Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Absolutely. A lot. But in summary, have a coach teach you. I had many false starts myself with meditation, trying the various apps, learning from books. None of it really worked for me. What worked was having one-on-one teaching from someone themselves who had been taught one-on-one, the yogic or the Raj tradition of teaching. And this person in particular had also been a venture-backed founder multiple times over. And so they're very well aware of the kinds of stresses that I tend to be under. And all of his clients are mostly in technology as well. If you're in the Bay Area, this person's name is Laurent Valasek, and they run an institution called the Peak Leadership Institute. And this is all about how we can live a more integrated and whole life, integrating wellness practices like meditation, but for the purpose of unlocking peak performance in life and in business. Thank you for sharing that. That is very actionable. We're going to link to that in the show notes. OK, I'm going to try to bring us back on course. The other thing you mentioned that I think is really interesting is hiring a president. A lot of founders and leaders might be hearing this and be like going from eight reports and doing all these things I don't want to spending most of my time on the product and design and marketing. Amazing. What did this president take off your plate and what is their responsibility and that allowed you to do the stuff you wanted to do? The biggest thing was taking off the operations and the management of the executive team and the rest of the company. So think of the president role in Superhuman as an operationally extremely challenging and very growthful role. It's perfect for someone who wants to go on to be a CEO in their next role. And instead of... hiring and firing that team instead of managing and setting their goals instead of the accountability conversations someone else is now doing that in addition because that's not the only job in addition they're also a very strong thought partner when it comes to corporate strategy when it comes to where do we take Act one, our email product. How far do we go down the multiplayer path? How aggressively should we lean into AI? What's a reasonable gross margin in a world with AI? Are we, from a financial perspective, okay dipping now and then coming back later? When should we start building our second product? How do we think about our R&D strategy? Should we keep on hiring in the Bay Area or as we've done for many of our recent hires, should we continue hiring in Latin America? Should we consider other time zones as well? And so on, and so on, and so on. I mean, I'm just randomly coming up with questions, but the list is truly endless. It is... Another way to think about it is it's like a... It's almost like a grown-up co-founder. The two people I co-founded the company with, Comrade and Vivek, they've long since gone from Superhuman. We're now a 10-year-old organization, and I'm one of those rare founders that is persisting and thriving, actually, 10 years in. That said... The journey never gets easier. It gets different. And you still need that co-founding energy around you. And I have a handful of people in the organization who are in their roles providing that kind of energy, that kind of input, and who thrive off doing so. And the president role is definitely one of them.…

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