How AI is reshaping the product role | Oji and Ezinne Udezue

0:00 It really irked me when in 2024 most people were saying AI is here and now the PM job is gone. There were others who were saying AI is here, so now we can do the things we don't like to do with AI. What do you find is most common across the companies that are succeeding? Companies that recognize that AI is not this magic thing that you're gonna slather on. To your product. The problems are still the problem. Something else that I think is also really important is getting super hands on with the tech. I've written more code in the last one year than I have in the last ten years, because code is now essentially architecture and English. I'll pick a project that touches a lot of the things that I need to learn. One of the function points I have. is to automate my house. The idea is that I give the house eyes and ears. The coolest thing is I've spec'd out a super sensor. It will see people, hear them, it will sense humidity and temperature, and I'm building the hardware myself. Today my guests are Aji and Ezine Udezwe. They are married, both long time product leaders with over fifty years of combined product experience.

1:06 They're also the authors of a new book that I love called Building Rocket Ships. Product management for high growth companies, which is a synthesis of their biggest product lessons over the course of their entire career. Aji was Chief Product Officer at Calendly and Typeform, and led product teams at Twitter, at Lasssian and Microsoft. Ezine was CPO at WP Engine and VPR product at ProCorp. We chat about what is changing in the role of product management.

1:29 Also, what is staying the same? We also get into the shift of PM to end ratios that AI is introducing. The five skills becoming most important in being a successful PM over the coming years, and the single biggest lesson that each of them have learned over the course of their careers. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

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2:09 I bring you Aji. And as in a U Desway. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. I've been banking with Mercury for years. And honestly, I can't imagine banking any other way at this point. I switched from chase, and holy moly, what a difference. Sending wires, tracking spend Giving people on my team access to move money around so freaking easy.

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4:08 Banta makes it automatic. Get$1,000 off. advanta.com slash lenny Aji and Ezine, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

4:22 Thank you for having us, Lenny. It's absolutely my pleasure. You guys are a a rare guest duo. You two are married. You're both longtime product leaders. You've been in product combined for over fifty years. The cool thing about the fact that you guys have been in product for so long is that you've seen a lot of change.

4:40 In the role of a PM and the role of building products. You've also seen what Doesn't change. And so let me actually start. Here and I'll throw this to Ezine. What are you

4:50 seeing changing most. in the role and day to day job of a product Manager. And what are you seeing staying the same? At a high level.

5:00 The core value that a PM has to deliver it hasn't changed. Um, it really is. Uh de risking The product delivery process.

5:11 While also really trying to maximize the value the business gets from these investments. But Tactically. I think that The good thing is that

5:22 We're finding out that PMs are. Feed up more. And as a result They're they can actually invest more in true

5:32 Developing true insights about their customer. So you're You're seeing or you're you're finding out your engineering leaders, engineering team is they're asking you to really confirm Your

5:44 insight and your instinct about the customer. The second thing I would say is That there's a need to orchestrate a little differently.

5:56 So in the past it was around people. Okay, straighting people, getting them into the room, et cetera. But now there are many moving pieces. Not there's the software, there's there are also the feedback loops, the LLMs that are the multiple touch points that you have in technology. Ensuing that those are also being built in a way that

6:16 Allows for true learning with within your software. So that idea of working static software isn't true anymore. It's almost like living, breathing software. And ensuring that The things that allow it to breathe. Actually occur.

6:29 The other piece Two other pieces. Data literacy. um, an understanding of what it is that you're product is learning from. Uh what where's the data going?

6:42 And how is it being used? How is it being Organized. So that it could be leverage for future insight about your product use and customer use. And then the last I would say is Just

6:55 Creating the right guardrails within your product. to ensure that it actually continues to do what it needs to do. You know, we spoke earlier and I have a whole thing about ethics of AI, et cetera. And I think that we have a responsibility as product folk.

7:11 Uh people. And I'm seeing PMs ask the questions that We didn't get to see them ask when we were building social media. So that those are the kind of things I would say. I definitely want to come back to that topic.

7:23 There's something you just talked about that ref uh connects so deeply with something a recent guest talked about, Asha Sharma, she's a Chief Vice President of Microsoft work again at AI. And she had this concept that products are evolving from product as artifact where it's this like done thing you ship. to a product as organism. That continues to evolve.

7:42 Based on data that it's feeding and this metabolism of data. Systems and I have this Innate passion around the idea of what a system is.

7:54 And it has to do with that living, breathing and interaction with every with other things. So yes. Yes, yes and yes. Let me throw over to Aji this first point you made. Uh I I love this idea that PMs there's more time spent almost at kind of the top of the funnel, the top of the product development life cycle. Confirming insights from customer data, deciding what to build.

8:16 Uh, there's talk recently of just PMs are almost becoming the bottleneck for teams because engineers are moving so much faster and PMs are the same, just like sitting around maybe docs are Easier to write. Uh what do you what do you see there? What do you think about just the The I don't know. This

8:31 ratio shift potentially for where PMs almost become a bottleneck. uh with AI accelerating other functions. Well the last twenty years we've had like very fixed ratios in terms of how what gets done. Like PM takes this amount of time. Developers take this amount of time, go to market take this amount of time.

8:48 And I think that contract is basically exploding. Because the bill process you know, sort of the the the close solutionary process go across is accelerating so fast. And so Uh a company we work with told us that

9:02 You know, they're sort of like a build contract build company. They say they will get off the phone. From A pitch. And in four hours they would have a prototype.

9:12 And so the question is like what is a PM doing? This the person listening to that is half PM, half developer, you know that to be able to produce that. And so what we're seeing is that The way you know PMs do three things.

9:26 We think about what the customers want that is profitable. So working on sharp problems and defining sharp problems and what's in the customers' mind that makes it sharp. We support the solutioning and the build. Okay. And then we Don't do this enough, but we need support to go to market of it. And so

9:41 What's happening is that this middle thing is coming more capable and much faster. And so the way we support it it has to change. Uh PRD righty is insufficient at the moment. Um you know, sort of like the static way we ask questions about what's in the customers' minds is like that stuff needs to be like faster. The cycle time is so fast now. And so PMs need to adapt. And that needs new tool sets.

10:05 New skill sets. And so on and so forth. I think that's where the most pressure is. But at the same time, like Izina said. PMs can't take some of the If they adapt to this really well, they can spend a lot more time here.

10:19 Right, and that's where there's a lot of opportunity. And you know, the thing that we want PMs to do is not Be the crouch. Not worry about people saying, Oh, you're the bottleneck. No. Don't be the bottleneck, first of all, but also it's just you see everything. Add Valley and other places where traditionally I was spent time.

10:35 I wanna pull on this sharp problem thread. This is my favorite A G meme. We talked about this a bit in in your when you visited the podcast last. I think it's such a useful f concept. So I just wanna make sure people learn this while we're talking about talk about what a sharp problem is and why that's important. One of the things I learned from failing a lot at building companies is that sometimes, you know, the way that why see other people pitch it

10:59 Is that you know, you build something and if it doesn't work you pivot. You know Stuff like that. Well it turns out that Yeah, in The world of high technology and the world of

11:10 W figuring out what customers need. There are many shortcuts that mean that Pivoting isn't just like a habit, something you walk around drunkenly doing. Right. A lot of the most successful people, you know, Bill Gates Facebook and they didn't even pivot.

