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Lenny Rachitsky: preference

21 May 2023 Lenny's Podcast Lessons from scaling Spotify: The science of product, taking risky bets, and how AI is already impacting the future of music | Gustav Söderström (Co-President, CPO, and CTO at Spotify)

“I really like that philosophy. Essentially, it's the idea of strong opinions loosely held.”

— Lenny Rachitsky

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
preference
Recorded
21 May 2023
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

Transcript context

…Gustav Söderström Well, the feeds, we tested, but the home feed, we rolled out and tested afterwards. And we tested out on users, a few different variants of it. And then we got the data back and we looked more at the quantitative data. And we do a lot of user research where people sit and use the feeds to understand and build our own theorem mind of what is working and what is not working. And then, obviously, you look at user feedback, of course, and some users are very good at expressing what is of it that isn't working, others are not as good as expressing what isn't working. So it can be hard to parse that, but certainly, that's a factor as well. Gustav Söderström And so then once you do that, then you have quantitative data to look at. And then you sit in recent through, what do you think is right and wrong? What are the different hypotheses? What is working, what is not working? And then just update and test again and again until you prove or disprove your hypothesis. Trying to be as scientific as possible about it. And also I think the biggest risk also when you've invested so much time in something is getting precious about things. You have to just be brutal. You have to believe in things 100% until the data says no and then you believe in something else 100%. That sounds easy. It's very hard to do, to the extent that people get upset when you do it because, for some reason, people don't like when people change their minds. It is what we should want from everyone. I would love a politician who said, "I'd looked at the data and I realized actually this is right and now I believe this." But we hate politicians that do that. They feel untrustworthy and we ridicule them. Gustav Söderström So I think that's the biggest risk with anyone. You just have to be unemotional and just look at the proof and the data. And then if you do that, you just move on and then you get to where you want to be, and you solve the same problem but you adapt. I really like that philosophy. Essentially, it's the idea of strong opinions loosely held. Is that- Gustav Söderström Exactly. Exactly what it is. And it sounds so easy, but it's hard.…

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