来自科技界顶尖权力夫妇的犀利观点与技术乐观主义 | Sriram and Aarthi
Hot takes and techno-optimism from tech’s top power couple | Sriram and Aarthi
Critiquing the To-Do List Framework
Sriram Krishnan: I hate Jobs-to-be-Done, I think it is a terrible framework, I think no successful company has ever been built on top of JTBD and if you pick JTBD, you’re probably doomed and I’ll give you an example. When you sign up for Instagram right now, when you sign up for Facebook for many, many years, Facebook knew that it needed to get you to 10 friends in 14 days. If you got your 10 friends in 14 days, you were probably going to use Facebook. So it’d be like, “Well, we’re going to throw every tool we have at our disposal to get you to 10 friends and 14 days.”
So if you signed up for Facebook for many, many years, you’ll get this little thing called People You May Know. Then you’ll have this person who just signed up for Facebook, you go, “Why I’m seeing this person?” It’s not because you need a friend, because they need a friend. So what Facebook did was it made your experience slightly worse to make that person’s experience slightly better. This was performing no job for you, it was trying to perform a job for them.
Intro and Background
Lenny: Welcome to Lenny’s Podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hardware and experiences building and growing today’s most successful products. Today for the first time ever, I’ve got two guests, Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan, both former product managers who between them worked at basically every major tech company including Netflix, Meta, Snap, Twitter, Microsoft, even Clubhouse. Sriram is now a partner at a16z. They’re actually married and both individually amazing. Together they host the Aarthi and Sriram Good Time Show, which started on Clubhouse, it’s now on YouTube and famously they had Elon Musk on back in the day, which led to Clubhouse’s crazy rocket ship growth, which we definitely touch on.
This episode is definitely the most fun conversation I have had yet on this podcast. We cover all kinds of areas, including this trend of techno optimism, building your network, creating content online and how to go about doing that, becoming a product leader, community building and a hilarious rant at the end about why the Jobs-to-be-Done framework does not work. I had such a good time chatting with these two and I know you’ll enjoy this episode. With that, I bring you Aarthi and Sriram after a short word from our select sponsors.
If you don’t have a SOC 2, there’s a good chance you won’t even get a seat at the table beginning. Getting a SOC 2 report can be a huge burden, especially for startups. It’s time-consuming, tedious and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny’s Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/lenny, that’s V-A-N-T-A.com/lenny to learn more and to claim your discount. Get started today.
Aarthi and Sriram, welcome to the podcast.
Guest Intro and Early Podcasting
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Thank you. Thanks so much for having us, Lenny. This is a bucket list thing because we are on Lenny’s Podcast.
Building Connections via the Internet
Sriram Krishnan: I know. Longtime subscriber, listener and now here. Wow. I don’t want to screw this up.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: First time caller.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, first time caller. Yeah, let’s not screw this up.
Clubhouse Growth Strategy and Future
Lenny: You guys are hilarious. I appreciate it and feel very flattered. You two are the first duo on this podcast and I couldn’t think of a better two people to start this podcast with. I have so much stuff I want to dig into. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun, so again, thanks for joining me here.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: It’s awesome. Big fan. Yeah, honestly, this just… I’m excited.
Lenny: So I don’t know if you remember this, I was thinking about this story, back when you were doing the Good Time Show, you invited me on the Good Time Show and I was thinking, hesitating, like, “I don’t know, that’s kind of scary.” And then the next day, Elon came on and then it just blew up and I was like, “Shit, I missed my chance.” And then became really fancy people and I was like, “I’m not ever going to make it back on there.” And so I look back at that as like, “Oh, I hesitated too long. That’s a lesson.”
Social Product Cold Starts and Acquisition
Sriram Krishnan: Well, the way you should interpret that is, “They couldn’t get me on, so their backup choice was Elon. I would’ve been the main event and they were like, ‘Well, oh, we couldn’t get Lenny, we’ll get… No, but seriously, we’ve been a huge fan and those are just the fun times. We used to do the show obviously on just Clubhouse and now we do the show on YouTube, wherever you can listen to our podcast. And a lot of people remember us for the Elon episode, but I will tell you this, it is often the folks who were working technology, who were not as famous, you’re obviously very famous now, but who really connected with the audience. But you know what, that’s why we have you back on the show now [inaudible 00:06:02].
Lenny: There we go. It all worked out.
Origins of Techno-Optimism
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Opening act, yeah.
Building a Personal Brand and Network
Lenny: Speaking of Elon, I was always curious, how did you actually get him on the show? I remember that was back before he was very vocal in the world and he was hard to learn from and hear from. How did you actually pull that off?
The Essence of Networking
Sriram Krishnan: Well, I think it’s actually similar to how a lot of good things in my career have happened, which is I just had a conversation on the internet. I have this whole thing where I do think a lot of people trying to get ahead in their career, especially in technology, should just write cold emails, cold DMs, notes, put out content, et cetera and that leads to good things.
In Elon’s case actually, what wound up happening was a few years ago, he DMed me out of the blue. At the time, I was working at Twitter and I think he saw something I’d written and wanted something from the company and I think he went through the org chart and he DMed me. And I was like, “Well, I’d love to help you,” and he sent me his phone number. And I called him and I was like, “Is this [inaudible 00:07:00] and we had a conversation and we built up a relationship after that. This was when Clubhouse first came on the scene and I was like, “Well, who do we get on?” and Elon hadn’t done a lot of press appearances, I think he’s done a lot more since then obviously, and I texted him and he was like, “I’m game,” and the rest is history.
Your Personal Brand’s Batman Signal
Lenny: Amazing. I love that Elon just DMed you. Sriram-
Practicing Non-Transactional Optimism
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Slid into his DMs [inaudible 00:07:25].
Sriram Krishnan: The crazy part of that story was I had texted him saying, “You should come on the show,” and he said, “Sure,” and then he tweeted about it. And I will tell you that when Elon tweets about you and well, even maybe more so now, your phone just melts. And then for the entire afternoon, I had hundred thousands of people asking me what’s going to happen, the Clubhouse people-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: But also on Clubhouse, if you open the Clubhouse app that day, there were so many rooms that were trying to collect questions for us and help us prepare. There was so much pressure just scrolling through the hallway and trying to look through, it’s like, “Oh my God, is this real? We are the people that they’re talking about here. This is crazy.” I don’t know if you’ve listened to the actual thing, but it was pretty cool because we got to ask him questions we’ve always wanted to ask on like, “When do we get to Mars?” it was kind of fun. And then after that, again it was this, we got a bunch of people reaching out and being like, “You should have asked this question. You guys are not professional journalists.” And we are like, “No, we’re not. What gave it away?” We are just random two people who are just talking to this guy, so it was really fun.
Creating Value Over Forced Networking
Lenny: Yeah, I remember that. I remember journalists were like, “They’re not actually asking him hard questions. How dare they have him on, give him a platform to share things without any criticism?”
Genuine Curiosity and Micro-Communities
Aarthi Ramamurthy: And we were like, “We are not those people that you think we are, that’s just never been our job.”
Core Elements of Building Communities
Lenny: Yeah. I have so many questions that spiral from this discussion, but I want to ask one quick Clubhouse question. So Aarthi, you worked at Clubhouse for a while. Very tactically, I feel like they’re really smart initially with their growth strategy of just getting fancy, smart people in there talking and pontificating. They had Naval and Marc Andreessen and then eventually, you want other people. And that was such a smart way to get people to get in there and want to get in there to listen to them, to engage with them. What’s your take on that as just a growth strategy to get a social network bootstrapped? And then just generally, I guess any thoughts on the journey of Clubhouse? It’s had a big rise, it’s kind of [inaudible 00:09:22].
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah. I mean, all good questions here. I think growth strategy, that’s a great way to acquire people right at the top of the funnel. Once you’ve done this a few times, you kind of see everything as a funnel and you’re like, “Well, are you retaining people? Are you not? Is it top of the funnel impressions or do they stick around?” So I think having people like Marc Andreessen and people like Naval and they were not doing this out of any… they were really, really interested. When we got invited by Marc and Marc was like, “Check out… this was way before a16z even invested in it, was like, “This product is amazing. These folks are doing something really cool, this is going to be the future, it’s amazing.” So it gave them a platform to go speak out and live social audio just made a ton of sense. I will say, Clubhouse, I feel like they get this unfair attention and criticism. It’s a what, three-year-old startup?
Lenny: Mm-hmm.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: And I’ve done two startups. The second one I did, three years in, we still sort of were struggling and trying to figure out what we were doing. So I mean, I feel like founders just need some time to breathe in and figure out what to go do. So I’m bullish on Clubhouse, I think they’ll figure it out and Paul and Rohan are great founders. They’ve been doing social stuff for over a decade plus and so they’ve got to figure it out. And I know that it’s like, they get this thing on, “Oh, they were really hot during the pandemic. Is this a pandemic fad versus not?” I don’t know, it’s a product at the end of the day and you’re going to have to find product market fit and I think they’ll figure it out.
Treating Communities Like Parties
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah. The broader question of how do social products acquire the users is super interesting. One of my favorite pieces written on this is Eugene Wei’s Status as a Service. Eugene should absolutely be on your podcast someday. It’s a 10,000 word piece, which is amazing and highly suggest people read it. But one of the key takeaways from that piece is the idea that when you have a new network, think of it as a new country, you want the high status people and high status mean they’re interesting, people want to be where they are in some shape or form because they have money, they’re smart, they’re cool, they’re good-looking, whatever it may be and you want to get them onto your network. And there’s exactly an interesting corollary that they’re often underserved by other existing platforms. And because if they’re already well-served, they wouldn’t want to move to you.
And Eugene doesn’t talk about it, but if I look at say the history of all the three, four large social media companies, you’ve seen this pattern. For example, they’ve often each had a breakout set of stars who are unique to the platform. For example, if you look at say Snapchat, you had folks like Kylie Jenner who really broke out first. If you look at Instagram, I would think The Rock, Cristiano Ronaldo, a lot of others are organic to Instagram. But let’s say you get to TikTok. One of the things you’ll see is a lot of the folks from the Instagram world rarely move to TikTok and there’s a couple of reasons. One, they didn’t really need to because they were already popular on some of these other existing platforms, but two, TikTok actually took advantage of a different set of skillsets. People who are really good on video, people who could dance, be funny. And so you saw the rise of Charli D’Amelio and Addison and so many others who are different.
So every single time, I think you need to go after a set of people who are high status who are also underserved. So coming back to Clubhouse, I think one of the interesting things is I think these celebrities are super interesting, but what is more interesting for me is all the homegrown folks. I actually consider us as a part of that, we would not be here doing the show if it wasn’t for Clubhouse. There are many folks who had that original launch using the platform, so I think for folks here who are thinking about social platforms, it’s interesting about okay, you need interesting people from elsewhere, but you also need homegrown talent. And by the way, you are a perfect example of this phenomenon because you are Substack’s homegrown talent and I think you bring a lot of value to Substack. And there are a lot of people with huge newsletters, et cetera, but I think your rise and your popularity is so tied to Substack now and that’s actually a great example of all of this.
Personal Branding and Content Creation
Lenny: Yeah. It reminds me, the founder of Musical.ly who turned into TikTok has a great story. I think you’ve heard his talk about this, how the way he thought about it is there’s all these successful people on Instagram, that’s Europe, and the people you can convince to come to America are not the kings of Europe, but they’re the peasants that are like, “Oh, we have a new opportunity to rise and become a king or a queen.” And so those are the people you pull in, the people not doing well on another platform that want to do well versus the people already killing it.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah, [inaudible 00:13:53].
Daily Posting and Overcoming Judgment Anxiety
Sriram Krishnan: Lenny just called himself the king of Substack right there.
Staying Self-Aware and Avoiding Self-Censorship
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yes, I know. You’re the king, you’re the king of Americas.
Sriram Krishnan: I’m just trying to give you clippable moments on video.
The Prerequisite for Sharing Experiences
Lenny: I did just find out that I think I have the fourth-largest Substack newsletter on all of Substack which is ridiculous-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: That’s amazing, wow. That’s amazing.
Dealing With Impostor Syndrome
Lenny: Their recent number.
Leveraging Strengths Over Fixing Weaknesses
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah. Number three, number two, number one, Lenny is coming after you, better watch out.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Take them out.
Escaping the Spotlight Effect
Lenny: Yeah. They’re up there. So you mentioned the chat with Elon and how you’re very tech positive and I think that’s something that you two are at the forefront of, is this trend, I don’t know if it’s called techno-optimism or maybe there’s another term for it and I’d love to hear just like why? Because I know that’s important to you too, why that’s important to you and just what is this movement of techno-optimism-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Let me take a small stab at it. Look, I think it’s also very personal to our context and our upbringing. For us, Sriram and I came from a fairly middle class family in India, this city in India that most people here won’t probably know. And we grew up really liking computers but didn’t have access to a computer for a longest time. In both our cases, our parents bought us our first computers after saving money for it and it was a hard thing. And when we eventually got onto it and started learning to write code, we met each other online. We’re dating ourselves now, but we met on Yahoo Messenger back in the day and we worked on this nerdy coding project, that’s how we connected. So technology and computers have given us everything.
Our first jobs were at Microsoft, we built developer tools and platforms. If you were in our shoes, you would feel the same way too. Tech has given us so much. And so for us to come here all the way from India, through multiple cities, we lived in Seattle and then here, the Bay Area, I’ve started tech companies, it is a bit frustrating to see the other viewpoint because you can see how much it has uplifted people, careers, lives, but also just from what we’ve been able to work on, what we’ve seen our friends work on and ship and put out there, it has dramatically moved the needle. And so for us, we are the living testament of tech actually helping us and help us do better, so I don’t even see the other viewpoint from like, why wouldn’t you be optimistic about technology? I don’t get it.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah. I think the personal part was really core. I think there’s generally two schools of thought. One school of thought, I would broadly write up as things are getting worse, technology is making things worse and we should all do less, build less. And then the other school of thought, which I think I subscribe to, is technology is not perfect, the impact technology is definitely uneven, but pretty much most of the good things in the world over the last 100, 200 years are responsible for it. And we can have a whole long discussion about the evidence why and we have lots of very fancy sounding intellectual theories as to why, but at the heart of it is what Aarthi said, if it wasn’t for tech, we wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing this.
I suspect a lot of folks who are listening to this wouldn’t be able to listen to it, wouldn’t have the opportunities they have or have the opportunities we have. It is a great level up. My dad pretty much had the same job for his entire life, essentially from age 25 till the time he retired and there was really no easy path out for him. And I imagine like, “Hey, if he was born 40 years later and he had a laptop and an internet connection and could get on GitHub, here are opportunities that would be just impossible, even 30, 40 years ago and that’s all from technology.” So I think that’s at the heart of it, it’s the best thing we have of getting ahead.
Shifting From Executor to Decision Maker
Lenny: It’s such a refreshing perspective on tech. In traditional media, all you ever hear about is all the problems that tech is causing and all the dangers and how we’re all screwed. And so it’s like you almost forget that there could be really positive stories about what’s happening with tech and it feels like there’s a small number of people that are doing this at scale and-
Sriram Krishnan: Oh, yeah. I’ll give you one small example. You made a joke about kings from Europe, et cetera. If we just go back 100 years, the piece of hardware that a king or a royalty would use or a rich person would use would be so different from what a peasant would use, but you know what? I suspect the phone that you and I have is probably the same phone that… actually I know it’s the same phone that Elon Musk uses, the richest person in the world. I know a lot of folks in India who have very high end Android device, they have access to the same internet. You go to google.com, google.com doesn’t know your net worth, it gives you the same results. Chat GPT doesn’t know how rich you are. It may not like you, but it doesn’t know how rich you are. If you just think of all these constructs, they’re were just impossible technology. But anyway, that’s a whole other conversation.
Worst Products and Lessons From Failure
Lenny: Yeah, I love that the richest people have the same phone as me and nothing they can do about it. Something else you two are really good at is building a network, building community, building personal brands. I know a lot of people listening are either often told, “You need to build a audience online, you build a brand, you got to build a network,” and all these things. So I guess I’d love to know just what advice do you give people that come to you and like, “Hey, I want to build a personal brand, I want to build the network”? Just how to go about doing that, what’s worked well for you two?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Sriram has way more structured thoughts on this and honestly, he’s way better at this than I’ve ever been. He’s basically slowly corrupted me and brought me to the dark side. But what I have come to believe and this differs from what I used to believe is especially if you’re working in a big company, you are one of the many thousands of employees in there. Generally what you get told is, “Hey, just ship really good products, put your head down, go to work. The products will speak for themselves. That’s just how it’s going to work. Don’t do this whole personal branding and all of that stuff. It’s such a distraction,” and that’s generally what you’re told.
Most of my career I was like, “Yeah, of course that makes sense, that’s kind of what you do.” But I’ve come to realize that that is just not true and this might be a controversial opinion, but you have to get out there and build your own brand. You have to figure out what you stand for, what your core values are, what you believe in, what you think you want to do, what your next career trajectory is going to look like. All of that is just up to you. It’s not up to the company to figure it out for you, it’s not up to anybody else, it’s just up to you.
And I think building a personal brand is looked down upon so much that people think of it as a dirty word. It’s like, “No, you can’t do that.” “Oh, look at this person who’s branding themselves,” kind of thing. But I almost see it as what distinguishes you from everybody else and that is not so much saying something that you’re not good at or touting yourself more, it’s really about highlighting, “I’m really good at this thing and I want to talk about this thing and I want to do videos about it or write about it or tweet about it.” Whatever is your forum, you have to put yourself out there.
Sriram Krishnan: I mean this is probably one of the most important things that somebody can do and I spent… no, we spent years slowly climbing the corporate ranks. We were junior product managers, IC product managers, senior product managers, slowly climbed the ranks and ran teams, et cetera. And I spent years just thinking that all I need to do is put my head down, do my job really well and that was it. But then I looked around and I suspect a lot of listeners here probably have the same feeling that some sort of people were getting way more opportunities, some sort of people are way farther ahead even though I was mostly sure that somebody else was doing a better job and I was trying to understand why. And I think building a network, which I’ll try and define because I think a lot of people have assumption of what it is, is at the heart of this. So building a network is very simply having relationships with human beings. And let’s start off by saying first of all, these have to be authentic, genuine relationships.
One thing, it drives me crazy when somebody will come and say, “I’m here to network.” I’m like, “I don’t know what that word means.” So all you’re trying to do is have authentic, genuine relationship with people and expecting nothing in return, so that’s great. And then people are like, “Oh, well that’s awesome, but I’m a senior… for example, I was a senior PM at Microsoft for a bunch of time and then kind of similar at Facebook for a bunch of time, you’re like, “Well, what does it mean? I’m here, I’m going to my meetings, I’m doing my day, its only so many hours.” I’ll be like, “Well, let’s start off with go and meet every single peer that you have you don’t directly meet with. Go get coffee with them and ask them, ‘Hey.’ Have no agenda. Just ask them what’s going on in their life, who are they, what their life story is and then who are a couple of interesting people that you should meet with? Go talk to your manager and go talk to their peers.”
Super important, by the way, your manager, peer relations are super important. Go have a coffee with them and they’d be like, “Great, I’m love to meet this person.” Then when I joined at Facebook, I was notorious for being the person who sent a cold email to every single Facebook leader. And I’d be like, “Hey, I’m new here, I want to meet. Let’s grab coffee,” and everybody will say as everyone is a new person and always asking the same thing, which I’ll be like, I show up, I’ll tell them my story, I’ll ask for their story. I’ll be like, “What are you folks focused on? How can I help?” Again, no expectation of anything in return. And then I’ll be like, “Who else should I talk to?”
