Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:58:51 · Andrew Ambrosino, S1
And that's often through connectors or computer use or even extensions in this case. And then there is Dan Shipper's thing, which is, "Hey, I have these web apps that you can click around and use, but I want to be able to open these in Codex and have Codex do extra stuff with it." And so those are kind of like two models that are almost inverse of each other that we're doing a lot with both at the same time. [00:59:18] S1: This Premiere story is interesting to me because it's another example of just be more ambitious with these AI jobs. You may not know, maybe they could do this thing. It's almost just like, "Go try, go try out, see if it figures it out." I'm going to take us to a recurring corner on the podcast that I call Fail Corner. And so the question for you is people see people like you just killing it, just growing. Everything's winning. Codex is doing so great, this crazy career, everything's up and to the right. People may not see the times that things didn't work out and things that you launched that were failures. And so these stories are really important for people to hear, that it's not all just win all the time. What's a story of a time you failed in your career that taught you something really important?
01:00:03 · Andrew Ambrosino, S1
[01:00:03] S0: It's funny to hear that description played back at me. And this is perhaps the first time I've not felt like I was failing. I mean, I was a startup founder for a long time. I ended up selling the company for parts essentially. It was years, it was a slog, it was heavily regulated spaces. The whole thing felt like a constant failure. I went to this other startup and we were trying to do some AI tools in this also pretty locked down, regulated industry. And that felt like just time after time of trying things and it not working. So to me it's been like, "Oh, I've failed actually quite a lot." And sometimes it's just a point in time where things line up like skillset, passion, point in the market, line up. With this project to bring what we've learned with the Codex app and marry it with ChatGPT, there have been, I don't know how many micro failures on this. Where we're like, "This is the shape it should look like." And then throw that in Slack and there's like a 2,000 message thread about how stupid we are. This is the thing I love about OpenAI, is people will just tell us that. There's no holding back on when we fail with product things internally. It's why the external product has been pretty great is because it goes through these cycles of- [01:01:27] S1: 2,000, this sucks. [01:01:28] S0: I failed for, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 15 years before getting to this point. So I'm still surprised every day that things are going well. And I know it.
01:01:28 · Andrew Ambrosino, S1
[01:01:28] S0: I failed for, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 15 years before getting to this point. So I'm still surprised every day that things are going well. And I know it. [01:01:38] S1: I think this is really important for people to hear. That you can have a lot of things not work out and then things start to work out super well and it's just keep going and keep learning. I imagine is a lesson. Well, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? [01:01:53] S0: Great. [01:01:54] S1: [inaudible 01:01:54]. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:01:59] S0: See, man, I'm a parent now. I'm a parent of young kids. [01:02:02] S1: Nice. [01:02:04] S0: I don't know. There's one called The Gruffalo, I read to my kids. [01:02:07] S1: Oh, my God. Our kid just got obsessed with The Gruffalo. [01:02:10] S0: Yes. [01:02:11] S1: We have a bedtime chart and now it's like pajamas, brush teeth, books, Gruffalo, on blankie. [01:02:18] S0: Yeah. [01:02:18] S1: Yeah. It's so good. [01:02:19] S0: So other books I'm reading right now are that style. [01:02:23] S1: Okay, the soft stuff. [01:02:24] S0: Actually, The Gruffalo is not a terrible one. [01:02:25] S1: No. [01:02:25] S0: I feel like there's some lessons in it. [01:02:26] S1: It's so sweet. Yeah. Although every kid's book is about death. Someone's eating someone, someone's killing. There's always bad murder and destruction. [01:02:35] S0: Kids like violence. Even when it doesn't feel like violence to them, the words...
01:02:35 · Andrew Ambrosino, S1
[01:02:35] S0: Kids like violence. Even when it doesn't feel like violence to them, the words... [01:02:40] S1: It creates an arc and excitement. [01:02:42] S0: Yeah. [01:02:42] S1: Yeah. Okay. Great choice, Gruffalo. [01:02:44] S0: I currently have a book backlog. I need to read all of them. [01:02:49] S1: Any other children's books then that your kid likes? [01:02:52] S0: Okay. Yes, actually. I am well versed on children's space. My favorite children's book ever is a very old one and it's called The Big Orange Splots or something along those lines. Look it up. It's great. Go get it. If you hate HOAs, go get it. It's about this guy, Mr. Plumbean, who lives on a street where all the houses are the same. It's a very neat street. And then one day a bird drops a large can of orange paint on his house and he says, "Eff it. I'm going all in." So he goes to the store, he gets paint, hammocks, alligators, and he totally redoes his house. And the neighbors, they're up in arms, right? HOA, property value, whatever, whatever. It's not about HOAs, but I'm a very anti-HOA person. It's just really cool. And then one by one, the neighbors go talk to him, have what they refer to as lemonade, but it's a very convincing lemonade. Because one by one, they all start redoing their house. One guy does a boat. I think that's a good book. I think people need to read this when they're, especially NIMBYs. [01:03:54] S1: What I hear from this is agency. [01:03:56] S0: Agency, exactly. You can just do things.
01:03:56 · Andrew Ambrosino, S1
[01:03:56] S0: Agency, exactly. You can just do things. [01:03:59] S1: Just do things. Amazing. Okay. We'll keep going. Favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed if you've had any time? [01:04:05] S0: So The Magic School Bus is back on Netflix. It's a new animated. It's got Kate McKinnon because Ms. Frizzle is now Professor Frizzle and she's around, but she's not the main Frizzle now. Kate McKinnon plays the main Ms. Frizzle. Yeah. I always liked the Magic School bus. It's back and very- [01:04:22] S1: I've never seen or heard of it. Cool. [01:04:24] S0: Personally, I don't have time for movies. So what I do is watch hour-long Netflix things back to back. You know that thing that people do? [01:04:33] S1: Like binge watch? [01:04:34] S0: I couldn't sit down and watch a whole movie and then watch hour-long episodes and keep... Idea. There's something addicting about that way. [01:04:41] S1: Favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? [01:04:44] S0: Well, this is a terrible answer. I feel like I'm discovering our product every day. [01:04:49] S1: Beautiful. [01:04:49] S0: That's terrible. [01:04:50] S1: That's so corny but- [01:04:50] S0: I think Linear does a great job. Until this, Linear was my favorite, at least software product. [01:04:59] S1: Is that what you guys use to plan and coordinate? [01:05:01] S0: Well, in theory. [01:05:04] S1: Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life?
01:05:04 · S1, Andrew Ambrosino
[01:05:04] S1: Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life? [01:05:07] S0: I want to ask everyone who works with me this because I feel like I'm not a motto person and then people tell me stuff I say all the time. [01:05:16] S1: Yeah. When we were chatting ahead of this, there's so many little nuggets that stood out to me that I've integrated into this chat. So I totally hear that. Okay. Last question. You've been a PM, you've been a designer, you've been an engineer. Which is the toughest role of the three, which is the hardest? [01:05:33] S0: Trying to start a war? [01:05:35] S1: Yes. [01:05:35] S0: I don't know. I think they're all very different. I think the things that make it tough for one person make it easy for others. There's a lot. There's so much, so many takes on this and this triad, what's going to happen with this triad? Designers are done or should designers code? Are PMs cooked? Do we not need engineers anymore because PMs are going to write all the code? Or are designers going to PM now? And everybody's cooked and everybody's so back. And I don't know. There's some convergence, there's some fluidity that is being introduced that I think is refreshing and great, especially for people with agency that want to be able to just do the thing that needs to get done. And at the same time, like we talked about, there are some things that shouldn't go away. But I think people should find the stuff that's worth working on and go figure out what to do on those things.