Becoming an AI PM | Aman Khan (Arize AI, ex-Spotify, Apple, Cruise)

25:41I'm really happy you shared that. And that reminds me, I'm just gonna go on a tangent here. I wanna get your take on this. I had this kind of hot take a month ago or so that there's this sense that as AI tooling emerged, that product managers are screwed. Why do you need product managers when you could just build things engineers could use all these tools, designers, like with the point of a PM in a world where AI can just build things for you. And I realize it's exactly the opposite that you may not need any other function if you have a PM because if you think about it, what are these AI tools amazing at?

26:18They're amazing at building things. You tell them what to build. They build them. The hardest part becomes knowing what to build, finding opportunities, problems people need solved, and then articulating it very clearly to an AI tool what to build, and then having the taste and sense of what is good and great in what we're going to market. And that's like exactly the job of a product manager. So I'm curious to hear you take if you agree with that. Basically, that PMs are the best positioned and function to thrive in this world? Yeah, I totally believe that. I think that there's a sort of feeling that executives might have or like VPs, the companies might have like, we need to get into AI.

26:57But the challenge is that, you know, there's this inclination towards, you know, doing the same thing that's working so far. And so I think the role of an AI PM in this type of organization is really to be the representative of how can we use these tools to their highest leverage. And so if you kind of combine the earlier notes of like, you know what this technology is capable of, you know the customer problems deeply. You're the representative of the customer at the company. You're really in the best position to get the point across of what should go and get built. And I think that's a really powerful position to be in a company.

27:34And then I can actually build on like one of the core product skillsets that you mentioned on your podcast too, which is influence. And what this tools really allow you to do is like up level, like max out that influence. Meaning you can now communicate ideas kind of coming back to the prototype node to design, you can communicate ideas engineering, and you can communicate ideas to the higher ups at the company around what should go and get built. So I think, you know, when you're able to translate the idea to the person that you're trying to communicate it to, these tools are really incredible at that.

28:08and I think it allows an AI product manager to be super high leverage. So to me, it's like, I totally agree, like being an AI product manager feels like the highest leverage position you can be in at the company right now, especially in the age of AI. Awesome. Okay. I'm glad to agree there. And what you just mentioned, we were talking about Mahika before we started recording in one of her superpowers and rolling to her episode is that she is designer engineer PM. She can just do a lot of all of it. And that partly has been why she has been so successful at Figma and influencing leadership to build these products that they were like, I don't know if we need a slides product.

28:47And so now everyone can be at Mehika basically, but you can build and design as a PM. So anyway, I think we've gone down that road far enough. I want to shift a little bit to talking about how to thrive as an AI PM. Say you got into this role, you're building with AI tools, or your building platforms for folks to build on. Let me try it this way. What have you seen separates the typical AI product manager from say the top 5 % AI product managers? We've kind of talked about like, what are AI product managers? How do you build AI power products around what the fundamental technology is? I think there's this really interesting moment where about two years ago, actually almost roughly to this time, Chatchy PT launches.

29:37And I think everyone who kind of tried it out was pretty impass by a couple of things. There was the interface, the super easy to use, it felt really intuitive. The model was pretty capable. It felt almost like human -like. Of course, that was actually an earlier model that was even available today. And when you look back on it, it's almost like looking at the old iPhone or something. You kind of have to have this moment of, Wow, that was really impressive at the time, but now if you try to use it, you're like this thing sucks You know like it's like it doesn't even do half the stuff like it get kind of conditioned to you know Technology continuing to get better, but when that moment happened and it did kind of feel like this iPhone moment around AI products It was really interesting to see what happened next and what I mean by that is you know We said in in sort of in the landscape at a place where we get to see where a lot of other companies are building.

30:30So we have customers that are super well -known, household brands, Spotify, Instacart, and these sorts of companies that people love and use every single day. And what ended up happening was we talked to a lot of folks of like, well, what are you doing around building around this technology, this really game -changing shift in AI. The first thing that everyone seemed to build was actually another chat GPT, but on top of their own data. For some reason, everyone gravitated towards this particular use case is all the AI product managers that knew were like, we're building an internal chatbot on top of our knowledge base, and it's going to be able to answer questions, and it's going to be great.

