177 Strategic Thinking & Models shared on Lenny's Podcast

Camel Blocks Prompt Injection Through Permission Control

By Sander Schulhof - Why securing AI is harder than anyone expected and guardrails are failing | HackAPrompt CEO

Camel grants agents only the minimal read/write permissions inferred from the user’s request, blocking malicious actions introduced via prompt injection.

Sander Schulhof

Why securing AI is harder than anyone expected and guardrails are failing | HackAPrompt CEO

Camel Blocks Prompt Injection Through Permission Control

Camel grants agents only the minimal read/write permissions inferred from the user’s request, blocking malicious actions introduced via prompt injection.

John Zorotsky

Rapidly test and validate any startup idea with the 2-day Foundation Sprint

Foundation Sprint Prevents Premature Ideation

John says running a Foundation Sprint keeps teams from ideating too soon and forces clarity on why they are unique and which market they target...

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Success Through Many Bold Bets

Success chances rise by placing many bold bets and cycling through them quickly, so test ideas early and move on fast.

Dan Shipper

The AI-native startup: 5 products, 7-figure revenue, 100% AI-written code. | Dan Shipper (Every)

AI Progress Measured by Agent Autonomy Time

Dan suggests measuring AI progress by how long you can safely let an agent work without intervention.

Will Larson

The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)

Systems Thinking: Stocks and Flows

Will defines systems thinking as modelling accumulations (stocks) and their movement rates (flows), illustrated with fish and fishermen in a lake.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

System Output Limited By Slowest Component

Brian stresses that overall output only improves when every function accelerates because a system is limited by its slowest part.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

Model Is The Product

Nick explains that ChatGPT’s model must be iterated on exactly like a product, using user research, data science and rapid feedback loops.

Chip Conley

Brian Chesky's secret mentor who scaled Airbnb (after dying 9 times & building a hotel empire)

Problem-Solution-Result Resume Format

He recommends crafting resume paragraphs that outline a thorny problem, skills applied, and measurable result.

Madhavan Ramanujam

Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam

20% of Features Drive 80% of Willingness to Pay

Twenty percent of features usually create eighty percent of willingness to pay and are often the easiest to build.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

Base44 vs Cursor Tradeoffs

Zevi explains Base44 removes product-build guesswork by auto-choosing auth and DB, sacrificing flexibility that Cursor restores.

Will Larson

The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)

Writing Down Strategy Enables Improvement

Will argues every team already has a strategy and the first rule is to write it down so you can debug and improve it.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

LLM Map-Reduce for Large Data Processing

Airtable created an ‘LLM map-reduce’ that chunks large data sets, runs separate LLM calls, then aggregates results to bypass context limits.

Elena Verna

The new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year

Giving AI Products Away As Marketing Strategy

Elena urges founders to view LLM pass-through fees as marketing spend, not a cost centre, to remove monetisation friction and accelerate adoption.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Murder Board Your Project Plans

Before any new project you write a two-page plan and invite three-four uninvolved peers to aggressively tear it apart to sharpen vision, goals and tactics.

Asha Sharma

How 80,000 companies build with AI: Products as organisms and the death of org charts | Asha Sharma

Planning in Seasons for AI Development

Asha plans around industry "seasons", aligning on secular changes, customer problems, winning definition and a north-star, then sets loose quarterly OKRs and 4-6-week squad goals...

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Distribution Platforms Follow Predictable Open-Close Cycle

Brian explains that new distribution platforms lure creators with high rev-share then predictably restrict organic reach and reduce payouts as they monetise.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Valid Reasons to Rebrand

He lists three valid reasons to rebrand: placeholder startup name, strategic product pivot, or signalling new capabilities after a merger.

Garrett Lord

Inside the expert network training every frontier AI model | Garrett Lord

Model Advances Require New Data Types

Future model advances will rely on new data types—CAD, scientific tool logs, multimodal audio and video—beyond today’s text corpora.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Retention Beats Distribution for Platform Winners

Brian argues historical winners succeed by superior retention and engagement rather than having the widest distribution at launch.

Mike Krieger

Anthropic's CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram)

Strategy Requires Focus Despite AI Capabilities

Mike stresses choosing clear where-to-play and how-to-win decisions to focus limited compute and avoid confusing positioning.

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

One Sentence Year-End Success Statement

Ask each team member what single sentence they’d love to tell the CEO at year-end to clarify expectations and desired outcomes.

