Hot takes and techno-optimism from tech’s top power couple | Sriram and Aarthi

0:00 I hate jobs to be done I think it's a terrible framework I think no successful company has ever been built on top of jdbd and if you pick jdb you're probably doomed and I'll give an example when you sign up for Instagram right now when you sign up for Facebook for many many years Facebook knew that it needed to get you to 10 friends in 14 days if you go to your 10 friends in 14 days you're

0:18 probably going to use Facebook so it'd be like well if you want to throw every tool we have at our disposal get you to 10 friends and 14 days so if you sign up Facebook for many many years you'll get this little thing called people you may know and it'll show you then you have this person who just signed up on Facebook right I'm seeing this person it's not because you need a friend because they need a friend so what

0:35 Facebook did was it made your experience slightly worse to make that person's experience slightly better this was performing no job for you it was trying to perform a job for them welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products today for the first time ever I've got two guests arthi Rama Murthy and sriram Krishnan both former product managers

1:05 who between them work that basically every major tech company including Netflix meta snap Twitter Microsoft even Clubhouse sriram is now a partner at a16z they're actually married and both individually amazing together they host the arthi and sriram good time show which started on clubhouse it's now on YouTube and famously they have Elon Musk on back in the day which led to clubhouse's Crazy Rocketship growth which we definitely touch on this episode is definitely the most fun

1:34 conversation I have had yet on this podcast we cover all kinds of areas including this trend of techno optimism building your network creating content online and how to go about doing that becoming a product leader community building and a hilarious rant at the end about why the jobs to be done framework does not work I had such a good time chatting with these two and I know you will enjoy this episode with that I bring you arthi and SRI Ram after a

1:59 short word from our select sponsors this episode is brought to you by vanta helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth if your business stores any data in the cloud then you've likely been asked or you're going to be asked about your sock 2 compliance sock 2 is a way to prove your company's taking proper security measures to protect customer data and builds trust with customers and partners especially those with serious security requirements also if you want to sell to

2:28 the Enterprise proving security is essential stock 2 can either open the door for bigger and better deals or it can put your business on hold if you don't have a sock 2 there's a good chance you won't even get a seat at the table beginning a sock 2 report can be a huge burden especially for startups it's time consuming tedious and expensive enter vanta over 3 000 fast growing companies use vanta to automate up to 90

2:55 of the work involved with sock 2. Banta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months less than a third of the time that it usually takes for a limited time Lenny's podcast listeners get one thousand dollars off Banta just go to vanta.com Lenny that's v-a-n-t-a.com Lenny to learn more and to claim your discount get started today this episode is brought to you by dovetail the customer insights platform for teams that gets you from data to

3:26 insights fast no matter the method there's so much customer data to get through from user interviews to NPS sales calls usability tests support Tickets App reviews it's a lot and you know that if you're building something hidden in that data are the insights that will lead you to building better products and that's where dovetail can help dovetail allows you to quickly analyze customer data from any source and transform it into evidence-based insights that your whole team can access

3:52 if you're a product manager who needs insights to motivate your team a designer validating your next big feature or a researcher who needs to analyze fast dovetail is the collaborative insights platform your whole team can use go to dovetailapp.com learning to get started today for free that's dovetailapp.com Lenny foreign welcome to the podcast thank you thanks so much for having us Lenny we are you know this is a bucket

4:25 list thing because you know we are on Lenny's podcast I know long time subscriber listener and you know now here wow this feels like I don't want to screw this up first time caller yeah first time caller yeah let's not screw this up you guys are hilarious I appreciate it and feel very flattered you two are the first Duo on this podcast and I couldn't think of a better two people to start this podcast with I

4:49 have so much stuff I want to dig into I think we're gonna have a lot of fun so again thanks for joining me here it's awesome big fan yeah yeah honestly yeah this is I'm excited so I don't know if you remember this I was thinking about this story back when you were doing the Good Times show you invited me on the Good Times show and I was like thinking hesitating like I don't know that's kind of scary and then

5:10 the next day Elon came on and then it just blew up and I was like I missed my chance and then became really fancy people and I was like I'm not am I ever gonna make it back on there and so I kind of looked back at that as like oh you hesitated too long that's a lesson well the way you should interpret that is they couldn't get me on so their backup choice was Elon like I would have

5:29 been the main event and they were like well oh we couldn't get anything no but seriously we've been a huge fan and those are like just you know the fun times we usually the show obviously on just Clubhouse and now we do the show on YouTube every every wherever you can listen to our podcast and a lot of people remember us for the Elon episode but I will tell you this it is often the folks who were working technology who

5:53 are not as famous you're obviously very famous now but yeah but who really connected with the speaking of Elon I was always curious how did you actually get him on the show I remember that was back before he was like very vocal in the world and he was like hard to you know learn from and hear from how did you actually pull that off well but I think it's actually kind of similar to how a lot of good things

6:22 in my career happen which is I just had a conversation on the internet like I have this whole thing where I do think a lot of people trying to get you know get ahead in their career especially in technology should just write cold emails called DMS notes put out content Etc and that these are good things elon's case actually what wound up happening was a few years ago he dm'd me out of the blue at the time I was working at

6:48 Twitter and I think he saw something at written and wanted something from the company and I think he kind of went through the arc chart and he DM me and I was like well I want to help you and he sent me his phone number and I called him and I was like the sister you know and we had a conversation and we sort of built a relationship after that and when you know this was when Clubhouse first

7:07 came on the scene and I was like well who do we get on and you learn hadn't done a lot of press appearances I think he's done a lot more since then obviously and I texted him and he was like I'm game and you know the rest is history amazing I love that Elon just dm'd you shrimp split into his DM you know the crazy part of that story was I texted him saying you should come

7:30 on the ship and he said sure and then he tweeted about it and I will tell you that when Elon tweets about you and you know even more maybe now but more so now your phone just melts and then for the entire afternoon I had like hundreds of people asking me what's going to happen the club was also on clubhouse like if you open the Clubhouse app that day there were so many rooms that were trying to collect questions for us yeah

7:54 I remember that and help us prepare and it was just like there was so much pressure just scrolling through the hallway and trying to like look through it's like oh my God is this real like we are the people that they are talking about here this is crazy I don't know if you've listened to the actual thing but it was pretty cool because we got to ask him questions we've always wanted to ask on like when do we get to Mars like you

8:13 know it was kind of fun and then after that again it was this like we got a bunch of people reaching out and being like you should have asked this question you guys are not professional journalists and we're like no we're not like who what gave it away you know we're just like random two people I was just talking to this guy so it was really fun yeah I remember that I remember journalists were like they're

8:34 not actually asking hard questions how dare they have them on give them a platform to share things without any criticism and they were like we are not those people that you think we are like that you know that's just never been our job yeah I have so many questions that spiral from this discussion but I want to ask one quick Clubhouse question so are they you worked at Clubhouse for a while that's right very tactically I

8:55 feel like they're really smart initially with their growth strategy of just getting fancy smart people in there talking and pontificating that Naval and Mark Andreessen and then eventually on other people and that was such a smart way to get people to get in there and want to get in there to listen to them to engage with them what's your take on that as just like a growth strategy to get a social network bootstrapped and then just generally I guess any thoughts

9:18 on the Journey of Clubhouse you know it's had a big rise it's kind of you know yeah yeah yeah I mean all good questions here I think growth strategy that's a great like like require people right at the top of the funnel right like you kind of create like once you've done this a few times you kind of see everything as a funnel and you're like well are you like retaining people are you not are you is it like top of the

9:38 funnel Impressions or do they stick around so I think having you know people like Mark Andreessen and people like nawal and they were not doing this out of like any you know they they were really really interested like when we we got invited by Mark and Mark was like check out like this is way before they like in a16 they even invested in it it was like this product is amazing these you know these folks are like doing

9:58 something really cool this is going to be the future it's amazing so it gave them a platform to go speak out and live social audio just made a ton of sense right I will say a clubhouse you know I feel like they get this unfair attention and criticism it's a what three-year-old startup and you know I've done two startups the second one I did like three years in we still kind of sort of were like struggling and trying to figure out like

10:26 what we were doing so I mean I feel like Founders just need some time to like breathe in and kind of figure out what to go do so I'm bullish on clubhouse I think they'll figure it out in Paul and Rohana like great great Founders they've been doing social stuff for decade plus and so they're gonna figure it out and I know that it's like they get this thing on like oh they were really hot during

