Linda Tong, Webflow CEO on Running Ops with AI at Scale

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Michael Koenig: Hello and welcome to Between two COOs. I'm your host, Michael Kig, and I'm shaking it up today by bringing on Linda Tong, the CEO of Webflow, the leading visual development platform for building a professional web presence without writing a single line of code. While Linda now leads the company from the top, her tenure at Webflow began as COO and President, where she served as a connective tissue across the business, running sales, marketing, education, support, people, ops, finance, legal.

Michael Koenig: You get the idea. That operator's mindset still shapes how she scales webflow. Today. Prior to Webflow, Linda was the CEO at AppDynamics, the VP of Product at Innovation at NFL, chief Product Officer, tap Joy and product at Google. Linda also holds board seats and Prezi and Hex and is generally just a wonderful person.

Michael Koenig: Linda, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Linda Tong: Thanks for having me. Love being here.

Michael Koenig: Let's talk about [00:02:00] AI Webflow, one of the leading web platforms out there, 300,000 customers. With the way the web is changing from like AI search results to bot traffic, how are you thinking about this at Webflow and how do you build for this new age?

Linda Tong: Gosh, it is. Um, it's probably the most exciting time ever and I mean, I say this as if it's like right now, it's been like the past few years, but every day there's something new happening in ai. And you know, for us at Webflow it is. A, a massive opportunity, right? The, the vision of the company has always been to bring developer superpowers to everyone.

Linda Tong: And what that has meant is being able to, you know, in, in our present day form, uh, allow people to build websites visually, what AI unlocks is the ability to go even further. So whether you're building a website, a web app, or just an app in general, or just anything with code AI accelerates our ability, uh, to actually fulfill that vision, which is, [00:03:00] uh, not only incredibly exciting, but is, um, it's, it's an accelerant across the board that I don't think anyone saw coming.

Linda Tong: Um, and so that, you know, we're spending every day thinking about how do we go faster and how do we unlock value for our customers?

Michael Koenig: Speed is totally off the wall these days. I built a platform. For OKR in just messing around. It was with lovable, not Webflow, I apologize. Maybe I'll go back. I'll build it again with Webflow, but I was just tinkering around and over in 48 hours for the cost of like a hundred bucks.

Michael Koenig: I had a fully fledged app, which would've cost me like a million and a half dollars and taken 18 months to build previously. Talk about that acceleration because it, I imagine at the scale of Webflow, when you actually have incredible engineers, it must be off the charts.

Linda Tong: Oh yeah, it is. Gosh, like on, on both sides of it, it's in, it's incredible.

Linda Tong: 'cause one, there's a. Um, the transformation on an [00:04:00] individual level, the productivity gains that you get when now you have AI supporting you in what you're doing, whether it's, uh, generating code and accelerating the path to actually developing features and functionality, to writing test cases and reviewing that, or fixing errors or like building context around really complex, you know, platform to, you know, other parts of the business where I'm seeing people leverage AI for content creation, for, uh, you know, automating really complex functions that honestly as humans we couldn't do before.

Linda Tong: So, you know, we're running hundreds of experiments on our website that, uh, you know, we can start to automate using our, this product AI Optimize, uh, which is part of the Intellimize suite that we purchased a year ago. Um, you know, AI is in, in every single part of our business, not only in what we unlock for our customers, but in how we operate ourselves.

Linda Tong: And so it's just created this productivity boom. The, the other thing that's happened is. It is unlocked. Uh, you know, I was kind of hinting at it, but it's unlocked capabilities [00:05:00] that we never had before, right? Because it's not about AI replacing people or workers or, or whatnot. You know, I know there's a lot of talks about that, but I think AI actually is an amazing partner and it's, um, and it's ability to help me unlock things that I never would've spent time doing before.

Linda Tong: So whether it's helping me take away some of the drudgery or actually giving me superpowers personally to handle things that, like exponential levels that I hadn't considered. So, uh, a good example is I was, uh, I was putting together a set of experiments to think about how do I start running, you know, on some of my own personal stuff.

Linda Tong: I was like, how do I start to run, uh, you know, multi-variate tasks across thousands of different elements on a website? That would've just been impossible to do before. But with AI, it can actually start to automate these things and suggest what things I should be testing, suggest what, uh, what like different variants should be created, create those for me, and then actually run those tests and then select winners.

Linda Tong: That's just something that people didn't [00:06:00] do before. It was a great thing to talk about, but uh, you simply just can't do it manually.

Michael Koenig: And it wasn't easy. No, it was complex. Like even doing just like an ab test, two variants was really complex to do

Linda Tong: and it took multiple developers and it took like a lot of time to find stat zig.

Linda Tong: And then when you're done half the time, you're like, I don't even know what to do. Right? Like, these are like really basic things that we could talk about. Yeah. But technically it was just really expensive. And now that cost has gone away and it now becomes really exciting in terms of how do we start to take things that are relatively static and turn them dynamic?

Linda Tong: Because I think AI really unlocks the, the dynamism of what you can create and how you create it.

Michael Koenig: Uh, well, because this is an ops podcast, you mentioned how it's transforming your operations. Like, what are some things that come to mind? What, what has been, I guess, the biggest surprise to you?

Linda Tong: Oh man. It's, um, I think the biggest surprise 'cause [00:07:00] it's, you know, I would say at the beginning of this transformation, there are a lot of people who are like, oh, AI's gonna come from my job.

Linda Tong: AI's gonna sort of like, we're gonna just cut all this headcount. Uh, and you are, there are also entire groups of people who are resistant to ai. They're like, oh, it's not good enough. Or, it can't quite do it. And it's, you know, people are feeling like they were getting DDoS by ai. Right. Because it's like creating all this like, kind of shitty content.

Linda Tong: Mm-hmm. What was really surprising is one, the quality at which all these models have improved, and it's like. Days or weeks, you know, between, between new models. And so the quality of what you can actually create has fundamentally shifted. But the other part of it is are the ways that people are leveraging it.

Linda Tong: You know, the, the obvious ways that people thought about were like, oh, like write documents for me, do some coding for me. And like, that's great. What's really cool is, um, you know, actually today is, uh, my, my three year anniversary with Webflow, and one of the ways I was was using ai. Thank you. [00:08:00] One of the ways I was using AI that I hadn't considered before was I actually fed out all of my historical documents, my email, and my calendar, and I was like, write me a summary of the past three years of my time.

Linda Tong: And it's just, these are things that I probably would never even considered doing before because it would just been so time consuming unless I'd actually like put something together that would allow me to summarize this information really easily. I can now ask ai, you know, different GBTs or whatnot, really interesting questions and queries I never would've considered before.

Linda Tong: Mm-hmm. Um, and actually do work. That was never work that I would've done. And it, it's amazing how accurate it was, how effectively it actually summarized it. Three years. And it was really fun to just read through it and see what, what happened. Uh, you know, in my, in my time here at Webflow.

Michael Koenig: W some of those things you mentioned, it's unlocked things you never would've done before.

Michael Koenig: There's this three year summary that you went through and did. What kind of insights did that give you? Because I, I've actually never did, you know, you, you hit an anniversary, a milestone and you're [00:09:00] like, oh, I've been here for a while. I remember like, this happened once before and I expected to have this, like big retrospect and I was like, no, I don't, I literally don't have time.

Michael Koenig: Like I just, great. It's a, it is great. Okay. Moving on.

Linda Tong: Yeah, I mean, it's one, there's um, you know, I think for people who have been like, go, go, go. I, you know, I've, similar to you, I've never really taken a vacation like between jobs or anything, and so I've never actually taken the time to truly reflect, um, it was.

Linda Tong: An amazing experience actually to sit back and see how much has happened in the past three years. Uh, and also like selfishly feel a little bit proud of what I've done. Like very rarely do you like take those moments to be like, oh, have I added value? Am I, have I accomplished anything? Mm-hmm. And, uh, to actually feel that way was like amazing.

