Shishir Mehrotra
Co-founder and CEO of Coda, a document platform that combines the flexibility of documents with the power of applications. Before Coda he spent six years at Google as VP of Product and Engineering for YouTube, and six years at Microsoft. He sits on the board of directors at Spotify.
Background
- Coda — co-founder and CEO; named the company Coda as a deliberate signal that it is a doc-first product (“Coda” is “a doc” backwards)
- YouTube (Google) — VP of Product, Engineering and Design; led the team through YouTube’s transformation from Google’s perceived “bad acquisition” to a global platform; oversaw the consistency-over-comprehensiveness strategic shift and the decision to reclaim the YouTube iOS app from Apple
- Microsoft — six years in product roles
- Spotify — board of directors; relationship originated through shared interest in bundling theory with Daniel Ek
Frameworks and concepts
- Eigenquestions — the question that, when answered, resolves the most subsequent questions; named after eigenvectors in linear algebra; developed at YouTube during strategic planning discussions
- PSHE (Problem → Solution → How → Execution) — a talent-evaluation and levelling framework developed at Google under Larry Page’s product-unit restructure; maps seniority to the level of autonomy in the P→S→H→E stack
- Black Loop / Blue Loop — Coda’s two-loop growth model; the Black Loop mirrors document-sharing virality; the Blue Loop mirrors YouTube creator publishing, enabling niche communities to discover Coda through published docs
Writing and public work
Prolific writer on topics including bundling theory (Four Mitzvot Bundling), eigenquestions, and decision-making. Writing the book Rituals of Great Teams, based on 1,000+ interviews and a dinner series exploring how named, templated rituals express and transmit organisational culture.