From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products

Lenny Rachitsky:You built and led Facebook News Feeds. You shipped the Messenger app as its own app. You launched ChatGPT Enterprise. What's an important lesson you've learned about what it takes to succeed building something from idea to one to billions?

Peter Dang:You have to plan your chess moves out in advance. You have to really think before you act and build systems that are gonna let you go sustainably faster. What's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned? Sometimes your product actually doesn't matter. At Uber, I learned this because really the price and the ETA at Uber was the product. Looking at it from a holistic perspective, we humans consume the entirety of the product. It's not to say that you shouldn't fix the bug, but it doesn't have as much of an impact as something that is more important to people.

Lenny Rachitsky:What's one specific thing you think will change in a big way with AI that people don't think enough about?

Peter Dang:Education is gonna change. My son, he was nine at the time, built a custom GPT that you can type in any topic and it would give you a sentence that had every letter of the English alphabet. Isn't that mind blowing? I can already see his brain rewiring.

Lenny Rachitsky:What's one thing you look for in people you hire?

Peter Dang:In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person. It helps me and the person operate on a different level where the goal is not did you hit this OKR. The meta goal becomes are we calibrating enough? Are we actually getting you to a spot where in six months you're the one telling me what needs to be done?

Lenny Rachitsky:What's something you've learned about what it takes to be a great product person?

Peter Dang:I think there are five different types of product managers. Number one is

Lenny Rachitsky:Today my guest is Peter Dang. Peter is maybe the most under the radar impactful product leader that you have never heard of. I often say that the best product people are not the people on Twitter and LinkedIn sharing advice but the people who don't have time to do that because they are too busy doing the work. Peter is the epitome of this. He was VP of Product at OpenAI where he oversaw product design and engineering for ChatGPT and helped ship ChatGPT Enterprise, voice, memory, desktop, custom GPTs and more. He also oversaw and built their first growth team. He was the first Head of Product at Instagram where he worked closely with Mike and Kevin and oversaw all product including on content sharing, ads, growth, even helped build out their design and user research functions. He was also Head of the Rider Product team at Uber where he oversaw everything in the rider app including big improvements to pickups and drop offs in Uber Pool and airports. He also helped the team launch new products including Uber Reserve which is now approaching a $5,000,000,000 a year business. He also spent nearly ten years at Facebook as their fourth ever product manager where he built and led the team behind the current Newsfeed product, the standalone Messenger app, also photos and groups and homepage and profiles. He was also Chief Product Officer at Airtable where he helped the company systemize how they build products and transition to enterprise. He also led product management at Oculus. These days he is General Partner at Felisys where he's able to bring everything he's learned to more founders as an investor. He has never done a podcast before or shared any of these lessons or stories publicly so you are in for a real treat. A huge thank you to Eric Antinow, Nick Turley, Lauren Motomedi, Joanne Jang and Sandeep Jain for contributing questions and topics to this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter you get a year free of a bunch of amazing products including Bolt, Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity and Granola. Check it out at Lenny'sNewsletter.com and click bundle. With that I bring you Peter Dang. Many of you are building AI products which is why I'm very excited to chat with Brandon Fu, founder and CEO of Paragon. Hey Brandon.

Brandon Fu:Hey Lenny, thanks for having me.

Lenny Rachitsky:So integrations have become a big deal for AI products. Why is that?

Brandon Fu:Integrations are mission critical for AI for two reasons. First, AI products need contacts from their customers' business data such as Google Drive files, Slack messages or CRM records. Second, for AI products to automate work on behalf of users, AI agents need to be able to take action across these different third party tools.

Lenny Rachitsky:So where does Paragon fit into all this?

Brandon Fu:Well, these integrations are a pain to build and that's why Paragon provides an embedded platform that enables engineers to ship these product integrations in just days instead of months across every use case from RAG data ingestion to agentic actions.

Lenny Rachitsky:And I know from firsthand experience that maintenance is even harder than just building it for the first time.

Brandon Fu:Exactly. We believe product teams should focus engineering efforts on competitive advantages, not integrations. That's why companies like You.com, AI21, and hundreds of others use Paragon to accelerate their integration strategy.

Lenny Rachitsky:If you wanna avoid wasting months of engineering on integrations that your customers need, check out Paragon at useparagon.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Pragmatic Institute, the trusted leader in product expertise. Pragmatic Institute helps product professionals turn ideas into impact through proven courses, workshops, and certifications designed for real world success. For over thirty years, they've trained more than 250,000 product leaders at companies like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce, equipping them with practical strategies to build and scale market-winning products. Pragmatic's full-time instructors each bring over twenty-five years of hands-on leadership experience teaching strategies proven to deliver real world results. And it's not just about what you learn, it's also about who you learn it with. Completing a course connects you to an active community of over 40,000 product professionals. You'll engage in meaningful conversations, collaborate with peers and mentors, and gain direct instructor access to refine your strategies and stay ahead of trends. Get 20% off with code LENNY20 at pragmaticinstitute.com/lenny.

Lenny Rachitsky:Peter, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Peter Dang:Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here, really honored, looking forward to having a great time here.

Lenny Rachitsky:As we were preparing for this conversation, we were jamming on what we should focus on. There's so much that we're gonna talk about, but something that you said was really interesting and I'm really excited to start with this, which is that you've always felt that you haven't been able to say all the things you really think and feel because you've been within corporations, PR people keeping you on message, and this is the first time that you feel free to share.

Peter Dang:First time.

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay, so first of all, just how does that feel? Second of all, tell us something that you've been wanting to share that you could finally talk about.

Peter Dang:Well, it feels really good. So I'll—let me ask, I love it that you're starting with a spicy question here, and let me share some more context behind it. It's, you know, I'm here to speak more freely, but it's not really what you think. I'm not here to divulge any secrets from the companies, but naturally I'm kind of a storyteller, I'm kind of an introvert, so this podcast I feel like I have the ability to go deeper with you on any topic and kind of add the context because I think the new without some of the context, some of my spicy takes or whatnot might be taken out of context. And just not having the time pressure, not feeling like there's some, you know, PR message I have to hit is just really freeing, so it feels awesome. Really anything that is on your mind that you would find interesting to your listeners, I'm here for it and yeah, excited.

Lenny Rachitsky:Something I always tell guests, and I want people to take this out of context also, but I always describe myself as a reverse journalist where I want the guest to be the best version of themselves. I never wanna catch people off guard or just say something they never meant to say, so that's great, a safe space. Okay, but still, is there anything that you want to share or that might be interesting to share that you've been wanting to share that you haven't been able to? Is there anything along those lines?

Peter Dang:I mean, I always get this question around sort of, you know, AGI, is it coming? Is it gonna, is it gonna solve everything?

Lenny Rachitsky:What have you seen?

Peter Dang:I mean, it's so interesting because, you know, when I was at OpenAI, it was around the time that people were really scared of AI and, you know, oh, it's gonna, you know, get rid of humans or it's gonna just, you know, do all these things. But with every technology, I think everyone's been just kind of taking some time to acclimate to it. And I think with AGI, it's a similar thing, which is it's so far out that everyone's like, well, is it, is it, what's our world gonna be like? And the real answer is like none of us really know. But in terms of solving problems, I think some people believe AGI is gonna solve everything, but I don't think so. AGI is just necessary but not sufficient. A lot of the value is still gonna require a bunch of hustle from a lot of builders to really turn that new source of energy and channel it into something that we humans want to use that solves some of our problems. And that hustle is gonna be required. That elbow grease is gonna be required to really make AGI something useful.

Lenny Rachitsky:Your point is that people think AGI hits all of a sudden, all jobs are gone, AGI is doing everything, like because I think this is an optimistic message that things will be okay if AGI basically—AGI being, and I'm curious if you have a clear definition, but AGI being AI being just basically as smart as humans.

Peter Dang:Look, I'm, I won't generally claim to be an expert on this at all, but I just, I think that with every technology that's come out, we've been able to harness it, and it takes a lot of harnessing. I think I'm gonna use that word very deliberately, deliberately, right? I'll use something really basic. What seems obvious today is that, you know, there was a time when databases were all the rage. It's like, oh my goodness, you can store a bunch of data and you can query it really quickly and like imagine all the possibilities. And I think that a lot of amazing entrepreneurs and builders, you know, built some really great products on top of databases, right? In fact, that's kind of the basis of all the stuff that we're seeing today. And it seems so obvious today, but I don't know, maybe in ten years, fifteen years, when we look back, it's like, of course it made sense that we have this superintelligent, you know, thinking machine, but it requires product builders to be able to go in there and say, how do we channel this energy to make it something that we as humans love to use and want to use.

Lenny Rachitsky:I love the optimism around this. It's just like things will not go crazy once computers are as generally intelligent as humans.

Peter Dang:I think that's exactly what I'm trying to say. Every technology people have this fear, right? I remember reading or watching a documentary once about when the bicycle came out, people thought it was the end of all things. It sounds silly today, but if you put yourself in the mindset of a previous generation, I think optimistically things are gonna be okay. We're gonna adapt. I talked about this with my friend Josh Konstein at South by Southwest: humans will always coevolve with technology. That coevolution is already happening. There was a lot of fear of AI when ChatGPT came out, but as you get familiar with it, things change. You evolve from being fearful to familiar, and then to mastery. Look at all the startups happening now and what we can build. Over eighteen months, there's been an attitude shift. So part of my optimism comes from looking back eighteen months and forward eighteen months, might it be the same for what we're chasing now?

Lenny Rachitsky:Let me follow this AI thread a little more and then we can move on. I feel like every conversation has a time to AI conversation. So, what's one specific thing you think will change in a big way with AI that people don't think enough about?

Peter Dang:I think education is gonna change in a big way. I'm involved in my kid's school quite a bit, something I've done after I left OpenAI. Watching my son, who got to dogfood a bunch of OpenAI stuff before it was public, when he was nine, I can already see his brain rewiring. He was starting to ask questions and had never heard the word prompt before. He built a custom GPT where you type any topic and it gives you a sentence with every letter of the English alphabet. In traditional programming, you couldn't write that function easily, but he could think of that prompt. It's mind blowing. At age nine, he could think about that, whereas I was playing with Legos and maybe QBasic. This new tool will change how young humans' brains evolve and how we do education. I'll be honest, I'm not an expert in education, but I think being able to ask the right questions will be really important. Humans are inquisitive, but turning that into the right questions to prompt AI will be a differentiator. Like when the calculator was invented, people didn't stop doing math; they did higher-level math. It frees the mind to think at a higher level of abstraction. We have to prepare kids to think at that higher level. This has happened before. Google made memory kind of obsolete; you don't have to memorize facts anymore. The next phase will be code appearing if you summon it. So, what skills develop at the next level of abstraction that tap into creativity and curiosity? Education is gonna change dramatically, like how progressive education switched from memorization to higher-level thinking.

