How LinkedIn became interesting: The inside story | Tomer Cohen (CPO at LinkedIn)

0:00 I think it's so underappreciated the turnaround. That has happened within LinkedIn. Like I check it at least ten times a day. What was the strategy behind it? I stuck backwards. If you start from the premise that LinkedIn ultimately is a platform for economic opportunity that sits on top of a very strong social graft, almost every aspect So of economic transaction is possible. Is there anything tactically that just like wow that really made a big dent in people wanting to come here and post share interesting content? To really set the new purpose for it, which was this is not a springboard for other products, this is not a traffic jump start, it's not an upsell feed. It's really about people that matter, talking about things that I care about professionally. The first thing we did was was really making AI first. How do you actually like on the ground help people shift their perspective and think AI first? So it wasn't like oh we have this cool technology, what can we do with it? It was like let go of what you've built, go back to the objectives you were trying to solve. And now with this technology, how can you do that objective better? There's so much I want to dig into here. Is there anything else you think would be interesting or useful for folks? the ultimate matchmaker. It's underutilized. It's misunderstood. It's really about

1:07 Today, my guest is Tomer Cohen. Tomer is Chief Product Officer at LinkedIn, overseeing all teams responsible for building and creating LinkedIn products and experiences, including product development, design, business development, content creation, and customer operations. During his tenure at LinkedIn, Tomer was head of the mobile team, led the effort to revamp the LinkedIn feed. And to many people's surprise, made it extremely interesting and a place I check regularly, and he was also at the center of shifting LinkedIn to an AI first mindset, which started way before AI became cool. In our conversation, Tomer goes inside the strategy behind the transformation of LinkedIn's feed and how they approached making it a place that people wanted to check and make it much more social. We also get into the one mindset that Tomer credits for helping him rise so quickly within LinkedIn. Also, why Tomor's most repeated mantra is, we might be wrong, but we are not confused. And so much more, this episode is for anyone wanting to see what great product leadership looks like and wants to be inspired to think bigger.

2:09 A big thank you to Shira Gasarch, Dan Roth. Josh Redfern and Sparsh Argawal for questions suggestions that made this episode so interesting. With that, I bring you Tomer Cohen. Tomer, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

2:27 Thank you for having me. Absolutely my pleasure. Uh, so as I was preparing for this podcast, I reached out to a bunch of people that have worked with you and asked them what I should ask you on this podcast and Interestingly, every single one of them said this one thing that I need to ask you, which is about this phrase. That Apparently you use all the time.

2:45 So first of all, can you guess what this phrase might be? I have a few sometimes we'll call them domerisms, but I would be I would be uh I might be wrong, but not confused. That's the one. Amazing. Okay. So let's talk about this phrase. I don't say it so much anymore. Okay. Maybe uh I think it's ingrained into the culture. Those are the ultimate things where they've you don't need to say them as much anymore. Okay, so the phrase again is we might be wrong, but we're not confused. Exactly. Let's talk about this. So w what does this phrase mean and why do you find it so

3:14 Powerful and important to say often. Yeah, by the way, it's like it's a simple phrase, but it has, in my opinion, so much depth into that and Ultimately something I really believe in. It's rooted in Clarity and principles that ultimately lead to leadership. And the first time I got the inspiration from it. It was from a a startup founder I met many, many years ago.

3:35 Their company was on the brink of failure. They had their last attempt. And they decided on a path forward. And after decided on the path forward, he was still seeing people hedging in different directions. Yeah, and it kind of led into this confusion in the system where we decided people are still hedging, they're still trying out things they thought could work.

3:56 And he realized that Unless they basically all pull through in the same direction, there's no chance they'll be able to be successful. Now, pulling food in some direction doesn't mean you're gonna be successful, but just it gives you a chance of success. And that confusion the system only luck can save you. So Uh that was when

4:14 He shared that. That was very impactful for me. I think it's a good one for life as well. And for me it kind of comes down to Two main parts. Clarity of thought. And clarity of execution. And they're both equally important.

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6:39 Check it out at workous.com to learn more. That's work os dot com. On the clarity of thought, what I find people to be attached to, especially when you build an environment with a lot of uh kind of alpha types is that they get attached to being right or wrong. And

6:58 That really creates a lot of lingering in the system. A lot of confusion and they're still stuck to their ideas. And for me, I get attached to clarity and focus. I think that's much more important. I That's why I think when I say I don't mind being wrong. It really comes from a humble place. I would rather go forward with everybody in some direction

7:16 than necessarily try to hedge all the time, which will give me not just a success. And The way we start we do this in our product gems right now is we start we actually spend some significant time On what is the problem we're trying to solve for, but not high level. Not like hey, we wanna launch this product, we wanna launch

7:34 a video product. It's exactly What type of video are you trying to launch for which audience? What is your unique criteria? What are you trying what is very nuanced? What would you trying to solve for? Ideally Once the time you see the problem, you know exactly the problem you're trying. You actually can imagine that mountain. It's not just a mountain. You can see exactly the road you can see exactly then of the base camp.

7:56 But then when you move the solution Uh I love solutions that are based on f first principles. That they have There's a principle thinking about it, there's opinions about it. If You talk to folks who work with me, they'll

8:09 tell you I push a lot for like w like what is actually your opinion, what is your potentially in it, a controversial opinion. And the best principles have teeth. So saying that we should build a simple product For me is useless. Who doesn't want to build a simple product? But saying that I'm willing to sacrifice or trade off this

8:28 That's when you st that's where I get excited. I'm like, okay, like that's a very strong opinion. Let's go into that. Why were you willing to trade off? Those type of vectors to make it happen. And You know, one thing that I saw also in Clarity of Thought was this is I came to the US in two thousand eight, I came from Israel.

8:44 you know, our hobby in Israel is to argue. So we we argue a lot as like a it's our love language in many ways. And I I come to the US and I noticed people say a lot like I don't exactly understand. Or you know, I'm not exactly clear on this. And it took me a long time to realize they're actually disagreeing. They're just masking it with a a layer of misunderstanding.

9:07 And a good mentor of mine said, Hey, just push back, are you disagreeing or misunderstanding? If you're misunderstanding, let's spend the night. Let's get to a point where you can articulate M uh my point of view In your words? And I can do the same.

9:23 But if we're disagreeing, let's stop. Why are we spending why are we wasting time just arguing it through? So those became really powerful. That's on the clarity of thought. Clarity execution is even more important because many organizations actually reach a decision They don't act on it.

9:39 Which is it's one of those like shocking things. They They said this is a top priority. But it doesn't make its way. into the organization. And I'll give you an example.

9:50 I like if somebody will say, Hey, my top priority for You know you know for my business is This initiative. And then I'll say, but most of your engineers are working on this migration. And so yeah, we have to finish that.

10:04 I'm like, so why don't you say my the migration is my number one priority? It's like Yeah it's like But That's exactly what you're doing. You have to like make sure that what you're sharing as a priority is actually manifested in your resourcing. Then I'm like, Hey, this is your top talent. Why is your top talent working on some moonshots?