11:24 They had an idea. But it turned out that the idea was a sharp problem. So like the way to avoid Drunken Startup Building is Pick things. That

11:38 Are old. The core needs. And and the way you profit is when you reimagine Old knees in new technological ways. And that's important. No.

11:51 Less freedom than the sharp problem. What do people feel? They need help with, what is still difficult. To the point that if you improve it Three to five times, maybe ten X.

12:03 Or you take cost out of it. Like ten X of costs. Right? Little one tenant. They'll be like, This is so compelling, you should take my money now. And that's what they should really, really focus on if they can't. Uh there's extended stuff we've talked about over the years, like

12:19 The Unicorn framework, which is like If you're building for B to B specifically. How do you draw a quarter around a problem so you know if it's highly frequent 'Cause frequency also means a lot of pain. and and figure it out, but that's something people gotta read on the substanti.

12:34 Yeah, and we we talked about that in our last chat, so we'll point people to that. Okay, so building on this idea of being a drunken walk of figuring out what to build, you have this concept of the uh shipyard. And this is kind of a way to think about Uh how to think about what product development might look like going forward and just a model for how to work in this Caddoic world that we're in.

12:54 Talk what that looks like in the in the advice here. I'm gonna give some credit. When I was at last year, the first time I encountered the idea was with Joff Redford, he's now like a V C. And he talked about it. But you know, I've taken the idea'cause I love it to maybe a whole different level, maybe a sense of clarity. A shipyard. If you evoke control chaos.

13:15 If you go to a shipyard at peak. in a long beach or whatever it is. There's so much going on and like big heavy machinery moving around, trucks. And containers from China from Malaysia jumping around, but This chaos

13:32 Underline it is Careful communication. high skill Right. Um so what looks like You know, ca you know, Brownian motion is actually orchestrated.

13:45 Progress. And you know, these are This shipyards are the center of GDP for a lot of nations because this is where trade happens. So this is what it's supposed to evoke is

13:56 Controlled chaos. And so what a shipyard team looks like is a six person team. It is Uh PM. It is

14:04 Engineering. It is design, it is user research, is data, ml. AI expertise, AI PMs or whatever you know call it. It is um Product marketing.

14:16 In a pod. Problem solving. It's only in AI age. The idea of stand ups isn't really even make as much sense, right? These people should be you know, can we get a collaborating

14:29 Our mean. Basically to solve the problem because it filled they're working a new problem so I think that's what a core ship here team means. And then there are these tendrils to You know, we call salespeople. Customers to people the the nervous

14:42 It's on the skin. Like think about the shipyard team as the brain, but this is the skin. This is how you feel customers. And so Here's a concrete example. Before I shipped anything at Caldly. I did the design review with

14:56 It's the support manager. Right, the support manager has to be in the room because The design people and engineering people as much as we cared. Wheel ships. Problems all the time. You know,

15:08 The featured that What a support manager looks at it and it's like, that's not gonna work. I've had ten a thousand conversations. And it was so useful. And so having the shipyard team have the tendrils of connection to customer teams was so important.

15:21 So what I'm hearing is essentially embrace chaos, things are gonna get Only weirder. The something I forget who maybe the CPO at Uh Open AI said just like it's only gonna get weirder. This is the least This is the most normal the world will be.

15:35 Yep. And and and and that's important because if the world is weird. And you wanna make sense of it. You need people who are highly motivated. have the right skill sets to continuously create it as it moves, as it gets weird. Uh you said uh EP I remember Lenny asked how many you know, wha what c what how what is what is

15:56 uh shipyard comprised of we said six people person team. I know that's gonna come up and people are gonna go Six weeks, six Six capability team. It is not a personal thing.

16:08 It is is engineering how however many you need. Again, it's all about admission. It's PM, it's designed. It's the capabilities I'm I'm optimizing for. It's book marketing. And it's a user research. If PMs can't do it. You need the capabilities. And when it's a fractional person within matrix into that EPD team or it's ten people because of developers.

16:31 That's what you need. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing there is uh it the roles will become blurrier. That PMs need to do more design, engineers need to do more PMing. People need more data. skills. So I so th to me those are the two takeaways. It's just

16:45 Learn to be more comfortable with chaotic. world just AI const every week there's like, Oh, this is changing everything. Rethink the whole roadmap. And then also the roles will be less Divided. People will need to learn to do

16:58 Many roles and chip in. Yes. Awesome. Yeah. So building on that, uh, as in a When you Higher

17:05 PMs these days when you're looking for product leaders. What do you is there something you're looking for more and more Because you believe this will be more important to be successful. In a world where AI is just changing everything. I think Audgy started uh he laid the foundation when he said it's day one.

17:24 And when you're working and thinking, um About building product in this type of air or space, it's important that you remember that. So I'm gonna talk about what it is that I typically will look for. From an attitude's values and behaviors point of view, as well as the skills.

17:40 Uh point of view. Um, I'm currently working with uh a firm in LA and I'm building curriculum for their PMs as well as helping them recruit. And The things that we've honed in on are Curiosity.

17:56 And I know it's been said over and over. Again. But it matters more now. It is is are pip are is this person Humble.

18:06 And curious enough. To admit they don't know and are willing to start As a learner. Do they truly have a growth mindset where they are okay? Being taught by someone else.

18:19 No matter how senior they have become. That is very important. That humility and curiosity mixed together. The second part is what I'd call agency. Being able to see Opportunity

18:34 And not ask others for permission to go execute on that opportunity, but actually take The opportunity themselves. Have a strong Um there's another word most people use for this. Um it's not coming to me.

18:47 But just no, there's another characteristic value behavior. Um But high agency being able to just move forward And feel act like an owner. Right.

19:01 Ownership. That's the word. High ownership. Um, but I think ownership is seeing that you can run. But I think agency Assumes that

19:12 You control, more thermos stat. than a thermometer. And that means that hey, the thermometer is always measuring the temperature of the room. While a thermos that will change The temperature of the room.

19:23 So I'm looking for that in in people. And I want people who can move from a Position of strength. It really Irked me when in twenty twenty four most people were saying AI is here and now the PM job is gone.

19:36 And There were others who were saying AI is here, so now we can do the things we don't like to do with AI and then go to focus on the things that we need to do. So people will spoke that way. Are the types of people I want on my team. Прома скілс перспективи. Obviously

19:52 An understanding of data. Right? Just high how high level of how is it organized, how is it leveraged in though in this new world of AI. Um There's this skill of being able to write evals. I know everybody can write prompts, prompt engineering, you can try and focus the L M so that it can

20:10 uh offer better insights and offer better results. But even as Your LM actually provide pro produces results. You need to verify that it actually is smart and it hasn't hallucinated or gone Off.

20:24 By creating true evals, right? I too those are some hardcore skills. being able to constrain how destination knowing what sk what ways you do that being able to use multiple Marvels?

