Erika Lust

Erika Lust Films is a 20 year old adult entertainment production studio, founded by the famous award winning director, Erika Lust. Four years ago, the founders decided to launch their own streaming service to monetize a consumer who they believed was willing to pay more for the ethical sexpositive entertainment they produced. And they were right.

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From producing and selling DVD’s at sexshops, they needed to display their work in a different setting, and their own streaming service gave them just that. The company underwent massive change, revenues grew - and continue to grow 20% MoM, and inevitably turned into a tech company. A very special kind of tech company. First, it had to grow through branding and running a smooth leadgen business, as adult sites are forbidden from doing paid ads. Second, only a few payment providers will work with them, so optimizing the payments funnel and bundling its offering well is key to the top line of the company.

 

As the company's first technical hire, we helped them define and hire a rock star head of product that would lead the product vision for the next few years.

 

Definition

 

Software product managers can come from one of three backgrounds: 

1. Engineering

2. Business

3. Design

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We believe that a company's mission and value proposition pretty much define which problem they are solving, at least for the next 2-5 years. That problem needs to have a good fit with the company's product leader.

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In the case of Erika Lust, it was all about traction and growth of a specific type of user who is paying for a service which is otherwise free on the internet. That's why we  focused on product people with strong consumer software backgrounds, and with a very analytical approach to understanding user behavior and traffic.

 

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The process

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We are big fans of the ghSMART method for hiring (book summary), beautifully summarized by the book “Who - A method for hiring”. Here’s a link to our written summary of it. It can get as fancy as you like, but for this specific case we ran three interviews: 

1. Screener - 15 minute, quick chat to understand motivations.

2. Who interview - 1.5 hour in depth interview to get to know how the candidate got to this call. 

3. Product case - 2 hour discussion of a case that the candidate can prepare as homework during a couple of weeks.

 

Our key contribution here was writing our product case that would highlight the technical, business and leadership skills we were looking for.

 

Saying no

 

Product talent is very hard to find, and very subjective to evaluate. That's why it's very tempting to say yes to the first candidate who ticks a couple of boxes during the screener interview. Especially for companies hiring their first product person. Just like in a product job, it's important to say no a lot.

 

After three candidates making it to the final stage, Erika Lust management was ready to welcome Fredi to the team. 12 months after the hire, we are happy to hear he is among the most relevant contributors to the growth of the company, and the organization has transitioned from a producer only studio to a category winner in their sector.