Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Ethan Evans 2.0 · Jan 14, 2024
Key learnings- Do your current job well first; you can't grow your career while your manager wishes you were different about your performance.
- Ask your manager directly how you can help them, then do what they ask even when the work is unglamorous.
- Once trust exists, tell your manager your specific career goal and ask what they need that would also advance you; managers help…
Lenny’s Podcast121 min
Sam Schillace · Jan 11, 2024
Key learnings- Treat 'why not' objections as signals to examine, and answer them with 'what if' questions about how far an idea could go if it…
- Judge disruption by polarization: if people either love or hate something, it is more likely disruptive than something met with…
- Make experiments cheap and fast so you can test ideas quickly, since you will almost always be wrong about the product until you…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Will Larson · Jan 7, 2024
Key learnings- Treat engineers as capable adults by giving them hard problems and accountability, which lets them grow into senior leadership…
- Build simple stock-and-flow models of processes like hiring pipelines, then compare them against historical data to find where…
- Write your engineering strategy down, even imperfectly; an unwritten strategy cannot be debugged or improved, and every function…
Lenny’s Podcast91 min
Judd Antin · Jan 4, 2024
Key learnings- Much research sits in a 'middle range' of questions that are interesting but rarely drive business decisions; push for macro…
- Integrate researchers from the beginning of product processes rather than calling them in at the end as a service function; their…
- Watch for 'user-centered performance': late-stage requests to validate assumptions or check boxes that signal customer obsession…
Lenny’s Podcast122 min
Nir Eyal · Dec 29, 2023
Key learnings- Distraction is mostly driven by internal discomfort such as boredom, anxiety, or fatigue rather than external pings, so identify…
- Use the 10-minute rule: when tempted to drift, set a 10-minute timer, return to the task or ride out the urge, and treat it as…
- Replace to-do lists with a calendar: time-box traction activities (work, family, health, rest) in advance so anything outside…
Lenny’s Podcast128 min
Sarah Tavel · Dec 27, 2023
Key learnings- Pick one core action that defines an engaged user and track it as your North Star, rather than vanity metrics like MAUs or…
- Build the product so it gets better the more it is used and users have more to lose by leaving, which drives retention.
- Design network effects and re-engagement loops so that each user's activity pulls in and re-activates others without extra effort.
Lenny’s Podcast120 min
Christian Idiodi · Dec 21, 2023
Key learnings- Earn trust as a PM by becoming the most knowledgeable person on customers, data and the business, and by asking experts to teach…
- Frame PM success as earning a 'certificate of appreciation' from customers: revenue, engagement, loyalty, or referrals.
- Recognize that value is the hardest and most overlooked risk; test whether customers will actually buy, choose, and use the…
Lenny’s Podcast150 min
Jason Fried · Dec 17, 2023
Key learnings- Software businesses have very low physical costs, so bootstrapping can be practical; treat cash flow and profit as the core skill…
- Venture-scale is an outlier path; most viable businesses sit in the large space between small and unicorn, so consider whether…
- Keep teams small and products simple; Fried argues constraints and a single product offering prevent the complexity that comes…
Lenny’s Podcast142 min
Matthew Dicks · Dec 15, 2023
Key learnings- Build every story around one five-second moment of transformation or realization, and make the rest of the story context that…
- Start stories as close to the end as possible, because the ending moment determines what you need to say and where to begin.