10:21 That are not in your number one priority. And like Yeah, like this is where you start finding that really it doesn't really translate into Uh execution as well. And you can solve so much by just making that sure that focus is there.

10:35 So the the big lesson here is to push for clarity. And push out anything that is unclear confusion, either in thought and also in execution. one of the folks that I talked to that worked with you about this phrase Josh Redfern.

10:49 He said that This phrase became really liberating for him, which is really interesting to hear because it forces you to make a call and to be aligned and make sure everyone is Is on the same page. I guess. Yeah, thoughts and just like why this concept is so liberating.

11:04 Goes back to like Kind of little alpha types or type A folks who are like just It's so attached to not getting it wrong. You when you need to move forward. And it's not about being right or wrong.

11:17 It's really about not being confused and making sure everybody's pulling the same direction. That is actually really liberating. And when you know that like the whole idea is to have a Socratic conversation about what you're trying to do. than g coming to the table with some kind of half baked ideas or Uh or actually like not an opinion.

11:36 I think actually brings into a conversational feedback. But you have to manifest it through. If you just play this through, but then you potentially playing the right or wrong game, that's that's really poor. Uh I also think it's the best way to learn. Like if you don't know exactly what you're doing, how can you learn back from why you made that decision? So if you had a clear understanding, ultimately like it's a growing organization. This is not a one off project. We're gonna build many projects in the future.

12:01 So if you're not sure about what we're trying to accomplish How can you know what you learn from it? I love that. So the idea here is make it very okay to be wrong. But make it not okay to be uh be confused and not clear about here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, everyone's aligned exactly on the same

12:19 How can I have a It's really hard. to it's har uh really hard to have a socratic conversation. Really hard to have I know if you ask folks how many time you left the meeting

12:33 in kind of corporate I guess it could be a startup or like larger companies and you're not sure exactly What was the problem discussed? What are the next steps? More often than not, they'll raise their hand. That for me is a waste of building time.

12:47 So that actually that agitates me. In a in a not a great way. But when we had a But I come in and I'm proven uh wrong or there's a strong challenge or argument, again that's Little bit my love language.

13:01 I actually enjoy those. I think we leave the conversation much better. You said there's some other tomorrow t tomerisms? What are some others just uh No, you can share. This is again this is classic to uh building in l large organizations, but I actually believe in

13:17 Especially when it comes to products to Really set ambitious goals, but then try to over deliver on them. Like reset, like What are you trying to do almost like the opposite, right? People are like under you know, underplaying it and over delivering. I don't understand what you're trying to do. For me it's like we are here to make an impact. We're here to make to really set our goals to something really massive.

13:39 And I'm trying when I'm trying to visualize this, like I see a mountain, you see the peak, and you know the peak exactly how it looks like. You see base camp, you know how to start. And maybe the middle of the mountain is kind of blurry. But you'll figure this out, but at least you know the pick you're trying to share. Show the peak. Sure where you're headed to.

13:58 And I think it's just a much more exciting way to build product. It's a much more inspirational way. For folks to be part of the product the the the product person, kind of thing. I was just uh chatting with Vlad, who worked at Airbnb for many years. He was actually my former manager at Airbnb and he reported to Brian for a long time and we talked about this. trait that Brian also is really good at is just setting crazy high goals, like ten X the goal that you thought you had, and what would it take? And it worked really well for Airbnb.

14:23 So I love that you're Kind of Double down doubling down on the same idea. Is there an example that comes to mind of one that you s like a some ambitious goal you set internally to LinkedIn? that people were like, No way And then it w ended up being Active.

14:35 Actually there's a lot. Like I I when I think about our LinkedIn feed And thinking about like you know, when you started off, it was hard to imagine what that product could be because it was more of a promotionally nature product. And I was like, no, this is gonna be a place where like millions of people

14:53 And not like just tens of millions, like will come daily. And like that's insane. That makes no sense based on the numbers today. But like I don't I don't start building from the numbers today. I start from work like I stuck backwards. I was like, but what this could be, what is the potential here? So how many professionals exist in the role? How many of them would love to find a place to share and and and engage with content. And this is my starting point. I start from there.

15:17 Uh so I don't start from The existence to set my ambition. I start from like what this could be like based on really inspiration and excitement. Again, it's it's it's it's not detached from reality completely, but it's also not hooked to it.

15:34 But then Basecamp. could be a good start. Like you know, you're not Not asking you to look at the next day. But if you don't have that ambition, there's no way you're gonna hit that. There's just no way.

15:45 And there's so many products across LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a twenty plus year old company. that many folks uh did not give it the chance in almost every phase of it. And I think if anything, it's one of those that just keeps getting better and better every year. And part of it is you keep the landmark on This is

16:05 This guy really has the potential to do so much for m so many people. Uh, it's really an economic part the platform. So if you play from that, like One billion members. That's actually pretty small where we can actually go. Mm-hmm. I'm so happy you went to this example. This is exactly where I wanted to take the conversation.

16:21 Uh I was very much in like s the camp you described of Uh LinkedIn, how could LinkedIn possibly become a place that I want to go and s browse a feed and Post. Content.

16:32 As you Probably no. For the longest time it was felt like this cringy place, as you said, where everyone comes and promotes themselves. Hey, I got a promotion, or here's my company's new launch. And it's I think it's so underappreciated the turnaround.

16:45 that has happened within LinkedIn. Like I use it I'm a multi day multi Dow user. Like I check it at least ten times a day. most of my traffic to my newsletter. Comes from LinkedIn, not Twitter. Where people think

16:57 It's absurdly underappreciated and it's I think underappreciated. what it took to make this happen. And When it I saw you guys starting to try to make it a place people post content, I was like, No way, this is not gonna work. Why would people want to share stuff that on LinkedIn? And it's working. It's amazing.

17:11 So uh I wanna some time here and just kind of Try to go inside the strategy that you guys put together to Here's how we're gonna make this happen. We shared you have this peak of like here's what we could become. How did you actually

17:23 Turn this around. How didn't what was the strategy behind it? Yeah, by the way, I'm glad you're finding great Um kind of audience and traffic on LinkedIn. I think your content h actually your content is exactly what we're trying to build for it's expertise, it's advice, it's people you can learn from. And it's also the views that really matter, not just the volume that matters.

17:43 I I think like, you know, if we take a step back There's so much conversation about zero to one products or scaling products. But you don't have much conversations about minus one to one products, like turnaround products. And I think there's a there's obviously the perception of the market you have to deal with, but people I think in minus two one products, at least from my experience, it's and we had a few at LinkedIn.

18:05 Pages is another one, helping businesses build their For instance on LinkedIn. what you find is it's actually mo most of the time it's internally harder. to do because there's so much entrenched flows and processes and metrics that people are using.

18:20 on that uh on that specific area. So you almost have to like Change the inner workings of the system to make it work. You know, going back to the analogy of the mountain, if you start from the premise that I deeply believe in is that LinkedIn ultimately is a platform for economic opportunity. That has that sits on top of a very strong social graph.

