Ami Vora

Ami Vora is Chief Product Officer at Faire, a B2B marketplace connecting independent retailers and brands. Previously: employee 150 at Facebook (launched the first Facebook developer platform); Head of Product for the $55B global Facebook ads business (also oversaw Instagram ads launch); led product and design for WhatsApp. Known for distinctive curiosity-based conflict style (“fascinating”) and for using product metaphors (face-to-face communication, hill climb, dinosaur brain) as alignment tools.

Key ideas

• Curiosity over defensiveness. Disagreement = information asymmetry; reframe visceral reaction to “fascinating, tell me more.” Learned, not innate.
• Dinosaur brain briefing model. Executives hold ~3 facts; their value is pattern matching and cross-company context. IC role: bring the recommendation; manager role: own context. “My manager owns context, I own the recommendation.”
• Execution eats strategy. 80/20 split; good strategy + poor execution yields no learning; good execution + decent strategy yields compound improvement.
• Toddler soccer (goal design). A single shared metric → everyone crowds the same surface. Fix: detangle into distinct, ladder-connected goals for each team.
• Hill climb. Local vs. global optimum. The valley between hills is necessary cost; what carries you through it is remembering the summit.

Appearances

See also

• Product Taste
• Agency-Control Trade-off