- Apply the dinner test: tell stories the way you would at a dinner table, only slightly elevated, without performance tricks like…
Lenny’s Podcast108 min
Kim Scott · Dec 10, 2023
Key learnings- Radical candor means caring personally while challenging directly; missing the first yields obnoxious aggression, missing the…
- Don't ask 'Do you have any feedback for me?'; instead ask a specific question like 'What could I do or stop doing that would make…
- Give feedback immediately, in person or by phone rather than text or Slack, and use context, observation, result, next step…
Lenny’s Podcast89 min
Anuj Rathi · Dec 7, 2023
Key learnings- Design onboarding for the next-state user, treating new users as lazy, vain, and selfish, and carry the same value proposition…
- Pick one clear value proposition and follow it through the full journey instead of presenting everything the product does at once…
- Use working backwards PR FAQs not just for customer value but to align GTM, pricing, legal, and engineering timelines, and to…
Lenny’s Podcast125 min
Ebi Atawodi · Dec 3, 2023
Key learnings- A vision should describe a picture of the future state, be lofty yet attainable, be free of today's technical limits, and be…
- Distinguish vision from mission: the vision is what the destination looks like, while the mission is the purpose and guiding…
- Write the vision as a 'once upon a time' story (current problem, a turning point, and the resulting changed world), or write the…
Lenny’s Podcast67 min
Inbal S · Dec 1, 2023
Key learnings- Engineers using AI tools need to shift from writing code to systems and architecture thinking, which lets junior developers spend…
- Don't adopt AI for its own sake; start from the customer problem and ask how AI can best solve it, rather than asking what to do…
- AI tools must fade into the background: any extra setup, asking, or waiting adds friction and developers will abandon the tool.
Lenny’s Podcast26 min
Interview Q Compilation · Nov 29, 2023
Key learnings- Ask 'To what do you attribute your success?' and watch for self-awareness and curiosity rather than an answer like 'luck' (Eeke…
- Ask 'What's the hardest thing you've ever done?' to learn how a candidate defines difficulty, how they overcame it, and how much…
- Use the teleportation-device 'Eigenquestion' exercise: candidates may ask only two questions, then must plan, revealing how they…
Lenny’s Podcast115 min
Tom Conrad · Nov 26, 2023
Key learnings- Choose where to work by the people you'd collaborate with, not just the product; your satisfaction tracks team relationships more…
- Trust your gut about a team's values and working style early; Conrad says he has consistently sensed mismatches before joining…
- Build a model of the whole business equation (investment in, returns out, over a time horizon) so you can see which levers have…
Lenny’s Podcast74 min
Paul Millerd · Nov 19, 2023
Key learnings- Notice whether you're consciously choosing your default path or simply inheriting it, including implicit contracts like working…
- Take a three-hour block during a workday, go for an aimless walk or revisit a childhood activity, and notice what emerges and…
- Ask yourself why you work beyond money, and examine the cultural scripts behind your answer about being a good person.
Lenny’s Podcast108 min
Ramesh Johari · Nov 9, 2023
Key learnings- Marketplaces sell the removal of friction (transaction costs) rather than the underlying goods, and both sides are customers who…
- Don't build a marketplace before you have one: early on, find a bespoke value proposition that solves a real problem (e.g…
- Apply a scaled-liquidity smell test: if you don't have a lot of buyers and sellers, you're not yet a marketplace; if one side is…
Lenny’s Podcast113 min
Maggie Crowley · Nov 5, 2023
Key learnings- Great PMs simplify relentlessly: find the one thing to do and stick with it long enough to actually finish it.
- Read your documents out loud and cut anything complicated; if you can say it in conversation, write it that way.
- Follow up on results after launches by setting calendar reminders to check metrics weeks and months later, and share what you…
Lenny’s Podcast109 min
Bill Carr · Nov 2, 2023
Key learnings- Start product decisions from the customer's real problem and work backwards to the required solution, rather than starting from…
- Avoid compound metrics that blend several numbers into one index; track each important metric individually so you can see which…
- Organize teams around a single-threaded leader who owns the people, resources and roadmap for a durable area, rather than…
Lenny’s Podcast193 min
Eric Ries · Oct 29, 2023
Key learnings- Treat a startup as an experiment: state the hypothesis, identify the leap-of-faith assumptions, and design the cheapest test that…
- An MVP is defined by the hypothesis being tested, not by a fixed level of stripped-down quality; it can be a brochure, a…
- Quality is defined by the customer, so teams that don't know their customer can't really know what a quality bar means; get early…
Lenny’s Podcast102 min
Paul Adams · Oct 26, 2023
Key learnings- Before redesigning a product for AI, start from the core premise: why people use it and what problem it solves, then map what AI…
- Treat AI as a strategic shift rather than a feature; Intercom ripped up its strategy and rebuilt from first principles after the…
- Build real machine learning depth on the team, but spread AI skills across product teams instead of isolating AI work in a…
Lenny’s Podcast132 min
Gina Gotthilf · Oct 19, 2023
Key learnings- Anchor the company in a mission people can rally behind; it helps with organic growth, hiring, and resisting short-term…
- Keep growth lean and avoid paid acquisition early, since rising CAC and dependence on paid users can become an addiction that is…
- Focus relentlessly on retention by asking whether the product delivers real value; users who find real value stick around.