20:37 Um, and figure out what is good about this model versus that. Um One of the things I love to talk about is what what does intelligence mean? Intelligence often people say is connecting dots. And The beauty of

20:50 What it is that we have an opportunity to do is that With AI You can find you can

20:56 train it so that it's very specific to a very particular task, right? It can become really smart in one area. And the idea now is how do you combine the smarts of what maybe Claude does, right, with something that GPT does better. And make something even Greater than

21:15 Each of them, right? So that's W one of the things I'm looking for in a PM And then being able to tweak for best for performance, whether it's choosing, whether it's just fine tuning. doing the weight adjustments.

21:28 Oh G is very passionate about this one. We talk about it quite a bit. Um But that's The attitudes point of view where, you know, just strong ownership, strong agency, curiosity, being humble.

21:39 And then this idea of understanding beyond prompt. Like the you know, really knowing that I is just Toolbox. Right, and it can make major mistakes and how do you

21:49 constrain it such that constrain it, optimize it. um tweak it so that it can actually work on your behalf. And not Like it in you need to make it work for you versus being lost in all the things that it's able to do. I love this answer and it resonates

22:05 So well with so many other people's uh advice which is Uh, curiosity, skills that matter most. And this actually curiosity comes up a lot when I ask people what skills are you focusing on teaching your kids. Uh the number one Uh

22:20 skill people mention is curiosity. Uh I love that you included humbleness. I wanna come back to that. So essentially curiosity hum humbleness. Agency. Such a meme these days and what

22:31 PMs need to build and be strong at high agency. So So great. And then evals. I I like I like that a lot. That's also super common. I have a really cool Guest post coming out really soon that'll teach you more than you ever thought you needed to know about how to become really good at evals. But I wanna double down on something you just said, which uh I love.

22:49 uh so much which is this idea of Instead of Waiting to see what jobs AI takes. It's almost like the way you phrased it essentially is what jobs can you take? As a PM, what can you do?

23:03 Can you do more engineering? Can you do more design? Such an empowering way to think about it. Let me let me talk about something that's really personal. Um I'm part of the women in product organization and the I was asked to guess right uh end of last year because there was A lot of fear.

23:19 in the in the community. And There was this thing called the rise of the CTPO. It's this thing it's been in the back of the ground there. Where

23:29 Yeah. I think many Venture VCs, many PEs were asking, do I need but uh a a CPO as well as a CTO? Right. And

23:39 Um I I was always Amazed at how many people were leaned back. In this in this thing versus actually showing and proving the value of what a CPO

23:48 quick beat. So In many places it is right that maybe you do only want one person, particularly when it's very well known spaces, right? It's clear they're not doing anything revolutionary. But

24:01 It's like saying an engineer is the same as a product person when you think about it that way. There is a conflict between Yep. CPO and the CTO that actually drives innovation, in my opinion, because one person is trying to optimize the resourcing, the fixed, right? While another person is actually trying to field opportunities and figure out how to wait and decide what is best to do it. At the high level that is their those are their jobs.

24:24 And that tension is really good. Because You need them to sharpen each other. as you try to maximize the value of your organization of the organization. I say all this to say

24:35 That. There are folks who are Not Stopping to figure out what how do we make the pie bigger?

24:42 But they're looking at instead how we divide this pie as it gets smaller. versus asking the question of really what is the opportunity to Increase this for all of us. And that is a skill set I also

24:53 Look out for it. Awesome. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to Yaji in a second, but I wanna come back on this humble idea. I haven't heard this before. Why is why is it why do you find it really important for people to be Humble. I haven't heard that.

25:05 Oh my gosh. Um, particularly now, it is really important to be. Um because I would say okay, I I went to school. I actually did neural networks in school when I was doing a project. And you know, you get to this part of your career where you go

25:22 I kinda know a lot of what product is. And I do see folks who are not willing to go sign up for that new Junior AIPM course.

25:32 Picas They're C P O or their head of product or their X, Y, or Z. Or they're a principal PM now. And I think that that's a mistake. I think that it's important to realize that you don't know everything. You can't know everything, and even as a leader, CPO, head of product, etc.

25:49 I f I come from this school uh Where I believe that in order to need An organization sometimes you actually need do need to know. How to do the work. And

26:00 I think I lead better that way. So being able to sign up and say, you know what, let me sit in and figure out how we're gonna build this thing. And Number one, learn for yourself, but also figure out What Questions.

26:14 Other PMs are asking in that course. Right. So it's about taking courses from people you may have considered Uh Junior. Figuring out and sitting and reading books that you thought

26:26 you you know, just going back to the day one of how do you build product in in an AI world. So that's where humility comes. to play. Period where we are. It's you just don't know everything, can't know everything and

26:39 things will change faster than you're able to uh stay ahead of so lean on Your team as well. I just had uh this guy Chip Connolly on the podcast. He's in his sixties. He joined Airbnb in when he was fifty two as an intern.

26:53 And he Said exactly the same thing to be successful. And it's interesting as a metaphor, as an older person you need to be really good at being open to learning from people younger than than you. And that's a really interesting, I think, lens and heuristic almost for just

27:07 people that aren't as AI savvy yet. uh just leaning into that idea of just like okay, I can actually learn a lot from people around me. Even if they're much younger than me. Mm-hmm. Okay, so A G

27:17 Something else that I think that you're really good at. And you've been spending time on that I think is also really important, is getting super hands on with the tech, not just like reading and not just listening to podcasts like this, not just reading newsletter. But like actually building stuff. Talk about just like why that's important, what you've been doing to learn and to stay ahead and not just be like ohtificator guy in the clouds.

27:39 I just love you know everything we've said in the last few minutes. You know, I you know, I think the shorthand I have for humility is humility is Teachability. Um And When do you need

27:51 Teachability. You need teachability when You know sort of Everything has changed. Where there is no blueprint. And

28:01 Whatever you think is a blueprint of of AI in the last few years, you know, whether oh wow, s lovable is so successful, the replet is so successful. It's actually quite possible that Any one of those companies won't be around in two, three years, right? Because We're still writing The playbook.

28:17 What success looks like. So humility is teachability. And teachability is survivability. If you're thinking about careers and if you also if you're thinking about building something that's important is also important like that. Um, in terms of How we

28:33 How to keep your hand sharp. Uh well what I would say is a couple of things. One is I have written Izzy and I both have a master's engineering, but we very quickly figured out that The thing that we were gifted at was

28:47 Inve tr helping to invent the future. Where customers thinking. You know, how do we work with developers to do that? And so We've been PMs forever. And being a PM means that Even though we could, we don't write code. We work with developers, we work with other people in the market. But I've written more code than last One year that I have in the last

29:05 Ten years. Because code is now essentially architecture and English or whatever language that you have. And so what does that mean? I've taken the opportunity to write more code. I've taken the opportunity to convert PRD writing into prototype writing. I've taken the opportunity to write more API interfaces and actually call those API interfaces with Postman myself.

29:28 I've taken the opportunity to subscribe to all the AI tools, right? And take that as a cost of learning. So that I can understand what each model is useful for. I've taken the opportunity to understand MCPs, right? And connect to different things to it. Like right now, one of my pet projects or one of the things I do. Not to learn is I think a project that

29:50 It's almost like right then Eval was an Eval for my life to learn is I'll take a pick a project. Yeah. touches a lot of the things that I need to learn. that I'm interested and passionate about. And as I get into it because of my passion, I start to learn more and more. And so one of the partial point because I've ha I have is to automate my house.

