Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:04:41 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[01:04:41] S1: What's one nugget of wisdom or lesson that people can take away from the Grateful Dead for startups? [01:04:48] S0: Okay, people talk about spiky teams, the Grateful Dead team was interesting. Garcia himself was a bluegrass guy, he was a banjo player. And then Bob Weir, recently passed, was a country crooner, like country music. Then their bass player was a avant-garde jazz trombonist, Phil Lesh. And their keyboard player was a guy named Ron McKernan, Pig Pen, and he was a harmonica guy. And the drummer was a marching band drummer. And so, spikiest of spiky teams came together and made a new genre, they created a new category of music. It wasn't rock and roll, it wasn't sort of Rolling Stones, it wasn't Buddy Holly, it was this new thing. And then they called it a jam band, because they played rock and roll in a bluesy, open, organic kind of jazzy way. And so, spiky teams in creating categories, underrated. [01:05:47] S1: Incredible. Are you one of these people that have been to 100 Grateful Dead concerts [inaudible 01:05:51]- [01:05:51] S0: Yes. [inaudible 01:05:53]. [01:05:53] S1: Makes sense. Okay, this could be a whole podcast, but we're going to move along. Okay. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Brian, are you ready? [01:06:06] S0: Yeah. [01:06:06] S1: Let's do this. [01:06:07] S0: Fire it up, I've watched you do the lightning round so many times. [01:06:10] S1: I'm flattered. Unsurprising questions. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:06:10 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[01:06:10] S1: I'm flattered. Unsurprising questions. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:06:17] S0: I haven't read a book in a long time. I listen to podcasts, I'm on X, I talk to a lot of other CEOs. I can't remember the last time I actually sat down and read a book. [01:06:26] S1: Much respect. I had Marc Andreessen on recently, and I don't know if you've heard his whole thing on what he consumes, he talks about he has a very barbell strategy to media. It's either Twitter or books that are 10 years or older and nothing in between. [01:06:40] S0: I've heard him say that. Yeah, I kind of stopped reading. I looked at that, I was getting ready for this, Lenny, and I was like, I can't remember the last book I read. [01:06:49] S1: I think this is going to make a lot of people feel better that don't read books, are like, all right, this is okay. Favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? [01:06:58] S0: I love the new Ken Burns, very long, very good Revolutionary War documentary. He's a crass person, it's exceptionally well done. And what I like about it is America's really a disruptor startup, so many startup lessons from those... They were gutsy. Talked about two steps forward, one step back. They got into the details of how George Washington ran the Army. We were very close to losing that war most of the time, and two steps forward, 10 step back, two step forward, 10 steps back. [01:07:36] S1: Lots of lead bullets.
01:07:36 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[01:07:36] S1: Lots of lead bullets. [01:07:39] S0: And unless we had alliances, we had alliances with the French, we were screwed. I love that, it's a long one, but it's really good. [01:07:48] S1: How long is this? What are we getting into? [01:07:49] S0: Probably 10+ hours. [01:07:51] S1: 10+ hours. It's a lot, but worth it is what I'm hearing. [01:07:56] S0: I'm in Boston, it's Revolutionary War kind of place. [01:07:58] S1: Surrounded by history. All right. Favorite product you recently discovered that you really love? [01:08:03] S0: I love my Delphi clone, I teach a course called Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures, and I don't do office hours, I have Delphi do my office hours. Very happy with that. [01:08:17] S1: My favorite feature of Delphi, and again LennyBot.com is my Delphi... I love that we both have little bots. The voice feature is the coolest thing- [01:08:24] S0: Great. [01:08:25] S1: You just talk to it. [01:08:25] S0: Great. Not good, great. I can't wait... I had video, they get rid of it, they're going to bring it back. Can't wait until it has video. My least favorite, my lowest [inaudible 01:08:32] product is my Sonos system. You have Sonos? [01:08:35] S1: I do, and I get you. [01:08:36] S0: Yes. Painful. [01:08:38] S1: Yeah. It's so good in so many ways and so annoying in so many ways. [01:08:42] S0: Annoying. [01:08:42] S1: But we still use it, there's nothing better. [01:08:44] S0: There's not a competitor. You and I should start a Sonos competitor.
01:08:44 · Brian Halligan, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:08:44] S0: There's not a competitor. You and I should start a Sonos competitor. [01:08:46] S1: No, we should not, that's a bad... I'm not doing this. And just to be clear what these bots are, just so people understand how cool this is. So, my [inaudible 01:08:55] every single podcast, like this one is going to be sucked into it, and every single newsletter, and you just talk to it and ask it, how do I find product market fit and space on everything I've ever shared? Here's your steps. [01:09:07] S0: Okay. What's even better about it is, because you can go to ChatGPT and say, what would Lenny think about this? What it's added is the ability to put a bunch of documents in there, that aren't on the internet, like I put my lectures in there, and there's a new feature where it asks you questions and it interviews you. And so, it's pretty proprietary, it's getting better. I like it a lot. [01:09:27] S1: Yeah. To that point, I haven't promoted this feature of it, but it's trained on all my paid content too. So, even if you're not a paid subscriber, you get access to all of the things I've ever shared. Let's not tell too many people that, because one day I'm going to pay wallet, and then [inaudible 01:09:45]. Anyway, enough about that. Lennybot.com. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life?
01:09:52 · Brian Halligan, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:09:52] S0: This isn't lightning, but four years ago I had a very bad snowmobile accident, drove a snowmobile off a cliff. The snowmobile smashed into a million pieces at the bottom of the cliff, so did I. and I laid at the bottom of that cliff for a while, I was unconscious for a long time. I woke up. And I didn't think I had my phone, so I sat there for a long time, like, I'm probably going to die tonight, no one knows where I am, it's frigid out. It's in Vermont. And I'm going to freeze to death. And I'm sitting there for a couple hours, I finally was like, oh, I do have my phone, dialed 911. By the way, 911, amazing service. And so, the helicopters came in and took me out, took me to the hospital. And lots of surgeries, and I was kind out of commission for a year. And you can't see it but I got metal over me, all in me. Life's short. Life's short. And I made some decisions at the bottom of that cliff... One of the decisions I made at the bottom of that cliff was, I don't really like being CEO of an 8,000 person company, doesn't really suit me. My harmonic motion is off. I don't love the day to day, if I make it out of here alive, I'm out. And so, that's exactly what happened. The first big thing that happened coming out of that was I gave the job to Yamini, who's still the CEO, doing a great job. So, life's short, don't waste it. [01:11:23] S1: I've heard this story, but it's just as powerful hearing it again. Why do you think it takes people, why does it take a moment like that to have someone realize, I need to change or just-
01:11:23 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[01:11:23] S1: I've heard this story, but it's just as powerful hearing it again. Why do you think it takes people, why does it take a moment like that to have someone realize, I need to change or just- [01:11:35] S0: I think people think they're going to live forever and they're not. As somebody who's 58, yeah, life's very short, and I'm much more intentional about the decisions I make, much more intentional about the people I hang out with today than I was before that. And I really try to work on things that bring me joy. Like this pod. [01:11:56] S1: Same, I appreciate it. [01:11:58] S0: [inaudible 01:11:58]. [01:11:58] S1: Same. I read that you had 20 broken bones in this accident. [01:12:03] S0: A lot of broken bones, a lot of metal. I got 33 screws in me, one loose one up here, Lenny. [01:12:12] S1: Same. Okay, last question, we talked a bit about the Red Sox, you're a part owner of the Boston Red Sox now. What's something that would surprise people about how a baseball team is run, or just what it's like on the inside of a team like the Red Sox?