18:40 Then really Almost every aspect of economic transaction is possible. A knowledge transaction is one of the most powerful economic transactions you can have. It's the biggest accelerant. for uh for an experience. And we were always very strong at helping people you know, uh get a job. We have seven hires per minute.

18:58 But as we were building more and more knowledge and part of it was we bought LinkedIn learning we bought LinkedIn to make it LinkedIn learning. A while back that we had one hundred forty uh hours of learning every minute on LinkedIn happening across the feed and LinkedIn learning. It's pretty it's pretty powerful and The transformation to the LinkedIn feed

19:16 Uh was exactly like you said, we We actually were the first company to have a social feed? Uh but I think we started wrong. So it we

19:27 We started with basically activity feed. So it was like who changed what, who changed the job, who connected to who. It was more of like a Tracking your network feed. And it became more promotional in nature. So in a way, just letting that be Just in naturally just move into more of a commissional type of feed.

19:46 And Uh what we've done is We've shifted dramatically into building actually this was one of the things I was excited about after I was leading the mobile team Uh there was no feet.

19:59 There was no unified feet team, there was no feed PM to an extent. I asked to do this role. Nobody cared about it. I really believed in it. uh have strong conviction about what they could do there and I asked to do this role and reassemble the team around it.

20:12 And Uh, one of the main things we've done was To really set the new purpose for it. Which was this is not a a springboard for other products. This is not a traffic

20:23 kind of uh uh you know a traffic jump start. uh for it's not an upsell feed. It's really about People that matter. Talking about things that I care about professionally. It's about knowledge exchange.

20:36 It's about how can I get the right views to the right Uh experts. in a way that actually helps them build a reputation and build their business. And then we started from there. backwards. So it was basically setting that ground for that mountain peak that was

20:50 Nowhere to be imagined at the beginning. And making our way backwards. The first thing we did was really making AI AI first. So the f A I team back then was completely centralized.

21:03 It was not part of uh uh of any product team. And we brought it together with like one unified AI AI first team and we The belief I had was ultimately the engine of the car was AI and that was almost like deprioritize or delegate it to a team that was not unified in objectives. So bring that in.

21:24 And then I spend most of my time on objectives and and algorithm features and Data training. Which kind of led me into my passion about training product people to be a first product people. And that was a big transformation there, really shifting And we had an incredible AI team, but they were completely they were conf actually, it was a confused operation. They were building something for a whole different purpose.

21:47 And we were trying to aim to that mountain peak and they were putting in a different direction. Not No bad intent. That was that was the were that that's what they were told to do. So bring it together into kind of this like swatting uh was the first thing that actually was uh extremely powerful. But then became then became the hard work. You have a product that works in a certain way.

22:08 And you almost want to change its DNA altogether. And It was very hard with because whenever whenever we're trying to run experiments that were Mass and scale. I told you everybody was relying on the feed for their traffic.

22:21 It just scared the whole system because numbers were shifting up and down and teams were freaking out about meeting their goals. And Uh, then I realized that was just spending my time in escalations instead of actually building a great product. So what I did was I carved out two million members. And I said, Those are my members, I'm gonna focus on building the few that mountain peak I'm gonna build for them.

22:45 full liberty and doing whatever. It doesn't hurt numbers giving the scale. And really focus on building a great experience for them. It wasn't overnight and it wasn't over a week, but over the course of months we've seen dramatic behavior change. for those members almost like secluded like a country of people that were seeing a different

23:04 uh experience of LinkedIn. And and once we saw that, you actually had strong evidence that wow, if I bring this in We don't need to spend time talking about how does this pie get slotted between different teams. We can actually grow the pie. The experience just manifests itself in a whole different way. And that was that was a big

23:24 change internally. It took It didn't Wasn't overnight, and but it was Will powerful in getting everybody around to see, wow, we have this cohort that is doing extremely well, which was a randomized cohort.

23:37 Then how do we can bring it out? I've also done some, you know, crazy things. We've done some negative tests to prove some stuff out. That's for the sake of learning when you run something that you can show that. You know, if it's just a promotional feed and you played it out organically Over time. Engage with the theoretics we've run some really

23:54 Important add tests as well. But we're really shown separate almost like we carved out the different product and we showed it this could work and then we brought it out. uh to the main experience for everybody else. And then that was kind of that would say the inner workings of like minus one to one. Then the scanning part really became when we started to focus on

24:13 professional opportunities so when people actually share How do they get the right views? into the experience. We don't compete for volume. Like it's not we're not in the same kind of category of meta in terms of the scale there, but we will compete all day long for the right people seeing your content.

24:31 In fact, I think in many ways that's the most powerful part of LinkedIn. How do we make sure that it's professionally productive and safe conversations? How do we we trade off bad engagement all day long? In fact One of the f when we started shifting the AI objective. from you know click through into more downstream conversations Spammers actually took notice as well. So they were jumping over the LinkedIn bagwag again. So we had to spend a lot of time.

24:56 Uh removing bad activity from LinkedIn. But that's been the evolution. Of this process. That is amazing. There's so much I wanna dig into here. Okay, so this two million user carve out that you did basically

25:08 Everyone's just like, What the hell are you doing to our metrics and goals? You're causing all this trouble for the business. Why is this team causing Hurting our metrics. So that was basically a A group that uh Those are the two million users are the only ones that saw this new updated feed.

25:21 And They were they removed from everyone else's metrics so they weren't fluctuate as much, or was it just And it could be kept in the overall because it wasn't always as important. Exactly. But for us they were like the world. We were basically able to prove with them. Got it. Okay, that's so smart. Okay. So basically you just decided we're not we're only gonna move your metrics a little bit worse case if we I tried for uh this I failed that I tried for a few months to you know play on the overall experience with everybody, but it was Uh yeah, you know, it was really hard, almost like impossible because you have an organization that is so tied into how things work.

25:55 Right. I was just hitting walls after walls after escalations and it was just unproductive. And this is before your chief product officer where you could have just said, We will take this bet. We know this might hurt metric short term. Yes. Okay, got it. That makes sense. Okay. The other piece, so just like lessons I'm taking away from trying something like this, that's an ambitious bet within a company is Put a PM and a team on it with a goal. That feels like a core.

26:19 part of the success of just like somebody's ass is on the line to doing this thing. Always. Oh, is with focus on this one problem and then There's the way kind of you described there's this goal for this feed, but how did you actually try to turn that into like a goal or metric or a KPI? What was that in the end? Was there something there?

26:35 Yeah, this is this is an interesting one. It's one thing we've done actually where'cause the feed is the first thing you land on. I can't just count how many folks engage with the feed because then I'm counting kind of Bypassers kind of thing. And uh bystanders that actually coming into the experience. So we actually started to look at the more Uh uh we go a lot into like you know, active engaged and kind of high value engagement. So we go downstream. We kind of put the onus on.