31:12And when you kind of look at like the products that are built, how much usage do they really have is pretty, I think like not very well understood. Like, was that the right thing to do? So coming back to your earlier question, how do you kind of go drive as a, be it top 5 % AIPM versus maybe an AIPM that isn't as stellar? I actually think it's kind of coming back to that earlier point to do what everyone else is doing. Just because it feels intuitive to go and replicate this interface that feels really great and feels everyone's bought in because they're familiar with it. You really have to think, is this the thing our business needs right now?

31:55Is this the problem that we need to go and solve? And I think if you look deeper at that, you'll actually find that the interface for AI might look really different. It won't necessarily look like a chatbot. It might look like you're trying to optimize or speed up a part of the process that humans have to do today, that you can make their life easier. And for us, that was data analysis. We have to look at a lot of data to make decisions within our own company. And so we decided to try to automate that. There is sort of, we did also ship a small chatbot just to understand how the tech worked. But on top of that, our interface around AI looks so, so different.

32:32And I think that a lot of the cutting edge sort of experiences around AI kind of look like that too. They don't really always resemble chat thoughts. And I think that that's really the question you have to ask yourself is, what's the right interface when I'm designing a product like this? So what I'm hearing is if your team is building something that's very similar to some other, to a foundational models product, for example, probably a red flag, probably not gonna be huge opportunity. So optimized for things that feel different than new. Anything else you wanna have there? Because I have a question.

33:03Yeah, I think there's like, so that's almost like a point of like, what do people do for the last two years? And now there's this moment of this actually kind of happening again. And this moment is sort of happening around the term of like AI agents. And I think again, like, you know, I think if you really look at it, like, I get, I actually bring up like, you're just point again because I was listening to that episode. I thought that was so insightful of like, he'd get so many emails every single day of like, We're AI for this. We're building an AI agent for that. But again, you're sort of trying to fit this technology to solve a problem that you're not really describing the problem, you're describing the solution, an AI agent to do something.

33:45So if you look at it, does it really ask yourself, does it make sense to build an AI agent within our company? Or is it just better to allow the foundation model companies to build this agent layer within their technology? And then your job is to make that experience so amazingly seamless in your existing product that it doesn't even feel like AI in the first place. And I think that's really powerful. That's the area where product managers can truly innovate because let's be honest, you're probably not going to have these cutting edge researchers that can go and design a model from the ground up or maybe design some new technique to build a next agent framework.

34:24But what you can do is take that technology and find a way to apply it in your organization. And that's where I think the role of the AIP really stands out. This episode is brought to you by Paragon, the developer platform for building native customer facing integrations with third -party apps. Our native integrations on your product roadmap, whether it's to ingest context from your user's external data and documents, or to sync data and automate tasks across your users' other apps, integrations are mission -critical for B2B software products today. But building these integrations in -house cost an average of three months of engineering according to the 2024 State of Integration Survey, which results in difficult roadmap trade -offs.

35:07This is why engineering teams at Copy AI, AI21, and over 100 other B2B SaaS companies use Paragon, so they can focus their efforts on core product features, not integrations. The result? They've shipped integrations seven times faster, all while avoiding the never -ending maintenance that comes with rolling your own integrations. Visit useparagon .com slash Lenny to see how Paragon can help you accelerate your product's integration roadmap today and get $1 ,000 in credit on their pro and enterprise plans. That's use p -a -r -a -g -o -n .com. I imagine a lot of product leaders are hearing this and be like, thank God I need every one I'm a team to hear this because I am guessing every PM and every company is like wants is like looking and proposing all these ideas all these AI based ideas just because it's like we got to do AI.

35:57Here's an idea. Here's an idea. There's all these people chasing AI products. And so I think this advice is really important is and this has come out a number of times people just try to keep reminding folks focus on the problem you're solving and AI is a tool to solve it not AI for blank just because how have you found ways to find really interesting. actually good ideas for how to leverage AI within your company or companies you've seen as like hackathons, is it like, here's way of our goals and just like make sure there's AI parts to a solution. Is there anything with practically that you find helpful in finding good ideas that are AI oriented?

36:34There's sort of like three things you could do in your company that I think will really, you know, if you try to implement this tomorrow, you probably see, start seeing those ideas is coming back. So the first one is, you actually bought a really point of how do I measure, what should I be measuring here? And I think that PMs kind of gravitate towards metrics. And I actually think that every AI PM actually needs a metric. And every PM within a business is tasked with moving some business metric, but there actually isn't one for building prototypes with AI, which is really interesting. I've talked to so many companies, and I'm like, How do you measure what the impact is in AI when then you're business?