Molly Graham

The high-growth handbook: Molly Graham’s frameworks for leading through chaos, change, and scale

Waterline Model: Snorkel Before You Scuba

Molly explains the Waterline model where structural and dynamics issues cause 80% of problems, so 'snorkel before you scuba' by first fixing goals, roles and...

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

Three Worlds of AI Alignment

Anthropic frames AI alignment difficulty in three worlds—pessimistic, optimistic, and pivotal—clarifying actions from slowdown to acceleration.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Chase Watermelons on the Ground

Howie urges teams to chase the many “watermelons on the ground” first—high-value, low-effort AI opportunities—before climbing harder trees.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

AI CTO Challenges Ideas

He prompts a dedicated CTO agent to own all technical decisions, push back on ideas, and require planning before any code is written.

Jason Lemkin

We replaced our sales team with 20 AI agents—here’s what happened next | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)

Buy AI GTM Tools, Don't Build Them

Jason urges most companies to purchase ready-made AI GTM tools rather than build in-house, as the classic software buy-vs-build logic still applies.

Madhavan Ramanujam

Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam

Master Negotiations Through Value Selling and Gives-Gets

Recommends mastering gives-and-gets, value selling, and negotiation tactics to capture full deal value.

Molly Graham

The high-growth handbook: Molly Graham’s frameworks for leading through chaos, change, and scale

Expect Instability as the Only Constant

Molly advises assuming everything will change—boss, role, structure—so you prepare by viewing instability itself as the only constant.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Four-Step Cycle of New Distribution Platforms

Brian outlines a repeat cycle of market readiness, moat discovery, platform opening, and eventual closure that determines category winners.

Jake Knapp

Rapidly test and validate any startup idea with the 2-day Foundation Sprint

Work Alone Together Method Speeds Decision-Making

Team members silently note answers, vote, and a designated decider finalises choices to speed decision-making.

Annie Duke

This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, former pro poker player)

Making Hiring Criteria Explicit Boosts Success Rate

Making implicit hiring criteria explicit via a rubric and structured interviews, then adding intuition, boosts hit rates from 50% to 65%, according to Annie Duke.

Ethan Smith

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

AEO vs GEO: Answer Engine Optimization Preferred

Ethan explains AEO – optimising to appear as LLM answers – and prefers it over GEO because it focuses narrowly on answer quality.

Madhavan Ramanujam

Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam

Nine Monetization Plays: Four for Startups, Five for Scale-ups

Organises nine monetisation plays into four for startups and five for scale-ups to keep focus manageable.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

Evals: Translating Product Goals to ML Teams

Writing evals is simply articulating ideal behaviour so researchers understand product goals, becoming the lingua franca between PMs and ML teams.

Matt McGinnis

“I deliberately understaff every project” | Leadership lessons from Rippling’s $16B journey

Drucker's Effective Executive Remains Relevant After 70 Years

He highlights Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive for timeless, practical advice on leading teams that has stayed relevant for 70 years.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Compound Names Create Multiplier Effect

Research shows compound names unlock extra associations—one plus one equals three—making them more powerful than single-word options.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Product Builders Need Tolstoy's Empathy

Nabil likens great product work to Tolstoy’s skill of entering every character’s mind, stressing deep user empathy over founders’ own views.

Brett Taylor

He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor (Sierra)

Three AI Market Segments: Avoid Foundation Models

Brett outlines frontier models, tooling, and applied-AI agents as the three meaningful markets, warning startups to avoid capex-heavy foundation models.

Claire Vo

Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD)

Operating in Your Zone of Genius

Define work where you are uniquely exceptional and energised to ensure long-term sustainable performance.

Elena Verna

The new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year

Bengali's Adjacent User Theory

Bengali’s adjacent user theory states growth comes from users just outside the core—same needs but new geos or use cases.

Sander Schulhof

Why securing AI is harder than anyone expected and guardrails are failing | HackAPrompt CEO

Three Security Tiers For AI Systems

Sander lays out three security tiers—read-only chatbot, verified read-only with classical security, and agentic systems requiring extra defences against prompt injection.

Ben Horowitz

$46B of hard truths: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear | Ben Horowitz (a16z)

Founders Must Build Confidence to Avoid Hesitation

Founders must simultaneously build confidence and competence or risk hesitation, politics, and eventual replacement.

Andrew Wilkinson

I’ve run 75+ businesses. Here’s why you’re probably chasing the wrong idea. | Andrew Wilkinson

Funding Path Depends on Business Model, Not Growth Ambition

Decide funding path by matching capital intensity and competitive moats rather than assuming bootstrap limits growth.