10:47 the pandemic is this a pandemic fad versus not I don't know it's a product at the end of the day and you're going to have to like find product Market fit and I think they'll figure it out yeah I also I think the broader question of how do social products acquire users is super interesting one of my favorite pieces written on this is Eugene ways status as service Eugene should absolutely be on on your podcast someday

11:09 and I don't know it's a 10 000 word Pizza which is amazing and highly searched people did it but one of the key takeaways from the piece is the idea that when you have a new network think of it as a new country you want the high status people and high status mean they're interesting people want to be where they are in some shape or form because they have money they're smart they're cool they're good looking

11:30 whatever it may be and you want to get them onto your network and there's actually an interesting color the corollary that they're often underserved by other existing platforms and because if they're already well so they wouldn't want to mute you and Eugene doesn't talk about it but if I look at say the history of all the three four large social media companies you've seen this pattern for example they're often each had a Breakout set of stars who are

11:53 unique the platform for example if you look at say Snapchat you had folks like Kylie Jenner who really broke out first if you look at Instagram I would think the rock you know Cristiano Ronaldo a lot of others are organic to Instagram but let's say you get to tick tock one thing you'll see is another folks from the Instagram world really move to Tech talk and there's a couple reasons one didn't really need to because they were you know already

12:15 popular on some of these other existing platforms but two Tick Tock actually took advantage of a different set of skill sets you know people who are really good on video people who could dance be funny and so you saw the rise of Charlie demellio and Addison and you know so many others who are different so every single time I think you need to go after a set of people of High status would also underserved so kind of time

12:37 back I think one of the interesting things is like I think the celebrities are super interesting but what is more interesting for me is all the Homegrown folks I actually consider us as a part of that we would not be here doing the show if it wasn't for Clubhouse there are many folks who kind of had that original launch using the platform so I think if for folks who are thinking about social platforms it's kind of interesting about okay really

13:00 interesting people from elsewhere but you also need homegrown talent and by the way you are a perfect example of this phenomenon because you know know you are subtracts homegrown Talent yeah and and I think you bring a lot of value to sub stack and you know and a lot of people with huge newsletters Etc but I think you you your rise and you know your sort of popularity is to try to substant now and that's actually a

13:24 great example of all of this yeah it reminds me the founder of musically who you know turned into Tick Tock had a great story I think you've heard hasn't talk about this how the way he thought about it is like there's all these successful people in Instagram like that's Europe and the people you can convince to come to America are not like the kings of Europe but they're like The Peasants that are like oh you have a new

13:43 opportunity to rise and become a king right and so those are the people you pull in the people not doing well on other platforms that want to do well versus like the people already killing it Lily just called himself the king of substract right there yes I know you're the king you're the king of Americas I'm just trying to give you clippable moments on video I did just find out that I think I have the fourth largest

14:03 sub stack newsletter on all of substack which is that's amazing wow yeah that's amazing number three number two number one Lenny's coming after you better watch out take them out different they're out they're up there so you mentioned the chat with Elon and how you're very like Tech positive and I think that's something that you two are at the Forefront of is this kind of trend I don't know if it's called techno optimism maybe there's another term for

14:25 it and I'd love to hear just like why because I know that's important to you too why that's important to you and just what is this kind of movement of tech optimism techno optimism I guess most evident look I think it's also very personal to our context and out of bringing right like you know for us firm and I came from a fairly middle class family in India like this city in India that most people here won't probably

14:46 know and we kind of grew up really liking computers but didn't have access to a computer for the longest time right like in our both are in our both our cases our parents bought us our first computers of like saving money for it and it was like a hard thing and you know when we eventually got onto it and started learning to write code we we met each other online we met on we're dating ourselves now but we met on Yahoo

15:11 messenger back today it's amazing and we worked on this like nerdy coding project that's kind of how we connected so like technology and computers have given us everything our first jobs were at Microsoft we built developer tools and platforms and so it's for like coming from if you were in our shoes you would feel the same way too Tech has given us so much and so for us to come here all the way from India through like

15:35 multiple cities we lived in Seattle and then here the Bay Area I've started tech companies it is a bit frustrating to see the other Viewpoint because you can kind of see how much it is like uplifted people careers lives but also just from like what we what we have been able to work on what we've seen our friends work on and ship and put out there it is dramatically moved the needle and so for us like we are the Living Testament of

16:00 like Tech actually helping us and help us do better so I don't even see the other Viewpoint right like from like why wouldn't you be optimistic about technology I don't get it yeah I think the personal part of is really core I think there's only two schools of thought one school of thought I would broadly put you know right up as you know things are getting worse technology is making things worse and we should all do less build less and then

16:24 the other school of thought which I think I subscribe to is technology is not perfect you know the impact technology is definitely uneven but pretty much most of the good things in the world over the last 100 200 years are responsible for it and we can have a whole long discussion about the evidence why and we have lots of very fancy sounding intellectual theories as to why but at the heart of it is what Arty said

16:43 if it wasn't for Tech we would be here we'll be doing this I suspect a lot of folks are listening to this wouldn't be able to listen to it wouldn't have the opportunities they have or have the opportunities we have it is a great level my dad pretty much had the same job for his entire like life essentially from age 25 to till the time he retired and there was really no easy path out for him and I I missed

17:05 like hey if it's 140 years later and he had a laptop and an internet connection and you know could get on GitHub your opportunities that you know would be just impossible even like 30 40 years ago and that's all from technology so I think that's the heart of it it's a it's the best thing we have of getting ahead it's such a refreshing perspective on Tech you know in in traditional media all you ever hear about is all the

17:27 problems that Tech is causing and all the dangers and how we're all screwed and so it's it's like you almost forget that there could be really positive stories about what's happening with tech and it feels like there's a small number of people that are doing this at scale and oh yeah yeah I'll give you one small example if you want to joke about you know Kings from Europe Etc if we just go back 100 years you know the piece of

17:49 Hardware that the king or royalty would use or rich person would use it would be so different from what a peasant would use but you know what like I suspect the phone that you and I have is probably the same phone that actually I know it's the same phone that you know Elon Musk uses the richest person in the world it's probably the same phone I know a lot of folks in India who have like very

18:05 high-end Android device they have actually same internet you go to google.com google.com doesn't know your net worth it gives you the same results chat GPT doesn't know how rich you are you may not like you but yeah you know it doesn't know how rich you are and that is you know that just if you just think of all these Concepts they're just impossible technology but anyway that's a whole other conversation yeah I I love that the richest people

18:26 have the same phone as me and nothing they can do about it something else you two are really good at is building a network building Community Building personal brands I know a lot of people listening are either often told you need to build a audience online you build a brand you got to build a network and all these things so I guess I'd love to know just like what advice do you give people that come to you like hey I want to build the

18:48 brand personal brand I want to build a network just like how to go about doing that what's worked well for you too firm has like way more structured thoughts on this and honestly he's like way better at this than I've ever been he's basically slowly corrupted me and brought me to the dark side but you know what I have come to believe and what this is diff this differs from what I used to believe is you know especially

19:08 if you're working in in a big company you are one of the many thousands of employees in there generally what you get told is like hey you know just ship really good products put your head down go to work the products will speak for themselves that's just how it's going to work don't do this like whole personal branding and all of that stuff it's such a distraction and you know that's generally what you're told and you know most of my career I was like

19:35 yeah of course that makes sense you know that's kind of what you do but I've come to realize that that is just not true and this might be a controversial opinion but you have to get out there and build your own brand you have to figure out what you stand for what your core values are what you believe in what you you think you want to do what your next career trajectory is going to look like all of

19:58 that is just up to you it's it's not up to the company to figure it out for you it's not up to anybody else it's just up to you and I think building a personal brand is looked upon looked down upon so much that people think of it as like a dirty word it's like no you can do that oh look at this person who's like branding themselves kind of thing but I almost seize it see it as like

20:20 what distinguishes you from everybody else and and that is not so much like saying something that you're not good at or touting yourself more it's really about like highlighting I'm really good at this thing and I want to talk about this thing and I want to like do videos about it or write about it or tweet about it like whatever is your Forum you have to put yourself out there yep I I mean this is probably one of the most

20:44 important things that somebody can do and I spent you know we spent years slowly climbing the corporate ranks right like we were you know Junior product managers IC product managers senior product managers you know kind of like slowly climbed the ranks and Iran teams Etc and I spent years just thinking that all you do it's gonna put my head down you know do my job whatever and that was it but then I looked around and I suspect a lot of listeners here

21:06 probably the same feeling that some set of people were getting way more opportunities some sort of people are way farther ahead even though I was demonstrate sure that somebody else was doing a better job and I was trying to understand why and I think building a network which I'll kind of try and Define because I think a lot of people have assumption what it is is at the heart of this so building a network is very simply we're having relationships

