Adam Nash: "You Get What You Give”
This Week's Guest: Adam Nash
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
We kick off Season 3 with Adam Nash, the VP of Product at Dropbox, whose career includes some of the biggest companies in tech at some of their most transformative stages—from NeXT during its 1997 acquisition by Apple, then Apple under Steve Jobs, to planning products at eBay and working at LinkedIn when there were only 100+ employees and less than a million users.
Adam describes where product strategy and product management interplay between engineers and marketers—and how he’s brought that expertise to some of the brands we know and use almost every day. Hear why LinkedIn chose not to use any profile photos at the beginning, and how Silicon Valley execs went about reinventing the way we use the web after the .com bust.
This episode holds some of our favorite advice on how to get the most out of schooling, how to tap into the brilliant minds around you, and the best ways to approach your first work experiences. Take it from this Silicon Valley veteran (born and raised) whose career speaks to the reincarnating nature of the Valley.
Show Notes
BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
1996 cover of Newsweek, lamenting Apple’s “sad decline”
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss
- The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
And just for fun, the Office Space clip featuring the guy “with people skills”
More About Our Guest
Vice President, Product & Growth at Dropbox
Adam Nash is a proven advocate for development of products that go beyond utility to delight customers. At Dropbox, he heads the team responsible for product strategy, product management & product analytics for a platform with over 500 million registered users. Before Dropbox, Adam served as the President & CEO of Wealthfront, where for four years he championed the creation of a new category of automated investment services. While Adam was at Wealthfront, the company grew its client base by over 60x, and grew assets under management 45x from less than $100m to over $4 billion.
Prior to joining Wealthfront, Adam was Vice President of Product Management at LinkedIn. Adam led LinkedIn’s Platform & Mobile products, including the launch of LinkedIn’s open developer platform and their highly successful native applications and mobile web experiences. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Adam held a number of leadership roles at eBay, including Director of eBay Express, an innovative new site focused on new, fixed-price products. Previously, Adam also held strategic and technical roles at Atlas Venture, Preview Systems and Apple.
Adam holds an MBA from Harvard Business School as well as BS and MS degrees in Computer Science with a focus on Human Computer Interaction from Stanford University. Adam was born and raised in Silicon Valley where he lives with his wife and four children.