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

Benchmarks Quickly Saturate as AI Advances

New AI benchmarks reach 100% within 6–12 months, so the real challenge is inventing harder benchmarks to expose fresh capability jumps.

Alexander Imbirikos

Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI)

Codex: Smart Intern to Proactive Teammate

Alexander frames Codex as a smart intern evolving into a proactive software-engineering teammate that helps by default without constant prompting.

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

One Step Away From Company Goals

Ensure a single 'why' statement or simple formula links a team metric directly to the company target.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

Projects Prevent Memory Cross-Talk

Zevi keeps distinct life and work contexts separate by using GPT Projects with shared instructions and knowledge bases, preventing memory cross-talk.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

Continuous AI Prompt Improvement

After every AI mistake Zevi asks what in its prompt or tooling caused it, then updates documentation or commands so the error never recurs.

Nasreen Shengal

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

Delight Grade Matrix Prioritizes Solutions

Matrix places solutions against functional and emotional motivators to label surface, low or deep delight and focus on high-impact ideas.

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

Middle Layer Obsession Reduces Business Impact

Matt warns that obsessing over OKRs, objectives and other middle layers distances teams from actual business impact.

Matt McGinnis

“I deliberately understaff every project” | Leadership lessons from Rippling’s $16B journey

High Alpha, Low Beta Framework

Use alpha for outsized upside and beta for volatility to balance creativity versus reliability in products and processes.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Brand Names Build Cumulative Advantage

A distinctive name used repeatedly builds cumulative advantage as customer exposure compounds over time.

Matt LeMay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

CEO Test for Team Value

He recommends asking, 'If you were the CEO, would you fully fund your own team?' to stress-test whether your work truly merits continued investment.

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

Law of Reverse Effort in Product Management

Citing Alan Watts, Matt explains that pushing harder often backfires, so avoid over-complicating goals and OKRs.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

AI Models Review Each Other

Zevi runs slash review with Claude, Codex and Composer then invokes peer review so the ‘dev lead’ model defends or fixes issues until no bugs...

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

Connect Work to Impact Using Goal Metrics

Prioritise work by estimating impact using the exact metric your goal is measured in rather than abstract scores.

Andrew Wilkinson

I’ve run 75+ businesses. Here’s why you’re probably chasing the wrong idea. | Andrew Wilkinson

Boring Businesses Have Less Competition

Choosing boring, unflashy sectors lowers competition and increases chances of building a profitable company.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

AI Product Development Requires Dual Approach

Nick explains that building AI products requires simultaneously working backwards from model capabilities and practising classic customer-driven product management.

Elena Verna

The new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year

Minimum Lovable Product Replaces Minimum Viable Product

Elena says viability is outdated—teams must ship a minimum lovable product that truly delights buyers in a growing market.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Evaluating New Distribution Platforms

Evaluate emerging channels on retention, user monetisation quality, value-exchange arbitrage, and absolute scale, then immediately craft an exit moat.

Alexander Imbirikos

Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI)

Three-Layer Stack for Effective AI Agents

Imbirikos says an AI agent needs a smart model, an API that understands agent concepts, and a tool harness, all tuned together.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Three Employee Segments in Transformation

Brian outlines three employee segments—catalysts, converts, anchors—to diagnose and manage any major transformation.

Tomer Cohen

The end of product managers? Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered “full stack builders”

Performance Reviews Now Assess AI Fluency

Hiring, calibration and biannual reviews now assess people on their AI agency and fluency to push early, active use of new tools.

Ethan Smith

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

Answer Tracking Monitors LLM Share of Voice

Ethan defines answer tracking as evolving keyword tracking to monitor share of voice and average rank across LLM surfaces by asking each question and its...

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Weekend AI Projects Reveal Product Possibilities

Creating small, fun weekend projects forces deeper hands-on use of new AI models and reveals product form-factor possibilities beyond ChatGPT’s default interface.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

Ship AI Products Fast to Learn What to Polish

Nick argues that with AI products you discover what to improve only after launch, so the team aims to ship daily.

Nasreen Shengal

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

50-40-10 Model for Prioritizing Delight Features

She categorises backlog items into low delight, surface delight, and deep delight to guide investment choices.

