Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:03:09 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[01:03:09] S0: That's a really interesting insight. And you're lying about how it's not a distribution or growth problem, it's a product problem is such an important one, because if your product was that good people would talk about it and share it and use it. Yeah, yeah. [01:03:35] S1: They're awesome, right? They're sort of like this creative studio that uses technology as their medium, very web 2.0 in that way actually. Many of the Ev Williams, the Kevin Roses, they were painters except technology was their canvas. So, they created this very funny product called Card V Card where they shipped, I think 100,000 people a debit card. And then every day they would text those people with a location that they had to spend the money at and they would put $100 on the card, and everyone would rush out to spend the money, and one or two would be able to spend it and everybody else would get declined. And it was just this hilarious social experiment that went hyper viral. And for me, it was always inspiring in the world of FinTech because it was like, wow, why don't we build more products like that? Money is inherently social and yet all the financial products we have are so dry and personal and embarrassing. I think there's a sort of similar moment happening in AI right now where we can build these wildly ambitious products that touch on many of our social nerves, we just have to do it.
01:03:35 · Anish Acharya, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:03:35] S1: They're awesome, right? They're sort of like this creative studio that uses technology as their medium, very web 2.0 in that way actually. Many of the Ev Williams, the Kevin Roses, they were painters except technology was their canvas. So, they created this very funny product called Card V Card where they shipped, I think 100,000 people a debit card. And then every day they would text those people with a location that they had to spend the money at and they would put $100 on the card, and everyone would rush out to spend the money, and one or two would be able to spend it and everybody else would get declined. And it was just this hilarious social experiment that went hyper viral. And for me, it was always inspiring in the world of FinTech because it was like, wow, why don't we build more products like that? Money is inherently social and yet all the financial products we have are so dry and personal and embarrassing. I think there's a sort of similar moment happening in AI right now where we can build these wildly ambitious products that touch on many of our social nerves, we just have to do it. [01:04:29] S0: So, let me follow that thread. You get to see tons of companies both pitching you and also companies you're working with, that you're investor in. What are some counterintuitive lessons you've learned from watching the companies that operate well and have succeeded? Lessons that maybe go against typical wisdom, startup wisdom?
01:04:51 · Anish Acharya
[01:04:51] S1: I'll tell you the biggest one. In the old days, which is three years ago, we would see a company, and if what they were trying to do was too ambitious we would not engage. Just too crazy, too complex. And implied by that is you wouldn't do $100 million seed because just it's too much money for almost any problem. It's too much money for any person to actually manage. It's too much money to build this sort of talent to absorb. It doesn't make sense as an inception round. I think today we're almost seeing the opposite problem where an idea that's too small is not something that we want to engage with. And you can talk about how you put $100 million to work in the seed productively. Now, I'm not recommending you raise $100 million, but I think that there's this sort of no ceiling on ambition is also showing up in how we're picking companies and maybe how they're picking us as well. Because when we invest, we tell every founder, "We're here to help you build the strongest form of your vision." Mark told this to me when him and I were talking about coming here and he said, "Anish, the way we told our story when we were raising our first fund was we were going to the moon or we were going to leave a moon size crater in the ground, and there was no other option." That's sort of how we want to work with our founders as well.
01:06:05 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[01:06:05] S0: I love that point. So, can you get too ambitious? Is there a limit? Obviously you look at the team and what they're ... But the key lesson here is be more ambitious. It's like the opposite of what used to be of here's our wedge, here's where we're going to go. What you're looking for is just how big is the idea. [01:06:22] S1: I mean, look at Adams. How crazy is Adams? I mean, what an incredible hero's journey for all of us collectively, but also what they're trying to do is something that 5 or 7 or 10 years ago would've felt insurmountable. And now it's like, okay, it's challenging. Let's see. [01:06:38] S0: Interesting. Is there anything else that has changed or I guess you've changed your mind about around what you think it takes to build a successful company these days? [01:06:46] S1: I mean, I think that the kind of old wisdom around consumer products have to be free. I'm almost taking the opposite take, which is let's think about consumer products that are extraordinarily expensive. I think every part of consumer discretionary spend is up for grabs right now, and I think are really useful, because price is a measure of product market fit, a really useful product exercise is what is the Birkin bag 10,000 a month, 1,000 a month version of our product. So, I think expensive consumer software is something new and important that we wouldn't have thought about five years ago. [01:07:18] S0: I love that framing, because it just pushes you, again, to be more ambitious. You mentioned Mark and you work closely with Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz.
01:07:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[01:07:18] S0: I love that framing, because it just pushes you, again, to be more ambitious. You mentioned Mark and you work closely with Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz. [01:07:26] S1: Yes. [01:07:27] S0: What's one thing you've learned from each of those guys?
01:07:32 · Anish Acharya
[01:07:32] S1: They're such extraordinary leaders, founders. I mean, the thing that I actually feel so grateful to be a part of that they really embody to their core, I think is a feeling of stewardship for the technology industry, and for really the country and maybe the Western way of living and thinking. And if you look at a Ron Conway or Brook Byers, Tom Perkins, there was this feeling I think of obligation to leave it better than you found it from an industry perspective. And that sort of aspiration goes way beyond just being the best investor in the world, though we want to do that too. I see them both show up that way over and over again where they want to do hard important things that don't directly benefit the firm, or at least not singularly because they're just sort of important. Ben has done a lot of that in the direction of the industry, and Mark in the direction of the country, though of course both work on both. Another really cool thing is just to see how I think Mark and Ben, but maybe the firm a little bit, has shaped our collective ambition as a founder community. I think if you look at 5 or 7 or 10 years ago, deep tech was deeply unpopular. It wasn't a high status thing to be working on, it was very fringe, and now it's become very popular, high status and mainstream. And I think there's a lot of firms that have of course pulled in that direction, but I think that someone like Mark has been very full-throated in his support of working on sort of capital I important work in the national interest, and all of Silicon Valley has changed as a result.