Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:15:59 · Tom Verrilli, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:15:59] S0: ... I don't think there is one way to do product management, and I don't think there is one way that AI will shape the industry. So we're pretty confident that for Whatnot, the product we're building and the culture of the company that we have, that this model of fewer PMs who are more senior with a lot more autonomy is right for us. I don't pretend to presume that that will be true for the entire industry, but I do think there has never been a better time to go back to the roots of the actual product work and getting out of that theater. And I think that probably is true everywhere, even if you are still, there are people who are wonderful people managers and really derive their satisfaction from doing that and growing and coaching. And I'm sure there'll be loads of places where that's still valuable. So assume that at least half of what I've said is wrong in the same basis that half of the things I've probably ever shipped are not correct. [01:16:47] S1: That's why I love these conversations, and why I think this work that we do together is important is we are living through the wildest time in our careers. So much is changing. So much is being rethought, as you've described. And it feels like the only way we can make our way through this successfully is to learn from how other people are approaching it, see what they've learned, see what has not worked. [01:17:07] S0: Take bits that resonate, ignore the bits that seem bombastic or not applicable.
01:17:07 · Tom Verrilli, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:17:07] S0: Take bits that resonate, ignore the bits that seem bombastic or not applicable. [01:17:12] S1: Exactly. Because no one knows exactly where... Elizabeth Stone had this great way of putting it. There's a storming phase and the norming phase, and we're in the storming phase of holy shit. I remember in my PM career, as I started writing and stuff, everyone's always asking me, "How has product management changed over the last decade?" I'm like, "It hasn't changed. It's the same basically." But it feels like now it actually has significantly changed, which feels weird. [01:17:35] S0: Although to your point earlier, actually the core things- [01:17:37] S1: And also not. [01:17:38] S0: ... will all be the same. [01:17:39] S1: Yeah. Yeah. So that's why these are so useful just for people to see here's how a team is operating and what they've learned, and here's things to try and it may not work for you. But this is how we learn from each other. With that, we have reached a very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. All right, here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:17:39 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tom Verrilli
[01:17:39] S1: Yeah. Yeah. So that's why these are so useful just for people to see here's how a team is operating and what they've learned, and here's things to try and it may not work for you. But this is how we learn from each other. With that, we have reached a very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. All right, here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:18:01] S0: Okay. Not to be cliched, but The Hard Thing about Hard Things I still think is the best book written about product management, just from a breadth of things that you have to go through and try and do and screw up a lot. Slightly left field, but the best book anyone's ever recommended to me to read, which I now recommend to others, is The Purpose Driven Church by a pastor called Rick Warren. Emmett Shear, the CEO at Twitch, used to basically make sure that people read it. It's this wild examination of why people emotionally invest in something and how to engineer emotional investment into it from a group of people. It's literally a how to go and build a church guidebook written in the '90s. Definitely worth a read if you're in a community product of any form. And the last one is if you're looking for fiction or fantasy, which is where I tend to go in the evening, Babel by R.F. Kuang. [01:18:52] S1: I love when books have never been mentioned before get added to the canon of recommended books. [01:18:56] S0: It's very fun. [01:18:57] S1: Favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?
01:18:57 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tom Verrilli
[01:18:57] S1: Favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed? [01:19:01] S0: Star City on Apple TV. If you liked For All Mankind, it's kind of like the flip of that, but it's the Soviet side. It's like watching The Americans and For All Mankind mixed together. [01:19:13] S1: Favorite product that you have recently discovered that you really like? [01:19:17] S0: This is a very deep cut, so I will apologize to most listeners. Hopefully you've detected the accent. I'm told constantly that my Australian accent is going, but one of the things that I love is every time I go home, I realize actually a bunch of the government services apps in Australia have become phenomenal. You ever had that kind of concept where you're like, the government has all my data, I wish there was just one place where I could with one click, get my driver's license renewed, I could transfer titles, and do all of the admin that slows you down in life. Services New South Wales actually nailed. Bizarre to me that I would ever come on a podcast and say, actually, a government-run app in Australia, of all places, is it, but I was home recently and had to do all of my life admin, and it's incredible. [01:19:58] S1: Wow. Something I heard recently about Australia while we're on that topic, real quick tangent from lightning round, is with a solar panel build-out that just happened there, there's more electricity available in Australia than they can use. And they're giving people free- [01:20:13] S0: [inaudible 01:20:13] solar, huge in Australia.
01:20:13 · Tom Verrilli, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:13] S0: [inaudible 01:20:13] solar, huge in Australia. [01:20:14] S1: So it's like they're giving people free electricity in the middle of the day because there's so much available. And they're like, use all your stuff in the middle of the day because otherwise it's going to go to waste. [01:20:22] S0: There is a pitch somewhere that says if AI actually needs loads of electricity in order to feed data centers, Australia's entire 21st century economy should be power. [01:20:30] S1: Incredible. That's such good news that we are finding ways to generate so much energy from solar panels. [01:20:37] S0: Small piece of regulation about 20 years ago that said if you're building a new property, you got to put solar panels on the roof, and it turns out it works great. [01:20:44] S1: Oh my God, I love this. I love this optimism of the future because climate- [01:20:47] S0: It turns out [inaudible 01:20:48] the way through. Not the problem. [01:20:51] S1: Hear hear. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?
01:20:51 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tom Verrilli
[01:20:51] S1: Hear hear. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:20:59] S0: In my uni days, or back in college for American translation, I used to have a party trick of I'd memorized If by Rudyard Kipling because I thought it was deep and really meaningful. But I think if I'm being really honest, I'll figure it out, is probably the closest. It turns out most things are not as hard as people think. We'll work it out. I'll figure it out. If you're willing to devote the required time, money, effort, energy, you can solve almost anything. And if you're not, then it's probably not that big of a problem. [01:21:28] S1: Final question. I imagine people ask you this a lot, but I'm also just curious, what's something you bought on Whatnot in the past month or so that was just awesome, delightful, surprising? [01:21:38] S0: The most fun thing I bought recently, I'm not joking, is a live lobster. Recently, one of the things that's really taken off on Whatnot is now fresh and specialty foods kind of category. And so there's this wonderful seller who goes by efish_co, who has a seafood store down on the dock in San Diego. And every morning as the boats come in, he literally goes out and live streams all of the crates of seafood coming in off the boats, and then he auctions them off live on Whatnot and ships next day to your door. So I got a California spiny tail lobster shipped direct to my door, courtesy of a live stream. [01:22:13] S1: And how's this work? They put in ice, ship it next, same day?