Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…It took a while to build those relationships. I talked earlier about Bangaly Kaba who sort of helped me figure out how to grow Slack even though he wasn't working outside, but helped me have the frameworks. I talked about Lawrence Ripsher. He helped me discover my strengths and also how to lean into them. Aaron Teague is another friend and mentor who brought me to Google, actually. And there's also Bradley Horowitz, former VP of Google Photos, also helped me in terms of how do you think about leadership and so on. Many other folks, Nikhyl Singhal, VP at Meta helped me with PM career. So, lots of mentors for sure. Okay, that's the killer list. Two questions. One, what do you look for in a mentor when you're trying to find someone to work with? And then two, how do you actually find these people? Most people listening are like, "Wow, I would love an amazing mentor to help me in my career. I don't know how to find one. " What advice do you have for folks to finding a mentor? I look for two things. One is, are you good at one specific thing I'm trying to get better at? And then two is, are you good at explaining it? Those two, at least for me, they're important. I know people are really good at their roles, at their job and at the subject, but they don't actually know how they do it or they don't really want to explain or cannot explain easily. So, that's what I look for. And then in terms of where I find these people, it's really everywhere. If you look at the list I mentioned earlier, Bangaly I met at an event. Facebook had a recruiting event, I showed up, I see this guy, I'm like, "Oh. Hi." Chat a little bit. I talked about Lawrence, who's now a close friend. I met Lawrence at a dinner. He organized a dinner for underrepresented PMs, we chatted, one thing led to the other, and then he became a mentor and friend. Bradley was at a fundraiser. And Nikhyl was an intro via email. Somebody was like, "Oh, you should meet Nikhyl." I know this sounds counterintuitive. I don't think the hard part is where to find them; it's more about finding the right person and then how do you get a foot in? Now, what I've seen... A lot of people, sometimes they get mentors who are too senior or who don't actually think about the topic they're interested in. Maybe they did five years ago, but once you find the right person, the key is like, "How do you have that initial conversation? How do you get the foot in the door?" And what I've found is you should make the smallest ask possible, which is the opposite of what 95% of people do. 95% of people is like, "Hey, I've never met you, but I heard your talk or I saw you on LinkedIn or whatever. Can we set up a call?" That's like a big ask. What I do... For example, there's this person who came to Slack, he was head of product of a major company and then he gave a talk about different methods to improve products. He had this concept of finding the heat for products. He spoke at the company, I got his email, and I reached out in the evening and I was like, "Hey, thanks so much for speaking today. We talked about finding the heat for products. Is there an example of product that you think was created with this approach?" Something he could answer in literally two minutes via email? That was my question. It wasn't like, "Hey, you talked. Now, I feel entitled to meet with you." But then the key is once you get that foot in the door, it could be a quick email, a tweet, a quick chat at an event, that sort of thing, and you get some advice that's useful, the key is to circle back with them at a later point and show that you've actually made good use of the advice. I think that's the thing nobody does. What I would do... For example, there's currently the CEO of a top tech company I met an event. She spoke there and then she gave some advice that was useful. I emailed her a follow-up type thing and then she gave me advice about how to rethink the mission statement for my nonprofit, all via email.…

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