You do this, you do two coffees a week and literally just ask me two hours a week, everyone has two hours a week, it’ll start compounding over overtime and time. And then as the years go by, you keep in touch with the people you used to work with you, these folks will go to other places, five years, six years go by, you start in your mid-20s or late 20s and you know hundreds of people all over. And the important thing about this is that it is a resource in so many different places. For example, one, if you ever need help, you’re trying to look for a new role or you’re trying to be like, “Hey, I want to hire this person, who knows something about this person?” or, “I want a new role. Who’s looking for something?” that network becomes your key resource.
Now what I think a lot of people don’t do, it’s just simple things. Number one is often people just have a great meeting with a peer and then they will never ever follow up. I’m sure a lot of us have the amazing first introduction email they never followed up, don’t do that. I try and make it a point to make sure I always meet them once a year, once every six months. I’ll just leave a note, “Hey, what’s up?” And the other key part is expecting nothing in return. And generally people are very good at reading other people and if you go and being like, “Hey, I just want to meet you because I want a job or I’m here to network,” whatever that means, they don’t want to meet you. Just go and be very curious about who they are and try and help them. And you’ll be surprised wherever you start, within a year, two years, you’ll know hundreds of people who you can tap into, so I think that is super powerful. That’s just building relationships.
The other part is brand building. Both Aarthi and I at different points in our career have gotten feedback in our job saying, “Oh, with Sriram and Aarthi, it’s brand build too much, et cetera.” I have learned that that is terrible feedback and to totally ignore that and if anybody hears anything like that, just totally ignore that. The things that work well for me and a lot of others is putting yourself out there and that can be anything. That can be like you make a presentation internally, you write tweets, you’re prolific on GitHub, you make a YouTube video, it doesn’t really matter, but put yourself out there because the internet rewards people being out there. And what happens when you put yourself out there? It’s a Bat-Signal. It’s telling people that, “Hey, I’m here, this is my body of work,” and you know what the internet does? It’ll send amazing people to you.
You’d be amazed how often somebody just have a random great Twitter thread with no followers and somebody super interesting will email them and that leads to amazing things happening, it encourages serendipity. So over the years, I wish I had listened less to people who said I should not do this and listened more to the people who said I should do this more.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I also think, Sriram keeps saying, “Expect nothing in return,” I think the other way I see it is this is again an extension of optimism for us. Generally, we think people like to help each other out, that is just in their true nature. It’s not meant to be transactional, it’s not meant to be, “If I know them, they will somehow do something for me down the road,” it’s not that. Just the way we are all building communities and are a part of this broader community, the way we work is we all want to help each other and help them be successful. And if that is in your nature, it’s hard to not feel like, “Yeah, of course I want to reach out to them. I want to see what I can do to help them. Maybe something good will happen, we’ll collaborate on a project together,” whatever. The core tenant being don’t expect stuff in return, don’t do it on a transactional basis, I think is really important.
Projects Disrupted by the Times
Lenny: What this reminds me of is Naval has this tweet that proved to be so true, which is don’t network, instead create amazing things, create value, do good work and then people will want to network with you. And that’s really stuck with me and it saves you from going to network events. Instead just go work hard, do awesome stuff and people are going to want to meet you.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I mean you will not believe the number of times I’ve shown up to some meetup or some founder thing or something and then somebody would come up and be like, “I’m here to network, what’s your name?” And I’m like, “What? No, you can’t do that. Not how that works.”
Final Critique of To-Do Frameworks
Sriram Krishnan: I actually say I disagree with Naval on this because often, when you’re part of a large organization, it’s really hard to do great work and get recognized for it. You’re part of a team, which is great, but it’s not the same as saying having a newsletter by yourself or having a piece of content by yourself. So when I was younger, I’d be like, “Great, I’m part of a large part-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I don’t know, I mean you guys are saying the same thing, he’s just saying create value and put it out there. I don’t think it’s-
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, I think the putting it out there part is super interesting. And also I would just say, don’t wait to create amazing things. Often just the act of putting yourself out there can just spur amazing things in itself.
Advice for Immigrants
Lenny: Yeah. And I think especially early in your career, you’re not going to create amazing things immediately, so there’s a lot of value to reaching out and meeting people. There’s a couple of directions I want to go here. One is, so you gave this, I don’t know, just mini masterclass on building a network and networking and things like that. I think what’ll get people to rewind and listen to that again is I don’t think people realize just how connected you two are. You’re at the center of so many micro communities of the most incredible people. I don’t know if you talk about this, but you run all these micro communities of incredible people in, I don’t know, creator land and investors and product people and all these people and so it actually has worked. You may be the most networked person there is and I don’t know if people know that.
Sriram Krishnan: Oh, wow. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. Is that-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: It’s a good thing.
Sriram Krishnan: It’s a good thing. Okay, I like that, I’ll go with that.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I think the thing that, well at least with Sriram, outside of all of the masterclass stuff which I think he’s particularly good at, I think the thing that Sriram, people don’t realize about him is he’s just inherently incredibly curious about people. He’s just really just wants to know what somebody else does, who they are, what their story is. And this is not some like, “Oh, I’m going to spend 10 minutes letting them talk, I’m going to spend… he often never lets the other person talk, but when he does, he’s truly-
Sriram Krishnan: Hold on a second right there.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: … but he is truly curious about who they are, what their story is. By now, we’ve known each other for 20-ish years and this is every dinner, every event, this is just how he’s wired and so you just can’t fake that in building out a network. He builds a network by just wanting to know who these people are.
Sriram Krishnan: Thank you.
Outro and Contact Info
Lenny: That’s beautiful.
Sriram Krishnan: The woman I married, ladies and gentlemen, right there. You marry the right person, everything else becomes [inaudible 00:28:56]. I haven’t really talked about this before and I’ll keep some of this slightly hidden, but I think the heart of it is I’m just curious about people, I’m just dumb about a lot of things. And I don’t mean it as this false modesty way, I know a lot of folks are smarter than me. Lenny obviously is so much smarter than me at writing a Substack newsletter, it’s just evident, Andrew Huberman is great at… Brian Armstrong great at building a crypto company, all these folks just evident. But what I realized is a lot of folks sometimes just want to be with other amazing peers. And one sort of hack I built over the years, I was like, “All right, let me just bring interesting people together.”
So I bring them in, let’s just say various kinds of online communities, they’re probably over 100 at this point. And I say, “Okay. You trust me, you trust me and I make the rules.” Everyone keeps some level of confidence, everyone is a peer, they’re all accomplished in their own way, no one is rude or mean or goes off the rails. So I’m a party host, so I’m like, “Okay listen, nobody is going to get super crazy over here,” but I’m also curating. I’m like, “Well, I need somebody super thoughtful, I need somebody who’s a little controversial, I need somebody who’s funny, I need somebody who’s like the celebrity… I’m trying to put together, engineer the right vibe or the right atmosphere, but digitally, I’m very anti-social in person. And some of these just happen over time. You put together the group of people and they hang out online and over times, you have a very famous CEO becoming best friends with somebody in their early 20s who’s just getting started just because they’re in the same space together.
So I love creating those online spaces and I think it’s something anybody here listening can do. Just take some of your favorite people, stick them in a WhatsApp group or a Telegram group or a Slack channel… which is by the way, Lenny’s Slack, highly, highly recommend it. Lenny is great at that. But yours has hundreds of thousands of people and I think sometimes there’s an intimacy from having smaller groups, like 5 people, 10 people like a shared space and then kick it off. And you’ll be amazed of after a year or two, of how much intimacy and how much connection where sometimes people open up about losing their jobs or having a divorce or something really personal and intense just because of the shared trust. And I think there’s something very heartwarming and fulfilling about being able to facilitate some of that.
Lenny: I want to dig into that a little bit more. You’ve built these incredible communities and you talked about a couple, and Aarthi, I know you also built Facebook’s early community products and Clubhouse. Obviously if you had to pick one or two things you got to get right with a new community that you’re just forming, what do you think those two things are or one or two things?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Find the niche, start really small and find the niche. I think oftentimes I’ve seen other startup founders and I invest and advise in a lot of early stage companies. I went through Y Combinator, so I go back to YC as much as I can and go help out folks. But oftentimes I’ll see people starting companies or founders coming in and being like, “I’m going to build this product that is going to cater to this community. I’m going to build this world’s largest community off this kind of thing,” and it almost starts at this super scaled version and then they set themselves up for failure.
You’re almost better off doing these small, niche, non-scalable things to go find these oddball set of people who are doing this, who are really interested in this one thing and kind of scale from there and grow from there. And I think that’s one big thing that when you’re starting to build a community, don’t start to build this super scaled community. Start with few people who are passionate about a particular problem and want to get together kind of thing. Start there. Two, I think people, and this might be a controversial thing, but I often think people don’t think through monetization. If you’re a community builder early on, start thinking about, if you’re truly focused on this as a business, how would you actually make money off of it?
Oftentimes they hit some sort of scale and be like, “Crap, now what do I do? And then they’re try all these options, they will have some churn and then they’re like, “Oh no, but I thought this was a very sticky community.” I’m like, “Yes, but it’s not as sticky as this particular price tag.” And so you have to start thinking through, if we hit a particular velocity, what is that going to look like? What are the things that I’m going to unlock. And think through monetization a little bit ahead of time before it comes in and becomes a crutch rather than a weapon that you can go leverage.
Sriram Krishnan: But I want to say, Aarthi is kind of the creator of Facebook Stars and of so much of the thinking there and I can see her go super deep on this. Of course on everything she said, I have a slightly different framework. First of all, I really don’t like the word community because the word community, the word networking, the word platform is a little abstract and it can mean a lot of things. And I like to think of things like a dinner party or church or things that seem more tangible and people know, “Okay, I know exactly what that is.” So when I think of a community or starting one, I think first of all, it’s a party. And you’re first starting off, you’re like, “All right, what is a vibe?”
For example and this is also true for every social media platform where if you can be a crazy, people are dancing on bars, having a great time, getting really drunk party or you can have a really formal dinner where everyone is seated, there is plates with name tags and there’s a clinking of glasses and you have to dress up. And they’re both fine, they’re both fun in their own way, but you need to tell people, as the host, which one it is. And by the way, I think one of the things that Twitter didn’t get right in the original days which some of the other apps did, it never told people what kind of party it was. It like, “Are we going to Michelin star restaurant where sit down or it’s a sports bar after the Super Bowl and you can go crazy?” And if you don’t do that, people make up their own rules. That’s number one.
The second part is as the host, you have to curate the original set of people and you need a mix, this is super important. I think sometimes people do this thing where they either optimize for “interesting famous people” or they get the most talkative lot of people. And I actually read a bunch of books on hosting great dinner parties, I actually have some interesting suggestions there and it’ll say like, “Well, you need a mix.” For example, in any organization, let’s say you’re the VP that everyone knows about, but that VP doesn’t have the time to maybe participate on a WhatsApp channel or a Slack channel and chit-chat all the time or show up for everything. And then maybe you need the really boisterous young BD exec who’s out and about and meeting everybody. You need that person, you need somebody who’s quiet and thoughtful. You need to merge different kinds of energy and that’s almost an alchemy and that’s more art than science. You have to start there.
Third I think is as the host, you have to have a sixth sense of how is a community feeling at any given point in time? Are two people dominating the conversation? That person hasn’t said anything in a while. One of the things I like to when somebody joins a group or one of these places, I try and get them into a question which they will feel happy about because you know what happens the very first time you walk into a party? You look around, you’re like, “I don’t know anybody here. Oh gosh, okay. I know this one person and I’m going to go talk to them,” and you just feel nervous. I’m trying to break that. For example, if you walk in a place and you didn’t know anybody, Lenny is actually very good at being social, but I’d be like, “Hey. Lenny has one of the most popular things on Substack and he just wrote [inaudible 00:36:04]. I’m just giving you an opening, you to feel comfortable and that’s another part.
The third part I love is rituals and religions do a great job of this, which is do something every month. There’s a little group I hosted some of my friends and during all of COVID, we did a Zoom meeting every Tuesday evening. And that was a ritual, it had nothing, it’s just Zoom meeting with a bunch of friends, people can share-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: And people would just bring their glass of wine or bring their kids in and there’s no structured agenda. But people started looking forward to it through the pandemic and stuff and we would be like, “Oh my God, it’s Tuesday. You know this evening, we are going to go do this thing.” And it was a really great way to go build that community and I totally agree with that.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, well Lenny has done an amazing job on it on his Slack, I see it.
Lenny: You’re so sweet.
Sriram Krishnan: The other interesting tension and challenge is how to grow it because I think there are… Interesting point, a four person dinner, very different from an eight person dinner, very different from a 20 person thing where people hang out, very different from, once you start getting hundreds of thousands, the things you’re willing to share, worrying about being judged. So I’m always trying to create more intimate different spaces and that’s a whole other topic. So I think if you’re trying to start a community though, I would say picking the right people, setting the tone, being really part of it yourself, that’s most of it.
Lenny:
LMNT is the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA Weightlifting and many other Olympic athletes, also dozens of NBA and NFL teams and players rely on LMNT to stay hydrated, along with Navy SEAL teams, FBI sniper teams and the Marines. You can try LMNT totally risk-free. If you don’t like it, you can share it with a salty friend and they’ll give you your money back, no questions asked. To give it a shot, go to drinklmnt.com/lenny and you’ll get a free sample pack with any purchase, which includes one packet of every flavor. My favorite is Watermelon Salt. You won’t find this offer publicly available, so you have to head to drinklmnt.com/lenny to take advantage of this offer, stay salty.
I want to go back to a topic we touched on that I think is really interesting which is building a brand and putting content out and that kind of thing. I think a lot of times people hear that, like a first-year PM and they’re like, “Yes, I’m going to start tweeting.” And then it’s such cringey useless stuff and nobody needs to hear from them because they haven’t done anything. And I guess I’d be curious for your take on, at what point should people start to put things out? How do you know if this is cringey and nobody wants to hear this stuff like, “Great PM-ship,” these very cliche things come out. There’s like hundreds of Twitter accounts, people are just tweeting these things like, “All right.” How do you think about that [inaudible 00:39:14].
Sriram Krishnan: I actually disagree with you and I actually think everyone should… well disclaimer, I work for firm which has invested in Twitter, but I swear that’s not why I’m saying this, people have heard me say this for years-
Lenny: And Substack.
Sriram Krishnan: Yup. Everyone should tweet or everyone should post on YouTube or post Instagram and it doesn’t matter how young you are. Because I actually disagree with the few things, which actually is a great point which I think a lot of people feel this, one is that you need to have hit a certain bar of accomplishment or interestingness to say something, strongly disagree with that. Second, that things are cringey. I don’t think anything is cringey, I strongly disagree with that too. And I think these are both interesting-
Lenny: Aarthi’s face is great.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Wait, I feel like Sriram’s bar is so low for-
Sriram Krishnan: Dude, no, this is really important because I think what stops a lot of people is, I’ve had probably 100 plus conversations where somebody who’s incredibly accomplished will come to me and they’ll be like, “Hey, I want to get on Twitter, I want write content or I want to Substack or I want to do a podcast.” I’m like, “Great.” They’re like, “But I don’t know what to say, I look dumb, I don’t want to get judged.” But I’m like, “No, you’re so accomplished,” and it is the fear of being judged that so often stops people. So whenever I hear that word cringe, I’m like, “No, no, no, that’s actually fine, you’re fine. You’ll figure it out,” and here’s why I say that.
Number one is what the most important thing and even, listen, if you just remember one thing from this whole thing is just get started and do something every single day. And this sounds so basic, like Aarthi and I have is a running joke where it’s like it’s diet and exercise is what we say. It’s like we are talking to people about how do you get healthy and you have the 100 different things you can do or podcasts you can listen to, but most of it’s like, “Well, diet and exercise.” And with creating content, diet and exercise, you just write a piece of content every single day because what’s going to happen is it builds muscle, it gets you familiar with the medium and you start understanding what works in that medium and what doesn’t and you start building reps.
You know who never works out in my opinion? Is somebody who’ll think for weeks, build up an amazing tweetstorm, blog post, newsletter, whatever it may be and then stops because the effort is so high. So I’m like, “One, do something every single day.” The second part of it is, I actually think you don’t have to talk about what you accomplish, you only have to talk about you. And by the way, this is going to sound very froufrou, but you are the best you out there. So for example-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Wow, okay.
Lenny: [inaudible 00:41:36].
Sriram Krishnan: … let’s say you are a 21-year-old PM, fresh out of school, first year… by the way, we were all that. I was a 21-year-old PM at one time, Lenny would’ve been too, lots of others. First you’ll see a lot of people who have been through journey and there are others like you. Second is you just talk about your journey, talk about what you’re doing, talk about what you’re learning. Because what often you’re trying to do when you’re creating content is to build a relationship with people. So when Charli D’Amelio dances on TikTok, she’s not saying she’s a professional dancer, she’s saying, “I’m relatable, I’m just like somebody you would be friends with next door, I’m just like you.” And so then people start connecting with you on that front, if you’re authentic and you’re doing a good job, and so everybody listening to this should be able to create content.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Okay, so the only place where I disagree, I think this is all right, but this is a bit like, we are Asian, we have this very Asian parent thinking, there are no participation trophies, so if it is cringey, you should at least acknowledge that it is cringey. I think at the end of the day, you have to persevere, I think I give a lot more words to people who are just persevering and showing up every day, but I do think there should be a level of self-awareness for people where it’s like, “Man, this is not great. I’m not getting any traction. I need to improve on things and keep building on it,” as opposed to being like, “I am the best me ever,” and just keep putting out garbage, don’t do that. Improve on stuff because there is such a thing as bad content-
Sriram Krishnan: I agree with you, but I think when people mean cringey… okay, I’ll see this. What people think they say cringey, it’s like our peer group thinks that this content is too basic-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: But everybody has that, whether you say it out loud or not.
Sriram Krishnan: Well, I’ll give you a story. So I spent years, I’d be like, “I’m a PM leader, I run organization, I should write smart PM things. I should write the kinds of things that Lenny writes.” For example, I’ll say that, “Lenny’s Post the other week from Duolingo is… I was so jealous. I was like, “Man, this is the kind of content… I would be like, “It’s amazing, banger post.” But the problem was when you start doing that, you start censoring yourself. And I’ll say, I’ve written a lot of posts over the years and I’ll try and sound smart, I have a great intellectual framework in some of this work, but you know what my most popular post and tweetstorm of all time is? It is how to write a cold email.
And when I wrote that tweetstorm, I was like, “Man, I’m going to sound so dumb,” because Lenny doesn’t need to know how to write a cold email and neither does the VCs I work with, everyone knows that. But the thing is, what is obvious to you and may seem cringey to your peers is definitely not obvious to a lot of people and they will connect to you, they will relate to you. When somebody says like, “Well, is it too basic? How do I get started with my job?” I’m like, “No, there’s a lot of people who this is not obvious to,” and I’ll just put myself out there and what’s the worst thing? Somebody thinks you’re moron? That’s fine. You put some new piece of content out there the next day and they’ll fix it or you can just ignore that.
Lenny: I think there’s a lot of really good nuggets here. I think the only area maybe we disagree and we should move on, but this is [inaudible 00:44:29].
