Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedLenny Rachitsky: evaluation
3 May 2026 Lenny's Podcast Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)
“I heard you've also talk about just being first doesn't matter that much either.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Lenny Rachitsky
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 3 May 2026
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…Yeah. Git Push Heroku master was just this very simple one-liner that went from the thing on my computer, now I have a URL, and that's so intoxicating that everything else flows from there. Dropbox is a great one. I think Dropbox is such an interesting study where it was the little menu bar icon that was so good at syncing that you could even use it as a symbol for, do I have internet or not? Because it was better at figuring out whether you had an internet connection than your Mac itself. And it was just, that's the job. Get out of the way and just all my files are always there. And then for years, they've tried to increase the surface area. And I kept thinking, "No, no, no, push it back. I don't want more. This is the only job I want from you. And so I think the tiny core is the thing that makes great products. And Snapchat, obviously, just the disappearing photo concept is so interesting. I heard you've also talk about just being first doesn't matter that much either. You have to be right, not first. I don't know. I mean, there are elements of, if you talk about network effects and perhaps now with training models, it doesn't make sense if you have a headstart, but I think it's overrated. I don't know. My favorite example is like Bluetooth headphones were crappy and then you have the AirPods and like, oh, they connect and so on. And they weren't the first. I don't know. They weren't the first MP3 player. They weren't the first. You just got to do it right. I don't think being first is all that useful. I think we're currently, because it's so hard to keep people's attention, we're like, "Oh, how do I go viral? How do I do the Cluely thing?" And I'm like, "Yep, durability matters." Think of like, how would you build Ikea like a generational company that is not concerning itself with whatever is trending on Twitter today?…
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