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Matt MacInnis

Published podcast speaker

Claims
16
Episodes
1
Shows
1
Named items
3

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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book / recommends

The Effective Executive

“Okay. Two or three books. You give me a heads-up on this. So one book is Conscious Business. I don't have Conscious Business in front of me because it's actually at the office because we have Conscious Business Reading Club at Rippling. And every member of my current, my product leadership team is going through this right now, Conscious Business, Fred Kofman. It's been used in many businesses, LinkedIn most notably, as a framework for thinking about ... effectively, it's a user manual for human beings. So if you are a leader, a manager, an executive, whatever, particularly younger people in their 20s and 30s who are just sort of getting the hang of being a CEO or a product leader for the first time, this book is absolute fucking gold. It was recommended to me by Bryan Schreier at Sequoia when he was on my board at my previous company. I took way too long to take him up on the advice, wished I had read it sooner. Highly recommend Conscious Business. Changes your life. Number two, Thinking in Systems, Donna Meadows. I always mispronounce her name, Donella Meadows. She died partway through writing this manuscript. Her fellow professors picked it up and finished it for her. It is the best generic framework for thinking about how systems work. You will extrapolate from this book to every aspect of your life after you read it. And then the third is classic 1960s, The Effective Executive. It's an anachronism. It uses weird pronouns for the secretary and the executive. I'll let you guess which ones. But the book itself is so chock-full of simple enduring advice on how to be effective at leading teams. And the good shit is the stuff that's been in print for 70 years, and that's one of them.”

Lenny's Podcast · 28 Dec 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Conscious Business

“Okay. Two or three books. You give me a heads-up on this. So one book is Conscious Business. I don't have Conscious Business in front of me because it's actually at the office because we have Conscious Business Reading Club at Rippling. And every member of my current, my product leadership team is going through this right now, Conscious Business, Fred Kofman. It's been used in many businesses, LinkedIn most notably, as a framework for thinking about ... effectively, it's a user manual for human beings. So if you are a leader, a manager, an executive, whatever, particularly younger people in their 20s and 30s who are just sort of getting the hang of being a CEO or a product leader for the first time, this book is absolute fucking gold. It was recommended to me by Bryan Schreier at Sequoia when he was on my board at my previous company. I took way too long to take him up on the advice, wished I had read it sooner. Highly recommend Conscious Business. Changes your life. Number two, Thinking in Systems, Donna Meadows. I always mispronounce her name, Donella Meadows. She died partway through writing this manuscript. Her fellow professors picked it up and finished it for her. It is the best generic framework for thinking about how systems work. You will extrapolate from this book to every aspect of your life after you read it. And then the third is classic 1960s, The Effective Executive. It's an anachronism. It uses weird pronouns for the secretary and the executive. I'll let you guess which ones. But the book itself is so chock-full of simple enduring advice on how to be effective at leading teams. And the good shit is the stuff that's been in print for 70 years, and that's one of them.”

Lenny's Podcast · 28 Dec 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Thinking in Systems

“Okay. Two or three books. You give me a heads-up on this. So one book is Conscious Business. I don't have Conscious Business in front of me because it's actually at the office because we have Conscious Business Reading Club at Rippling. And every member of my current, my product leadership team is going through this right now, Conscious Business, Fred Kofman. It's been used in many businesses, LinkedIn most notably, as a framework for thinking about ... effectively, it's a user manual for human beings. So if you are a leader, a manager, an executive, whatever, particularly younger people in their 20s and 30s who are just sort of getting the hang of being a CEO or a product leader for the first time, this book is absolute fucking gold. It was recommended to me by Bryan Schreier at Sequoia when he was on my board at my previous company. I took way too long to take him up on the advice, wished I had read it sooner. Highly recommend Conscious Business. Changes your life. Number two, Thinking in Systems, Donna Meadows. I always mispronounce her name, Donella Meadows. She died partway through writing this manuscript. Her fellow professors picked it up and finished it for her. It is the best generic framework for thinking about how systems work. You will extrapolate from this book to every aspect of your life after you read it. And then the third is classic 1960s, The Effective Executive. It's an anachronism. It uses weird pronouns for the secretary and the executive. I'll let you guess which ones. But the book itself is so chock-full of simple enduring advice on how to be effective at leading teams. And the good shit is the stuff that's been in print for 70 years, and that's one of them.”

Lenny's Podcast · 28 Dec 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Matt said.

5 transcript-backed records

02 / belief

You have to apply the same frameworks and concepts to get people to achieve goals together. But one thing that is absolutely universal that I think we, honestly, I think we forget it in Silicon Valley or a lot of people don't sort of internalize it, is that if you want to accomplish something truly extraordinary, if you want to be in the 99th percentile in terms of outcomes, it's going to be really difficult.

“You have to apply the same frameworks and concepts to get people to achieve goals together. But one thing that is absolutely universal that I think we, honestly, I think we forget it in Silicon Valley or a lot of people don't sort of internalize it, is that if you want to accomplish something truly extraordinary, if you want to be in the 99th percentile in terms of outcomes, it's going to be really difficult.”
Speaker
Matt MacInnis
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

The system is there to take advantage of the people who don't, or at least it is the easiest prey for the incentive structures, not for venture capitalists as individual people who are beautiful and all of them are just really wonderful people. It's just that the incentive structures lead to some real harm, I think, in certain cases.

“The system is there to take advantage of the people who don't, or at least it is the easiest prey for the incentive structures, not for venture capitalists as individual people who are beautiful and all of them are just really wonderful people. It's just that the incentive structures lead to some real harm, I think, in certain cases.”
Speaker
Matt MacInnis
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / belief

We've spent a lot of time talking about intensity and the grind, and the need to just always be operating at the 99th percentile. And I think if you listen to that in a vacuum, it's very easy to believe that that intensity is soul crushing, that it's a negative, that it's maybe not something that you want.

“We've spent a lot of time talking about intensity and the grind, and the need to just always be operating at the 99th percentile. And I think if you listen to that in a vacuum, it's very easy to believe that that intensity is soul crushing, that it's a negative, that it's maybe not something that you want.”
Speaker
Matt MacInnis
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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