Lenny Rachitsky:This makes me think about an NPR story where professors use ChatGPT to create their curriculum. There's talk of students cheating with ChatGPT, but teachers are using it in a big way. Then students rate professors badly because they notice they're using ChatGPT for their curriculum. It's kind of an arms race.

Peter Dang:Well, it's interesting because that shows the whole system has to change. I still believe human brains are inherently inquisitive and need development, but how that's gonna develop, I'm fascinated to watch.

Lenny Rachitsky:I want to get back to product, but first, I know something you think a lot about is the power and importance of language—being really good at thinking about the words you use in writing and speaking. Talk about the importance and power of language as a leader.

Peter Dang:I remember a college class called Language and Thought taught by Herbert Clark. He had a thesis that language actually affects the way you think. Once I heard that, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I grew up speaking Chinese and noticed I thought differently when I learned English. There are studies, for example, in Russian, where there are two words for blue—a greenish blue and a bright blue.

Lenny Rachitsky:Or something in Russian. My Russian isn't great since I moved to the US at six, but keep going.

Peter Dang:From what I remember, Russian speakers who learned English had an easier and faster time distinguishing those two blues than native English speakers. Some languages don't have a word for blue, making it hard to distinguish. This stuck with me. In practice, when I make slide decks, I obsess over the 20 or so words on the deck to capture the essence. Crafting language is important in product because if you're not intentional with words in vision docs or PRDs, people might misinterpret things. There's a multiplicative downstream effect of using the wrong word. I really believe in the language affecting thought thesis and pay close attention to it.

Lenny Rachitsky:Mhmm, yeah, and I feel like AI can help you with that too. Yes, we had an—well—

Peter Dang:Actually, speaking of AI, it's poetic that the breakthrough in artificial intelligence came from large language models. Every word and sentence encapsulates so much knowledge. When ChatGPT does something interesting, it's often just writing Python code and interpreting it. Python is a language again. The condensation of human thought in language relates to LLMs and AI advancements today.

Lenny Rachitsky:I think it was Ilya on a Dorcas' podcast where he was talking about how you may think LLMs are just like oh just predicting the next word what's the big deal but in order to do that it has to understand the universe and everything in the world that has ever happened and existed and everything anyone's ever written to predict the next word.

Peter Dang:Yeah love it.

Lenny Rachitsky:Yeah okay so let me let me zoom out a little bit and shift a little bit to just product in general.

Peter Dang:Sure.

Lenny Rachitsky:You've worked at and built some of those iconic products in history you worked at OpenAI Facebook Uber had a product in Instagram so let me just ask you this question and see where this goes what's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned about building products or leading teams that goes against common wisdom.

Peter Dang:I think one thing that it's a really hard lesson that I learned at Uber which is sometimes your product actually doesn't matter and by product I mean sort of the pixels you put on the screen or things that you build in your in your in your mobile app and at Uber I learned this because you know it it it pains me to say this but really like the price and the ETA at Uber was the product and I think a lot of times you know people at tech companies think of the product as just this digital manifestation but looking at it from a holistic perspective you know we humans consume the entirety of the product and I think that's that was one of the things that I I learned the lessons that I learned that was like really kinda hard hitting right that sometimes the pixels don't matter as much as you think right and you fix a certain bug it's not to say that you shouldn't fix the bug but it doesn't have as much of an impact as something that is more important to people like a price or an ETA and this happens a lot in you know B to B products where it's not just about you know how it's great that your product is is well loved by its end users but you know doesn't make good business sense is one of those those hard lessons I learned as a very bright eyed bushy tailed sort of design based product manager manager going into Uber I think the other insight that I had or rather other thought I had the other day was just the idea that like so many of the tech companies today this is kinda counterintuitive so many of the tech companies that are most valuable today didn't really start with any technological breakthrough they were built on some kind of technological breakthrough and they ended up building a lot more technology but really a lot of these companies like Facebook for example just put in the hard work right the elbow grease to especially in the early stages to take you know essentially a database of human connections and build something valuable on top of it and keep on polishing and iterating that product and and coming up with new ones like news feed and photo tagging were just you know kinda came out of just really paying attention to what people wanted and some of the ideas are super simple and it's not something that came out of the lab right so Uber for example took the fact that everyone had these GPS devices in their pockets and they didn't invent the GPS device but they were able to take that and the fact that people had cars and people wanted to kind of you know get around and there was a human need and they just put the connected the dots and put everything together and eventually built a ton of tech to predict the right marketplace and pricing etcetera but largely like that's a very valuable tech company but it's largely an operations company and I I wanna give a huge shout out to my colleagues there who run you know kind of Uber Eats and and Uber rides from a from a operations perspective because truly like that was one of the biggest kind of business model hacks that I've seen right and so I I think that's know at Silicon Valley it gets lost a lot it's like oh this is a new tech company oftentimes some of the most valuable ones are just the ones that are just building what people need on top of existing tech.

Lenny Rachitsky:This is such there's so much to say here I I I love it and this is coming from someone that led the Uber rider product team and worked at Facebook and head of the product Instagram you know it's like means a lot coming from someone like you not someone you know that's like not in product especially.

Peter Dang:Yeah I mean I'm just to go further on the Instagram part like it's the the idea was super simple it was it was showing photos and and visual sharing but the craft that Mike and Kevin had in putting in the hard work to get the product just right that's what made it really take off right that's a great example I I'd forgotten about Instagram but how could I but you know it wasn't anything that any other company couldn't have done but it was that product taste that Kevin and Mike had and conviction that there's a certain sort of vibe if you will that people wanted and building that and iterating I mean and look at it now it's it's a it's a core part of our lives visual sharing they really solved it.

Lenny Rachitsky:Yeah I just had Mike Krieger on the podcast so it's interesting there's two tensions here one is just like the product doesn't matter in a lot of really successful companies it's secondary to the cars the drivers the the GPS and the phone and then on the other hand techno there doesn't need to be a technological breakthrough for to build a huge business is there it's almost like if the if there's no technological breakthrough then the product matters like Facebook is an example basically it's like a database of connections but what allowed the and Instagram would allow them to be breakthrough and there's you know classically competitors at the time was the experience was a lot better and then maybe on the flip side if the if the experience doesn't matter then it's the breakthroughs on the operations and other does that resonate is that kinda what you're saying.

Peter Dang:It does resonate I think I think both have to be true but also I would say that like even if you did found a company that has a huge technological breakthrough very shortly I think that you know kind of the the the product experience will start mattering right because you know how long does that technological advantage last right before humans wise enough to be like well this is not the product I wanna use I wanna use it a little bit differently and this is more ergonomic for me etcetera so I think I think that that's what you said is is is a beautiful summary I I also think that a point in time in a company's history will also determine what is gonna be more important.

Lenny Rachitsky:This this is all especially interesting for companies building on top of LLMs and AI infrastructure where you're essentially saying you don't need to have some kind of technological breakthrough to build something valuable if you can create a really special unique experience that unlocks the potential of this superintelligence.

Peter Dang:I think that's right and and I have some more thoughts on just sort of the companies that are building on top of LLMs that are just you know that's a slightly different thing I would say I think that for them you know having the right data and the right data flywheels is so important.

Lenny Rachitsky:Like proprietary data especially.

Peter Dang:Exactly yep and the flywheel part is is is just you know you can start with proprietary data but the flywheel is really just sort of how do you continue to maintain that and generate that and the second thing is again it's it's the workflow so it's the it's the ergonomics of how does it actually integrate into people's lives and that is gonna be more and more important.

Lenny Rachitsky:Let's actually spend more time there because a lot of people are thinking about this feels like feels like everybody's trying to start a company these days with you know AI enabling so much more and so I think a lot of people are just curious where should they spend time and so I think this is actually really interesting so what I'm hearing here is two things to think about to create any kind of moat defensibility against say foundation models coming to your lunch or another companies what sort of data can you acquire that is proprietary and create a flywheel to generate more of that data and then the other piece is how do you fit into a very specific like basically vertical that you understand really well that fits into their existing workflow is that yeah

Peter Dang:Exactly right well it's again this is this is this is something we can unpack for a long time right because you know with any product that you wanna build there's gonna be incumbents that have distribution advantages but I do have this thesis that there are certain products that will be able to break through those advantages of the distribution of the other companies but you have to kind of overcome a pretty high bar of your product has to be so much better right that's I think that's that's one thing but yeah I think the data flywheel thing is really interesting because what you know the the the models will get really good at whatever data you show it and that's that's one of the things that people just think that AI is such a magic wand but no it's like if it's been trained on the right data it's gonna do the thing that it's been trained on it's very malleable so being very mindful of the data that you have access to to start your flywheel going and what you can do to keep on going with that flywheel is gonna be a a critical thing for for anyone who's starting a company today

Lenny Rachitsky:So let's make that even more specific when you talk about this I think about this the CEO Windsurf was on the podcast and he talked a lot about how they have all this really unique data about which recommendations of code snippets people accept and reject and they actually launched their own model I think based on that is that is that an example any other examples to make this feel

Peter Dang:Perfect example there's some companies I've invested in that aren't public yet that have their own sort of take on that which is really interesting to be able to to take sort of whatever activity is in their product to get smarter at the thing that they are doing again which is why I think the data flywheel and the the the workflow goes so hand in hand together right because if you are solving something actually valuable for businesses for people and there's a lot of that attention that's being paid to it a lot of work is being done through it you're gonna have that edge and you know this is where I see again startups in very different markets who have this insight who understand this very deeply and are not just trying to zero shot everything and be like no no no like this is how we're gonna build it to make the product genuinely useful so that it can get genuinely more useful over time and that is gonna be amazing because you know as a consumer of any of these products we're gonna benefit

Lenny Rachitsky:What I'm hearing here is also if you don't have proprietary data or unique data you can still have a chance by building this flywheel where you collect that data through your usage for example Windsurf they all built on Clawd 3.5 and then now they have all this unique data and now they're launching their models

