Building Across Every Platform Shift - Google, Oculus VR and Beyond | Robert Hamilton

Firstly, welcome to Season 3, and thank you to all my listeners! Please follow and rate the show so I can keep bringing on incredible Product leaders on the podcast! Robert Hamilton has been building products since before the Web existed. He founded the world's first SMS search and shopping company in 1999, spent 8 years at Google shipping the Google Mobile App, Voice Search, and Nexus hardware, and helped build the Oculus VR platform before anyone had figured out headset retention. He now helps and coaches PMs and product leaders full-time to accelerate their careers. In this episode, we cover: What it was like building Scan Mobile in 1999, raising $10M, and learning that being early pays the same as being wrong How Google approached app distribution before app stores existed, and what that bet taught the team about building for the future The real challenge of VR retention and why getting someone to put something on their head is harder than it sounds What keeps pulling Robert toward the frontier rather than the established thing Why the biggest barrier holding PMs back has nothing to do with skills or AI tools His framework for PMs at every stage: increase clarity and drive progress A conversation for PMs who want to think differently about building, navigating platform shifts, and understanding themselves before they try to understand the technology. You can find out more about Robert's current work here.