Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:14:31 · Anish Acharya, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:14:31] S1: Is it the select the fruits? Anyways. [01:14:33] S0: Yeah, it's like you have to click three different matching shapes, which come on, you can't do that? Hopefully by the time this comes out I've seen it. I think it's a few podcasts in a row I'm like, "I haven't seen it yet." Oh, man. Okay. Favorite new AI product? I don't know, favorite AI product recently that they've given you joy. [01:14:54] S1: Oh man, I've spent a lot of time with the personal agents. I think Grok's okay, I'm going to give it to Grok Bots only because it's just so unhinged for it to be so ambitious about caching credentials and getting work done on your behalf. I love it and I expect it from a startup, but they actually are doing things that I think no other sort of big company would do. It's really, really well done. It's a really thoughtful UI. It's got a really powerful foundation model. I think it also is like, okay, wait, maybe this is not a two-horse race on the sort of model side. So, I just think the product is fun and ambitious, and is sort of taking risks that other products like that wouldn't take. [01:15:31] S0: Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?
01:15:31 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[01:15:31] S0: Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:15:37] S1: Oh man, I've got one. I learned this or this is from my founder days but it also is something that's very true of parenting, which is don't discover things through painful experience that somebody can just tell you. And I unfortunately have had a bad habit of discovery versus learning from somebody who's just a few steps ahead of me, and I find my children have that habit too. [01:15:59] S0: What's one example of something that you wish someone had told you? [01:16:02] S1: I mean, for my kids it's don't touch the hot stove. For my startup, it was like- [01:16:02] S0: Like literally. [01:16:08] S1: Literally. For my startup, it was don't build a product and a platform at the same time. If you're going to be a platform company, build one. Our first company we tried to build a social platform for mobile games and be a gaming studio, and somebody wise told me right away, "Look, being a studio is so hard, much less being a studio and a platform. Pick one." And we did, and it took us years to figure out we were wrong. [01:16:30] S0: Final question. I asked Ben Horowitz what to ask you about, and he just said, "Ask him about his DJing. He's very good." And I found your DJ site. I don't know if that's you call it on SoundCloud/illscience. [01:16:43] S1: That's very good. Thank you.
01:16:43 · Anish Acharya, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:43] S1: That's very good. Thank you. [01:16:44] S0: I'm just listening to it while I work. Any tips for somebody that wants to get into DJing? Any tools you found useful? Any, I don't know, insights that might help someone become better at this? [01:16:56] S1: Totally. I mean, I think that this is why I love music models so much. I mean, I love DJing, I've been playing for 30 years now, since '95, actually 31. Wow. And it's an awesome way to express yourself musically if you're not a classically trained musician. You select the music, you pick the records, you mix them together so it requires some technical skill. But now I think you can go a step further and just make music with the models. And the best part is when you can come up with music ideas and have the models do the kind of strong form of them. So, I think music is just such a visceral, satisfying way to experience and provide experiences in the world. So, whether it's DJing or making music, I just suggest everyone do it. [01:17:37] S0: I hadn't though about how DJing has changed now that you have Suno and things like ElevenLabs and all these things where you could just generate the music, not have to just splice together existing music.
01:17:37 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[01:17:37] S0: I hadn't though about how DJing has changed now that you have Suno and things like ElevenLabs and all these things where you could just generate the music, not have to just splice together existing music. [01:17:46] S1: I mean, think of the history of it. You went from, okay, first you could only hear music if you were there with a person playing on an instrument, recorded music on the phonograph. The big change in music actually from a medium perspective was the cassette tape, because the cassette tape was really the first time you could create. You could actually compose your own "album." I think a lot of why music struggled in the 2000s is that went away and we went back to broadcast, and now that people are making music again I think the music industry is going to be bigger than it's ever been. [01:18:17] S0: Wow. Man, so much disruption. Anish, this was incredible. We covered so much ground. Final question, how can listeners be useful to you? [01:18:27] S1: I mean, show me what you're building. Please don't be despondent. Build something and then tag me, and I'd love to see it. If you're interested in hearing more stuff like this, please follow me on X. I try to kind of engage and follow back. And otherwise, make sure you check out all the amazing folks in Lenny's network. Claire is a star, Alina is so, so good, and there's just so much compelling content here. [01:18:49] S0: Nikhyl, which we talked about. [01:18:50] S1: Nikhyl's the best, man. That guy is everything. [01:18:55] S0: Amazing. Anish, thank you so much for being here.
01:18:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Anish Acharya
[01:18:55] S0: Amazing. Anish, thank you so much for being here. [01:18:58] S1: Thank you, Lenny. [01:18:59] S0: Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.