Linda Tong: Also incredibly humbling because, you know, none of these things are individual accomplishments or things that we do together as a team. And I feel so proud of like what everyone at this company has done over the past [00:10:00] three years. It's been a wildly transformative couple of years. And, uh, wealth was like a very different place from the place I joined.

Michael Koenig: Yeah. And what a cool time to be there, right? Yeah. When all this transformation is happening.

Linda Tong: Yeah. I mean, and we have some of the most incredible talent, I mean. The things that I'm seeing people build, I can't say exactly what's coming, you know, through the hopper, but yeah, the innovation that's happening, the speed at which it's happening, the like excitement in our AI channels where people are just talking about cool things they've done.

Linda Tong: I mean, I'm seeing people share really cool experiences and it's, it's just such an empowering moment in time. Um, you know, this weekend, like I was building an app for myself 'cause I'm like taking a trip and I was like, oh, I wanna build this app that'll allow me to like, tag all my favorite places and add my photos and create this like timeline view and uh, a map view of everything I'm doing.

Linda Tong: Mm-hmm. I never would've done that before. Like, it took me, I don't know, six and a half hours to build this thing and like get everything that I wanted into it [00:11:00] and like format it and design it. But it's been amazing.

Michael Koenig: That's awesome. Well, there is so much going on, and I know in the past you've said no year is predictable and like constantly have to iterate.

Michael Koenig: How do you maintain clarity and focus for your teams when just the platform dynamics are shifting so rapidly around ai?

Linda Tong: I mean, it's, I think I'm really lucky. It's, um, for some, for some companies I think AI is great, but it does, you know, maybe it offers productivity improvements, right? And that's really how that can be an accelerant.

Linda Tong: For us, AI is a direct, like, improvement and accelerate to our vision. Like, it, like the space that we're in is like the perfect space to not only be disrupted, but like fundamentally transformed by ai. And for us, like our vision is about bringing the, the, the power of code to everybody and. I, I can't imagine a technology that does that [00:12:00] better than AI right now.

Linda Tong: And like when you pair that with our core differentiator of being a visual first platform that allows you to really like, tweak and interact with it, it's, it's kind of a match made in heaven. So I think I'm just really lucky in that the opportunity and the transformation that's happening in the industry right now is directly aligned to what we wanna do as a company.

Linda Tong: And so staying focused on our mission becomes that much more clear. The, the thing that's wildly disruptive is we used to joke about where Webflow was going and how we were gonna unlock all these capabilities and, and get there incrementally. And, you know, I was staying, it's a three year vision, it's a five year vision or a 10 year vision because, you know, if you subtract AI from the picture, really it was gonna take a long time to get there.

Linda Tong: But now with ai, I'm like, man, it's really just compressed that timeline and I think we're gonna be able to unlock our long-term vision in a very short amount of time. And it's, um, it's so exciting. But that, that's really what the shift has been for us.

Michael Koenig: Sure. And then it's, well, what's the next vision?

Michael Koenig: Right? Yeah. The longer term grander thing. Yeah. That maybe we didn't even think about [00:13:00] because it was so audacious. Yeah. And now it becomes something that is potentially attainable.

Linda Tong: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, and I think that that is, we're starting to see that I, you know, for me, for us though, it's always been how can, how can you create, right?

Linda Tong: Creation was sort of the beginning. I think now I, you know, I, I built so many apps using everything, cursor, lovable, V zero bolt, web flow. Um, the thing that no one talks about is, you know, we've now created like, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 apps and you've dropped a couple hundred bucks. What are you doing with them?

Linda Tong: The continuous like lifecycle management, iterating on those things, adding value, sharing them, like what is the purpose of creating these things if they're just gonna turn into like internet garbage, right? Like there needs to be this ongoing purpose and, and curation and iteration. And I think this next phase is how do we start to do that at scale?

Linda Tong: And how do we create the tools and technology that allow people to take the ideas that [00:14:00] they've turned into something and really grow them into something meaningful. And I think that's sort of the next age. And I think that's where web flow is gonna continue to, to push. Uh, you know, we, we've talked about owning the full web lifecycle.

Linda Tong: Now I want us to own the full code lifecycle.

Michael Koenig: Hmm. You talked about transformation and disruption. Two words that like have always been involved in tech, but now are just so much more weighted. Let's talk about websites in general and the future of the web. How do you think about designing for both humans and now agent bots?

Michael Koenig: Like how does that change things?

Linda Tong: It is, you know, it's really fascinating. I think I fundamentally believe that there needs to be, um, either a standard or just like a new practice mm-hmm. Websites that are created for humans. Are created for experience and for beauty and for layout and structure and design.

Linda Tong: You know, what an agent really wants to do is more effectively understand [00:15:00] index and like source the right content for your site to more effectively surface it and like recognize that information, whether it's in results, like a chat results or in terms of understanding the content to be able to provide more intelligence.

Linda Tong: And, you know, the way that sites are designed right now, a bot or an agent scraping it is highly inefficient. And I think we need to come up with like a new standard of how an agent could trans, like actually navigate a site, interact with it, and then ultimately, you know, like actually drive some of these actions through it.

Linda Tong: Um, and it's, it just needs to be thought of as its own thing. And right now, you know, we're too busy just trying to get a great website out there that we're not thinking about two versions of it. I think the other thing that's challenging is. You know, where people are seeing their traffic now split between the two.

Linda Tong: They're starting to try and optimize this one website for two very different audiences. 'cause you know, how you rank in search an LLM search is fundamentally different from how you think [00:16:00] about SEO. And so if you start blending these things, I don't know what that's gonna do to your, you know, search volume or traffic volume.

Linda Tong: Um, and so there is a, there's a fundamental shift happening right now on the web in terms of how do we manage traffic coming from all these different sources and how do you, how do you optimize for the sort of the recipient, right? Whether it's the human or whether it's an agent. And so we're thinking a lot about that at Webflow.

Linda Tong: We've been thinking, you know, we've been studying a lot of what's happening with, uh, SEL and more importantly, how do you think about actually finding, you know, ranking and surfacing your content effectively within an LLM, um, you know, any sort of, you know, chat GBT or whatnot. Um, and we're starting to think about like, how do you.

Linda Tong: How might the web look when you actually have two versions of a website?

Michael Koenig: Hmm. What you just mentioned in terms of the disruption of that top of funnel. Yeah. The engine optimization, which is this new AI thing. It's, what is the call [00:17:00] answer Engine optimization. Yeah, I think A EO. Yeah, A EO. I'm, I'm

Linda Tong: seeing A EOG, E-O-A-I-O.

Linda Tong: It's like all over the place, but probably the most prominent is a EO, I think.

Michael Koenig: Yeah. It's what's so interesting about it is you see sites like Stack Overflow, for instance. Yeah. Their traffic just tanks. Yeah. And now how do we think about. You know, how do we make up that different traffic and people, I've rec, I'm sure you get the question all the time, but I've gotten the question, which is like, how do I think about surfacing my site or my brand within an agent an LLM rather?

Michael Koenig: Yeah. How do you guys think about it? How do you approach it? Because you've got how many hundreds of thousands of sites out there that are probably all wondering the same thing?

Linda Tong: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's gonna be a different question for everybody. So, uh, for example, if you are, let's say you're just like, you know, startup A and your website is there to [00:18:00] drive signups that ultimately drive customer engagement into your web application.

Linda Tong: So, you know, let's say you're just building like a simple, I don't know, an e-commerce site, uh, and you want someone to like sign up and buy stuff. Um. It is not necessary for you to actually get the same traffic back. 'cause actually, like you're probably moving further down the funnel. And what you wanna do is be able to get people to that conversion faster.

