any app or on the YouTube channel, we have links in the description. Until next time, come on, be efficient and bye bye.