21:24 with human beings and let's start off by saying first of all these have to be authentic genuine relationships you know one thing she drives me crazy when somebody come and say like I'm here to Network I'm like I don't know what that word means right like you know so all you're trying to do is have authentic genuine relationship with people and expecting nothing in return so that's great and then people are like oh well that's awesome but I'm a senior for

21:43 example I was a senior near a PM at Microsoft for a bunch of time and then kind of similar at Facebook for a bunch of time what does it mean like I'm here I'm going to my meetings and kind of doing my day like it's only so many hours I'll be like well let's start off with you know go and meet every single peer that you have you don't direct me to go get coffee with them and

22:01 ask them hey and you know you know you have no agenda just ask them what's going on in your life who are they what their life story is and then who are a couple of interesting people that you should meet with right go talk to your your manager and go talk to their peers super important your manager be relationship or Supreme go have a coffee with them and they'll be like great I'm allowed to meet this person then when I

22:20 was at when I joined at Facebook I was Notorious for being the person who sent a cold email to every single Facebook leader and I'll be like hey I'm new here I want to meet let's grab coffee and everybody will say yes everyone's a new person and always ask them the same thing we should have like I'd show up I'll tell them my story I'll ask for their story I'll be like what are you folks focused on how can I have again no

22:38 expectation of anything in return so and then I'll be like who else should I talk to you do this you do two coffees a week I literally just has to be two hours a week everyone has two hours a week it'll start compounding over time and time and then as the years go by you keep in touch with the people you used to work with you you these folks will go to other places five years six years go by

22:56 you start in your mid-20s or late 20s and you know hundreds of people all over and the important thing about this is that it is a it is a resource in so many different places for example one if you ever need help right you're trying to look for a new role or you're trying to be like hey I I want to hire this person who knows something about this person or how do I or I want a new role like

23:17 who's looking for something that Network kind of becomes your key resource now one I think a lot of people don't do is just simple things number one is often people just have a great meeting with a peer and then they will never ever follow up I'm sure a lot of us have the amazing first introduction email then never followed up don't do that I try and make it a point to make sure like I always meet them like once a year once

23:38 every six months I just want to say what's up and the other key part is expecting nothing in return like you really have to go and generally pay people people are very good at reading other people and if you go and being like hey I just want to meet you because I want a job or you know I'm here to network whatever that means they don't want to meet you like just go and be very curious about who they are and try

23:55 and help them and you'll be surprised if you you know wherever you start within a year two years you know hundreds of people who you can tap into so I think that is super powerful that's just building relationships the other part is brand building both are there are different points in our career have gotten feedback you know in our job saying Brand Build too much Etc I have learned that that is terrible feedback and to totally ignore that and if

24:16 anybody here isn't receiving another has totally ignore that like the things that work well for me and a lot of others is putting yourself out there and that can be anything that can be like you make a presentation internally you write tweets you do you write you you know your prolific on GitHub you make a YouTube video it doesn't really matter but put yourself out there because the internet rewards people being out there and what happens when you produce out

24:36 there it's a bad signal it's telling people that hey I I'm here this is my body of work and you know what the internet does it will send amazing people to you you'll be amazed how often like somebody just have a random grade Twitter thread with no followers and somebody's super interesting will email them and that'll lead some amazing things happening it encourages Serendipity so I you know over the years I wish I had listened less to people who

24:57 said I should I should not do this and listen more to the people who said I should do this more so I also think you know keeps saying expect nothing in return I think the other way I I see it is this is again an extension of the optimism for us generally we think people like to help each other out that is just in their true nature it's just it's not meant to be transactional it's not meant to be if I know them they will

25:20 somehow like do something for me down the road it's not that just the way we are all building communities and are a part of this like broader Community the way we work is we all want to help each other and help them be successful and if that is like in your nature it's hard to not feel like yeah of course I want to reach out to them I want to see what I can do to help them maybe you know

25:40 something good will happen we'll collaborate on a project together like whatever right so it's not the the core tenet being like don't expect stuff in return don't do it on a transactional basis I think it's really important yep what this reminds me of is Naval has this Suite that proved to be so true which is don't network instead create amazing things create value do good work and then people want to network with you yeah and that's really stuck with me and

26:06 it kind of saves you from going to network dividends like instead just go work hard do awesome stuff and people are going to want to meet you I mean you will not believe the number of times they've shown up to like some Meetup or some founder thing or something and then somebody would come up and be like I'm here to network what's your name and I'm like no you can't do that like that's just it just isn't not how that works I

26:26 actually say I actually disagree novel on this because often when you're in a when you're part of a large organization like it's really hard to do great work and get recognized for it you know you're part of a team which is great but it's it's not the same as saying having a newsletter by yourself or having a piece of content by yourself so you know when I was younger I'd be like great I'm part of a large part I don't know I mean

26:48 you guys are saying the same thing he's just like saying Great Value and put it out there like I don't think it's yeah I think you the putting it out there part is super interesting yeah and also I would just say like you know don't wait to create amazing things like often just the act of putting yourself out there can just put amazing things in itself yeah I think and I think especially early in your career you're not going to

27:08 create amazing things immediately so there's a lot of value to reaching out and right meeting people there's a couple of directions I'm going to go here one is so you gave this I don't know just mini master class on building a network and networking and things like that I think what'll get people to rewind and listen to that again is I don't think people realize just how connected you two are like you're at the center of so many micro communities of

27:29 the most incredible people I don't know if you talk about this but you kind of run all these micro communities of incredible people in like I don't know crater land and investors and product people and all these people and so like it actually has worked like you may be the most Network person there is and I don't know if people know that oh wow is that a good thing I don't know it's a good thing it's a good thing I I

27:51 well okay I like that I'll go with that I think the thing that at least with like outside of all of the master class stuff which I think is like particularly good at I think the thing that people don't realize about him is he's just inherently incredibly curious about people people like he's just really just wants to know what somebody else does who they are what their story is and this is not some like oh I'm gonna spend

28:17 10 minutes letting them talk I'm gonna spend he often never lets the other person talk but when he does but he is truly curious about who they are what their story is and he will ask these like and I've seen them you know by now we've known each other for like 20ish years and this is every dinner every event this is just how he's wired and so you just can't like fake that in like building out a network he's just he

28:45 drew he builds a network by just wanting to know who these people are thank you thank you you married the right person everything else becomes I haven't really talked about this before but and I'll keep some of this slightly hidden but I think the heart of it is I'm just curious about people I'm just dumb about a lot of things and I don't mean sort of this false modesty way I'm like I know a lot of folks are smart I mean like Lenny

29:11 obviously is so much smarter than me at writing a subsequence letter right it's just evident Andrew huberman is created like you know Brian Armstrong building a crypto company all these book is evident and what I but what I realized is a lot of folks sometimes just want to be with other amazing peers and one sort of hack I you know I built over the years I was like all right let me just bring interesting people together so I bring

29:35 them in let's just say various kinds of online communities they're probably over like 100 at this point and I say okay you know I I'm you trust me you trust me and you know I make the rules I'm no one's you know everyone kind of keeps some level of confidence everyone's appear they're all accomplished in their own way no one's rude or mean it goes off the rails and so I can I'm a party host I'm like okay listen nobody's gonna

29:59 get super crazy over here but I'm also curating I'm like well I need somebody super thoughtful I need somebody who is a little controversial I need somebody who's funny I need somebody who's like a celebrity I'm trying to put together engineer and the right Vibe or the right atmosphere but digitally I'm very anti-social in person and then you know and some of these just happen over time right you put a group of people and they hang out online and over times you know

30:25 you have a very famous CEO getting becoming best friends with somebody in their early 20s who's like you know just getting started just because they're in the same space together so I love creating those online spaces and it just it and I think it's kind of like something like anybody here listening can do right like just take some of your favorite people you know stick them in a WhatsApp group or a telegram group or a slack Channel which is right by the way

30:47 Lenny slack highly highly recommended is great at that but yours has hundreds of thousands of people and I think sometimes there's an intimacy from having smaller groups like five people ten people like a shared space and then kick it off and you'll be amazed of after a year or two of how much intimacy and how much connection where I you know sometimes people open up about you know like losing their jobs or having a divorce or something really personal and

31:13 intense that's because of the share trust and you know and I think there's something very heartwarming and fulfilling about being able to facilitate some of that I want to dig into that a little bit more you've built these incredible communities and you talked about a couple and aren't they I know you also built like Facebook's early Community products and Clubhouse obviously if you had to pick like one or two things you got to get right with a new community