Linda Tong: So maybe it's less traffic, but maybe it's more about surfacing whatever you're selling more effectively within, you know, as any sort of like, you know, a chat JPT or a perplexity or a Claude or, you know, still maintaining some amount of SEO for organic search. Um, and if the question is how do I drive more conversions, then it's really about figuring out how do you surface the content and the call to action more effectively, um, versus someone else who might be pure traffic because they're looking for generating eyeballs and getting people to come in and interact with like a stack [00:19:00] overflow.

Linda Tong: The value of it is that it's so much user generated content and so it, it's a very different approach that I would take if you're really like focused on that traffic and interaction that actually, uh, is a sort of. You know, a self-fulfilling cycle of value in terms of people creating content and coming back for more.

Linda Tong: Um, so one, I think it's figuring out what's the question that you're asking? Like what is the goal that you're trying to accomplish with your website and like, what should you be optimizing for? Uh, I think the second part of it is, is like understanding based off of what you're trying to optimize for, there are different tricks that are already out there to.

Linda Tong: Drive relevance, right? So what we've already seen with, with a EO is, you know, there's heavier weights for like, freshness of your content. So refreshing your content regularly is important. Um, influencers and like sort of these, um, you know, very like opinionated community is like a, Reddit is like actually a very important part of how you rank like great content on Reddit [00:20:00] actually gives you a much heavier weight in, you know, a chat GPT, um mm-hmm.

Linda Tong: And so really optimizing for your community strategy and your, and your content that's coming from influencers or like very real user generated content I think is important. And then like, you know, then you have consistent themes across like what are the other sources that you're, um, you know, just distributing content on.

Linda Tong: So not just first party but third party. 'cause like, where you're being sourced matters a lot. Um, and then I think the last bit is like actually the value of your content. Like there's people who sort of generate the. I don't know, call it the, the business insider clickbait type of articles. And then there's people who are putting like very real value into what they're saying.

Linda Tong: You know, writing a blog post that's giving like strong examples, uh, you know, really differentiated perspectives and points of view and like cold hard facts, things that you're able to walk away with, like some real meat on the bone, uh, that just performs significantly better, right? It gets referenced. It starts to [00:21:00] generate a lot more, uh, sort of contextual value.

Linda Tong: Mm-hmm. Um, and so I think like even the content strategy is not about volume, it's about quality. So those kinds of shifts we've already seen how people rank more effectively in a EO, uh, and are things that I think are in general, like good things to do anyway. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that's where we, you know, I would push people now while we figure out how do we start to like, interact very differently with these different sources.

Michael Koenig: Yeah. And potentially even, even though you may have a traffic drop, the traffic that is coming through is potentially more meaningful. Yeah, it's potentially more valuable.

Linda Tong: It may, I mean, most people by the time they get to your website nowadays, probably know a lot more about you than they did in the past.

Linda Tong: And so, you know, potential, like, it'll vary obviously, uh, by, by site, but like hopefully the site, the, the traffic that's coming in through some sort of, um, you know, like some sort of agentic search or LLM in theory is gonna come in more informed and potentially convert [00:22:00] faster. And you're gonna see a higher conversion rate because hopefully they actually have done some research on you, um, and are coming in with higher intent than maybe historical, you know, like standard SEO organic search traffic.

Linda Tong: Um, you know, but it, I've seen it vary quite a bit across, you know, everybody. So I can't say for sure that that's what's happening, but I can say in, in certain instances, I'm seeing that.

Michael Koenig: What I'm hearing is there's, there's a core thing here that is actually unchanged from SEO and that is the quality content that is an authority in what you are seeing.

Michael Koenig: And what I'm hearing is even though the amount of garbage that's on the web has just exploded, the quality is still hopefully what's going to be filtered to the top.

Linda Tong: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Michael Koenig: What's your favorite LLM? What do you go to?

Linda Tong: Uh, it depends on what I'm doing. Um, okay. Right. If I am, if I [00:23:00] am, uh, you know, trying to find a partner, uh, to, you know, whether I'm writing a board memo or an email, I've created my own GPT with chat, GPT that, um, sort of like knows my tone and voice and how I write, so I.

Linda Tong: Chat, GPT is my writing partner. Uh, you know, I use 4.0. And then, uh, for coding, I'm using Claude Sonnet four Oh, um, or Sonet four. And then, uh, outside of that, like I've played a lot with Gemini. Um, haven't really done nearly as much with it, but Notebook LM has been a, a total killer for me. It's been awesome.

Michael Koenig: Hmm. Your CEO what you're talking about coding still, what, what are you coding? How do you have time to code?

Linda Tong: I mean, I have nights and weekends and it's so fast now. Uh, no, but really it a, I think, um, I don't think you can lead right now in this time and in this space if you don't like, put your hands on the technology and feel it and understand it.

Linda Tong: Um, [00:24:00] it's just, it's moving so rapidly that I can't possibly. Imagine a world where I'm not trying to build a skill set myself. Um, so I have a lot of like hobby projects. Nothing that I'm particularly proud of, but it's really exciting and awesome to learn. 'cause just understanding the nuances of, you know, how, like how to prompt effectively or how to get the kinds of outcomes I want or where I need to be really specific if I wanna fix like an error, or if I'm just trying to like put together sort of like a simple ui.

Linda Tong: I, these are all things that the only way you can learn them is just to do it. Mm-hmm. And you know, it's a, um, it's a fun time and also I think it's just like, I'm naturally curious and I wanna know like, what could I possibly do here? So it's fun.

Michael Koenig: That's awesome. Notebook. All right. I haven't tried Notebook.

Michael Koenig: I will check it out.

Linda Tong: The best is my favorite use case with Notebook lm um, is when I have to just ingest a ton of information. Um. [00:25:00] Basically upload the different, you know, obviously with respect to, uh, privacy policies inside of your company, but like, upload the information that you want to consume and you can either generate a podcast and it's like this fun podcast you can listen to and I'll like actually explain it to you.

Linda Tong: Or you can actually just use it as like a buddy and ask a question and be like, Hey, tell me about this, or explain this to me. Or, uh, I'm thinking about taking this approach. Tell me why this content would like, tell me why shouldn't, but it's, it's basically an expert based off of what you teach it. And, um, you know, I think like almost everyone and their mother, you know, downloaded that Mary Meer report that was like 340 some odd pages, uh, popped into l like notebook, LM and mm-hmm.

Linda Tong: Created a podcast like a 25 minute podcast. And it's awesome. Um, I still read the whole report, but it was just amazing to get it summarized in such a coherent and articulate way. Um, and it took, you know, a couple minutes.

Michael Koenig: Only because you brought it up, the me Mary Meers [00:26:00] report this year. What was the thing that you took away where thinking back to it like, oh, that Mary did it again.

Michael Koenig: What was it?

Linda Tong: I mean, one, just like, the data's just really fascinating. I think the man, if I have to pick one thing

Michael Koenig: or, or not, or not, I mean, like anything.

Linda Tong: So there, there's two really interesting things about Mary Maker's reports in general. Like one, she's, she's very clearly capturing these trends and articulating the changes that are happening.

Linda Tong: The thing that is just when you look at the data, right? When she puts these into graphs and visualizes the changes that are happening, the thing that's like really outta this world compared to any other tech trend that I've seen in the past, ever, right? Historical, whatever, not the rate of adoption of AI has just so out of this world.

Linda Tong: I, I mean like basically this is like exponential curve upwards, um. You know, I think 10 years ago people were like, oh my god, [00:27:00] crypto and like blockchain, and it's still big, but you know, it kind of like faded out. AI is one of those trends where it's come and like, you look at these graphs and you look at how she's talking about the adoption.