Alexander Imbirikos

Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI)

Browser Integration Enables Contextual AI Assistance

Embedding the assistant inside a browser lets it leverage full page context to surface in-flow actions instead of flooding users with push notifications.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Ask What Names Can Do, Not Opinions

Instead of asking opinions, ask what a name could do for the company to unlock richer feedback.

Ben Horowitz

$46B of hard truths: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear | Ben Horowitz (a16z)

Success Is Chain of Small Decisions

Ben learned from a pilot that both crashes and successes result from chains of small choices, so break sunk-cost thinking and focus on each next...

Molly Graham

The high-growth handbook: Molly Graham’s frameworks for leading through chaos, change, and scale

Escalation as a Tool, Not Failure

Viewing escalation as a neutral tool, teams should jointly go upward when stuck so higher-ups unblock decisions instead of wasting time in deadlock.

Ethan Smith

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

Cialdini's Persuasion Frameworks for Growth Tests

Ethan recommends Cialdini’s persuasion frameworks to design growth tests that convince users to sign up or buy.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Cross-Functional Competency in Product Teams

Each PM, engineer, and designer should be minimally competent in the other two disciplines, then deepen their own specialty.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

Map Team Skill Gaps Before Hiring

Treat hiring like executive recruiting by first mapping each team’s missing skills instead of filling generic PM, EM, and designer slots.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

AI Agents Use Airtable Primitives as Domain-Specific Language

Airtable lets AI agents compose business apps from robust no-code primitives, acting like a domain-specific language that avoids raw code and cuts bugs.

Alexander Imbirikos

Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI)

Human Typing Speed Limits AI Acceleration

Human prompt-and-review speed now limits AI acceleration, so systems must let agents be default useful to unlock hockey-stick gains.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Smile Curve Retention Signals Escape Velocity

Brian and Lenny describe rising–dipping–rising retention curves as a rare early sign of platforms reaching escape velocity.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

Polish vs Ship: Reason From Scratch

Decide whether to polish or ship by reasoning from scratch about learning value, not by following inherited processes.

Jake Knapp

Rapidly test and validate any startup idea with the 2-day Foundation Sprint

Decision Making with Magic Lenses

Jake says if one option wins most lenses choose it, otherwise decide which single lens matters most and move forward.

Will Larson

The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)

Systems Thinking in Hiring Pipeline Analysis

Mapping each hiring stage as interconnected stocks and conversion flows reveals whether sourcing, screening, or closing limits progress.

Owen McCabe

How Intercom rose from the ashes by betting everything on AI | Eoghan McCabe (founder and CEO)

Killing Side Projects For Strategic Focus

Owen killed side projects and focused Intercom solely on service, ignoring other $80M ARR lines to create clarity and momentum.

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

Three Steps to Impact-First Product Teams

Matt outlines setting team-level goals tied to company goals, keeping impact visible throughout development, and reconnecting every task back to that impact.

Claire Vo

Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD)

AI Will Replace Functional Communication, Not Influential Communication

Claire separates replaceable "lowercase c" functional information exchange from irreplaceable "Capital C" influence-driven communication when assessing AI impact on PM work.

Ben Horowitz

$46B of hard truths: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear | Ben Horowitz (a16z)

Markets Only Bubble When No One Believes It's a Bubble

Ben argues a market only bubbles when almost everyone believes it is not a bubble, since capitulation drives prices out of control.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Making Intangible Products Tangible Through Metaphor

When the product is intangible, the first step is making it tangible by anchoring naming exploration in real-world metaphors of its core experience.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Users Struggle with Horizontal Tools

Because users find do-everything tools hard to adopt, specific entry points, UI and data are needed for each use case.

Garrett Lord

Inside the expert network training every frontier AI model | Garrett Lord

Handshake AI's Early Metrics Focus

Handshake AI adopted weekly, monthly and quarterly metrics from day one, unlike Handshake’s initial resistance.

Annie Duke

This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, former pro poker player)

Bezos' 70% Rule for Accepting Uncertainty

Bezos has the 70% rule to roll people back to be willing to accept uncertainty in the starting decision.

Asha Sharma

How 80,000 companies build with AI: Products as organisms and the death of org charts | Asha Sharma

Platform Success Requires Invisible Infrastructure

Asha stresses that reliability, privacy, availability and data residency, not myriad features, are what make a platform win.

Will Larson

The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)

Three-Rule Test for Effective Company Values

Will shares a three-rule test for any company value: it must be honest, directly applicable to daily work, and have a meaningful opposite so it...

