Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:17:49 · Lenny Rachitsky, Roman Ugarte
[01:17:49] S1: Damn. We need another episode of going deep on Roman's Grok Bot setup, which probably has way too much private sensitive information we can show it. Okay. That's an amazing tip. Roman, is there anything that you wanted to share or anything else you wanted to touch on before we get to our very exciting lightning round? [01:18:09] S0: Nothing else on my side. [01:18:10] S1: We covered so much ground. I can't believe that was only an hour and a half-ish. I felt like we've been talking for ages and covered everything I was hoping to cover. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got four questions for you. Are you ready? [01:18:22] S0: I am ready. [01:18:24] S1: What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:18:28] S0: Yeah, so two books for you. One is I love Kurt Vonnegut. So Cat's Cradle has been a fun recommendation and a copy that I bought many friends before. And then second is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield that I find myself frequently coming back to even if it's just a page or two at a time and I'd recommend for anybody. [01:18:51] S1: War of Art, incredible. It's such a short book and it's like once you read it ... And it's not The Art of War, which is what people might think they're hearing. [01:18:58] S0: Yes.
01:18:58 · Roman Ugarte, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:18:58] S0: Yes. [01:18:58] S1: But it's the War of Arts to play on that and it's about the challenge of being creative and creating something new and how to overcome the resistance. I love that recommendation. Next question. Favorite recent movie or TV show if you've had any time to watch any of these things? [01:19:14] S0: Yes. Recently, so every year I do a watch of Casablanca, which is one of my favorite movies. And it incidentally also has a character with my last name, Ugarte, which is the only example of I think a Ugarte in the media. So Casablanca, always a great re-watch. And then on the TV side, I sometimes sneak in an episode of Monk, the detective show, which was one that I watched as a kid with my family and I've come back to now that I live in San Francisco. And it's just a great moment in time snapshot of San Francisco in the late '90s, early 2000s when it was shot that I really enjoy. [01:19:57] S1: First Monk reference on the podcast. Okay. Favorite or most interesting AI product right now? You can say Grok Bot if you want, but if there's anything else, you get bonus points.
01:19:57 · Lenny Rachitsky, Roman Ugarte
[01:19:57] S1: First Monk reference on the podcast. Okay. Favorite or most interesting AI product right now? You can say Grok Bot if you want, but if there's anything else, you get bonus points. [01:20:08] S0: I've always been a big AI semantic search nerd. I love any SEM search product, especially the kind of out of the ordinary ones. So I was a very early user of Metaphor at the time, which became Exa, and I love using Exa to do all of these maybe more strange queries over the internet. But I see a lot of examples of people building semantically search over an embedded image store of the MoMA or things like that. And I always have so much fun playing with those. So anything semantic search engine over a weird data set, I love. [01:20:47] S1: And Exa in particular is one you'd recommend? [01:20:49] S0: I love Exa, yeah. [01:20:51] S1: Very cool. Okay. Favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:20:56] S0: Not as short as a single motto, but I love the Desiderata, which I don't know if you've read, but I have it on my door and I've had it since I was a teenager and everywhere I move, I kind of paste it there and it's a very short poem, but each line, I find myself finding something new in it every time I read it and I find it really grounding.
01:20:56 · Roman Ugarte, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:56] S0: Not as short as a single motto, but I love the Desiderata, which I don't know if you've read, but I have it on my door and I've had it since I was a teenager and everywhere I move, I kind of paste it there and it's a very short poem, but each line, I find myself finding something new in it every time I read it and I find it really grounding. [01:21:20] S1: Roman, this was amazing. What a point in time we're here right now at this moment in time of Grok Bot, of AI in general. It's going to be really fun to revisit this in a year and be like, wow, we were so right and so wrong about so much. Thank you so much for doing this. I know it's a very busy time on your team right now, so I really appreciate you carving out a couple hours to chat. Is there any place you want to point people to? Anything you want to plug other than check out Grok Bot? Is that ... [01:21:47] S0: Check out Grok Bot, of course. And yeah, main thing would be please send feedback. I think we're in the very early innings of this still. I mean, we released a beta three weeks ago and a lot of the feedback that we've been getting from this early set of users is directly translating to what we built and how we build it. And so really appreciate all the input that people are giving. [01:22:10] S1: Nice job, Roman and team. I know there's a whole team behind all this. Roman, thank you so much for being here. [01:22:17] S0: Awesome. Thanks, Lenny.
01:22:17 · Roman Ugarte, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:22:17] S0: Awesome. Thanks, Lenny. [01:22:18] S1: 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.