Linda Tong: This isn't gonna fade out. It's actually still, it's still accelerating, which is crazy to think about. Um, and it's just one of those things that I, like, I can't even begin to imagine what's gonna happen next because it's just been so earth shattering, like every couple of weeks, the kinds of things that are becoming real.

Linda Tong: Um, and just seeing that in her report, you know, she's such a voice of authority on all these things. And so, you know, for her to have covered all these major technical shifts in this world and for her to even lay out AI as this, like transformative is like such a downplayed word, but it's just like, yeah, it's so wildly transformative.

Linda Tong: And you see it, it's like the first, like 10 pages of her deck and you're like, oh my God, the world is, the world is gonna be so different. In, in one year. Like I can't even, everything I'm saying right now [00:28:00] is probably gonna be a joke and irrelevant because it's gonna be so, so wildly different. Um, and that's the stuff that just gets me.

Linda Tong: 'cause I can't even, I can't even imagine what it'll look like. I can't even see that far into the future. And the future is so close. I.

Michael Koenig: Yeah, so it's funny just being a tech dad with crypto and everything, I tried to explain it to my kiddos. This is a while back now, they were much younger and I'm like, I'm gonna buy you some Bitcoin.

Michael Koenig: You're just gonna have it. It's gonna go along and we'll see where it is. Maybe you know, you'll buy your first house with it or something like that. Oh my God. They were just like, yeah, okay, cool. Thanks. But we talked about AI and they're, they actually care about it. And they're the power users of soa, like, my gosh.

Michael Koenig: Yeah, they just do. It started off just like the image, I gotta put together a book because the images and like the prompts along with them are hilarious. The first one they did was put together a picture of a cat doing its taxes floating in outer space.

Linda Tong: My God. [00:29:00]

Michael Koenig: It's fa like it. So nailed it. That is awesome.

Michael Koenig: So anyways, definitely a much bigger shift. It hasn't hit my mom yet, but that's okay. I wanna dive right into something that we had previously talked about. How do you create and foster a culture of innovation and get people to solve problems in different audacious ways?

Linda Tong: I think a big part of it is putting people into situations where they have to change their own behavior.

Linda Tong: If you are given a problem and you're working with the same team you've worked with, you're gonna approach the problem the same way and they're gonna probably approach how they work with you the same way. So if you start to change that environment by bringing different people together with different backgrounds, and then just put out there a simple prompt, which is.

Linda Tong: What's your other solution? So besides the first thing you come up with, what's a second solution? What's another way to think about this? You can start to get people to think about alternative ways to solve similar problems and start to bring in insight from sources that they may not have previously used.

Linda Tong: And I think that's the [00:30:00] very starting point of creating a culture of innovation. 'cause it's just about thinking differently about how you solve some of the same problems that we face day to day.

Michael Koenig: That's a simple question. What else would you do? How else would you solve it? Okay, I heard what you said the first time.

Michael Koenig: Now answer it again. Is basically, is basically it pretty much. That's amazing. And now part of that though is creating sort of a culture, an environment, an atmosphere where people feel comfortable to spit out that second more, you know, perhaps it's off the wall, perhaps they're not necessarily confident in what they're saying with that answer.

Michael Koenig: How do you do that? I know you are a expert at creating trust amongst teams. How do you do that?

Linda Tong: A lot of it is people are afraid to present ideas that they're afraid that others might look down on or consider failures or think of as bad ideas. And if you create a space where the ideation elements or the ideation phase, it's really about [00:31:00] just getting things out there that you can quickly just align on.

Linda Tong: Address or dismiss is a safe space for people to just throw things against the wall. And you have to actually create that environment and say, this is the moment where we're gonna throw things against the wall. I think in addition to that, celebrating really bad ideas and celebrating the fact that people are coming up with that, I think creates a safe space, just a psychologically safe space for people to even think outside of the normal realm of the constraints that they, they, they put on themselves.

Linda Tong: And by doing that, I think it allows you to just open up the aperture of what people consider, how they think, what angles they're taking at a problem. And by doing that, I think it did, like, that's where you start to get areas of, of psychological safety that then become the foundation of that underlying trust to even engage and present, you know, some of these ideas that aren't standard or typical, uh,

Michael Koenig: how do you celebrate a really bad idea?

Linda Tong: Literally celebrating it, right? If someone's coming in and coming up with an idea that you're like, it makes no sense. You can't turn around and be like, that's a terrible [00:32:00] idea, or No way, it's never gonna work. I think you have to take the idea and run with it and say. Awesome. Didn't even think about it this way.

Linda Tong: I'm so impressed that you actually came at it, at this angle and, you know, completely ignored some of these things that we probably would've used as constraints in a prior world. Let's take this one step further. How might we actually put this idea into play? How might we think about it differently? And by even engaging in it and leaning into it and, and demonstrating that this is something that we can continue to iterate on and think through, shows that the idea has some sort of validity.

Linda Tong: You may not actually pursue it at the end of the day, but by not quickly dismissing it, I think is probably the first step. And, and giving people that safety, uh, to come up with these potentially bad ideas and to celebrate them.

Michael Koenig: That takes a lot of patience, right? If say, I came with just a crazy idea for this podcast.

Michael Koenig: Um, I can't think of one right now. If we just talked about like amazing bets that we've placed on sports [00:33:00] teams, right? I don't think anyone would really enjoy it. Well, maybe some, maybe I'm onto something, but we would be almost eating up a lot of time. Right. Almost, almost losing that. But in the context of a team is what I'm hearing, that it's okay because it's the process that matters.

Linda Tong: Absolutely. I think it's a, when teams are coming together to form ideas and then ultimately execute on them, think about those as two different phases. You have this divergence phase where you are diverging and thinking about all the possibilities, and then you're converging on an approach in that divergent phase.

Linda Tong: If you time box yourself in a really limited fashion such that you can't explore ideas and you can't play them out, then you're really gonna limit the kind of ideas that come in. And so I think it's a, not worrying about giving ideas that kind of space, because it's actually the cheapest time to play out those ideas.

Linda Tong: You're literally like ideating on them and talking about them and thinking about it, and imagining a future that is the [00:34:00] cheapest way to test that idea. Once you get to the convergence space and you start throwing resources at it and executing that gets really expensive and you better have had thought that one through.

Linda Tong: And so it's actually a really cheap way to give yourself space to play with that idea versus quickly dismissing it. And I think that's a great way to give people that space to actually think through the mechanics of it, explore why it could work, or why it can't. What are the merits? What are the failures?

Linda Tong: And actually understand what are some of the underlying things that fed into it. So for example, going back to what you said, what if you did a podcast just talking about some of the biggest bets that we've made in sports. People might not like that, but what they might like about it, what this audience might like about it.

Linda Tong: Is the fact that we'd be talking about bets that inherently represent how we think about risk and risk tolerance, and how risk is represented in decisions that we make. So are you making a ton of small bets? I'm probably having a low ev. Or are you making a couple of really big bets that if they hit it's a huge winner and they miss you lose everything?

Linda Tong: Where are you on that risk spectrum? And that [00:35:00] that risk spectrum might be a really interesting topic for this audience. Hmm.

Michael Koenig: That is, I like how you brought that together and made my bad idea actually a good one. Um,

Linda Tong: should we switch to talking about sports bets? Should we,

Michael Koenig: I think so. Well, let's talk about it.

Michael Koenig: As a leader, you control how you react. So when you're in those, let's come up with bad ideas, moments, or let's come up with every idea and celebrate that idea of moments. You can certainly encourage and react in the way that you think will be, you know, most encouraging. What about the rest of the team?

Michael Koenig: What about everyone else in the room?

Linda Tong: I think a big part of it is leadership is an opportunity to demonstrate how you want others to show up. And as a leader, the way I show up typically starts to set the example for others. And you know, where people in the room fail to open up their minds in that space and either don't wanna engage or maybe they [00:36:00] do reflect that kind of activity and they do engage.

