Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:29:38 · Anish Acharya, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:29:38] S1: Totally. [00:29:38] S0: I'm visualizing this input to response, the whole idea of there's a space between input and response, and meditation helps you think more deeply before you respond. And I feel like the trick now is insert in that moment, "How can AI help me with this?" [00:29:53] S1: I mean, I'm also a longtime meditator. We should talk about that if you like, but yeah, I think that's right. I think in our day-to-day knowledge work, sometimes it's less obvious to me. I guess my mind is I've always been a consumer product person, I love products. So for me, it's easier to think of a new feature to add to my DJ streaming app or my Google Reader for X that I use than it is to find a part of my life to automate. But you're right, there's some fun examples. I posted about one a few weeks ago where I had my laptop transcribe everything that was happening in the kitchen, and then it would award or detract screen time from my son's iPad depending on whether he was being good or bad. So, it was a fun little social experiment. It also had a fun outcome, which is that he recorded a video of himself saying, "I love you, Dad," over and over, and put it next to the mic. [00:30:42] S0: To hack the metrics? [00:30:43] S1: To hack the metrics. So yes, anything becomes a measure it's no longer useful, but it was just a cool little social experiment. I think those things are super fun. [00:30:54] S0: That is hilarious. So, one of the measures was how often he said, "I love you," and that was going to give him more free time?
00:30:54 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[00:30:54] S0: That is hilarious. So, one of the measures was how often he said, "I love you," and that was going to give him more free time? [00:31:00] S1: Is he saying things that are positive and pro-social- [00:31:00] S0: That is so funny. [00:31:03] S1: ... or negative and antisocial? And saying, "I love you," is very pro-social. [00:31:07] S0: That's so funny. I had a friend who built this little device that measured how often he and his kid laugh throughout the day. [00:31:14] S1: Oh, that's nice. [00:31:15] S0: Yeah. He hacked one of those Limitless pendants to do that, and then they just look at that metric every day. [00:31:21] S1: And this is what I mean, man. I think we spent a lot of the time on the show so far really intriguing, talking about productivity, job loss, all these heady, important topics with a capital I, but what you just described, how often you laugh, that's not a startup, that's probably not an economically consequential idea, but it is for the quality of our life. And I think we tend to think that happiness is fixed, but what if it's not? If you and I were doing jobs 100 years ago, what would our jobs be? I promise they'd be less cool than they are right now, and maybe 100 years from now they'll be that much cooler. So, I think that the thing that gets often missed, and this is why I'm a fan of Claude and others, is just how can this thing add texture to our human lives even if they don't have economic consequences?
00:31:21 · Anish Acharya, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:31:21] S1: And this is what I mean, man. I think we spent a lot of the time on the show so far really intriguing, talking about productivity, job loss, all these heady, important topics with a capital I, but what you just described, how often you laugh, that's not a startup, that's probably not an economically consequential idea, but it is for the quality of our life. And I think we tend to think that happiness is fixed, but what if it's not? If you and I were doing jobs 100 years ago, what would our jobs be? I promise they'd be less cool than they are right now, and maybe 100 years from now they'll be that much cooler. So, I think that the thing that gets often missed, and this is why I'm a fan of Claude and others, is just how can this thing add texture to our human lives even if they don't have economic consequences? [00:32:05] S0: Yeah. Along these lines I saw somewhere you have this really interesting take that the big opportunity, maybe just in consumer, but broadly is this idea of, "Loop, make me happier." [00:32:16] S1: Yeah. [00:32:17] S0: Talk about that.
00:32:18 · Anish Acharya
[00:32:18] S1: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that we believe that people want to be more productive, but they don't. I think more people want to spend time than save time. There's a reason the biggest products in the world are entertainment and social. So, we get at the heart of how do we deliver the value to the consumer? I think for most consumers, sometimes I tease and I say it's like the Instagram AI user versus the X AI user. The X AI user is fearful of being outside of the permanent underclass, is really opinionated on GLM-5.3 versus Kimi K3. They're just so pilled. And then the Instagram person is like, "Oh, this is like a better Google search. Kind of. It's cool." They don't get what all the hype is about. And it's really a product design failure. We have the capabilities to radically transform people's lives. I mean, Lenny, in many ways we spent 40 years building a technology that enables better spreadsheets. We built this technology that extends our intellect, but nothing to extend our soul. And I think that we have a little bit of a spiritual hunger, especially as a lot of these cultural institutions have gone away that fulfilled that, especially in the rest of America where you don't have as many hot yoga classes, and Pilates, and fasting, and Friendsgiving. So, I think that the opportunity for this technology is like, hey, the basics of consumer need, how do we feel more connected, more loved? How do we make progress? How do we have fun? The things that we all aspire to, the basics, how do we apply this technology to those areas? That's what I want to see more of. And again, I don't think it's a model or a capability challenge. It's just a product design challenge.
00:33:50 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[00:33:50] S0: I love this so much. We talked about this idea of, "Loop, grow my business. Loop, find me more sales. Loop, close support tickets." But the way you're describing here, I think you, the way I had it in my notes here, just like, "Loop, improve my health," or, "Loop, make me a better friend." And there's no reason AI can't just think deeply and hard about all those things and figure out a way to actually do this. [00:34:11] S1: Yeah. And also, look, we have to dial this in, but I think there's a way that AI can challenge you, can push you, can be disagreeable. This is also why I think startups are advantaged over incumbents. The idea those 1,000 Google committees who would roll in their graves at the idea that they're going to release a model that's disagreeable, or God forbid it should be sexually suggestive, but guess what? Those are all parts of human existence. So, I think exploring the kind of uncomfortable parts of our social existence are things that startups are uniquely set up to do. [00:34:42] S0: And I know you spent a lot of time investing in consumer companies. What I'm hearing here is this is a big opportunity for consumer businesses to basically build an app product that is exactly this loop around improve my connections with my friends and family.
00:34:56 · Anish Acharya
[00:34:56] S1: I think that's right. I think the thing that's held back consumer so far a little bit, and it maybe held back is too strong, because if we put this into iPhone terms, we're in iPhone 2010. What is iPhone 2010? I think it's pre-Airbnb, pre-WhatsApp, pre-Uber, pre all the important consumer companies. So it is early days, but what's held us back is I think three things. One is that the models have been expensive, so if you want to do a kind of free to use product, that hasn't been easy. The second is that we've had an interface problem. Chat makes sense if you're the highest agency person in the world, which is Elon and Sam, but for the average consumer, their ideal interface is TikTok. So, we need to find something between Chat and TikTok. And then the fact that the technology has been so much more focused on productivity than things like human connection and entertainment, I think all those things are kind of up for grabs. The open weight models mean things are way cheaper. I think that we're starting to have conversations about things like, "Loop, make me happier." And I think that founders like Eugenia, who you should have on the show, she's tremendous, are thinking really ambitiously about user interfaces. Brian Chesky from Airbnb, I think he started a foundation lab focused on next gen user interfaces. So, I think all those problems will get solved or they're at least in a better position to be solved than they were two years ago.