Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:20:40 · Lazar Jovanovic
So I'm deliberately exposing myself to people and resources that I know I need to consume to level up. And then a lot of it just comes from building as well. If we're honest, it's a muscle. Everything is a muscle. You need to practice. You need to see what's possible. And though that's where some of the techniques and mindset shifts that I want to also use an opportunity today to ingrain into people's minds later down the call may be useful.
00:21:10 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:21:10] S1: Okay. So what I'm hearing here is because coding is now essentially a solved problem, I love that you don't look at the code. You've never coded, you don't want to look at the code, you don't care about what's happening there. Instead, you're watching this agent output. I want to actually ask you about that. But what I'm hearing here is the areas you are investing in, building in yourself is at the front end, clarity around what it is and I want to hear how you actually do that, what you do there. You have a really cool system there. And then there's the taste and judgment of knowing, is this the thing I want? It feels like those are the two sides now that are more and more important. And on the taste judgment side, you share this concept. There's something Guillermo Rauch shared in our conversation, this idea of exposure time, exposure hours, being exposed to great stuff. Here's a great user experience. Here's a great onboarding flow. Here's a great, I don't know, website. So I really like that advice because it's so actionable. Okay. I'm going to spend more time with stuff that's great to inform my taste and judgment. And then on the clarity piece, let's actually talk about that, just what do you do there to be clearer with Lovable and other AI tools to help it build the right thing?
00:22:22 · Lazar Jovanovic
[00:22:22] S0: This is the first mindset shift that I want to put into people's minds. If you just have a vague idea, let that be your first version of the project, Open, Cursor, Lovable, whatever it is that you're using, and just input a brain dump prompt. Just talk into it. Lovable specifically, I don't know about the other tools, has a really cool voice function. You click it, you just dictate the hell out of it and just press send. Don't even wait for it to finish. Open a new window. Again, lovable.dev. In here, you're like, "Okay, as I was brain dumping, I think I found a good thread. I think things are getting clearer. So let me start another project now with more clarity, more deliverability. I know which features I want, which pages I want, and maybe I can even find a good reference. Maybe I can go on Mobbin, maybe I can go on Dribbble, maybe I can go wherever, get a good screenshot, get a good animation and attach it," because most of these tools accept files as a part of the input. So you have the second project started. Now things are even more clear. Now you expose yourself to quality and now you're like, "Well, what if I found a template that actually is already out there? Why reinventing the wheel? I'm building a platform that somebody else built. Why not expose AI to what quality looks like?" So what I'll do is I'll go and find a library, 21st.dev or a DotBuild or whatever, places which allow me not to export screenshots, but export code snippets. Because guess what? Even though English is the number one programming language, Lovable and all other tools still communicate in code the best. If you want to get pixel perfect results, just give them code. It will interpret it better than your English or Spanish or whatever language that you use in these tools. So that's the third way. You're like, "Okay, now I'm even more deliberate. I'm not even going as wide as giving it vague concepts. I'm giving it code snippets like, 'I want this exact design. I want this exact type of functionality.'" So that's your third project. And then by the time you do all of these three, you're already at a level of clarity that you wouldn't have if you just sat with an empty piece of paper or maybe chatting just with ChatGPT, but not taking action. I think taking action is so, so cheap these days and free, by the way. All the tools I mentioned have free plans.
00:24:56 · Lazar Jovanovic
Most times you would be able to do this without spending any money at all just by starting multiple projects because guess what? That doesn't also cost anything either or doesn't incur additional cost except for builder credits. You're going to get three, four, five, six different concepts that you can compare. As you're comparing them, clarity just keeps coming and things get better and better to understand. And you're also solving for one big problem that you mentioned. You used the term AI slop, and I like it because a lot of people, when they say AI slop, they don't refer beautifying the code, but beautifying the design. This process that I just mentioned actually gives you four or five different design options, and in the long run, save you massive amounts of credits. Because a lot of people obsess over the concept when I give them this hack, they're like, "Oh, but doesn't that cost more?" I'm like... ... this hack they're like, "Oh, but doesn't that cost more?" I'm like, "Yes, upfront it may cost a little bit more. In the long run, if you really want to finish this project, you're actually saving hundreds of credits and maybe even hundreds of dollars, not to mention the amount of days simply because you started from a point of better clarity and better refinement process." Right? So that's the first step of solving for clarity. There are more, which is the second layer, but I assume you may have some questions on this one.
00:26:31 · Lenny Rachitsky, Lazar Jovanovic
[00:26:31] S1: Questions and also just, wow, this is such a great ... It shows you the power of having someone come into this world without an engineering background, this advice of just build it five times in parallel. You ask AI to try all kinds of stuff. This is not how someone that has been a software engineer, or a PM, or designer would approach stuff. So your advice here, which is so fun, is as you're getting started with a project, just run five different approaches at it, to start. One is just brain dump. "Here's what I'm thinking. Here's general idea." Use Wispr Flow or use the built-in mic. And then two is, "Okay, now I have a general idea. Let me try to type it out," actually thinking through the prompt. Three is, "Let me find a mock design somewhere online." And the sites you suggested were Mobbin and Dribbble. Those are the two that you go to? [00:27:20] S0: Yeah, most times. Yeah. [00:27:21] S1: Cool. Okay. And then the fourth, and these are all in parallel, this is great, is find actual code template that looks similar to the thing you want to build, download the zip file basically and attach it, or is it just HTML and CSS? Is that kind of what- [00:27:22] S0: Anything. [00:27:22] S1: Anything you got. Cool- [00:27:22] S0: Yeah.
00:27:22 · Lazar Jovanovic, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:27:22] S0: Yeah. [00:27:39] S1: There you go. Okay, and then cool. "Here's the prompt. Here, make me what I want." And what I love is there's two wins here. One is just it helps you clarify the idea as you see the tool build it. "Oh no, that's not what I mean. Let me try it again." And then two as you pointed out, you can pick the right direction so that you're not locked into your first design and first architecture. To your point, if you then spend all this time trying to fine-tune design and direction, it's like all these tokens are being lost. You could have just started over. This is so great. Someone may think, "Okay, of course you're just getting us to spend all these Lovable tokens. This is what a Lovable person would tell me." But what I'm feeling is this is where you could save the most money because if you get it correct in the beginning, you save so much work trying to get it back to where you want it to go.