Portfolio Approach to Product Scaling

The art of scaling products requires thoughtful systems thinking and strategic planning rather than simply moving fast. Peter Dang's experience scaling products at Facebook, Instagram, Uber, and OpenAI reveals critical principles for sustainable growth.

Planning for Scale: From 1 to 100

When transitioning from finding product-market fit to scaling for hypergrowth, successful product leaders:

• Plan chess moves in advance rather than just reacting to immediate needs
• Build systems that enable sustainable speed rather than quick fixes
• Sometimes need to "go slow to go fast" by investing in proper architecture
• Focus on creating scalable abstractions that solve core problems

"You have to plan your chess moves out in advance. You have to really think before you act and build systems that are gonna let you go sustainably faster."

The Portfolio Approach to Scaling

• Scaling is not a binary switch but a gradual ramp rate
• Adopt a portfolio approach to resource allocation:
  • Google used a 70/30 portfolio approach for mature products
  • Startups might use a 50/50 split between immediate needs and future-proofing
  • Adjust the ratio based on your company's stage and product maturity

Building for Sustainable Growth

The 1-to-10 Phase: Measurement and Rigor

• Build a growth team early to drive measurement discipline
  • Growth teams ask the right questions about what's happening in your product
  • They expose what data you're not tracking but should be
  • They create a culture of experimentation and hypothesis testing
  • This builds rigor into your product development process

The 10-to-100 Phase: Systems Thinking

• Identify the core components and architecture needed for scale
• Find the right abstractions that allow for global adaptability
  • Example: Uber's pickup/dropoff system needed to work worldwide with different conditions
• Invest in infrastructure that can handle exponential growth
  • Example: Facebook Messenger grew to 4.7 billion messages per day in 2.5 years

Balancing Growth and Craft

• Create healthy tension between growth metrics and product quality
• Structure your team with different archetypes who naturally focus on different priorities:
  • Growth PMs (metrics-driven, experimentation-focused)
  • Consumer PMs (design-focused, craft-oriented)
  • Business PMs (model-focused, value-creation oriented)
  • Platform PMs (systems-focused, building tools for scale)
  • Research/AI PMs (technology-focused, bridging research and product)

Real-World Examples

• Facebook News Feed: Carefully designed the entire sharing loop and information architecture, which has stood the test of time for over a decade
• Uber: Rearchitected the rider app to create scalable components like the product selector and pickup/dropoff system
• Instagram: Quadrupled usage in two years through systematic growth approaches

"When you go from one to 100, I think one of the things that you really gotta take into account is that you have to plan your chess moves out in advance... and build systems that are gonna let you go sustainably faster."