AllTrails CPO: Ivan Selin

Ivan, it's good to see you. We had some fascinating conversation already. You have been working in the best product companies out there. I'm super excited to hear a number of advices that you have around products. I've seen from your past experience, companies like Motorola, Continental, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, and now as Chief Product Officer of AllTrails. Before we jump there, what's your favorite trail?

My favorite trail. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here as well. My favorite place to explore the outdoors is by far Lake Tahoe. I still remember the first time I visited Lake Tahoe a few years ago.

Did you go during the winter or the summer?

I went during the shoulder season, around October or November. I remember zigzagging through the mountains, trying not to get car sick, and then suddenly, Lake Tahoe opens up in all its glory. It's a place we keep going back to and just love.

Let's speak about what you have done before AllTrails that led you to the company.

I've been part of companies like Motorola, Apple, Uber, Airbnb. I've always been intentional about the companies I pick, ensuring I love both the mission and the product, and of course, the people there. I've been lucky to work at companies at the intersection of technology and the real world. AllTrails is similar, helping people connect with nature using technology.

Can we get some of your learnings from these companies?

Every company is different. Apple and Airbnb are similar in their product philosophy, having focused roadmaps and a shared company vision. Companies like Uber and Facebook focus on data and experimentation. At AllTrails, we integrate both approaches, starting with the vision of connecting people with the outdoors and translating that into a product strategy.

How did you hear about the AllTrails opportunity? Did someone reach out to you?

Yes, Ron, our CEO at the time, reached out to me. It's been a theme in my career; companies have reached out to me. I was a user of AllTrails before joining and loved their product and mission. I was looking for a company in the sweet spot between big companies and startups, and AllTrails fit that perfectly.

What did your first three months look like at AllTrails?

I spent time absorbing information, listening, and having conversations. I'm a big believer in the workshop culture, where ideas are workshopped with different team members. The first three months were about listening, learning, and understanding how the company operates.

What changes happened in the product after you joined AllTrails?

I give a lot of credit to the team for the product that was already there. The discovery experience was well designed. We started thinking about frequency of use and engagement, giving people more reasons to use our product. Last summer, we had the biggest upgrades in the past 10 years, including a redesign of our homepage and trail detail pages.

You mentioned a big update. Why the focus strategy versus experimentation?

We're somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. We believe in the benefit of a launch approach but also want to move fast and improve our products regularly. We delivered hundreds of features throughout the year, some smaller, some bigger, but all part of a cohesive story.

Can we speak about the organization structure? How do you structure the teams?

My philosophy is smaller, flatter teams. At AllTrails, we have about 200 people, with the product team being around 30. Smaller teams lead to having more senior people who can take on bigger initiatives independently. We organize teams around user journey phases and product surfaces, ensuring clear responsibilities.

How far out do you plan, and how do you keep increasing the vision of the company?

We have both long-term and short-term planning. Long-term planning is more high-level, focusing on the company's vision. Short-term planning involves detailed product roadmaps. We use a now-next-later planning process, continuously evaluating and defining future projects.

You mentioned SEO. What's the approach when it comes to SEO?

SEO is a big channel for us to get in front of more users. It starts with our trail pages and content, both generated internally and user-generated. User-generated content, like photos and reviews, is the secret sauce of our product.

How do you keep encouraging users to generate content?

It's easier for our product because people feel compelled to share their experiences. We've redesigned our review flow to make it simpler and encourage more detailed feedback.

What are your thoughts on AI and its impact on SEO?

Our approach to AI is intentional, focusing on building useful features. We had a partnership with OpenAI, introducing our AllTrails plugin. We also use AI for features like PhotoTour and review summaries. The SEO landscape is changing, and we're excited to be part of it.

What's the best way to compete? Do you focus on competitors or your own path?

It depends on the company and its stage. For AllTrails, the only competition we're worried about is AllTrails two or three years from now. We're focused on building value for our community and making the outdoors more accessible.

What makes a good product?

It's about ease of use and leaving an impression. A product should be useful, beautiful, and crafted with attention to detail. We take inspiration from companies like Apple and Airbnb.

What makes a good company culture?

It's about finding people who are skilled, hungry, and low ego. We look for people who understand our mission and can imagine what it means to work on our products. We focus on building features that align with our health and wellness app philosophy.

It's interesting. From your perspective, it sounds like you are looking for ways for the technology to be removed instead of being added. How do we get people outside and just use less technology, making it easy for the technology to disappear?

We're very cognizant and intentional about this tension. Don't get me wrong, technology has been helpful to both get people outside and ensure they have the right information when they're outdoors. We want to make sure people don't get lost and have information on what to expect on a particular trail or route. We're thinking about ways to improve that even further and elevate the user experience.

For example, how can we tell people more about the world around them when they're outside? Not just through navigation and knowing where to go, but learning more about places around the trail, points of interest, flora, and fauna. To me, that's an example of value-add technology when you're outdoors. We have many more exciting ideas in store around that too. It's a tension, and it's important for us to think about the value we bring and ensure we don't build features that just keep people on the screen for the sake of getting more screen time.

I have two last questions. The first one is, do you have any mental models that you're using for decision-making?

Oh, mental models for decision-making. It's a good question. I don't know if there's one particular framework I use, but maybe I can tell you a little about how I approach decision-making in general. To me, it starts with listening and collecting information. It's listening to other experts, whether within the company or outside. It's about collecting information through user research and data that we have at our disposal based on how people use the product today.

Then, forming a point of view. I think it's important to have a strong point of view, loosely held. It's important to have an opinion to start and then evolve that opinion based on different inputs and feedback from others. I tend to start with a point of view, and the decision we make often evolves and becomes different. So yeah, that's the process. Intuition is really important to rely on.

For the last one, I wanted to ask you, say we go 100 years into the future, what does hiking look like? What does the outdoors look like?

Fascinating. I hope that hiking and the outdoors don't look as different as they do today, to be honest. One of the goals of AllTrails is to connect as many people as possible with the outdoors so they can share the love we have internally at AllTrails and our community has for the outdoors. For many people, nature and the outdoors are a bit of a black box. If something is unknown, you don't necessarily know whether you should care about it.

The more people experience the outdoors, the more they care about nature. Hopefully, that leads to the outdoors, hiking, and outdoor exploration being just as awesome as it is today, a hundred years from now. In terms of technology, a hundred years is a long time, but I would expect and hope for a product like AllTrails to become like a park ranger in your pocket, your best friend who knows everything about the outdoors and can help you have a better experience and be more prepared for your adventures, even beyond what we think is possible today.

Ivan, that's been a fascinating conversation.

Yeah, thank you so much. Nice to meet you.