26:58 looking at more downstream engagement there and we build that as the feed engagement. So really trying to show that we're not just counting some overall, you know, whatever it's page rules or sessions at the top level, that's not really helpful because any shifts can help there. But really setting targets for that.

27:15 You know, there's obviously it's a marketplace. So there's the creation side, there's the consumption side, making sure that's healthy. uh in engaging Uh, there was so much we went into that. But I think the the best thing was It's almost like your carve out. I think when you do minus one to one. It's really hard unless the

27:32 CO says I don't care about You know. how their company performs for the next two years, we're gonna go for it. uh if you want to keep the site keep growing and the experience keep growing, carving out and almost like setting very specific, unique metrics. But then could easily be extended out once you show it.

27:48 uh was was in retrospect the right way to do it. And then to give people a glimpse into the way your brain works to identify this is a big opportunity. So you Talk about just like I see there's a lever that we're not

28:02 investing in F in and I see a huge this big opportunity to grow of LinkedIn. How did you decide I need to go and bet on this thing and lead this team and I think feed is a huge opportunity. I I start from beliefs a lot. So I start from like What do I believe this could be or where like I actually came to LinkedIn this way. In fact.

28:19 My biggest change in my career was when I moved here and I shifted to more like what do I care about? What am I excited about? What do I have conviction on? I think it's really hard to be a strong product leader without having strong conviction about something. Um Uh so I start there. And in fact coming to LinkedIn as an example, when I came into Lead Mobile

28:41 LinkedIn was a desktop first company. The mobile team was kind of uh an offshoots of entrepreneurs. I came from a startup that I ran. And it wasn't It wasn't a big like it wasn't it was like okay, I want to do mobile case fine. Like It's like noise at this point.

28:56 Same with feed and same when I moved shifted into ads, because I felt really strong about the ability to flip that into a great way for companies to grow. So for me it starts with a conviction of where things could go, like where word it like what do I believe in? I believe LinkedIn can be an incredible superpower and deli use case for every professional in the role. I believe knowledge sharing and knowledge exchange is the most amazing way

29:22 To grow your career. And to grow your business. So that needs to be a strong pillar of the experience which didn't exist before. And what is better than the feed experience, the home figures to actually build it.

29:34 So I don't get attached to what have did not work in the past. That's not um I know, maybe it's a mistake sometimes, but I don't that doesn't stop me from thinking about the future. How do you actually make time to think like this? You know, a lot of people are listening to this like, Okay, I want to think about what could this become. Do you just is this just the way your brain works? I'm always think you're always thinking how big what could this be?

29:56 You set time aside to think like quarterly or yearly. What could this be if we really Made this amazing. It's a good question. Haven't thought about it. Uh as a it's like a process I do. I don't set time aside for this, but I'm

30:09 I'm I'm very reflective. I try to focus Love the conversations on Like the dream? Like what what ultimately are we trying to achieve?

30:21 I think LinkedIn has a great process uh called Vision to Values that started from our former CEO Jeff Winner, which is like if you said this is for company or for a product, which is if you're successful, what change would happen in the world, which I love. It's just a great phrase, just a great empowering phrase. So I actually tend to spend a lot of my time There. Um I'm also very optimistic in nature. Again, sometimes it's

30:44 I'm not best for any role. Perspective. You want somebody to be more more pessimistic about the future, but I I tend to lead with beliefs versus evidence. I try to prove my beliefs with evidence, but I don't lead with evidence.

30:59 Awesome. Okay. And then maybe maybe just one more tactical question about this. shift that I wish I could spend like hours on'cause it's so interesting. the success you had making the feed so engaging. Is there anything tactically though just like wow, that really made a big dent in people wanting to come here and post and share interesting content like a feature or a

31:17 part of the strategy that really Made the feed. Social. I think the lesson would be Ah for me that was

31:24 the biggest learning going into AI force that gave me the Why is AI so core and why I got to make it a priority all the way to my role today to make sure the rest of the organization thinks AI first. The understanding is is that in a marketplace, if you're if I'm able to satisfy your need on the other side, then I then I have it then it's magic. So ultimately it came down to AI is the ultimate matchmaker. It's underutilized, it's under misunderstood.

31:50 It's run Separate from the team. And in a marketplace it's all about value exchange. And if I'm able to do value exchange really well Then people will come back. And they do.

32:01 And they engage. And actually they come back even more and they spend more time. Uh so for me it was that Is that depth into AI first as the engine that moves the whole organization forward. Got it. So essentially making sure the content you're seeing is the most engaging you could see.

32:17 Based on using AI to make the algorithm really smart. On both sides, if you play if you're the creator, if you're the person sharing, remember like this was a while back, I think it's about the former Olympics. And uh a person shared like, you know. Uh I should have like an article on LinkedIn about

32:33 how they should not call it Olympics, they should call it like the commercial uh Olympics because it's all about commercials and less Olympics. And then They they sent me this amazing screenshot about how You know, NBC execs were covering the uh the Olympics were viewing the post. This for stem was gold. It was like oh my God, my content is influencing people. People are seeing it. People that matter.

32:58 So that's That's what's really key, making sure that when you share something, you share your expertise, the right people on the other side. are relevant to your content and they see it. Yeah, that could make your day or your week or actually It could make your you know, it could make your living in many ways.

33:13 And then on the receiving side, when I come in, it's the it's the things I'm excited about seeing. It's the things that are relevant. I can actually The the reason I your content resonates so much with other people, I can actually take your podcast and I can apply them at work. What could be a better way to learn? I'll give you another example, which was very, very recent. I met with a known professor in his field, um and he shared with me how over the last year and a half he started using LinkedIn.

33:39 'Cause somebody told me you have great content, why don't you just post it? It's like I don't want to post on social media. I'm like, Oh, LinkedIn is different. Share on LinkedIn. And he was like, I post daily. I have so much content over the years. I I post daily. And he's like, He basically told me this is unbelievable. in terms of economic opportunity I'm getting.

33:56 He's like, I'm getting speaking engagements. that are roughly half the salary I make in a year here at the university. just by people seeing this content and building it getting to the right people. I was invited to advise prime ministers on their investment uh strategy for the country.

34:15 And it's like and they and I've been teaching for twenty years. But This platform just completely elevated my ability to reach and influence people. That's the magic, and that's the value exchange, and that's the kind of matchmaking at scale. Amazing. That's an awesome story.

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35:31 And receive a fifty dollar Amazon gift card. That's merge.dev slash lenny. I wanna shift a little bit and talk about this AI first mindset that you've touched on a lot. So you talked about how at the beginning of this investment. You've already been like focused on AI before it was really Before as as hot as it is today.

35:51 And I've heard from many people that you're really big on getting people to shift to this mindset of being very AI first. Clearly it's worked really well. at LinkedIn. I'm curious just what that actually looks like. Like I know you could be like, Hey guys, we gotta be AI first. AI AI. What

36:05 But it's different to actually make people really think differently. How do you actually like on the ground help people shift their perspective and think AI first? Uh when I can spend uh days on this. This is so so important. It's actually so important for me. It's a key focus for me. Actually to your point, long before it became cool. To talk about AI in the last two years.

