Evidence receipt / recommendation
Published · transcript-backedRecommends Steve Jobs. Recommends Elon Musk book. Recommends Hard Thing About Hard Things.
1 Jun 2025 Lenny's Podcast Why Uber’s CPO delivers food on weekends | Sachin Kansal
“Maybe a boring answer, but these are the books I believe in. I recommended the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson. I have recommended Elon Musk book. I have read the Ashlee Vance one fully. I'm in the middle of the Walter Isaacson one and I have recommended Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. These are the three books. I think that there was a period of time in Silicon Valley maybe 10 years ago, and maybe this is still true, but everyone wanted to be Steve Jobs and they thought that they can just recreate being Steve Jobs. There was this fever in the valley, and the reason why you want to listen or read that book is you need to understand the context of what makes up the entire person. Yes, the person part is important, but how they apply their own context to the products that they ship and they change the world is important because not that I or anyone else can recreate what they did or what they're doing, but take the learnings from them and see how you can apply the same principles to your context. You're not going to behave the same way that they did. You're not going to build products the same way that they did, but you're going to give it your absolute freaking best because that's what your end users deserve and you're not going to compromise on that. That's sort of what my takeaway is, and I think that takeaway is extremely strong in the books that I talk about. And the Ben Horowitz book, it goes back to my concept of resilience. Some people have this really optimistic view of how life is in the corporate world or in the product world or in the CEO office. It's not so. These are lonely jobs, these are hard things, and how do you persist through that? I felt that that book was amazing at teaching me that.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Sachin Kansal
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- recommendation
- Recorded
- 1 Jun 2025
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…Number one, what are two or three books that you have recommended most to other people? Maybe a boring answer, but these are the books I believe in. I recommended the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson. I have recommended Elon Musk book. I have read the Ashlee Vance one fully. I'm in the middle of the Walter Isaacson one and I have recommended Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. These are the three books. I think that there was a period of time in Silicon Valley maybe 10 years ago, and maybe this is still true, but everyone wanted to be Steve Jobs and they thought that they can just recreate being Steve Jobs. There was this fever in the valley, and the reason why you want to listen or read that book is you need to understand the context of what makes up the entire person. Yes, the person part is important, but how they apply their own context to the products that they ship and they change the world is important because not that I or anyone else can recreate what they did or what they're doing, but take the learnings from them and see how you can apply the same principles to your context. You're not going to behave the same way that they did. You're not going to build products the same way that they did, but you're going to give it your absolute freaking best because that's what your end users deserve and you're not going to compromise on that. That's sort of what my takeaway is, and I think that takeaway is extremely strong in the books that I talk about. And the Ben Horowitz book, it goes back to my concept of resilience. Some people have this really optimistic view of how life is in the corporate world or in the product world or in the CEO office. It's not so. These are lonely jobs, these are hard things, and how do you persist through that? I felt that that book was amazing at teaching me that. Amazing. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show?…
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