Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:24:42 · Dan Shipper, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:24:42] S1: Yeah, I agree. [01:24:43] S0: So if you haven't seen that yet, then it's just like, try, fine, try solving it. The thing I hear a lot is just find a problem in your life or work and see if AI can do it. Go to Lovable, go to apply code, go to Replit, just try to build the thing and often it's like, holy shit, this is so cool." Dan, is there anything else that we haven't covered? We've gone deep on so much. Is there anything else you wanted to share? Anything else you want to predict or just say before we get to a very exciting lightning round? [01:25:09] S1: I think we covered it. We did a lot. This is awesome, and I'm very excited to see how well or poorly I do in a year, and I hope that you hold me to it. [01:25:19] S0: We're going to have AI score us. How about that? [01:25:21] S1: Great. [01:25:22] S0: Look at the world like a dance prediction. See where it goes. Well, with that, Dan Shipper, we've reached a very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? [01:25:30] S1: I'm ready. [01:25:31] S0: What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:25:36 · Dan Shipper
[01:25:36] S1: Obviously Annie Dillard. Everyone at every has to read The Writing Life. When you join, you get a copy and you have to read it. You only have to read the last chapter though. I think the last chapter is incredible, and it is at the intersection of writing and technology and the future and its relationship to the future and to time. It's everything about every wrapped up into a very tight chapter. It's so good. And I think Annie Dillard just generally is fantastic. What else do I recommend? I'll just tell you a couple things that I've read that I've really liked recently, and whenever I like something, I always just tell everyone about it. So I have recommended these a lot. I've been reading... One of the things I learned, which I didn't know is Churchill is a really good writer and he has a whole history of World War II that he wrote and it's like a combination history and memoir. And I think that's so cool because he was there, he did it. And there's something about what we do at everywhere. I feel some sort of kinship with that of like we're building stuff, we're writing stuff and it's very rare to find people that also do that. And so Churchill History of World War II is fantastic. I just finished the first volume. I'm on the second volume. The Nazis just invaded France. It's very captivating stuff. So that's one. I've been on a little bit of a quantum physics kick recently. AI is actually very good for quantum physics if you get into it. And there's this book called The Rigor of Angels that I just finished, which is, it's a history of ideas that relates Heisenberg, who has his uncertainty principle. Borges, who's an Argentinian fiction writer, wrote a bunch of great short stories. They're actually starting to get a lot of play now because they're very AI related. And Cantor and very cool, super mind-blowing. Lots of interesting overlaps with AI stuff and, yeah, highly recommend.
01:27:51 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dan Shipper
[01:27:51] S0: I feel like we got a whole podcast episode about your reading and books you recommend. I know this is a passion of yours. My current obsession is The Power Broker. And I think we talked about it when I was visiting you. It's just- [01:28:03] S1: So good. [01:28:04] S0: Never ends, but it's surprisingly compelling to read through the history of New York. Okay. Second question, what is a recent movie or TV show you recently enjoyed if you have time for TV? [01:28:15] S1: So I've been watching a lot of basketball, so that's one. I became a Knicks fan this year, so that's really fun. But I recently watched this, I guess it's a miniseries documentary called The Dark Wizard about this guy, Dean Potter, who he was like Alex Honnold before Alex Honnold was Alex Honnold. And he just has this very extreme personality where he's free soloing everything and then he's base jumping in a wingsuit and stuff like that and it's sort of exploring his psychology and what happened to him. And I don't know, I kind of like stuff like that. There's another one called Hundred Foot Wave where it's about people who are trying to select big wave surfers. There's something about that that sort of, I guess just reminds me of Founders or whatever. But The Dark Wizard, highly recommend. [01:29:09] S0: Is there a product you recently discovered that you really love? [01:29:12] S1: Codex. [01:29:13] S0: Okay. [01:29:15] S1: It's really good. It's really good. [01:29:18] S0: Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?
01:29:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dan Shipper
[01:29:18] S0: Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:29:22] S1: Yes, I have several. The core one that I wrote for myself in college was do things worth writing about and write things worth reading. And then there's this guy, Rob Burbea, who's very popular in the AI meditation overlap discourse, which is also a big thing and who I also, I really like him. He's dead, but I think he's amazing. And I've listened to so many of his talks and there's this one talk that he gives where it's just one sentence, but he just talks about when you're dealing with stuff that's hard, what you want to do is be able to relate to it from a position of spaciousness and strength. And there is something I think really interesting and important in that. A lot of the meditation discourse are just generally like, how do you deal with hard things? It's a little bit more of the David Goggins. You just got to go for it kind of. And sometimes that can work. And also I think sometimes when you're dealing with things, so for example, when you're dealing with, I'm super afraid of how AI is going to change my job, it has been very helpful for me to be like, "Am I coming at this from a vantage point of spaciousness and strength? And if not, can I get there because it will be much more productive for me to deal with it from that place." And that has been very, very helpful for me.
01:29:22 · Dan Shipper, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:29:22] S1: Yes, I have several. The core one that I wrote for myself in college was do things worth writing about and write things worth reading. And then there's this guy, Rob Burbea, who's very popular in the AI meditation overlap discourse, which is also a big thing and who I also, I really like him. He's dead, but I think he's amazing. And I've listened to so many of his talks and there's this one talk that he gives where it's just one sentence, but he just talks about when you're dealing with stuff that's hard, what you want to do is be able to relate to it from a position of spaciousness and strength. And there is something I think really interesting and important in that. A lot of the meditation discourse are just generally like, how do you deal with hard things? It's a little bit more of the David Goggins. You just got to go for it kind of. And sometimes that can work. And also I think sometimes when you're dealing with things, so for example, when you're dealing with, I'm super afraid of how AI is going to change my job, it has been very helpful for me to be like, "Am I coming at this from a vantage point of spaciousness and strength? And if not, can I get there because it will be much more productive for me to deal with it from that place." And that has been very, very helpful for me. [01:31:04] S0: Wow. I love that. Well, our final question, just on the theme of this conversation, curious if there's just an AI tool that you think is still kind of underrated that you're just recently people should know about. Don't say, "Codex."
01:31:04 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dan Shipper
[01:31:04] S0: Wow. I love that. Well, our final question, just on the theme of this conversation, curious if there's just an AI tool that you think is still kind of underrated that you're just recently people should know about. Don't say, "Codex." [01:31:21] S1: I hate to say this, but I have to because anyone who knows me... We were at this conference recently, an Anthropic conference, and I'm telling Boris and Kat from Claude Code, "You have to try Codex." And it's just really good and the things that you can do with it are so different, especially if you're using it with the in app browser to do things like do your emails or check analytics or anything like that. It has completely transformed the way I work and I would be doing you a disservice if I was searching for something else because is that good. [01:31:59] S0: Wow, damn, that's wild. Do you feel like Anthropic can catch up or is this just like, "Well, they get [inaudible 01:32:07]" [01:32:06] S1: No, yes, I think they can. Like I said, I think it's going to be a horse race and different people will be ahead at different times, but I think right now OpenAI has gotten back the mandate of heaven a little bit. It was a rough couple months, like six months or so, but I think they're back. [01:32:25] S0: Interesting. And you'd switch if on became- [01:32:28] S1: I would. I would. It's funny. People are like, "Oh, are you sponsored by OpenAI?" I'm like, "No, I just talk about what I like." I was super loud about Claude Code when that was the thing I really liked, and I'll just say what I like when it happens.