30:10 So I've been doing this for years and years, but now I'm trying to build A very smart house run on a processor that has AI chip and inference in it. While the house looks dumb. So'cause I don't want anyone to know about it.

30:25 And so what am I doing? Um d getting models. I um think learning about how to what quantization of those models means. I am learning how to fine tune some of them. I'm feeding them and building an MCP server in my house. that talks to the whole entities and then I can collaborate with Claude on how to build and make it sort of super dynamic.

30:47 Uh but beyond that, you know, one of the things we're spending time on is Aventure studio uh raising And raising capital for adventure studio because that's what I want to spend the next decade on building seminal AI companies beyond the book. I'm collaborating with some of the smartest people in AI right now who can Teach me.

31:07 how to do this, how to write agents, what agents really mean. And so Everything isn't I said, writing evals, being humble, going back after twenty five years of being a PM to being teachable. Is how I stay sharp. I wanna to go back to this house. What do you what are you what is your house doing? How how smart is this house?

31:28 The the idea is that Um I give the house eyes and ears. And it senses The the coolest thing is I've spectout.

31:39 What I call like a super sensor. It will see people. It'll feel their he it'll hear them. It will sense humidity and temperature and it will just be scattered around the house, right? And I'm building the hardware myself. And basically as you walk into the house, it starts to adapt itself to you.

31:59 Right. It manages energy in the house. It knows you're in a room. If you leave my kids are not in their in in their rooms right now. Well the H VAC around them just Stopped. And said they're not here.

32:16 And then when they come back, it says oh, they're here and it starts to do cool things. So There's a lot of stuff like that. that a building. And the question is you don't want that to be completely inflexible. You want it to be super dynamic and super human. And so that's part of the AI. I I am the recipient of all of this. W I I I woke up at one AM and I want toast. Why is the toast not working?

32:41 The power. No, but look at look, isn't that walks into lots of rooms in a house. And the light just turns on and when she leaves, she just walks out. And then he knows she's not there and he turns it off. And she's taking it for granted. Well it's actually doing all this. Wow.

32:58 It is also but there's also like a horror movie version of this. Yes, there is Well I what I will say is that My family should not piss me off because you know I could do crazy things to them. Oh man Okay And this is built on like a uh like an LLM that you trained. Is that is that what what the power is? So multiple levels. There's this open source software called home assistant that I use. And you can

33:29 Uh it's very extensible, so I can put in like fine tune LLMs I can use uh The big LMs. The the There are things like smaller like spoken whisper models you can use to like I can just say hey Jarvis.

33:44 Like Iron Man and it it'll s the house will start talking to me and telling me things about what's going on. So things like that. Uh getting us back on track. I'm excited and scared to visit this house. So that's always my dad.

34:04 Get this out of me. Uh what I love about this is this something that I've seen a bunch is Having a very specific problem to solve for yourself is a really good way to build and and Get into these tools because you're

34:16 motivate to solve a problem and it's like a specific thing. That you're doing versus just generally I'm gonna go sit around and play lovable. No, I I I I think I wanna double click on that, Lenny. I was telling you the other time that uh we spoke that I get a lot of questions from I I would say people who aren't very familiar with with AI and they don't know where to start. And that is exactly

34:37 What I say is, Hey, I know you love fashion, for example, right? Or you you like um Reading. Right. And you have

34:45 The the the Yeah, you actually have the database of the entire Austin Library or whatever it is online and you can pull it if you really want to. And it can re recommend based on your feelings. So you can create a project around what it is that you're passionate about. One particular woman, um, older lady.

35:00 Uh wanted to figure this out. I I I figure out a passion project and I knew she liked this idea called outfit of the day. So With L O Ms.

35:11 She started a project where she actually has she took the time to take all her tops All her bottoms. All her dresses, all her shoes. And now she's working on Based on the temperature

35:23 having recommendations of her alpha for the day. So That's one way she was able to find something that she loved. And could take a you know Leverage.

35:32 AI to build. And that could help her determine okay, what should I wear or what are the options I should consider for today. That's an amazing example. Can I just make like one you know, I'm always like High concept prediction guy.

35:44 So I'm gonna make one prediction. I think that You know, in the next few years. A lot of a lot of high agency people, not just PMs. Essentially be writing the software that automates their lives.

35:58 Right, and so the one man says is gonna go away because The ability to People who really care. Well

36:09 Automate their lives, they'll build applications that just work for them. Um The the the advice for PMs is they sh we should be the vanguard of that. Because if we can start doing that for ourselves, we'll be able to do that for software that hits a million people.'Cause that's the way to get started. And I wanna we also want to offer hope. It's still day one.

36:27 Meaning that No matter how far, you know, if you hear me and hear about fine cheating and home assistance and all this crazy hardware that I've trying to build. And you're scared, you're like, I'm behind. Uh you're not behind. You're not behind people who seem like they're succeeding. We were here when you know the internet dropped and everyone, you know, Microsoft thought it was behind.

36:48 And you know, with social people, some people thought they were behind. The people who seem like they're off the gate fastest, whether it's a company or a person, The people who win. And so it's the wisest. And the most dedicated women. And so people should just start.

37:03 You know, email people we have a proverb that says whenever you Wake up is your morning. And so just wake up and go. Uh I love so much of the advice you two are sharing. There's a

37:15 There's a post I'm gonna link to in the show notes that shares a bunch of examples of what people are by coding. building with AI, that seems to be the biggest challenge for a lot of people is just like what should I actually do? And something that I realized as I was putting that together is People think about like, Oh, can you build real product and businesses on bold lovable reply? But interestingly, most people just want to build a thing that solves a specific problem for themselves.

37:36 And sometimes that turns into a thing, but there's And what's the bigger opportunity just to build all personal software? Uh Similar to the example you shared, as in a there's a site, someone built this like how many layers should I wear today dot com or whatever.

37:49 I don't think that's the actual domain and it's just like three. And that's sometimes all you need to know. Today's episode is brought to you by Coda. I personally use Koda every single day. To manage my podcast and also to manage my community. So where I put the questions that I plan to ask every guest that's coming on the podcast.

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39:11 So let me take this opportunity to zoom out a little bit. We've been talking a lot about Personal skills, what you think people need to get better at, what it takes to be successful. I'm gonna talk about at the company level. You two work with a bunch of different companies. You've both worked at a bunch of different companies. When you look at the companies that seem to be doing well in this new AI world, adopting the best practices, seeing productivity gains.

39:32 versus the companies that are just struggling and not getting anywhere and just having a hard time. What do you find is most common across the one the companies that or succeeding shifting their culture. And the way they work. In this world of AI and I'll I'll throw this to Ez.

39:49 I think the the main thing I will say is um recognizing companies That recognize But AI Is

40:02 A core Set of Multiple capabilities. That they've been gifted. I think that you need to understand that it is not this magic thing.

40:12 That you're gonna slather on. To your product. And It will do perfectly. The problems are still the problems. The customer is still the problem is still the customer.

40:24 And they're paying Well shark problems still exist as they they have. The idea now is how do you take AI And not Have it be something we call it you put at the edge alone.

