Naomi Gleit: commitment

Transcript context

…I have to think about this. Yeah, I got to hit some goals here. This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the only all-in-one product experience platform for any type of application. Tired of bouncing around multiple tools to uncover what's really happening inside your product? With all the tools you need in one simple-to-use platform, Pendo makes it easy to answer critical questions about how users are engaging with your product and then turn those insights into action, all so you can get your users to do what you actually want them to do. First, Pendo is built around product analytics, seeing what your users are actually doing in your apps so that you can optimize their experience. Next, Pendo lets you deploy in-app guides that lead users through the actions that matter most. Then, Pendo integrates user feedback so that you can capture and analyze what people actually want. And the new thing in Pendo, session replays, a very cool way to visualize user sessions. 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Join thousands of global companies that use Vanta to automate evidence collection, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to Vanta.com/Lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A.com/Lenny. Let me start. I want to start by just how you actually landed at Meta as employee number 29, which is a life-changing decision and a life-changing role and I want to learn if there's something folks can see about what you did that might be helpful to them when they're trying to find a place to work and your story, I was reading about the story and it's super interesting. You basically wrote your senior thesis at Stanford about why Facebook was going to win and why it was going to beat its competitors and the competitors cited I've never even heard of, so it's interesting that that was the competitor at the time. Could you just share the story of how you landed as employee number 29 at Facebook, now Meta? Facebook as part of being an academic, researching Facebook, also being a Stanford student using Facebook. I was like, "I really want to work here." Facebook had just moved to Palo Alto. Mark had driven across country I guess, and arrived in Palo. Alto opened up an office at 443 Emerson Avenue or Emerson Street. It was right above the Jing Jing's Chinese restaurant in downtown Palo Alto and I just went to the office sort of cold called the equivalent of just walking into the office and seeing if there were any available jobs. There were not. I think I did that maybe five to 10 more times. Eventually, there was an opening to interview for Sean Parker's personal assistant. He was at the time I think the president. I did interview and I did not get the job. A few months later I found out about a marketing role that was available. And one interesting thing I haven't really talked about was I got an offer from Facebook. I also got a competing offer from LinkedIn, and so at that time I made the choice to go to Facebook because I was interested in the social networking aspect of it. Why was I so bullish on this website at the time it was www.thefacebook.com. Why was I so excited about this thing? I think it's because I definitely saw that there was product market fit. I saw that students at Stanford were obsessed with it, but it also had a long list of colleges that were really excited and on the waiting list to be accepted onto Facebook, and so there was this product market fit piece and also a huge demand from other audiences, other colleges, but our younger brothers and sisters were also sort of interested about Facebook and it seemed like it had this much broader appeal. So that's what happened. I got the marketing job. Cheryl also talks about when you are on getting a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. That was my foot in the door and here we are 19 years later. I was just going to say that that's such a good example of what she recommends of if you can get a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask which seat. And I love the Sean Parker piece. I did not know that. That's hilarious. What a different life would've been if you got that job and went down that track. So a couple of takeaways here for people that are trying to pick where to work, what I love about your story is one is you just had so much. You just had confidence that this business would work and you just knew that you wanted to get on this rocket ship. You saw attraction. So that told you I guess that added to this confidence that this was going to work out. And then you said that you walked into the office kind of cold, not even cold emailing or calling, but cold arriving. Five to 10 times you said?…

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