Data Dash

I know that you're very diligent about feedback on products. Anytime you develop anything new, why is that so critical? And what is the best way to go about gathering feedback? For example, at what points should you do it? How often should you do it?

So, one thing about Facebook with every product had a group that's called X feedback. So marketplace feedback, payments feedback. And first and foremost, the people who are your colleagues are using your products and you should listen. Because they're most incentive they're working there. And they're giving you information. But beyond that, you're actually looking at data to get feedback on your product. And so that data is also feedback that you need to take into account. But I actually find gathering feedback is talk to five people who use the product and they can tell you more than you can ever imagine. Talk to five people who don't work in tech, let's ask five people what it is about our product that they love and what frustrates them. And you'll find so much incredible feedback. I actually participate in a number of feedback groups for Ancestry and for other areas in our products, so DNA, where I just want to read what people are saying, and it helps me get a sense of what passionate users are telling about our product, what they're concerned about.

So when you participate in these feedback groups, at Ancestry, are they in person or they virtual? Are you actually there talking to people face to face?

Actually a lot of these groups are on Facebook. There's a number of Ancestry feedback groups, user groups, where people teach each other how to use our product. And I often lurk in these groups sometimes participate, but I learn so much about the product, about how people use it, what they love, what's frustrating. And is really fascinating to see users help each other. But also what's confusing because someone new will come and they say, hey, I can't figure out X. And five people will say, oh, we ran into that when we first started, here's how you get around it. And that's feedback for us to really think about how we can go about improving our product and making it better every day.