40:37 But you actually Retran the way you solve the customer's problem. So we have this phrase called AI at the core and AI at the edge. And the fa the best way to think about it is that With AI at the edge, you're probably still using software as you always have. The bits and bytes that you wrote before still are there.

40:56 You're instead inserting L's or AI. At different intersections or connection points. Okay.

41:05 A the core. means fundamentally Looking at the problem space and the workflows. And using AI. To solve the problem.

41:16 Not just Sprinkling it. At the intersections of you know, GUIs or u user interfaces that are out there or Using it to just accelerate things.

41:28 So the way we talk about it is that Companies where Their code base remains and they are attaching Uh AI to it. often aren't the ones who are going to revolutionize

41:43 uh the their industry. Companies for whom their code base perhaps shrinks. And the LM becomes a core part of what it is that they use to solve the problem. are companies that actually are doing it right. Another

41:59 Uh characteristic. Is specificity. We've seen a lot of companies want to Do so many things and expect LMs to be as broad

42:11 As the problem sets they want to solve for. And we in our experience of seeing that. To do that, you actually will need to

42:21 Have Specialised First. And then create a layer. Of

42:30 A connective tissue. that can offer intelligence. So we've seen companies instead just stay on top, try to build this massive solution set or LM that can do it all. But the successful ones that we've consulted with

42:44 partnered with or talking to or those who instead have seen you know what I can find I can build with this team that I have on here can actually build this very specific solution set. This other team can do this and then My job is to tie it all together with a broader Малці

43:01 mo model solution. Um and build it and create An offering for the customer. I think those are two core things. I'm sure Ogy can remember a few others. No, I think no, I I I I love I I was humble in listening to him. No, um

43:21 So maybe I I'll uh I'll embellish the point. We're seeing companies that are starting From a blank sleeves. Taking an old problem, a sharp problem.

43:33 And saying if we built it today. With LM as the core. capability as a core sort of blob of code. How would it look? And often these people are

43:47 Finding a lot of acceleration and it actually like Taking on adjacency when are formless. Type form. You know, uh new product built by Uh, David O'Kunev and you know, and me.

44:00 And a small group of people We built A new type form. And we ended up building more than it because it also became like a sales lead agent. So like it

44:11 Did pre sales. Which ordinarily type one gets you into qualification before you talk to a sales person, but the product itself did pre sell. So that capability was so strong. We're also seeing the shrinking thing. It's funny, in the last week I've seen companies that have been around for five years who once LLMs came, they just reimagined their product. Like clay.ai. As is a six year old company super successful.

44:37 Um so in the first category is like things like lovable, but in the second category people are who are like okay. We're gonna rethink this and we're gonna do it. Um now the problem for the rest of the industry Is This

44:51 You know, you know there is dilemma. They have lots of revenue tied to old code bases. And so they their job is to you know, we tell PM leaders all the time is to navigate how you use LLMs on the old thing but navigate to the new thing. Before someone eats your lunch. And it's not co it's complicated as hard, but you have to do it. Now let me some make maybe a couple of smaller things.

45:12 Um The people who are succeeding are taking chances on user experiences. We don't believe the chap interface is the Final boss for AI user experience, we think. That

45:24 There's a reason US exist and the command line didn't work, otherwise DOS will be the biggest operating system. Uh and so people have to do different things, uh and the dynamic. Yeah, one of the big things is dynamic user experiences that just Personal likes of the customer.

45:40 And so we'll see a lot of uh we see a lot of people succeeding there. And One of the things that we don't see people doing actually that we want people to do is something as even mentioned, which is Ethics. You know, like

45:53 We think of AI and its core capabilities as ordnance level meaning like at at some point we'll think of this as more powerful than the the fusion the fusion bomb. And We have a bunch of

46:08 software people who have no consideration of ethics. Play with this stuff all the time. And so One thing we'd like to see the bet best companies do is lead on that. Like Think about the responsibility we have to the human race when we build new digital products that will give them superpowers.

46:24 I wanna zoom out even further. So we started talking about individual people skills, what's gonna be most important. We've been talking rec just now about what companies are doing well, the ones that are succeeding in this crazy world of AI. I wanna now zoom out just your entire product career.

46:43 I'm curious just when you look back at you the fifty plus years of combined experience. You to have What are some of the Biggest Product lessons that have

46:52 If that if you've learned that you Would love to share that you think people can avoid having to learn the hard way. I think one wanna reiterate the thing that we talked about sharp problems. Your The problem you focus on is probably the most predictive of your success.

47:07 Pick a sharp problem. Take something. that if you really solve it, people will come. You know, it is watching Jeff Bezos from the eighties feels Christian. He's like look.

47:19 People always shout, I'm gonna be the guy. And he and he did it. So Do that. Humbly because I've failed.'Cause sometimes

47:30 We build things that we are passionate about. But Being a founder is not an exercise and even an operator in a company, it's not an exercise in your passion and your brilliance. It's an exercise in finding what the market needs. So do that. Be disciplined in doing that. We also talk about simplicity a lot. Um even this morning I was talking to a designer and he had a covoluted

47:52 uh user experience and I said Only twenty percent of people who come to this will see that. And so the point of Design is First simplicity and clarity before we get fancy.

48:04 And so There's a lot. Steve Jobs embodied this earlier on. I think IOS has become complicated. But like Start with simplicity, and simple is hard. Um

48:17 And in twenty twenty five, we're designing for distracted brains. This a couple of things are happening. People are super distracted. People are no longer wild by technology, you call it AI all you want. They just assume that it is what it is. And so Simplicity is really good for twenty twenty five and beyond, basically.

48:35 Um And then You know, we talk a lot about fundamentals, I'm gonna throw this to is in there, like there are Ways to figure out the fundamentals. What we do I know we operate in the software layer.

48:48 Well I'm It's most basic, we're trying to predict what humans would do, what they will want, how their soft you know, workflow will go. And if some There's some

48:59 You know, uh there's a there's a layer of that that is Quite similar. You know, because Our friends, the anthropologists and the psychologists really understand those. And I think if we understand it we can build better software. So but isn't I wanna let you

49:13 Uh I'm just gonna throw this off to you so I don't take up All the space. Go for it. No, I think I think you're on to something about um just So When I think about

49:25 The hard lessons I've learned. You talked about simplicity. And I'm saying this also from Ha. Humility and just having learned a lot.

49:35 From Past failures. Она в резенс піпо create complicated solutions is because they are afraid to make Tick a stab.

49:46 point of opinionated. Yeah. And That often comes from not having high conviction. Because you're not sure.

49:58 That you spend the time with the customer. So With that, I know it sounds trite. But spend time and understand the customer or borrow from others who do. But you've got to not

50:13 Just lay it all out and have them choose. Which way? Because it is so Fing confusing. Ten thousand options because you can't pick one. Yeah. The experience. Is so murky, chalky, nobody knows what the hell to do because you can't make a decision.

50:30 Make it simple, come up come up with an opinion. And put your opinion out there. You can change. Leave the configurations and the options behind. But leave them behind the scenes if you must.