Lenny’s Podcast113 min
Katie Dill · Oct 15, 2023
Key learnings- Beauty and functionality are not opposites; beauty enhances usability, approachability and trust, and users read attention to…
- When joining a team, come in listening and build trust first; Katie's early team intervention taught her that people won't follow…
- Quality is a group effort: align engineering, product and design on shared standards, and use an editor or architect to ensure…
Lenny’s Podcast132 min
Jason Feifer · Oct 12, 2023
Key learnings- Before pursuing press, define what you need it for, such as awareness, investor credibility, or a new customer segment, the same…
- Choose outlets whose readers can actually buy or use your product; a local business gains little from a national outlet, so…
- Study how a publication covers your category and competitors, then identify the specific writer or editor, since the…
Lenny’s Podcast118 min
Karri Saarinen · Oct 8, 2023
Key learnings- Ship features early to a small set of users or internal teammates and polish only at general release, rather than perfecting…
- Co-create early features with one or a few large customers to clarify how complex workflows should actually work.
- Give project teams ownership of their features; craft often emerges when engineers and designers discover better interaction…
Lenny’s Podcast104 min
Brian Balfour · Oct 5, 2023
Key learnings- Building a great product is necessary but not sufficient; durable winners separate themselves by building strong distribution…
- New distribution platforms tend to follow a cycle: competitive consensus, identifying a moat, opening a third-party ecosystem…
- Being early to a new platform matters because late adopters face shrinking windows, since platform cycles appear to be getting…
Lenny’s Podcast104 min
Lane Shackleton · Oct 1, 2023
Key learnings- Treat the core job of product work as turning ambiguity into clarity, and build repeatable systems rather than chasing one-off…
- Build default-on customer contact systems, such as a standing weekly slot with customers, instead of quarterly OKRs to talk to…
- Ask career questions about how many 'oh shit' moments someone has had recently, a sharper signal of growth than asking whether…
Lenny’s Podcast101 min
Maya Prohovnik · Sep 28, 2023
Key learnings- Dogfood your product by creating content with it yourself, since building creator tools without living the creator experience…
- Ensure the team experiences the product's pain directly, for example by having engineers and PMs make their own podcasts, to…
- Balance data and gut instinct by treating your intuition as a legitimate data point, explaining its reasoning with evidence…
Lenny’s Podcast95 min
Nilan Peiris · Sep 24, 2023
Key learnings- Measure word of mouth by simply asking new customers how they heard about you and overlaying that on attribution and…
- Use NPS as a proxy for viral potential: moving promoters up the scale roughly doubles how many people each customer refers, so…
- Read the verbatim NPS comments company-wide; Wise found customers repeatedly asked for lower prices, faster transfers, and easier…
Lenny’s Podcast88 min
Itamar Gilad · Sep 21, 2023
Key learnings- Build product from evidence rather than opinion; a leader's conviction should be tested with customer data, interviews, and…
- Define clear, user-facing goals first, and map them with a metrics tree linking a North Star metric (value created for users) to…
- Use ICE (impact, confidence, ease) to score ideas, and be honest about confidence using the confidence meter: opinions and themes…