Sriram Krishnan: Listen to me, Lenny, come on. Your podcast is too friendly otherwise, let’s listen.
Lenny: My feeling is I think for helping you do better work kind of content, like entertainment anyone could do no problem, you could be awesome at it, is I feel like you need to do something in your career first before you can start speaking to, “Here’s things I’ve learned and here’s what works and here’s what doesn’t work.” I think I wouldn’t spend a lot of time sharing all your wisdom before you’ve done a thing and been successful in some way.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah. I actually think you make a very interesting point, which is I think a lot of people online LARP, live action role-play, as somebody else which is like you trying to project a persona or a career point that you are not at and you know it, we know it, you probably admit you know it-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: And also for that kind of content, everyone can tell. I think it just comes off as not authentic. I mean I feel like the universe figures itself out over time, but I do think there is a level of, just because Sriram thinks no content is cringey does not mean people all feel that way. You can’t just magically just wipe that out. I feel like everyone just feels that way, whether or not you say it out loud. I do think there is a process of iteration and acknowledging that, “Yeah, okay, this is bad, but I’m going to put this out there anyway and we’ll just keep working on this,” and coming back to it.
I really appreciate people who would just do that and just keep coming back to it every day and like Rocky style, chip away at things. I really have appreciation for those folks because it’s hard. I’ve realized over time that everyone is deeply feeling as if they’re imposters and we talked about this. Imposter syndrome is so real, it is so gut-wrenchingly real that it’s not just every one person, it’s most people I think. So to be able to overcome that threshold and look at your amazing peers and your seniors and everybody else and then still be able to put yourself out there, I think we have to really appreciate that and help them go iterate and just get better over time.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, I agree. One tiny story before we wrap on this topic, which is I was talking to somebody who’s four or five years into their career as a PM and they’d written this post on LinkedIn which is full of cringey content, by the way. Okay, let me say it, LinkedIn has a lot of cringey PM content-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Wow, look at Sriram.
Sriram Krishnan: … I’m sorry LinkedIn folks. And it was one of the things about how do you set product strategy as an organization and I was like, I called them, I was like, “Dude, come on. You’re four years into your role, nobody believes that you actually are driving this from a place of actually really knowing it. And that is fine if you’re learning, but you are trying to project this person you’re not.” But the thing which I was talking to him, I was like, “I know you’ve done this amazing deep dive on this other niche topic. You’ve gone out, you read all the posts, go write about that because you are an expert legitimately in something you think is niche, as opposed to a fake expert on this other thing you want to be.”
He went and wrote this follow-up post on something very niche and that went really popular because the truth is, there’s not a lot of great content out there, especially great content from people who actually done the thing. You’d be surprised how niche you can be, but if you actually done the work, talk to a people, aggregated some posts, people come seek you out and you don’t have to do it. So anyway, so lots of LARPing, lots of cringey LinkedIn content for sure.
Lenny: Just to close this out, I 100% agree with the idea that people should be just trying stuff, writing, sharing stuff on Twitter, LinkedIn, just get it out of there, don’t be afraid because that’s how you start down this road. I was going to go in a different direction, but you mentioned imposter syndrome and I’m curious, have you two dealt with imposter syndrome and-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Oh, yeah. We have and I still, I don’t know about Sriram. Sriram comes off as so much more confident and has so much gravitas that nobody ever thinks of it, but we both do, we both deeply have imposter syndrome. Every single day, anything we do, we look at ourselves, we are creators, we have this show on YouTube and then we look around at everybody else who have millions of subscribers and followers and everything and we are like, “Why are we creators? This is not a thing. We should not be doing this stuff. I just think people haven’t been honest with us on how much we suck.” It’s like you have these loops in your head and then every once in a while, you’ll see a comment being like, “This was amazing. I just had to stop doing what I was doing to listen to this whole thing. It was so valuable for me.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay. We are not all the bad. That’s, I think, okay.”
So we go through this a lot. For the longest time, I had really severe imposter syndrome through school, college, getting into Microsoft. Even after I got through the Microsoft, which we were one of the youngest product managers there, I still was like, “Oh, someday they’re going to figure out that this was all… they’ll know the real me and they’ll be like, ‘Oh man, we made this mistake with her.’” And it was just such a real crippling thing for me. Even now I feel like maybe it’s not 100% true, but I can kind of see the gradients there, so very real thing.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, it’s so true. I have a hack or a technique of how to get over imposter syndrome. But I’ll just say, and this is just if folks here feel it, every new job I’ve been in, I have always felt that I didn’t deserve to be there and I mean I genuinely. When I joined Microsoft, I was a young student, I was like, “I don’t know anything. These folks are professional, they’ve been doing this job for years.” When I moved to the US I said, “Look, my accent is super intense, I’m Indian, these folks have been doing this for many years, they have very different lifestyles, I don’t know what I’m doing here.” When I move to Silicon Valley, I got no hired by probably four or five different companies and one of them told me, “You work for Microsoft so you can’t really cut it in Silicon Valley because you’re from Seattle,” which I’ll never forget.
And I look at the person from LinkedIn from time to time, I’m very typically like, “Well, I’ve cut it now,” and I’m very petty that way. And then of course and then when I start running large organizations, several hundred people or more, I was like, “I’ve never done this before.” I’m in a meeting, everyone is looking to me, “Do they know that I’ve not done this before? Because I haven’t done this before and can they tell?” And it’s every step of the way. So it just pushes every step of the way and in the beginning, it was quite crippling, but over time, you build things to help you. And I think for those listening, if you feel this way, the thing I’ve learned to do is you have to retreat to a place where you feel real mastery of. So for example, when I was at Microsoft, I was like, “Well, I don’t speak the language very well, English,” and I had an accent, et cetera, but I knew that I was the most online developer person out there.
I knew every single online community, I was very plugged into open source, so in every meeting when the topic would come to, “Hey, what is happening with Ruby on Rails?” I was like, “I know this better than everybody else,” and I learned to put together a presentation. Because then you start with the base of something that you feel super comfortable in and you build from that. And what you realize when you build from that is you are like, “Oh, actually you know what? People really respect that and they react to that.” And I also learned not to do other things. For example, for them for years where I would listen to people from a certain academic background or I’ll be like, “I wish I could do slide decks like they could,” or, “I wish I could have these intentional… but I was like, “That doesn’t really matter. You just need to come from a place where you are confident you’ve done the work.”
So if you folks are listening and you feel imposter syndrome, next time you walk into a meeting, just think about, “Okay, this is a place where I know I spend so many nights and weekends,” and it can be super tiny, it can be one little button, one customer, but you’ve done the work, you’ve had multiple conversations, it is [inaudible 00:51:54]. And you start from there, you talk about that and you build out from that and you will feel comfortable. So I’ve done that in pretty much every role now and I still catch myself doing-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah, I think for me, when I was a first time founder, I definitely felt that way and there was all this, at that time, which was conventional wisdom. Nobody we knew at that time were founders, it’s not our friend circle, they all worked in medium to big companies. My family, nobody has ever been a founder, entrepreneur, it’s not a thing. And so when I started this I was like, “Oh my God, I’m making a mistake.” But then you read all these people tweeting or writing posts, being like, “If you’re a founder you’ll be really good at fundraising. Best founders learn how to… I sucked at fundraising. I was so bad at it. It was just like, “Oh, you have to be able to tell your story.”
I tried. I email like 250 founders, took 85 meetings and 50 plus second meetings and then got 30 checks. This was my seed round which took eight months to close or something and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so bad at this. I should just give up right now.” And then I started building this startup and I was like, “Actually I’m really, really good at understanding customer acquisition and really trying to find creative ways to cheaply acquire customers.” And I kind of started putting together playbooks on it, what I can go do there and I tried this, I tried this, then I started talking to few for our own investors and I’m like, “I don’t know if your portfolio companies are finding this useful, but I tried these tactics.” And they were like, “Oh my God, I’d never heard of that.”
And so I realized that that’s the one place I could be really good at and I can grow my business in a really profitable way very quickly. And then investors started talking to me about other companies and all of that stuff and it became a thing and that helped me get more confidence over time. It was like, who cares if I can’t do these other things? I can do these few things and this is really, really important to build a sustainable business and I think I can do that. And that for me kind of helped me get over it. It’s not anyone telling me, “Don’t worry, you’ll be good at it,” that never helped, it was just I had to do it myself to figure it out.
Lenny: It’s interesting both of your pieces of advice is find the thing you’re actually good at and then just lean into that as much as possible. That’s something I learned from an executive coach I worked with once that you have strengths, you have weaknesses, you can accomplish almost all the things you want accomplish through the lens of the strengths without using those weaknesses as much and that really was pretty transformative.
Sriram Krishnan: That’s actually such a profound point and I wish somebody had told me that earlier in my career because early in my career, I would get all this advice like, “Oh, Sriram is too loud and too boisterous.” And the thing is, nobody I know has ever become successful by trying to fix their weaknesses, it’s just impossible. The only way you succeed is one, you might need to mitigate some of them, especially if they’re really, really holding you back. But you have to lean into your strengths, which is a weird thing because I think when we do performance feedback, it’s feedback and so much time we are like, “Well, these are all the good things and then let’s talk about the ways you know can improve.”
It’s almost the flip time and I think if you’re doing performance feedback, you’ll be like, “Well, these are things you’re really good at, let’s make you even much better at that. Let’s make you fly faster, run harder, close the deal, write better code.” Oh yeah, and some people are mad at you for these things. You should watch it and maybe fix some if it’s really bad, but that’s not what’s going to pull you ahead. It’s the superpowers that’s going to really pull you ahead, so let’s focus on that.
Lenny: Yeah. The way I think about that is the weaknesses can’t be liabilities, you can’t just get on stage and melt and explode, but you don’t have to be amazing. As long as you can email really well, write documents really well, communicate in other ways if that’s a strength. One last trick while we’re on this topic, I was just reading Hunter Walk’s blog and he shared a cool trick for imposter syndrome where you just have to ask yourself, “Am I so good at pretending that people don’t see what’s actually happening? Am I actually that good to being this imposter? Probably not, the people can tell,” and it’s really unlikely you’re actually an imposter.
Sriram Krishnan: Also, by the way, the reality is and this a cliche is people are just not thinking about you.
Lenny: Right.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: That’s true. Yeah, you’re giving other people too much credit that they’re focused on somebody else. Everyone is so busy focusing on themselves and their own insecurities and fear and just living life. And think about ourselves, when was the last time we thought about somebody else and were like, “That person, probably an imposter”? We just don’t have the time for it.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about me this whole time.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I am not surprised.
Lenny: You guys are hilarious. There’s something I actually along these lines I was going to ask about. I remember, Sriram, when you were just getting out of the companies you worked at, you made this point that you were an IC and you were in these meetings where people are reviewing your work and they’re making decisions and you’re the person presenting. And then all of a sudden, you’re the person reviewing all their work and making the decisions and no one trained you to be that person where you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m that person they’re all looking for for all these answers?” And I’m curious just how you worked through that and what advice you’d have for people that are maybe going through that transition?
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, it’s a good question. First of all, it’s kind of a jarring change because you realize, “Well, I have power, but I’m also called upon to do a bunch of things,” because no meeting, let’s call it an exec review, let’s say and you’re the exec they’re presenting too. It doesn’t really matter what your title is. All of a sudden, you’re having to do a bunch of things. You’re making decisions, but you’re also providing feedback, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.
You might piss off somebody by naming somebody and not naming the other person, you might piss off somebody by not inviting them to the meeting. You might have to feel like, “Well, I really want to overrule this person, but if I do, they might get mad at me.” And there are so many different things which you have to keep in your head as well as like, “Is this the right path for the team, for the company,” or whatever the situation is and it can be really overwhelming. And I learned a lot of how to do great exec reviews from my time at Facebook, from Zuck and from Andrew Bosworth. Andrew Bosworth, Boz, has some great posts on his site, boz.com, about how to do reviews and-
Lenny: I’m trying to get him on this podcast by the way.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Oh, that sounds good. He’s great.
Sriram Krishnan: He’s great, he’s fantastic. Let me know when you have him, I have some questions I want to get you to ask him. But Boz had a few ways of thinking. First of all, let’s start with Zuck. Thing I loved about Zuck’s exec reviews was that it was clear when you walked into the room that you are talking to one of the most powerful people on the planet. But what he did which not a lot of other people in this position do, is he would tell you what the rules of engagement were for every meeting or [inaudible 00:58:08]. He’d be like, “Look, I’m going to give you a spectrum of A, how much I care about this topic. Everything from I don’t care, I don’t know why you’re talking to me, do I care kind of care little? I kind of care so I’m happy you’re getting this update, do I really want you to do this? But you know what, if you overrule me, that’s fine. All the way to I’m the founder, I’m the CEO, just do this.” But he will make it clear where he stood on the spectrum.
The second thing he would make clear is why he believed the things he did. For example, the very first time I pitched him on what is the Facebook Audience Network which grew into probably one of the largest ad networks on mobile, he had all these sort of ideas, he was like, “We shouldn’t do an ad network because,” and he had all these opinions on, “Well, mobile ads all look terrible, they are spammy, X, Y and Z.” But he was really good at articulating those to you and also saying, “Well, if you can prove me wrong on these legs of my logic tree, I will let you overrule me, unless I have a strong opinion.” So when you walk in a meeting, you’re like, “Well, I know the framework, I know what the dance is, do you convince him?” Or maybe there’s no shot to convince him and that’s fine. He’s the CEO and that’s fine too.
So I really learnt that it’s so important to clarify for your team the framework you’re operating in with you. And it’s also maybe a clarifying function for yourself as so how do you actually feel about this and why do you feel like that? That’s number one. The second part of it is inside a meeting, there’s a few things I think you need to do which is clarify what kind of meeting is it. Is it just an update? “Great. We’re just going to get an update? I’m going to listen to you, I’m going to applaud you for a job well done, I’m going to send you on your way.” Or is it a decision in which case, what are the pros, cons, et cetera? There are some real big failure modes where one kind of meeting slides into another kind of meeting where somebody is like, “Why are we doing that? Is that a thing?”
And then somebody will start fighting on and people are like, “Oh gosh, we shouldn’t have brought this topic at all.” And everyone listening to this has probably been to one of those meetings. There’s also something else which teams sometimes like to do, which is they’d be like, “Hey, we have a hard problem. We don’t know what to do.” They’re trying to kind of push the responsibility of the [inaudible 01:00:02] from them to you which may be fine, but you should be like, “Hey, are you saying that you can’t make up your mind and you want me to make up your mind for you?” You want to be very explicit because often I’ve seen this when there are hard decisions, teams are like, “The exec feels strongly, we don’t want to know what to do,” and they kind of want to push the accountability to you and here, we watch out for that a lot.
There are a lot of hygiene things we think are very important. For example, send out a pre-read before, make sure it’s the right people in the room, not everybody, but not missing out key people. Make sure you’re paying complete attention, make sure everyone gets a chance to talk which by the way, I was really bad at. And those things go a really long way. Oh, and one final thing, have a regular rhythm to those, so you’re doing this every month, et cetera. What I hate, I stole this line from Gokul Rajaram, is the phrase, “Hero meetings.” All of us have been this which is there’s a big thing, there’s a big review, it’s probably a go/no-go, maybe it’s career limiting, maybe it’ll get our team funded and everyone is stressed out. You spent two weeks working on a deck and the first 20 minutes of conversation goes totally sideways because the exec thought of something. Every one of us has been one of those. Those are bad.
The way to fix that is to have a regular check in, so you have meeting every single week and becomes like you’re not spending weeks, it a muscle, it’s a rhythm of what you do and those are reason. Sorry, I went on a bit of a speech there.
Lenny: What I was thinking about is you two have worked at basically all the big consumer companies and coming back to imposter syndrome briefly, what’s the worst product you’ve built or the biggest failure you’ve each built and what did you learn?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Oh, man. At a startup, I tried all kinds of things. We kind of grasp at straws and build whatever. And also I think I fell victim to, a lot of startups do this where they’ll see some theme that has become a meme with investors and they’ll be like, “I’m going to go build that company. I’m just going to take that technology, adopt it.” You’re kind of start of seeing that with AI now where it’s like everything is now an AI company. Of course everyone has incorporated AI part of it is you get it, you kind of want to be in the game and be cool, but if it doesn’t really fit with your product hypothesis and thesis and what your customers are asking for, don’t fall for that fad.
And I did stuff where I totally fell for the fad. I think I had a consumer electronics e-commerce, like a machine learning model where we rent and then recommend the right things to go buy. But then we were like, “Oh, Uber is doing this whole UberX thing where it was people having their cars and they could do this thing.” And at that time, I think this whole shared ownership of stuff became such a big thing and I was like, “Oh, I’m going to do that exact thing where it’s like it’s less-
Lenny: [inaudible 01:02:51].
Aarthi Ramamurthy: At that time, we were partnering with Best Buy and we were like, “Well, we should do this other side product,” which is people’s own stuff that they could put up on the site. Total disaster because there is a lot totally different company logistics, everything. You could build it out as a different business, but we had a small team which was heavily focused on this business, was already doing pretty well and then we had to fork all of that effort to go build this other thing which required different skillset, different fulfillment technology and all of that. And so we were like, “Okay, disaster.” So we pull the plug on it many months in, but we should have done it a lot sooner.
Lenny: What you learn from that experience other than pulling the plug sooner?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah, don’t fall for fads. It’s do the thing that your customers are asking for and are willing to pay for. Or not even what your customers are asking for, but if you have something that is working, don’t get distracted. It’s very easy to be like, “I’m going to build this five other things and it’s all going to accrue value.” And I literally talked to another founder last week where they’re like, “But I’m building this consumer thing, but I’m also going to do this SDK so I can go partner with these other companies and do this B2B thing.” And I’m like, “But you are four people. Why are you doing that? That’s crazy.” “But imagine catering to 10X the market.” I’m like, “Well, but you’re going from a consumer payments thing to something like Stripe and that’s a very different business, so do you want to go do that and go have that trade-off conversation?” So that was one big learning. At Netflix, we tried this out, we knew it was an experiment. This was before Netflix was cool like 10, 11 years ago, where [inaudible 01:04:27].
Lenny: Like DVD place?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah. So my job was to build the streaming player software that goes-
Lenny: No big deal.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah. My job was to go partner with Samsung and Sony and Panasonic and build a software, the SDK that goes into TVs and set-top boxes and Blu-ray players. This is before international, Netflix and original content like House of Cards and all of that, but one of the experiments we tried back then was Netflix 3D. Total disaster [inaudible 01:04:57].
Lenny: Like on 3D TVs? That was another fad issue. Oh, no.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Exactly, yeah. But we had a lot of OEMs who were like, “3D is going to be really big and you have to go invest in that.” So I spent months trying to do this left eye, right eye codec and trying to make this whole thing work with these odd glasses, sitting in your living room trying to do 3D content, which is really hard. I think we tried seven movie titles over, imported it over to 3D and they’re like, “I don’t think this is such a great experience,” and we ended up pulling the plug on it. We knew it was an experiment going in, we knew there was a good exit criteria, but it was kind of a failure.
Lenny: Sriram, I bet you’re going to have a really good one?
Sriram Krishnan: All my products were huge successes, so I have nothing.
Lenny: Okay, [inaudible 01:05:40] other way it’s going to go.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, what are you talking about? No, I’ll say part of the very first thing I worked on and it’s complicated because I love the team and I think we did some great work, was we work on something called Visual Studio for Devices. And the idea was-
Lenny: What was it? Wishlist for what?
