A Legend in Collaboration
I just had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation on the Breakthrough Builders podcast with Varun Parmar, the Chief Product Officer at Miro. And I’m glad I was sitting down, because he really blew me away with his smarts, his perspective, and his humility.
Listen to my conversation with Varun Parmar
on the Breakthrough Builders Podcast
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the web.
Varun has spent over two decades building products that have been used by millions and generated billions in revenue for companies like Adobe and Box. In 2015 he co-founded Doculus, a SaaS platform for faster, cheaper, and easier contract reviews. Box acquired Doculus in 2018. Varun would eventually become Box’s SVP and CPO. He’s now CPO at Miro.
Our conversation started with Varun reflecting on his time at Adobe, and his instrumental role in shifting the company from packaged software to the cloud.
While at Adobe, one of the things he learned is that the status quo is not an option, especially during times of uncertainty.
“There are things that happen around your business where it is unclear what the answer is, but you have strong indication that’s coming from different stakeholders from what’s happening in the marketplace that you need to start acting, not because you know the answer, but because you know where you’re standing is not the right place.”
Leadership can often look like trying new things and admitting when something is wrong – and doing so early on to avoid headaches down the road. Just about every successful company has had a strategy or product miss the mark.
“You have to be the first person in the room that hits their head against the wall. The right thing to do in that very moment is to be the first one who figures out that the path you’re on is either right or wrong. So when you hit the wall, you’re the first one who can figure it out.”
The faster a company can pivot, the better. However, speed is relative.
“In a 100,000-person organization, moving fast might mean doing things in a matter of six months. In a 10-person organization, it might mean doing things in three hours.”
Varun’s experience has allowed him to see the difference in processes between startups and major companies.
“One of the things that big companies do is they spend an inordinate amount of time around strategy, around competitive differentiation, around your place in the market.”
Those things have been ingrained in him. That approach makes it easier to create a product that’s easier to protect.
“I first think about the market position. How can we create the wedge and how can we go after something that’s more defensible and start to create a business around that?”
Something else Varun left Adobe with was the desire to create a wonderful user experience. When he was taking Doculus to market, he knew he had a good product, but he had one problem.
He didn’t know how to sell to the end-user.
“What I knew was, I could sell to executives in big companies.”
His first deal brought in $500,000.
“We convinced an organization that the product we were offering, they could actually package it up as part of an overall product, and that would give them a massive amount of competitive differentiation.”
When Varun was at Box, the company stumbled upon the rapidly-growing e-signature space where Microsoft didn’t have a product. It’s rare to find a space that‘s growing quickly where there isn’t a major player already comfortable. Box took notice and made moves in the space. They had to protect and defend their present foundational core while taking steps to find future growth.
“Unless you’ve basically secured the foundation, you should not go into new initiatives. … There is only so much defense you can do with the past. … I like to say, ‘Attack the future, and then don’t spend too much time defending the present,’ and this is not to say that, ‘Hey, you should not protect your base.’ It is to say that you need to innovate.”
He did this while at Adobe.
“It was less about defending the $900 million business we had in Acrobat. It was more about attacking the future and asking, how can we drive growth?”
After scaling products to ubiquity, what’s next? What do you aim for after aiming for the stars and hitting them?
“I think there comes a time in everyone’s professional career when they start to think about their legacy.”
This is coming from the person who helped make the word “Photoshop” a verb.
Miro's vision is to have 500 million users in a world where teammates are farther apart, yet more connected than ever. Right now they have 35 million users.
Varun paints a clear picture of what impact at scale looks like to him.
“The definition of scale is something that is being used by 50% of knowledge workers. So if you say that there’s about a billion or so knowledge workers, half of that is 500 million.”
He’s aiming for Mt. Rushmore with Miro.
“I think that there’s really four companies in the history of software that have actually achieved that. Microsoft, Google, Slack and Zoom. I truly believe that Miro could be that fifth company.”
Varun feels the future is blending synchronous and asynchronous work in a way that makes people not feel left out, regardless of their place on Earth. Varun is confident Miro is the best tool for this new way of work.
“We’re going to move fast. We’re going to hit our head against the wall. We’re going to be the first ones to hit, and if we hit we know we need to turn left or right, but as long as we don’t hit we’ll keep moving, but once we hit we’ll be the first ones to figure it out.”
When learning about the origin stories of successful people, there’s often an event or hardship that triggers someone’s motivation to succeed from a young age.
That didn’t happen with Varun.
Even though he mentions wanting to scale like Microsoft and Google, when you peel back Varun’s layers of work goals you’ll see he’s not chasing Bill Gates, Larry Page, or Sergey Brin.
He’s chasing his dad.
“What’s always been a guiding pole for me, is, can I be half as successful as my dad? It’s probably going to take more than a single lifetime for me to fulfill that, but it is so inspiring. When I get up, sometimes I get emotional about it. He’s an individual who actually came from nothing, and he did exceptional things in his life.”
His father was his first business teacher and a great provider. One important lesson he taught Varun was to never let go of his craft regardless of how far up the professional ladder he goes.
“The world’s best products are built by people who never let go of the craft. If you’re closer to your craft, you can actually mentor, guide, and make decisions that actually have a 10x, 100x impact on the trajectory of the business.”
There’s something poetic about someone who never wants to stop getting their hands dirty when it comes to their craft. It’s one of the hallmarks of a breakthrough builder, and it was my honor to have such a far-ranging and beautiful conversation with Varun.
Listen to my conversation with Varun Parmar on the Breakthrough Builders Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the web.