Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…I'm a big believer of what Claire Hughes Johnson, who was COO at Stripe, used to share with us, which is there is a concept of a work-life blend and sort of making sure that you're working at a company that has three components. I think first and foremost is always people. So, are the people that you're surrounding yourself with ones that push your thinking, who are kind, who are genuinely interesting people to spend your hours with? Because you're spending a vast majority of your time with them. The second to me is product, right? Do you go to sleep thinking about the product, waking up, wanting to put it into the hands of more people because you know it is going to be good for them or useful to them? I'm not one of those marketers who can pick up any product and market it. I have to have that conviction behind the product itself. And then third is sort of potential, right? Not just potential for the company to do well, but potential for your discipline to have an impact on the trajectory of the company. And so when you have that kind of potent combination, it can really change your perspective on what's draining, what's energizing. But being very self-aware of what gives you energy is also very helpful to align with the needs of the company, also. Let's shift to talking about Thrive, which is where you work now, and talk about what your role is. And what's interesting, I think, about this role is you get to work now with a bunch of different startups instead of go really deep with one. So share what you do there. And then, what are some things you've learned there so far from a perspective for marketing? Yeah, surprisingly, more people know about Thrive these days than used to even just a few years ago. Thrive's a very unique type of investment company. And sometimes, when I made the leap, people used to ask me, "Oh, was this always in your ambition to make the leap into the investment side of the house?" And I can honestly say it wasn't. But I think being at a firm like Thrive really gives you a very different perspective and it strengthens your ability to be a stronger operator, whether that's in marketing or go-to market or strategic finance, or whatever other pillar within the company there is. Yeah, Thrive's mission is to be the most meaningful partner to founders. And so there's a lot of high-concentration, high-conviction investments each year. And Thrive is also unique in that it's a network of builders, and so they are really pulling their investment strategies from having been founders themselves. So my role at the company is to help our entire portfolio with all of their marketing needs, so sometimes it means being interim CMO for some portion of time until they find a great leader to fill that seat. Sometimes it means pressure testing their strategy and making sure that their growth targets are ambitious enough. Sometimes it means looking at a Figma file for a landing page that's going out the next day and making sure the words are as good as they can be. And that variety across a bunch of industries, a bunch of stages of companies, everything from a company that hasn't even been incorporated yet, all the way to Databricks and Stripe and OpenAI when it comes to the types of organizations that we work with. And in the end, the variety of domains can range from consumer to healthcare, to defense, to B2B SaaS, to AI. So it is a variety pack in the best way possible.…

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