31:34 that you're just forming what do you think those two things are or one or two things find the niche like start really small and find the niche like I think oftentimes I've seen Founders other startup Founders and I invest in advice and a lot of like early stage companies I went through y combinator so I go back to ycee as much as I can and like go help out folks but oftentimes I'll see people starting companies or Founders

31:59 coming in and being like I'm going to build this product that is like going to cater to this community I'm going to build this like world's largest community of this kind of thing and it almost like starts at this super scaled version and then they set themselves up for failure you're almost better off doing these small Niche you know non-scalable things to go find these like Oddball set of people who are doing this or and really interested in this

32:27 one thing and kind of scale from there and grow from there and I think that's like one big thing that when you're starting to build a community don't start to build this super scale Community start with like few people who are passionate about a particular problem and want to get together kind of thing start there two I think people and this might be like a controversial thing but I often think people don't think through monetization if you're like a

32:48 community Builder early on start thinking about if you're like truly focused on this as a business how would you actually make money off of it oftentimes they like hit some sort of scale and be like crap now what do I do and then they like try all these options they will have some children and then they're like oh no that but I thought this was a very sticky Community like yes but it's not as sticky as this

33:09 particular price tag and so you have to kind of start thinking through if we hit a particular velocity what is that going to look like what are the things that I'm going to unlock and think through monetization a little bit ahead of time before it comes in and becomes the crutch rather than a weapon that you can go leverage but I want to say arthi you know is kind of the creator of Facebook stars and of so much of the thinking

33:28 there and I can go super deep on this I have like a i co-sign everything she said a slightly different framework first of all I actually don't like the word Community because the word Community like the word networking or the word platform is a little abstract and it can be a lot of things and I like to think of things like a dinner party or church or things which seem like more tangible and people are like okay I know

33:48 exactly what that is so when I think of community or starting one I think first of all it's like a party and you're first starting off like all right what is the vibe all right in the sense of you know for example in this house through every social media platform where if you can be a crazy people are dancing on bars you know having a great time getting the elite drunk party or you can have a really formal dinner

34:09 where everyone's seated there is plates with name tags and you know there's a clinking of classes and you have to dress up and they're both fine they're both you know fun in their own way but you need to tell people as a host which one it is and by the way I think one of the things that Twitter didn't like get right in the original days with some of the other apps did he never told people what kind

34:27 of party it was it was like are we going to Michelin star restaurant where to sit down or out it's a sports bar after the Super Bowl then you can go crazy and if you don't do that people make up their own tools that's number one the second part is ask the host you have to curate the original set of people and do you need a mix this is super important I think sometimes people do this thing

34:45 where they either optimize for quote unquote interesting famous people or they get you know the most talkative about people you know and I actually read a bunch of books on like hosting great dinner parties actually have some interesting suggestions there and it'll say like well you need a mix right you need you know for example in any organization like let's say you're the VP that everyone knows about right but that VP doesn't have the time to maybe

35:07 participate on a WhatsApp Channel or slack Channel and you know Chit Chat all the time or show up everything and then maybe you need the really boisterous young BD exec who's out and about and meeting everybody you need that person you need somebody's quiet and thoughtful you need to merge different kinds of energy and that's almost an Alchemy and that's a that's more art than science you have to start there third I think is as the host you have to have a sick

35:30 sense of how is a community feeling at any given point in time are two people dominating the conversation that person hasn't said anything about the one things I like to do when somebody joins a group or one of these places I'm like I try and get them into a question which they will feel happy about because you know what happened the very first time you walk into a party you look around you're like I don't know anybody here oh

35:48 gosh okay I know this one person and you know I'm gonna go like talk to them and you just feel nervous so I'm like I'm like hey you know for example if you walk to a place and nobody you didn't nobody learn exactly very you know good at being social but I'd be like hey Lenny has one of the most popular things on Snapchat and he just wrote blind I'm just giving an opening to you to feel

36:06 comfortable and that's another part the third part I love is like rituals and you know religions do a great job of this which is do something every month I used to like there's a little group I hosted some of my friends and during all of covet we did a zoom meeting every Tuesday evening and there was a ritual you know I think it's just zoom meeting a bunch of friends people and people were just bringing like their glass of

36:25 wine or bring their kids in and there's no like structured agenda but people started looking forward to it through the pandemic and stuff and we would be we'd be like oh my God it's Tuesday like you know this this evening we're gonna go do this thing and it was a really great way to go build that community and I totally agree with that yeah but Lenny's done an amazing job on it on his slack I see it the other interesting

36:48 tension and challenge is how to grow it because I think there are interesting a four-person dinner very different from an eight-person dinner you know very different from a 20 person thing where people hang out very different from once you start getting like hundreds of thousands like the things you're willing to share worrying about being judged so I'm always trying to create more intimate different spaces and that's a whole other topic so I think you know if you're trying to start a community I

37:14 would say picking the right people setting the tone being really part of it yourself like that's most of it amazing there's so many little nuggets of advice there I feel like we could do a whole other episode on just Community Building strategy today's episode is brought to you by element I just recently discovered the stuff actually from another podcast and it is such sweet salty goodness element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with a science-backed electrolyte ratio and

37:41 unlike most electrolyte drinks there's no sugar coloring artificial ingredients gluten or any other BS getting enough electrolytes helps prevent and eliminate headaches muscle cramps fatigue sleeplessness and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency element is the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA weightlifting and many other Olympic athletes also dozens of NBA and NFL teams and players rely on element to stay hydrated along with Navy SEAL Teams FBI sniper teams and the Marines you can try element totally risk-free if you

38:11 don't like it you can share it with a salty friend and they'll give you your money back no questions asked to give it a shot go to drink lmnt.com Lenny and you'll get a free sample pack with any purchase which includes one packet of every flavor my favorite is watermelon salt you won't find this offer publicly available so you have to head to drink lmt.com Lenny to take advantage of this offer stay salty I want to go back to a topic we touched

38:37 on that I think is really interesting which is building a brand and putting content out and that kind of thing I think a lot of times people hear that like a first year pm and they're like yes I'm gonna start tweeting and then it's like such cringy useless stuff and nobody needs to hear from them because they haven't done anything and I guess I'd be curious your for your take on like what is your at what point should

38:58 people start to put things out how do you know if like this is cringy and like nobody wants to hear this stuff like great PM ship like these very cliche things come out you know there's like hundreds of Twitter accounts people are just tweeting these things like all right like how do you think about that that thing I ask you took it with you right and I actually think everyone should well disclaimer I walk performance investor in Twitter but

39:22 I swear that's not why I'm seeing this people have heard me say this for years everyone should tweet or everyone should post on YouTube or post on Instagram or you know and it doesn't matter how young you are because I actually disagree with the few things which you said which I think it's a great point which I think a lot of people do this one is that you need to have hit a certain bar of accomplishment or interestingness to say

39:42 something strongly disagree with that second that things are cringing I don't think anything is cringy I strongly disagree too right and I think these are both interesting earthy space is great I mean I feel like Firearms bar is so low this is really important because I think what stops a lot of people is I'll I've had probably 100 plus where somebody whose interviewer comes to come to me and they'll be like hey I want to do get on Twitter I want to you

40:09 know write content or I want to start a sub stack or I want to do a podcast I'm like great but I'm I don't know what to say I look dumb I don't I don't want to get judged and you know I but I'm like no you're so accomplished and it is the fear of being judged that so often stops people so whenever I hear that word cringe I'm like no no that's actually fine you're fine you'll figure it and

40:29 here's why I said it number one is what the most important thing and if every reason if you just remember one thing from this whole thing is just get started and do something every single day and this is also basic like I think I have this running joke where somebody it's like it's like diet and exercises it's like you know we are talking to people about how do you get healthy and you have like you know so many like you

40:48 know the 100 different you know things you can do or podcasts you can listen to but I was like that next service right so and with creating content that next is you just write a piece of content every single day right because what's going to happen is it builds muscle it gets you familiar with the medium and you start understanding what Works in that medium and what doesn't and you start building preps you know who never

41:09 works out in my opinion opinion is somebody who's like who will think for weeks build up an amazing tweetstown blog post newsletter or whatever it may be and then stuffs because you know if the effort is so high so I'm like one do something every single day the second part of it is I actually think there's nothing you don't have to talk about what you accomplished you only have to talk about you and by the way this is