Sriram Krishnan: Oh, sorry. Visual Studio for Devices. This was in 2005-
Lenny: Oh, like coding on your phone?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: No, no.
Sriram Krishnan: Well, coding for your phone. And the idea was this was before iPhone it, this was the era of Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile smartphones, so-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Man, the kids listening to this like, “What’s he talking about? What was before iPhone?”
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah. And this was 2005/2006, so right before the iPhone came out, the two years and we were fresh out of school, both of us worked on this. And there was basically an ID, Visual Studio, and we had an extension where you could write code on a slimmed down version of the .NET Framework and you would run apps on these small phones and these small Pocket PCs. And the team was fantastic, we’re all still friends and without that, we wouldn’t have our jobs or careers, so that’s not the point. The point is we all knew these phones were terrible and slow and awful, but what we were told all the time was, “Listen, nobody can change this because the carriers control this market. They determined what software goes on a phone, goes on a device, so this entire ecosystem is all about competing with Blackberry.”
In fact, the codename for Windows Mobile 5.0 was Crossbow and kind of a little secret which I think is kind of public now, Crossbow was a weed killer, it killed blackberries. And so the whole idea was how do you kind go after the enterprise market Blackberry and work with the carriers? And then in 2007, Steve Jobs comes out and says, “I have three launches for you, actually it’s one thing.” I remember texting my manager, I was like, “You have to see this keynote,” because it was so obvious that this thing was going to change everybody. And everyone in Microsoft was like, “No, it’s the carriers who have all the control. They will never let these devices [inaudible 01:07:32]. But actually, it turns out that’s not true.
I learned two lessons from that. One is the market is bigger than all of you. You can work with the amazing team, you can work with the A plus team, A plus company, but if the market shifts, you can’t overcome a bad market or a bad space. The second part is at the heart of it, if you feel some product is bad and if you feel like this new thing, it’s just better to use and you can just feel it instinctly, you have to follow the instinct. Because I remember being like, “Yeah, the iPhone is cool, it feels so much better, but okay, maybe they’re right, maybe it is the-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: All these people are so much more senior than us, clearly they’ve put so much more thought into this, clearly what do I know kind of thing. And you realize that now, I think over, what, we’ve done product for 15, 16 years now, and we look at it and go, “We now have these patterns to go match against.” We know when something is better, when something is working, when something feels like it’s intuitive, you follow that intuition now then and not try and fight it and be like, “But here are all these things where this is not going to get there,” kind of thing. It just doesn’t work that way, the market ultimately wins.
Sriram Krishnan: And I think when you’re younger, you should really trust your instincts. And instincts can mean, “I just hear people talking about this other thing a lot,” or, “I hear that other company’s name come up a lot,” or, “I tried this thing and… And you may not have the framework to articulate it and you may not trust your instincts, but there’s something there and you should learn to listen to that voice. You’re like, “Why is that? Why are we talking about it? Maybe they’re doing better marketing, maybe their CEO is better on Twitter or they have Lenny Rachitsky as an angel investor or they advertise on your podcast,” there we go. I tried to get a plug in there, Lenny. But you have to listen to your instinct because there’s usually something there to follow.
Lenny: I only have two more questions, one is you mentioned framework. I know you have strong opinions on a very specific framework, Jobs-to-be-Done and I know you’re not a fan. What do you want to share about why you don’t like Jobs-to-be-Done as a framework?
Sriram Krishnan: All right, I knew you were going to ask me this and I was thinking how do I be kind of balanced in-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Bombastic?
Sriram Krishnan: No, balanced and give measured answer and say, “Well, every framework has good and bad ways and there are good things and bad things,” and I could probably given one of those answers. No, I actually think the more fun thing to do is I’m going to say I hate Jobs-to-be-Done, I think it’s a terrible framework, I think no successful company has ever been built on top of JTBD and if you pick JTBD, you’re probably doomed and here’s why. Let’s go back to the canonical example. And there’s nothing Clayton Christensen who was a legend, amazing, the milkshake, what is the idea of being the milkshake? You are a person, you go into a commute and you’re like, “Hey, I’m going to get this milkshake because it’s the exact right quantity and save me on my commute.” But they changed it up and all of a sudden, boom, it was not serving the job and look into the thing that actually it is serving the customer for.
I’ll tell you that’s not how actual real companies work because in real companies there are so many different parameters. For example, maybe it is really, really hard to go build that milkshake. Maybe there’s another person who opens up across the street who builds a better milkshake than you do. Maybe the cup configuration in the car changes, maybe the supply chain for milkshake changes. But in my world, let me make this more concrete, when you work in social media, there are often so many other agents in the system where you can’t focus on one person’s equation. I’ll give you an example. When you sign up for Instagram right now, when you sign up for Facebook for many, many years, Facebook knew that it needed to get you to 10 friends in 14 days.
If you got your 10 friends in 14 days, you were probably going to use Facebook. So it’d be like, “Well, we’re going to throw every tool we have at our disposal to get you to 10 friends and 14 days.” So if you signed up for Facebook for many, many years, you’ll get this little thing called People You May Know. Then you’ll have this person who just signed up for Facebook, you go, “Why I’m seeing this person?” It’s not because you need a friend, because they need a friend. So what Facebook did was it made your experience slightly worse to make that person’s experience slightly better. This was performing no job for you, it was trying to perform a job for them. Was the right trade-off or not? I don’t know. We had this problem at Twitter. The single best product launched for the last five years at Twitter was the introduction of the algorithmic ranking and-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: God, hearsay. Oh my God.
Sriram Krishnan: … and it saved the company and power users hated it. They’re like, “I know how to control my timeline, I know who to follow,” et cetera, et cetera. It turns out though, this is not built for power users. It was really built for a regular person when they sign up for Twitter to be able to give them a great experience because we knew the power users, they already have. And by the way, TikTok really great example of that. So how do you make the trade-off? Do you pick power users or do you pick a regular person? What is the trade-off between them? Jobs-to-be-Done does not tell you that.
Let me tell you this. If you go order a package from Amazon right now, five years ago or three years ago, you would’ve gotten an email, it’ll tell you what is that package, what is in it and when it’s showing up doorstep. Last couple of years, it doesn’t, why? Because Amazon doesn’t want Google to have that data inside Gmail system. So it is, for very, very valid competitive reasons, made your experience worse because that’s the right thing do for a company. So real life and real product is all about these trade-offs and whenever I’ve seen people trot out JTBD, it’s a tell that they actually haven’t dealt with a trade-off, where you have to make one person’s life slightly worse in one situation for some other interesting dynamic. Okay, I’ll stop with my mini speech [inaudible 01:13:02].
Lenny: This is my favorite part of the podcast so far. I’m hoping people listen to the end here because this is-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah, I think JTPD, the problem with that is it’s just too idealistic. And most frameworks are, but this one just takes it up a notch where it’s like it’s almost meant for people who are so naive about product building and especially product building at scale. I think it might work for the V1 or just a hypothesis that you’re trying to go test out, where it’s like, “What is the core value that we are trying to serve for this user,” kind of thing. But really V2, V3, it kind of falls apart because you have these super hard trade-offs that you have to make and every company goes through that. So it’s almost a little too idealistic in its thinking. I think that’s the biggest problem with it.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, and look, I was being a bit bombastic obviously and it does have some [inaudible 01:13:48].
Lenny: We’re going to edit this part out. This is [inaudible 01:13:49].
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s may be useful in some niche case which nobody has ever heard about-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: For milkshakes.
Sriram Krishnan: Right, for milkshakes. Yeah, if you’re starting a milkshake company, go for it. But I’ll say, so people have good [inaudible 01:14:01] what is the alternate, would involve not JTBD, how do we actually figure this out? And I think a much better way and I really understand the early Facebook years, which is systems thinking. Think of all the players in the system, think of all of their incentives and how they interact with each other. So in that milkshake example, your car, the person, the competitor across the road, the supply chain, the profit margin of each person, the podcast they have to listen to, what is each person’s incentives that you’re trying to drive and look at how they all work together.
So for example, so then when you look at the algorithmic rankings case, sure it kind of deprioritized a certain set of people, but it prioritized the other set of people and you could then have a much more rational discussion about whether that trade-off is worth it. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not, but it’s a much better discussion that, “Well, that person wanted milkshake, we’re not giving them milkshake,” what do you do? That doesn’t help you at all. And yes, it may be a good tool in ways that I absolutely have not seen so far, but-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah, also the other tool I think I really like is first principles thinking. Everyone throws it out there, it’s kind of become this cliche now, but really think about it as if your product didn’t exist and if you had to start over from scratch, would you build it the exact same way for these set of customers? How would you think about it? Oftentimes people hyper-focused on competition and what other company is doing. That almost never matters. Other companies are probably looking at you and going, “What are these guys doing?” And you have to look at it as all of these systems, as Sriram said, but also really think about it as if you had to do this all over again, how would you do this? Is this the right way or are you just inheriting decisions over time and just trying to make incremental changes and trade-offs and stuff like that? I like that way more than trying to think of it as a job that a customer hires you to go do. It just sounds like really naive.
Sriram Krishnan: It makes you sound smart, I think. But I’ll give you an example. Sorry, I have to-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Stop. You just gave so many examples.
Sriram Krishnan: No, one last thing.
Lenny: Examples is good. Let’s do one more example.
Sriram Krishnan: One last example, okay. One of my favorite posts from Lenny in the recent times, I don’t know when this episode going to go out, is the Duolingo growth post. I’ve been sharing it all the time, it’s exactly one of the best posts I’ve seen recently. What is the job that people are hiring Duolingo to go do? Help teach them a new language, right? That sounds about right, some version of that. But if you look at that post, what actually saved the company?
So they tried dozens of different things, found their North Star metric, the current user retention rate, then they tried leaderboards, realized why leaderboards don’t work. Then ultimately, it is streaks that worked up. Tell me how do you use Jobs-to-be-Done to get to a world where, “Hey, we really going to show these fire emojis and you need to kind of get that fire emoji every day. Because what it’s really getting at is the sense of [inaudible 01:16:45] so there is no JTBD brainstorming offsite that’ll ever get you there. What I’ve seen quickly, is almost always when you get a great product breakthrough like that, it comes from one person usually having a product intuition about something, about the psychological thing the product delivers and systems thinking. Those are the only two places I’ve ever seen it up. Okay, I’ll stop now.
Lenny: No, that example is amazing. I was going to talk about how I’ve actually found it a little useful in my life, but I think that’s just going to keep us going-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I was just going to ask you, are you now convinced Lenny, because Sriram has spent 45,000 minutes just trying to tell you why you should not be using JTBD-
Sriram Krishnan: I’m just going to get canceled by Lenny’s audience. Lenny’s audience is like, “This is a reasonable podcast.” They’re like, “I now hate this guy.” [inaudible 01:17:30].
Lenny: It. I think the JTBD industrial complex is going to come after you.
Sriram Krishnan: It’s all mafia.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: I think if you see a bunch of mass unsubscribes, I just want to say this is not on Lenny, this is on Sriram.
Lenny: [inaudible 01:17:41] from your podcast.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah, I’m going to get attacked by a bunch of people who are really good at holding offsites and framework thinking.
Lenny: Yeah. I find it useful in specific cases, not as a scaled product development process, I think which you’ve run into or just the whole company is run by Job-to-be-Done. One paper was like, “What is the job?” And you’re like, “The job is to get them to open that up three times more each day.” Yeah. Okay, I know you guys have to run so I have one more question. I have this saying in my family that whenever we do something well, I’m like, “We’re making it in America,” because we also immigrated from the Ukraine. And as immigrants, you talked about your story of coming to America and clearly making it. You’re both at the center of, I don’t know, what’s happening in tech, which is also at the center of the world in many ways. I’m curious what advice you would give to immigrants and people that have moved here recently or even a while ago, just how to make it and be successful in the US, especially in tech?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Some of it Sriram covered before, it’s put yourself out there, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. Oftentimes, for us, it took us a decade plus to feel comfortable doing that because we came in, we look different, we sound different, we have strong accents, the number of times I got told at both startups and before then, “Oh my God, your accent, it’s so difficult, I can’t hear you,” or, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” I got told before fundraising that nobody will be able to invest in my company because the accent is too strong. You already have these virtual barriers in your own head and then you have people coming and telling you actively that you are different and you can’t succeed.
Now if I had to do it all over again, I almost think these differences are what sets us apart and makes us unique. And you can do really interesting things with them because you are going to a place where you are rare and that’s, I think, a really good thing. So you should sharpen that rareness and do really interesting things with it, whatever that might be. We have this show called Good Time Show, it’s Aarthi and Sriram’s Good Time Show and we focus a lot on outsiders being insiders or how you started out as… For us, we are quintessential examples of that where we’re outsiders to tech, to Silicon Valley, to being in this world and we kind of “made it” to being here. And we often talk about what it takes to do that and whatever your version of being outsider and becoming an insider means. And for us, part of it is not being afraid to put yourself out there, power of cold emails, networking and being really proactive about that. What would you add to that or how do you think about it?
Sriram Krishnan: I think everything Aarthi said, I don’t have much to add. I’ll just say if you’re listening to this and you’re immigrant, A, you’re in the right place, B, you’re listening to this podcast, reading this newsletter which is probably not your day-to-day today job, so you’re already doing something right, so you’re going to make it. You’re already putting yourself out, you’re doing the right things, you’re going to make it.
Lenny: What a beautiful way to end it. Two final questions, where can folks find you online, the Good Time Show, when you on Twitter, wherever? And then how can listeners be useful to you too?
Sriram Krishnan: They can find us online on JTBD sucks… No, sorry. That’s my alt account. Well, we are on pretty much every platform. We are aarthiandsriram.com. That’s kind of a home for our podcast, our show, so go subscribe there, but you can find us everywhere. We are on YouTube at again, Aarthi and Sriram, you can find us on Spotify podcast, wherever you get your daily milkshake/podcast and also on Twitter @aarthir and sriramk.
Lenny: Amazing.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: And how can people be useful [inaudible 01:21:26].
Lenny: Yeah.
Sriram Krishnan: I would say, this is going to sound like a cliche, but my job is fantastic in a way where if people are building amazing things, I benefit. Because if you build amazing things, odds are you’re going to build a great company and then odds are that I’ll have the chance to maybe invest or one of my partners will have the chance to invest and hopefully you make a bunch of money out of it. So just go out there and build things, tell me about the things you’re building and also just reach out-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Yeah, just reach out, say hi.
Sriram Krishnan: Okay, let me put it, if you listen to this, send me a DM, send us a DM and send us an email and we will respond and-
Aarthi Ramamurthy: If it is JTPD hate, just send it to him, not me. Just keep me out of it. But for everything else, if it’s a nice note especially, send it to me, I will read it.
Sriram Krishnan: Yeah.
Lenny: All right. I hope you’re ready for some DMs, both of you. Thank you again for being here. You’ve set the bar high for our first duo guest. Thank you again and goodbye everyone.
Aarthi Ramamurthy: Thank you.
Sriram Krishnan: Thank you.
Lenny: 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 a leaving 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.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Aarthi Ramamurthy | Aarthi Ramamurthy |
| Andrew Bosworth | 安德鲁·博斯沃思 |
| Bat-Signal | 蝙蝠侠信号(Bat-Signal) |
| Clayton Christensen | Clayton Christensen |
| cold email | 冷邮件(cold email) |
| Gokul Rajaram | Gokul Rajaram |
| Hunter Walk | Hunter Walk |
| IC product managers | 独立贡献产品经理(IC product managers) |
| Jobs-to-be-Done | 待办任务 |
| LARP | LARP(实况角色扮演) |
| product market fit | 产品市场契合度 |
| techno-optimism | 技术乐观主义 |
| Visual Studio for Devices | Visual Studio for Devices |
| Zuck | 扎克伯格 |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
科技界资深夫妇Sriram与Aarthi结合在Meta、a16z等机构的丰富履历,在本次对话中分享了摒弃套话的产品洞察。文章开篇即对经典的“待办任务”框架提出犀利批判,以Facebook早期增长为例,揭示成功策略往往并非单纯满足既有需求,而是基于平台视角的系统性博弈。此外,对话还探讨了当下的技术乐观主义趋势,并拆解了建立顶级人际网络的务实路径——通过持续的内容输出与真诚互动,他们成功促成了埃隆·马斯克的经典连线。本文超越了常规的产品理论,以真实的实战复盘,为从业者的思维迭代提供了沉稳而富有启发性的参考。
来自科技界顶尖权力夫妇的犀利观点与技术乐观主义 | Sriram and Aarthi
对“待办任务”框架的批判
Sriram Krishnan: 我讨厌待办任务(Jobs-to-be-Done),我认为这是一个糟糕的框架,我认为没有哪家成功的公司是基于 JTBD 建立的,如果你选择 JTBD,你大概率注定失败,我来举个例子。现在当你注册 Instagram 时,当你在过去许多年里注册 Facebook 时,Facebook 知道它需要让你在 14 天内添加 10 个好友。如果你在 14 天内添加了 10 个好友,你很可能会继续使用 Facebook。所以它就像这样,“好吧,我们要动用所有可用的工具,让你在 14 天内达到 10 个好友。”所以在过去许多年里,如果你注册了 Facebook,你会看到这个叫做“你可能认识的人”的小功能。然后你会看到这个刚注册 Facebook 的人,你会想,“为什么我会看到这个人?”这不是因为你需要朋友,而是因为他们需要朋友。所以 Facebook 所做的,是让你的体验稍微变差一点,以让那个人的体验稍微好一点。这对你来说并没有完成任何任务,它是在试图为他们完成任务。
节目开场与背景
主持人: 欢迎来到 Lenny’s Podcast,在这里我采访世界级的产品领袖和增长专家,从他们的硬件与经验中学习,探讨如何打造和增长当今最成功的产品。今天我破天荒地请到了两位嘉宾,Aarthi Ramamurthy 和 Sriram Krishnan,他们都是前产品经理,两人加起来基本上在所有主要科技公司都工作过,包括 Netflix、Meta、Snap、Twitter、Microsoft,甚至 Clubhouse。Sriram 现在是 a16z 的合伙人。他们实际上是夫妻,各自都非常出色。他们一起主持 Aarthi and Sriram Good Time Show,这个节目最初在 Clubhouse 上,现在搬到了 YouTube,早年他们 famously 地请到了埃隆·马斯克,这直接促成了 Clubhouse 疯狂的火箭式增长,这也是我们绝对会聊到的。
本期节目绝对是我在这档播客中经历过的最有趣的对话。我们涵盖了各个领域,包括技术乐观主义这一趋势、建立人际网络、在线上创作内容以及如何着手去做、成为产品领导者、社区建设,以及最后一段极其搞笑的关于为什么“待办任务”框架行不通的吐槽。我和他们俩聊得非常开心,我知道你们也会喜欢这期节目。
嘉宾登场与早期播客经历
主持人: Aarthi 和 Sriram,欢迎来到播客。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 谢谢。非常感谢你邀请我们,Lenny。这简直是遗愿清单级别的事情,因为我们上了 Lenny’s Podcast。
Sriram Krishnan: 我知道。作为长期订阅者、听众,现在终于来到这里了。哇。我可不想搞砸了。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 第一次“打进来”的听众。
Sriram Krishnan: 对,第一次“打进来”。对,千万别搞砸了。
主持人: 你们太逗了。我很感激,也感到非常荣幸。你们俩是这档播客的第一对双人嘉宾,我想不出还有比你们更合适的开场嘉宾了。我有很多想深入探讨的话题。我想我们会聊得很开心,所以再次感谢你们来到这里。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 太棒了。超级粉丝。是的,说实话,这简直……我很激动。
主持人: 我不知道你们还记不记得这件事,我刚才在想这个故事,当初你们在做 Good Time Show 的时候,你邀请我上那个节目,我当时在想,在犹豫,就像,“我不知道,那有点吓人。”然后第二天,埃隆·马斯克就上了节目,然后节目就爆火了,我就想,“糟糕,我错失了机会。”然后你们请来了真正的大人物,我就想,“我再也回不去那个节目了。”所以现在回想起来,我就觉得,“哦,我犹豫得太久了。这是个教训。”
Sriram Krishnan: 嗯,你应该这么理解这件事,“他们请不到我,所以备选才是埃隆·马斯克。我本来应该是绝对主角,他们就会说,‘好吧,哦,我们请不到 Lenny,那我们就请……’” 不,说真的,我们一直是你的超级粉丝,那些只是有趣时光。我们当时显然只在 Clubhouse 上做节目,现在我们在 YouTube 上做,在所有你能听到我们播客的地方。很多人因为埃隆·马斯克那期节目记住我们,但我要告诉你,往往是那些从事技术工作、当时没那么出名的人——你现在显然非常有名了——才真正与观众产生了共鸣。但你知道吗,这就是为什么我们现在又把你请回了节目。
主持人: 这就对了。一切都圆满了。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 暖场嘉宾嘛,对。
主持人: 说到埃隆·马斯克,我一直很好奇,你们当初到底是怎么把他请上节目的?我记得那还是在他在世界上非常活跃、很难从他那里学到东西、听到他声音之前。你们到底是怎么做到的?