Peter Dang:Yep that's exactly right and this goes back to sort of something I might have mentioned briefly but you gotta have grit when you're building anything right you gotta be able to like have that vision have that clear direction and be able to really go chase that I think that's really important

Lenny Rachitsky:The and to make your example of distribution being overcomeable a great example I think a lot about when we had the CPO a CPO turns out there's many CPOs at Microsoft I didn't realize how many CPOs they had yeah and she she I asked her about like why didn't Copilot like the fastest corrosion companies in the world Cursor Windsurf Lovable Bolt all these guys like Copilot was so ahead of these these companies and and these companies broke through while Microsoft has distribution amazing talent infrastructure all the things early first mover advantage and it's to your point they were just building products that were much better Cursor Windsurf all these like Lovable

Peter Dang:I do believe there is a a level of product craft that will make it so that it's just worth it to switch or try something else and there are a few products out there that I see with that with this I think Granola is one of them there's so many distribution advantages that Google Meet has that Google Facebook sorry Microsoft Teams has Zoom has but they're just these tiny little product craft delightful things that I really appreciate myself of like yeah they got it they have these little edges sanded down just right and they've really figured out a way to really make it so delightful that it's like yeah I will I will install this piece of software yes a 100% I will talk to my friends about this because it is so life changing right and that we're starting to see that now again before I would say 18 ago it's like oh well who has the best model but then coming forward it's like really who has the best workflow and who has the best product and we humans are just demanding we want the best and so when that when someone is gonna come out and produce something that's so well crafted I think people are gonna pay attention

Lenny Rachitsky:So a couple takeaways here is if you're trying to build an AI startup a few things you should be thinking about that gives you a better chance of breaking through and winning is what are your data flywheels where you collect proprietary unique data how do you build something that's in the craft is comes through and people are like wowed and want to tell their friends about it Granola is a great example clearly Cursor Lovable Bolt Repo all these guys did that and then it feels like there's just like a understand a vertical workflow really well and then someone's problem and solve that in a really unique way

Peter Dang:Yep you couldn't have put it better myself

Lenny Rachitsky:Awesome let me ask you this because this came up in my chat with Mike at Anthropic and it's along these lines so I I was thinking about just what is what is product doing at Anthropic so they're building this basic we a gigabrain superintelligence thing that's gonna know everything and maybe build its own experience in the future and then there's this like product team building this layer on top to interact with this superintelligence gigabrain what is the point what is the value of that layer you spoke to it a bit here of just like there is value in the experience and it feeling native but I guess let me just ask you that just where do you think product goes at a company like Anthropic OpenAI where there's just the superintelligence that the team is working on and there's this like UX on top

Peter Dang:I think those companies have just such an advantage because you get to work in the same building as the researchers and I think that you know there there's that really kind of symbiotic relation close partnership between post training and product where know again more and more it's gonna be less about the raw intelligence it's gonna be about the fine tuning of of what the model can do that that really resonates with people and what people want and also what the product trajectory is is gonna be right so I think that's gonna you're gonna see that more and more I mean I think I think you know this is less about Anthropic but more about OpenAI I think OpenAI made a great move I am a huge Fiji fan as soon as that news leaked that she was gonna join I texted her was like this is great amazing congratulations I'm thrilled for her for the company for all of my friends still at OpenAI because it's just gonna be this amazing leader coming in I'm also thrilled as a consumer because some great products are gonna come out I think that really that close tight knit relationship between at any of these large model companies between post training and and product is gonna produce some really incredible stuff

Lenny Rachitsky:First of all Mike actually said very similar things that the more

Peter Dang:I did not I promise you I did not watch that

Lenny Rachitsky:Positive account yet.

Peter Dang:So okay.

Lenny Rachitsky:Well then believe you yeah they they he had this interesting finding where he he put product people on like ux product experience because front facing product and then he put pms on the research teams and building models helping models get better helping researchers build things and he found that all all the leverage and wins came from the pms working with the researchers much less so on the product experience and so he puts more and more pms with that with that with that team.

Peter Dang:I'm so thrilled to hear that because that's a little bit of it's very validating because that's what we did at openai too like we were very closely tied to the post training team and so it was because of that tight collaboration that you see some of the advances of of of chachi bt getting better at so many things right so it's great it's it's awesome that we independently came to the same conclusion.

Lenny Rachitsky:Yes it's a good sign okay so we're talking about start ups building new companies i wanna follow this thread a little bit sure i feel like you've built more products that from zero to one to scale than may maybe most anyone else across all the companies that you've worked at i'm gonna do a quick rundown of some of the things you've done and i'm i'm gonna miss a bunch but let's see you built and led the facebook news feed the current version of it you built the new group's experience chat and messages you shipped the messenger app as its own app that was that was one of your projects you let uber pool low cost rides you launched chatgpt enterprise you shipped voice and vision memory custom gpts just refreshing the whole design of chatgpt many more things a lot of work at airtable obviously also at oculus these are just some examples in the intro i'm gonna try to go through all these things so all that to say i feel like you've seen a lot of what works and doesn't work building from idea from zero essentially to one to scale so let me just ask you this question what's what's an important lesson you've learned about what it takes to succeed building something from idea to one to billions.

Peter Dang:Yeah thank you and that was a good trip down memory lane too when when you read that off so i think the first thing i would say and and you know going from zero to one is different going from one to 100 and when you are in the one to 100 phase which is a lot of the time that i spent you know is is in the one to 100 phase we you know were able to we quadrupled instagram usage in two years that was very much a fun ride and there's a bunch of other examples at other at other companies but when you go to one to 100 i think one of the things that you really gotta take into account is that you have to plan your chess moves out in advance you have to really think before you act and build systems that are gonna let you go sustainably faster because the zero to one is you're trying to find that product market fit and then when you get to one to 100 you're trying to make sure you can get to hyperscale and and as fast as you can right and i've been very fortunate to be along the ride of of many of these products as they were going through that hyperscale and the analogy i always like to use is that when you do that you feel the g forces right and you know some people are like oh yeah i'm a pilot i can fly at you know 35,000 feet but like the the you know feeling the g forces of takeoff of a rocket is very different right and one thing that i've learned there doing that a few times is you gotta build the systems that help you move sustainably faster right and sometimes you have to go slow to go fast and here's an example so in building the newsfeed the current version that we have today it it really hasn't changed much from the time that we built it i don't even know was like twelve years ago or something i don't know the reason why it hasn't changed much but i like to think that it's because we put a lot of time and craft into thinking about the whole sharing loop and what are what is the what is the what are the key pieces of it and how is it architected what's the information architecture and what does that whole flow look like how does it go from posting something at the top of the page to showing up in the newsfeed to someone clicking like and then that notifications thing lighting up red and then that repeating over and over again and i like to think that newsfeed has stood the test of time the current version of it because we thought very carefully about how people wanted to interact and how people wanted to consume information and also that whole loop and so when when that happens then i think things are built to last right and i think the the this i think this is the case with a lot of different companies so when i was at uber we we had a bit of a spaghetti string code situation on the ryder app but you know taking a step back and rearchitecting things of like what are the core components and how do you actually make it so that the product selector can scale around the world and here's a little known fact like you know talk about grit and elbow grease like uber is not just as simple as like finding a ride if you've ever been to another country like in india sometimes there are no street signs so you have to like pick up in front of this you know mini mart or whatever it might be so there's a whole team that worked on pickup and drop offs this is a large effort and it sounds so boring but it was so critical to uber being able to scale because pickup and drop offs team thought about well how do you do it for venues and that venues and finding that right abstraction means that you can have a scalable way to to do pickups at airports and you know configure different venues and those systems when you take the time to build them in the one to 100 phase help you speed up massively and that's how you get four x you know users in two years or on messenger we put a lot of thought into the infrastructure around push notifications etcetera we grew that product from zero to 4,700,000,000 messages sent per day in about two and a half years and i think it really is requires that that forethought in in building the right systems.

Lenny Rachitsky:Let me follow that thread real quickly because that's really interesting so essentially what you're saying is once there's like a phase of once you find product market fit and i'm i wanna actually ask you this before you start planning when you're starting to scale going from one to a 100 your advice here is basically don't move fast and break things don't ship mvps this is the time to really think many chess moves ahead about what you're gonna need to get this to say a billion users.

Peter Dang:Yeah yeah it's building the systems and then that that systems thinking will will will carry you really far far at least that's been my experience and hopefully hopefully you can find the same way but you know your mileage may vary but yeah that's exactly right.

Lenny Rachitsky:What's your guidance on just like when to do that because know you can't you know you build something okay well it's working there's also this just like okay let's just keep it going let's scale it as far as we can there in your experience is it just like what's the guidance on when to really step back and really think years and years ahead.

Peter Dang:Great question i'll say the first thing i'll say is that it's not a binary switch it's actually a ramp rate and so when i've led teams i've always believed strongly in this portfolio approach right and so you know famously google had the 7030 portfolio approach that may be the right thing for a more mature company maybe it's 5050 if you're a startup right but you have to think about this in a non binary way and in in a way that's about scaling up and when do you need to put more resources behind behind that so every startup is gonna be different right every product that you're launching is gonna be different and then thinking about your portfolio approach and how much you allocate your time that would be my my advice and it's your you know it's it's really dependent on the stage that you're in i think that actually is a nice dovetail to my second thing if i if i may yeah which is you know when you're going from that stage of of maybe you know one to five or one to 10 so not just fully one to 100 one thing i found to be very helpful is to measure everything and this sounds again very simple but you know just like how you wouldn't fly a plane without instruments like why would you run your product without understanding the instrumentation and how it's doing right and so one of the things i did in pretty much all the teams that i led whether it was instagram uber airtable was all about and chatgpt two the one of the first things i did was always to build a growth team and building a growth team is really interesting because it actually is a simple razor it's a simple thing to think about like i'm gonna build a growth team but then you're gonna uncover a lot of things right you're gonna uncover how much stuff you have not yet logged and how nonrigorous you've been looking at your entire product and it's it's so funny because i've seen this movie so many times the same movie so many times at every one of these companies where i remember walking to instagram and i think asking kevin max like so how many users do we have it's like well we don't really know and and so it's like well there are a lot and we don't really know and so when you build a growth team and you hire the right growth leader i've had the pleasure the the pleasure of working with george lee at instagram you know some early growth folks at at facebook andrew china air at at uber airtable i had the privilege of working with lauren who is currently now leading growth at at notion so i've i've been very fortunate to work with some really amazing people on my team and when you hire the right person they start asking all the right questions because when you know the the archetype of person who is a a growth pm will be like well wait why is this happening and let's get the data on x y and z thing and that's when you realize you don't have x y and z thing logged and after you have x y and z thing logged you look at the data you're like wait well why is that happening and then you're you're forcing yourself to go deeper into the analysis of doing some analysis of like well you know what's correlated with what and what are some hypotheses and because growth leaders growth product leaders are so into this experimentation side it actually is this really easy thing to do is when you start building a growth team it just begets all of the right questions being asked and then it starts you know kind of turning into all the right behaviors of of of taking something you've been building which is seems like it's working into a more rigorous system so that's like the zero sorry the the one to 10 phase i would say that really sets you up for the 10 to 100.

