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Bret Taylor

Published podcast speaker

Claims
73
Episodes
3
Shows
3
Named items
2

Books, apps, and tools

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book / recommends

Endurance

“I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but probably if I had to pick one in the area of the topics we talked about, Competing Against Luck, which was the book that produced Jobs to be Done, which is a framework I really believe in. My only critique is I think most of these business books should be like an article. So maybe buy the book and punch it into ChatGPT and get the summary. But buy the book it's Clayton Christensen talked about it, but it's a really good framework for thinking about delivering value with your products. And I think it definitely influenced me. Actually one book I do recommend is Endurance, which is the story of Shackleton's trip to go to the South Pole. Half the book is him starving to death and eating seal meat with his crew of people frozen in their boat. I've never seen a better story of grit in my entire life. It's remarkable that it's a true story and if you're an entrepreneur going through a hard time, read that, you'd be like, okay, it could be worse. It's a great book too. It's just remarkable that it's a true story.”

Lenny's Podcast · 31 Jul 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Competing Against Luck

“I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but probably if I had to pick one in the area of the topics we talked about, Competing Against Luck, which was the book that produced Jobs to be Done, which is a framework I really believe in. My only critique is I think most of these business books should be like an article. So maybe buy the book and punch it into ChatGPT and get the summary. But buy the book it's Clayton Christensen talked about it, but it's a really good framework for thinking about delivering value with your products. And I think it definitely influenced me. Actually one book I do recommend is Endurance, which is the story of Shackleton's trip to go to the South Pole. Half the book is him starving to death and eating seal meat with his crew of people frozen in their boat. I've never seen a better story of grit in my entire life. It's remarkable that it's a true story and if you're an entrepreneur going through a hard time, read that, you'd be like, okay, it could be worse. It's a great book too. It's just remarkable that it's a true story.”

Lenny's Podcast · 31 Jul 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Bret said.

13 transcript-backed records

01 / evaluation

One of the challenges when you're offering either sales or service or customer experience to a really well-known brand is it's harder to ground it. It's actually easier when the internet has never heard of you and you want to make a well-grounded agent, it's actually pretty easy because there's no temptation from the LLMs to go off-script.

“One of the challenges when you're offering either sales or service or customer experience to a really well-known brand is it's harder to ground it. It's actually easier when the internet has never heard of you and you want to make a well-grounded agent, it's actually pretty easy because there's no temptation from the LLMs to go off-script.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

03 / evaluation

" The answer is obviously yes, over some period of time. But it's really interesting because sometimes, I think the hard part of engineering is in the details, and code repos have very specific qualities.

“" The answer is obviously yes, over some period of time. But it's really interesting because sometimes, I think the hard part of engineering is in the details, and code repos have very specific qualities.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

04 / evaluation

We just did a great case study with SoFi, and I'm really proud that we raised their net promoter score by 33 points just because it's just so delightful.

“We just did a great case study with SoFi, and I'm really proud that we raised their net promoter score by 33 points just because it's just so delightful.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

05 / evaluation

I don't know. It's interesting because if you look at the past few iterations of technology, you had the PC revolution, then you had the internet and the browser, then the smartphone came out and the tablet.

“I don't know. It's interesting because if you look at the past few iterations of technology, you had the PC revolution, then you had the internet and the browser, then the smartphone came out and the tablet.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Cheeky Pint

06 / evaluation

This works if your product is a platform product. It doesn't work, for example, if your product is trying to help a line of business because lines of business typically don't have dedicated engineering teams or let alone, the latitude to just go download a new library or start using a web service like that.

“This works if your product is a platform product. It doesn't work, for example, if your product is trying to help a line of business because lines of business typically don't have dedicated engineering teams or let alone, the latitude to just go download a new library or start using a web service like that.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / evaluation

We ended up integrating mapping local search, driving directions, like all of these products at the time were actually separate product categories and ended up with something that redefined the industry and certainly my career. But it took, I think for me as a product leader, it changed the way I think about product just because there's feature and functionality and then there's like why should I use this thing in the first place?

“We ended up integrating mapping local search, driving directions, like all of these products at the time were actually separate product categories and ended up with something that redefined the industry and certainly my career. But it took, I think for me as a product leader, it changed the way I think about product just because there's feature and functionality and then there's like why should I use this thing in the first place?”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / evaluation

We launched the first version of that product that I was the product manager for, was called Google Local and it was, I'll be a little bit more critical now than I might've been at the time, but it was a little bit of a me too version of Yahoo Yellow Pages, essentially grafting on Yellow Pages search on top of Google Search and with a properly crafted query you could see those listings at the top of your search results but a standalone site at local.

“We launched the first version of that product that I was the product manager for, was called Google Local and it was, I'll be a little bit more critical now than I might've been at the time, but it was a little bit of a me too version of Yahoo Yellow Pages, essentially grafting on Yellow Pages search on top of Google Search and with a properly crafted query you could see those listings at the top of your search results but a standalone site at local.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / evaluation

How do you teach kids differently? It's really hard for teachers right now because I think we haven't gone through the transition of adding calculators to the exams.

“How do you teach kids differently? It's really hard for teachers right now because I think we haven't gone through the transition of adding calculators to the exams.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / evaluation

Broadly, but I, but it doesn't reduce my excitement about what is the reactive building agents kind of thing, just because it is, it is the right question to ask, but I think we'll probably play out probably an open source space more than anything else.

“Broadly, but I, but it doesn't reduce my excitement about what is the reactive building agents kind of thing, just because it is, it is the right question to ask, but I think we'll probably play out probably an open source space more than anything else.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Latent Space

11 / evaluation

I'm not really a 50, 50 ball. So I feel very fortunate in retrospect that the economy collapsed because in some ways it forced me into like one of the greatest companies of all time, but I kind of lucked into it, I think.

“I'm not really a 50, 50 ball. So I feel very fortunate in retrospect that the economy collapsed because in some ways it forced me into like one of the greatest companies of all time, but I kind of lucked into it, I think.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Latent Space

12 / evaluation

This is so amazing. And I wouldn't, I don't know if I'd be, I wouldn't, I'm not [01:20:00] sure I would have started another company if not for open AI, kind of inspiring the world with chat GPT, maybe I would have, I don't know, but it was like, it had a very significant impact on you, all of us, I think.

“This is so amazing. And I wouldn't, I don't know if I'd be, I wouldn't, I'm not [01:20:00] sure I would have started another company if not for open AI, kind of inspiring the world with chat GPT, maybe I would have, I don't know, but it was like, it had a very significant impact on you, all of us, I think.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Latent Space

13 / evaluation

How much does a latte cost? And I bring it up because there's a supply chain from growing [00:30:00] coffee beans to roasting coffee beans to like, you know, you could make one at home or you could be in the airport and buy one and the margins of the company selling lattes in the airport is a lot higher than the, you know, people roasting the coffee beans and it's because you've actually solved a much more acute human problem in the airport.

“How much does a latte cost? And I bring it up because there's a supply chain from growing [00:30:00] coffee beans to roasting coffee beans to like, you know, you could make one at home or you could be in the airport and buy one and the margins of the company selling lattes in the airport is a lot higher than the, you know, people roasting the coffee beans and it's because you've actually solved a much more acute human problem in the airport.”
Speaker
Bret Taylor
Publisher
Latent Space
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