36:25 And in fact, I think I've learned this on my and myself. So when it came to the feed, I took the role of the AI product leader. They didn't exist in the company. There was no person that was ever From a product perspective, thinking about AI. I think it starts with the belief, like I like we talked about before. I think every technological revolution has dramatically changed the way we build.

36:44 And AI arguably is the biggest one in our lifetimes. And when I say I first, it's not about a tech, it's a mindset. It's a start with strategy. Like You know, it's rare. Maybe now you'll see it, but it was rare two years ago to see anybody in their strategy talk about the role of AI and how they build with AI.

37:02 And it goes to this. to the product and then the talent itself you hire. Do they actually think this way? The analogy I would give to people is imagine a we were aft boat. And you have like you know, everybody on the sides holding the pedals and adding accuracy, adding speed.

37:18 But there's the guide on the back. And they're holding those two pedals. Those two pedals navigate Pretty much the both and those pedals are AI. And the guide better be you.

37:29 And in most cases in companies The guide was a somebody else. It wasn't the public leader. So then the question is if AI actually is directing your product or success and it's the biggest factor. And you as the polygon is not the one holding those two pedals, what are you doing? And

37:47 W then I realized that it was a bit of a lack of education in that. Like there was mon actually most producters used to think of AI as this like Black box, magic spells. that they don't know how it's working, so they're delegating. And obviously that's Further as far from the truth as possible.

38:05 But there's so many ways to unpack it. Like when It came to the feed where I push, for example, more specifically for the teams It doesn't stay as an AI first, like There is the objective. I would ask him, What is the objective of the algorithm? Oh

38:20 Challenge you to ask folks, you know, more and the folks who are like leading product specifically with the algorithms uh inherited built into them. What is the objective of the algorithm and can you actually Can you write it down for me on a board? They should be able to do so. Ultimately it's a mathematical formula. And then it's like what features have you added to

38:38 To the algorithm. And this is not user features. This is specifically what parameters to learn on. And then what investment do you have in data collections and fine tuning? Now everybody talks a big game about fine tuning, but again, two years ago fine tuning was something that the Park folks fought the engineering team was supposed to do.

38:57 No, it's the whole organization. In fact You can build a whole strategy just on uh data collection and fine tuning. And your product will see tremendous success. Oh, you can delegate it and it will never happen.

39:11 So In many ways that was bring into the fold. In in our phase one, which really started Around two thousand sixteen for me and every team I went to Uh AI the AI component was The f the area I spent most of my time on, I hired people for that, product leaders, I spent most of my

39:29 Back to like how do I spend my resources, most of my resources there. And it was my top priority all the way from strategy to tell it. And ultimately with the last couple of years we've seen this metamorphos of AI and this incredible new wave, and we've done

39:46 Pretty big change there as well over the last two years. I I love this. So I took some notes on what you're talking about. So kind of The big message that I'm taking away so far is As a product leader, you need to Think about things that you thought

39:59 The engineering leader had to think about or the ML engineer was thinking about things like What is the objective of our algorithm? What are the features that we're building into it? What is the data collection strategy? What how are we fine tuning it? Like as a PM, you should be asking these questions. In fact, you should go all the way to infrastructure. Like you can have massive lifts in in in your

40:19 product outcomes and goals, if you probably enhance your infrastructure. How many product people talk about the infrastructure they have? Right. Not many. Uh inferences. Like those are things ultimately your goal is to j you know.

40:33 Your goal is to win with your products and build a much better experience to your members and customers. Literally just changing the infrastructure on top of it, you build that could be the biggest lever than you building another button. More experience for your for your members on the top of it. So like say the PMs at LinkedIn, are you encouraging them all to Like is it like how is AI integrating into what you're doing?

40:52 How do you just like set this up so that teams do this well within LinkedIn. Yeah, so coming into this role in early to twenty twenty, we basically established an AI Academy. Every PM had to go for training, just like we did mobile in twenty uh Fourteen, we gotta move the whole organization to be mobile first, so everybody had to go for this process. I spend a lot of time in my reviews on the AI strategy

41:15 The objectives uh we make sure there's actually AI practitioners on the product side who are strong who can teach. So we kind of like, you know, in wave started to build more of like expertise and kind of distinguished uh leaders across that can actually bring this learning acqu across the board. And then You know, in fall twenty twenty two, when we all know what happened, uh at least a few months after, but we started early. We

41:38 completely change our entire uh almost like product operations and portfolio. So we can focus on this new web of AI with LLMs in the front. So Lincoln has been working with AI uh very closely uh since the early days.

41:54 Uh, but mostly as an as a matchmaker. So it was the matchmaker for a marketplace. Somebody looks to hire this dream candidate, and then you have a candidate looking for a dream job, and AI would be the one doing the matchmaking. We talked about The knowledge sharing on the feed. It happens in our in our commerce platform as well.

42:12 So but the ISO I was kind of in the background so you never saw it. It was kind of making those matches. And then with uh the new new of AI, we actually brought AI from the back of our marketplaces really as the matchmaker to the front. And one of the things we've done there was

42:31 really asking the teams to completely revisit their entire roadmap. This is This is fall of twenty twenty two, the world will learn about J P T four. Several you know, in March twenty twenty three. So we kind of had like a nice uh beginning there in terms of getting started. And

42:48 The goal there was let go of what you've built. Let go of your roadmap. Go back to the drawing board with what are you trying to solve for, but to that idea of like clarity on your problem statement. And now Tell me what's the solution. That's very much AI first.

43:03 It reminds me of so one of the folks I pinged about you, uh Shira Gasarch. She used this quote about you, Maybe you were made for such a time as this. And it connects a lot what you're talking about, where you've been thinking a lot about and back then it was called machine learning, right? Like it wasn't called AI for a long time. And now it's AI. The fact that you've been on this so long is just like a perfect synergy for now it's Working its way into everything.

43:26 Here's like an example that I think sometimes To bring it Uh to people in a more kind of visceral way if you've been building products. Product leaders are used to very much dictate the experience they're building.

43:38 Like I want this experience to be exactly like this. Like I want the member to come from here and this is the options they have and I want them to be able to select this and this will be my default and I want the onboarding to progress this way. And I I think this is one of the biggest shifts with this when you become an AI first kind of leader.

43:58 is that there's a realization that you don't control the experience anymore. You control the ingredients. It's like almost like being a chef at the restaurant. And you're used to like deciding every part of the of the dish, right? You're like deciding everything from the ambiance to the temperature of the broccoli. And then you know, this new technology comes in and says, Just give me the ingredients. Give me the uh you know, the the guidelines of how you cook.

44:22 And I'll I'll take care of it. I'll declare it. It's a for many folks, this is a very uh Scary feeling. They're not used to kind of letting go. of the control obviously you build safety guards and responsible AI around it and that's super critical.

