Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:13:11 · Peter Sellis
We're giving this away, we're making this happen today because we know they'll come back tomorrow even bigger." And yeah, that one was really, really, really effective. I think the other thing was at both Snap and Discord, we created this concept of core product value, and this was related to my DAU comment, was like you need to define both from a theoretical or like a conceptual level as well as a metrics level, like what it means for somebody to come back to your product every single day. And so Snap, I think at the time was like Snap is the fastest way to share a moment with the people you care about. So it's like fast, share a moment, people you care about. And you could actually break down what does fast mean? Time to load. What does share mean? It's like, okay, you're opening to the camera with sharing quickly. What does people you care about mean? Focus on best friends. You could actually break this thing down, and so you had fastest way to share a moment with your best friends. So if you're building a product roadmap on the consumer side and you're like, "Oh, should we work on this?" It's like, "Well, does it help us be the fastest way to share a moment with your best friends?" Kind of tenuous link to that, maybe that's not what we should prioritize. I think Discord was like the best way to talk and hang out with your friends before, during and after playing games. So it's like talk, hang out, games, before, during, after. You can break this thing down and we actually had metrics definitions, which I think are kind of proprietary internal, but we had metrics definitions that we were looking for. Those metrics definitions made their way into the growth books, into the hacks like, "Okay, did this impact CPV?" And this whole ideological language that everybody shared, you could onboard new data sciences to, I think just got people on the program... ... science too, I think just got people on the program really, really fast.
01:15:05 · Lenny Rachitsky, Peter Sellis
[01:15:05] S0: These are awesome. This idea of core product value is such a nice way to frame. It combines mission with the levers essentially of the business. And basically the idea here is come up with just a phrase that describes the mission that happens to also connect with how we grow this business. And it feels like three components is a consistent pattern here. [01:15:31] S1: Yeah. Three made it... Yeah, maybe it's just like a rule of threes. Yeah. But the way you characterize it is exactly right. And you can't over rely on one or the other. If it's just metrics, it's kind of meaningless to people. If it's just a phrase, it doesn't get actioned day to day by data scientists, product managers and engineers. So having both and building a story around that and telling that story repeatedly. For core product value at Snap, we actually had an onboarding presentation which I delivered to every single new hire for seven years straight every week or every other week later that was about this because that was part of the cult. This is how we deliver core product value. This is why people choose Snapchat every single day in the face of tons of alternatives and a bunch of savage competitors. And I think the same goes for Discord. [01:16:16] S0: And the work is coming up with that phrase that actually is clear, simple, connects to all these things. Not easy I imagine. [01:16:22] S1: And the metrics that are causally demonstrated with retention. That's tough too. I think no data scientist likes working with me because I'm like, "Hey, guys, we got to figure this out."
01:16:22 · Peter Sellis, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:22] S1: And the metrics that are causally demonstrated with retention. That's tough too. I think no data scientist likes working with me because I'm like, "Hey, guys, we got to figure this out." [01:16:32] S0: Interesting. Okay. One other take that you mentioned when we were chatting, this is this idea of how a great PM is an oxymoron.
01:16:40 · Peter Sellis
[01:16:40] S1: Yeah. I can't help but think this is maybe why it's so hard to come by some of them because you see an [inaudible 01:16:48]. There's basically these three, I bet you could actually come up with this from a synthesis of so many of the amazing product leaders you've had on here, but there are these three oxymorons, I think. There are two wolves inside of the PM three times. One is, I think to be a really good PM, you kind of have to be really confident and that borders on arrogance a lot of the time, especially at certain levels. And so that has to be balanced with some form of humility, really serious humility where you, again, are so confident that what we're doing is the right thing to do and that we have conviction on this path. And also personally, that I will be recognized for my contribution. I can go out there and give credit to exactly who deserves it. The designer who made that last second change that made a huge difference, the engineer that stayed up all night to get out the thing on time for the partner event. I think that this also ties to being a great leader, but having the humility and the attention to detail to know who to give credit to actually comes from this sense of confidence that you kind of know that PMs are going to get too much credit no matter what. And so I think that's the first one. The second one, which I really like and really try and test for in interviews, and I'm not the best interviewer, is you want these people who are extremely organized and very process driven. They understand the value of good process and not too much, not too little, et cetera, and then are just super comfortable with ambiguity, almost to the point of despising authority, almost like pathological demand avoidance. And so it's just like, "I have a checklist for everything, but I'm also comfortable if I have to throw it out and redo it all the time." Or something like that. I think these two wolves are like, if you can demonstrate that through some stories or through some examples, that's so attractive to me in a candidate. It's like, yeah, I'm really comfortable with ambiguity, but that doesn't mean I just am not organized or I hate process. Another one of those things where it's really trendy to just say all process is useless, but it's like I like somebody who has both those wolves.
01:19:16 · Peter Sellis, Lenny Rachitsky
And then I think the last one is a little more obvious, but a lot of the great PMs that I've worked with really just always have some form of long-term thinking in their mind. They just know how they want the world to look six months, a year, two years from now, and they're patient and they know what building blocks need to come into place for the system to work, but yet on a day-to-day basis, their bias for action is just borderline annoying. They're just such good people at setting the pace of the entire company. When they wake up in the morning, the company wakes up, the group wakes up, the team wakes up, whatever it is. I think that combination of urgency and bias for action with long-term thinking, those are my three oxymorons, the three pairs of wolves inside every great PM. [01:20:09] S0: Amazing description of what makes a great PM. Such a cool way to think about it. Nikhyl Singhal was on the podcast a couple times and he talks about the, it's like a different way of thinking about it, but he talks about the shadow. You have a superpower, but then there's the shadow of what the downside of that is. It's a different thing, but I love this. It's just a really interesting way to just think about what is a great PM. Okay. One final thing before we get to a very exciting lightning round, I want to take us to Contrarian Corner, which is a recurring podcast segment where I feel like you're going to have some good stuff here. The question is just, what's something you believe that most other people don't?
01:20:09 · Lenny Rachitsky, Peter Sellis
[01:20:09] S0: Amazing description of what makes a great PM. Such a cool way to think about it. Nikhyl Singhal was on the podcast a couple times and he talks about the, it's like a different way of thinking about it, but he talks about the shadow. You have a superpower, but then there's the shadow of what the downside of that is. It's a different thing, but I love this. It's just a really interesting way to just think about what is a great PM. Okay. One final thing before we get to a very exciting lightning round, I want to take us to Contrarian Corner, which is a recurring podcast segment where I feel like you're going to have some good stuff here. The question is just, what's something you believe that most other people don't? [01:20:46] S1: Being contrarian is tough these days. Very trendy to be contrarian, which is ironic. So maybe I should just be conformist. Can I break this into a light spicy, medium spicy, heavy spicy? [01:20:58] S0: Love that. Let's do it.