How Michelle Parsons scales products and purpose, from Spotify to Lex
How do you reinvent a dating app into a vibrant social network for the queer community—and grow it globally without a marketing budget? Why do even the most successful product teams still sometimes forget to listen to their users?
In this episode of EUROPE BUILDS, live from the Doers Summit in Athens, we sit down with Michelle Parsons, Chief Product Officer of Lex. A former product leader at Netflix, Spotify, Kayak, and Hinge, Michelle shares hard-earned lessons from scaling some of the world’s most beloved platforms. We discuss Lex’s pivot from dating to community, how to nurture word-of-mouth growth, how to adapt products to new cultures, and why customer obsession and fast experimentation are key to sustainable innovation. Michelle also opens up about designing with safety and privacy for marginalized users—and how a science teacher from Texas ended up shaping the future of consumer tech.
If you want to build better, listen deeper, and lead with impact—this one’s for you.
