Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:05:47 · Zevi Arnovitz, Lenny Rachitsky
It was like our mentee kind of making us all proud. And it was such a great shift for me. And basically at the end of the day, I really excelled through this. [01:05:57] S0: That is an awesome story. And this idea of learning is such a good thread throughout this whole conversation that AI is good at getting stuff done, but it's also really good at helping you learn how to do the thing and to be this partner, this thought partner, the way you talked about the interview process you went through and this learning opportunity /command. So awesome. Great story. Zevi, okay. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything you want to leave listeners with?
01:06:25 · Zevi Arnovitz, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:06:25] S1: Yeah. So kind of to tie back into the first thing I said where if people walk away thinking, "Zevi's so cool." Then I've failed here. I think that it's just the best time to be alive, I think. It's the best time to be a junior contrary to what a lot of people are saying how there's no more junior roles out there and people get out of school and you can't find a role. Yeah, that's true. But also when else in history could you get out of school and just build a startup on your own with a couple of friends completely bootstrapped. And I see more and more people towards the end of my time at Wix, I was interviewing and I saw more and more people building their own stuff with AI. And I think contrary to what a lot of people think, it's the best time to be a junior. It's the best time to be a learner. And I think if any listener is listening to this and you're a curious person, you're a hardworking person, I want to say kind, I'm not sure, but if you're a kind person and a good communicator, you have such an unfair advantage and you can give more value to companies than most people who have 20 years of experience. So I really hope people get inspired by this and start killing it with their projects. [01:07:44] S0: Amazing. So many ways to be inspired from this conversation. Zevi, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? [01:07:52] S1: Yep, let's do it. [01:07:54] S0: What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:07:54 · Lenny Rachitsky, Zevi Arnovitz
[01:07:54] S0: What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:07:58] S1: So I'll take one from each kind of genre. So in fiction, I love The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, one of my favorite books. Really makes you think, really makes you feel. Business books, I'm a big fan of Shoe Dog, the Nike story, one of my favorite books. [01:08:15] S0: I just finished reading that. So funny. [01:08:17] S1: Amazing. [01:08:17] S0: This is great. It was great. [01:08:19] S1: Yeah. I love Shoe Dog. And then more on the psychology side Mindset by Carol Dweck, who coined the term growth mindset. It's just such an amazing book. It kind of sounds like a self-help book, but then you understand that it's completely psychological and is based on research and that book completely changed my life. Really, I was always with a fixed mindset, and then after reading that, I kind of understood that it was something holding me back. And since then, I've been really, really trying to cultivate a growth mindset. So I really recommend everyone reading that. [01:08:51] S0: Again, connects to that thread of the way you described it, being a 10X learner versus a 10X doer. Okay. Next question. Favorite recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed? [01:09:02] S1: Yeah, actually, my wife is really into film, so we watch a lot of TV. It's probably our favorite together time. I just finished watching The Pitt, which was amazing. It was really good. And my first recommendation to everyone is if you haven't seen Severance run to see Severance, one of my favorite shows.
01:09:02 · Zevi Arnovitz, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:09:02] S1: Yeah, actually, my wife is really into film, so we watch a lot of TV. It's probably our favorite together time. I just finished watching The Pitt, which was amazing. It was really good. And my first recommendation to everyone is if you haven't seen Severance run to see Severance, one of my favorite shows. [01:09:21] S0: Is there a favorite product that you have recently discovered that you really love? [01:09:24] S1: This is a good question. I'm always trying new products. I'll always have three or four browsers installed on my computer and all this different kind of stuff, and I recently discovered a Loom alternative. I was kind of disappointed with Loom. They were taking so much money and the product, I don't know, I just didn't love it. And there's an open source alternative called Cap, which is just really well-crafted. You can see that the person was really sweating the details and it's just a really, really great alternative. So I've been using that recently. [01:09:58] S0: There's also a product called Supercut that I love that's also a Loom alternative. Shout out. Okay. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life?
01:09:58 · Lenny Rachitsky, Zevi Arnovitz
[01:09:58] S0: There's also a product called Supercut that I love that's also a Loom alternative. Shout out. Okay. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life? [01:10:09] S1: Yeah. I'm kind of between two right now. One, which has become a Twitter meme basically, which is you can just do things. I feel like that is basically going always in my head every time I do something that I'm just shocked at the speed and ability to do things now so you can just do things, and the second one I stole from my brother. His motto is nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. And I just love that. And I think it kind of makes you take life more lightly. So yeah, nobody knows what the they're doing. [01:10:39] S0: I think people see these companies on the outside and it feels like everything they've got all figured out. And if you're ever on the inside of a company that's doing really well, you're like, how is this staying on the rails? How is this still a thing that is working? Doesn't make any sense. It's all about to fall apart. Yeah. Okay. Last question. You've had a long entrepreneurial thread throughout your career. There's a couple other real world businesses you've started in the past. You did a thermal clothing business and then like a hummus delivery thing. So maybe pick one of those and just tell the story of what that's about.
01:11:13 · Zevi Arnovitz
[01:11:13] S1: Yeah, I'd love to. Really fun that you asked about this. So I'll tell the thermal clothing because I think it's really cool. So in high school, I was selling thermal clothes in 10th grade for one of my sister's friends or something, and basically it was just packs of thermal clothing, shirt and pants. I grew up in Jerusalem, so it's a bit chillier there. So it was perfect for the weather. And in 10th grade, when I was selling them, they were like 20, $25 a piece and I was making like $4 a sale, and if you look in the food chain, I was like sixth or seventh down the line. So this was like crazy margins. So during the summer I thought about it like I should just go straight to the importer. So throughout the summer I called the importer and at first he was really, really mad. He was like, no, you have to work for me for years to get to this state. And I said, listen, man, I'm finishing school soon. This is not going to be my career. Either do it or not. And we basically negotiated throughout the whole summer. And this was also like how I did things before ChatGPT. So he would throw out something, he'd say, "Oh, the import tax has gone up." And I'll just search Google, like Import Tax Israel and start reading. And I'll be on the phone with him and I'll be like, "Hey, I would just basically stall." And then I'd somehow come back with a challenge. And I ended up getting a really great price, like 12 and a half dollars a piece. So I was making 100% profit and I spread throughout a bunch of different schools. Each school, I had the coolest people in school selling for me. And then a really fun thing that I did was we had a really awesome basketball team and our basketball team would basically be 30 points up within the first half and it kind of got boring for the crowd. So I wrote a song, like a basketball chant about Thermal Clothes that basically has my number within it. And the end of it was if you join in now, we'll give you a discount. And it was with drums and everything. And still when I go to Jerusalem, I know some people who I don't even know my number by heart because they know it by the tune. And sometimes when I walk in Jerusalem, people stop me and say like, "Hey, it's Thermal Zevi." So that was just a really cool experience as a kid.