Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:16:30 · Tara Seshan, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:30] S0: Yeah, the Thiel Fellowship was an inflection point in my life. I wouldn't be where I am without it. Maybe to the point of there are key moments where you can tell people to elevate their ambitions and they do, and that changes them. That was a moment where someone came to me and elevated my ambitions and said, "No, you can do this. You don't have to take the path that you were on." And truly, I'm eternally grateful for them being able to do that. One of the Thiel Fellows that I get to work with all the time now is Ari Weinstein, who founded a company called Sky that was acquired by OpenAI. And prior to this, he founded and worked at Apple for a while because they acquired his previous company. Ari is just one of the most creative thinkers I've ever seen and is truly the expert on, what are all the cool things you can do on a Mac? And so Ari leads a lot of our computer use stuff at OpenAI, and he's shipped a whole bunch of great things for computer use. But yeah, his creativity and his joy in what he does and his love of his craft really inspires me. And Ari's a cool guy. But I'm trying to think what is a good story from that time that feels [inaudible 01:17:45]. [01:17:44] S1: As you think about it, I'll explain the Thiel Fellowship for people that don't know this, and correct me if I'm wrong. Basically, Peter Thiel's like, "Hey, people shouldn't go to college. Instead, they should just try building something that they want." And you get $100,000 to not do college and instead just go follow your ambition. Is that roughly correct?
01:17:44 · Lenny Rachitsky, Tara Seshan
[01:17:44] S1: As you think about it, I'll explain the Thiel Fellowship for people that don't know this, and correct me if I'm wrong. Basically, Peter Thiel's like, "Hey, people shouldn't go to college. Instead, they should just try building something that they want." And you get $100,000 to not do college and instead just go follow your ambition. Is that roughly correct? [01:18:04] S0: Yeah, that is exactly right. [01:18:05] S1: Cool. [01:18:06] S0: And you're with 19 other people at the time. It's like 20 people every year because it's 20 under 20. [01:18:12] S1: How many years did it go on for? Is it still going? [01:18:13] S0: I think it's still going, but I think it was constrained at the 20 number for the first four or five years or something like that. Yeah, I think a really crazy thing that happened my year is that I was the second every year of the fellowship. They decided to make it all a documentary on CNBC, and so my pitch for the fellowship, getting up on stage and presenting the idea I was going to do, all of that is unfortunately live on YouTube. So if you really want to see me as a 19-year-old doing something embarrassing, it's there. Of course, one of the most amazing and successful people who came out of that batch of the fellowship is Dylan Field, who is not only a incredible talent, but also a very kind person. And yeah, feel very lucky to be able to work with those folks. [01:19:03] S1: Amazing. Yeah. It's interesting that Dylan's the guy. I think everyone thinks of when they think of Thiel Fellows. [01:19:09] S0: Yeah. Yeah.
01:19:09 · Tara Seshan, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:19:09] S0: Yeah. Yeah. [01:19:10] S1: What a brand. Okay, Tara, this was incredible. Is there anything you want to plug, anything you want to point people to, and how can listeners be useful to you? [01:19:18] S0: Anything I want to plug and point people to, maybe they should use the ChatGPT desktop app. They should use ChatGPT in the web and try Work. It's unfortunately a little toggle. They can toggle over to it and try out Work. Ask it to do some cool thing. Ask it to build a site about you maybe to start, or ask it to make a little visualize a block of your ChatGPT usage. It's a really cool way to start experiencing the power of this stuff very intimately, and the list of use cases they can do from that are infinite, and I'm happy with it. [01:19:53] S1: Here's a better idea. Here's a better idea. [01:19:54] S0: Yes. [01:19:55] S1: Ask it to build a site to tell you what you could do with Work. [01:19:58] S0: Great. That will work. [01:20:02] S1: Solve all the problems. Okay. I interrupted you. I apologize. What else were you going to add or say? [01:20:08] S0: Yeah, my main plug is, yeah, go download the ChatGPT app, go use it on web. Even more transformatively, go try it on mobile, then take a long subway ride or something like that, or a Muni ride. And when you pop out after having no service, the thing is done for you. That's the part that feels super-duper magical. You're not wandering around with your laptop open the entire time. You've finally got these things running in the cloud doing real work.
01:20:08 · Tara Seshan, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:08] S0: Yeah, my main plug is, yeah, go download the ChatGPT app, go use it on web. Even more transformatively, go try it on mobile, then take a long subway ride or something like that, or a Muni ride. And when you pop out after having no service, the thing is done for you. That's the part that feels super-duper magical. You're not wandering around with your laptop open the entire time. You've finally got these things running in the cloud doing real work. [01:20:31] S1: Yeah, that last piece I was going to bring up, but I think a really underappreciated element of the product today on mobile. And that's just a mobile only feature, the cloud piece, is it? [01:20:43] S0: No, it's everywhere. [01:20:43] S1: It's everywhere. Okay, so, amazing. So on your mobile app, you can go to ChatGPT, toggle Work, ask it to do some work, and you don't need to actually have the... It's not running locally, it's running in the cloud. It'll keep doing work until it's done and then you could chat to it. So it feels really simple, but that's a massively powerful thing. Okay. Anything else, Tara, before we let you go? [01:21:07] S0: No, that's it. [01:21:08] S1: Okay. [01:21:08] S0: Thanks, Lenny. [01:21:09] S1: Tara, this was awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. [01:21:11] S0: Such a pleasure. [01:21:12] S1: What a journey since the fellowship back in the day. I'll talk about that more in the intro. [01:21:16] S0: Yeah. [01:21:17] S1: All right. Well, thanks for being here. [01:21:18] S0: Thank you.
01:21:18 · Tara Seshan, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:21:18] S0: Thank you. [01:21:20] 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.