通过互联网建立连接
Sriram Krishnan: 嗯,我认为这其实和我职业生涯中很多好事发生的方式一样,那就是我只是在互联网上和人聊天。我有一套完整的做法,我确实认为很多试图在职业生涯中取得进展的人,尤其是在科技领域,就应该去写冷邮件、发冷私信、留言,发布内容等等,这会带来好结果。
Sriram Krishnan: 就埃隆的情况而言,其实最终的结果是几年前他突然私信了我。当时我在 Twitter 工作,我想他看到了我写的东西,想从公司获取些什么,于是他翻了翻组织架构图然后私信了我。我当时想:“我很乐意帮忙,”他就把电话号码发给了我。我打过去,我问:“请问是……”然后我们聊了聊,之后便建立起了关系。那正是 Clubhouse 刚出现的时候,我就想:“我们请谁上节目呢?”当时埃隆没怎么做媒体露面,显然他后来做得多了,我给他发了短信,他说:“我愿意,”剩下的就是历史了。
Lenny: 太棒了。我就喜欢埃隆直接私信你这一点,Sriram——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 直接滑进他的私信里。
Sriram Krishnan: 这个故事最疯狂的部分是我给他发短信说:“你应该来上节目,”他说:“好啊,”然后他发推提到了这事。我告诉你,当埃隆在推特上提到你时,甚至现在可能更是如此,你的手机直接会热到发烫。然后整个下午,我有成千上万的人问我会发生什么,Clubhouse 的人——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 而且在 Clubhouse 上,如果你那天打开应用,有非常多的房间在试图为我们收集问题并帮助我们准备。光是滑动大厅看着那些内容就压力巨大,感觉就像:“天哪,这是真的吗?我们就是他们在这里谈论的人。这太疯狂了。”我不知道你有没有听过实际的内容,但那挺酷的,因为我们能问他我们一直想问的问题,比如“我们什么时候能去火星?”这挺有趣的。在那之后,又出现了这种情况,我们收到一大堆人的联系说:“你应该问这个问题。你们不是专业记者。”我们就像:“对,我们不是。你是怎么看出来的?”我们就是两个随便找来的普通人跟这家伙聊天,所以真的很有趣。
Lenny: 是的,我记得。我记得记者们会说:“他们实际上并没有问他尖锐的问题。他们怎么敢请他上节目,给他一个平台来分享东西而没有任何批评?”
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 而我们就像:“我们不是你们以为的那种人,那从来就不是我们的工作。”
Clubhouse 的增长策略与前景
Lenny: 是的。我从这次讨论中能引申出很多问题,但我想先快速问一个关于 Clubhouse 的问题。Aarthi,你在 Clubhouse 工作过一段时间。从具体策略来看,我觉得他们最初的策略非常聪明,就是让那些有魅力、有智慧的人进去聊天和高谈阔论。他们请到了 Naval 和 Marc Andreessen,然后逐渐吸引其他用户。这是一个极其聪明的做法,能吸引用户进入、想要进去听他们说话并与他们互动。对于社交网络冷启动的增长策略,你对此有何看法?另外总体而言,你对 Clubhouse 的发展历程有什么想法?它经历了一次巨大的崛起,现在有些……
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 是的,这些都是好问题。我认为就增长策略而言,这是在漏斗顶端获取用户的绝佳方式。做过几次之后,你基本上会把一切都看作漏斗,你会想:“好吧,留住了用户吗?没有留住?这仅仅是漏斗顶端的曝光,还是他们真的留下来了?”所以我认为有 Marc Andreessen 和 Naval 这样的人,他们并不是出于任何……他们确实非常、非常感兴趣。当我们被 Marc 邀请时,Marc 说:“看看……这远在 a16z 投资它之前,他说:‘这个产品太棒了。这些人在做一些非常酷的事情,这将是未来,太了不起了。’”所以这给了他们一个发声的平台,而实时社交音频也完全顺理成章。我想说,我觉得 Clubhouse 受到了不公平的关注和批评。它算起来是个怎样的初创公司,三年左右吧?我自己也做过两家初创公司。我做的第二家,到了第三年,我们依然在挣扎,试图弄清楚我们在做什么。所以我觉得创始人只是需要一些时间去喘息,去弄清楚接下来该做什么。所以我看好 Clubhouse,我觉得他们会弄明白的,而且 Paul 和 Rohan 是很棒的创始人。他们做社交产品已经超过十年了,所以他们肯定能弄明白。我知道外界会有这种说法,“哦,他们在疫情期间非常火。这到底是不是疫情的产物?”我不知道,但归根结底这是一个产品,你必须找到产品市场契合度(product market fit),我觉得他们会找到的。
社交产品的冷启动与用户获取
Sriram Krishnan: 是的。关于社交产品如何获取用户这个更广泛的问题超级有趣。我最喜欢的关于这个话题的文章之一是 Eugene Wei 的《Status as a Service》。Eugene 哪天绝对应该上你的播客。这是一篇一万字的文章,非常精彩,强烈建议人们去读。但那篇文章的一个关键要点是,当你拥有一个新网络时,把它想象成一个新国家,你想要那些高地位的人,而高地位意味着他们很有趣,人们出于某种形式想要待在他们所在的地方,因为他们有钱、聪明、酷、长得好看,无论是什么,你都想把他们拉到你的网络上。而且有一个非常有趣的推论,那就是他们通常在其他现有平台上得不到很好的服务。因为如果他们已经被服务得很好了,他们就不会想转移到你这里来。
Eugene 没有谈到这一点,但如果说看看三四家大型社交媒体公司的历史,你会看到这种模式。例如,他们通常各自都有一批在该平台独有的爆发式明星。如果你看看 Snapchat,有像 Kylie Jenner 这样的人率先真正爆发。如果你看看 Instagram,我认为 The Rock、Cristiano Ronaldo 以及许多其他人都是 Instagram 原生的。但假设你转到 TikTok,你会看到的一件事是,Instagram 圈子里的很多人很少转移到 TikTok,这有几个原因。第一,他们真的不需要,因为他们已经在其他一些现有平台上很受欢迎了;第二,TikTok 实际上利用了一套不同的技能组合。那些非常擅长视频的人,那些会跳舞、幽默的人。于是你看到了 Charli D’Amelio、Addison 以及许多其他不同的人的崛起。
所以每一次,我认为你都需要去追求一群具有高地位且未被很好服务的人。所以回到 Clubhouse,我觉得有趣的一点是,这些名人当然很有趣,但对我来说更有趣的是那些原生人才。我其实认为我们也是其中的一部分,如果不是因为 Clubhouse,我们不会在这里做节目。有许多人利用这个平台进行了最初的起飞,所以我认为对于这里正在思考社交平台的人来说,有趣的是,你需要从其他地方找有趣的人,但你也需要原生人才。顺便说一句,你就是这种现象的完美例子,因为你是 Substack 的原生人才,我认为你为 Substack 带来了很大的价值。有很多拥有庞大订阅邮件等等的人,但我认为你的崛起和受欢迎程度现在已经与 Substack 紧密相连,这实际上是所有这一切的一个绝佳例子。
Lenny: 是的。这让我想起,Musical.ly 后来变成 TikTok 的创始人有一个很棒的故事。我想你应该听过他关于这个的演讲,他的思考方式是,Instagram 上有这么多成功人士,那就是欧洲,而你能说服来到美洲的人不是欧洲的国王,而是那些农民,他们会想,“哦,我们有一个新的机会可以崛起,成为国王或女王。”所以你要拉拢的就是这些人,那些在另一个平台上表现不好但想要表现出色的人,而不是那些已经很成功的人。
**Aarthi Ramamurthy:**是的,我知道。你就是国王,你是美洲的国王。
**Sriram Krishnan:**Lenny 刚才在那里自称为 Substack 的国王。我只是想给你在视频里提供一些可以剪辑的瞬间。
**Lenny:**我刚刚才发现,我想我拥有整个 Substack 上第四大的 Substack 通讯,这太疯狂了。
**Aarthi Ramamurthy:**太棒了,哇。太棒了。
**Lenny:**这是他们最近的数字。
**Sriram Krishnan:**是的。第三名、第二名、第一名,Lenny 正在追赶你们,最好小心点。
**Aarthi Ramamurthy:**干掉他们。
**Lenny:**是的。他们排在很前面。所以你提到了和埃隆·马斯克的聊天,以及你们是如何非常支持科技的,我认为你们俩处于这个趋势的最前沿,我不知道这是否被称为技术乐观主义(techno-optimism),或者也许有另一个术语,我很想听听为什么?因为我知道这对你也很重要,为什么这对你很重要,以及这个技术乐观主义运动到底是什么——
技术乐观主义的起源
**Aarthi Ramamurthy:**让我先简单说一下。看,我认为这与我们的背景和成长经历也非常个人化。对我们来说,Sriram 和我来自印度一个相当普通的中产阶级家庭,在印度一个这里大多数人可能都不知道的城市。我们从小就非常喜欢电脑,但在很长一段时间里都没有机会接触电脑。在我们两人的情况中,我们的父母都是攒了很久的钱才给我们买了第一台电脑,那是很不容易的事。当我们最终用上它并开始学习写代码时,我们在网上相识了。我们现在是在暴露年龄了,但我们是在当年的 Yahoo Messenger 上认识的,我们一起做了一个极客的编程项目,我们就是这样建立起联系的。所以技术和电脑给了我们一切。
我们的第一份工作都在微软,我们构建开发者工具和平台。如果你处在我们的位置,你也会有同样的感觉。科技给了我们太多。所以我们从印度一路来到这里,辗转多个城市,我们在西雅图住过,然后来到了这里的湾区,我创办了科技公司,看到另一种观点其实有些令人沮丧,因为你能看到它在多大程度上提升了人们、职业和生活,而且仅仅从我们能够参与的工作、我们看到朋友们工作和发布并推向市场的东西来看,它极大地改变了现状。所以对我们来说,我们是科技确实帮助了我们并让我们做得更好的活生生的证明,所以我甚至无法理解另一种观点,比如,你为什么不乐观对待科技?我不明白。
**Sriram Krishnan:**是的。我认为个人经历部分真的是核心。我认为通常有两种思想流派。一种思想流派,我大致可以概括为事情正在变得更糟,技术让事情变得更糟,我们都应该少做一点,少建一点。然后另一种思想流派,也就是我认为我认同的,是技术并不完美,技术的影响绝对是不均衡的,但过去 100 年、200 年里世界上几乎所有的好东西都要归功于它。我们可以就为什么这样进行一整个漫长的讨论,我们有很多听起来非常花哨的知识理论来解释原因,但其核心就是 Aarthi 说的,如果没有科技,我们就不会在这里,我们就不会在做这个。
我猜想很多正在听这个节目的人如果没有科技,就不会有机会听到它,就不会有他们现在的机会,或者有我们拥有的机会。这是一个巨大的阶层跃升。我爸爸几乎一辈子都在做同一份工作,基本上从 25 岁直到退休,对他来说真的没有一条容易的出路。我会想象,“嘿,如果他晚出生 40 年,他有一台笔记本电脑和一个网络连接,可以上 GitHub,这里的机会在 30 年、40 年前绝对是不可思议的,而这全都来自技术。”所以我认为这就是它的核心,这是我们所拥有的实现跨越的最好工具。
**Lenny:**这是一个对科技来说非常令人耳目一新的视角。在传统媒体上,你听到的永远是科技造成的所有问题,所有的危险,以及我们是如何完蛋的。所以你几乎会忘记关于科技正在发生的事情其实可能会有非常积极的故事,而且感觉在大规模这样做的人很少——
**Sriram Krishnan:**哦,是的。我给你举个小例子。你刚才开了个关于欧洲国王之类的玩笑。如果我们回到 100 年前,国王或皇室成员或者富人使用的硬件设备,与农民使用的会截然不同,但你知道吗?我猜你和我的手机可能跟……其实我知道它跟埃隆·马斯克,这个世界上最富有的人,用的是同一款手机。我知道印度有很多人有非常高端的安卓设备,他们可以访问同样的互联网。你去 google.com,google.com 不知道你的净资产,它给你相同的结果。Chat GPT 不知道你有多富有。它可能不喜欢你,但它不知道你有多富有。如果你想想所有这些设定,在过去都是根本不可能实现的技术。但无论如何,那是另外一整个话题了。
打造个人品牌与社交网络
**Lenny:**是的,我喜欢最富有的人和我也用同一款手机,而且他们对此无能为力。你们俩非常擅长的另一件事是建立网络、建立社区、建立个人品牌。我知道很多听众经常被告知,“你需要在网上建立受众,你要建立品牌,你必须建立人脉”等等这些事情。所以我想我很想知道,你们对那些来找你们说“嘿,我想建立个人品牌,我想建立人脉”的人会给出什么建议?就是如何着手做这件事,什么对你们俩很有效?
**Aarthi Ramamurthy:**Sriram 对这个有更多结构化的思考,老实说,他在这方面的水平一直比我强得多。他基本上是在慢慢腐蚀我,把我拉到了黑暗面。但我现在开始相信的,并且这与我过去的信念不同的一点是,特别是如果你在一家大公司工作,你只是那里成千上万员工中的一员。通常你被告知的是,“嘿,只要发布真正好的产品,低下头,去工作。产品会为自己说话。事情就是这样的。不要搞什么个人品牌和所有那些东西。那太分散注意力了,”这通常就是人们告诉你的。
在我职业生涯的大部分时间里,我都是这样想的,“是的,当然有道理,基本上就是你应该做的。”但我逐渐意识到那根本不是真的,这可能是一个有争议的观点,但你必须走出去建立你自己的品牌。你必须弄清楚你代表什么,你的核心价值观是什么,你相信什么,你认为你想做什么,你的下一个职业轨迹会是什么样。所有这些都只取决于你自己。这不是由公司来替你弄清楚的,不是由任何其他人来弄清楚的,这完全取决于你自己。
而且我认为建立个人品牌备受轻视,以至于人们把它当成一个脏字眼。就好像,“不,你不能那样做。”“哦,看看这个在包装自己的人,”之类的话。但我几乎把它看作是将你与其他人区分开来的东西,这与其说是去谈论你不擅长的东西,或是过度吹嘘自己,不如说是真正去突出,“我非常擅长这件事,我想谈论这件事,我想为此做视频,或者写文章,或者发推文。”无论你的阵地在哪里,你必须让自己走出去。
建立人脉的本质
Sriram: 我想这可能是人们能做的最重要的事情之一,而且我花了……不,我们花了数年时间慢慢在企业里爬升职级。我们做过初级产品经理、独立贡献产品经理(IC product managers)、高级产品经理,慢慢爬升职级,带团队等等。我花了好几年时间只是认为,我需要做的就是低下头,把我的工作做得非常好,仅此而已。但后来我环顾四周,我怀疑这里的很多听众可能也有同样的感觉:总有那么一些人获得了多得多的机会,总有那么一些人远远走在前面,尽管我基本确定有其他人工作做得比我好,我当时就想弄明白为什么。我认为建立人脉,我会试着定义一下,因为我觉得很多人对它有预设的假设,是这一切的核心。所以建立人脉非常简单,就是与人建立关系。首先让我们说明一点,这些必须是真实的、真诚的关系。
有件事让我抓狂,就是有人走过来跟我说,“我是来建立人脉的。”我就会想,“我不知道那个词是什么意思。”所以你真正要做的,就是与人建立真实、真诚的关系,并且不图任何回报,这就很棒。然后人们会说,“哦,那太棒了,但我是个高级……例如,我有很长一段时间是微软的高级产品经理,后来在 Facebook 也差不多是这样,你就会想,‘好吧,这意味着什么?我人在这里,去开会,过我的一天,时间就那么多。’我就会说,‘好吧,那我们先从去见见每一个你没有直接共事过的同级开始吧。去和他们喝杯咖啡,问他们,“嘿。”不要带任何目的。就问问他们生活过得怎么样,他们是谁,他们的人生故事是什么,然后有哪几个有趣的人是你应该去认识的?去找你的经理谈谈,也去和他们的同级谈谈。’
顺便说一句,非常重要的一点,你的经理、同级关系超级重要。去和他们喝杯咖啡,他们会说,“太好了,我很乐意认识这个人。”然后当我加入 Facebook 时,我出了名地给每一位 Facebook 领导都发了冷邮件(cold email)。我就会说,“嘿,我是新来的,我想认识一下。我们喝杯咖啡吧,”每个人都会像面对每个新人一样说同样的话,也就是都在问同样的事情,我就会去,我会告诉他们我的故事,我会问问他们的故事。我会说,“你们目前关注什么?我能怎么帮忙?”同样,不期待任何回报。然后我会问,“我还应该去和谁聊聊?”