37:17They're like, oh, well, we're not expecting it to move a business metric. It's not moving revenue. So how do you really measure of what you're doing is working? And I think that's where you need a metric of how many shots are you taking in the first place. And that kind of ties into the next point, which is, I think hackathons are great. I think that getting people to be hands on in the first place, it really removes that feeling that this technology is not approachable. So the goal is really to get everyone in the organization to try to use this thing. And I think that's really actually a great position for an AI PM to be in as well.

37:50So oftentimes, I think there's like this aversion sometimes to hackathons because it's like taking away from company time. But what you can do is try to come with some ideas of problems to be solved and see how can I use AI to actually solve those problems. What you're going to come out with is maybe a list of 10 problems and nine of them you tried to apply AI towards and it doesn't work. It's like this thing doesn't work as well as I thought it would or it's like you're trying to get a very specific answer but it doesn't actually lead to like AI doesn't actually do a good job with that. I actually have an example here of we actually did our own hackathon a couple weeks ago and the engineering team had all these ideas and one of them was this Slack bot that actually alerted a person that was on call for a problem.

38:38So we thought it was gonna be so simple. Like if someone posted like a support channel, I'm having a problem with this thing, the Slackbot would take that question and actually ping the right person. We thought, oh, this is gonna be great. This is a perfect use case for AI and we'll kind of give access to this table and we'll look at problems, we'll classify them and then ping the right person. Turns out, that's actually a really hard problem to do because there's so much context that is missing. And, you know, while this person was working on this problem two weeks ago, but now they're working on this other project and some other team took over.

39:08And I think the challenge there is really like identifying the right problems to solve in the first place. And a good intuition to build around that is through hackathons, through coming with problems, and then seeing where the ideas actually stick, versus where they actually aren't super great. And then I think the last kind of point here is really obsessing about the details of the user experience in the first place. And you were looking for problems to go and be solved with AI, but I think part of that is really looking at like what are successful AI products today. And you can probably try a few and name a few, but a good example of that might be, and really like if I kind of zoom out, like the goal is really to find experiences where AI is actually magical.

40:00And what did they get right? So like an example of that might be like, there's this like funny anecdote of what a lot of people are trying to do with AI is like, automate the job away entirely. And there's this story of Betty Crocker, like actually launching this cake mix, where all you have to do is like mix water. And all you have to do is mix water and you could kind of bake a cake with just like one ingredient. All you need to do is this cake mix. And it turns out that I actually like tanked their sales. So all you have to do is basically change the instruction so that all you have to do is add eggs.

40:37And that one thing kind of created this effect where their sale skyrocketed because they realized that the customer actually wants to have a little bit of control over the experience. And you can kind of see that even now if you've like taken, you know, if you've been able to like take a whemo or self -driving car like the car is fully self -driving, but you could still control the air condition, you can still control the music. So you want to leave some knobs and levers for your customer to feel like they're still in control of the experience. That's kind of like the IKEA effect applied to AI.

41:08People feel more empowered when they can actually have an impact on the end experience versus everything being taken care of them. That's just one insight we realized from looking at successful AI products versus ones that try to automate everything away. I think if you're looking at the space, you're gonna find so many more examples like that. That's such an important point that even if you can build a product that is fully automated, you may not want to. And that Betty Crocker example is really interesting. It reminds me of like Blue Apron and all these food and making, I have a friend who's like, who told me that he cooks, he's cooking a lot these days and just like finding all this time to cook and then it turns out he's using Blue Apron.

41:45And it feels to you like you're cooking and you can tell people, hey, I'm cooking a lot, but it's not quite the same. Yeah, but actually, if you were in my, I could like, problem that like, that's a really interesting point with like, Blue Aferm because like, if you look at that product, what's the problem that they're trying to solve? Is it, are they trying to get people to be fed or like, you know, eat food? I don't think so actually. Like, I think if you're really trying to solve that particular problem, you'd probably build something close to like DoorDash, which is just the passion button and food shows out.

42:18And Blue A for the other hand is trying to get people to feel like they're getting closer to cooking or feeling closer to the experience of making something. And I think that's sort of what really amazing AI products do as well. They're making your experience or the product, AI makes your product easier to use and it brings the barrier to creation down. And I think that's really what it's good at, not necessarily just trying to automate the problem away. That's such an important point. and again, coming back to your main point here is just focus on the problem you're solving and AI could help you solve it may not.

