Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…When I started out my product career, I actually joined as a RPM, or rotational product manager, at Meta, which was effectively a program that brought together new grad PMs, so people who had zero PM experience and taught them how to be PMs. And, in the beginning of this program, we had a series of conversations with leaders across the company. And, one particularly notable conversation was with Julie Zhu, who was the first ever intern at Meta and the VP of design. And, she was giving us feedback and advice about how to draft compelling product strategy, etc. And, something she said that has stuck with me throughout my entire product career is that when two people disagree about product strategy, it is because they have different assumptions. Because, if you have the same assumptions, there is no reason why a person should think, "We should do X versus we should do Y." And so, it's like, "Okay, how does this relate to what you were just asking about feeling deeply and caring about what you're building?" I think that it's really important to not just build a roadmap because it's handed to you, or not just build an idea because it's handed to you. I think that you need to understand in the event that it's a top-down strategy, what are the assumptions that led to folks believing that that is the right idea? And then, if it is you pushing something bottoms up, you need to be able to ensure that everyone else has the same assumptions that you have in your head that leads them to believe deeply or not believe deeply. And I think what's really important is that people can, to Carl's point, gauge someone is about a project. And, my take is that, the more you believe in an idea, the more natural it is to be passionate about it. I imagine people listening to this will feel like, "Oh shit, I don't really love what I'm working on. I don't work at Figma. I don't have the best of most amazing products." Maybe it's hard to get excited about stuff. Is there anything you could share there? Just say you're working on something that you're not so passionate about, is it a fine thing, keep searching, or is it just figure out something you're excited about? Any advice there for someone in that boat? My first piece of advice would be to not just think about the scope of what you are working on as the thing that happens to be in flight at any given moment. But, if you're working in a company, take a step back, understand the vision of that company, and understand your users, and understand if there's anything in that space that you are passionate about. I think it's quite easy to believe that the project that you're working on is your scope. My take is that your scope is the world, and to the extent that you can figure out does the idea that you're passionate about fall within your company, versus fall outside of your company, that should guide the next steps in your career. And so, I think that potentially common misconception is that founding something is just for capital F founders, but I think that anyone can found something. You can found something inside of an existing company, you can found something from scratch. And, there are different reasons why you would do each, right? The reasons why you would found inside of an existing company is if you think that there is a distribution advantage that you want to take advantage of, if there is a technical or platform advantage that you want to take advantage of. Or, there's also a reality which is it's slightly less risk. So, depending on what your risk tolerance is, you can figure out what makes sense. There are things that are harder inside of an existing company, right? It's harder to take an executive decision. You actually cannot take an executive decision. You need to receive buy-in on every single decision that you make. Sometimes it's harder to move faster. And then sometimes, there are things that are just different when you're starting inside of an existing company, versus starting something outright. So the things that are different is building a team is quite different. The way that you recruit and the set of folks that you can recruit from, that composition is quite different. And then, the way that you pitch and who you are pitching to is quite different. And so, I think that sometimes, yeah, it makes sense to found inside of a company and to use that to make your flame burn, right? Sometimes it makes sense to found outright. But I think that the first key to being passionate about what you're working on is to find an idea that you're passionate about.…

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