Product Strategy 10/10 Answer: What should Zillow do next?
I answer a sample product strategy question so you can see the product strategy framework in action, and understand exactly how to elevate your answers.
What should Zillow do next?
Get the lay of the land:
Before you jump into all the possible things Zillow could or should do, take a moment to articulate the lay of the land and have a shared understanding with your interviewer.
About Zillow:
Zillow is a product built to simplify the home buying/selling process. It aims to be the one-stop shop for all buying/selling needs for existing and new homeowners.
About the Industry
The real estate market has been booming in the last few years, with little signal of a slow down. Even the pandemic did not impact action in the market; in fact, many areas saw an increase in activity and prices during the pandemic.
Macro trends impacting the industry/company:
With people staying at home most of the time, remodeling/home improvement industry grew manifold. With remote working becoming increasingly accepted and widespread, there is a ton of buying activity in locations that weren’t that popular before (e.g., Austin, the midwest, Hawaii, etc.) and selling activity in otherwise expensive, high-demand areas like the Bay area and Seattle.
Supply chain issues due to the war and limited imports/exports led to increased construction costs. This led to the soaring home prices that tested the market’s appetite to spend on houses.
If the company/product in question is a marketplace, talk about all the players in the ecosystem:
Zillow operates in an ecosystem with all of the below players:
Home buyers/sellers
Banks/Lenders
Realtors
Insurance companies
Home builders/remodelers
Interior designers/stagers/etc
Property Management Companies
And Zillow has invested in areas/products that solve pain points for home buyers/sellers.
Then move on to discussing how the company monetizes today:
Zillow makes money by 1. ads placed on Zillow by sellers/property management companies/realtors and 2. Commission on selling homes sold by Zillow realtors.
And finally, touch upon the competitive landscape for the product/company:
Zillow competes with Redfin, which has very similar features and is mostly neck to neck in terms of features/usability/etc. Another prominent player is Compass, which has focussed its energy on the realtor market and solving use cases for them but is now moving into the consumer space.
You have now established a shared understanding of the industry and the company with the interviewer. Take a moment to conduct a detailed SWOT analysis. Use this time to brainstorm with your interviewer and make it interactive. It should be easy to do so if you did a good job setting the lay of the land.