Tomer Cohen

The end of product managers? Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered “full stack builders”

Clear Explanations Unlock Iterative Breakthroughs

Tomer says building clear cause-and-effect explanations unlocks iterative breakthroughs, echoing themes from The Beginning of Infinity.

Jason Lemkin

We replaced our sales team with 20 AI agents—here’s what happened next | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)

Pick One AI Tool, Train It, Become Hyper-Employable

Jason urges picking one agentic tool, ingesting data, answering training questions daily for 30 days, and becoming hyper-employable.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

AI Moat Lies in Context and Memory

Brian explains the competitive moat in AI models lies in accumulating user context and memory that improves outputs and reinforces usage.

Tomer Cohen

The end of product managers? Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered “full stack builders”

LinkedIn Launches Full Stack Builder Pilots Through Small Pods

LinkedIn launches Full Stack Builder pilots via small pods that must use tools and provide feedback to improve them.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Airtable's Shift from Feature Teams to Business Units

Airtable moved from feature-owned teams to business-unit pillars so groups pursue holistic outcome goals rather than incremental surface tweaks.

Peter Dang

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

Finding Success in AI Products: Data Flywheels and Crafted Workflows

Peter looks for unique data with a flywheel, a tightly crafted workflow, and clear insight into which product elements truly matter.

Andrew Wilkinson

I’ve run 75+ businesses. Here’s why you’re probably chasing the wrong idea. | Andrew Wilkinson

Entrepreneurs with ADHD Delegate to Compensate

Andrew explains that entrepreneurs with ADHD can offset weak executive function by delegating tasks and putting robust systems around themselves.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Focus on Behavior, Not Positioning When Naming

David urges starting naming discussions with how the company behaves now and wants to behave in the future rather than classic positioning talk.

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

Constitutional AI Self-Improvement Process

The model critiques and rewrites its own outputs against a natural-language constitution, learning to comply upfront.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Data Integration Pain in Large Organizations

Nabil notes only 5-10% is analysis and 90+% is gaining, cleaning, joining and normalising data, so tackling those steps is where product effort should focus.

Dan Shipper

The AI-native startup: 5 products, 7-figure revenue, 100% AI-written code. | Dan Shipper (Every)

Compounding Engineering Through Reusable Prompts

Dan suggests creating a reusable prompt that turns rough thoughts into a polished PRD, so every future spec takes far less work.

Jake Knapp

Rapidly test and validate any startup idea with the 2-day Foundation Sprint

Classic Differentiator Scales Jump-Start Strategic Thinking

Jake walks through a simple list of universal scales—fast-slow, smart-dumb, easy-hard, free-expensive, etc.—that teams quickly score to kick-start structured thinking on differentiation.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Startups Must Pick One AI Platform

Early-stage startups must pick one AI platform and go all-in instead of splitting scarce resources across multiple bets.

Nick Turley

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (OpenAI)

Is This Maximally Accelerated Approach

Nick applies the rule of asking why something cannot be done now to keep work moving at maximum speed.

Molly Graham

The high-growth handbook: Molly Graham’s frameworks for leading through chaos, change, and scale

Goal Cadence Differs by Company Stage

Seed-stage teams should set goals every two months, whereas mature businesses can use annual cycles.

Matt McGinnis

“I deliberately understaff every project” | Leadership lessons from Rippling’s $16B journey

Conway's Law: Teams Ship Their Org Chart

Locally optimised, globally incoherent teams will inevitably ship a similarly incoherent product, per Conway's Law.

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

Scaling Laws Continue to Hold for AI Progress

Ben says model intelligence follows scaling laws where more compute, smarter algorithms, and additional data compound to deliver disproportionate gains.

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

Safety Research Accelerates Product Competitiveness

Anthropic learned that investing in safety research actually accelerates product competitiveness rather than slowing it.

Alexander Imbirikos

Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI)

Chatter-Driven Development

Allow agents to act directly from team chats and social signals so code ships without formal specs, mirroring self-driven teams.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

CEO Must Act as Chief Product Officer

Echoing Brian Chesky, Howie argues a product-first company needs its CEO to act as chief product officer, continually driving major product reinvention.

Peter Dang

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

Price and ETA Were Uber's True Product

Peter stresses that at Uber the real product was price and ETA, showing core value often outweighs UI polish.

Ethan Smith

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

AEO Testing Requires Control Groups and Reproducibility

Ethan advises testing AEO by splitting 200 questions into untouched controls and varied interventions, tracking before-after performance, comparing to controls, and repeating to ensure reproducibility.