41:29 going from a very flu but you are the best you out there and so for example wow okay like let us say you're a 21 let's say okay let's say you are a 21 year old PM fresh out of school first year like by the way we were all that right I was at 21 year old pm at one time I you know Lily would have been to lots of others first of all a lot of

41:46 people who have been through journey and there are others like you second is you just talk about your journey talk about what you're doing talk about what you're learning because what often you're trying to do when you're creating content is to build a relationship with people so when Charlie DeMille your dances on Tick Tock she's not saying she's a professional dancer she's saying like I'm relatable I'm like just like you know somebody you would be friends

42:06 with next door I'm just like you and so then people start connecting with you on that front if you're authentic and you're doing a good job and so everybody listening to this should be able to create content okay so the only place where I disagree I think this is all right but this is a bit like you know you know yeah we we are Asian we are you know we have this very Asian parent thinking there are no participation trophies so

42:30 if it is cringy you should at least acknowledge that it is cringy it's okay like you I think at the end of the day you have to persevere like I think I give a lot more votes to like people who are just persevering and showing up every day but I do think there should be a level of self-awareness for people where it's like man this is not great I'm not getting any attraction like I need to improve on things and keep

42:50 building on it as opposed to being like I am the best me ever and just keep putting out garbage like don't do that like improve on stuff because there is such a thing as bad content like I I you know I I agree with you I agree with you but I think when people mean cringy okay I see this right what people think when they say cringy it's like our peer group thinks that this content is too basic

43:11 everybody has that whether you say it out loud or not well I'll give it straight right so I spent years I'd be like I'm a PM leader right I run organization I should write smart PM things right like I should write the kinds of things that linear for example I'll say that Lenny's post the other week from Duolingo is we paper I was like so jealous I was like man like this is the kind of content I would derive

43:30 it's amazing Bangor Post right and but the problem was when you start doing that you start censoring yourself and I would say I've been a lot of a lot of posts over the years and I apply and sound smart I have a great in textbook framework and some of this work but you know what my most popular post and tweet sum of all time is it is how to write a cold email and you know when I wrote

43:49 that tweet Strom I I was like man I'm gonna sound so dumb because everyone literally doesn't need to know how to write a cold email and neither does the VCS I work with everyone knows that but the thing is what is obvious to you and may seem cringy to your peers is definitely obvious to a lot of people and they will connect to you they will relate to you so whenever you know when somebody says like well I think is it

44:11 too basic how do I get started my job I'm like no there's a lot of people who this is not obvious to and I just put myself out there and what's the worst thing somebody thinks you're that's fine you know you just you put some new piece of content out there the next day and they'll fix it or you can just ignore them I think there's a lot of really good nuggets here I think the only area maybe we disagree and we can

44:27 we should move on but this is something come on your podcast is too friendly otherwise my feeling is I think for like helping you do better work kind of content like entertainment anyone could do no problem you know you could be awesome at it is I feel like you need to do something in your career first before you can start speaking to here's things I've learned and here's what works and here's what doesn't work I think there's a lot I

44:48 think I wouldn't spend a lot of time sharing all your wisdom before you've done a thing yeah and been successful in some way yeah I actually think you make a very interesting point which is I think a lot of people online a lot live action role play as somebody else right which is and this is very which is like you trying to project a Persona or a career point that you are not at any you know it we know it you

45:10 probably I mean but and also for that kind of content you can you everyone can tell right like I think it just comes off as like not authentic yeah and so I mean I I feel like the universe figures itself out over time but I do think there is a level of like like just because sriram thinks no content is cringy does not mean people all feel that way like you know you can't just magically just wipe that out I feel like

45:32 everyone just feels that way whether or not you say it out loud I do think there is a process of iteration and acknowledging that yeah okay this is bad but I'm gonna put this out there anyway and you know we'll just keep working on this and coming back to it I really appreciate people who would just do that and just like keep coming back to it every day and yeah like Rocky style like chip away at things I I really have

45:54 appreciation for those folks because it's hard like everyone's I've realized over time that everyone is deeply feeling as if they are imposters and we talked about this right you know imposter syndrome is so real it is so gut-wrenchingly real that it's not just like every like one person it's like most people I think so to be able to overcome that threshold and kind of look at your amazing peers and your seniors and everybody else and then still be

46:20 able to put yourself out there I think we have to like really appreciate that and kind of help them go iterate and just get better over time yeah I'll give you one final story before we wrap on this topic which is I was talking to somebody who's sort of you know four or five years into their career as a PM and they written this post on LinkedIn which is full of crunchy content by the way okay let me see LinkedIn has a lot

46:38 of cringy wow sorry LinkedIn folks and it was one of them how do you set product strategy as an organization and I was like I call him I was like dude come on right like you're four years into enroll right like nobody believes that you actually are writing this from a place or actually really knowing it and that is fine if you're learning but you know you're trying to protecting this person you're not but the thing which I was talking to

47:01 them I was like I know you've done this amazing Deep dive on this other Niche topic you've gone out you did all the posts go right about that because you are an expert legitimately in something you think is niche as opposed to a fake expert on this other thing you want to be and so he went and wrote this follow-up post on something very Niche and that went really popular because the truth is there's a there's not a lot of

47:25 great content out there especially great content from people who've actually done the thing you'd be surprised how Niche you can be but you've actually done the work talk to a people aggregated some posts you know you people who come seek you out and you don't have to do it so anyway so yeah lots of LARPing lots of cringy LinkedIn content pressure just to close this out I 100 agree with the idea that people should be just trying

47:48 stuff writing sharing stuff on Twitter LinkedIn just like get it out of there don't like be afraid because that's how you start down this road I was gonna go in a different direction but you mentioned imposter syndrome and I'm curious have you two dealt with imposter syndrome comes off as so much more confidence and confident and has so much gravitas that nobody ever thinks of it but yeah we both do we both deeply have imposter syndrome we still like every single day

48:15 you know anything we do like you know we look at ourselves we are creators we have the show on YouTube and then we look around at everybody else who have like you know millions of subscribers and followers and everything and we're like why are we creators we should just this is not a thing like we should not be doing this stuff I just think people haven't been honest with us on how much we suck you know it's like you have

48:35 these like Loops in your head and then every once in a while you'll see a comment being like this was amazing I just had to like stop doing what I was doing to listen to this whole thing it was so valuable for me and you're like oh okay like you're not all that bad that's I think okay so yeah we go through this a lot I particularly had for the longest time like I had like really severe imposter syndrome through

48:55 like School College you know getting into like Microsoft like even after I got through the Microsoft which is like we were like one of the youngest product managers there we I still was like oh you know someday they're going to figure out that this was all like they'll they'll know the real me and they'll be like oh man we made this mistake with her and it was just a such a real crippling thing for me it took a very very long time to feel

49:18 like even now I feel like maybe it's not 100 true but I can kind of see the the gradients there so yeah very real thing yeah it's so true I have a hack or a technique of how to get over imposter syndrome but I'll just say and this is just you know if folks here feel it every new job I've been in I always felt that I didn't deserve to be there and I mean it generally when I was at joined

49:40 Microsoft I was I was a young student I was like I don't know anything these folks are professional they've been doing this job for years when I moved to the US I said look my accent is super intense I'm Indian these books I've been doing this for many years they have very different Lifestyles I don't know what I'm doing here when I moved to Silicon Valley I got no hired by probably four or five different companies and one of

49:59 them told me you work for Microsoft so you don't like you can't really cut it in Silicon Valley because you're from Seattle which I'll never forget and you know I look at the person from LinkedIn from time to time I'm very typically like well I've cut it now I'm very Petty that way and then of course and then you know when I start running large organizations you know like several hundred people or more I was like I've never done this before I'm

50:23 in a meeting everyone looking to me do they know that I've not done this before like you know like because I've done this before and I can they tell and it's every step of the way so it just pushes every step of the way and in the beginning it was quite crippling but over time you build things to help you and I think for those listening if you feel this way the thing I've learned today is you have to kind of retreat to

50:44 a place where you feel real Mastery of so for example when I was at Microsoft I was like well I don't speak language very well English and I had an accent Etc but I knew that I was the most online developer person out there I knew every single online community I was very plugged into open source so in every meeting when the topic would come to like hey what is happening Ruby on Rails I was like I know this better than

51:06 everybody else so and I learned to put together a presentation because then you you start with the base of something that you feel super comfortable in and you build from that and what you realize when you build from that is you're like oh actually you know what people really respect that and they react to that and I also learned not to do other things like for example for them for years where I would listen to people