你这样做,每周喝两次咖啡,真的只需要每周花我两个小时,每个人都有每周两个小时,随着时间的推移,它就会开始产生复利效应。然后随着岁月流逝,你和以前共事过的人保持联系,这些人会去往其他地方,五年、六年过去了,你从二十出头或二十多岁中后期开始,你就会认识遍布各处的数百人。这件事重要的一点在于,它是分布在许多不同地方的一种资源。例如,第一,如果你需要帮助,你想寻找一个新的职位,或者你想说,“嘿,我想招这个人,有谁了解这个人吗?”或者,“我想找个新职位。谁在招人?”那时,这个人脉网络就会成为你的关键资源。
我认为很多人没有做到的一点,其实是一些很简单的事。第一,通常人们只是和同级进行了一次很棒的会面,然后就再也不会跟进。我相信我们很多人都有过那种非常棒的初次介绍邮件,但后来再也没跟进过,不要那样做。我尽量做到确保每年或每六个月一定会和他们见一次面。我只会留个言,“嘿,最近怎么样?”另一个关键部分是不期待任何回报。通常人们很善于察言观色,如果你过去说,“嘿,我只想认识你因为我想找份工作,或者我是来建立人脉的,”不管那是什么意思,他们都不想见你。就过去对他们是谁感到非常好奇,并试着帮助他们。你会惊讶地发现,无论你从哪里开始,在一年、两年内,你就会认识数百个你可以触及的人,所以我认为这超级强大。这只是建立关系而已。
个人品牌的“蝙蝠侠信号”
另一部分是建立品牌。Aarthi 和我在职业生涯的不同阶段都收到过工作中的反馈,说,“哦,Sriram 和 Aarthi,他们在品牌上建得太多了,等等。”我已经认识到,那是一个糟糕的反馈,应该完全无视它,如果任何人听到任何类似的话,就完全无视它。对我以及很多其他人很有效的方法是,让自己走出去,这可以是任何形式。比如你在内部做了一次演讲,你写了推文,你在 GitHub 上非常活跃,你做了一期 YouTube 视频,这并不重要,但要让自己走出去,因为互联网会奖励那些抛头露面的人。当你让自己走出去时会发生什么?那是一个蝙蝠侠信号(Bat-Signal)。它在告诉人们,“嘿,我在这儿,这是我的作品集,”你知道互联网会做什么吗?它会将非常棒的人送到你身边。
你会惊讶于有多少人只是发了一条完全没有粉丝的随机优秀推文串,然后某个超级有趣的人就会给他们发邮件,这会促成惊人的事情发生,它鼓励了机缘巧合。所以这么多年来,我真希望我少听那些说我不该这样做的人,多听那些说我应该多做点这方面事情的人。
非交易性的乐观主义
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我也认为,Sriram 一直说“不期待任何回报”,我看待这件事的另一种方式是,这再次体现了我们的乐观主义。通常,我们认为人们喜欢互相帮助,这只是他们的天性。它不应该是交易性的,不应该是,“如果我认识他们,他们以后就会在某种程度上为我做些什么,”不是那样的。就像我们都在建立社区,并且是更广泛社区的一部分,我们的运作方式是,我们都想帮助彼此,帮助他们取得成功。如果这出自你的本性,你就很难不觉得,“是啊,我当然想主动联系他们。我想看看我能做些什么来帮助他们。也许会发生一些好事,我们会在一起合作一个项目,”诸如此类。核心原则是不期待回报,不要在交易的基础上做事,我认为这真的很重要。
创造价值而非刻意社交
Lenny: 这让我想起了 Naval 有一条被证明非常正确的推文,那就是不要去建立人脉,而是去创造令人惊叹的东西,创造价值,做出色的工作,然后人们就会想和你建立人脉。这真的深深印在了我的脑海里,它让你免于去参加社交活动。相反,只要去努力工作,做很棒的事情,人们就会想认识你。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我意思是,你都不敢相信有多少次我出现在一些聚会或者创始人活动之类的场合,然后有人走过来会说,“我是来建立人脉的,你叫什么名字?”我就会想,“什么?不,你不能那样做。不是这么玩的。”
Sriram Krishnan: 实际上我想说我不完全赞同 Naval 的观点,因为通常当你在一家大型组织中时,很难做出出色的工作并因此获得认可。你是团队的一部分,这很好,但这和拥有一个完全属于你自己的 Newsletter 或完全由你个人产出的一篇内容是不一样的。所以当我年轻的时候,我就会想,“太好了,我是一个庞大组织的一部——”
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我不知道,我的意思是你们说的其实是同一件事,他只是说创造价值并把它展示出来。我不觉得这——
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,我觉得“把它展示出来”这部分非常有趣。而且我只想说,不要干等着去创造惊人的东西。往往仅仅是把自己展示出来这个行为,本身就能催生出惊人的事物。
Lenny: 对。而且我认为特别是在你职业生涯的早期,你不可能立刻创造出惊人的东西,所以主动联系和结识人是很有价值的。关于这个话题我有几个想深入的方向。一个是,你刚才可以说是给了一个关于建立人脉和网络之类的迷你大师课。我觉得能让人们倒回去再听一遍的原因是,我觉得人们没有意识到你们俩的联系有多么紧密。你处于许多最不可思议的人群组成的微型社区的中心。我不知道你们有没有聊过这个,但你运营着所有这些由不可思议的人组成的微型社区,在创作者圈、投资者圈、产品人圈等等,所以这确实奏效了。你可能是这个世界上人脉最广的人,我不知道大家知不知道这一点。
Sriram Krishnan: 哦,哇。这是件好事吗?我不知道。这是——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 这是件好事。
Sriram Krishnan: 这是件好事。好的,我喜欢这个说法,我就这么认为了。
真正的好奇心与微型社区
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我想说的是,至少对于 Sriram 来说,除了那些我觉得他特别擅长的大师课内容之外,人们没有意识到的一点是,他骨子里对他人有着极其强烈的好奇心。他真的只是想知道别人在做什么,他们是谁,他们的故事是什么。这不像什么,“哦,我要花10分钟让他们说话,我要花……”他通常从不让别人说话,但当他这样做时,他是真心——
Sriram Krishnan: 等一下。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: ……但他是真心对他们是谁、他们的故事是什么感到好奇。到现在,我们认识大概20年了,不论是每次晚餐还是每次活动,他就是这样的人,所以在建立人脉方面你是无法伪装这一点的。他建立人脉仅仅是因为想了解这些人是谁。
Sriram Krishnan: 谢谢。
Lenny: 这说得太好了。
Sriram Krishnan: 女士们先生们,这就是我娶的那个女人。你娶对了人,其他一切都会变得[听不清]。我以前真的没怎么谈论过这个,我会把其中一些稍微藏起来,但我认为核心是我只是对人感到好奇,我只是对很多事情一无所知。我这并不是在虚假谦虚,我知道很多人比我聪明。Lenny 在写 Substack Newsletter 方面显然比我聪明得多,这很明显,Andrew Huberman 在……方面很棒,Brian Armstrong 在建立加密公司方面很棒,所有这些人就是很明显比我强。但我意识到的是,很多人有时候只是想和其他优秀的同龄人在一起。我在这些年来建立的一个小窍门是,我想,“好吧,让我就把有趣的人聚集在一起。”
所以我把他们拉进来,比方说各种类型的在线社区,目前可能已经有100多个了。然后我说,“好的。你们信任我,你们信任我,我来制定规则。”每个人都保持一定程度的保密,每个人都是同龄人,他们都在各自的领域有所成就,没有人粗鲁、刻薄或脱轨。所以我是个派对主人,我就像,“好的听着,这里没有人会发疯,”但我同时也是在策展。我会想,“嗯,我需要一个深思熟虑的人,我需要一个有点争议的人,我需要一个幽默的人,我需要一个像名人那样的人……我是在试图拼凑、策划出正确的氛围或正确的环境,但是在数字世界里的,我在现实生活中非常反社交。其中一些社区只是随着时间推移自然发生的。你把一群人聚在一起,他们在网上闲逛,随着时间的推移,一位非常著名的CEO就会和一个刚起步的20出头的人成为最好的朋友,仅仅是因为他们处在同一个空间里。
所以我非常喜欢创造这些在线空间,我认为这是在座的任何听众都可以做到的事情。只需拉上一些你最喜欢的人,把他们塞进一个 WhatsApp 群、一个 Telegram 群或一个 Slack 频道里……顺便说一下,Lenny 的 Slack 社区,强烈、强烈推荐。Lenny 在这方面非常厉害。但你的社区有数十万人,我认为有时候较小的群体,比如5个人、10个人这样的共享空间,会带来一种亲密感,然后把它启动起来。你会惊讶于在一两年后,会产生多少亲密感和联系,有时候人们会敞开心扉谈论失业或离婚或一些真正私人和激烈的事情,仅仅是因为有着共同的信任。我认为能够促成其中的一些事情,是非常温暖和令人满足的。
构建新社区的核心要素
Lenny: 我想深入探讨一下这点。你们建立了这些不可思议的社区,你提到了几个,Aarthi,我知道你也构建了 Facebook 早期的社区产品和 Clubhouse。显然,如果非要让你挑出一两件在刚刚组建一个新社区时必须做对的事情,你认为那是什么?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 找到利基市场,从非常小的规模开始,找到那个利基市场。我想我经常看到其他的创业公司创始人,因为我投资并指导很多早期公司。我经历过 Y Combinator,所以我尽可能多地回到 YC 去帮助大家。但我经常看到人们创办公司或者创始人进来时会说,“我要打造这个产品来服务这个社区。我要以此建立世界上最大的社区,”这几乎总是从一个超级规模化的版本开始,然后他们就把自己架在了失败的位置上。
你几乎最好去做这些小型的、利基的、不可扩展的事情,去寻找这些做着这件事的奇怪的人,他们真的对这单一事物感兴趣,然后从那里开始扩展和成长。我认为这是在开始建立社区时的一个大忌,不要一开始就想去构建这个超级规模化的社区。从少数对特定问题充满热情并想聚在一起的人开始。从那里开始。第二,我认为人们,这可能是一个有争议的观点,但我经常认为人们没有深入思考变现问题。如果你是一个早期的社区建设者,开始思考一下,如果你真的把这当作一门生意来专注,你到底如何从中赚钱?
他们经常达到某种规模,然后就会想,“糟了,我现在该怎么办?”接着他们会尝试所有这些选项,就会出现一些流失,然后他们就会说,“哦不,但我以为这是一个非常具有粘性的社区。”我就会说,“是的,但它没有这个特定的价格标签那么有粘性。”因此你必须开始思考,如果我们达到了某种速度,那会是什么样子?我将解锁哪些东西。提前一点思考变现问题,在它成为你的拐杖之前,把它变成你可以利用的武器。
将社区视作派对
Sriram Krishnan: 但我想说,Aarthi 可以说是 Facebook Stars 的创作者,在那方面有很多深入的思考,我可以看到她在这方面钻研得很深。当然对于她所说的一切,我有一个稍微不同的框架。首先,我真的不太喜欢“社区”这个词,因为“社区”、“人脉网络”、“平台”这些词有点抽象,可以代表很多东西。我喜欢把它想象成晚宴或者教堂,或者那些看起来更具体、人们知道“好吧,我确切知道那是什么”的事物。所以当我想起社区或者创建一个社区时,我首先想的是,这是一场派对。当你刚开始时,你会想,“好吧,氛围是什么?”
例如,这对每一个社交媒体平台来说也是如此,你可以是一场疯狂的派对,人们在吧台上跳舞,玩得很开心,喝得酩酊大醉;你也可以是一场非常正式的晚宴,每个人都坐着,盘子上放着名牌,伴随着玻璃杯的碰撞声,你必须盛装出席。它们都没问题,都各有各的乐趣,但作为主人,你需要告诉人们这是哪一种。顺便说一下,我认为 Twitter 早期没有做对的事情之一,而其他一些应用做到了,就是它从来没有告诉人们这是一场什么样的派对。它就像,“我们是去米其林星级餐厅坐下吃饭呢,还是去超级碗之后的一家体育酒吧,可以尽情疯狂?”如果你不这么做,人们就会自己制定规则。这是第一点。
第二点,作为主人,你必须策划最初的参与者阵容,你需要一个混合体,这超级重要。我认为有时候人们会做这样的事,要么去优化“有趣的名人”,要么找来最健谈的一群人。我其实读了很多关于举办优秀晚宴的书,我在那里有一些有趣的想法,书里会说,“好吧,你需要一个混合体。”例如,在任何组织中,假设你是一个大家都认识的副总裁,但那个副总裁可能没有时间在一个 WhatsApp 频道或 Slack 频道上一直闲聊或出席所有活动。然后也许你需要一个非常活跃、到处跑、见所有人的年轻商务拓展主管。你需要那个人,你需要一个安静且深思熟虑的人。你需要融合不同类型的能量,这几乎是一种炼金术,是艺术多于科学。你必须从那里开始。
第三点,我认为作为主人,你必须对社区在任何一个特定时间点的感受有第六感。是不是有两个人主导了对话?那个人有一段时间没说话了。当有人加入一个群组或这些地方时,我喜欢做的一件事是,我试图让他们回答一个他们会感到开心的问题,因为你知道你第一次走进派对时会发生什么吗?你环顾四周,心想,“我这里谁也不认识。天哪,好吧。我认识这一个人,我要去跟他说话,”你会感到紧张。我试图打破这一点。例如,如果你走进一个地方,你不认识任何人,Lenny 其实很擅长社交,但我会说,“嘿。Lenny 在 Substack 上有最受欢迎的内容之一,他刚写了[听不清]。”我只是在给你一个开口的机会,让你感到舒服,这是另一部分。
我喜欢的第三部分是仪式感,宗教在这方面做得非常好,也就是每个月都做点什么。我主持了一个由一些朋友组成的小组,在整个新冠疫情期间,我们每个星期二晚上都会进行一次 Zoom 会议。那是一种仪式,它没有任何实质内容,只是一群朋友的 Zoom 会议,人们可以分享——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 人们只是端着酒杯,或者把他们的孩子带进来,没有任何结构化的议程。但在疫情期间,人们开始期待这件事,我们会说,“天哪,星期二了。你知道今晚我们要去做这件事了。”这真是一种建立那个社区的好方法,我完全同意。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,嗯,Lenny 在他的 Slack 上做得非常出色,我看到了。
Lenny: 你太贴心了。
Sriram Krishnan: 另一个有趣的张力和挑战是如何发展它,因为我认为有……有趣的一点是,四个人的晚餐,与八个人的晚餐非常不同,与二十个人的聚会非常不同,而一旦你开始达到几十万人,你愿意分享的东西,担心被评判,这些又非常不同。所以我总是试图创造更亲密的不同空间,那完全是另一个话题了。所以我认为,如果你想尝试启动一个社区,我会说选对人,定好调,你自己真正参与其中,这占据了绝大部分。
建立个人品牌与内容输出
Lenny: 我想回到我们稍微涉及到的一个话题,我觉得它非常有趣,就是建立品牌、发布内容之类的事情。我觉得很多时候人们听到这些,比如一个第一年的产品经理,他们就会想,“是的,我要开始发推文了。”然后那都是些令人尴尬的无用内容,没有人需要听他们说,因为他们还没做出任何成绩。我想我会很好奇你们的看法,人们应该在什么阶段开始发布内容?你怎么知道这是否令人尴尬、没有人想听这些像“伟大的产品经理之道”之类的东西,这些非常陈词滥调的东西冒了出来。好像有几百个 Twitter 账号,人们就在发这些东西,“好吧。”你们是怎么看这个[听不清]的。
Sriram Krishnan: 我其实不同意你的看法,我其实认为每个人都应该……好吧先声明一下,我所在的公司投资了Twitter,但我发誓我不是因为这个才这么说,人们听我这么说过很多年了——
Lenny: 还有Substack。
Sriram Krishnan: 对。每个人都应该发推,或者在YouTube上发视频,或者在Instagram上发帖,无论你多年轻都没关系。因为我其实不同意刚才那几点,那确实是个很好的观点,我觉得很多人都有这种感觉:第一是你需要达到一定的成就或有趣程度的门槛才能发声,我强烈反对这一点。第二是觉得事情会很尴尬。我不觉得有什么是尴尬的,我也强烈反对这一点。我觉得这两点都很有趣——
Lenny: Aarthi的表情太精彩了。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 等等,我觉得Sriram的门槛太低了——
Sriram Krishnan: 老兄,不是,这真的很重要,因为我觉得阻止很多人的原因是,我大概有过一百多次这样的对话,一些成就非常高的人会来找我,他们会说:“嘿,我想上Twitter,我想写内容,或者我想在Substack上写,或者我想做播客。”我说:“太好了。”他们会说:“但我不知道说什么,看起来很蠢,我不想被评判。”但我会说:“不,你非常成功了,”而正是这种被评判的恐惧常常阻止了人们。所以每当我听到“尴尬”这个词,我就会说:“不,不,不,那其实没问题,你没问题的。你会找到感觉的,”我这么说原因如下。
坚持每日输出与克服评判焦虑
Sriram Krishnan: 第一点是最重要的事情,甚至,听着,如果你只能记住这整件事中的一件事,那就是开始行动,每天做点事。这听起来太基础了,就像Aarthi和我之间有个持续的老梗,我们总说这就像饮食和锻炼。就像我们跟人们谈论如何保持健康,你可以做一百种不同的事情,或者听各种播客,但绝大多数情况其实就是,“嗯,饮食和锻炼。”而在创建内容方面,饮食和锻炼就是,你每天只管写一段内容,因为接下来会发生的是,这会锻炼你的肌肉,让你熟悉这种媒介,你开始理解在这种媒介里什么有效、什么无效,你开始积累经验。你觉得谁从来不锻炼?在我看来,就是那种思考好几个星期,憋出一篇惊艳的推特长文、博客文章、Newsletter,不管是什么,然后就停了,因为投入的精力太大了。所以我说:“第一,每天做点事。”第二部分是,我其实认为你不需要谈论你取得了什么成就,你只需要谈论你自己。顺便说一下,这听起来可能有点虚,但你就是世界上最好的你。所以举个例子——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 哇,好吧。
Lenny: [听不清]。
Sriram Krishnan: ……假设你是一个21岁的产品经理,刚毕业,第一年……顺便说一句,我们都经历过。我曾经也是个21岁的产品经理,Lenny也是,还有很多其他人。首先你会看到很多人经历过这段旅程,也有其他像你一样的人。其次你只管谈论你的旅程,谈论你在做什么,谈论你在学什么。因为当你创建内容时,你通常试图做的是与人们建立联系。所以当Charli D’Amelio在TikTok上跳舞时,她不是在说她是个专业舞者,她是在说:“我很接地气,我就像你隔壁会交朋友的邻居,我就像你一样。”然后如果足够真实并且做得好,人们就会在这个层面上开始与你产生共鸣,所以听这个播客的每个人都应该能够创建内容。
