Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:58:58 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Mosseri
[00:58:58] S1: It's interesting how running experiments now is very risky for companies at your scale. One person spots it, and I go, "Shit." [00:59:04] S0: Kind of need to have a ... You don't need to be proactive about communicating it, but you need to have a comm strategy. For any design change or any test that could be controversial, we talk about it beforehand and be like, "Okay, not if it leaks, when it leaks, what are we saying? Should we talk about it proactively? Should we talk about it reactively? Either way, what's the message?" Because you can't launch something to three billion people and not test it first, but you can't test something at our scale and not expect people to cover it. And so you have to be ready to talk about it before you even know you want to launch it. So it makes the development cycle more complicated than it used to be. [00:59:54] S1: Yeah. The head of growth at Anthropic launched an experiment with pricing, and it just went crazy on Twitter. He's like, "It's rolled out to 1% of people. We're just [inaudible 01:00:02]." They're like, "No, Anthropic. Come on." [01:00:04] S0: Pricing particularly, that one is a real ... You got to be real careful with that one. We've all learned these lessons. We should all share notes more, that's what I think. [01:00:12] S1: "Here's not what to do." How to avoid the internet hating you for the day. [01:00:15] S0: Yeah. I'm happy to talk to that [inaudible 01:00:18] in Anthropic.
01:00:15 · Adam Mosseri, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:00:15] S0: Yeah. I'm happy to talk to that [inaudible 01:00:18] in Anthropic. [01:00:20] S1: I think he's all right. He's all right. Okay, I'm going to take us to two recurring corners on the podcast, Fail Corner and Hot Seat Corner. Fail Corner, what's something that you worked on that was just a huge failure that helped you become better? [01:00:33] S0: Oh, a bunch. [01:00:35] S1: So many. [01:00:36] S0: So I'll give you two maybe. So before Instagram, my first project as a PM was on a project called Facebook Home, which was a sort of fork of Android at the operating system level- [01:00:50] S1: I remember that.
01:00:51 · Adam Mosseri
[01:00:51] S0: ... and a piece of hardware with HTC. It was a spectacular failure. I learned way more in that year, year and a half than I did in any year, I think, probably in my career, because I was just a design manager before that. I declared myself a PM because the PM on the project quit, and I just threw myself headfirst in understanding carriers and OEMs and certification, as well as Android and operating systems, and just learned a ton. And I'm happy I brought that project to an end, because it had been going on for a long time. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is execute an idea that doesn't have market fit well, just to decide whether or not the idea was a good idea in the first place. Another big mistake I made during my Instagram tenure was the first version of Reels was built on top of Stories. Stories had a ton of momentum. This was, I think, 2019, and we were trying to build Reels into Stories because we were trying to build in the thing that was growing the fastest. But it was not a strong foundation. The read-through rate on stories is relatively low. There's way more stories than most people have time to consume. So most of the Reels were never seen, and then they disappeared. And if we had the version of Reels that we launched in, I think it was the summer of 2020, in the summer of 2019 ... I think TikTok is still big and important, but I don't think it's as big as it is now, because when they really took off was when the pandemic hit, and a bunch of people had a lot of time at home, and we're looking for a little bit of joy, and we're totally fine with our phone having sound on. And so if you look at the numbers, 2020 is when they exploded, and we were out of position. And on one hand, I'm a designer, I'm trying to not add new things to the product. I'm trying to extend existing primitives, and that was the idea. On the other hand, I was wrong. And it's a pretty big fork on the road if you just look at the overall business over the last eight years.
01:02:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Mosseri
[01:02:55] S1: You created a lot of economic opportunity in the world, allowing TikTok to grow. [01:03:00] S0: Yeah, it's good. I'm glad they exist. [01:03:03] S1: Okay, final question. I'm curious just about your screen time policy with your kids. I know you have three kids. There's a lot of concern these days about Instagram not being great for people, not for kids. A lot of tech executives don't let their kids use devices while they're building the product. As head of Instagram, how do you think about screen time with your kids? [01:03:27] S0: The key thing for me is boundaries. It's also about education and having conversations with them. But my kids are too young to use social media. They're 10, 8, and 6. But they each have an iPad. They have to earn their time. So they have different ways they earn their time. It's usually about sitting down to do your homework. Three times for half an hour each gets you a total of 90 minutes on the weekend, and then they can use that time on the weekend. But you kind of have to set that boundary, where it can't just be they ask for it, and you give it to them. I think that matters a lot. And then I'm pretty opinionated about what they do on it. I approve what apps that they have. I think parents should be approving what apps kids specifically are downloading onto their devices. We've been advocating for this at a policy level for a long time at Meta. I think those things help a lot. There are some exceptions. One is planes. It's just about surviving. I don't know if you've ever ... For those of you who are parents-
01:03:27 · Adam Mosseri, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:03:27] S0: The key thing for me is boundaries. It's also about education and having conversations with them. But my kids are too young to use social media. They're 10, 8, and 6. But they each have an iPad. They have to earn their time. So they have different ways they earn their time. It's usually about sitting down to do your homework. Three times for half an hour each gets you a total of 90 minutes on the weekend, and then they can use that time on the weekend. But you kind of have to set that boundary, where it can't just be they ask for it, and you give it to them. I think that matters a lot. And then I'm pretty opinionated about what they do on it. I approve what apps that they have. I think parents should be approving what apps kids specifically are downloading onto their devices. We've been advocating for this at a policy level for a long time at Meta. I think those things help a lot. There are some exceptions. One is planes. It's just about surviving. I don't know if you've ever ... For those of you who are parents- [01:04:30] S1: I'm going to be, yeah.
01:04:31 · Adam Mosseri
[01:04:31] S0: Yeah, that's just like, "All right." It's a 10-hour flight or 8-hour flight. It's like, yeah, you just need to get through it. The other one that I'm starting to experiment with my 10-year-old with is ... So schools are interesting because I think I'm pretty supportive of a no phone in classrooms that's happening more and more. I think that's just probably good for education. And I do also know, in the world of AI, that there's concern about kids using AI and not learning critical thinking skills, and I think that's a valid concern. But I also am worried about kids not learning how to leverage AI and then being sort of at a disadvantage. So that's a balance. I think you need both. So with my eldest, we started vibe coding recently together. He just loves video games. So I was like, "All right, let's make a video game." And so he's made this 19-level platformer game that kind of looks like an eight bit version of Super Mario from when I was a kid. But each level has its own theme, its own types of monsters. There's a store where you can buy different skins or weapons. And it's unbelievable what a 10-year-old who still types with three fingers can do with just a couple hours of sitting together. But that is more of a, "I want you to learn how to make things. I want you to be thinking, not just playing games. And I'm going to sit with you, and we're going to do this together." So to me, these are the things that matter, boundaries, scoping it down to the activities you think are healthy for your kid. Every kid is different. But I do think you want your kids to be digitally literate, AI literate, because I think if they're not, they're going to be at a disadvantage. But you also don't want it to be a free for all.