51:28 from like a certain academic background automatic I wish I could do slide decks like they could or I wish I could like you know have these Impressions but that doesn't really matter you just need to come from a place where you are confident you've done the work so if you're Focus are listening and you feel impossible right next time you walk into a meeting just think about okay this is a place where I know I spent so many

51:45 nights and weekends and can be super tiny it can be like one little button one one customer but you've done the work you've had multiple conversations it is protein right and you start from there you talk about that and you build it from that and you will feel comfortable so I've done that in like pretty much every role now and I still catch myself you know yeah I think for me when I was the first time founder I

52:06 definitely felt that way and you know there was all this at that time it was conventional wisdom and look none of nobody we knew at that time were like Founders like it's not our friend Circle they all worked in like medium to big companies my family nobody has ever been a Founder entrepreneur it's not a thing and so when I started this I was like oh my God I'm making a mistake but then you read all these people tweeting or

52:27 writing posts being like if you're a Founder you'll be really good at like fundraising this is like you know best Founders learn how to I sucked at fundraising I was so bad at it it was like it was just like oh you know you have to like be able to tell your story I tried like you know I think if we had like I'd email like 250 Founders took 85 meetings and it's like 50 plus second

52:49 meetings and then got like 30 checks like this was like my seed round which took like eight months to close or something and I was like oh my God I'm so bad at this I should just give up right now and then I was like I started building this this startup and I was like actually I'm really really good at understanding customer acquisition and like really trying to find creative ways to cheaply acquire customers and I

53:13 kind of started like putting together playbooks on like what I can go do there and I tried this I tried this and I started talking to fewer for our own investors and I'm like I don't know if your portfolio companies you are finding this useful but I tried these tactics and they were like oh my god I've never heard of that and so I realized that that's the one place I could be really good at and I can grow my business in a

53:32 really profitable way very quickly and then like investors started like talking to me about like other companies and all of that stuff and it became like a thing and that helped me get more confidence over time I was like who cares if I can do these like other things I can do these few things and this is really really important to like build a sustainable business and I think I can do that and that for me like kind of

53:54 helped me get over it it's not anyone telling me don't worry you'll be good at it like that never helped it's just I had to do it myself to figure it out it's interesting both of your pieces of advice is finding you're actually good at and then just lean into that as much as possible that's something I learned from an executive coach I worked with once that you have strengths you have weaknesses you can accomplish almost all

54:13 the things you want to accomplish through the strengths through the lens of the strengths without using those weaknesses as much right and that really was pretty transformative I think it was such a profound point and I wish somebody had told me that earlier in my career yeah because I really make it I would get all the surveys like oh I'm still loud and do boisterous and the thing is nobody I know has ever become successful by trying to fix their

54:34 weaknesses it's just impossible the only way you you know you succeed is one you might need to mitigate some of them especially if they're really really holding you back but you have to lean into your strength so which is kind of a weird thing because I think when we do performance feedback it's feedback and so much time we're like well these are all the good things and then let's talk about the ways you you can improve it's

54:54 almost a flip time and like I think if you're doing performance feedback you're like well these are things you're really good at let's make you even much better at that right like let's make you fly faster run harder right close the deal right better code oh yeah and some people are mad at you for these things you should watch it and maybe fix some of it really bad but that's not what's going to pull you ahead it's the

55:12 superpowers that's going to really pull your head so let's focus on that yeah the way I think about that is you want to like the weaknesses can't be liabilities you can't just get on stage and melt and explode but you have to be amazing as long as you can like email really well write documents really well communicate in other ways if that's the strength one last trick while we're on this topic I was just reading Hunter

55:31 walks blog and he shared a cool trick for imposter syndrome where you just have to ask yourself am I so good at pretending that people don't see like what's actually happening like am I actually that good to being this imposter like probably not like people can tell and it's really unlikely you're actually an imposter also by the way the reality is a cliche is people are just not thinking about you right that's true yeah you're giving yourself you're

55:53 giving other people too much credit that their everyone's focused on somebody else everyone's so busy focusing on themselves and their own insecurities and fear and just like living life and like yeah like think about ourselves right when's the last time we thought about somebody else like that person probably an imposter like we just don't have the time for it I've been thinking about me this whole time I am not surprised it's hilarious this there's something actually along these lines I was going

56:21 to ask you about I remember sriyama when you were just getting out of the companies you worked at you kind of made this point that you you were like Nic and you were in these meetings where people are reviewing your work and they're like making decisions and you're the person presenting and then all of a sudden you're the person reviewing all their work and making the decisions and no one trained you to be that person where you're like oh my God I'm that

56:41 person they're looking for for all these answers and I'm curious just how you worked through that and what advice you'd have for people that are maybe going through that transition yeah it's a good question first of all it's kind of a jotting change because you realize well I have power but I'm also like called upon to do a bunch of things because no meeting let's let's call it an executive let's say and you are the exact they're present thing too right it

57:02 doesn't really matter what your title is you know all of a sudden you're having a bunch of things you're making decisions but you're also providing feedback sometimes explicitly sometimes implicitly you might piss off Somebody by naming somebody and not naming the other person you might prefer somebody by not inviting them to the meeting you might have to be like well I really want to overrule this person but if I do they might get mad at me and there are so

57:22 many different things which you have to you know keep in your head as well as like is this the right path for the team for the company or whatever the situation is and it can be really overwhelming and you know I learned a lot of how to do great executive videos from my time at Facebook from Zak and from Andrew Bosworth under Boswell boss has some great posts on the sidebars.com about how to do reviews and I'm trying

57:40 to get him on this podcast by the way he's great he's fantastic let me know when you have them I have some questions get you to ask him but boss had a few ways of thinking first of all let's start with Zach I think I love about Zach's executive views was that it was clear when you walk in the room that you are talking to one of the most powerful people on the planet right but what he did which not a lot of other

58:02 people in his position do is he would tell you what the rules of engagement were for every meeting or reputation he'd be like look I'm gonna give you a spectrum of hey how much I care about this topic everything from I don't care I don't know why you're talking to me do I kind of a cat a little I kind of care so I'm happy you're getting this update dude I really want you to do this but

58:20 you know what if you over me that's fine all the way to like I'm the founder I'm the CEO just do this right but he will make it clear where he stood on the Spectrum the second thing he would make clear is why he believed the things he did like for example you know the very first time I pitched him on what his Facebook Audience Network and which grew into like probably one of the largest attendant books on

58:40 mobile you had all these sort of you know ideas he was like well I know I wish into an ad Network because and he had all these opinions on well mobile ads are looked terrible they are spammy X Y and Z but he was really articulating those to you and also saying like well if you can prove me wrong on these legs of my logically I will let you overrule me unless you know I have a strong

59:00 opinion so you could when you walk to me and you're like well I know the framework I know what the dance is do you convince him or maybe that's very shadow of convincing but that's fine now his name he's a CEO and that's fine too so I didn't know so so important to clarify for your team the framework you're operating in with you and it also maybe a clarifying function for yourself so how do you actually feel about this and why do you

59:19 feel that but that's number one the second part of it is inside a meeting is there's a few things I think you need to do which is to clarify what kind of meeting is it right is it just an update great we're gonna get an update I'm gonna listen to you I'm going to upload you for job well done I'm going to send you on your way or is it a decision in which case what are the pros cons Etc

59:39 the there are some real big failure modes where one kind of meaning slides into another kind of meeting where somebody's like why are we doing that you know is there a thing and then somebody else starts people like oh gosh like we shouldn't have brought this topic at all and it's everyone listening to this has probably been to one of those meetings there's also something else which teams sometimes like to do which is they feel like hey we have a

59:57 hard problem you don't know what to do and they'll be like they're trying to push the responsibility of the dation from them to you which will be fine but if you want you want to be like yeah you should be like hey are you saying that you can't make up your mind and you want me to make up your mind for you you're only very explicit right because often you like I've seen management that are hard decisions teams are like they

60:18 exactly strongly we don't know what to do and they kind of want to push the accountability to you and you have to watch out for that a lot a lot of hygiene things we think are very important for example send out a pre-read before make sure it's the right kind of people the right people in the room not everybody but not missing out key people make sure you're paying complete attention make sure everyone gets a chance to talk which I by the way

60:39 I was really bad at and you know those things get go a really long way oh and one final thing have a regular rhythm to those so you're doing this like every month Etc what I hate I sold this line from Google rajaram is the phrase hero meetings right all of us have been this right which is like there's a big thing there's a big review it's probably a go no go maybe it's career limiting maybe