44:38 But at the essence of it, AI is not deterministic. So giving that Giving it the rope to learn and do that. experience for you ultimately will become much, much better. You have to have that belief going into it. So s along those lines, I'm curious if there's anything you do to avoid

44:54 You know, everyone's like, Cool AI into everything and then they All these stupid things ship that no one wants. I saw this hilarious meme of like, Oh wait, we built like a kind of dumb Uh artificial person. Let's integrate it into everything. Now it's everywhere.

45:06 Is there anything you've learned about just How not to ship stuff that like Isn't great. I can do what we've done here and I've been we've we've failed a lot, but we learned so much along the way. Uh when we started it in fall twenty twenty two, literally it started with me calling out uh calling the leaders coming to the room and we We talked about okay, let go of your roadmaps. Like what we've done, great, but I wanna let go of the road maps and I wanna

45:30 Instead go back to what are you trying to solve for and let's meet in a couple of weeks and tell me How you're thinking differently. about what you're trying to solve for knowing we have this technology uh in in a role for us. So That was like a starting point around just setting out some ground

45:46 is some ground and and principles around it. But we didn't start with like new objectives to solve. So it wasn't like oh we have this cool technology, what can we do with it? It was like go back to the objectives you were trying to solve. And now with this technology, how can you do that objective better? The second part is we actually allowed teams to run.

46:04 To really inspire creativity. I didn't want to contain them. I wouldn't want to get them really excited about the potential here and Uh, even some things were building duplicates for uh for a while of like, you know, similar ideas but then differently. Part of it was I was learning. I was very excited to see what people would come up with and see how they can do it and There was no playbook for building this really, really well. And in many ways We were writing the playbook. Like prompt engineering became a playbook internally for us, which

46:31 Every day was amazing. Like how do you cognitively I know a reverse engineered a brain a little bit. That was incredible. In fact, a lot of things we've learned so much ahead of the market and even shared uh with open yeah with microsoft But then after that period of like just

46:47 Everybody getting excited and building We we basically brought it down and we did like top down guard it. So we basically picked the Back to the objectives we had. Out of everything that we've seen. Those for us look like the best

47:01 Kind of four uh biggest bets we wanna wanna aim for and then wanna c we wanna converge resourcing across it. So no more Everybody's building whatever they want. We also, you know, capacity is also constraint, cost is a constraint. We wanna start bringing them together.

47:16 So we really much allowed people to Uh, I would say many way to diverge. But then what's it like? Several weeks after converge, but we had a lot more excitement and understanding about how this thing works and what we can actually do with it.

47:30 Well that advice. Basically give people a bunch of time and space to explore, experiment, R and D. And then like as a top down Uh Strat strategy picture. Usually they do product jams for every Multiple topics we have for out.

47:46 The corner. I just did every week I just f reviewed the five kind of bets we had. On a repeated basis, nothing else. 'Cause it was so important for them to understand that this is what I care about and And we have to be focused about it.

48:00 It feels like that space to explore and go crazy is important because otherwise people at the company are gonna be like, Oh, I wish there's so many cool this thing I wanna try with AI, we should try it. Like And that'll just be pissed because they don't have time to work on it. So it's it's a great point. It wasn't my intention, but I love that you're saying it. Uh it's a great point because I think it gives them that that I was actually For me sometimes almost in a maybe

48:20 Too much, but I try to focus on learnings. I was trying I knew Just going like this. We weren't gonna learn a lot. But having people come back and like trying different things and starting going crazy and going you know, pushing the boundaries, we would learn so much. So for me it was learning, but I love the motivation around also allowing them to have the energy.

48:39 It relates a another point that uh a recent podcast episode had with Brian Chesky where he introduces chaos sometimes when things are feeling too comfortable, when roadmaps everything's calm, everything's on schedule, he's just like How do we Like how do we do this w in one day versus in two weeks? Let's just tr see what happens. Yeah,'cause I think people get like there is just inertia, right? People get into their it's it's human behavior. People get into their lanes.

49:04 they start to feel really comfortable with their delayes and then they don't know that there's a different way to do things. Yeah. And you have to like almost like externally invoke that or trigger that. So if we think about just your career arc, I'm zooming out a little bit. You uh helped create the mobile experience on LinkedIn. You helped you built the feed initially and now you're in front of AI. Uh, I could see why you're so successful at LinkedIn.

49:26 I was talking to folks about your career arc. at LinkedIn and you basically went from senior PM to senior PM number two to group PM. to director to senior director to VP to CPO in like not that many years. It's a pretty meteoric rise. I wanted to spend a little time here.

49:41 And I wanna maybe start with a question of just like If you could give one specific piece of advice for someone looking to advance in their career based on what you found to be really effective? What what would that be? I realise everybody's in the right every stage in their career and

49:56 They have different ways to think about the role than what they need. Maybe I'll just share about my journey, what worked for me. Instead of Giving kind of

50:04 uh kind of more of a general advice. First of all, I I feel super fortunate. Like I'm building. That's what I love doing. I love building I love working with builders. Uh you know, sometimes I'm like I get paid for this, this is insane.

50:18 But I love I love my craft and I love getting deep into it. So in many ways, I think like In in May like the the things I'm excited about is the things I'm doing. When people are starting off, I usually like really focus on learning from great people, like people you talk to or have like amazing mentors and managers

50:38 Some of them don't even know they're remote mentors. Like it's not like a mentor officially. Like I try to like pick up Things from people all the time. And Uh, that's been just a remarkable experience, like working with great people and in many ways A lot of those great people actually allowed me or empower me to take on some b bigger challenges. So

50:57 I could You know, I can see forks in the road were If it wasn't for that person saying something very specific. probably would have done something differently. And it just made me think a lot. So I really try to absorb

51:09 Learning from great people. But by far for me personally, again, this is very personal versus generic advice, it was When I moved here, I was an engineer for many years before I moved here for graduate school in two thousand eight. And I always love building

51:25 Uh that was all there I was there from a young age, but When I moved here, I realised my career path. Was very much dictated by one thing. It was like what's most in demand. What's most challenging?

51:38 And how do I do that? It was very childish in many ways. It was not dictated by me, it was in a way dictated by society. So What's the Tapfis engineering role? What's the best company to go into

51:51 Uh, what's the best army unit to serve in? And I I felled along a lot along the way, but always kept going. And then when I came here Uh there was a really big challenging for me personally around like what do I care about? What matters most to me, and I was

52:06 Again, it's very personal in many ways. It it was very much for me an impact on learning And actually how do I create impact more broadly? And I shifted one eighty in how my thought process used to go. I was it was less about

52:22 What was out there and exciting and in demand and challenging. And it was more about like where did I have strong conviction on? What was I passionate about? And what where did I feel I could make a dent and learn? And that was my path forward. So uh after school with a student visa and massive school debt.