Lenny Rachitsky:What what i like about this growth team advice is that a lot of people think of a time to hire a growth team to we need to drive growth what you're saying is there's a lot of second order benefits which is they help you figure out what the hell is going on and inform a lot of of other things that are happening people just actually understanding how things are going in.

Peter Dang:Totally and i think that the reason why growth team is is is the advice i would go with rather than to build an analytics team is because if you build an analytics team or a data science team it's possible that no one's gonna listen to right it's like oh i have these insights it's like well no one really cares but if you have a if you hire a growth leader they are now tied to outcomes of driving growth so they're gonna be the ones who are listening and asking you know more questions and really partnering with that data science team to make your entire product and business more rigorous and that just changes the dna of of your entire team.

Lenny Rachitsky:I wanna talk about hiring but is there anything else along these lines that you wanna share of building new product scaling products.

Peter Dang:I guess the the last thing i would say is like i i i wanna make sure that you know sometimes in the in the pursuit of numbers product folks lose sight of the importance of taste and craft so maybe this is actually the dovetail into kind of building teams but like you gotta have the counterbalances right and it's really important to give two people on your team different charges one is like go grow the product and the other one is wait maintain that design that beautiful aesthetic that that that the the craft that your that your product is known for and that tension is extremely healthy right and so i i've saw i've seen this at at at at facebook i've seen this at instagram i i helped create this in instagram this kind of healthy tension airtable same thing but just having chatuchi bts same exact thing you have to have that push and pull on both sides to really stretch the gamut.

Lenny Rachitsky:That begs the question how do you actually do that you know lot you could talk about it you could be like okay we need to make sure the experience is awesome but also grow this number here's your goal how do you operationalize that is it like a performance review attribute thing is it culture or something else

Peter Dang:As a leader you have to set up your team the right way you have to really think about your team as a product and what are the various pieces you need to really stretch the gamut of what you're what you're thinking about and the teams that i've helped build are the most successful ones are a team of avengers that are just like very different have very different superpowers but together you as the leader are the one who's helping adjudicate any differences or any any disagreements but you're you know you're getting the best outcome when everyone's pulling and obsessing over a different thing right and that's important it's important to to create your balance and and really kind of increase the space that you're looking at and create those healthy debates and i think a lot of people overlook that i think some people think of you know people on a team as like warm bodies to do a job but my philosophy has always been to think about well what is the what is the company need to be successful and who's the best person who spikes at that one thing and how do i make sure that that we get that person and how do we make sure we get the other person and the other person it's almost like you're playing an rpg where everyone has different sliders and you have to create this super team where everyone actually spikes in different in different ways and that is something that i've had a lot of success with in terms of when you create that environment and you create that vibe you're gonna get a lot of mileage out of that team

Lenny Rachitsky:That is a really interesting answer it's not one i've heard before essentially you're it's not like create the right incentives it's hire people that naturally want us see the world in a certain way and that creates a balance and tension and a healthy tension between say a pm and a designer and an engineer that is really interesting because that feels a lot more sustainable than like here's your goal okay but also when your goal is make sure the experience is great and people support tickets are down it's just like naturally they need to want this to happen

Peter Dang:Totally and actually there was a i i i have a a sort of a a framework around like i think there are five different types of product managers that has kind of held true so this is a a a framework that just came out of a random jam at uber when i was talking to some some of my my colleagues there and we formulated this in terms of helping with hiring practices everywhere i've gone i've also been like best friends with the recruiters because honestly my whole thing is like gotta build the right team so we have to really partner very deeply and at uber we developed this this this this five archetypes of a pm and i've to this day i still think it's like actually exactly true and it still holds true to this day but is that interesting you want me to kinda go into that

Lenny Rachitsky:I'm so excited to hear with you zach

Peter Dang:These are the five that i found to be most enduring and actually the most like kinda different right and and when you talk about i love the way you put this lenny which is when you hire the right people and like how they're they're naturally motivated by different things right and so these are the five that that we came up with number one is the consumer pm so this is the person that's like half designer half product person really obsessed over the details is it delightful is it crafted enough oh my goodness this is three pixels off i can't stand it this is like making driving me nuts like why is this so complex i mean these are the people that you think of as like you know you know sometimes the criticism pm is the consumer pm but that's just one type right and another type just going on the other side we've talked about before is the growth pm these people are like half data scientist half product person they are kinda wired to think numbers first and they have this kind of air about them that's like the best ones do which is like i'm really skeptical show me the data let's run a test and prove it i don't believe you right and it's and and i start with these two in the framework because they're actually really different right one it's like i have vibe i feel the vibe this is better and the other one's like no i don't believe you we should test this and prove it and that's like a really healthy tension i love you know having two people in a room like debating that i'm like great we are gonna get some good things done and we're gonna we're gonna move the product forward the third type is you know kind of what i call the gmpm or the business pm right these are like kind of half mba half product person these are folks that are kind of naturally wired to start with the business model and think about what are the margins like what are the opportunities where's the value being created and we had a lot of these at at at uber and they were the marketplace pms and they're just like i loved working with them because their their minds just work differently they just thought about problems from well what is the incentive here right and you this is a fascinating type of mind to to to work with another one i i found this is it's it's it's actually more nuanced than you think it's like there's a certain sort of archetype that i call the platform pm which is someone who's like really deeply wired to kinda build tools for other people and at uber we had like internal platforms for like messaging or for you know building internal tools and oftentimes these folks are overlooked but it's like actually a really deep wiring because these are the people that are gonna build the systems that are gonna make you go faster right and that's what they love doing and the last one i would say i used to call an algorithms pm but now in the in the in the the the world of of ai i'm gonna rename this to research pm and these are like half researcher half engineer half product person and these these minds are amazing so like basically they think you know you know traditional google search algorithm pm right but nowadays it's like who are the people who really have that product taste but deeply understand the tech and the you know the way the models are trained to go and affect that and build the most amazing product so those are the five i still think to this day these hold true and we might have been onto something the day that we we brainstormed this at uber but yeah i'm curious to hear your feedback

Lenny Rachitsky:This is great as you're talking i'm just like here's that person here's that person okay they fit here and this super resonates this episode is brought to you by contentsquare the analytics platform that helps companies build better digital experiences ever wonder why customers drop off before converting or why some pages perform better than others contentsquare takes the guesswork out of digital experiences giving you real time insights into how users interact with your site or app with ai powered analytics automatic frustration detection and clear visualizations you'll know exactly what's working and what's holding your customers back whether you're optimizing an ecommerce checkout refining a b2b lead flow or improving a mobile app experience contentsquare pinpoints exactly what needs fixing and why contentsquare powers better customer journeys across 1,300,000 websites and apps discover the insights you've been missing at contentsquare.com/lenny so just to summarize there's consumer pms growth pms business slash gm pms platform pms sort of research pms a lot of people call them ai pms now i feel like that's the term that's where we thought about it

Peter Dang:We have to evolve with the times yeah but also the other part of the framework i find kinda interesting is that everyone's like a primary has a primary one and a secondary one it's kinda like one of those like personality tests right and maybe we kinda did this just because it was hard to pigeonhole people and i i myself don't think i was pigeonhole able but i i do think that people likes you know kind of lead with one type of thinking and then also have the secondary thing that keeps them in balance and so if you believe that and you apply it to your team i'm curious to hear you know from your listeners like sort of if if this does resonate or not and you know maybe this framework will help you realize that you're missing someone that that you should be not missing

Lenny Rachitsky:What was your archetype when you were a pm

Peter Dang:This is and and that's the other thing with personality types is the ones you hear you're like this is me this is i i own this right there's no doubt about it i am a consumer pm and also a growth pm that's that's my i'm primarily consumer i just i i can't and this is what i told you about you know the other products i've loved i've i've see the i can see the details that people put into it and i so appreciate that but at the end of day it's like we gotta measure things right so that's what i am but you know again everyone's different

Lenny Rachitsky:I love your point about how a lot of people think of pm like they hear that first example they're like oh i guess that's what i need to be because that's what everyone talks about when they're amazing product managers but you're saying there's many other ways to be a successful pm we did a personality test at airbnb when i was there and one of the biggest takeaways was it's like this color test and you get a color green or yellow red and like the team was all over the spectrum and so and it was a really good reminder just you can be a different type of person and still be really successful in this role of pm it's and probably because of these different archetypes and different needs and roles of pms like there's this word product manager but there's many things that pms do

Peter Dang:And also as an investor now it's really important to see the fit of the founder to the market because if you put a consumer pm into like a really you know boring regulated industry they're probably gonna get frustrated and they're probably not gonna see it through whereas like there's people that you look at you know the pitch and you're like wow this is you are really passionate about this problem and you really care about building tools for others and this is exactly this is the twilio pm or you know whatever it might be you're a perfect fit for this business and like that's awesome right so i think that yeah i i love that what you just said in in the summary because i think there's no one way to be a pm and i think this is sort of the hopefully this framework will get give people a little bit more space to be you know express who they really are

Lenny Rachitsky:I'm curious if other functions also have these sort of archetypes like designers and engineers but we don't need to get into that how about if you're listening to this on youtube leave a comment of which of these archetypes you think you might be what's your primary and secondary i'll read them again consumer pm growth pm business slash gm pm platform pm research slash a i p m

Peter Dang:Got it

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay I wanna talk about hiring so this actually came up a lot when I was chatting with folks that you've worked with especially Nick Turley who's head of product at ChatGPT who are trying to get on the podcast because that's an what a

Lenny Rachitsky:That's what I've heard so he told me that the current head of engineering the lead product engineer the head of design and head of marketing at ChatGPT are people that you hired also many of the people you hired have gone on to do incredible things you've shared a few of those names many of them have been on the podcast which is the ultimate measure of success so let me just ask you this what's what's one thing you look for in people you hire that you think are that you think people sleep on that you think people aren't paying enough attention to that helps you find amazing stars

Peter Dang:He's awesome.