50:41 But try and create the most compelling, the simplest experience. And you will actually have better adoption, you're better off doing that and being wrong. Many times we leave and Ship. convoluted experiences because we don't have

50:56 The The the courage. Number one to make A decision, create a point of view and ship it out there. The reality is, and my experience has shown that

51:06 You're better off. Picking An opinion. Shipping it shipping it out there, being wrong and then adjusting. that leaving too many options'cause you then can never learn.

51:17 What was the better experience overall? So That's one thing. The other Major lesson I've learned is actually one about strategy.

51:29 It is that The best way. To go from strategy to execution. In a way that activates the entire organization. is communication.

51:41 You will never Never spend Too much time. Communicating The why?

51:49 to your organization. Over? And over and over again. I I don't remember what movie it was, th but I think it was uh Oh

51:58 The movie about sending someone to The moon. Right. Um Mm. I'm forgetting what it is.

52:06 But the idea that everybody in NASA knew that we were working to send A man to the moon. Even the janitor did. knew that. So that idea of ensuring that everybody in a team understands the why behind what we're doing and can speak to it.

52:22 I saw something on LinkedIn the other day, I think it was Martin Erickson who actually Push. Up we'll post it this. It talked about how The same way we talk about crossing the chasm.

52:32 And figuring out who it is that will adopt a product. We should think about the change management required for strategy communication. Through that lens. There will be early adopters. Think about those people.

52:46 Those people will hear the message, the strategy. And by the time others are just beginning to understand what it is, they're probably on the next version of the strategy asking what can change what should change And that was so clarifying for me because I always wondered why strategy

53:02 could get muddy sometimes is because when you look at your entire population, about five percent are going to be the early adopters. They get it. They buy into it and they're moving. Four months later, they're onto something, wondering what the next version of the strategy will look like. How do we build on top of this? At that same time, some people are just beginning to get it. And honestly

53:24 That answered a lot of questions for me as to how it is that You can be working on a strategy. Some people get it, can recite it, tell you why we're doing what we're doing. While some PMs are still struggling with but why? How come? Can we do this? Because they are in stock laggards. out there.

53:41 So that idea of trying to really activate a strategy into pure execution If you think about communication as a critical element And then also look at it as How many people what is the

53:54 Crossing the chasm version. Who is at what point in this change management journey? I think that is actually that that was one of the major lessons. I've learned as a leader in product. I love these sorts of conversations where you two spend fifty years learning and then you just tell us here's all the answers, here's the bunch of stuff that'll save you a bunch of pain and suffering.

54:14 Let me try to summarise what you shared and tell me what I missed. So some of the biggest thing you two have learned over the past fifty years. At all, it's not in the right order. But uh communicating the why making sh n you never You can never spend too much time helping people understand why.

54:28 Why what you're working on is important. And then there's just the change management component of not underestimating the work that it'll take to convince people. Uh to adopt something. And then this whole idea of crossing the chasm. We had Jeffrey Moore on the podcast, so we'll point to that if you want to

54:42 deeply understand what that's all about. Then this lesson of simplicity just keep Just the value of Keeping things simple, easier said than done.

54:51 And having us an opinion, having the courage almost to do something really simple. Not give people all the options. And then this uh Aj meant you talked about the idea of Most times when something fails, it's the wrong you're going after the wrong problem. It's not sharp enough or it's just Not solving people something people actually care about.

55:10 And then just talking to customers, uh Always easy to say. Most people don't actually do it. Enough. I wanna add one more thing and I'll be brief. This is more more uh about people's careers, like PMs. In our career

55:24 We have you know, we started out as engineers basically. We came Mainline PMs. Got an NBA. became, you know, work harder, became executives and so on and so forth. So some you know, people look at it

55:37 My career's in a screen they're like, Oh, this is amazing. What behind that Is a lot of intention. Like we always Held in our brains.

55:49 What do we want to do next? Like What is the next step. What is the hunger? That drives us.

55:57 And there's nothing more powerful. Uh than intention. than like imagination. It's like Yeah, a little bit bit of cheese in front of the mouse like it chases after.

56:08 being able to visualize And chase. The thing that you see about where you want to be. Is so powerful. I talked to uh a guy who gave me a break. So when I was

56:21 You know, the last Two years of my time at Microsoft. I switched to become a marketing lead. I guess I I was a little tired of PM at Microsoft specifically, and I was getting an MBA.

56:33 And I talked to Dave Mendlin. He was uh Vice President, you know, or senior director in The uh worked. You know, potentially for Satya. And

56:43 He gave me a break and became a product marketer for a couple of years. But I he came back and talked to me this year and he said, Oh Gee Everything you told me you wanted to do. From afar I saw that you have done. And you told me about them ten years ago. And I didn't even know that.

57:01 And so it's very powerful thing, I think that this is not just about how to build better products, but how to manage your own career is super important. I just went to a talk, uh storytelling event and There is a very similar theme. Always wanted to be a stand comedian. And he

57:16 The lesson he learned is just you need to The be the best motivator is desire. Having Does having that desire not fade? Because that'll

57:25 It's kinda like going back to our idea of the project, having a project to work on because you need a problem solved. Uh is a really good way to just get to where you want to go. Yeah. Uh Ezine, I think you had something else you wanted to add. Yeah, you know, you you you said this thing about, you know, c know the customer, know the customer, and I think there's a lot of inf there's a lot of

57:43 noise out there about customer interviews, et cetera, right? But I do want to remind people that there's a difference between what the customer says Right. Customer discovery. Asking them things.

57:55 Right. And AI is really good at that right now. Like it can help you get all the transcriptions, but just remember that what they do is actually more important. So i earlier in my career Um I had the opportunity to have A U X lab?

58:10 That I worked in and ethnographic research. Watching what people truly were doing. Still is Top notch. It's the best thing you can ever do. So

58:21 How d what does that look like digitally? It's still the core instrumentation, figuring out how people finish things. But also Sure customer insight comes from Not using AI to read all the transcripts of your customer interviews. That isn't what it is.

58:38 It's actually Trying to figure how to best walk in their shoes. And whatever it takes. You've gotta figure out how to do that because it's not what they say they do. It's not what they say they want. Those aren't that's not the true

58:50 intimacy you want with the customer. You actually want to observe them. As much as possible. And understand the why behind the actions they're taking. And I I think that's a really important thing to point out right now, because I think people are cheating with AI through interviews, et cetera, and thinking that they're going to figure it out.

59:07 But there's a different type of insight that comes from what I call true ethnographic research of studying, observing, understanding the driver behind their need, their their their their problem or the need that they're trying to solve. Um And I just want to make sure we say that because I think people think AI has come to save it all, but no, it's going to give you junk because people don't always. don't realize that they're lying.