52:42 I decided to start a company which was not, you know, a very intelligent kind of uh decision based on my uh Economic circus circumstances. But I didn't care. I was like this is my new path. And then

52:56 Uh I got into LinkedIn and apply for a job. I met with who was who was in my role today, Deep Nishar at that time. And we talked and I said, This is how I think we should you know, this is how LinkedIn Mobile should be built. And he was like, Okay, how about you come and build it? And I was like amazing. So I it didn't apply to LinkedIn. And then at LinkedIn I was always kind of like, This is what I want to do. This is what's exciting for me. And this is the dental thing I can make and this is my plan for it.

53:21 So I don't know if I'm not sure. A recommendation for everybody, but it's for me it's worked really, really well. It was Really pursuing the conviction I had uh and my excitement

53:32 And kind of bring that to the fold with people. I do think that in products in In building product If you're not genuinely excited about what you want to build, if you don't have conviction about it, It might be very hard for you to make a big impact.

53:45 That's uh also similar theme from my My most recent podcast on Flat. If just if you don't actually buy into the mission of the Place you're working on you're not gonna have a good time. Yeah, there's there's a so for black people, it's a very fortunate

53:59 position. I always tell people like if you're in one of the most fortunate positions you can have because If you just measure thing for you, just measure based on your career and so on. People are gonna evaluate you based on your actual work. It's a very special place. It's not I nobody cares about your title. Who cares? No, but like it's not that like maybe the company name for some people matters, but

54:22 For the most part, it's about the impact you created. with the products you've built. So if I think about some of these resume I think if it was a product question, it would be It will be the products you built and the impact you had with it. I don't care about the companies you worked at. I don't care about the logos. I don't care about the titles.

54:39 Slightly like again, not to kind of overextend, but it Somebody's almost like an artist, right? It's like what you're a musician, it's the albums you took out. And how well they did. And I think for product people, it's a very fortunate place to be that you get measured based on the impact you had. This sounds like a LinkedIn feature uh idea right there.

54:57 I feel like if there's any company that can make that happen, it'd be you guys. So kind of the uh some of the takeaways here essentially is try to index towards what are you actually excited about and motivated to work on and uh driven by versus where it's the most amazing company to work at or the most challenging problem. Yeah, I think sometimes, you know, great companies

55:19 have great opportunities for you to have dent at scale, but you need you need to be the one doing it. Like it's If you are thinking about I don't know, a title or That that did not get you know, four like once I did the change into my excitement around impact

55:35 That's been at least my my yardstick. And when I look at people that I talk to or interview internally I the first thing to my mind to me is like what did you build? And what did you learn and how well did it do? That's what I care about. Imagine there's also people on the other side where all they do is work on things that are really exciting to them.

55:55 And they could use a little pushing towards the other direction of what's actually important in the world. Hundred percent. If you tell me again, everybody has their different if you tell me like hey, you can work on something. Super exciting, but it's on the kind of the fringes of the company. Or you can work on something which is a bit more grindy, but it's at the core of the company. The latter would like no no doubt.

56:16 Uh like for me impact first. Yeah. So and and and just listening to the story you've told of the things you decided to focus on as a clear example that like you saw. Hey, there's this huge opportunity in the feet, I'm gonna go take tackle that or mobile. Oh yeah.

56:29 So I think there's a lot of it's kind of the Z van diagram is what I'm taking away. Of just what's important, what am I excited about? Yeah. Please for me. Yeah.

56:38 Awesome. Okay, so I know uh you gotta run relatively soon. Uh so we're gonna get to our very exciting lightning round, but before we do that, is there anything else that You think would be interesting or useful for folks to know or leave them with. I know we covered a bunch of things already. Yeah, you know one thing that actually um

56:55 I've now build it into a podcast. But something I I'm really excited about is I don't think there's one way of building. Remember like when the Steve Jobs biography came out. Everybody read it and they're like oh that's the way to build and like that was unique to him. And uh one of the things I love a lot is when I look at like great builders, they're all very distinct. They're all different. And I used to do this thing internally. I used to

57:21 invite kind of product builders uh of different disciplines and And have a fireside chat with them. And I saw people across the company join, not just PMs or designers, but folks across and I build that into a podcast. It's it's I love your podcast. Mine is very different. It's more around like What is their edge a little bit? Like what would

57:41 Uh is this is from the co founder of Pixar It cut more to the CPU of Canva or Spotify, Roblox, but all the way to like a chef, Dan Barber, who's like The number one chef in the US. Uh for many years.

57:56 And it's just everybody has their craft and they do it differently. Uh it's called Building One. I'm excited about it. It's a little bit of a plug right now, Lenny. Please, yeah, where do people find it? Let's blow it up. What's uh Building One? App Building One on Apple or Spotify. Perfect. It's it's short. And it's really about showing you different disciplines from a chef to an animation director. And

58:17 really the main learning there is like everybody builds differently and you can be very successful. But it's very authentic to how they are personally, and it's how they push their craft to the limit. It's how well they've done their craft. I love that. And something I super believe is just the power of focusing on your strengths and the things that make you a little different versus Trying to become good at everything. Hundred percent.

58:38 That's so cool. Okay. Build one. Uh uh we'll link to it in the show notes. Building one. Yes. Building one, building one. Okay, amazing. And it's on all the podcasting platforms. Okay, great. With that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Uh are you ready? Yes. All right. First question is what are two or three books that you recommended most?

58:55 to other people. So I have this continuously this three. I love that you have them right. They look very pretty down there. Don't mess with it. I'm not going to destroy my study. Uh so I love fundamentals. I love studying from fundamentals. So if you're somebody who starts in your career My fundamental books is one mindset. It's about growth mindset. It's about basically the ability to continuously grow.

59:18 over time, you know, in one sentence is the whole idea is our skills our abilities are malleable. we can completely develop them, we can build expertise and craft and And mastery and it's really a mindset change and Carol Dick wrote the book. uh was also my wife's manager and that's how we got into that. So I'm

59:38 That's awesome. That's kind of like our second religion at home. Uh second book is Thinking Fast and Slow. Um by d Daniel Kahneman. I'm I love it.

59:49 Behaver economics. When I think about products, I think a lot I always start from people like what is the member expectation? What are they trying to do? And this is like the Bible for behavior. So if you're building front end products or even like you're thinking about how you

1:00:05 Rally organization. Uh it's an incredible book. Every page is like a stopper, you have to stop and think. And then lastly and on the fundamental side is high output management. Uh by Andy Grove it's like There's so much basics to doing good manager. It's like

1:00:22 I think after you read this book Your managerial skills should start from a B. And then you can, you know, over time become an A. But like beginning to a B is just a level of like Putting the effort in

1:00:34 and knowing the best practices. So I think like there's a those are all fundamentally Uh a great book that I really like to give to people. Yeah, it's awesome. I love that they're right there behind you. Is there a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed? Yesterday I saw Bluey. You know Bluey?