Peter Dang:That's really flattering to hear that from Nick. Nick is one of the best people I've worked with period. In fact I wanna just do a quick shout out of like folks at OpenAI I are pretty much the best people I've ever worked with in my career. When I took the job I told the team this is gonna be my last operating role and I'm gonna leave it all on the field and I'm just gonna go out and basically I spent probably as much time if not more time on recruiting and building the team than I as I did sort of thinking about the product and this is going back to sort of what I said earlier about I think you gotta bring the right people together to have a huge impact and oftentimes leaders overlook this and they're like oh it's just a warm body but truly you know people who have strengths in certain areas complement others with strengths in other areas and when you build that team amazing things happen it's the it's the best investment you can make it's gonna pay off so many dividends so I think that's my opening salvo in terms of like you know you gotta get the everyone who's listening out there you gotta make sure you look at everyone in your team you should look at what you need and you have to get the best in each and truly like you know in in in in my farewell dinner at OpenAI I think I I I close with just the the like look I don't even know what I would do after this because all the best people I've worked with are here we have Ian Silber running design there Thomas Dimson you know Joey Flynn right Ryan O'Rourke Nick Turley was amazing person I met there Joanne I mean just have so many people I'm missing but you know Coley on product marketing Eric Antonelle on the marketing comms side Solma on engineer you you you the name the list goes on product operations is is is stellar I'm so proud of like honestly the the team that I built there more than than the products so I just wanted to say that that's just like it's it's a it's a big thing that I really care about and I hope more leaders think about that too is like really be mindful of putting your team together and and thinking about that as a product and you have to really craft that you have to really care about the team right

Lenny Rachitsky:Just to double down on that point actually before you get to the next tip here is I just love this answer which is ins you know if I were to ask someone here's hire what's your hiring advice what do you look for that people may not be looking for enough I love that most of it would be like in that person here's what you need to focus on and here's the interview question and but the like kind of your broad answer so far is it's not actually about the person so much as what is the team gonna look like and where do we need spikes where do we need to balance out the composition of this Avengers that we're building

Peter Dang:Totally awesome totally that's exactly right and so so that being said I I guess I have I guess on brand I have two things I wanna share about about sort of hiring the right team I have this saying I actually have this like doc that I've taken around various companies called the PXD API which is like here's how to work with me and in it there's there's there's a saying that I have which is what I really optimize for for everyone that I support and everyone I hire which is in six months if I'm telling you what to do I've hired the wrong person and it's just kind of served me really well as on three different levels right number one it's a reminder for myself when I'm either hiring or looking for the person is to keep my bar super high and just not settle because if I do most likely in six months it would not be true that I that I would be able to let this person run and I would still be telling them what to do which is not what I want that is not my desire the second sort of effect of that is that it's I say that to people you know when they come on the team or when or as we're making the fire hire because you know it communicates to them that that's my bar and that's how they know they'll be successful right and something to kinda work towards right and the third thing is kind of a joint thing for the both of us which is it kinda gives us it it helps me and the person operate on a different level where it's not the goal is not like did you hit this OKR did you hit this goal the the the meta goal becomes hey are we building you know are we calibrating enough are we actually getting to a spot where in six months like you're the one telling me what needs to be done like like are we are we getting there right because then if if that's the framing every you know mistake that you know is made or whatever on either of our our parts is becomes a learning opportunity in terms of like well how do we grow to to from this to where we wanna be in six months right and how is it possible that you know I as a as a manager can do the right things to set this person up for success so that I only have to be involved six months right and I think that those those three things like and and and being able to have that second order effect of like this simple razor in six months I'm telling you what to do I've hired the wrong person it puts pressure on me it puts pressure on the person and it creates this really interesting environment and and this kind of safe space to really think about are we heading towards that goal and again every place I've been at as much as I've loved building the product I've taken so much pride in building the team and it's just been so much of a pleasure and I think this is my one of the two secrets that I have here

Lenny Rachitsky:This is so good I wanna have I wanna have a follow-up question but just to point out why I think this is so genius is it there's kind of a assumption here of this person you can trust them so there's like do I trust this person do I feel like they're gonna be proactive do I feel like they're gonna have correct insights essentially taste and gut feeling it's like the layer below this question which is great and also just this like autonomy it feels like you autonomy almost implies so many important traits of somebody that you want to hire and I love just how simple this question is for both you and them

Peter Dang:To do and and really with that autonomy I love what you said about autonomy because truly if without as as a leader as a manager your goal is to scale and if you don't have if this thing this simple statement is not true how are you able to build the best company the best product

Lenny Rachitsky:So here's the follow-up question is this mostly for leaders like say head of product at JetGPT say someone's not a CPO they're just like I don't know a manager of a PM team do you find is there a version of this that you think might be useful to them or is this mostly for leaders

Peter Dang:I think this is for everyone I think it's for everyone who is a manager right because you know if you're gonna be a successful manager at any company or a leader at any company and if you're if you're kind of starting as a line manager or whatnot and you're kind of you know wanting to grow or even just wanting to you know if you're early at a company you have so much institutional knowledge and so getting more sort of leverage in terms of being able to pass on the wisdom that you've learned is so crucial into being successful that I think every manager should should approach their you know their their reports with this because truly like that's it's just good for everyone it's good for the company to have more kind of leverage and and scale it's good for the the person who's being brought onto the team because they know what success looks like and it gives them a path to kind of keep on growing and it's great for you as a leader as a manager to be able to basically scale up the entire

Peter Dang:Sort of expertise of your team

Lenny Rachitsky:And I imagine you don't even need to plan to not tell them what to do like it's just a good lens into are they gonna be amazing even if you plan to be telling them sort of what to do

Peter Dang:Yeah exactly and and and the other thing is like again in your interview process you kind of end up looking for these insights right and you look for like the behaviors of like oh are they actually gonna be potentially able to to to achieve this in six months and that's gonna give you a really good lens on the picking side not just the development side as well

Lenny Rachitsky:Peter what's your second secret this is one for one

Peter Dang:Yeah okay the second one I'd say is I I feel really strongly about this which is you know the area that I look for most is growth mindset and I actually came to this you know some point in my management career at Facebook where I real you know I did make a mistake and hired someone who just didn't quite have that growth mindset and it was really difficult because you know yeah I the way I say it is look I don't have time to sugarcoat any feedback right and frankly like the best people I work with are the people who come into one on ones with me and yell at me and telling them I'm I'm messing up like that's I love that because that's there's no nothing left unsaid and we're able to kinda move the ball forward of like hey like how do we get better from this and I feel like growth mindset's one of those things Lenny that feels really hard to teach at a certain age and this is really important to me and my family I expect growth mindset of myself of my kids you know my my colleagues at work because I think it just like creates this environment where everyone is open to like what's the one thing I can get better at and you know the whole get 1% better every day can become true and it's it's funny because like I whenever I go to teams like CatchyBeetee or Uber when I'm always the final interview for someone in my org and I partner with recruiting and developing that the rubric I always insist on doing the last interview and I do not product sense I don't do design I don't do execution I don't do metrics I only do growth mindset and it's kind of like well that's crazy like what about all of these other attributes I'm like well I'm pretty sure I can trust the other people to assess the other attributes but I think the growth mindset thing is so important to me that that we build an org where where people are self reflective and want to get better and take that feedback and give that feedback and it just is this meta unlock that I found to be true and really if you don't have growth mindset then and you're not open to feedback and you're not open to learning then that's like the the meta blocker right at that point you know it's hard to give feedback it's hard to you know onboard to a new skill it's hard to kind of develop in any sort of meaningful way and so I've I've found that to be like the the the really critical piece

Lenny Rachitsky:That's a big deal what you just said there that essentially as the CPO head of product big product leader at a company your interview is not like are you an amazing product manager are you do you have products taste things like that it's a growth mindset

Peter Dang:And and I just wanna clarify it's because everyone that has all the other things have been interviewed by the designer by the engineering lead etcetera and that's where that you know kind of the previous principle comes into play as well in terms of I I do trust my team to go and assess those people right but the one thing that I care so much about is growth mindset and that's kind of the the thing and and to be honest I do do a little bit of a sweep so if if some we got weak signal on one of those areas I'll do it but the the pure sort of focus of my last interview is gonna be on growth mindset

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay well I need to ask you what that looks like but before I do when you talk about growth mindset I have this image of Marc Benioff on the podcast and I asked him just like there's so much changing all the time it's such a crazy world to be leading a company in this world where just everyone's disrupting each other AI is changing everything it's just like moving so fast every day there's a new you know breakthrough and you have to keep track and just how do you deal with that and he's like you should be thinking good this is amazing this is the best time to be building there's so much opportunity so exciting this is what we want exactly good I just remember him seeing it like good

Peter Dang:I love that

Lenny Rachitsky:I feel like that's the epitome of growth mindset

Peter Dang:Yep absolutely

Peter Dang:Well good thing I'm not an operator anymore because I'm gonna give away my interview questions so no one can like cheat on this so I I feel like this is another reason why this is such a great time to do this podcast the question I asked is is the same one I've asked for years and you can really you know kinda suss it out from this which is I I ask them think about the one of the biggest mistakes you've made like truly the most the more painful the better and tell me what the mistake was describe to me the situation and tell me actually how you actually think differently now work differently as a result like how has that turned into a core principle of yours etcetera and I give them a moment to think about it sometimes I even share some of my mistakes if need be and it's interesting because because I've asked this question so many times I can smell the BS if they're not being authentic right it's like know kind of like oh I've worked too hard or I you know did this thing and and they're really not being that you can tell the vulnerability that people are willing to express and I reciprocate with that because if they ask me what mine is I will tell them what it is right and then that's the vibe and then what ends up happening is like there's multiple reasons why this is really interesting one you get to get a sense of how reflective they are and there were some there's one moment I I I was was chatting with and we actually went on for like an hour because she was just like educating me on this like amazing problem that she made this mistake on and like how it changed the way that she worked and the company worked it was just incredible right and you can you can sense the passion you can sense what's genuine right and then there are always once in a while those those those things that people are like just very a little bit more defensive and not willing to open up and I think that's and it's safe it's a it's a one on one setting so it's a safe space and I'm you know it's also it's I I don't think it actually selects for or against introverts or extroverts I think at that point it's really genuine and the second sort of odor effect there is if they end up coming on the team you've already had that moment you've already had that moment where you've just already said like hey like this is where I really messed up and guess what it's all okay it's not a loss it's a lesson right and so it just sets a different tone for your working relationship so again I've never AB tested this so I can't tell you if this is actually either works or not but I found it to be very helpful in the style that I work in to be able to have that level of connection whether it's with a direct report or somebody in the org

