“and then I went to go work at Google ventures.”
Google Ventures
By Google
2 recommend/use · 4 sourced episodes
Every sourced reference
Short attributed excerpts only. Timestamps are approximate.
“Michael has been a ux researcher at Google Ventures for almost 15 years”
“brought then to uh GV to Google Ventures when I joined in 2010”
“we developed the design Sprint at Google Ventures”
“I was a partner at at Google Ventures at GV”
“he was even a VC at Google Ventures for a time”
Related frameworks
Comically-Narrow Bullseye Definition (Inclusion / Exclusion / Triggers)
Narrow your target to ~seven concrete attributes across three buckets so everyone agrees these people will say yes
Design Your Day (Calendar as Canvas + Groundhog Day Iteration)
Draw the day you want on the calendar, run it, see what actually happened, adjust, repeat
Guilty-Pleasure Career Bet
Find the thing you feel guilty getting paid for, do the hell out of it with intensity, and take non-linear risks.
Humble Inquiry Interview Mode
Interview to learn, not to sell — lower your status, smile, and weight past behavior over stated intent
Laser Mode: Engineering Speed Bumps Against Distraction
Willpower never wins. Move the candy further away than the sandwich.
Magic Lenses
Evaluate competing implementation paths by plotting each through the eyes of the advisers you wish you had
Make Time: Highlight, Laser, Energize, Reflect
A daily four-step loop that changes your defaults instead of making you faster at the wrong things
Multi-Prototype Comparison Testing
Show three distinct concepts instead of iterating one, so users can compare and you avoid over-commitment
North Star Exploration
Turn aimless tech-tinkering into learning by chasing an arbitrary-but-real goal and being stubborn about reaching it.
Reflect: The Daily Experiment Loop
Treat each day as an experiment you ran, not a gravestone of success or failure
Reset Expectations + Slow Your Inbox
Announce a slower response cadence with a 'because', then actually slow the hamster wheel
The Bullseye Customer Sprint (5 + 3 in 1)
Interview five hand-picked customers against three prototypes in one team-watched day to learn who to build for
The Daily Highlight
Pick the one thing you want to name as today's highlight, size it to 60-90 minutes, write it down
The Design Sprint Scorecard
Break your founding hypothesis into rows and grade each one red/yellow/green after head-to-head customer tests
The Differentiation 2x2 (Escape Loserville)
Plot two customer-facing differentiators you can prove and own the top-right; the other three quadrants are Loserville
The Five-Day Design Sprint
Go from zero to a tested prototype in five days — decide with customer reactions, not hunches
The Foundation Sprint
A 10-hour, 3-phase team sprint that turns a vague startup idea into one testable founding hypothesis
The Founding Hypothesis (Mad Libs Strategy Sentence)
Compress your entire startup strategy into one testable fill-in-the-blank sentence — then go prove it
The Love-Hate Disruption Test
Gauge whether an idea is truly disruptive by how polarized the reactions are, not how positive.
The Team Watch Party
Whole team watches interviews live, predicts first and debriefs after, replacing the research report with instant alignment
User-Value Thermodynamics
Users are lazy; adoption only happens when total value delivered exceeds total effort spent, ideally by 10x.
What-If Before Why-Not
Evaluate a disruptive idea by imagining its upside first, then treat the objections as your build list.
Work Alone Together (Note-and-Vote)
Replace group brainstorms with silent individual idea generation, a quiet vote, and one designated decider
People in these episodes
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