Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. And what can you notice that AI can't? AI is not good at being an anthropologist yet. It is based on a corpus of existing knowledge. And I think the best product thinkers, again, across functions that I've worked with, really are able to get to novel insights through that user empathy, through that understanding and through deep understanding of the business dynamics, changing industry, and bringing those together to prioritize ideas that actually really, really matter. We're going to have so much software we won't even know what to do with it, but what software actually works, what software actually matters, what software gets marketed or sold? Or we're going to have to think about not just that the software exists, but that it can get to its final state, and that is going to require people's buy- in to that idea working. Yeah. The way I think about this right now is just where humans are still necessary and great product thinkers are still necessary is on the front end deciding what to prioritize and build, on the back end, determining if this is good and ready, essentially judgment and taste. And then there's distribution I think is such an underappreciated new bottleneck, because as you said, there's so much shit out there. Just like, how do we get anyone to pay attention to any of this stuff? Every day, there's a new life-changing product. So I feel like that's going to be a big problem. Oh, I want you to do a whole episode on distribution because I feel this so much. If everyone thinks they can build the next sales force on their own, by the way, I don't believe that, then you're going to have just a flood of available tools. And who gets the attention? It is still going to be who has the marketing dollars, who has the brand reputation, who is the existing customer base. Distribution is everything. And I think the quintessential example we've seen here is with Gemini and Google's tools and just their total continued dominance in that market because of tools of distribution. And I think it's really fun to see. I think the other piece I would say that's underrated there is trust building, trust with your users, but also with your internal teams. We're seeing even model companies hire at a huge rate right now. So you are still working with colleagues. You are still working with millions of users, and alongside distribution is trust, and that is a function of influence and empathy.…

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