保持自知之明与拒绝自我审查
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 好吧,我唯一不同意的地方是,我觉得这些都行得通,但这有点像,我们是亚洲人,我们有这种非常亚洲父母的思维,没有参与奖,所以如果内容很尴尬,你至少应该承认它很尴尬。我觉得归根结底,你必须坚持,我认为我会给那些只是坚持不懈、每天出现的人更多肯定,但我确实认为人们应该有一定程度的自知之明,比如,“天哪,这不太好。我没有任何起色。我需要在事情上改进并不断建设它”,而不是像,“我是有史以来最好的我”,然后一直输出垃圾,别那样做。改进你的东西,因为确实存在糟糕的内容——
Sriram Krishnan: 我同意你的看法,但我认为当人们说尴尬时……好吧,我懂这个。人们说尴尬时想表达的意思是,我们的同龄人认为这个内容太基础了——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 但每个人都有这种感觉,不管你有没有大声说出来。
Sriram Krishnan: 好吧,我给你讲个故事。所以我花了好几年时间,我就会想:“我是个产品经理领导者,我管理组织,我应该写些有智慧的产品经理内容。我应该写Lenny写的那种东西。”比如,我会说,“Lenny上周发的那篇关于多邻国的帖子……我太嫉妒了。我就会想,天哪,这就是那种内容……我就会觉得,‘太棒了,神帖。’但问题是,当你开始这么做时,你开始自我审查了。我会说,这些年来我写过很多帖子,我会试图听起来很聪明,在这些工作中我有一些很好的智力框架,但你知道我所有时间里最受欢迎的帖子和推特长文是什么吗?是关于如何写一封冷邮件。当我写那篇推特长文时,我就想,“天哪,我听起来会好蠢,”因为Lenny不需要知道怎么写冷邮件,我共事的VC也不需要,每个人都知道。但问题是,对你来说显而易见、对你的同龄人来说可能显得尴尬的事情,对很多人来说绝对不是显而易见的,他们会与你产生联系,他们会与你产生共鸣。当有人说,“嗯,这是不是太基础了?我该如何开始我的工作?”我就会说,“不,有很多人觉得这并不显而易见,”我就会把自己展示出来,最坏的结果是什么?有人觉得你是白痴?那没问题。你第二天发一些新内容,他们就会修正看法,或者你也可以直接忽略它。
分享经验的前提
Lenny: 我觉得这里有很多非常好的干货。我觉得可能我们唯一有分歧的地方,我们应该继续往下进行了,但这[听不清]。
Sriram Krishnan: 听我说,Lenny,拜托。不然你的播客就太温和了,让我们听听。
Lenny: 我的感觉是,我认为对于那种帮助你更好工作的内容,比如娱乐内容任何人都可以做没问题,你可以做得非常棒,而我的感觉是,你需要先在职业生涯中做出点成绩,然后才能开始谈论,“这是我学到的东西,这是有效的方法,这是无效的方法。”我认为在你真正做成一件事并以某种方式取得成功之前,我不建议花大量时间去分享你所有的智慧。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的。我其实觉得你提出了一个非常有趣的观点,就是我认为网上很多人在LARP,也就是实况角色扮演,扮演别人,就像你在试图投射一个你并没有达到的人设或职业阶段,而且你知道这一点,我们也知道这一点,你可能也会承认你知道这一点——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 而且对于那种内容,大家都能看出来,我觉得它就是显得不够真实。我认为世界终究会自我理清,但我的确觉得,仅仅因为 Sriram 认为没有内容是令人尴尬的,并不意味着所有人都是这么想的。你不可能神奇地抹除这种感觉,我觉得大家都有这种感受,不管有没有大声说出来。我确实认为存在一个迭代和承认的过程,承认“好吧,这确实很糟,但我还是要把它发出来,我们会继续完善它”,然后不断回头去改进。我非常欣赏那些能做到这一点的人,他们每天都不断回头去改进,像洛奇一样一点点啃下难题。我真的很钦佩这些人,因为这很难。随着时间的推移,我意识到每个人都深深觉得自己像个冒牌货,我们也聊过这个。冒名顶替综合征是如此真实,真实得令人揪心,我觉得这不仅是某几个人,而是大多数人。所以,能够跨过那道坎,看着身边优秀的同龄人、前辈以及其他人,却依然能够勇敢地展现自己,我认为我们真的必须对此表示赞赏,并帮助他们去迭代,随着时间推移不断进步。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,我同意。在这个话题结束前讲个小故事,就是我跟一个做了四五年产品经理的人聊天,他在 LinkedIn 上发了篇文章,顺便说一句,LinkedIn 上全是尴尬内容。好吧,让我直说,LinkedIn 上有很多令人尴尬的产品经理内容——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 哇,看看 Sriram。
Sriram Krishnan: ……抱歉 LinkedIn 的朋友们。那是关于如何作为组织制定产品战略的内容之一,我就想,我打给他,我说,“伙计,拜托。你在这个职位上才四年,没人相信你真的是出于真正了解而在推动这件事。如果你在学习那没问题,但你在试图投射一个你不是的人。”但我在跟他聊的时候,我说,“我知道你在另一个小众话题上做了很棒的深度研究。你出去看了所有的帖子,去写那个吧,因为在你认为小众的事情上你确实是专家,而不是在你想要成为的另一个事情上做假专家。”他后来去写了一篇关于非常小众话题的后续文章,结果非常受欢迎,因为事实是,外面并没有很多优质内容,尤其是真正做过这件事的人写的优质内容。你会惊讶于你能多么小众,但如果你真的做了这些工作,跟人交流过,汇总了一些帖子,人们会主动来找你,而你不需要去强求。总之,确实有很多 LARP(实况角色扮演),很多令人尴尬的 LinkedIn 内容。
应对冒名顶替综合征
Lenny: 为了结束这个话题,我百分之百同意人们应该去尝试,在 Twitter、LinkedIn 上写作、分享,就是把它发出去,不要害怕,因为这是你踏上这条路的方式。我本来想换个方向,但你们提到了冒名顶替综合征,我很好奇,你们俩处理过冒名顶替综合征吗?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 噢,是的。我们有过,而且我现在依然有,我不知道 Sriram 怎么想。Sriram 表现得自信得多,有那么多威信,没人会这么想,但我们俩都有,我们都有深深的冒名顶替综合征。每一天,无论我们做什么,我们看着自己,我们是创作者,我们在 YouTube 上有这档节目,然后我们环顾四周,看看其他拥有数百万订阅者和粉丝的人,我们就会想,“我们算什么创作者?这根本不算什么。我们不应该做这些。我觉得人们只是没有坦诚告诉我们我们有多糟。”就像你脑子里有这些循环,然后偶尔你会看到一条评论说,“这太棒了。我不得不停下手里的事来听完这整期节目。这对我太有价值了。”然后你就会想,“哦,好吧。我们还没有那么糟。我觉得,还行。”我们经常经历这些。在很长一段时间里,从上学、大学到进入微软,我都有非常严重的冒名顶替综合征。甚至在我通过微软的面试后,我们是那里最年轻的产品经理之一,我仍然会想,“哦,总有一天他们会发现这一切都是……他们会知道真实的我是怎样的,然后他们会说,‘天哪,我们在她身上犯了个错。’”这对我来说真的是一件极其令人困扰的事。即使现在我觉得可能不再是百分之百如此了,但我还是能看出其中的痕迹,所以这是非常真实的东西。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,太真实了。我有一个克服冒名顶替综合征的窍门或技巧。但我只想说,这也是给这里有这种感觉的人听的,我经历的每一份新工作,我总觉得我不配待在那里,我是说真心的。当我加入微软时,我还是个年轻的学生,我会想,“我什么都不知道。这些人都是专业人士,他们做这行好多年了。”当我搬到美国时,我说,“你看,我的口音非常重,我是印度人,这些人做这行很多年了,他们有截然不同的生活方式,我不知道我在这里干什么。”当我搬到硅谷时,我可能被四五家不同的公司拒绝过,其中一家告诉我,“你在微软工作,所以你根本没法在硅谷混,因为你来自西雅图,”这句话我永远不会忘记。我时不时会去看看那个在 LinkedIn 上的人,我通常会想,“好吧,我现在混出头了,”我在这一点上非常小心眼。然后当然,当我开始管理大型组织,几百人或更多时,我会想,“我以前从没做过这个。”我坐在会议室里,每个人都看着我,“他们知道我以前没做过这个吗?因为我确实没做过,他们能看出来吗?”而且这在每一步都会出现。所以它在每一步都推着你,一开始这相当令人崩溃,但随着时间的推移,你会建立一些东西来帮助自己。我认为对于听众来说,如果你有这种感觉,我学会做的就是你必须退回到一个你感到真正掌握的领域。例如,当我在微软时,我会想,“好吧,我英语说得不太好,”我有口音等等,但我知道我是那里最懂线上开发者的人。我了解每一个线上社区,我非常融入开源,所以在每次开会当话题转到“嘿,Ruby on Rails 现在怎么样了?”时,我就会想,“我比其他任何人都了解这个”,然后我学会了把演示文稿拼凑起来。因为这样你就可以从一个你感到超级舒适的基础开始,并以此为基础去构建。当你在那之上构建时,你会发现,“哦,其实你知道吗?人们真的很尊重这一点,并且会有所回应。”我也学会了不去做其他事情。例如,有好几年我会听那些有某种学术背景的人讲话,我会想,“我希望我能像他们那样做幻灯片”,或者“我希望我能有这些刻意的……”,但我后来会想,“那其实不重要。你只需要从一个你确信自己做过功课的地方出发。”
发挥优势而非弥补弱点
Sriram Krishnan: 所以如果你们在听并且感到冒名顶替综合征,下次走进会议室时,就想一想,“好吧,这是一个我知道自己熬过无数个夜晚和周末的地方”,它可以非常微小,可以是一个小按钮,一个客户,但你做了这些工作,你进行了多次对话,它是确凿的。你从那里开始,谈论那个,并以此为基础向外扩展,你就会感到舒适。所以我现在几乎在每一个角色中都这样做,而且我仍然会发现自己……
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 是的,我觉得对我来说,当我第一次做创始人时,我绝对有那种感觉,而且当时有各种所谓的传统智慧。我们当时认识的人中没有谁是创始人,这不是我们的朋友圈,他们都在中型或大型公司工作。我的家人,从来没有人当过创始人、企业家,这不是我们圈子会做的事。所以当我开始做这个的时候,我就像,“天哪,我犯了个错。”但后来你读到所有这些人发推或写文章,说,“如果你是创始人,你会非常擅长融资。最优秀的创始人会学会如何……”我太不擅长融资了。我在这方面太差劲了。就好像,“哦,你必须能够讲好你的故事。”我尝试了。我给大约 250 个创始人发了冷邮件(cold email),开了 85 个会,其中 50 多个是二次会议,然后拿到了 30 张支票。这是我的种子轮,花了八个月左右才关闭,我当时想,“天哪,我在这方面太糟了。我现在就应该放弃。”然后我开始建立这家初创公司,我想,“其实我非常非常擅长理解客户获取,并真的试图找到有创意的方式来低成本获取客户。”我有点开始把关于它的操作手册拼凑起来,关于我能在那里做些什么,我尝试了这个,尝试了那个,然后我开始和我们的几个投资者交谈,我说,“我不知道你们的投资组合公司是否觉得这有用,但我尝试了这些策略。”他们就说,“天哪,我从来没听过这个。”于是我意识到那是我真正可以擅长的领域,而且我可以非常快速地以非常盈利的方式发展我的业务。然后投资者开始和我谈论其他公司等等,这就成了一件事,这帮助我随着时间的推移获得了更多自信。就像,如果我不能做这些其他事情,谁在乎呢?我能做这几件事,而且这对于建立一个可持续的业务来说真的非常重要,我觉得我能做到。这对我来说帮助我克服了它。不是任何人告诉我,“别担心,你会擅长的”,这从来没帮助过,只是我必须自己去做才能弄清楚。
Lenny: 有意思的是,你们俩的建议都是找到你真正擅长的事情,然后尽可能多地投入其中。这是我从曾经和我合作过的一位高管教练那里学到的东西:你有优势,你有弱点,你几乎可以实现你想要实现的所有目标,只要通过优势的视角,而不需要太多地使用那些弱点,这确实相当具有变革性。
Sriram Krishnan: 这实际上是一个非常深刻的观点,我希望在我职业生涯早期有人能告诉我这一点,因为在我职业生涯早期,我会得到所有这些建议,比如,“哦,Sriram 太吵了,太喧闹了。”问题是,我认识的没有人是通过试图修复自己的弱点而获得成功的,这是不可能的。你成功的唯一途径是,第一,你可能需要减轻其中一些弱点,特别是如果它们真的严重阻碍了你。但你必须投入到你的优势中,这是一件奇怪的事情,因为我认为当我们做绩效反馈时,它是反馈,所以很多时候我们会说,“好吧,这些是所有好的方面,然后让我们谈谈你知道可以改进的地方。”这几乎是反过来的,我认为如果你在做绩效反馈,你应该说,“好吧,这些是你真正擅长的东西,让我们让你在这方面好得多。让你飞得更快,跑得更猛,达成交易,写出更好的代码。”哦,是的,有些人因为这些事情对你感到生气。你应该注意这一点,如果真的很糟糕也许可以修复一些,但这并不是推动你向前的东西。是超能力真正推动你向前,所以让我们专注于那个。
摆脱聚光灯效应
Lenny: 是的。我对这个问题的思考方式是,弱点不能是负债,你不能一上台就崩溃和爆炸,但你不需要很惊人。只要你能非常好地发邮件,非常好地写文档,如果那是一个优势的话,用其他方式沟通。在我们讨论这个话题时还有最后一个窍门,我刚在读 Hunter Walk 的博客,他分享了一个很酷的应对冒名顶替综合征的窍门,你只需要问自己,“我是否非常擅长伪装以至于人们看不出实际发生了什么?我真的有那么擅长做一个冒牌货吗?可能不是,人们能看出来的,”而且你实际上是一个冒牌货的可能性非常低。
Sriram Krishnan: 另外,顺便说一句,现实情况是,虽然这有点老生常谈,但人们只是没有在想你。
Lenny: 没错。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 这是真的。是的,你给了其他人太多信任,以为他们专注于别人。每个人都太忙于专注于自己和自己的不安全感、恐惧以及仅仅是生活。想想我们自己,我们上次什么时候去想别人并说,“那个人,可能是个冒牌货”?我们根本没有时间做这个。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,我一直都在想我自己。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我并不惊讶。
从执行者到决策者的转变
Lenny: 你们太搞笑了。沿着这些思路,我其实有一件想问的事。我记得,Sriram,当你刚离开你工作的公司时,你提出了这个观点,你是一个 IC,你在这些会议上,人们在审查你的工作,他们在做决定,而你是那个做演示的人。然后突然之间,你变成了那个审查他们所有工作并做决定的人,而且没有人培训你成为那个人,你就像,“天哪,我就是那个他们都在寻找所有答案的人?”我很好奇你是如何度过这一关的,你对那些可能正在经历这种转变的人有什么建议?
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,这是个好问题。首先,这有点是一种令人震惊的变化,因为你意识到,“好吧,我有权力,但我也被要求做一堆事情,”因为没有哪个会议,我们姑且称之为高管评审,假设你是他们向你汇报的高管。不管你的头衔是什么,突然之间,你不得不做一堆事情。你在做决定,但你也在提供反馈,有时是明确的,有时是隐含的。你可能因为点名了一个人而没有点名另一个人而惹恼某人,你可能因为没邀请某人参加会议而惹恼他们。你可能不得不觉得,“好吧,我真的很想推翻这个人的决定,但如果我这么做了,他们可能会生我的气。”还有许多不同的事情你必须记在脑子里,以及“这对团队来说,对公司来说,是正确的道路吗”,或者无论是什么情况,这真的会让人感到难以承受。我从我在 Facebook 的时光、从扎克伯格和安德鲁·博斯沃思那里学到了很多如何做好高管评审的方法。安德鲁·博斯沃思,Boz,在他的网站 boz.com 上有一些很棒的帖子,关于如何做评审,以及——
Lenny: 顺便说一句,我正在试着请他上这个播客。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 哦,听起来不错。他很棒。
Sriram Krishnan: 他很棒,非常出色。你请到他的时候告诉我,我有些问题想让你问他。不过 Boz 有几种思维方式。首先,从扎克伯格开始吧。我喜欢扎克伯格的高管评审的一点是,当你走进房间,你很清楚你正在和这个星球上最有权势的人之一对话。但他做了一些这个职位上其他人不常做的事,他会告诉你每次会议的互动规则是什么。他会说,“看,我会给你一个区间,代表我对这个话题有多关心。从我不关心,我不知道你为什么跟我谈,我稍微有点关心?我有点关心所以很高兴你来做这个更新,我真的很想让你做这个吗?但你知道,如果你推翻我的决定,那也行。一直到我是创始人,我是 CEO,就这么做。”但他会清楚地表明他在这个区间里处于什么位置。
他会说清楚的第二件事,是他为什么相信他所相信的东西。例如,我第一次向他推销 Facebook Audience Network 的时候——这后来可能发展成了移动端最大的广告网络之一——他有各种各样的想法,他会说,“我们不应该做广告网络,因为”,他对“移动广告看起来都很糟糕,它们是垃圾信息,X,Y 和 Z”有各种各样的看法。但他非常擅长向你表达这些,并且还会说,“好吧,如果你能在我逻辑树的这些分支上证明我是错的,我会让你推翻我,除非我有强烈的意见。”所以当你走进会议时,你会想,“好吧,我知道这个框架,我知道这是一种什么博弈,你能说服他吗?”或者也许根本没有机会说服他,那也没关系。他是 CEO,那也没关系。
所以我真的学到了,向你的团队澄清你们与你一起运作的框架是多么重要。这也可能对你自己有一个澄清的作用,即你实际上对此感觉如何,以及为什么你会有这种感觉?这是第一点。第二部分是,在会议内部,我认为你需要做几件事,即澄清这是什么类型的会议。只是个更新吗?“太好了。我们只是来听个更新?我会听你说,我会为你们做得好而鼓掌,然后我会让你继续。”或者这是一个决策会议,在这种情况下,优缺点是什么等等?有一些真正的巨大失败模式,就是一种类型的会议滑入了另一种类型的会议,有人会说,“我们为什么要那样做?那是回事吗?”
