Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:12:57 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna
[01:12:57] S0: I'm really glad you said that and corrected me there, that it is possible to work at a company, one of, if not the fastest growing company in history, and actually have work life balance to get sleep, to spend time with your kids and family. [01:13:11] S1: You just have to protect it ruthlessly, but you also need to be realistic with how much is expected out of you, and you need to feel confident that you'll be able to deliver it. And by the way, you won't be able to deliver it unless you use AI in many aspects of your work life. So that's like the piece that helps you actually get to hit those expectations of outcomes that you need to do and the velocity. But I'm very protective of my personal time with kids. Like, why did I have children if I'm not gonna spend time with them? So, like, those are part of the non negotiables that I bring along with me in every single work. [01:13:47] S0: For people that maybe have trouble setting boundaries or just not good at this, anything, what do you... What works for you? Is it just is it as easy as just telling people, here's where I need to leave? What do you what advice do you have for people to set boundaries like that?
01:13:58 · Elena Verna
[01:13:58] S1: So, first of all, I would not think about it as a work life balance. There's no such thing as balance. A balance feels like, oh, I have enough time for everything. I don't have enough time for anything. But I prioritize my family in some moments. I prioritize work in other moments. And I don't try to balance the two. I go where I'm needed and where I go. And I feel like I'm not going to regret the choices that I'm making today. So I'm constantly trying to put myself in the future and say, well, I resent myself if I make this choice right now. And if the answer is yes, I don't make that choice. And sometimes I have to say no to Anton and say like, I can't make it or I won't be there. I need to be here with my family. Like today, I need to cancel my day. My kid is sick and he needs me and I need to be I need to take him to the doctor. So I think that just making in the moment, like in every day, even sometimes in the hour decisions to me works better than trying to balance something that is completely unachievable and it feels overwhelming to even think about. But I prioritise this in my sleep, my health, my workout schedule, my kids, my family, my husband and just my downtime, because I know that I'm most creative once I have separation from work, because then I come in with like all cylinders firing and I have so many more ideas about it. So to me, it's actually part of doing my best work is to take time off.
01:15:18 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:15:18] S0: That is really great advice. I want to touch on what it's like to work at Lovable because it feels like Lovable is at the cutting edge of what working at... In product is gonna be. So you mentioned a little bit about how you're always talking to AI, asking questions. Is there any any other kind of anecdotes of just how people operate at Lovable that is really unique or weird or funny or interesting that might be helpful for people to try in their company?
01:15:43 · Elena Verna
[01:15:43] S1: Yeah, mean, we use Lovable at Lovable a lot. Like all of our internal tools are built on Lovable. We actually have our first hackathon on Lovable happening next week where we're gonna... Entire company is just gonna take full day to pipe code and see what we actually have happened. We prototype everything on Lovable. So our specs, yeah, we do still have a written spec, but it always accompanied by a Lovable prototype that everybody can interact with and to click around with and provide feedback. And everybody bunches in and also like does some edits if they have any better ideas. So I create blocks on Lovable. So for example, we need to make some pricing changes or pricing page changes. I take a screenshot of our pricing page. I go to Lovable, say recreate this pricing page, make these changes. And then I send that to my engineering team saying, Hey, this is what I want to happen. And then like they take it from there. So we just, and chat GPT, I use a lot for brainstorming, especially the deep thinking mode. I love it. It takes a long time, but it's so worth it. Sometimes it has crazy ideas. Sometimes it does. Like sometimes I was like, yeah, is like nothing new to me. So it's not interesting, but it like it gets me thinking and it gets me look at the different angles. And lots of I use Granola a lot, for example, because to me, it's super helpful to get AI summaries of the meetings. And it's very powerful for me. I use Wispr Flow a lot because I feel like I have no time to type anymore. So I just like talk to my phone and talk to my laptop all the time in order to do it. But we're even thinking about all of the customer support automations that are done through AI. How do we... Every single aspect of what we do is question is asked, what can AI do here first? And then how we can add ourselves into the equation. But Lovable for us, having unlimited credits at Lovable is a pretty awesome perk, I have to say. Like, I sometimes have to pinch myself. I'm like, I get paged to BypeCode. It looks so fun.
01:17:45 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna
[01:17:45] S0: Feel like that engineer or that BypeCode engineer, he's he's, like, actually [01:17:48] S1: getting paid by job. I want his job. I feel like I... Yeah. I I got into the wrong line of fashion here. [01:17:54] S0: Oh, man. Okay. Is there anything else about Lovable? Cause the... What I think about actually, I interviewed the Perplexity founders back in the day, years ago, and they shared like, before we talked to anyone for advice, we first asked ChatGPT, and I was just like, that is the most insane thing I've ever heard. How couldn't you possibly work that way? And now that's how everyone works. And so I'm curious just to... I don't know. Like how... I don't know how Anton works. Is there anyone else that's just like way in the future of here's how things might be?
01:18:19 · Elena Verna
[01:18:19] S1: So for me, especially for product and growth, and even marketing at some point, in some capacity. When I have an idea in my head, it like it sounds so freaking cool. And sometimes they can even like I put it in paper and it's like, oh, this is like like we need to do it. And then like I go and try to vibe code it and I'm like, oh, like this, I don't see the magic anymore. Like or I can't like I can't envision it anymore. Or sometimes I'm like, yeah, yeah. And like, there's more, there's more. So to me, it's actually has helped really complete the ideation process for me quite a bit, because then I actually try to go and build it and it breaks down some of the elements of what's important, what's not. So it's taking me on product development life cycle so much further down. And then it creates a much better communication vehicle with my engineers too, because I then can tell them exactly what's important and whatnot. So to me, it's been great because sometimes we envision things that are so much better than the reality. And before, until it hands it off to design, designers would do it for us and try to make it awesome versus I often stop my ideas in tracks super early on without pushing it forward versus other times I might have pushed it to for too far, too long, even through design cue or even like pitching to leadership. And I find that very powerful because it calibrates me really quickly.