Linda Tong: That is a, that's just a team dynamic, right? That's like, did you bring the right people together? Did you level set appropriately and set expectations on what it is that we're trying to do with this time and space? And are we giving everyone space to actually come up with ideas? Because what we wanna celebrate is the ability to think differently about how we solve problems, think outside of the box, and do really, really cheap iteration on this.

Linda Tong: And if people are starting to jump into the wrong phase of where we are as a business, that's where I'll lean in as a leader and say, Hey, I. I get that you don't love this idea, but let's take it one step further. What can you get out of it? What can you learn? What are the merits of it? What are the failures of it?

Linda Tong: But let's talk through it. And it's, it's about continuing to set those expectations on what is it as a group that we're trying to accomplish, and more importantly, what are the expectations of how this conversation should be going? Because oftentimes, people are just probably at different points in that timeline of where we are.

Linda Tong: And I see myself as being the facilitator of that discussion and leading by example and then creating the bounds where people start to step out.

Michael Koenig: So now let's pull [00:37:00] back, because we dove into specific meetings and solving specific problems, pulling back, how do you as a leader, paint the big picture, the big vision for your team, and how do you help them understand their role in achieving it on an ongoing basis?

Michael Koenig: Not just once, but just ongoing.

Linda Tong: It's challenging where. The functions that report into me are like GNA functions and go-to market functions. You know, it's really easy actually to paint that bigger picture and align it to like an RD team because in, in many cases, especially in technology, the vision and the future of a company is inherently tied to your product and your product strategy.

Linda Tong: And so that's usually a really easy conversation to be had when it comes to go to market functions. A lot of it is them taking that vision and making it real and bringing it to customers. It's pretty easy to consume, but for G and A functions, they're like, how is me managing an IT stack at this company unlocking the future of our company strategy?

Linda Tong: And so a lot of that is twofold. [00:38:00] One. Articulating that vision so people understand why we exist as a company. Where we wanna go and what we wanna deliver to our customers is super important, and they may not need to be people who directly contribute to actually writing code and delivering product. But the second part of it is it's understanding what role they do play.

Linda Tong: Because the company isn't just a bunch of engineers and product managers are delivering product and a couple of people selling it and marketing it. A whole company comes together because every function is necessary for business to operate effectively building products by themselves in isolation. You don't get a company selling something by itself.

Linda Tong: You don't get a company running accounting books, you don't get a company. You need all of these pieces and understanding why each piece is important. How it needs to come together to support the company as it starts to transform and change at scale, and creating that empathy across teams is actually what's the most important thing about aligning people to that vision?

Linda Tong: Because everyone needs to see that one, their function is absolutely critical and the success of the business, and more importantly, their [00:39:00] peers need to understand how their functions integrate and operate with each other so that there isn't this sort of, oh, we're the drivers and everybody else's supporting cast.

Linda Tong: It's everybody needs to come together because the recipe to success requires everybody being on this ship, rowing in the same direction and fully aligned. And so it's really empathy about functional alignment.

Michael Koenig: And how do you reinforce that on an ongoing basis? Say someone new to the company starts right.

Michael Koenig: How do you bring them on board? How do you get them involved?

Linda Tong: Yeah, I mean, depending on who that person is, and there's one helping them understand the vision, which every net new employee, it's about making sure onboarding experiences, touch on the most important pieces of what are we doing, what are we here for, what's the mission, and then what is your role in that?

Linda Tong: And so depending on, regardless of what function they're in, understanding how they impact the team that they work on day to day and how the team they work on impacts the company is a really important set of connection that have to [00:40:00] be made in the first, I would call the first 30 days. And with all of the people who come in, a lot of it is continuing to reinforce that message about what does every group do at Webflow for me?

Linda Tong: What does every function do? Why are they important? And we do these regular conversations where we showcase, we have props channels or we have wins channels where we talk about what are some of the highlights and what are the efforts that teams are driving. And we celebrate them on a regular basis so people can see, one, what our teams are doing, but two, how they relate to our goals.

Linda Tong: All of this work that people are doing are tied to things like our OKRs. Our OKRs are tied to our company strategy, and we show how those actually cascade into each other. And so when you start to celebrate those individual efforts that roll into an OK R that roll into our company goals, you can start to see how everything comes together.

Linda Tong: And so we have to do a good job of celebrating every individual effort and every team that actually contributes to that and, and just doing that on a regular basis so people can see it

Michael Koenig: and all the more difficult when you're in a remote [00:41:00] environment. You mentioned having channels in Slack for those props.

Michael Koenig: What are some other ways that you've found that are very conducive to making people feel appreciated?

Linda Tong: For me personally, my, my own style is actually private, one-on-one conversations. I am a, I'm a person that doesn't, I. One that love crowds. And I feel weird giving people public props. I tend to send people private one-off very personalized messages.

Linda Tong: So that's just my own style. I think everyone has their own style, but I definitely take moments every week to sit back and think to myself, what are some awesome things that happen this week that I wanna make sure I recognize in the moment and celebrate so that it doesn't one go unnoticed. Uh, and people don't feel like there isn't that level of gratitude or consideration for the efforts that they put in.

Linda Tong: But two, it also is just a really nice reminder every week of how much progress our teams are making. 'cause people are coming in every weekend, just they're working hard and they're driving things forward. And knowing that [00:42:00] someone is aware and appreciates it is really important. And I do that on a pretty regular basis.

Linda Tong: But in addition to that, we do have a lot of. Part of my job is scaling and operating this business. And so as we get a much larger scale, it becomes impossible to have an eye on everything. And so we do have, what I would say are programs or systems that we've created that can help create some of these positive cycles.

Linda Tong: So we have individual recognition programs where folks can recognize their peers. Managers can do spot bonuses for individuals who are going above and beyond. Our props channel is really public, so any of the company can props anyone else. We also have different wins channels. So for every function, sometimes like we have a sales wins channel, so as different people close deals, we're celebrating and highlighting these things.

Linda Tong: So we've kind of created different motions for different groups tied to the kind of operating rhythms that they have where we can incorporate celebration.

Michael Koenig: Now, how do you keep an eye or stay informed about what's actually happening [00:43:00] on the front lines, those little wins? How do you know what's going on?

Michael Koenig: Uh,

Linda Tong: twofold. One. I still spend a ton of time going through every Slack channel. I like to look at that stuff, and I like to spend time every day feeding through it. I know that's not gonna scale infinitely. I know we're probably gonna reach a breaking point. And then the other part of it is through my leadership team.

Linda Tong: We have a a regular leadership team check in. And as we check in, we always have an allocated time for top of mind to check in on how are your team's doing? What's going on, what are you working on? What's the latest and greatest? Where do you need help? And a lot of times you can start to surface things like these big wins that their teams have had, and we can celebrate each other or send props to folks in the teams.

Linda Tong: But we make sure that we have those regular rhythms so that at least at any given point, you can ask me, what are the functional teams that are reporting to me? What are the top two or three priorities? And I can tell you pretty consistently. One, because those check-ins and then two people are actually quite good [00:44:00] at updating, you know, their OKRs and things like that.

Linda Tong: So if I ever feel like I'm out of the loop, I can usually check in on those systems.

Michael Koenig: You mentioned the word empathy a couple of times. It's thrown around so much. What does that empathy really mean in this context when you're talking about it, when you're thinking about it and applying it to a culture and applying it to your team?

Linda Tong: Gosh, there's so much that goes into that. It's, to me, being an empathetic leader is recognizing two things. One, every person is more than just an employee. I. They have, there's a 360 degree person that you're working with, and they have their work life, and then they have all the other things that make up who they are, and things are spiking or peaking and valleying at different times.

Linda Tong: And so work life might be good, but personal life might be bad or whatever might be happening, but recognizing that that exists, right? My job isn't to manage their lives, but my, my job is to understand that they're more than [00:45:00] just an employee or more than just a colleague. The, the second part of empathy to me is actually understanding that every person in and of themselves, even just as an employee or as a, as a colleague, they are a unique person.

Linda Tong: They have a unique approach, personality perspectives, approach of how they think about problems, preferences of how they engage. And I think it's about creating space for unique individuals to come together and be a part of a team. And so I think about it from both of those angles because a lot of times people are just like, oh, you know, especially in COVID, people are going through a lot, so let's just back off and give them space and be empathetic.

Linda Tong: I think there's understanding that, but I think the second part is creating space for diverse individuals that have really different approaches or ways of thinking and being empathetic to that and creating environments that allow them to be successful. One of the hot topics that I think happened during COVID was people talking a lot more about the quiet revolution.

Linda Tong: 'cause as we moved into remote spaces where you have folks who are [00:46:00] identifying as both introverts and extroverts and how people show up in meetings, how they contribute, are they the type of people who went a meeting with in person, they were always butting in and saying something, and they're people who are quietly sitting around the edges of the table, never saying a word.

Linda Tong: And did that get infinitely worse when we moved to COVID? Are we creating the right spaces for those people to flourish in this new remote working environment? Recognizing those types of differences I think is actually the more important part of empathy at a company level right now, because one, we've seen a lot of changes in how companies operate and how people come together.

Linda Tong: But two, those differences in who people are just their own personal preferences allow some people to be more and less successful in how they collaborate with others and work with others. And what you wanna do is create an environment that allows teams to be highly effective, collaborative, and able to unlock synergistic outcomes.

Linda Tong: So the one plus one is greater than three type of outcomes. Um, and that happens by creating [00:47:00] spaces for individuals to come together, be themselves and work well together with others. So to me, that's actually the area where I focus on when I think about being an empathetic leader. And then the second part is also recognizing if one of my employees comes to me and says, Hey.

Linda Tong: I got a lot of stuff going on at work and I need to step back for a minute. Like, I need, I need help. I'm like, I got you a hundred percent. It happens. And that I think is just being an empathetic human. Um, and I think you need both of those at work.

Michael Koenig: What are some of those spaces look like when you're saying creating spaces, because a lot of us are still remote or hybrid or whatever it may be.

Michael Koenig: What has worked for you? What does that look like?

Linda Tong: It's funny, uh, I think about some of the folks on, on different working groups that I'm on and there are some individuals who, who've talked to me in the background and said, Hey, I don't feel like I can participate in this conversation live. I need space to think about some of these things.

Linda Tong: And where I find the mix of teams not necessarily optimizing for the voices of certain individuals who may not wanna engage in that format, [00:48:00] it's finding alternative methods. So saying, Hey, maybe for this meeting, let's do pre-reads. Let's actually get the information out ahead of time so this person can be prepared to engage or can form their thoughts ahead of the live discussion and not have to engage live if the information's rolling out because of just the way that they think and approach things.

Linda Tong: Or maybe I give them space to ping me in the background and surface idea that I'm happy to put out there, uh, that they might feel uncomfortable saying live. Or maybe it's like, to me, I'm, I'm one of those people who strangely always looks at gallery view on Zoom. So even when people are projecting things, I always like expand to look at gallery view.

Linda Tong: And I, I'm pretty well known for staring at people's reactions and, uh, and facial sort of expressions during conversations. And I'll call people out. I'll say, Hey, it looks like you might wanna say something. And just actually pausing a conversation to unlock space for people to engage, because I do think that the ability for certain voices to be heard and brought to the table is really important and, and how you create this team dynamic.

Michael Koenig: And of course you run the risk though, of putting someone on the spot who doesn't wanna be on the [00:49:00] spot, which I've done before, and it can be unpleasant. But if we're getting back to risk and taking risks, sometimes it's worth it. Getting back to gambling.

Linda Tong: See, it's gonna come back, it's gonna just be

Michael Koenig: the recurring thing.

Michael Koenig: Yeah. The title of this will be Gambling with, with Linda to, I think that'll really drive the downloads in terms of, uh, maintaining focus. How do you decide what to say no to?

Linda Tong: It's really, actually, it's not that hard. It's actually one of the, the hard part about saying no, for me at least, is disappointing people, or, you know, people feeling like I, I disagree with them, or I don't like what they're doing.

Linda Tong: Or, yeah, it, it ultimately comes down to disappointment. It's actually quite easy for me to know what to say no to, because. I usually know what are the most important things that we need to do, and I can, I'm [00:50:00] pretty simple minded. I'm not some complex person with a lot of really great tooling and systems.

Linda Tong: I still do everything in notes. I write all of my notes. Everything for me is written and in my mind there's always a constant stack rank that's going on of what are the most important, impactful things we need to do. And I always apply product management thinking to it, which is what's the level of effort and what's the impact?

Linda Tong: And things that are low level of effort and high impact are like easy top things. The things that I say are when, then I overlay the access level critical for our long range strategy, whether it's short term or long term investments, those things automatically get an extra push. And so my stack rink is always updated in my mind.

Linda Tong: So knowing what to say yes to is actually really easy. It's the saying no to things and disappointing people because either one, something was a top thing and has moved out, or two, I. Something wasn't a top thing and either I or someone else didn't have the courage to shut it down early enough. And so people have put in so much effort on it that by the time you're saying no one, people can be disappointed, but two, they're gonna look at time that's been wasted [00:51:00] and that hurts.

Linda Tong: You know, as an operator that hurts 'cause you're like, Ugh. Even though it's a sun cost fallacy, it still is some cost. And so knowing what to say no to actually is usually the easy part. Having the courage to say no is the hard part and I think it's knowing that when you're, when you're making decisions that you are saying no is actually even harder.

Linda Tong: A lot of people, when they say yes to something, what they don't realize is they're actively saying no to something else and they just don't realize it at that moment because you really are ultimately resource constrained and recognizing in that moment that you have basically said no to something else.

Linda Tong: Figuring out what that is and circling up with that team and letting them know, that's something that I think people miss a lot.

Michael Koenig: Also not realizing that you're saying no. Early in my career, I had something that I worked on for like three months and then in one meeting, like one very quick decision that was all for naught and it was all in the trash.

Michael Koenig: It's so demoralizing. How, how do you catch those sooner than later?

Linda Tong: It's tough, but [00:52:00] it's, there are signals. There's signals that you get pretty early on about things that you are allowing to go down that path of things. Where teams are working on something, they aren't the most important things. You're ultimately gonna probably make the decision to reorient them.

Linda Tong: Or even worse, you're let them just keep going and they're not gonna know that they're not working on something that's critical to the business and it comes out one way or another. It's just a question of are you direct about it or are they gonna find out on their own? And the signals you see are one, are these things where it's like very few people are working on it.

Linda Tong: Are they things that you're actively measuring and checking in on on a regular basis? Are they things that you look at and think to yourself, Hey, this is a big bet, it's gonna pay off really well. I think it'll be impactful for the company if those aren't answered right away. And if you're like, yeah, there's a team running off doing things and I'm not even checking in and I don't think there's a lot of upside, you've basically already said no to it.

Linda Tong: You've just allowed people to run down this path. And at some point, either they're gonna be disappointed when you come back and say, Hey, we're gonna move resources, or we're gonna shift direction, [00:53:00] or, this doesn't really matter. Or, I think a lot of people pray that they're gonna be pleasantly surprised that this something's gonna happen and it's gonna turn into something big and they're like, oh look so lucky.

Linda Tong: That never happens, like maybe once in a million times. But that is not, you know, realistically that is, that is you saying no to something. And when you see those behaviors, when you see very few resources, little attention and no real measurement for impact, you've already said no. Now you need to articulate it.

