Episode 162: Product Roadmap: Building a Platform for the Next Decade with Craig Saldanha, Chief Product Officer at Yelp

In this episode of Product Thinking, Craig Saldanha, Chief Product Officer at Yelp, joins Melissa Perri to explore user research, two-sided marketplaces, and the concept of the flywheel. They discuss future-proofing the business, building customer trust, and Yelp’s importance as a platform for reviews and recommendations.

Craig has over twelve years experience in product management, with a focus on technology and digital content. He is skilled in product development, strategic planning, market segment analysis, change management and go-to-market strategies.

Craig has been Chief Product Officer for Yelp since 2022. The new product launches he has helmed include a new numerical rating system, “Yelp Guaranteed”, search experiences that use AI, and immersive video. Before Yelp, he worked at Amazon for over nine years as a product manager, and director of Prime Video International.

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You’ll hear them talk about:

[02:44] - Customer obsession is one of the key differentiating factors between Yelp and its competitors. Craig says that what separates Yelp from their peers is the quality of the reviews. It is the depth and breadth of these reviews that build customer trust, and mean Yelp is the go-to when someone is looking for a local business, restaurant, or nightlife spot. Craig emphasizes that every review is equal, and that this ethos drives the “road map” for Yelp’s evolution.
[08:26] - Craig decided to codify the product ethos and product culture of Yelp into five tenets. Tenet one is delighting a two-sided marketplace. Tenet two is regarding decision making, and how to differentiate between ‘one-way doors’ (like a price change) and ‘two-way doors’ (like UI/UX changes). Tenet three is being consistent and scalable. Tenet four is being diverse and inclusive in product thinking. Tenet five is “think big and learn fast”.
[13:40] - While driving revenue is, naturally, very important, Craig says that simply developing products that “delight the customers” is vital. Whether or not something moves a metric is almost by the by in the ideas stage, since the driving force behind product development should be the bigger picture, aka the customer experience. Craig says that if you build things people love, “you're definitely going to be OK in the long term”.
[20:13] - Working across teams, especially in product management, can be very difficult. Craig says that although each team does their best to work out their own dependencies, they will most likely only get 60% of them. One solution is to have a small product operations team that “owns the overall level road map”, can reconcile differences between other teams, and “see where some of the gaps are”.

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Previous guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web Services

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