1:00:49 I've heard of Bluey, my kid's not old enough for it yet. Oh, you're in for a treat. Okay. Uh so I love Bluey. So Bluey is this like animation series from from Australia. And It's the What's beautiful about it is I can watch it with my

1:01:05 Six year old, nine year old, and twelve year old. And we're all gonna enjoy it. We're all gonna laugh. At the same point, but at the nuance of the jokes. It's like when I think about the product. The right pro his build.

1:01:19 It's built for the whole family. But it's built as layers. There's like layers of Oh, dialogue and and points that they're trying to get across. And it's all packaged together into one experience. So it's for me, it's amazing that I could succeed to my six year old daughter.

1:01:35 We were both laugh. uh this animation it's a sweet animation kind of thing. It's like a family of dogs. And she would laugh at the nuance of the qu uh of of the point and lack at a different nuance. For me it's like that that's a genius Creation.

1:01:50 Speaking of Ed Catmole, the Pixar does that really well as well. Um totally. And I feel like the story of Bluey is really incredible too. It's like just like a random little independent group and they just are making tons of money with it. It's just amazing. The dialogue there is like one is like it's slightly edgy, but not too edgy. Like it's it's exactly right. It's just exactly right. Yeah. Makes me want to watch it. Okay. Uh

1:02:12 Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really love, whether it's physical or digital? So I I like playing guitar. It's like amateur, I'm not Not that good. Uh, but I love playing it. Uh and there is a combination I've done recently I really like. There's a Spark amp I have, which allows me to kind of play with effects easily, but that's not what I use it for. I can I can tune my guitar based on the specific

1:02:36 A song I like. So if I want to do Pink Floored or Metallica or Nirvana. Or David Bowie, I can I can get that tune easily. I don't have to be an expert. I can just download the tune to my guitar, which is so great. And then I coupled that with the it's called the ultimate guitar app. And basically doesn't give to give me the chords and the tabs.

1:02:57 It gives me the Other instruments. So I can get the drums going. I can get the you know it's a violin going, whatever that is. That's going in the band.

1:03:08 As somebody who does not play so well and plays for itself and nobody's supposed to listen to how I'm playing because it's it's really just uh a way for me to enjoy my time. It's just an um I would never get into any band. So this is the closest I can get to get to a band. So I love that combination. I wish we could uh close this podcast episode with you playing your guitar, but uh the ratings of the show. Yeah. Oh man, that's amazing.

1:03:31 Okay, uh two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often repeat to yourself, find really useful and work your own life? Share with folks. For Growth Mindset there's a motto that I really like. It's called Becoming is better than being. It's like the moment you think you kind of achieved something is the moment you start to deteriorate down. Like you were like

1:03:50 We're really trying to grow as human beings. We're trying to learn. We're trying to evolve. Uh yeah, product is a good example. I think the moment you think you actually master that is the moment that you become obsolete. So I I love the idea that becoming is a better goal than continuously trying to reach some kind of level. Yep. Final question, just to come back to LinkedIn, is there like a

1:04:10 fun feature of LinkedIn people sh don't know about or should check out. Is there anything new that's like, oh, that's that's something you should try, or that's something that might surprise you about LinkedIn these days. Maybe I'll I'll give a couple so I don't have to like pick the best right off the bat. But one, right now we're like heavily invested in video and it's doing so well for those creators. We talked about it. Like immersive video where you can actually come in. We talked about like for us You know, we're Like new video is uh you know, obviously a best practice right now in the industry, but on LinkedIn the right views really matter.

1:04:41 So highly encourage creators to kinda think about their video play at LinkedIn. And then I I think our Uh what we call our coach experience in some cases is so powerful. Like we For job seekers out there, you know, we have people hired on LinkedIn. There's like seven folks hired every minute.

1:04:59 Jobseeking is a lonely Journey. It's actually in in um A session recently meeting with job seekers. And

1:05:07 I was talking to them And one Started crying midway into the session. Because they said, I cannot share my journey with anybody because I feel like I'm alone in this People don't get how hard it is. I feel very accomplished, but I can't get the job.

1:05:23 And I wish there was a buddy. I wish there was something that I could talk to brainstorm with who wouldn't judge me, who just be trying to help me.

1:05:33 without paying hundreds of dollars to a coach of some sort. I don't have that money. In many ways. Uh, when we walked him through the job seeking experience, the the coach experience, we build this coach aspect where You can go to any job and you can riff on the job with with This kind of

1:05:49 really kind of this new RI, this L M. But it's stellar to you, personalized to you, private to you. Everything from your fit. to how to best apply to kind of consulting about different opportunities, to comparing this to others.

1:06:04 Uh, to feeling supported. So when we talk to people around, you know, we always I love to measure the impact of our work by emotion. When we talked to job seekers after that, it's was basically the sense of I felt supported. In many ways getting to that. ability to remove the loneliness.

1:06:20 uh is is amazing. It's a little bit like people need to We're making it more and more visible and more and more um Uh uh kind of ramp to everybody uh to a certain point. But that's a really powerful way to just humanize the

1:06:36 Job seeing experience for everybody. Awesome, and to find that it's just is it called LinkedIn coach or It's in the jobs. So if you go to the jobs tab on LinkedIn, it's uh it's actually we just a few weeks ago, we just put it on the top. So you don't have to go to the specific job and find it. You can just start there and engage with it. Awesome. Just to quick give a quick plug to a future podcast that's coming out. There's this book called Never Search Alone. that we're gonna have the author on the podcast soon and it's all about this same idea of having a buddy that helps you search for a job yeah when I think about the future of AI in a sense of belief that relationship is gonna be sacred.

1:07:06 The relationship between A I and the human is gonna be afraid. There's a Do you know what n nomomia means? Nomophobia, no. Not nomophobia. No phobia. No being afraid of it's the fear it's the anxiety of being away from your phone.

1:07:21 I have that. Yeah, I think we all know. I think we're in for AI of AI nophobia at one point. We're You're gonna get to a point where your eyes gonna feel so intimate, so personal. That

1:07:33 It would actually feel concerning to you to be away from it. Mm. Oh man. There's it reminds me of friend dot com, which just launched in a really fun I don't know if you saw friend dot com in their launch video. No, I did not. Oh man, check out friend dot com. It's like a digital friend that just is with you all the time and you're talking to him and it's an AI.

1:07:50 Oh, we're we're just getting started there. It's gonna be it's we're in for incredible revolution there. I'm excited and scared at the same time. Tomer, thank you so much for being here. This was amazing. You're awesome. Two final questions. Where can folks check out stuff that you're working on? Any of a course also podcasts to just give people a sense of where to find that. Awesome. So obviously I'm on LinkedIn. Reach out anytime. I read everything people send to me. I don't always reply to everything, but I read everything sent to me. And then if you want to go deep on AI first, I have two courses. They're free. I think it's a phenomenal way for you to build or starting to build your uh expertise, especially if you're in product, it's a great way

1:08:26 to go deeper and not just stay kind of on the high level parts of things. Amazing. We'll link to all those things in the show notes. Tomer, thank you so much for being here. Lenny, thank you. This is our pleasure. 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.

1:08:45 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.com. See you in the next episode.

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