Will Larson

The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)

Book Recommendations for Strategic Thinking

Will advises starting with Good Strategy Bad Strategy, then The Crux, and adding systems-thinking texts to model reality for sharper diagnosis.

Peter Dang

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

Five PM Archetypes Framework

Framework outlines five enduring PM types—consumer, growth, business, platform, research—to balance motivations and build a complementary team.

Nasreen Shengal

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

Products Must Serve Emotional and Functional Needs

Nasreen says the best products satisfy both functional needs like booking flights and emotional needs like feeling secure to create an emotional connection.

Peter Dang

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

Portfolio Approach to Product Scaling

Scaling is not a binary switch; use a portfolio split like Google’s 70/30 (or 50/50 in startups) and ramp resources as the product matures.

Andrew Wilkinson

I’ve run 75+ businesses. Here’s why you’re probably chasing the wrong idea. | Andrew Wilkinson

Fish Where VCs Don't Go

Target markets too small for VC interest so you are not battling capital-fuelled competitors.

Annie Duke

This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, former pro poker player)

When Thinking About Quitting, You're Already Late

If you’re already thinking about quitting it’s probably past the time you should have quit.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

AI as On-Call CTO

Zevi uses Claude as an on-call CTO that scans files, asks clarifying questions, and decides implementation details during the exploration phase.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Fast Thinking Teams Need Autonomous Full-Stack Thinkers

Howie says fast thinking work needs people who operate with autonomy, are entrepreneurial, and can think full-stack about ambiguous product and user experience problems.

Sander Schulhof

Why securing AI is harder than anyone expected and guardrails are failing | HackAPrompt CEO

Training AI Models Early for Adversarial Robustness

Sander suggests injecting adversarial training early in the training stack—when the model is a “very small baby”—to raise baseline robustness.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Hard Constraints Drive AI Adoption

He argues that imposing strict constraints like capped headcount or mandatory prototypes is the most effective lever for driving AI adoption.

Annie Duke

This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, former pro poker player)

Would I Start This Today? Test for Quitting

Ask “would I start this today?” as a forecast when deciding whether to quit.

Madhavan Ramanujam

Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam

Outcome-Based Pricing Model: The Ideal Quadrant

A two-by-two of autonomy versus attribution shows the top-right outcome-pricing model, reached by only about five percent of firms, as the ideal.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

Models For Their Strengths

He divides work so fast Composer handles simple backend tasks while Gemini 3 manages UI, matching each model to its strength.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Forward Deployed Engineers Work Onsite With Customers

Nabil explains Palantir sends engineers onsite four days a week to sit with customers, blending technical build work with real-time problem-solving and social navigation.

Nasreen Shengal

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

Segment Users By Functional and Emotional Motivators

Nasreen explains step one of her four-step Delight Model—segment users by functional and emotional motivators to design truly standout products.

Elena Verna

The new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year

AI First, Human Refinement Second

For every task we first ask 'what can AI do here' and prototype in Lovable before humans refine.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Future Winners Will Be Human-AI Cyborgs

Future winners will be hybrid ‘cyborgs’ who deeply fuse their workflows with AI tools rather than working separately.

Peter Dang

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

Five Stages of Design Thinking

Peter lists empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test as the five stages of great design thinking, highlighting empathize and define.

Peter Dang

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

Say You'll Do It, Do It, Say You Did It

Dang’s model—say you’ll do the thing, say you’re doing it, then say you did it—keeps managers aligned and surfaces goal changes early.

Peter Dang

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

AI Startups Need Data Flywheels

For AI startups, durable advantage comes from proprietary data plus a flywheel that continually generates more of it, not from models alone.

Chip Conley

Brian Chesky's secret mentor who scaled Airbnb (after dying 9 times & building a hotel empire)

Culture Interview Questions Reveal Alignment

He suggests asking each interviewer for 3-5 adjectives describing culture and the biggest endemic issue to judge alignment.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Software Products Must Be Refounded for AI Era

Howie argues every software product must be ‘refounded’ around rapidly-evolving AI, demanding hands-on exploration of new UX and business models.

Mike Krieger

Anthropic's CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram)

Shared Framework Needed For Human-AI Relationships

Teams need a shared framework for defining what “going well” with human-AI relationships looks like and to guide research, product, and monitoring along the way.

