Conversation · Meta @Scale podcast
From running product at Yahoo! to building my own AI system. One conversation.
Francois Richard hosts the @Scale podcast at Meta, where he also runs very large systems. He asked a Product Guy (me) on to talk about going from exec to builder, and what AI is doing to product.
October 8, 2026 · Video, 41 minutes
We go back a long way. Xobni first, then Yahoo!. So this was half interview, half two old colleagues comparing notes, recorded at Pleasure Pizza in Santa Cruz with people ordering slices behind the camera.
What I wanted engineers and product managers to hear: building got cheap. Judgment became scarce.
What we get into
- Growing up in Amsterdam, and moving Yahoo! search off Google and onto its own engine. That took an army, certainly not me alone.
- The startup years. Xobni is where Francois and I first worked together.
- The Yahoo! Mail outage that made us stop all new development for months. Francois was in it with me.
- Shutting down AIM. Then Yahoo! Messenger, Groups and Answers. Groups had 115 million users when we made the call.
- Why I set a kill rate before anybody builds anything.
- How a junior product manager builds judgment now, when you can prototype and learn so much faster.
- Product and engineering in one org when I was GM at Yahoo!. 750 people, one set of priorities. I think those two jobs are merging.
- Leaving the exec job and learning to build.
- The AI system I run every day, and what I told it on day one: I do not trust you.
- A lightning round, including the one place I don't need AI at all.
Thank you Francois, Jack and the whole @Scale team. I enjoyed every minute of it!