59:31 about their reasons for doing a thing. I think some of these lessons, especially the last one, is the kind of lesson that You can hear it and be like, Yeah, yeah, I get it. And then you have to actually learn it. And s and find the times. Oh wow, okay. Everyone told me they wanted this thing and nobody actually used it. Okay. I remember as Ine said that on a podcast. Oh, I get it now. And so I think, you know, there's only so much we can do to

59:53 help people learn these things. Sometimes you just have to fail. Excellent to learn. Okay, is there anything that we have not touched on, anything that you wanted to share? before we get to our very exciting lightning round. I think we need to talk about ethics and as you know, people of color and parents

1:00:14 I think that having an having a call for action for our PMs. To really be thoughtful about what it is they're building. And

1:00:22 And what it is they're integrating into their product is really important to to us. We just want to call PMs that this awesome power we have. to direct. Lots of developers, conjured responsibility, or the Spider Man trope. And um

1:00:37 You know, we created social media. I worked at Twitter and I always like Oh my God, like how many mistakes do we make, like The I remember the person who'd been at Deep Faith was interviewed one time and she said And they're like, What are the implications of your stuff? And she's like, I don't care. I was so sharp.

1:00:55 I was like, What Software Engineer, you don't care? She's like Oh it's all event and countermeasure. I'm like, Oh my God. So PMs we shouldn't be like that. Um We shouldn't be like that. I I guess the one thing I also wanted to say, like one pain point we hear a lot is strategy.

1:01:09 Yeah, but PMs who are like senior PM principal PM worry about oh my god. How can I do product strategy? And um In the book we talk a lot about the sources of strategy. And

1:01:21 There's a it's not Mysterious. I I think there's things you need to learn about, like the sources of competitive advantage and even what that means, like you know, intellectual property or like um economies of scale, economies of scope. Because there's no formal education about this stuff. PMs don't have the fundamentals they need.'Cause you know, it's easy to learn customer discovery, but like

1:01:42 Learning the Seven levers of competitive advantage maybe you've never seen. Or learning the ten ways that companies can grow, which is not just product, sometimes it's distribution, sometimes it's superior business strategy. And these are ideas. That if PMs had

1:01:58 Good material. Yeah, it's sort of like Pack in the middle of business school. You can actually become a person who helps direct your company on where to go. And do it in such a way that's so compelling you can talk about it that you know, it's good for your career.

1:02:12 I remember then I think one time I saw uh maybe a long time ago I saw something you're written around how do you make money. You know, you sell a thing, you rent a thing, you know, there there they're Many people think that. It's There are many, many like it's this amorphous thing.

1:02:28 But You may not have the truly exhaustive list. Right, but There are a fixed number of things. That you can know.

1:02:36 To create strategy to make money. And just doing the work or doing the research to figure out hey, how how does one make money? How does one get competitive advantage? In the book we wrote about ten growth levers and seven levels of competitive advantage. And I think if you master s that you have like eighty percent of the tool set.

1:02:55 That makes you a compelling director CPO That can play at that level. Um and it's super important. Otherwise you're sort of guessing. You're like, Oh, did this deck work for my CEO? No, that's not what you should think about. I I'll point to the post that you're mentioning, Ezena, that uh is all the ways to make money. But let's use this opportunity to

1:03:15 Talk about your book, just what people would get out of it, why they should buy it. Do the pitch and then we'll get to the very exciting lighting round. In our career. Fifty plus years.

1:03:25 We when we started this product management thing, we thought Oh, this is gonna be mainstream. There's development, there are thirty million developers, whatever. It was gonna be product managers all over the world, but operating in the US, operating in

1:03:40 Europe In Africa. It turns out the best PM is so ghetto. Somewhere in the west coast of the United States. Right, we know this.

1:03:50 We don't like it at all. Right. We think opportunity should be everywhere. So we wrote building rocket ships to help people figure out how to build Not only great products, but the companies. that build great products. to make sure that people have the knowledge not to be one hit wonders.

1:04:06 And the book is divided into two. One is The fundamentals if you're a senior to principal PM the fundamentals of building a great product. Right? All the way from simplicity to even pricing. And then the second part is how do you lead A high performing shipyard.

1:04:24 And how do you go from motivating people to charting the course for the future, depending on where you're in the market to Make you know, like isn't it to Commanding a shipyard that is kick ass.

1:04:40 That's that's the book. And um you know In the latter part we also talk about like what's gonna happen in terms of AI over the next few years. Um, so we are

1:04:52 It's called building rocket ships. We're very proud of it. It's right over here. And um We think it's awesome because it represents a lot of uh of the experience that we've had over these years and a lot of success. And where do folks find it if they want to go check it out? Maybe you can buy one.

1:05:06 Or two or ten or hundred. Some companies I've been buying a lot actually, uh in bulk. So this is a not for the companies. But you can buy it on Amazon. Uh you can find it on Shopify. On Shopify if you go for it, you will there's an additional Prohibition. The production is like a team product. If the book is on coda.io and you can share it with your team.

1:05:30 You can take notes. There's almost double the amount of content because it contains Checklists. uh um um templates, tools for PMs that they can download and just use immediately. It's almost like code for you, for your PM career. We have the the book and then we have the coda version.

1:05:50 And one of the things we really worked on was making it actionable. So the minute you If you get the coda version. Um you can read a a a chapter and then you'll have templates, frameworks, step checklists, whatever it is that we What felt me sense.

1:06:07 Uh we made that available via the coded version. What a motherload of value. Where do uh uh people always have uh issue saying the dom the URL on podcasts. I just wanna make sure what's that how do you actually find this version? You said it's on Shopify, but it there's probably a domain name to get there. So if you go to Dub dub dub dot product mind. Dot C O slash

1:06:27 B. R Pro. You can buy the prohibition. And if you've bought it, you can also use it to log in too. The Coda Edition. And you're off to the races.

1:06:41 There we go. Amazing. We'll also link to it in the show notes. And with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you too. Are you ready? Yes. First question is what are two or three books you find yourself recommending most to other people?

1:06:55 We just did one. Building Rocket Ships. Building Rocket Ships is the first one, so we're not afraid to self promote. But also the other one for me is the build. Tony Fidel. You know, uh I ran into Tony. Um in Nigeria building an accelerator and uh he it was just incredible book, so I totally recommend it.

1:07:13 One for me and it's both for work and life, et cetera. This one called the Let Them Theory. I think it was Mel Robbins. I I love it. I just think that many Times PMs are control freaks or a type and Uh Being able to leave people.

1:07:30 Do their own uh devices sometimes is hard. So let them remind us that we get a lot more uh rest for ourselves when we let people be. I was just listening to that book on audio. I was like, it's sitting at the top of the bestseller like every freaking week. What is this book? And it's so good. I sounded your background actually. I noticed that you're reading. Uh yeah, it's so good. It's such a simple idea and and the thing I learned I listening to it is there's a second part to it that isn't just let them. I don't know if you got the it's it yeah, I did. But then let me.

1:08:01 Yeah, exactly. Such a g I've been using it. It's really powerful. I I didn't I mean The book is good, yeah. Let's give for credit, but it's such a simple thing that other people in in many religions, et cetera, have have used. But

1:08:14 She grounds she grounds, he makes she she she shows you why it's necessary and how We how we show up trying to control others. In other years. d s situations that are very common to most people. So I like that. I never thought of it in the PM context. That is very cool. And it's by Mel Robinson, by the way. Okay. Mel next question. Is there a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed?

1:08:35 So we watch a few shows together recently, so I would say uh One that we loved and we couldn't we kept saying, Gosh, I c we can't wait for our kids to be old enough to watch it was One called forever. It's it was just really, really

1:08:50 Good. Um it's uh it's a love story. It's uh One of these bo it was a book reimagined, um, done from a African American point of view. Just really well done. So that's a T V show it's called Forever. And another one that we really like'cause I think it was Sterling K Brown is Paradise.