61:00 it'll get our team funded and everyone's stressed out you spend two weeks working on a deck and the first 20 minutes the condition goes totally sideways because their exact thought of something every one of us has been one of those those are bad right like the way to fix that is to have like a regular checking so you're meeting every single week and it becomes like you're not spending weeks it's a muscle it's the rhythm of what

61:18 you do and those reasons all right sorry I went on a bit of a speech there but yeah what I was thinking about is you two have worked basically all the big consumer companies and coming back to imposter syndrome briefly what's like the worst product you've built or the biggest failure you've each built and what did you learn oh man startup style start free at a startup I tried all kinds of things right like we just like kind of grasp it

61:44 straws and build whatever so I remember and also I think you I felt kind of victim to like a lot of startups do this where they'll see some theme that has become a meme with investors and they'll be like I'm gonna go build that company like I'm just going to like take the technology adopt it and now like you're kind of start off saying that with like AI now where it's like everything's now an AI company of course like everyone's

62:05 Incorporated AI like part of it is like you get it like you kind of sort of like want to be in the game and be cool but if it doesn't really fit with your product hypothesis and thesis and what your customers are asking for don't fall for that fad and I did stuff where I've totally fell for The Fad I think I had like a consumer electronics e-commerce you know like a machine learning model where we like rent and then

62:29 recommend the right things to go by but then we were like oh Uber is like doing this whole like uberX thing where it was like people having their cars and they could like do this thing and I was like well and at that time I think this whole like shared ownership of stuff became such a big thing and I was like oh I'm going to do that exact thing where it's like it's less you know we were at that time we

62:52 were partnering with like Best Buy and we were like well we should do this other side product which is like people's own stuff that they could like put up on the side total disaster because it is a lot totally different company Logistics everything like you could build it out as like a different business but we had a small team which was like heavily focused on this business was already doing pretty well and then we were like had to like Fork

63:15 all of that effort to go build this other thing which required like different skill set different fulfillment technology and all of that and so we were like okay disaster so we pulled the plug on it like many months in but you should have done it a lot sooner would you learn from that experience other than pulling the plug sooner yeah don't don't fall for ads right it's like do the thing that your customers are asking for and are willing

63:35 to pay for or even not even like what your customers are asking for but if you have something that is working don't get distracted and it just it's very easy to be like I'm gonna build this five other things and it's all going to like accrue value and I literally talked to another founder last week where they're like but I'm I'm building this consumer thing but I'm also going to do this SDK so I can go partner with these other companies

63:57 and do this B2B thing and I'm like but you are four people why are you doing that that's crazy like but imagine catering to 10x the market like well but you're going from you know consumer payments thing to something like stripe and that's like a very different business so do you want to go do that and go have that like trade-off conversation so yeah that was one big learning at Netflix we tried this out we knew it was an experiment this was like

64:23 before Netflix was cool like 10 11 years ago where yeah so my job was to build like the the streaming player software that goes let's go yeah it was like my job was to go partner with like Samsung and Sony and Panasonic and build a software the SDK that goes into like TVs and setup boxes and Blu-ray players this is before like International Netflix and original content like House of Cards and all of that but one of the experiments we tried

64:52 back then was Netflix 3D total disaster 3D TVs when that was another that was another bad issue exactly yeah but you know we had a lot of oems who were like 3D is going to be really big and you have to like go invest in that so I spent months trying to do this like left eye right eye codec and trying to make this whole thing work with these like odd glasses you know sitting in your living room trying to do

65:15 like 3D content which is really hard like I think we tried like seven titles movie titles over imported it over to 3D and like I don't think this is such a great experience and we ended up like pulling the plug on it that one was like we knew what an experiment going in we knew there was like a good exit criteria but it did like it was kind of a failure sure I bet you're gonna have a really

65:36 good one all my products were huge successes so I have nothing the other way no I I'll say probably the very first thing I worked on and it's complicated because I love the team and I think we've seen great work whereas we worked on something called visual studio for devices and the idea was what was it wish list for what oh sorry Visual Studio visual devices on your phone yeah well no no phone and the idea was this was before iPhone it

66:04 this was the era of Windows mobile pocket PCS and Windows Mobile smartphones so kids listening to this like what's he talking about what was before there was some and this was 2015 so right before the iPhone came out the two years and we were fresh out of school both what was work on this and there was basically an IDE Visual Studio where they had an extension where you could write code on a slimmed down version of the.net framework and you

66:27 would run apps on these small phones and the small pocket PCS and the team was fantastic they're all still friends and without that we don't have our jobs or careers so that's not the point the point is told you these phones were terrible and slow and awful but what we're told all the time was listen nobody can change this because the the carrier first control this Market they determine what software goes on a phone goes on a device so this entire

66:51 ecosystem is all about competing with Blackberry in fact the code name for Windows mobile 5.0 was crossbow and kind of the secret which I think kind of public now crossbow was a weed killer it killed blackberries and so the whole idea was how do you kill Enterprise how do you kind of go after this Enterprise Market blackberry and work with the carriers right and then in 2007 cdos comes out and says I have three launches for you actually it's one thing

67:17 right and that I remember texting my manager that I was like you have to see this keyword right because it's so obvious that this thing was going to change everybody and everyone's Max I was like no you know it's the OE it's a carrier so all the control like they will never let these devices learn but actually it turns out that's not true I learned two lessons from that one is you know the market is bigger than all

67:39 of you you can work with the amazing team you can work the a plus team A Plus company but if the market shifts you can't overcome a bad Market or a bad space the second part is at the heart of it if you feel some product is bad and if you feel like this new thing it's just better to use and you can just feel it instantly you have to follow the incident because yeah the iPhone is cool

68:00 it feels so much better but okay maybe they're right maybe you know it is the you know all these people so so much more senior than us clearly they've like put so much more thought into this clearly like what do I know kind of thing and you kind of realize that like now I think over the you know what we've done product for 15 16 years now and we look at it and go like we now have these

68:21 patterns to go match against we know when something's like better when something is working when something feels like it's intuitive you kind of Follow That intuition now then and not try and fight it and be like but here are all these things where this is not going to get there kind of thing like it just doesn't work that way the market ultimately wins and I think when you're younger you should really trust your instincts and instincts can mean I just

68:46 hear people talking about this thing this other thing a lot right or I hear that other companies name come up a lot or I tried this thing and and you may not have the framework to articulate it and you may not trust your instincts but there's something there and you should learn to listen to that voice like why is that we're talking about it maybe they're doing better marketing right maybe their CEO is better on Twitter

69:07 or you know they have Lenny richardsky as an angel investor and you know are they advertised on your podcast there we go try to get a plug in there daddy and everybody but you have to sort of Listen to Your Instinct because you know there's usually something there to follow I only have two more questions one is I mentioned framework I know you have strong opinions on a very specific framework jobs to be done and I know you're not a fan

69:32 what do you want to share about why you don't like jobs to be done as a framework all right I knew you're gonna ask me this and I thought you know I was thinking like how do I be you know kind of balanced bombastic no no balanced and give like a measured answer and you know say well every framework is good and bad ways and you know there are good things and bad things and you know I could probably

69:56 give it one of those answers no I actually think the more fun thing to do is I'm going to say I hate jobs to be done I think it's a terrible framework I think no successful company has ever been built on top of jdbd and if you pick jdbd you're probably doomed and here's why because jdbd assumes that let's go back to the canonical example right and there's nothing who was a legend you know amazing what the

70:19 milkshake right what is the idea being the milkshake you you are a person you go into a commute and you're like hey I'm going to you know I'm going to get this milkshake because it's the exact right quantity and it will save me on my computer but they changed it up and all of a sudden boom like you know you you it was not serving the job and look into the thing that actually it is serving the customer form I'll tell you

70:40 that's not how actual real companies work right because in real companies there are so many different different parameters for example maybe it is really really hard to go build that milkshake right maybe there's another person who opens up across the state who builds a better milkshake than you do maybe the the cup configuration in the car changes maybe the supply chain for milk chain changes right but in my world let me make this more concrete when you work on social media

71:01 there are often so many other agents in the system where you can't focus on one person's equation I'll give an example when you sign up for Instagram right now when you sign up for Facebook for many many years Facebook knew that it needed to get you to 10 friends in 14 days if you go to your 10 friends in 14 days you're probably going to use Facebook so it'd be like well if you want to throw

71:18 every tool we have at our disposal get you to 10 friends and 14 days so if you sign up Facebook for many many years you get this little thing called people you may know and it'll show you then you have this person who just signed up on Facebook why are you missing this person it's not because you need a friend because they need a friend so what Facebook did was it made your experience slightly worse to make that person's