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay so let me ask you just what do you how do you tease out a strong growth mindset what are some ways

Lenny Rachitsky:What I love about this answer is it's very much like fail corner which is a recurring segment on this podcast and I might tweak fail corner to be even closer to this question okay so let me summarize these two essentially two questions that you found to be really helpful in finding these superstars that you've hired over the years one is you ask people in six months if I'm telling you what to do I've hired the wrong person or I guess how do say it when you say it to someone just like you're probably the right wrong person

Peter Dang:Well it's it's actually framed a little bit differently it's in so there's there's five different sort of part of my API or just how to work best with me there's like five attributes of people that are most successful who who who work with me and I love working with and and one of them is framed as sort of you know that that you know they're you're telling me what to do not the other way around

Lenny Rachitsky:Six months after joining right

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay by the way you should open source this p pxd api doc

Peter Dang:Right and then I I follow-up with in six months if I'm still telling you what to do I've hired the wrong person got it right and I think that is that's that's how I frame it

Peter Dang:I would love to I think now I got nothing to hide I'm just like here I'm gonna open book so maybe we'll do that at some point you'll you'll you'll you'll make me brave enough to do that maybe after this podcast

Lenny Rachitsky:So you may find a link in the show notes for this podcast to that doc if

Peter Dang:I'm brave enough

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay and then the the other question you ask is tell me essentially a a story of when you failed a product that you launched failed and how that changed how you behave how you think about product how you operate

Peter Dang:Yeah

Lenny Rachitsky:Amazing okay great okay let's talk about management

Peter Dang:Sure

Lenny Rachitsky:So this came up so I talked to a bunch of people that have worked with you and interestingly one of those recurring themes it wasn't about like AI or hiring came up a bit but it's actually mow mostly about how skilled you are as a manager and this all has already come through in a lot of the things we've talked about so I wanna talk about a couple things here sure one is someone that you worked with at OpenAI Joanna Jeng or is

Peter Dang:It you Joanne Joanne

Lenny Rachitsky:Joanne Jeng or Ying yeah

Peter Dang:Jeng

Lenny Rachitsky:Jeng okay cool you worked with her at OpenAI and she shared a couple things that I think are really interesting one is that you had a profound impact on her career by teaching her how to manage up more effectively and you did that by teaching her a really simple phrase that she just says and uses first of all do you remember what that phrase is

Peter Dang:I've said a lot of stuff and I've kind of forgotten I tend to forget what I say so my you might have to remind me

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay so she said say you'll do the thing do the thing say you did the thing.

Peter Dang:Mhmm.

Lenny Rachitsky:As a skill of managing up so sure just talk about that just the power of that and what that's all about.

Peter Dang:I mean look I I I learned this from my time at Uber from Jill who runs PR comms and policy there and she used to have this saying which is like repetition doesn't spoil the prayer it's just a a natural thing where people are busy so whether you know if you say about managing up or even managing you know the entire org if you don't repeat what your goals are if you don't repeat what your vision is if you don't repeat the thing that you feel strongly about like what you're doing what you're you know whether it's maybe to your manager one I think you might lose sight of the thing that's important and I think this is where it's a little bit of a behavior this is another language affecting thought thing right by by by by giving this this phrase to Joanne maybe it was just like hey let's just be very intentional about what we build that's like that becomes a a constant reminder right and it it also has this other effect where if you're saying this is what I'm doing and then that's a thing that your manager's like wait we don't need to do that anymore you can have a conversation about it as opposed to just like doing the thing and not saying that you're doing it so let me take a step back so one say what you're gonna do and then in that in that exercise you're gonna be able to calibrate with your manager again with anyone right what is it that we're gonna do and it's I think the words are really important here going back to what I said earlier so figuring out what is that goal and crafting that to really pack the most punch and the densest of of of concepts right and and then you're telling them that you're doing it which that's the second phase which is like well in your one on ones or in your in your your your your team all hands you're saying this is what we're doing right it's a great time to reaffirm what you're doing or invite the conversation that this is no longer the thing to do and you gotta tell them you did it so just close the loop just be like okay great this is now done and I think that's again it's one of those like really pithy phrases that has so many second order effects that are behavioral almost and this is a little bit of a hack in terms of helping people you know it's funny that Joanne thought of it as managing up which is which it is but in my mind it's almost like this is how we operate and this is how we're successful to stay on stay on task stay on goal and be able to revisit the goals that we've set when they no longer are relevant.

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay so the phrase again is say you'll do the thing do the thing and then say that you did the thing.

Peter Dang:It's actually sorry one more time it's it's it's say it's the way I would say it is say you're gonna do the thing say that you're doing the thing and then say that you did it.

Lenny Rachitsky:This reminds me of this also works for presentation advice so this came up I I don't know if it was Guy Kawasaki or someone had a very similar phrase that was for how to present well which is tell them what you're gonna tell them tell them and then tell them what you just told them.

Peter Dang:That you know it's possible that I might have you know incepted it from there so I take no ownership over this phrase I will just say that yes I did I did repeat it.

Lenny Rachitsky:This is great and I love that this isn't just managing up advice it's just like operating advice for everyone and that there's an implication of the last part is just like take like make sure people know what you did like almost like make sure that you get some credit and people understand the the impact you've had.

Peter Dang:Which is which is important I think there's a lot of people who are kind of introverted and don't wanna draw attention and don't have the hero complex and I think that those people tend to get lost in in organizations so if that describes you just remember to to say what you did.

Lenny Rachitsky:There's another management trait that Joanne shared that I wanna spend a little time on which is you're very good at helping people understand that they can lean into their strengths and not feel like they need to fit into a certain box she shared that you basically helped her create almost a new role within OpenAI that wasn't even a thing before so just maybe share that example and then just talk about why this is important how you think about this.

Peter Dang:Well I I love that we're talking about things that Joanne Joanne taught are telling you because Joanne's really special I I gotta just take a moment to give her a giant shout out she is the only person that I've worked with that has as much technical depth as she does have product taste and I just wanna pause there like it's it's it's just truly special I I feel entirely privileged to have the chance to cross paths with her at OpenAI I learned so much from her like again talk about like not telling you what to do after six months like she was telling me what to do from like day two and I loved it because she was she's so technical and she has this taste and that those two things are very rare to find together and with Joanne because she was so special in that way and I spotted that I was like wow like I've worked with so many PMs and it just like this is very unique it just it feel it felt like we had to find a way to craft this right and sure enough she was I was like hey can you just write up a job description of like what is this thing because there's something magical here but I don't fully understand it I don't think any other person really thinks of things this way I think this might be a big superpower for OpenAI like let's codify it right and again going back to my language being a really important thing I think the exercise sometimes of writing things down of like things that you intuitively feel give you an artifact that can kind of communicate with somebody else so like in this case Joanne writing down like kind of some of the things that she got really excited about helped me really understand that and you know I was luckily in a in a position where I can basically say like let's let's create this role let's let's create this role and have you lead it and I think this is gonna be great for the product if we're able to codify it so I don't think I did anything special I was just following my instincts and just like following her lead again I will be clear I did not author a document I my recollection she did that so she did all the hard work and all of this thing and I don't wanna take any credit for it the only thing I did was just gave her a little nudge of like I think there's something here like can you just take a moment to go and write this down and when she did it was just like okay this has gotta be a role and you have to be the leader for this function.

Lenny Rachitsky:What is the actual role she ended up in I think that'd be really interesting to share.

Peter Dang:Yeah the role was model designer and it was just a really interesting way that she framed it and and I know this role probably exists in some incarnation in other foundational model companies but the way that she described it and the things that she found to be the spikes required led us to hire our first two model designers after running a search and they were just perfect fits for the team right and that I think is largely a big secret as to why at least I'm biased I love ChatGPT so much in the way the model does I it come comes off and and the vibe of the model is largely because of this like technical plus taste role that she has created and she is leading.

Lenny Rachitsky:I love one of the interesting takeaways from this as a leader is just pay attention to some to what people are really really excited about and then take the step of let them try to describe it very clearly in a doc coming back to your point about the the power of language and words is just like okay tell me exactly what you're thinking and let's jam on it because maybe there's something here yeah is there anything broader here about just like leaning into strengths that you find just like you know there's a lot of people there's all this debate of like should i just work on the things i'm terrible at and that'll make me better or should i find the things i'm amazing at and just get better at those things any thoughts there

Peter Dang:I genuinely believe that fit is a two way street and so what you are passionate about what your strengths are you gotta really find the right company the right role for you and i think there's a lot of force fitting that people want to do is to fit into a certain archetype i'm glad we talked about the pm archetypes hopefully frees people up to kind of really lean into what they love right because you know life's pretty short it would be great if everyone find the thing that they really wanted to do and be able to lean in and do that and i the optimism in me is also why this is i'm so excited about the time and age that we're in right now because there's so many different companies popping up so there's like there's there's something that really resonates with people right i mean take a look at just the the the you what we're doing here it's like podcasting was not a thing twenty years ago like we there's just it was it was not a thing but now we're able to like have these amazing tools and platforms that allow people to to really express themselves and really what really truly brings them joy and and makes them happy and also brings a ton of value to the world right so i think that yeah i definitely believe in leaning in strengths and i think that you know as hard as it may be sometimes you gotta look at sort of where you are right now and is this the thing that you really want to do or is there something else that's kind of like kind of drawing your attention and and drawing you towards that

Lenny Rachitsky:There's another management oriented question i'll ask you this came from eric antonelle who apparently has worked with you for seventeen years across a bunch

Peter Dang:Different for seventeen years one of my my biggest mentors and friends like he's he's amazing

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay so he's he's he's he's like you need to ask this question so the way he put it is you've hired managed mentored many many many product people some junior some senior across so many different cultures and he's just like we need to learn something from your experience doing that in terms of what you've learned about what it takes to be a really successful product person whether it's being successful in building product or career wise what's just like a nugget that you learn from seeing so many different types of people and cultures and seniority

Peter Dang:I think for a product person specifically it's really important to obsess over the details of craft because you're ultimately you're crafting a product it's important to obsess about the details of craft while simultaneously having the perspective and wisdom of which details don't actually matter

Peter Dang:I'm gonna pause there and just kinda try to unpack this a little bit because at the core of being a product person you're like oh like i wanna build something that people love right and that's the job and that's that's what draws people to be product people is that you have this desire to build and i think that i've been involved in enough teams where i myself and when i was really young and and coming up as a product person i would just get obsessed over these little little details and i've i realized afterwards that we've just wasted a bunch of time on something that didn't actually matter so i think that dichotomy is somewhat interesting and beautiful to me because it capsulates both the core of what the ethos of a successful product person is which is you really have to care and you have to to to give a crap about the product that you're building but you also have to have the perspective and business know how to understand where do you apply your time and where do you apply the care there and i myself feel like i've gone through cycles you know like everything that i've done i've done super deep and really obsessed and then i take a step back and i'm like wait actually i was missing something and this other thing was was more important right i'll i'll give you an example i'll use the uber example here as as as you know when i said that you know the the digital product didn't really matter right and it's all about the price the eta one of the proudest products that i've built at uber which is uber reserve right it's the simplest of thing going back to what i said before sometimes the the best products are the simplest of things but the problem that we were trying to solve is that you know everyone has this you have a 6am flight and are you really gonna wake up at 4am and request an uber and hope that there's enough ubers and the person is gonna come right because if you do that you're not gonna sleep well and you're gonna like you know wake up every two hours and you're you're probably gonna miss your flight anyway because you're gonna fall asleep or whatever and so there was this insight of like okay there's a whole mismatch between what people really want which is the the peace of mind that their car is gonna be there and guess what i'm willing to pay for that right and so we built uber reserve which was like it was the simplest thing which is like oh just like go ahead and say what time your flight is and we'll work backwards or even just like tell us when you wanna get picked up and everything about that product we crafted what really mattered for the user which was the peace of mind so if you go there and you say what time your flight is and you you pick up your your pickup time or whatever i think that the product is it hasn't changed that much since i was since i was there it would tell you oh this is cutting it really close you may not make your flight it's like wow good that was put in there because of the principle of peace of mind right and and on the other side it's like well what do drivers need they need to they need to know you're not gonna cancel and all this other stuff you gotta think about the driver incentives too so it was a simple idea i'm really proud of the team for figuring out all the intricate details did some testing and last i heard from folks internally this is like a 5,000,000,000 a year business now and one of the highest margin ones and i'm really proud of this because it's like it came from the idea of like let's focus on what actually matters right which is this that peace of mind and how many people really need it in that moment so so that i think that's the story that the best the best story i can tell

Lenny Rachitsky:That's an awesome story it connects so many of the things you've talked about one is just it may not be the product that really matters and micro optimizing the experience is not gonna move the needle when there's something else that's more operationally oriented but you know there's always gonna be a product component if you're building it for for users the other piece that i think is interesting here is it's well there's two one is just it connects back to your point about the importance of autonomy of product people it's just like i feel like you're like here's the team here's what i'm told to work on and then you're like oh but this thing is actually the problem we need to solve and let's just build a new product around it and then there's a whole story imagine if you're getting buy in and all that stuff the other thing that connects you we just had the cpo of the of uber the current cpo of uber on the podcast and he talked little yeah a few episodes before this one and he's it was all about dogfooding and basically exactly discovering these problems he he's done seven to 800 rides as an uber driver to do to discover these problems he had this great quote about it's one thing to watch just build an app for drivers sitting in your office making it look really pretty to another to be driving 60 miles an hour with this phone a few feet away from you trying to figure things out

Peter Dang:100% oh i remember that i i took two weeks off before i joined uber and in that time i've i've been obsessed with kind of like user research for the the longest of times and this is like more relevant back then when you wanted to really understand how you know yeah the the wide massive users were using your product and i remember i actually leased a car to to drive for uber those two weeks so it's a little white vw something or another i put an uber sticker on it i turned on the app and it just started driving it it's like there's no better way to learn than to dog food and i'll just build on what what sachin sachin right is the person you had on on the podcast yeah he's amazing amazing guy and and so i'll just build on sort of what he said there i think that you know what really stuck with me in terms of framework that i learned back in school was because i was brought up at with the ideo way of design thinking and i was at the design school at stanford where before you know we literally were in trailers that's that's that's how early it was but i remember that the framework that really stuck with me is what ideo preached which is like there are five stages to great design thinking number one is empathize two is to define three is to ideate four is a prototype and and five is to test and what i love about this framework and i i really hope this doesn't get lost because i i don't know how much it's being preached nowadays in in design thinking is that it really it has the right words associated with it you know like the first thing is empathizing like it's not just about you gotta really feel the pain of your customers right it's not just about kind of theoretically understanding what the problems are it's like really empathizing which is why you know user research was so important to me right is to understand that or even you know like sachin said just taking those rides but also you know flying around the world and and when i was working at uber to figure out well what are the various conditions and so empathize is like a really powerful word the define is also a really powerful word because it forces you to articulate what the problem is and this is again going back to the language thing of you have to be very intentional about defining the the the the problems that you wanna solve and then ideate we all know it's brainstorming and prototyping tests are self explanatory but the first two stages i think are really insightful and it talks directly to what sachin was saying it's like you gotta dog food because you really have to empathize and the great products are when you really feel the pain and you really empathize with the with with what people are are experiencing

Lenny Rachitsky:It makes me think of jeff bezos as this great quote if you're trying to if you have an anecdote and data and they're telling you different things trust the anecdote

Peter Dang:Mhmm

Lenny Rachitsky:Oh man right so many lessons okay so to start to kinda wrap up our conversation we covered a lot of ground i wanna ask you about facebook real quick so sure you joined facebook very early eric antinow who i've mentioned previously told me that it was very strange that you left google to join facebook at that stage google was killing it on top of the world you had such a strong career path things are going great we decided to take a big leap joining facebook what made what did you see because i think there's something interesting here that we can learn about what you saw that helps that may help other people decide where to go work

Peter Dang:I've always been enamored with this idea of understanding us as fundamentally human and how we're wired and I remember at the time you know talking to the folks at Facebook and seeing it and this is back when like people are like oh this is just a college site you know and and that's how that was the the vibe back then but what I saw was that the team and Mark and and others really understood the fundamental human sort of desires that people had to connect and feel lonely and to to share and they really got the right articulation of the problem they're trying to solve which was to to to make the world more open and connected and this really resonated with me because I again I studied a lot in college like psychology and just I was really enamored with this idea of like how are we as humans fundamentally wired and it felt to me like a a no brainer to go work at Facebook because they saw

Peter Dang:how people were wired and how to actually build products that complement how people are wired right and it wasn't that they were trying to force fit something into something that was unnatural it was almost like you know how do we build technologies and and products that actually augment our our fundamental desire to kinda stay connected and this goes back to sort of why I think the power of wars is so important is because you know you take a look at some of the mission statements for like friendster or or myspace I don't even know if they had mission statements or what they were they were kind of vapid and they didn't really speak to the fundamental humanity of what Facebook was striving to build and that just deeply resonated with me right and so it's I remember spending time with Eric being like hey what should I do should I take this offer from Facebook or should I stay at Google but ultimately it was just like that deep resonance with my values of building things that were fundamentally human and ultimately think that for any startup out there anyone building product the more that you can get a good impedance match between what you're building and what humans fundamentally want and need the more successful you're gonna be right so that's that's like my my my big answer I think the the second an secondary answer I've always optimized for learning like in my career and this is a huge thing that I say to a lot of people because they look at sort of like oh you've been at all these companies like what's your secret I'm like well I've just figured out that I wanna go to the place where I can learn the most and for me that wasn't really Google but I had so much I wanted to learn from operating at Facebook and at Facebook I would say yeah I was there for nine and a half years but I always jumped around every two and a half or so when I feel like there was something new to learn and that's it that's I mean I don't know if it's a secret or not it just it just I got lucky and I just was able to have opportunities to learn different things and different skills and that served me quite well and regardless of any outcome I would say that's just a great way to live your life personally it's just to kind of optimize for learning and those experiences and and for me you know moving to Facebook was that I saw so much learning that that that could have happened and it ultimately did hap so I feel like that was a good outcome too

Lenny Rachitsky:Boy did it so a couple takeaways here for folks that are maybe trying to decide between a couple roles maybe deciding if they should leave and do something new is one are you feeling like you're learning enough slash is the new place you're thinking about gonna help you learn a lot more two is this is what they're building aligned with human behavior almost this impotent impotence match that you described feels like there's another element you shared which is do they have a really unique insight about how things work and also do you really care about this is this also how you see the world so you're talking about a Facebook like they have this really unique insight about human behavior and that was really important to you and so it's a really good fit

Peter Dang:100% yeah I think the insight thing thank you for summarizing that and and drawing that out because that is it's also what I look for and what I you know wanna partner with companies and startups now is like you have that unique insight are you teaching me something that I I really don't know and that usually is a good indicator of a strong point of view and having a strong point of view is really important because like you know there's a saying that Mike and Kevin had at at Instagram which is we may not be right but at least we're not confused I think that just it was it's a beautiful phrase I thought because like you know sometimes you just gotta go and do the thing that you think is right and the indecision is gonna be one of the things that really kinda gets you and bites you right so that that that for me is is something as I look for folks who have a strong conviction whether it's the the founders I support you know when I go join and and be an operator at the company or the founders I support in my current role

Lenny Rachitsky:That's so interesting Tomer Cohen the C CPO of LinkedIn uses that's that's a famous phrase that he often uses too I wanna be barred from those guys yeah that was that was one of his mottos we may not be right but we're not confused

Peter Dang:Wow I didn't know that so I I did talk to him at one point I don't remember if that's something we talked about but again it could just be like you know great minds think alike and we just had different different great folks when Mike and Kevin and and Tomer are feeling feeling the same vibes