Asha Sharma

How 80,000 companies build with AI: Products as organisms and the death of org charts | Asha Sharma

Products Evolve From Artifacts to Organisms

She argues products must ingest data, update reward models, and improve continuously, shifting KPIs to a team’s metabolism rather than feature shipping.

Ethan Smith

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

Landing Pages Should Target Question Clusters

Each landing page should target hundreds or thousands of related questions, not a single keyword, to surface in both search and AEO.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Diverse Teams With Different Briefs Create Better Names

He creates separate teams with intentionally different product contexts to spark diverse, breakthrough name ideas for the same brief.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Project Principles Should Invite Disagreement

Project principles must be contentious enough that many would disagree—bland maxims like “move fast” are rejected to force explicit trade-offs.

Garrett Lord

Inside the expert network training every frontier AI model | Garrett Lord

Capability Trumps Seniority for Project Leadership

Garrett says each project has a directly responsible individual chosen for capability, not role or seniority.

Nasreen Shengal

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

Balancing Roadmaps with 50-40-10 Delight Framework

Nasreen says roadmaps should blend deep, surface and low-delight features to create a balanced bouquet of value.

Dan Shipper

The AI-native startup: 5 products, 7-figure revenue, 100% AI-written code. | Dan Shipper (Every)

Media Businesses Need Founder Content Creation

Media businesses still rely on the founder creating the product, unlike tech startups where the founder can hand off after product-market fit.

Sander Schulhof

Why securing AI is harder than anyone expected and guardrails are failing | HackAPrompt CEO

Adaptive Evaluation for Adversarial Robustness

Sander explains the best way to gauge adversarial robustness is an adaptive evaluation where your defence faces an attacker that learns and improves over time.

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

GDP Growth Above 10% Signals Superintelligence Arrival

If global GDP growth tops 10 % annually, that is a practical macro-indicator that super-intelligence has arrived.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

Late Stage Companies Spread Bets, Startups Must Choose One Platform

Late-stage companies can spread chips across several AI platforms while startups must commit early, reflecting different risk-return profiles.

Chip Conley

Brian Chesky's secret mentor who scaled Airbnb (after dying 9 times & building a hotel empire)

Maslow's Hierarchy for Employees: Money, Recognition, Meaning

Chip’s Peak model applies Maslow to staff: compensation at the base, recognition in the middle, and meaning at the top, with money’s share varying by...

Brett Taylor

He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor (Sierra)

Agent Is New App

He states that "agent is the new app", forecasting agent companies will evolve like SaaS and win by workflow value rather than model tech.

Ben Horowitz

$46B of hard truths: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear | Ben Horowitz (a16z)

Enterprise AI Requires Access Control and Custom Entity Definitions

Ben emphasises enterprise AI must embed fine-grained access control and each company’s unique entity definitions, so generic foundation models are insufficient.

Tomer Cohen

The end of product managers? Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered “full stack builders”

Human Builders Focus On Judgement While Agents Automate Everything Else

Vision, empathy, communication, creativity and judgement stay with human builders while agents aim to automate every other task.

Annie Duke

This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (Thinking In Bets, former pro poker player)

Collect Opinions Independently Before Group Discussion

Send prompts individually and collect private responses via forms or sheets so opinions form independently, reducing loudest-voice bias.

Brian Balfour

Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour

AI Agent Pricing Requires Data Moat

Brian argues outcome-based pricing for AI agents remains viable only when paired with a defensible moat such as proprietary data to withstand margin erosion.

Chip Conley

Brian Chesky's secret mentor who scaled Airbnb (after dying 9 times & building a hotel empire)

Customer Pyramid: Expectations to Unrecognized Needs

For customers, meet expectations first, fulfil stated desires next, and solve unrecognised needs at the top—guiding product and brand strategy.

Owen McCabe

How Intercom rose from the ashes by betting everything on AI | Eoghan McCabe (founder and CEO)

Pricing Based on Value, Not Costs

McCabe insists price should reflect ticket-resolution value rather than internal costs, charging 99¢ per solved case to align revenue and customer benefit.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Names Start Stories, Not Make Statements

Names should initiate a marketplace story, not merely state what the product is.

Nabil Qureshi

How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Product Vision vs Customer Problems

People often err by clinging to their product vision instead of pivoting to a customer's massive burning problem; keep a matrix of options and choose...

Garrett Lord

Inside the expert network training every frontier AI model | Garrett Lord

Community-Rooted Expert Network Boosts Retention

Garrett describes building a community-rooted expert network with cohort training to create a deep network effect that boosts retention and data quality.

