Lenny Rachitsky: commitment

Transcript context

…Yeah, it's for design-driven college students. I think one thing to call out is that one of my focuses in the early years was to ensure that this is for, not just capital D designers, but design driven students. So, we also took engineers who are very design minded and marketers who are very design minded, et cetera, because of that core belief that the most innovative solutions will come out of people that are operating at this intersectionality. Okay. So we've talked about all kinds of things you're amazing at. Before we transition to what you've learned about just building new stuff at larger companies, which you're very good at, can you just bullet point the skills you find you're not good at? I said we would come to this. What do you think you're not good at? And we won't go too deep here, unless you want. So it's interesting, because I think that there are many things that we talked about that are actually a double-edged sword in practice. So, let's start with the conviction piece. I think that the good thing about being high conviction is that you're able to sell forward and to get people to feel strongly about something and a next step in the future. I think the downside of that is if there is less of a history of working together, there might be skepticism about like, "Oh, are you just pushing something because you believe in it? Or are you pushing something because our users actually needed it?" And so, in those moments, it becomes really important to constantly be highlighting user proof points. I think, the second is scrappiness. So, I think I have a very high ability to thrive in ambiguity and to pull things together last minute. So, for example, it's very common that I am editing a product review deck minutes before we are about to present, or that I haven't started until the night before and stay up until 3:00 AM to do it. And this is somewhat fine. But then, I think that other people don't always love it, because they're like, "Hey, maybe let's start earlier next time." I get that. The third piece would be I get very consumed by the details of something. And I think in a lot of instances, this is great. Also, at a certain point, sometimes you want to defer those decisions. And so, that's also an important skill to learn.…

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