71:38 experience slightly better this was performing no job for you it was trying to perform a job for them what was the right trade-off or not I don't know where his problem at Twitter the single best product launch for the last five years at Twitter was the introduction of the algorithmic ranking algorithm oh my God and and how are users hated it they're like I know how to control my timeline I know who to follow etc etc it

72:03 turns out though this is not built for power users it was really built to get for a regular person when they sign up for Twitter to be able to give them a great experience because reading the power users they already have and by The Tick Tock is a great example of that so how do you make the trade-off do you pick power users how do you pick a regular person what is the trade-off between them jobs we done does not tell

72:20 you that right in fact they're even worse if you go sign up for let me tell you this if you go look at if you go order a package from Amazon right now you know five years ago or three years ago you got an email I'll tell you what is that package what is in it and it's been showing up yourself last couple of years it doesn't why because Amazon doesn't want Google to have that data

72:38 inside Gmail system so it is you know for very very valid competitive reasons trying to make your experience worse because that's what I think do for a company so real life and real product is all about these trade-offs and whenever I've seen people Trot out jtbd it's a tell that they actually haven't dealt with a trade-off where you have to make one person's life slightly versus one situation for some other interesting Dynamic okay I'll stop with my mini

73:01 speech this is my favorite part of the podcast so far I'm hoping people listen to the end here because this is I think yeah I think jdb the problem with that is it's just too idealistic and most Frameworks are but this one just takes it up a notch where it's like it's almost meant for people who are so naive about product building and especially product building at scale I think it might work for like the V1 or

73:24 just like a hypothesis that you're trying to go test out where it's like what is the core value that we're trying to serve for this user kind of thing but really like you know we too V3 it kind of falls apart because you have these super hard trade alternative to make and every company goes through that so it's almost a little too idealistic in its thinking I think that's like the biggest problem with it yeah I look I was I was

73:45 being a bit bombastic obviously you know and it does have some we're gonna edit this part out this is yeah right you know it may be useful in some Niche case which nobody is talking about right for milkshakes yeah if you're starting a mainstream company go for it but I'll say so people people have a good Financial like what is the alternative right well not jdbd like how do we actually figure this out and I think a much better way and I really

74:07 don't see the early Facebook years which is systems thinking right think of all the players in the system think of all of their incentives and how they interact with each other so in that milkshake example your car the person the competitor across the road the supply chain the margin profit margin of each person the podcast they have to listen to what is each person's incentives that you're trying to drive and look at how they all work together

74:31 so in for example so then we look at the algorithmic rankings case sure it kind of de-prioritize a certain set of people but it prioritize other set of people and you could then have a much more rational discussion about whether that trade-off is worth it right maybe it is maybe it's not but it's a much better discussion that well that person wanted milkshake you're not giving a milkshake like what do you do that doesn't help you at all and yes it may be a good tool

74:52 in ways that I absolutely have not seen so far but yeah also the other two I think I really like is first principles thinking you know it's it's everyone throws it out there it's kind of become this cliche now but really think about it as if your product didn't exist and if you had to start over from scratch would you build it the exact same way for these set of customers like how would you think about it oftentimes

75:12 people focus hyper focused on competition and what other companies doing that almost never matters like you know like other companies are probably looking at you and going what are these guys doing and you kind of have to look at it as you know all of these systems that sriram said but also really think about it as if you had to do this all over again what how would you do this like is this the right way or are you kind of just

75:36 inheriting decisions over time and just trying to make incremental changes in trade-offs and stuff like that yeah like I like that way more than like trying to think of it as a job that a customer hires you to go do it just sounds like really naive it just it just makes you feel it makes you sound smart I think but I'll give you an example right sorry you just you stop okay one of my favorite person learning in

76:02 the recent times I don't know when this episode is going to go out it's a Duolingo growth post right I have been sharing it all the time it's actually one of the best posts I've seen right what is the job that people are hiring Duolingo to go to help teach them a new language right that sounds about right some version of that but if you look at that post what actually saved the company so they tried

76:23 dozens of different things found that not start metric you know the current user retention rate then they tried leaderboards realize why leaderboards don't work then ultimately it is tricks that worked out right yeah tell me where how do you use jobs to be done to get to a world where like hey we really we're going to show these fire emojis and you need to kind of get that fire Emoji every day because what it's really getting at is the sense of motivation

76:45 right so you know there is no jtbd brainstorming off site that will ever get you there and one of my what I've seen quickly is almost always when you get a great product breakthrough like that it comes from some one person usually having a product intuition about something about the psychological I think the product delivers and systems thinking those are the only two places I've ever seen it okay I'll stop now now that example is amazing I was going to

77:10 talk about how I've actually found it a little useful in my life but I think that's just going to keep us I was just going to ask you are you now convinced Lenny because Freedom has spent 45 000 minutes just trying to tell you why you should not be using I'm just going to get canceled by Lenny's audience right Lenny's audience like this is a reasonable part because I know hate this guy right like you know I'm very good I

77:31 think the jtbd industrial complex is going to come after you it's a whole Mafia I think if you see a bunch of mass unsubscribes I just want to say this is not on Lenny this is unsure from your podcast yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna get attacked by a bunch of you know people who are really good at holding offsides and you know framework yeah I like I think I find it useful in like specific cases not like as a

77:53 skilled product development process which I think which you've run into where just the whole company is run by job to be done right every one paper is like what is the job like the job is to get them to open it up three times more each day yeah okay I know you guys have to run so I have one more question I have this kind of saying in my family that whenever we do something well I'm like we're making

78:14 it in America because we also immigrated from the Ukraine and as immigrants you talked about your story of coming to America and clearly making it you're kind of both at the center of I don't know what's happening in Tech which is also at the center of the world in many ways I'm curious what advice you would give to immigrants and people that have moved here recently or even a while ago just like how to make it and be

78:35 successful in the US especially in Tech the time of Hiram covered before it's like put yourself out there don't be afraid to put yourself out there oftentimes like for us it took us a decade plus to kind of feel comfortable doing that because we came in we looked different we sound different we have strong accents you the number of times I got told at both startups and before then like oh my God your accent is so like it's so

79:00 difficult I can't hear you you know I don't understand what you're saying I got told before fundraising that you know nobody will be able to invest in my company because the accent is too strong like there are all these like you already have these barriers like virtual barriers in your own head and then it's then you have like people coming and telling you actively that you are different and you can succeed I almost now if I had to do it all over again I

79:25 almost think these differences are kind of what sets us apart and makes us unique and you can do really interesting things with them because you are you are going to a place where you are rare and and that's I think a really good thing so you should kind of like sharpen that rareness and do really interesting things with it whatever that might be we have this show called where good time shows are the insurance good time show and we focus a lot on

79:52 Outsiders being insiders or how you started out as like for us you know we are quintessential examples of that where it Outsiders to Tech to Silicon Valley to being in this world and we kind of made it quote unquote to being here and we often talk about like what it takes to like do that and whatever your version of being Outsider and becoming an Insider means right and for us like you know part of it is like not

80:16 being afraid to put yourself out there power of cold emails networking and being really proactive about that what would you add to that or how do you think about it I think everything I don't have much to add I'll just say if you listen to this and you're making it a you're in the right place be you know you're listening to this podcast leading this newsletter which is probably not a day-to-day jobs you're only doing something right so you want to make it

80:38 right you're already putting yourself out you're doing the right things you're going to make it what a beautiful way to end it see final questions working folks find you online the good time show and you're on Twitter or wherever and then how can listeners be useful to you too to go subscribe there but you know

81:10 you can find us everywhere we are on YouTube at again at the Instagram you can find us on Spotify podcast whatever you get your daily milkshake slash podcast and also on Twitter at RTR and SRI Ram K amazing how can people be useful yeah yeah I would say you know this is gonna sound like a cliche but my job is fantastic in a way where if people are building amazing things I benefit because if you build amazing things our

81:41 job you're going to build a great company or and then odds are that I'll have the chance to maybe invest or one of my partners without transmit invest and hopefully you make a bunch of money out of it so just go out there and build things tell me about the things you're building and also just reach out right just Reach Out say hi yeah if you're okay if you're if you listen to this right send me a DM send us a DM and send

82:02 us an email and we will respond yes send it to him not me just keep me out of it yes but for everything else if it's a nice note especially send it to me I will read it yeah all right yeah if you're ready for some DMS both of you thank you again for being here you've set the bar high for our first Duo guest thank you again and goodbye everyone thank you thank you so much for listening if you

82:28 found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com see you in the next episode