Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, is a founder and governance thinker focused on protecting company mission. He discusses why success creates "financial gravity," how legal structures like Public Benefit Corporations guard purpose, timing protections early, and real-world governance examples that keep companies true to their values.

Max Schoening, Notion’s Head of Product and former Google, Heroku, and GitHub leader, dives into why agency matters more than skills as AI reshapes work. He explores getting designers and PMs to prototype in code, the idea that the first draft is now almost free, malleable software, tiny-core products, and why the SaaS apocalypse is overhyped.

Evan Spiegel, Snap co-founder and CEO, joins to talk about building one of social media’s rare long-lasting platforms. He digs into why distribution now matters more than product alone. He shares how tiny flat teams generate ideas fast. They explore copycat features, hardware as a stronger moat, AI changing design work, and why human comfort may limit AI more than the tech itself.

Cat Wu, Head of Product for Claude Code at Anthropic and a former engineer, breaks down how AI teams speed from months to days. She talks about hiring PMs with product taste, cutting process in favor of principles and metrics, building for models that are not fully ready yet, using model self-critique, and why Claude’s personality gives it an edge.

Nikhyl Singhal, founder of The Skip and former product exec at Meta and Google, gets candid about why product careers are entering a chaotic AI-first reset. He talks about builder PMs pulling ahead, why judgment matters more than fancy logos, the trap of mid-career reinvention, “smiling exhaustion,” and finding small moments of joy with AI before the market fully reshapes.

Keith Rabois, Khosla Ventures managing director and former PayPal, Square, and LinkedIn leader, brings sharp takes on hiring, startup speed, and AI. He digs into barrels vs. ammunition, why undiscovered talent matters, why product management is fading, why consumer customer interviews can backfire, and how AI is reshaping content, design, and company building.

Amol Avasare, Head of Growth at Anthropic and former founder, shares the wild story behind Claude’s meteoric rise. He gets into cold emailing his way into the company, automating growth experiments with AI, why activation became the biggest challenge, when extra friction can boost conversion, and how coding focus sparked a powerful research flywheel.

Simon Willison, Django co-creator and AI-focused developer-blogger, maps where AI coding is headed. He digs into the inflection point for coding agents, the rise of dark factories, and why mid-career engineers may feel the squeeze first. They also explore AI-fueled mental overload, phone-first coding, prompt injection risks, and the oddly famous pelican-on-a-bicycle benchmark.

Claire Vo, former product and engineering leader, ChatPRD founder, and AI tinkerer, shares how OpenClaw turned her from skeptic to superfan. She talks about deleted calendars, safe setup on spare machines, building specialized agents for family logistics, sales, podcast prep, and course ops, plus why memory, onboarding, and browser workarounds make the system feel surprisingly alive.

Jessica Fain, a product leader at Webflow and former Slack chief of staff, gets into why great ideas fail without buy-in. She explores how executives make decisions, why the first minute of a meeting matters, and how to disagree without becoming political. They also dig into presenting options, aligning with company strategy, and why AI makes influence even more valuable.