Lenny Rachitsky:I love just how many episodes this conversation is referenced okay so speaking of learning final question before we get to our very exciting lightning round I'm gonna take us to fail corner right which very aligned with your growth mindset question so the idea of this segment is people come on this podcast they share all these amazing stories of everything's working out I had so much success at all these incredible companies everything worked but in reality things don't often work out most people go through a lot of failed initiatives projects career hits so the question is just what's a product that you built and launched that was just a big failure and I'll ask it the way you ask it what's how did that change the way you think and operate

Peter Dang:You know one one example is you know since we're talking about Instagram before yeah we we try to build a kind of camera first app at Instagram it was called Bolt

Peter Dang:It didn't work and the great you know kinda levels of craft and design and and the premise was essentially like you know can we make it so it just reduces the pressure to share right and you can open to a camera you can you can just kind of like send some things to folks and you get some good feedback and you kind of go from there and it was and obviously the Instagram design team so it was top notch like the app was designed really well it was really fast because it's the Instagram you know engineering team and they were just really good at making perform mobile apps right it had all of the advantages that we had talked about that we've evaluated in Instagram but we launched it in I believe was New Zealand or Australia and it didn't work and I remember the the reason we we we knew this is as we're looking at sort of the the retention graphs and retention is the key indicator in any product that you build it's not the number of users it's not the volume it's actually retention and cohort retention can you can draw the you plot the line and and if it asymptotes then you're in a good spot because that means that people over x period of time will will continue to stay on the app and that just didn't happen and I think the learning here was that you can really have the best team in the world with the best product taste and you can't really predict what's gonna hit on the first go and failure is okay you're just gonna up and learn from that right and nobody wallowed over that we actually had some technologies that we built there that we were able to port over to the main app which was really good which is really helpful but you know to quote the great American poet poet Sean Carter it ain't a loss it's a lesson right and I think it's really important that you see that as a product person is that you don't don't see it as failure you see it as like kind of great now now I'm that much smarter right and this is something that I've just collected there's other examples as well but I think this is one of the a good example of sort of something that's somewhat counterintuitive that you have the best team you're gonna provide those hits over and over but sometimes you you can't predict those hits and you just have to have the wisdom to be like okay let's let's let's see what we can learn here see what we can save here and then move on

Lenny Rachitsky:And

Lenny Rachitsky:I absolutely remember that product in launch or heard about it but I also don't ever think about it and so I think it's a good reminder of because that's a you know Instagram launching a new product that's trying to rethink the way you do so your camera that's a big deal and so I could see that being a really big deal for it not to work out at the same time nobody remembers that really

Peter Dang:Exactly yep

Lenny Rachitsky:Peter we've we've gone for two hours at this point I feel like we could do two hours more we'll save that for another conversation

Peter Dang:Great

Lenny Rachitsky:Before we get to our very exciting lightning round is there anything else you either wanted to share or wanna leave listeners with to maybe double down on a point you made that you think might be helpful otherwise we'll just jump right in

Peter Dang:I think we should jump right in because i i i feel like you've you've extracted every little ounce of what wisdom i had here and you did a great job here just helping me remember these stories and recounting stuff so i'm i'm ready to jump in

Lenny Rachitsky:That's my goal although i know there is much more that i haven't even started to tap but with that we reached our very exciting lightning round are you ready

Peter Dang:I'm ready question one what are two or three

Lenny Rachitsky:Books that you find yourself recommending most to other people

Peter Dang:This is easy for me number one is sapiens you if you're a product person you have to understand our own humanity if you wanna build products for people straight up that's that's that's a beautiful book i read it before it was called sapiens it was called from animals to gods and it was just republished with a different name but it has really stuck with me and i remember it's a very short easy read so i i'd recommend that the second book i think for product folks is is a classic one which is the design of everyday things by don norman this may seem outdated and old but it's it i promise you it's not it really helps you understand you know physical product design which is again things that mold and shape to humanity i think that gives you a a good sense of that third book is something i'm reading right now it's recommended by a a friend of mine and i can't put it down it's called the silk roads by peter francopan and basically this is a recounting of history through the lens of the silk road and and sort and the middle east and how how that's evolved it's so fascinating because one of the things i love lenny is seeing things from different perspectives this is why travel's fun this is why like you know user research is fun for me and it really helps you see the events of world history that we've all been experiencing through a very western view viewpoint in a in a different way and it kind of connects a bunch of things that are like you know there's western thought there's eastern thought but if you see the connection between them it's super fascinating i'm only two chap three or maybe four chapters in but definitely something i would recommend off the bat

Lenny Rachitsky:What is a favorite recent movie or tv show that you've really enjoyed

Peter Dang:I have to go maybe it's not as recent but i the one that always comes back to me is the wire hbo's the wire and and i just i guess there's just so many tv shows now that are i'm still processing do i wanna put it in my all time greats but the storytelling there and the the various different sort of consistent characters but the fact that there's the beautiful writing of the wire is something that's unparalleled

Lenny Rachitsky:I'm now curious what's in your all time greats list but i'm not gonna go there we're gonna keep going what's a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love

Peter Dang:I i will i'm just gonna go with cranola because i think that we've talked about this before but this has been a superpower for me and i have a lot of commute time now what i do is i just do a single player mode i go up and i i start thinking about and brainstorming about sort of ideas or theses i have for investing or whatnot and i get to where i'm going and boom it's there organized in a more cogent way and oftentimes ways that i didn't even think about articulating them so it it goes through the process of of forming words but it also helps that assistance and i think it's a beautiful product for on many different levels

Lenny Rachitsky:Wow granola's killing it at this category recently and i'll give a shout out you get a year free of granola if you become a yearly subscriber of my newsletter which is the not just for you but your entire team they're just they gave an incredible deal

Peter Dang:Is that true i didn't know that 100% true okay well i tell you i was not compensated for that little pitch there that was that's that's genuine right now

Lenny Rachitsky:Not compensated yeah if you go to lenny'snewsletter.com and click bundle you'll see a way to get it love the product use it all

Lenny Rachitsky:I should be using it for these interviews and then I could have a whole summary ready to go. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?

Peter Dang:The time

Peter Dang:Yes, this is actually something that my dad taught me. It's a saying that is in Chinese that actually rhymes in Chinese but, you know, kind of almost rhymes in English and it goes something like this in English which is if you move a tree it dies but if you move a person he thrives and I think it's a really interesting thing I keep on coming back to and this goes back to why, you know, for me it's just the joy of learning and trying new experiences and, you know, being at different companies that I've been very fortunate to be at. I really think that that's how you should live life is just to kind of experience these different experiences and it's kind of poetic to be like yeah, like something lies, you know, unfortunately for trees like you can't really move them after a while but for humans I think that you move them around and, you know, we get different travel experiences and we get different life experiences when we go to different jobs and I think that makes life really worth living.

Lenny Rachitsky:There's a, I always think about what I would answer to this question and there's a few but one is something I always come back to when my wife and I are deciding to do something is choose adventure. Similar sentiment. Final question. Okay, so you've now moved from product leader to investor so I just want to give you a chance to share, tell people what kind of stuff you're looking for. So you moved, you're for leases now, yep, investing in startups, yep. What sort of startups are you looking for? Who should reach out if they're interested in?

Peter Dang:I appreciate that opportunity. Look for me, I just think it's been very clear like I just love working with great people and, you know, for me investing is just the ability to support more amazing founders. I've always been drawn to the founder archetype, right? Like working closely with Zach or, you know, with Travis or Howie Brendan at Oculus and, you know, folks at OpenAI. I think there's this amazing sort of visionary person that I just love supporting in one way or another and I've supported them mainly from the inside as a product leader but for me it's just finding those amazing founders and in this current role I get to work with many founders at the same time, right? And just two days ago I was on had meaningful calls, product jams with like three different founders in three different industries and that kind of keeps my mind super alive. So, you know, that's kind of why I'm doing what I'm doing now and I would love to find some more of those amazing thought partners and people that I can just help out if I can.

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay then, stage and market, anything there for folks of okay he's a fit, not a fit?

Peter Dang:Absolutely. So I would say early stage, seed, seed plus and A is where I really get excited. I feel like I'm able to help folks see the next stage. I've seen a lot of movies in my life, in my career, so it's like, oh great, I can definitely see this extrapolating out. You don't have to convince me of the future and then it's really fun to be able to jam and help support if I can and how you scale from the one to ten and ten to a hundred so that's really big. And in terms of what I look for, it's the two things I said before. It's like in this day and age there's so many amazing things that's gonna be built. One is do you have unique data and do you have a data flywheel? Two, do you have a really crafted workflow that you can really get after? And I guess third it's like do you have that insight of what product things actually matter and also which ones don't and then how do you actually go and expand upon that. So yeah, really excited to meet a bunch more founders whether it comes from here or somewhere else.

Lenny Rachitsky:Okay so final question then is how do folks reach out if they wanna actually talk to you about this and how can listeners be useful to you?

Peter Dang:Thank you for the question. I am an introvert so I'm really kind of silent on a lot of social media. I have accounts on X and Threads but really I think LinkedIn is the network of choice for me. I really want to be able to passively kind of consume and learn about what's happening. How listeners can be helpful, I just want to learn like what are you all thinking about, what are some of the insights you're seeing. One of the analogies I have about AI in this day and age is that it's this really interesting new element that humanity has discovered and what's awesome is that humanity is also very creative and so what humanity does with this new element I'm fascinated by, right? And you can tell the founders who've actually played with this element because they have this innate sense of what this thing can do and can't do and I'm just looking to be inspired by the creativity of all y'all out there.

Lenny Rachitsky:Wow, that's such a cool way of thinking about it. It's gonna change my perspective on AI a little bit. Peter, this is incredible. I really appreciate you taking the time to share so much wisdom. I know this is the first time you've done anything like this. I feel like this is gonna help a lot of people in a lot of different ways. I feel like we covered everything I wanted to cover.

Peter Dang:So just...

Lenny Rachitsky:Again, thank you for...

Peter Dang:Well, thank you for having me. This has been a real pleasure and it's hopefully, you know, some folks out there can get some learnings from this and find it useful but that was my goal is to be able to share some things and hopefully it'll be helpful to some folks out there so thank you, thank you for the opportunity.

Lenny Rachitsky:Thank you Peter. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.