1:09:11 Really enjoyed it. It was Interesting kept us. Excellent. Yeah. I do. What about you? Man is in a role. And then the the movie that we've been geeking out on is Sinners. Uh we just love sinners. I think I saw it twice, my son saw it like

1:09:27 Three or four times. Um We're just big fans of Coogler and the way he tells stories, so we love that. I've I've seen both those two. Uh Recently and they're both have very unexpected they've unexpected directions. I'm like, Why didn't I see this coming? Yes. Yes. Oh man, yeah, that movie is beautiful, sinners. I was like, wow. And then but I I usually hate scary movies. Uh I enjoyed that one. Someone else recently mentioned that movie too, actually, on the podcast.

1:09:52 Next question. Do you is their favorite product you recently discovered that you really love? Could be a gadget, could be clothes, could be kitchen device, could be an app. I'll I'll start me. I love Claude. It it's like you says it's my sidekick. I use it. For anything and everything. Um But I mean, obviously the thing you learn is don't even though keep talking about it is generative AI.

1:10:12 Be the generator and let it refine. That's the major trick. You know, that's the hack everybody should learn. Generate first. Generate and let it refine. Let it help you. Otherwise you're gonna get bullshit. Sorry. Yeah, like a tip. And one I'll I'll say I have this new Nespresso machine, the virtuo, the what you got from me?

1:10:32 Everybody's using it now and I'm kinda pissed'cause But it's still my favorite product, but Everybody's in it, you know. The reason I is and now we like keeping it really clean and shiny. Now that everybody's using it, it's not as clean and shiny as it used to be. When she says everybody, she means everyone else in the house. She wants to use it by herself. She needs a second version just for herself. Yeah, we need another one. And then the the plebs and the pluretorate can use the other ones, right?

1:11:01 I love it. Maji, what about you? I I just like using like these new Air tools that have improved my life. Like Gamma is a good Frame. Is also good. I'm getting to logable because uh sort of like

1:11:16 Say using the hardcore stuff. And so using Lovable felt like a little Step down a little bit, but like Umama LM studio. These are ways that I used to do my hobby of improving the house.

1:11:30 Um but also I'm super into local models. Th these open source models running them because I feel like I can put them in different places. Uh so LM Studios and Olama are just favorite things. Um

1:11:44 So yeah, those are some of the things I'm vibing on. Gamma and Lovable get a year free by becoming a paid subscriber of my newsletter. Uh we'll link to that. I heard about Lovable, I didn't know about Gala, I should have been a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a Maybe frame her some day. There's a luck one on there. Check it out. Lenny's newsletter dot com click product test.

1:12:02 Okay, good. Uh two more questions. Is there a favorite life motto that you two find really useful and come back to in work or in life? So I'll give you I'll say two. And one has been from childhood. And my mother had a little plaque in our house that said anything worth doing is worth doing well. And it's so funny, I just

1:12:23 I assume that that's how everybody lives, but I I realise now that it isn't, so I I come back to that all The time. And then so I'll say that came from my mother. But for the one I think I've adopted and probably just general upbringing is um

1:12:39 This thing that any way you are make better. So it's like by being there. Um I've made it better. And it's simp simple things like you walk into a bathroom, it's nasty, try and clean up if you can't.

1:12:51 It's it's that simple. Beautiful. Um, but it's something I I live with and I live by. Yeah. A Gee, what you got?

1:13:03 You know, I I I mentioned one already, which is whenever you wake up is your morning. So like I I sp I tr I try to spend very little time booking backwards, except to mind the lessons of it. And then just move forward because the universe and the forward motion is infinite. And so it's an evil proverb, uh. So I wanna say that. Um

1:13:26 Well the other thing I think I learned from my dad Uh it's just like Lear all the time. What doesn't mean that you should be Not confident.

1:13:38 Uh, you know, is this idea that there's more knowledge outside your brain And inside it. And that doesn't mean you should be in the crouch. In fact, you should be proud of Be called stupid for a second because you'll

1:13:51 We're all stupid at something. Right? In the sense that we don't know. There's so many things we don't know because we're finite. But do that. And still be confident. So you can learn but still have a sense of self on what you've accomplished. And so I try to live by that every day.

1:14:06 Mm. I love that you each had two and they're both so wonderful. Uh unfortunately, final question, something that I like to do with duo guests. Uh I I switch between two types of questions, so I'm gonna ask you this one.

1:14:19 What's something you Love about The other person. I love Is that

1:14:26 Oh G lives in the future. And Um, as obviously I get the benefit of this. Uh we get to Flan.

1:14:36 Um, he's very intentional about the future. And uh it just makes Us move together with intention. Um For as partners in life as well as even with our our company.

1:14:51 I think That is something I really appreciate about him. So sweet. So uh there are two things I love about Izina. One is she is I think she's very

1:15:05 accepting loving person. She's nice. Like when I introduce Her I say, look. You're gonna talk to her and you're gonna forget about me because she's ten times nicer than I am. Uh I'm not I'm not a horrible person, but she's just way nicer than I am. And so that's that's great. The second thing is Something that people don't know about her is that

1:15:24 She's a great problem solver. Right. She will You'll throw something at her and the asymmetric thinking is incredible. Right. But

1:15:34 You know, like I didn't think of that. It happens to me all the time. So I love that. Asine and Aji, this was amazing. Uh we covered so much ground, so many lessons learned over these past fifty years about life and work and PMing and all the things. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out? And how can listeners be useful to you?

1:15:54 They can find us online at w dot product mind.co That's first. That's where we Help founders and help companies build better products. Uh they can find us on Substack. Um where we pro publish as product minded.

1:16:10 Um I think those are the main places like we are starting to put content out in like YouTube or Um You know, just experimenting with how to amplify our voice, but those are the two main places you can find us. Awesome, and we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes and then yeah, as any.

1:16:27 No, same thing, like our LinkedIn we're our we always say my DMs are always open. That's what I always tell people at work. Um you can reach out to us. We we're pretty responsive to most people. Um, but yeah, product mind dot co. Um is the best way to get a hold of us. How can be useful to us is like we are so inspired by what you've done with your community.

1:16:49 And We're part of a few communities, but We are very interested in partnering with More PMs and Shall we? Uh

1:16:58 Uh executive cohort, like we're having a hard time right now. Like Partnering with us. calling us like we want to be able to distribute opportunity that we may not be interested in to PMs.

1:17:10 Who are Struggling right now. And sometimes it's not obvious where to pass up a trini that we're not interested in. So like I think useful to us is reach out. Um and there might be intersections that

1:17:23 Help you. I help us, so do it. Amazing. And that's through DMs on LinkedIn ideally, or through your website. Yes, through a website or through Substack or just uh LinkedIn.

1:17:35 Yeah, incredible. Uh Thank you two so much for being here. Thank you Lenny. Um we just like what you're doing for our community is incredible, so Uh that's all.

1:17:46 I appreciate it. So yeah, well done. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Okay. Bye everyone. Right. 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.

1:18:05 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's Podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

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