Claire Vo

Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD)

Breaking Problems Into Actionable Factors

Claire Vo breaks problems into structural, cultural, external and internal factors, then seeks leverage points to influence or walk away.

Mike Krieger

Anthropic's CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram)

Three-Part Equation for AI Product Utility

Mike presents a mental model where model intelligence, context & memory, and applications & UI must converge to make AI products genuinely useful.

Tomer Cohen

The end of product managers? Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered “full stack builders”

Single-Job Expert Agents Before Orchestration

They build single-job expert agents first so they can rate and improve them, then plan to add an orchestrator layer later.

Lenny Rachitsky

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

Vertical Workflow Understanding Creates Defensible AI Products

Deeply understanding a vertical workflow and solving its specific problems creates differentiated, defensible AI products.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Processing Fluency in Brand Names

Because the brain prefers easily processed information, the team prioritises short, simple names to avoid cognitive friction and drive recall.

Matt McGinnis

“I deliberately understaff every project” | Leadership lessons from Rippling’s $16B journey

Deliberate Understaffing Prevents Politics

Matt McGinnis advocates deliberately understaffing projects because overstaffing breeds politics, waste and slows delivery, with wisdom in not under-understaffing.

Andrew Wilkinson

I’ve run 75+ businesses. Here’s why you’re probably chasing the wrong idea. | Andrew Wilkinson

Fish Where Fish Are, Not Where Fishermen Compete

Andrew cites Charlie Munger’s rule of finding uncrowded, high-yield ponds—niches with few competitors and better margins.

Howie Liu

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Functional AI Prototypes Over PRDs

Howie urges teams to present functional AI prototypes instead of PRDs, letting stakeholders feel speed, accuracy and UX on real prompts before committing resources.

Jake Knapp

Rapidly test and validate any startup idea with the 2-day Foundation Sprint

Custom Differentiators Create New Customer Reality

Jake advises inventing fine-tuned, product-specific attributes that reframe customers’ view of what matters, then scoring them to see which truly stand out.

Brett Taylor

He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor (Sierra)

Choose Go-to-Market Model Based on Buyer Behavior

Brett outlines developer-led, product-led growth, and direct sales models and urges teams to pick the one that matches how their buyers evaluate and purchase software.

Claire Vo

Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD)

Calendar Energy Audit Reveals Zone of Genius

List past-month activities, bucket by energy level, drop low-energy tasks and double down on high-energy ones to locate your zone of genius.

Peter Dang

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

Plan Chess Moves Ahead for Sustainable Scaling

After product-market fit, plan chess moves and invest in durable systems so you can ‘go slow to go fast’ during hyperscale.

Matt Lemay

The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

Commercial Constraints Shape Product Decisions

Treat regulatory, B2B or financial constraints as guiding parameters rather than excuses, letting them shape commercially sound product decisions.

Lenny Rachitsky

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

Delight Framework: Remove Friction, Anticipate Needs, Exceed Expectations

Delight comes from removing friction, anticipating needs, exceeding expectations, and giving something unexpected.

Elena Verna

The new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year

Lovable's Tiered Release Strategy

Lovable groups releases into tier 3-2-1, saving tier 1 for step-function product-market-fit shifts while smaller tiers ship continually.

Benjamin Mann

Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann

Idea to Product Journey at Anthropic

Ben details an operating model that maps an idea’s path from prototype through graduation to full product using ambition-aligned sprints.

David Plasik

Naming expert shares process for creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos

Three-Step Naming Process: Identify, Invent, Implement

Projects move through identify, invent, and implement stages, culminating in prototypes and rationales that sell selected names up the chain.

Peter Dang

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

Technology Adoption Cycle: Fear to Mastery

Technology adoption moves from fear to familiarity to mastery, as seen in society’s 18-month shift toward AI comfort.

Nasreen Shengal

A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)

Identify Emotional Demotivators First

Nasreen notes it is often easier to spot what frustrates users, so identify emotional demotivators and design features that reduce them.

Madhavan Ramanujam

Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam

Beautifully Simple Pricing Tells Value Story

Advocates ultra-clear early pricing that customers can repeat back and that narrates a value story.

Zevi Arnovitz

How a Meta PM ships products without ever writing code | Zevi Arnovitz

Slash Command Development Pipeline

Zevi outlines a create-issue, explore, plan, execute, review, peer-review, docs pipeline powered by reusable slash commands in Cursor.