Michael Koenig: Now, one of the things I haven't made clear in this conversation about your background is that you come from a product background. You were Chief Product Officer at Tap Joy, I believe, product manager at Google. I need to give you the opportunity, it's a great story. I need to give you the opportunity to walk us through the genesis of how a product person lands in an operation role, but also I'm curious about you.

Michael Koenig: You talked about the the biggest impact and least amount of work. How else have you integrated your product, [00:54:00] DNA, into operations?

Linda Tong: Yeah. I still identify as a product person, even though I'm in operations. A big part of it is everything I do, I think about it as a product. It just may not be the ultimate customer facing product, but it is.

Linda Tong: I'm building products internally for our company and I have to think about who I'm building for, what do they need, what are the requirements, what's the most impactful thing I can do for them, and what resources do I have available to do it? But my, my evolution to getting here is quite funny. You know, I was a product person that throughout my whole career, I was a consumer product person working on mobile games, mobile ads, mobile phones, a lot of mobile, like I was a, I'm an Android person for life, and then worked on sports.

Linda Tong: I was at the NFL leading product for them, a huge sports fan. And then I ended up on enterprise products. I was working at AppDynamics, leading an observability suite, and I ended up finding myself in this role where I'm leading this enterprise product and trying to figure out how [00:55:00] to grow this business.

Linda Tong: And one day woke up and was asked to take over as GM and basically the CEO of this company. And I was like, what gives me the ability to take that next step? And they're just like, well, we trust you. We think you can do it. And I'm like, big mistake, but sure, I'll give it a shot. And so I ended up in this role where suddenly I owned everything else, including product.

Linda Tong: And I spent very little time on product at that point. 'cause I was like, man, I have so much, I have to learn so much. I need to understand and so much I need to bring together to make this company successful. And that's when I realized that every function is so important to the success of a business. I understood how everyone plays together.

Linda Tong: I understood how. From a people perspective, the talent that you bring in fundamentally shifts your business. How, from a finance perspective, the way that you're trying to shape your model ultimately influences where you're investing and where you're not, and actually follows some of the same principles I think about from a product lens of where can we get high impact, low effort investments that [00:56:00] are the best invest, you know, best payback for the company from a sales perspective.

Linda Tong: How do we tell these stories and bring this product to life and demonstrate value for our customers? And so I could actually bring that thinking to every function, but more importantly, I could bring every function together to collaborate and, and make a company successful. And at that point, I realized that my product shifted from the product we're building to the company, being my product.

Linda Tong: As a gm, you're a product person, and your product is the company. And as I shifted into operations, it's very much the same thinking. My job is to build a scalable company, a company that, uh, can bring on more people, can actually build towards our mission, deliver value for our customers, and build world class organizations that can scale with this business and build new organizations as we need them.

Linda Tong: And so that's a lot of the, the product thinking and how it's evolved. And then from a day-to-day perspective as COO, I've had to think about things like, you know, how do we build up, especially at Webflow, we're, we're smaller, right? We're a hundred ish people. Uh, so we're still [00:57:00] in this fund growth phase, but building up everything from.

Linda Tong: Actually our OKR framework to our annual planning framework to thinking about opening up new m and a pipelines and building out a corp dev function. Every single one of these things I've thought about from a product perspective of what's the level of effort, what does it take to build these up? What's the impact of the business?

Linda Tong: So what's the right time to make this investment? And what are the kinds of outcomes that I think it'll drive to the business if I do it well? And then where am I gonna place my resources to place those bets? And where am I gonna spend my time for me personally, where, what are my top three items to invest in?

Linda Tong: And so it's always followed a very similar thinking from a product perspective. It's just the product is isn't the traditional product that we all think of.

Michael Koenig: Do you ever get the itch to hop back into the traditional product that we think of?

Linda Tong: I, I'm deeply passionate about it. I mean, a big part of why I'm at Webflow is as a product person, the web thing I would say is probably my downfall.

Linda Tong: Or like my chip on my shoulder is. [00:58:00] I'm a non-technical product person, right? I'm a product person that came from an econ background. I studied econ and math. My senior thesis was on rewriting the Medicare Act of 1965. That doesn't scream engineer to you. And so my biggest frustration as a product person was I would think about what are the problems I wanna solve?

Linda Tong: What do I want us to build and how do we build it? And I dream up these big ideas and work with designers and work with engineers, and everything I dreamt of versus what was built is never the same. That's just the reality of it. And I used to always think if I were an engineer, I could just build it differently.

Linda Tong: I would just build it my I, I would. I had that vision, I could just build it. And so that ship on my shoulder has always remained. And with Webflow, we create a visual platform that allows you to extract code. And actually build websites without actually having a code. And so it starts to connect designers and frankly, the technology that was once sort of removed from their access point to allowing them to create their [00:59:00] visions with web flow's visual editor without having a code.

Linda Tong: And it takes a whole step out of it and it really scratches that itch of mine. And so I, I don't necessarily need to be a product person again, but I love the product that we're building and I love making web flow more successful because it's, I think it's addressing that pain point of mine of like, how do we allow more people to innovate at scale and take their visions and turn them into our reality, even if they don't have the entire technical background required to build it?

Michael Koenig: So I'm former automatic from way, way back when, and automatic is WordPress. And for me, I love Webflow. I think it's brilliant. And I remember the first time that I used it because I was so used to putting together a WordPress site, but then having to go in and tweak the HTML and the CSS and I'm like, you know, I'm, I'm not a, an engineer minded person.

Michael Koenig: I mean, I know how to do it. It's just not done well. And then I remember Webflow and I was like, okay, this is really cool. And WordPress, you might [01:00:00] have, uh, might have some competition here finally, but, uh, yeah, I, I love the product. Now you saw me dive off screen for just a second and I wasn't being rude.

Michael Koenig: It was because I now remembered that you are a mobile phone addict and I wanted to share with you. My mobile phone collection. For those of you listening to this, I'm currently holding up, I don't know, must be 15 different phones in a different stack. All of these are Android, by the way. Do you have a favorite Android?

Linda Tong: I mean, I have to go OG the T-Mobile G one with the slide up and the keyboard.

Michael Koenig: Oh yes.

Linda Tong: The slide mechanism was such a beautiful gesture.

Michael Koenig: Yeah, it switched. Yeah. And, and you could just flick. It was like spring action. Oh good. I know exactly which one you're talking about. That's amazing. I need one of them then, because I don't have that one anymore.

Michael Koenig: What about, and, and we're totally nerding out on smartphones, so people are gonna completely tune out Now they're like, oh, this, this is, boy did this conversation. Go [01:01:00] south for me. Old school Nexus Ox Yes. Was such a great phone and I wish they stuck with it anyways. I, I

Linda Tong: guess, I dunno if you remember the Nexus one, it had this small little, uh, light up scroll ball, and so it was like, it was a single flat design.

Linda Tong: And then instead of like. Instead of like a wheel or something. It was a tiny little ball and it lit up and you would like move the ball around. It was kind of like, um, old school gaming consoles. It was just like a ball to move around the screen. It was just beautiful. I loved it. It wasn't, it didn't have great ergonomics.

Linda Tong: It like not that useful. You were better just like dealing with a touchscreen, but I just thought it was so fun.

Michael Koenig: So, because we're talking about phones and then we will come back to this conversation, but now we're, we're scratching a mutual itch that we love. What is it about phones? What that you're just so enthused about.

Linda Tong: I think phones are really cool in that, I mean, we talk about AI right now, right? It's like AI is the hottest thing and they're like, [01:02:00] yeah, AI can be your personal assistant. And I'm like. Phones are your personal assistant. Phones are your, everything. Everything you need can come in a phone and it can come with you wherever you're going.