然后有人就会开始争论,人们会想,“天哪,我们根本不应该提出这个话题。”每个听这段话的人可能都参加过那种会议。还有另一件事,团队有时喜欢做,就是他们会说,“嘿,我们有个难题。我们不知道该怎么办。”他们试图把责任从他们自己推给你,这也许没关系,但你应该说,“嘿,你是说你无法做出决定,想让我替你做决定吗?”你要非常明确,因为我经常看到这种情况,当有艰难的决定时,团队会说,“高管意见很强烈,我们不想决定该怎么做,”他们有点想把责任推给你,在这里,我们非常警惕这一点。
有很多基本规范我们认为非常重要。例如,提前发送会前阅读材料,确保房间里是对的人,不是所有人,但也不能遗漏关键人物。确保你全神贯注,确保每个人都有机会发言,顺便说一句,我以前在这方面做得很差。这些事情能发挥很大作用。哦,还有最后一点,保持固定的节奏,比如每个月做一次等等。我讨厌的一个词——我是从 Gokul Rajaram 那里借用的这句话——就是“英雄会议”。我们所有人都经历过这种,就是有一件大事,有一个大型评审,可能是一个放行/叫停的决定,也许它会影响职业生涯,也许它能让我们的团队获得资金,每个人都很紧张。你花了两周时间做幻灯片,而前 20 分钟的对话完全偏离了方向,因为高管想到了别的东西。我们每个人都经历过那种情况。那些都很糟糕。
解决这个问题的方法是进行定期沟通,所以你每周都开会,这就变成你不是花几周时间做准备,这是一种锻炼,是你做事的一种节奏,原因就在于此。抱歉,我这里有点长篇大论了。
最糟糕的产品与失败教训
Lenny: 我在想的是,你们俩基本上在所有大型消费公司都工作过,简单回到冒名顶替综合征的话题,你们做过的最糟糕的产品或最大的失败是什么,你们学到了什么?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 噢,天哪。在一家初创公司,我尝试了各种各样的事情。我们有点像在抓住救命稻草,什么都做。而且我觉得我也成了受害者,很多初创公司都会这样做,他们会看到一些在投资者中已经成为梗的主题,然后他们会说,“我要去建那家公司。我只要采用那种技术就行了。”你现在开始看到 AI 出现这种情况,好像现在所有东西都成了 AI 公司。当然每个人都加入了 AI,部分原因是你懂这个,你有点想参与其中并显得很酷,但如果它并不真正符合你的产品假设和论点,以及你的客户所要求的,不要掉进那个风潮里。
我做过完全掉进那个风潮的事情。我想我有一个消费电子电商,就像一个机器学习模型,我们在那里租赁然后推荐合适的东西去购买。但后来我们想,“哦,Uber 正在做这个 UberX 的事情,就是人们有自己的车,他们可以做这件事。”在那个时候,我觉得这种东西的共享所有权变成了一个大热门,我就想,“哦,我要做完全一样的事情,就像它更少——”
Lenny: [听不清]。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 那个时候,我们正在与百思买合作,我们想,“好吧,我们应该做这个副业产品,”就是人们自己的东西,他们可以放在网站上。彻底的灾难,因为那是一个完全不同的公司物流,一切都不一样。你可以把它作为一个不同的业务来构建,但我们有一个小团队,他们严重专注于这项业务,已经做得相当好了,然后我们不得不抽走所有的精力去构建另一个需要不同技能、不同履约技术等等的东西。所以我们想,“好吧,灾难。”所以我们在几个月后叫停了它,但我们本应该更早一点这么做。
Lenny: 除了更早叫停之外,你从那次经历中学到了什么?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 是的,不要盲目追逐潮流。要做客户提出需求并愿意付费的事情。甚至不一定是客户提出的需求,而是如果你已经有了一套行之有效的东西,就不要分心。人们很容易陷入这种想法,“我要去构建这另外五个东西,这都会带来价值增值。”我上周确实和另一位创始人聊过,他说,“但我正在做这个消费者产品,同时我也打算做一个 SDK,这样我就能和其他公司合作,做这个 B2B 业务。”我就说,“但你们只有四个人。为什么要这么做?这太疯狂了。”“但想象一下如果能覆盖十倍规模的市场呢。”我说,“好吧,但你这是从一个消费者支付工具转向了类似 Stripe 的东西,这是一个完全不同的业务,所以你真的想去做那个,并去进行那种权衡取舍的对话吗?”所以这是一个重大教训。在 Netflix,我们尝试过这种事,我们知道那是一场实验。那是在 Netflix 变得酷之前,大约十十一年前,那时 [听不清]。
Lenny: 像是卖 DVD 的地方?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 对。所以我的工作是构建流媒体播放器软件,就是放进——
Lenny: 没什么大不了的。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 对。我的工作是去和三星、索尼、松下合作,构建一个软件,也就是放进电视、机顶盒和蓝光播放器的 SDK。那是在国际化之前,也是在 Netflix 的原创内容比如《纸牌屋》等等出现之前,但当时我们尝试的实验之一是 Netflix 3D。彻底的灾难 [听不清]。
Lenny: 是在 3D 电视上吗?那又是一个潮流问题。哦,不。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 没错,是的。但我们有很多 OEM 厂商说,“3D 会非常火,你必须去投资这个。”所以我花了好几个月试图做这个左眼、右眼的编解码器,试图用这些奇怪的眼镜让整个系统运转起来,坐在客厅里试图体验 3D 内容,这真的很难。我想我们试了七部电影,把它们转成 3D 导入进去,然后大家觉得,“我觉得这个体验没那么好”,最后我们拔掉了插头。我们知道进去时这是一个实验,我们知道有一个很好的退出标准,但这算是一种失败。
被时代颠覆的项目
Lenny: Sriram,我打赌你肯定有个非常好的故事?
Sriram Krishnan: 我做的所有产品都取得了巨大成功,所以我没什么可说的。
Lenny: 好吧,[听不清] 原来方向是反过来的。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,你在说什么呢?不,我要说的是我参与的最早期的工作之一,这很复杂因为我喜欢那个团队,我认为我们做了一些很棒的工作,就是我们做了一个叫 Visual Studio for Devices 的东西。这个想法是——
Lenny: 那是什么?满足什么愿望?
Sriram Krishnan: 哦,抱歉。Visual Studio for Devices。这是在 2005 年——
Lenny: 哦,像在手机上写代码?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 不,不。
Sriram Krishnan: 嗯,是为手机写代码。这个想法是在 iPhone 出现之前,那是 Windows Mobile Pocket PC 和 Windows Mobile 智能手机的时代,所以——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 天哪,听这个节目的孩子们肯定会想,“他在说什么?iPhone 之前有什么?”
Sriram Krishnan: 是的。那是 2005、2006 年,就在 iPhone 问世的前两年,我们刚从学校毕业,我们俩都参与了这项工作。基本上有一个 IDE,就是 Visual Studio,我们有一个扩展,你可以在精简版的 .NET Framework 上编写代码,然后在这些小手机和这些小型 Pocket PC 上运行应用。那个团队非常棒,我们现在仍然是朋友,如果没有那段经历,我们就不会有现在的工作和职业生涯,所以这不是重点。重点是我们都知道这些手机很糟糕、很慢、很烂,但我们一直被告知,“听着,没有人能改变这一点,因为运营商控制着这个市场。他们决定什么软件能放进手机、放进设备,所以整个生态系统都是为了与黑莓竞争。”Windows Mobile 5.0 的代号是 Crossbow,有一个小秘密,我觉得现在应该公开了,Crossbow 是一种除草剂,它专门杀黑莓。所以整个想法就是如何进军企业市场的黑莓并与运营商合作?然后在 2007 年,史蒂夫·乔布斯走出来说,“我要给你们发布三个东西,实际上它是一个东西。”我记得给我经理发短信,我说,“你必须看看这场主题演讲,”因为很明显这个东西会改变所有人。微软的每个人都觉得,“不,是运营商掌控着一切。他们绝对不会让这些设备 [听不清]。”但事实证明,其实并非如此。
对待办任务框架的批判
Sriram Krishnan: 不,平衡一下给出稳妥的回答说,“嗯,每个框架都有好与坏的方式,有好与坏的地方,”我大概能给出那种回答。不,我其实觉得更有趣的做法是直说我很讨厌待办任务(Jobs-to-be-Done),我觉得它是个糟糕的框架,我认为没有一家成功的公司是建立在JTBD之上的,如果你选择JTBD,你大概注定要失败,原因如下。让我们回到那个经典例子,这里没有贬低 Clayton Christensen 的意思,他是个传奇,非常了不起,关于奶昔,作为奶昔的理念是什么?你是一个人,你去通勤,你会想,“嘿,我要买这个奶昔,因为它的量刚刚好,能在通勤路上帮我解闷。”但他们改变了做法,突然间,砰,它就没有完成这个任务了,然后去看看它实际上是在为客户服务什么。
我要告诉你,真正的现实公司不是这样运作的,因为在真正的公司里有太多不同的参数。例如,也许去制作那个奶昔真的非常非常难,也许街对面开了另外一个人,他做的奶昔比你的更好,也许车里的杯架配置变了,也许奶昔的供应链变了。但在我的世界里,让我说得更具体一点,当你在社交媒体工作时,系统里通常有太多其他的参与者,你无法只关注一个人的等式。我给你举个例子,现在当你注册 Instagram 时,当你在很多很多年前注册 Facebook 时,Facebook 知道它需要在14天内让你拥有10个朋友。
如果你在14天内得到了你的10个朋友,你很可能会继续使用 Facebook。所以这就变成,“嗯,我们要动用一切可用的工具,让你在14天内加到10个朋友。”所以如果你在许多许多年前注册了 Facebook,你会看到这个叫做“你可能认识的人”的小功能,然后你会看到这个刚刚注册 Facebook 的人,你会想,“我为什么会看到这个人?”这不是因为你需要朋友,而是因为他们需要朋友。所以 Facebook 所做的就是让你的体验稍微变差一点,以让那个人的体验稍微变好一点,这对你来说没有完成任何任务,它是试图为他们完成任务。这到底是不是正确的权衡?我不知道,我们在 Twitter 遇到了这个问题。Twitter 过去五年推出的唯一最好的产品是算法排名的引入,以及——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 天哪,传闻。我的天哪。
Sriram Krishnan: ……它拯救了公司,而重度用户却很讨厌它。他们会觉得,“我知道怎么控制我的时间线,我知道该关注谁,”等等,等等。但事实证明,这不是为重度用户构建的,它真的是为普通人在注册 Twitter 时能够给他们很棒的体验而构建的,因为我们知道重度用户已经拥有了这种体验。顺便说一句,TikTok 就是一个非常好的例子。那么你如何做出权衡?你选择重度用户还是选择普通人?他们之间的权衡是什么?待办任务不会告诉你这些。
让我告诉你这个,如果你现在去亚马逊订一个包裹,五年前或三年前,你会收到一封电子邮件,它会告诉你那个包裹是什么,里面是什么,什么时候出现在你家门口。过去几年,它没有了,为什么?因为亚马逊不想让 Google 在 Gmail 系统里拥有这些数据。所以,出于非常非常合理的竞争原因,它让你的体验变差了,因为对公司来说这是正确的做法。所以现实生活和真实的产品全都是关于这些权衡的,每当我看到人们搬出 JTBD 时,这就暴露出他们其实没有处理过权衡,在某种情况下你必须让一个人的生活稍微变差一点,以换取某些其他有趣的动态。好了,我的小演讲就到此为止吧 [听不清]。
Lenny: 这是到目前为止我最喜欢的播客部分。我希望人们能听到最后,因为这是——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 是的,我觉得 JTBD,它的问题在于它太理想化了。大多数框架都是这样,但这个框架更进了一步,它几乎就是为那些对产品构建,尤其是大规模产品构建非常天真的人准备的。我认为它可能对 V1 或者只是你试图去测试的假设有效,比如“我们试图为这个用户提供什么核心价值”之类的事情。但到了 V2、V3,它就有点崩溃了,因为你必须做出这些极其艰难的权衡,而每家公司都会经历这些。所以它的思维方式几乎有点太理想化了,我认为这是它最大的问题。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,而且听着,我显然有点危言耸听,它确实有一些 [听不清]。
Lenny: 我们要把这部分剪掉。这是 [听不清]。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,吧啦吧啦吧啦吧啦吧啦吧啦。它可能在某些没人听说过的利基情况下有用——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 对做奶昔有用。
Sriram Krishnan: 对,如果你要开一家奶昔公司,放手去做吧。但我想说,所以人们有很好的 [听不清] 替代方案是什么,如果不涉及 JTBD,我们实际上该如何弄清楚这一点?我认为一个更好的方式,也是我真正理解早期 Facebook 年份的方式,就是系统思维。想想系统中的所有参与者,想想他们所有的动机,以及他们如何相互作用。所以在那个奶昔的例子中,你的车,那个人,街对面的竞争对手,供应链,每个人的利润率,他们必须听的播客,你试图驱动的每个人的动机是什么,看看他们是如何协同工作的。
所以例如,那么当你看算法排名的案例时,当然它某种程度上降低了某一部分人的优先级,但它提高了另一部分人的优先级,然后你就可以进行一个更理性的讨论,看看这个权衡是否值得。也许值得,也许不值得,但这比“嗯,那个人想要奶昔,我们没有给他奶昔,你该怎么办?”这种讨论要好得多,那根本帮不到你。是的,它可能是一个好工具,以我目前绝对没有见过的方式,但是——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 是的,另外我觉得我非常喜欢的另一个工具是第一性原理思维。每个人都在谈论它,它现在有点成了一种陈词滥调,但真的要这样想:假设你的产品不存在,如果你必须从头开始,你还会为这批客户以完全相同的方式构建它吗?你会如何思考它?通常人们会过度关注竞争和其他公司在做什么,那几乎从来都不重要,其他公司可能也在看着你,心想,“这些人在搞什么?”你必须像 Sriram 说的那样把它看作所有这些系统,但也要真正思考,如果你必须重新做这一切,你会怎么做?这是正确的方式,还是你只是随着时间的推移继承了那些决定,只是试图做出渐进的改变和权衡之类的事情?我更喜欢这种方式,而不是试图把它看作客户雇佣你去完成的一项工作,那听起来真的很天真。
Sriram Krishnan: 我觉得它让你听起来很聪明。但我给你举个例子,抱歉,我必须——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 停,你刚给了太多例子了。
Sriram Krishnan: 不,最后一件。
Lenny: 例子很好,我们再来一个例子。
Sriram Krishnan: 好的,最后一个例子。最近 Lenny 写的文章里,我最喜欢的一篇就是关于多邻国增长的那篇,我不知道这期节目什么时候播出,但我一直在分享它,这确实是我最近看到的最好的文章之一。人们雇多邻国去做的待办任务是什么?帮他们学一门新语言,对吧?听起来差不多就是这样,某种类似的说法。但如果你看那篇文章,真正拯救公司的是什么?
他们尝试了几十种不同的方法,找到了他们的北极星指标,即当前用户留存率,然后他们尝试了排行榜,意识到了排行榜为什么不起作用。最终,起作用的是连续打卡天数。告诉我,你怎么用待办任务来到达这样一个世界:“嘿,我们真的要展示这些火焰表情包了,你需要每天都能得到那个火焰表情包。”因为它真正触及的是一种[听不清]的感觉,所以没有任何待办任务头脑风暴闭门会能让你到达那里。我快速观察到的结果是,几乎总是当你取得这样伟大的产品突破时,它通常来自一个人对某事物的产品直觉,关于产品传递的心理层面的东西以及系统思维。这是我见过仅有的两个来源。好了,我现在停。
Lenny: 不,那个例子太棒了。我本来想谈谈我实际上在生活里发现它有一点点用处,但我觉得那只会让我们继续聊下去——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我正想问你,Lenny 你现在被说服了吗,因为 Sriram 刚花了四万五千分钟试图告诉你为什么你不应该用待办任务——
Sriram Krishnan: 我只会被 Lenny 的听众取消。Lenny 的听众会觉得,“这是个理智的播客。”然后他们会觉得,“我现在讨厌这家伙了。”
Lenny: 是的。我觉得待办任务产业复合体要来找你麻烦了。
Sriram Krishnan: 全是黑手党。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 我觉得如果你看到大量退订,我只想说这不怪 Lenny,这怪 Sriram。
Lenny: 从你的播客退订。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的,我将会被一群非常擅长举办闭门会和框架思维的人攻击。
给移民的建议
Lenny: 是的。我发现它在特定情况下很有用,而不是作为一种规模化的产品开发流程,我想你遇到过这种情况,或者整个公司都由待办任务来运营。一份文档写着,“待办任务是什么?”然后你回答,“待办任务是让他们每天多打开三次。”好的。我知道你们得走了,所以我还有一个问题。我们家有句口头禅,每当我们把一件事做得很好时,我就会说,“我们在美国出人头地了”,因为我们也是从乌克兰移民来的。作为移民,你们谈到了来美国并显然出人头地的故事。你们俩都处于,我不知道怎么说,科技界正在发生的事情的中心,这在很多方面也是世界的中心。我很好奇你们会给移民、最近搬到这里或者甚至搬来了一段时间的人什么建议,关于如何在美国出人头地并取得成功,尤其是在科技界?
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 其中一部分 Sriram 之前讲过,就是展现自己,不要害怕展现自己。通常对我们来说,花了十多年时间才对这样做感到自在,因为我们进来时,看起来不一样,听起来不一样,我们有很重的口音,在创业公司以及之前,我有无数次被告知,“哦天哪,你的口音,太难懂了,我听不清你在说什么”,或者“我不明白你在说什么”。在融资之前我被告知,没人能投资我的公司,因为口音太重了。你自己的脑海中已经有了这些无形的障碍,然后还有人主动跑来告诉你,你与众不同,你不可能成功。
现在如果让我重头来过,我几乎认为这些差异正是让我们脱颖而出、让我们独特的原因。你可以用它们做非常有趣的事情,因为你去到了一个你很稀缺的地方,我认为这是一件非常好的事情。所以你应该磨砺这种稀缺性,并用它做一些非常有趣的事情,无论那是什么。我们有一个节目叫 Good Time Show,是 Aarthi 和 Sriram 的 Good Time Show,我们非常关注局外人如何成为局内人,或者你一开始是如何……对我们来说,我们是典型的例子,我们是科技界、硅谷、身处这个世界的局外人,然后我们某种程度上“出人头地”来到了这里。我们经常谈论做到这一点需要什么,以及无论你作为局外人变成局内人的版本是什么意思。对我们来说,其中一部分就是不要害怕展现自己,冷邮件(cold email)的力量,建立人脉,并对此非常主动。你会对此补充什么,或者你怎么看?
Sriram Krishnan: 我认为 Aarthi 说的一切,我没太多要补充的。我只想说,如果你在听这个并且你是个移民,第一,你来对地方了,第二,你在听这个播客,读这个通讯,这大概不是你现在的日常工作,所以你已经做对了一些事情,你会出人头地的。你已经展现了自己,你在做正确的事情,你会成功的。
结尾与联系方式
Lenny: 结束这个话题真是个优美的方式。最后两个问题,大家在网上哪里能找到你们,Good Time Show,你们在 Twitter 上,或者任何地方?然后听众怎么能帮到你们?
Sriram Krishnan: 他们可以在网上找到我们,在“待办任务烂透了”……不,抱歉。那是我的小号。好吧,我们几乎在所有平台上。我们在 aarthiandsriram.com。那算是我们播客、我们节目的家,所以去那里订阅吧,但你到处都能找到我们。我们在 YouTube 上,同样是 Aarthi and Sriram,你可以在 Spotify 播客上找到我们,无论你在哪里获取你的每日奶昔/播客,还有在 Twitter 上的 @aarthir 和 sriramk。
Lenny: 太棒了。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 人们怎么能帮上忙呢。
Lenny: 是的。
Sriram Krishnan: 我想说的是,这听起来可能像句陈词滥调,但我的工作在某种意义上非常棒,如果人们在构建令人惊叹的东西,我就会受益。因为如果你构建了令人惊叹的东西,很可能你会建立一家很棒的公司,然后很可能我会有机会投资,或者我的某个合伙人会有机会投资,希望你能从中赚到一大笔钱。所以只管去外面构建东西,告诉我你正在构建的东西,并且直接联系——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 是的,直接联系,打个招呼。
Sriram Krishnan: 好的,让我这么说,如果你听了这个,给我发个私信,给我们发个私信,给我们发封邮件,我们会回复的——
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 如果是待办任务仇恨信,直接发给他,别发给我。让我置身事外。但对于其他一切,尤其是如果是一张友好的便条,发给我,我会读的。
Sriram Krishnan: 是的。
Lenny: 好了。我希望你们俩都准备好接收一些私信了。再次感谢你们的到来。你们为我们首位双人嘉宾设定了很高的门槛。再次感谢,大家再见。
Aarthi Ramamurthy: 谢谢。
Sriram Krishnan: 谢谢。
Lenny: 非常感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这很有价值,你可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅这个节目。另外,请考虑给我们打分或留下评论,因为这真的能帮助其他听众找到这个播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Aarthi Ramamurthy | Aarthi Ramamurthy |
| Andrew Bosworth | 安德鲁·博斯沃思 |
| Bat-Signal | 蝙蝠侠信号(Bat-Signal) |
| Clayton Christensen | Clayton Christensen |
| cold email | 冷邮件(cold email) |
| Gokul Rajaram | Gokul Rajaram |
| Hunter Walk | Hunter Walk |
| IC product managers | 独立贡献产品经理(IC product managers) |
| Jobs-to-be-Done | 待办任务 |
| LARP | LARP(实况角色扮演) |
| product market fit | 产品市场契合度 |
| techno-optimism | 技术乐观主义 |
| Visual Studio for Devices | Visual Studio for Devices |
| Zuck | 扎克伯格 |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)