Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
00:15:00 · Josh Woodward
[00:15:00] S1: Yeah, I think one of the maybe trickiest parts of it is it is way more art than science. I wish it was science. We know how to run science experiments, make data-driven decisions, set OKRs, all this process that helps. Sometimes in the early days, Lenny, it's literally a couple of people on the team who might just have conviction and they're just like, "I think the future is going to look like this" and I can't explain it. That advice is just not that useful or helpful, but I would say that's some of it. I think maybe a little more useful, we talk a lot about how do we get outside the building and just show people prototypes. And when you're showing people early prototypes, what I'm always doing in those is you're looking at people's eyes and that is the metric. It is not a DAO, it's not a DAO over a MOU. It's not a D7 [inaudible 00:15:57], it's none of that. It's literally like, "Hey, Lenny, did you see this? What do you think about this?" And if your eyes kind of light up, if you lean in, these are the kind of signals you're looking for the early days. Maybe the third thing I would say, and this one's also maybe on the flip side of your question, is the people who get excited about things, usually we try to think about what's the problem we're falling in love with, not the product. Because what I found is it takes three, four, five pivots before you either got something or you're just like, "That's it. Didn't work." So I think when people fall in love with an actual product solution first, it's going to, at least in my experience, lead to a bad time. So that's the other thing I think we try to think a lot about. And usually people talk about PMF, you sort of know it when you have it. I think that's true. In the last, I don't know, year or so when Nano Banana went viral on Gemini, when the NotebookLM podcasts have gone, when stuff's happened on Flow or Stitch or other kind of projects that have had these mini moments, you're literally just swarming it and holding on for dear life. And it is both so exhausting and so fun. But yeah, you almost have to take a lot of shots, I would say. And in the early days, again, it feels a little more art passion driven than science, unfortunately.
00:17:25 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:17:25] S0: Those are actually very concrete, specific things to look for. The eyes, eyes light up a way I've heard someone else describe this as their pupils dilate. [00:17:35] S1: Yes. Yeah, that's right. And you know too, when you're talking to someone, if they're having a good time, if they're into it or if they're just bored out of their mind and you're showing them some dumb product. So it's really like, can you hit a nerve with a pain point in their life where they're just like, "I want that." And I mean, that's what makes this job so fun is trying to figure out how many of those nerves you can hit. [00:17:58] S0: So having that context of it's clear when things are product market fitting and their eyes are lighting up, what are signs that it's time to kill an idea?