Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Richard Rumelt is a legend in the world of strategy. He’s the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, both of which are often recommended by guests on this podcast . From his early days teaching in Iran at a Harvard-sponsored business school to teaching at Harvard Business School itself to over four decades teaching at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management...

Heidi Helfand is the author of Dynamic Reteaming , which outlines practical strategies for orchestrating successful team and company org changes. Her work is informed by more than 20 years in the tech industry at notable companies like AppFolio, Procore, and Expertcity/GoToMeeting. Today, she dedicates her efforts to sharing her knowledge through workshops, comprehensive courses, and consultative...

Ethan Evans is a writer, career coach, course instructor, and retired VP at Amazon. During his 15 years at Amazon, he helped invent Prime Video, Amazon Video, the Amazon Appstore, Prime Gaming (formerly Twitch Prime), and Twitch Commerce. Prior to Amazon, Ethan spent 12 years in technical leadership roles at several East Coast startups. He writes a newsletter, Level Up , which publishes candid car...

Sam Schillace is deputy CTO and corporate vice president at Microsoft. Prior to working at Microsoft, Sam started a company called Writely, which was acquired by Google and became the foundation of what today is Google Docs. While at Google, Sam helped lead many of Google’s consumer products, including Gmail, Blogger, PageCreator, Picasa, Reader, Groups, and more recently Maps and Google Automotiv...

Will Larson  is Chief Technology Officer at Carta. Prior to joining Carta, he was the CTO at Calm and held engineering leadership roles at Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He is the author of two foundational engineering career books,  An Elegant Puzzle  and  Staff Engineer , and  The Engineering Executive’s Primer , which will be released in February. In our conversation, we discuss: • Systems thinking: w...

Judd Antin has spent 15 years leading research and design teams at companies like Yahoo, Meta, and Airbnb. His direct reports have gone on to lead user research at Figma, Notion, Slack, Robinhood, Duolingo, AllTrails, and more. In our conversation, we unpack the transformation that the user-research field is experiencing. Specifically: • Where user research went wrong over the past decade • The th...

Nir Eyal is the author of two best-selling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life . He writes, consults, and teaches at the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. His books have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages; he has taught at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and its Design...

Sarah Tavel  is a General Partner at Benchmark and sits on the boards of Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Rekki, Cambly, and Medely. She is a founding member of All Raise, the nonprofit organization working to accelerate the success of women in the venture-capital and VC-backed startup ecosystem. Before Benchmark, Sarah was a partner at Greylock Partners. She joined Pinterest in 2012 as their first PM and la...

Christian Idiodi is a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group. After a long product career and founding multiple companies, Christian now spends his time working closely with product leaders at companies big and small to implement and improve their discipline of product management. In today’s episode, we discuss: • Why there’s often a negative perception of product managers, and how we can fix thi...

Jason Fried is the co-founder and CEO of 37signals, the maker of Basecamp and HEY. 37signals is a very different kind of company. With fewer than 80 employees, they have over 100,000 customers, generate tens of millions of dollars in profit each year, and have no investors, board, or any plans to ever raise money or sell the company. In our conversation, we explore a path many tech founders never...

Matthew Dicks is a best-selling author, columnist, blogger, podcaster, playwright, and teacher. He wrote my all-time favorite book on storytelling, Storyworthy . He is an elementary school teacher by day and by night teaches storytelling and public speaking to individuals, corporations, universities, religious institutions, and school districts around the world. He’s taught storytelling at Yale, M...

In this special compilation episode, we delve into failure—an overlooked source of wisdom. From freezing onstage in front of thousands of people, to coworkers staging an intervention, to huge product investments that went to zero, we’ve pulled our favorite stories of failure from 100+ podcast episodes. I hope these stories serve as a gentle nudge to view failure not as a setback but as a crucial d...

Kim Scott is the author of Radical Candor , currently the #1 most recommended book on this podcast. The book has sold over 1 million copies and has been translated into 23 languages. Before writing, Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was also a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Goo...

Anuj Rathi is the Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Jupiter Money, where he leads product management, marketing, design, growth, and analytics. Before Jupiter Money, Anuj served as the Senior Vice President of Revenue and Growth at Swiggy, VP of Product at SnapDeal, a Senior PM at Walmart Labs and the first-ever PM at Flipkart. He’s also one of the most beloved and respected product leaders i...

Ebi Atawodi is Director of Product Management for the Creator Experience at YouTube, former Head of Product at Uber, and a former Director of Product (Payments and EMEA) at Netflix. Known for crafting a strong, unified vision, Ebi empowers her teams to achieve outsized outcomes. In today’s episode, we go deep into vision and strategy, including: • The four key elements of a good vision statement •...

Inbal Shani is the chief product officer at GitHub, where she leads core product management, along with product strategy, marketing, open source, and communities, including the development of GitHub Copilot. Prior to joining GitHub, she led engineering and product teams at Amazon and Microsoft. In today’s conversation, we discuss: • What Inbal believes is overhyped and underhyped in the rapidly ch...

This is a special episode of the podcast where I’ve curated my favorite interview questions that guests have shared, among over 100 podcast guests. Whether you’re a hiring manager, currently interviewing, or simply intrigued by the creative and perceptive questions that top product leaders rely on to find top talent, these questions offer unique insights into the strategies and philosophies that s...

Tom Conrad is the CEO of Zero and on the board of Sonos. He began his career in engineering at Apple, where he helped build key features that remain in iOS today. Tom was previously the VP of Product at Snap and the chief technology officer of Pandora. He also held leadership positions at notable tech flops Pets.com and Quibi, giving him a unique perspective not only on what it takes to build a su...

Paul Millerd spent several years working in strategy consulting and on the “default path” before deciding to walk away to work on his own in 2017. His book, The Pathless Path , chronicles his own journey and deep dive into the history of work and has been read by more than 40,000 people. His podcast, The Pathless Path Podcast, highlights conversations with others following unconventional paths. He...

Melissa Perri is the CEO of Produx Labs, a product management training organization; author of the seminal PM book The Build Trap ; and a former Harvard Business School professor of product management. Denise Tilles is the CPO at Grocket, Melissa’s colleague at Produx Labs, and a seasoned product leader with over a decade of experience. Together they authored the new book Product Operations: How s...

Brian Chesky is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. Under Brian’s leadership, Airbnb has grown into a community of over 4 million hosts who have welcomed more than 1.5 billion guests across over 220 countries and regions. I had the privilege of working under his leadership, so it is a great honor to have him on the show. We discuss: • How Airbnb has shifted their thinking on product management • Why...

Ramesh Johari is a professor at Stanford University focusing on data science methods and practice, as well as the design and operation of online markets and platforms. Beyond academia, Ramesh has advised some incredible startups, including Airbnb, Uber, Bumble, and Stitch Fix. Today we discuss: • What exactly a marketplace is, if you boil it down • What you need to get right to build a successful...

Maggie Crowley is VP of product at Toast and previously vice president and head of product at Charlie Health, senior director of product management at Drift, and a PM at TripAdvisor. She’s also the host of Build , a podcast dedicated to product and product management. In today’s conversation, Maggie shares: • The value of building a broad-based PM skill set • Three qualities of the best product ma...

Bill Carr is the co-author of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon . With a background at Amazon of over 15 years, Bill played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s global digital music and video ventures, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. After Amazon, Bill was an Executive in Residence with Maveron, an early-stage, consumer-only venture ca...

Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup , and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE). He’s also a multi-time founder and currently advises startups, VC firms, and larger companies on business and product strategy. In today’s episode, we discuss: • The current state of the Lean Startup methodology • Common misconcept...