Linda Tong: Um, and it can carry whatever you want. It's such a small form factor with such powerful CPU and ram. You can literally do everything you would do on a laptop now, on a phone outside of really high powered like gaming and a lot of, uh, visual editing, things like that. But it is, it's getting there. And. To me for a form factor like that, to be that powerful, to go be on the go with you, it's like having a superpower that just sits in your pocket.

Linda Tong: So I love that about it. I think the other thing about it that I've always wanted unlock, and this actually goes back to a previous company called Nextbit that I was at. We were a bunch of X Android folks that came together with this vision that the hardware of a phone should be, frankly kind of just like whatever.

Linda Tong: And the key is actually the operating system being truly a cloud operating system, such that as long as the hardware has all the components you need, you should be [01:03:00] able to go from any physical device, device and authenticate, whether it's with biometrics or with a password or with an account. But you should be able to authenticate and bring down all of your apps, all of your, all of your content, all your data, and you could inter interact with any sort of dumb piece of glass.

Linda Tong: Right. I could go to an airport and interact with a kiosk and it would be like, oh, hey, Linda. And I would pull up my things. I could just pick up a phone in a store, move all every, all of my apps, all of my states on that device. I like the idea of buying a new phone still is kind of painful. It shouldn't be.

Linda Tong: It literally your entire OS should live in the cloud and then it should come down to you by different form factor based off of application. And I still think that that is the future. I think we're, I think we still have a ways to go, but I really believe in, in truly like existing, within a cloud environment, and then hardware being a touch point in which you access that data.

Michael Koenig: Now you've got me thinking about just latency and high-speed connections. Okay. Getting away from shared passions and schmoozing and getting back to why people actually [01:04:00] listen to this podcast. Uh,

Michael Koenig: so getting back to AppDynamics, you came in and your mandate was to create an innovation line. We've talked about empathy, we've talked about psychological safety, we've talked about celebrating bad ideas. I think we all want to have an innovation lab one. How do you go about doing that? What, when you first got there, you were like, okay, we're gonna create an innovation lab.

Michael Koenig: Now what?

Linda Tong: Oh my gosh. It was hilarious. 'cause a lot of people were like, how did you get this kind of a boondoggle job way to get a very unclear, awesome sounding job? How exactly are you gonna do this? And I was given a meaningful budget, and I think people were just waiting to see, one, they're waiting for me to fail, but two, they're waiting to see what crazy ideas was, was I gonna come up with?

Linda Tong: And I went back to that thesis of build relationships, bring people [01:05:00] together that don't come together on a regular basis, create a space for them to come together and then actually create a mindset shift where when they come together, they think differently. And so actually my first, my first deed with that budget that I got was actually coordinating off a space within our physical, like, you know, this pre pandemic.

Linda Tong: So coordinating off a space in our office, literally putting up different wallpaper, a completely different look and feel. I closed off the space, we put couches in there, we put up a neon sign. We had bookshelves with different books. So just open up your mind. We brought in building blocks and Legos and toys, but it was a space that when you walked into it felt completely different.

Linda Tong: It was wildly off from every other space inside the building. And we said, Hey, when you come into the innovation lab, we literally called it the innovation lab. When you come into this lab, you come here to. Think differently. You come here to connect with people and we hosted everything from happy hours to working with teams when they did offsites to bringing them into the [01:06:00] lab and helping them to work through problems.

Linda Tong: And then we also hosted hackathons and different events and we would bring people through the lab and we would brand everything we did with, with the innovation lab. So it intentionally set a different mindset when people started to engage with us and we, we created these little boxes. Think about it as like lab in a box.

Linda Tong: That had toys and prompts and games such that before you even got started, they would prompt you to think differently. So they'd prompt you to play games or start to think about crazy ideas before you even got into solving something so that you have a mindset shift before your team even got started on problem solving.

Linda Tong: But that was a big part of it. And through that program, one, we ran the first company wide hackathon and the ideas were off the wall. We had some people who were literally building machines to bake meatballs. It, it was all over the place, but it, what it did was it brought people together from different functions.

Linda Tong: 'cause we said, Hey, one of the rules, the constraints of this hackathon is you have to work with at least two other [01:07:00] people who are different functional groups than yours. So if you can't have three engineers, you have to go through different functional groups. We also said that for the groups, you got extra points if you met, met new people that you've never worked with, you got even more points if your idea was.

Linda Tong: Basically not obvious. So we said, Hey, come solve these problems. And if people came back with completely off the wall ideas, we gave them extra points, and then we helped facilitate sessions inside of the lab that as people did them, they essentially got more and more exposure, more and more support. And so a lot of our core theories of building relationships and different mindsets and literally changing your space could really come through in that hackathon and through all the other activities that we ran.

Linda Tong: And so that was the first phase of building an innovation lab, literally having a lab.

Michael Koenig: Linda, thanks so much. Uh, my time for my favorite question. We've all had those crazy moments when we're in the seat and something wild pops up and we're just like, wow, I never thought I'd see that. Do you have one you can share [01:08:00] with us?

Linda Tong: Totally. Uh, besides the fact that the past few years have just been every single day is like that with ai, one very real prominent thing. Um, you know, for, for those who are in Silicon Valley. Uh, or maybe actually not even Silicon Valley, but bank in Silicon Valley. Uh, you know, a couple years ago SVB had that bank crisis and, you know, we had some exposure there, and you just don't expect these things to happen.

Linda Tong: You, like, you don't expect to suddenly question like, oh my gosh, like, what's gonna happen with the money that we're like, that's in the bank? And, you know, we like many other companies, you know, we had payroll the following week and we had to think about how do we make sure that we can pay our employees.

Linda Tong: And, uh, it was probably the craziest, you know, it happened on a Thursday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Like, I don't think I slept a wink. Um, and I was trying to figure out all the logistics. And you learn that if you don't make payroll, like. You actually have to furlough your employees otherwise, like, you know, you can like actually be in very real trouble.[01:09:00]

Linda Tong: Um, and so you learn all these things that you don't even think you ever needed to know. Um, and, you know, luckily everything worked out great in the end. And like, what was most exciting about that time is, you know, you never want a crisis. You never wanna have one of these crises happened to you at a company.

Linda Tong: But, um, it was also one of my brightest moments because I saw our whole company come together. Like people didn't panic. Like we rallied, we communicated, we supported each other. We like problem solved together. So many people dropped everything they were doing that weekend so that we can come together and just make sure we could stabilize and like, you know, reduce any risk.

Linda Tong: And ultimately everything worked on the end. And if you just fast forward and skip that whole week, I, nothing would be different. But like those four days, they age you so much. Um, and it was just, yeah, it, it's one of those things that like one day I'll be talking to like kids, you know, four or five generations away, I'll be like, ah, a long time ago there's a bank crisis.

Linda Tong: Um. But that was my day. Absolutely. Wild. Yeah, exactly. And they're like, what? Ai?

Michael Koenig: You're making it sound like the 1930s like it was.

Linda Tong: Exactly. Was it the depression? Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Koenig: Oh, that's wild. That's wild. Linda, thanks so much for, for joining me. This has been one of my favorite conversations, but don't tell my other guests about it.

Linda Tong: Of course not.

Michael Koenig: Of course not. All right, and thank you all to listening to between two COOs. Linda, where can everyone go to keep up with you?

Linda Tong: Uh, they can find me on Twitter at yay lt, um, YAY lt, or uh, check me out on LinkedIn,

Michael Koenig: Y-A-Y-L-T. So fits your personality. I love it. Alright, well thank you so much Linda, and thank you all.

Michael Koenig: Tune in next time for our next COO chat. Might be with a CEO you never know here. And go to between two coos.com for more and please go to your podcast platform of choice and rate this podcast so other people can learn as much and hear from amazing operators like [01:11:00] Linda. Thanks for listening. Tune in next time and until then, so long.

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