Speakers in the public record
Claim mix
belief 6recommendation 3prediction 3evaluation 3preference 2
Evidence policy
Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.
Claim ledger
The useful parts, with receipts.
17 published records
“I really love A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. That book to me is so interesting because I'm a bit of a nerd around science, I used to read a lot of fiction growing up too. And I think weirdly enough, Bill tells this story of the history of science really and how we know the things that we know, and he kind of tells it from the perspective of learning about the scientists that discovered these things. So for instance, you learn that Newton was kind of an asshole to the co-workers he had, or Darwin wasn't maybe perceived as such an amazing scientist at the time. And a lot of these scientists, their discoveries don't become famous. It's almost like being an artist, where you realize the relevance of a scientist's discovery years later at times. And people don't get credit for things that they discovered. So to me, it was really interesting to one, read more about the scale of the universe and how long we've been here. And I think it just puts a lot of things into perspective of our time here, how we spend it. And even the age we're living in now with AI, it's such a blip in the cosmic scale. And then you also get these really fun anecdotes from scientists along the way. So that one I recommend to almost everyone, because it's a pretty easy read as well. And then I think another one, which is maybe a little bit more in the career lens, is this book called Designing Your Life, which is written by actually one of the founders of IDEO, and these folks are Stanford professors in the Design Lab. And what's really powerful about this for me is it's actually pretty practical. So it comes with exercises that I remember I did myself as well when I wasn't sure which direction to go in my career, that helped me really figure out, the most powerful exercise and take away from this book for me was basically in the first or second chapter I think, you write out one page on the meaning of work to you and what does work mean? Is it a way for me to make money? Is it a way for me to feel fulfilled with what I do or how I spend my time? And then you write out one page on the meaning of life. And what's really powerful is it's really, really hard to do those two things, and then you have to find the overlap between the two. And I think that exercise is so clarifying and I recommend it to anyone when they feel stuck in their career, because it can at least, coming back to the energy point, can give you a direction to go even if you're not sure how to get there just yet. And so I love both of those books because they're really shifting from a perspective standpoint.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“One is if I think about the Venn diagram of some of the most interesting trends in product right now, you're kind of at the center of AI and staying IC, an individual contributor, for a long time.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“Actually, I'll steal this one a little bit from our friend Kevin Yien, who I think he had this advice when he was on your pod, which really resonated with me actually at a personal level, which is you have to be able to walk and chew gum.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think the thought I'll leave people with is I'll respond to anyone that messages me, but I do have one condition there, which is if you're cold emailing, cold messaging, kind of coming back to how to stand out, I think there was this note from John Dory, spoke at the college I went to, and he put his email up on the board and his note was, "I'll email anyone who emails me as long as you send me your top three favorite books, movies, podcasts, or videos that impacted you in some way, and I'll do the same for you.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I feel like as a metaphor of walking and chewing gum, doesn't communicate the difficulty of Kevin's, now that I think about it, of what he's trying to describe.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“Your organization might want to do something and you're trying to get them to do something else, and that's really the challenge in this type of role is, there is so much buzz, there is so much excitement around AI, that knowing what the right thing to build is really what this job needs to convey. So I think when you take all of that signal and you try and put it together and solve that customer problem, that's really what being a successful AI PM is at the end of the day.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think that was a crazy moment of just seeing how many people piled onto that, those posts, and then some of our discussion back and forth on this thread. And I thought it was super interesting, it was this combination of product and AI where just happens to be, I think where the space is headed or what seems to be catching so much attention.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“That would not have been possible even a year ago. And I think the way that the technology is, trending is things will keep getting easier, and as a product manager, your curiosity is going to keep pushing you forward so that you can be the person out there saying, hey, did you see this cool thing that I just pulled up?”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I made a point earlier of, it's become easier to break into product management to some degree if you can use these tools, and now you have all these tools at your disposal to go build the next prototype, but I think the bar just got higher for product managers within a company and what the impact needs to be.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think that there's a feeling that executives might have or VPs of companies might have of like we need to get into AI, but the challenge is that there's this inclination towards doing the same thing that's working so far. And so I think the role of an AI PM in this type of organization is really to be the representative of how can we use these tools to their highest leverage.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think if you really look at it, I actually bring up Yuriy's point again because I was listening to that episode, I thought that was so insightful of he gets so many emails every single day of, we're AI for this, we're building an AI agent for that.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think if you're really trying to solve that particular problem, you'd probably build something closer to like DoorDash, which is just you press a button and food shows up.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think that becomes so much more approachable with tools like Midjourney, or even DALL-E and it's really at your fingertips to how well can you prompt this thing to get you the output that you want.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“Because if you're a consumer and you're trying out technology and you're trying out AI technology and trying to push the boundaries of what's possible, I think you can have that light bulb aha moment of, I can take this thing that kind of feels like it's early but it could be something here, and go take it to my team and say maybe it's possible for us to use this thing.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“It almost feels a little bit like AI will be as common as the database to some degree for SaaS applications. And so I think that's really where if you really break it down, I kind of see in the future, in the near future, most PMs are probably going to be one flavor of an AI product manager, either building tools for other PMs or other companies that are deploying AI.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“I think the same thing is true for AI product managers, meaning you're really trying to design the best customer experience and really solve your customers' problems. And I think if you are obsessed with that and you spend time just trying to realize, what would an ideal experience look like that I'm trying to solve, you'll find tools along the way to help unbox really that problem.”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
“The signal can be super sparse you get back at times too. And then what you can do is there's really powerful tools, we use Gong for instance to understand what are maybe prospects or really engineers, to me it's like potential customers, what are they talking about?”
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast