Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:31:13 · Elena Verna
[01:31:13] S0: Yeah. So I also want to say a lot of people hate me for doing so much memes as well because they think it's not serious. Actually, I want to rebuttal that really quickly because I think humor is the best way to disarm people and to point out very painful situations that we're facing with every single day or conundrums without putting anybody on defense. Because we can all laugh at the absurdity of the lives that we live in every single day. And pictures worth a thousand words and sometimes memes are just the best way to communicate the most complex situations that we are facing within our corporate world. And they help us understand how common all of those situations are. We're not unique. You're not feeling alone by feeling down about what happened. Everybody's going through the same thing. So that's why I love memes, because they help connect people on both sides, even if you're making fun of one side, because they're like, Yeah, is true and this is so funny. So I'm a big proponent of that just because I think it's actually a better way to both unite people and just talk about heart problems that otherwise would be not read if you put it in words. But my favorite meme is actually one of the first ones that I've created. And I think it's from Family Guy, where they have an elephant and a penguin standing. And then there's Moses, I think, or some biblical character saying, What the hell is this? Looking at the elephant and the penguin. And the result of it is a child that has a penguin body and an elephant head. And if you think about elephant as product and penguin as marketing, what the hell is this is growth, which is a byproduct, a weird, weird byproduct product and marketing merged together that doesn't really fit with either, yet it's its own entity. I don't know. I just... I think that that one's the best to describe to people what growth is.
01:33:14 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna, Christina Gilbert
[01:33:14] S1: So appropriate. Also, described. It's hard to describe a meme and make it feel funny. So good job. Thank you for doing that. We'll link to this meme in in our show notes. Elena, this was incredible. Thank you again. Thank you for being our first ever third return guest. Hopefully, there will be many more episodes of Elena Verna. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they wanna reach out and learn more? And how can listeners be useful to you? [01:33:37] S0: Find me on LinkedIn or my Substack. I'm not competing with you, Lenny, but I share a lot of my thoughts and everything that I learned on my own Substack. It's just alenaverna.com. LinkedIn is for all of my memes. So go there if you wanna laugh, but if you wanna learn from what I'm learning, go to my Substack. And how you can be useful? Tell me what problems you're facing. Now, don't tell me, Oh, my growth is slowing down. What should I do? I can't help you with that. Too broad. But if you're having a situation, there's often really good ping for me to go and write about it or to do more research about it. So I just love to hear what some people's minds... So I can both help them connect their dots as well as learn about it myself. [01:34:20] S1: And what's the best way for them to do that? Is it like DM me on LinkedIn? Any [01:34:23] S2: other stuff? [01:34:24] S0: DM me on LinkedIn or just reply to my Substack newsletter email. It goes directly into my personal inbox. So I read every single one of them.
01:34:24 · Elena Verna, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:34:24] S0: DM me on LinkedIn or just reply to my Substack newsletter email. It goes directly into my personal inbox. So I read every single one of them. [01:34:32] S1: That's a really good tip. People don't know that. When you get an email on Substack, if you reply, it just goes straight to the author. [01:34:36] S0: Exactly. [01:34:37] S1: Elena, thank you so much for being here. [01:34:40] S0: Okay. Thank you for having me, Lenny. [01:34:42] 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 lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode.