Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:21:19 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:21:19] S0: For the beach, right? Like, it's a [01:21:21] S1: white metal detector. Oh, I see. You have a metal detector versus looking through all the sand with a spoon. Wow. I love that metaphor. And then sometimes you may find a thing that and then you don't realize it's not worth anything. Okay. Wow. That's a great metaphor. Well, Rob, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? Let's do it. First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most other people? [01:21:49] S0: Oh gosh. The... My favorite one is the four volume Nature of Order series by Christopher Alexander. It's book on architecture, series of books on architecture. Best thing ever. [01:22:00] S1: Never heard that recommendation before. Those are my favorite. Favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? [01:22:06] S0: I have two favorite movies that we watch repeatedly. One is the pride... The most recent Pride and Prejudice, and the second is the Penguins of Madagascar movie. Don't know why. There's very different in both ends of the spectrum there. [01:22:20] S1: Favorite or most interesting AI product that you recently discovered or use or love? [01:22:26] S0: I've been using Muse, and it's like, if it works for me, it can work for anyone. [01:22:31] S1: Yeah. Very hot right now. Amazing. Okay. Favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:22:43] S0: Life is what you make of it.
01:22:43 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:22:43] S0: Life is what you make of it. [01:22:46] S1: So true. Final question. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. So there's this idea of tar pit ideas. So I had Dalton Caldwell on the podcast. He was a partner at YC and he has this term tarpid ideas, which are ideas that people constantly have that are just terrible and don't work. And people keep having these ideas, and they keep trying it, and they're just like, okay. It doesn't work. Is there are there any tarpid ideas you just find people keep coming to you and you're like, don't do that. It's not gonna work. Oh, that's interesting. [01:23:16] S0: The the category is... Of ideas is to go after a space when there is already a clear winner in that space without any theory on being different. I just keep seeing the... It's just like, Oh wow, Lemlist just built a sales automation tool and they're bootstrap and they're growing really fast. So let me just build the exact same thing as them or something very close. And it's like, Okay, but they've probably won that or they've already done that thing. And so unless you're like, oh, but this kind of customer is unblocked and so we're going to build something kind of different for them, those ideas almost always don't work and you feel like you're going crazy because you're like, well, it worked for them. What am I doing wrong?
01:23:16 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:23:16] S0: The the category is... Of ideas is to go after a space when there is already a clear winner in that space without any theory on being different. I just keep seeing the... It's just like, Oh wow, Lemlist just built a sales automation tool and they're bootstrap and they're growing really fast. So let me just build the exact same thing as them or something very close. And it's like, Okay, but they've probably won that or they've already done that thing. And so unless you're like, oh, but this kind of customer is unblocked and so we're going to build something kind of different for them, those ideas almost always don't work and you feel like you're going crazy because you're like, well, it worked for them. What am I doing wrong? [01:23:59] S1: And I imagine everyone answers, but it's better. And as we know, it can't just be a little bit better. And basically, you're saying like, okay. But this is unblocking them. Yes. And it's better than all the alternatives. They're just gonna go with that thing. But I guess then, you know, this goes into a whole other conversation. Like, what if it's like two times better? And I guess your advice there is it's it's probably not good enough. [01:24:20] S0: There are many things. Right? You could give me a a 100 x better printer for my house, and I won't buy it because I don't... I'm not blocked. [01:24:28] S1: That's a great example. Oh, man. Rob, we did it. We did it. Holy cow. We did it. Holy cow. Okay, how can listeners be useful to you? That's our final question.
01:24:28 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[01:24:28] S1: That's a great example. Oh, man. Rob, we did it. We did it. Holy cow. We did it. Holy cow. Okay, how can listeners be useful to you? That's our final question. [01:24:40] S0: Oh, gosh. If you like the framework, use it. Tell other people about it. Check out the book if it's useful, and reach out if you have any thoughts, ideas. Or this is a kind of... This is a theory framework model that is just in development. I still feel like I'm kinda scratching the surface on this. This is kinda like what I'm what I'm gonna be doing for the next ten, twenty years. So if you have ways to improve it, like, reach out and tell me. [01:25:05] S1: Awesome. And your newsletter is an exact... Is exactly that. It's you just... I don't know how often you're publishing, but just like cool, here's another way to think about this. Here's a wrinkle here. Just the idea of calling it physics of startups is an awesome idea. Thanks. So we'll point people to the newsletter. Rob, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. 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 lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode.