Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:22:49 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[00:22:49] S1: These folks you mentioned were this good before AI became a thing, I imagine AI helps more CEOs fill the gaps that they have. [00:22:58] S0: I think AI is, it's hard to fill the gap of this guy's a developer, he's genius level, obsessive, but can he sell? Can he convince an investor to give him a lot of money and a high valuation? Can he convince brilliant employees to leave OpenAI and join him? Can he convince some big skeptical Fortune 500 enterprise to buy his product? Being able to do that, and have taste, and be able to code really well at next levels, I think is rare. I actually think it might be the other way though, where mere mortals like me, who can kind of code, all of a sudden we're going to be able to build stuff. I think it kind of goes the other way. [00:23:42] S1: I love this list you shared of things that you find CEOs most have to learn. BS detection, inspiring people, giving hard feedback. Maybe the one thing that most often people that become CEOs/founders have to work on, is there a most common thread of, here's the thing you probably need to work on most?
00:23:42 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[00:23:42] S1: I love this list you shared of things that you find CEOs most have to learn. BS detection, inspiring people, giving hard feedback. Maybe the one thing that most often people that become CEOs/founders have to work on, is there a most common thread of, here's the thing you probably need to work on most? [00:24:00] S0: It's that feedback thing. All of the CEOs are building their teams, and so many are like, I have a co-founder that runs product and engineering, but I need that co-founder to step aside and be the CTO, and the thinker, and the labs person, and I need to hire somebody who can actually run the engineering machine. So many of the CEOs are going through that right now. That's a tricky transition. So many of the CEOs are layering folks, like you hired that early head of sales, he hired 10 people, but just can't quite figure out the sales profile, can't quite unpack the sales process, can't quite forecast accurately. We need to layer the person. Those types of conversations are very tricky and quite unnatural for homo sapiens to have if you're 25 and you've never done anything like that before. So, I see the best ones getting really good at that and studying it, and it's super uncomfortable, but they have to suck it up and get good at it. [00:25:05] S1: What do you find most helps them build these skills, get better at this? Is there some tidbits of advice you give them? Is it something that they study to improve?
00:25:05 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[00:25:05] S1: What do you find most helps them build these skills, get better at this? Is there some tidbits of advice you give them? Is it something that they study to improve? [00:25:13] S0: I think misery loves company on this. So, what I do, the table is 15 CEOs of companies under 100 employees and the adults' table are CEOs of companies over 100 employees, about 15 of them. They talk about this with each other, it's kind of a safe space, and I can weigh in, but it's actually much more effective when their peers weigh in. I think misery really does like company on stuff like this. They learn from each other. [00:25:41] S1: So, essentially it's find peers to talk to and share and be vulnerable and open. [00:25:44] S0: [inaudible 00:25:45]. And the reason I break it out is the problems with the kids' table are very different than the problems of the adult table. And they all rhyme, they rhyme a lot. [00:25:54] S1: So, you teach a course at MIT around scaling startups, and it's specifically around scaling, not startups, not starting the company. And you have this quote in your syllabus, "Starting a company has never been easier, scaling one into a durable high impact organization has never been harder." Why is that the case? [00:26:12] S0: Has it ever been easier to start a company? It's so easy- [00:26:15] S1: That's absolutely true.
00:26:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[00:26:15] S1: That's absolutely true. [00:26:18] S0: And the flip side of that is, how many companies... The number of companies formed is going to mushroom over the next 10 years relative to the last 10 years, and the last 10 years compared to the previous 10 years is mushroomed. I just think in my life, I'm old, and when I was a kid I'd walked into CVS corner drug store and I wanted to buy a toothbrush, there are four or five there, you pick one. And in the 90s or 2000s you go to Amazon, there are four or 5,000 toothbrushes. Four or 5,000 companies bringing us toothbrushes. It got much, much easier to make stuff. And even technology. AWS just made it easier to start a software company. So, it's like a huge jump, back then when we started HubSpot in 2006, but now it's going to be an even bigger jump. So, it's easier to start. Now, there's so much noise and competition, it's just going to be hard to stand out and really accelerate and scale. So, that's why I say it's never been easier to start, there's never been more competition, it's never been harder to scale. [00:27:22] S1: And a big part of this is distribution, essentially, breaking through the noise is what I'm hearing? [00:27:26] S0: Yeah. And it's hard to learn that. You didn't grow up doing distribution, you don't know. So, they're all learning it, and the ones that learn fast... It's like a learning game, the faster you learn, the better you do.
00:27:26 · Brian Halligan, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:27:26] S0: Yeah. And it's hard to learn that. You didn't grow up doing distribution, you don't know. So, they're all learning it, and the ones that learn fast... It's like a learning game, the faster you learn, the better you do. [00:27:38] S1: Along these lines, I saw you tweet this recently, where people talk about which jobs AI is going to replace, and you said that sales is maybe the last job AI will replace. Why do you think that's the case?
00:27:53 · Brian Halligan
[00:27:53] S0: Well, if you look inside a typical enterprise, where's AI really working? Let's say inside of HubSpot. Software development is working incredibly well. Customer support, incredibly well. Legal starting to work incredibly well. But there really aren't apps in the rest of the org that have really changed things a lot. And in the go-to-market side has been kind of slow, really just support. There isn't a canonical marketing, or sales, or... Maybe the BDR is the first one. But I think ye old enterprise sales, where there's actual trust built up between two carbon-based life forms, I think will be very, very, very late to go in the white collar world. I think a lot about the go-to-market. I think the go-to-market is going to get turned on its head. When we started HubSpot, if I think of the way the funnel worked, you want to get found in Google, someone clicks on a blue link, they land on your website, they go down the rabbit hole, they clicked on contact sales, they wait until that sales rep's ready, go down that rabbit hole, and I think it's going to get turned on its head, where people are evaluating a product, they start in Gemini or they start in Anthropic, or they start in ChatGPT, And for example, ChatGPT knows everything on your website, everything beyond that, knows all your competitors. So, they will stay in there and do lots more research, and be incredibly well-educated. So, your website's a lot less important. And then they go to your site, I think sites will change where you're going to have a really high quality avatar that knows everything about your products, knows everything about your company, and your pricing, and packaging, and you can have a high quality conversation with that person. That person that will get stored in your CRM, and will get scored. Is this is good quality conversation? And then the sales rep will follow up. But that sales rep will bring an avatar with them on every sales call. You won't have to wait for their SC, they'll have their own SC that's all knowing, that will follow them through the process. So, go-to-market hasn't changed much yet, but I think over time it's going to change a lot.