Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:09:36 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:09:36] S0: Is there anything on that list you can share of things that are not yet possible but almost possible that you're waiting for or watching for? [00:09:42] S1: Well, maybe I can share a few areas because I think how we think about it in Labs is we have a bit of a thought experiment we go through where we're like, what is the future of a certain thing going to look like? So the future of software design and development or the future of creativity, the future of work or knowledge. One area we're watching very close right now is just what is the future of entertainment going to look like? And this whole idea around immersive entertainment is super interesting just at a technical level for many reasons, but also you think about just the user sort of behaviors and what does entertainment look like last year, this year versus next year, maybe in three years. And so that's one where we've got a whole list underneath that where we're like, oh, okay, well, if a model can get to this kind of latency and this amount of languages and this amount of modality, you can start to think through what would be interesting from the tech side. And then we do a lot of work in Labs around where are just behaviors and trends going. And for that, some of it of course you can study in the Bay Area, but for a lot of our teams, I'm always thinking about how do we get way outside the Bay Area and thinking about where are the other cities, the classrooms, the other places to almost mine for ideas and these behavioral changes.
00:11:05 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:11:05] S0: So an interesting takeaway here is this, you're not just waiting for inspiration to strike, you're doing a lot of pre-work to think about here's what is almost working, here's where we think the future might be going, here's areas that are going to be ripe for disruption. [00:11:19] S1: That's right. [00:11:20] S0: Cool. [00:11:20] S1: In this doc I talked about, we have 82 predictions that all begin with, we believe the future is, or we predict. This is dangerous ever to make one prediction, let alone 82. But I think you have to almost have a point of view about the future knowing that nine out of 10 or maybe 9.9 out of 10, you're going to be wrong. But I think that's one of the things we really try to cultivate in the team is how do we chase the future? That's one of the values and sort of trying to chase it, you almost have to throw yourself out there and try to live in it a little bit. [00:11:52] S0: What are signs to you that an idea is worth pursuing when you're in the shower and you have this idea? What's the sign that, okay, that's worth betting on at least to start with? And what's often just a false signal like, okay, no, that's actually not going to work?
00:11:52 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:11:52] S0: What are signs to you that an idea is worth pursuing when you're in the shower and you have this idea? What's the sign that, okay, that's worth betting on at least to start with? And what's often just a false signal like, okay, no, that's actually not going to work? [00:12:04] S1: Yeah, I think one thing for me, especially when you've got these lists going and you're thinking about the future, when you see something that surprises you or maybe that's very interesting to you in a certain way, and if you can describe it to yourself, like this thing I saw about 48 hours ago, I left that sort of demo and I thought this is so exciting. And I think that's maybe a signal I use a little bit is trying to be at the frontier and then what makes me interested or excited and then feeding off that with the team together. [00:12:40] S0: I feel like that bar is too low these days because everything is so magical or it's the opposite. Now everything, okay, great, this thing is doing my taxes for me. Of course, that's the way [inaudible 00:12:51].
00:12:40 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:12:40] S0: I feel like that bar is too low these days because everything is so magical or it's the opposite. Now everything, okay, great, this thing is doing my taxes for me. Of course, that's the way [inaudible 00:12:51]. [00:12:51] S1: Well, I think this is one of the things, obviously that excitement is maybe a tech thing and yeah, there's dazzling demos every other day or every other hour right now. But then I think trying to think through where's the user behavior maybe that is universal or maybe there is some shift on that side. And then the way we think about monetization too is can you get to a group of people that can't live without it? They literally will pay you because it's so valuable to them and then how you can put those pieces together. But yeah, sometimes it's got to come from one of those areas, I would say. [00:13:24] S0: Is there a great example or story of a product that emerged in this way?
00:13:24 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:13:24] S0: Is there a great example or story of a product that emerged in this way? [00:13:27] S1: Yeah, I mean, I remember still the first time I heard the first NotebookLM podcast, exactly where I was standing. It was right outside this room and it was probably at 6:30 PM on a Tuesday or something. And there were two people on the team who came over and were like, "You got to listen to this." And it was the proceedings of the British Parliament debates, not known for its riveting material, but these two AI hosts were talking about it in a way that was literally interesting. And that was one where we're like, "We got to just do something with this." And that was one. I remember the first time when I saw something come out of Google Flow, we had a project before that called Whisk, where you could whisk together multiple images and then start to animate them. And it was a level of control and creative kind of channeling that had never been possible that it was that accessible. So maybe those are two examples. We also have other examples where we get excited, we try to build some product that's just not good. So that's the other thing is a little bit of a game of numbers in this as well.
00:13:27 · Josh Woodward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:13:27] S1: Yeah, I mean, I remember still the first time I heard the first NotebookLM podcast, exactly where I was standing. It was right outside this room and it was probably at 6:30 PM on a Tuesday or something. And there were two people on the team who came over and were like, "You got to listen to this." And it was the proceedings of the British Parliament debates, not known for its riveting material, but these two AI hosts were talking about it in a way that was literally interesting. And that was one where we're like, "We got to just do something with this." And that was one. I remember the first time when I saw something come out of Google Flow, we had a project before that called Whisk, where you could whisk together multiple images and then start to animate them. And it was a level of control and creative kind of channeling that had never been possible that it was that accessible. So maybe those are two examples. We also have other examples where we get excited, we try to build some product that's just not good. So that's the other thing is a little bit of a game of numbers in this as well. [00:14:37] S0: Let's talk about product market fit and signs that something's actually working. I feel like you've seen more ideas thrown at the wall and tried and prototyped than maybe anyone else. I don't know if that's true, but it feels true. What are signs to you that this is something we need to double down on and what's something that might surprise people about what product market fit looks like?