42:54Okay, we went on tangent from advice you were sharing on what separates typical AI pms from 5 % top 5 % pms. And what else you got? What else you got on that list? Well, actually, I'll kind of sue this one a little bit from our friend, Kevin Yeehan, who I think he had this advice when he was on your pod, which really resonated with me actually at a personal level, which is you have to be able to lock into gum. So as an AIPM, your job is not to go and ship AI products. It's to go solve customer's problems. I think we've come back to that a little bit. But you're constantly going to be pushed by your team and your company to go and solve a business metric, like move a business metric in some way.

43:43The goal though is to make space for the other things we were kind of talking about, which is prototyping, you trying the tools firsthand yourself, making space for your team to have hackathons and try the tools themselves as well. Breaking down product experiences that are really great. So as an example, like we did a tear down of the notebook LM product just yesterday as part of our company. So we like live streamed it and we're going to do this, you know, probably every week or two where we'll take a cutting edge AI product and Have a webinar around it and try to break down how it works and the goals there are you know to really understand the space better ourselves But by the way, none of those three things are going to move your KPI or business metric, right?

44:27So I'm going to come back to that point of you have to be able to walk into you can you have to continuously to deliver a customer value while also creating space to iterate and fail and find that the experiment that you tried to launch and people really excited about why not work. But in the process, you learn something. And that's, I think, a really powerful takeaway, which is to really stand out as an ATM, you have to accept this technology is changing really fast. You might think it's going to do something greater, or maybe you have a bad product experience. It's like, you had a point earlier as well, which is like, to be a really great chef, you have to have a lot, okay, so you're gonna have a bad meal.

45:08I think that's gonna be the same thing here with your AI product diet. You're gonna try some bad experiences, you're gonna have some failures, but the goal is to keep iterating. And that's how AI gets better. I think that's how companies can deploy AI better too. So don't give up on the North Star. just find ways to make space to have AI sort of propagate when you're organization. And that's, I think really stellar AI attempts do that. I feel like it's a metaphor of walking chewing gum doesn't communicate the difficulty of what your, of Kevin's now that I think about it of what he's trying to describe, but it doesn't feel hard to walk into gum.

45:45I wonder what a better metaphor would be. Yeah, well, I think he's, and let's look at bubbles, maybe gum bubbles and dance. Yeah, I don't know why that is the like that's the expression that it's always vetted like describe something hard that you realize like It doesn't make sense. You can do more than one thing Anyway, we don't want to solve it right now Okay, so before I want to talk about being an IC being successful as an IC before we get to that as there Anything else long these lines that you think would be really valuable to share or get into about how to be successful as an AI PM specifically that we haven't touched on I know we've talked about a lot of things now your organization might want to do something, and you're trying to get them to do something else.

46:29And that's really the challenge in this type of role is, there is so much buzz, there is so much excitement around AI, that knowing what the right thing to build is really what this job needs to kind of convey. So I think when you take all of that signal and try and put it together, and solve that customer problem, that's really what being a successful AI PM is at the end of the day. So that's really, I think that's the hard part about the job, but also maybe the most important impactful part of it. I love that. Okay. So let's put it AI to the side for a moment. But not totally off to the side.

47:03We're imagine we're going to touch on it in this next area. And the next area is talking about how to be a really successful IC. You've very consciously decided to stay an individual contributor and not move up the ladder of product management and director and VP and all these things. And there's a specific skill set that it takes to be successful and to thrive as an ICPM. Most people either can't move up the chain and become really successful ICs long term, or they don't want to, or they don't even think it's an option. So here's my question here. What are some of the biggest habits, mindsets, lessons you've learned about how to be really successful as an IC long term?

47:43When I think about my own career journey here, it's so much of that comes down to what drives you personally. And I'm just obsessed with solving that customer's problems. And so to do that, that might mean I have to spend a lot more time trying to get into the weeds and get into the details. So I think that there's kind of really three areas, kind of like three things that come back to me of what the hard part about being an ICPM is and how you can kind of break through that. So I first want to like set the tone a little bit, which is, the ICPM is really hard. It's, you know, I've made a point earlier of like, it's become easier to break into product management to some degree if you can use these tools.

48:30And now you have all these tools that you're disposable to go build a nest prototype. But I think the bar just got higher for product managers within a company and what the impact needs to be. And by the way, that's always going to compete with your, you know, being able to like jump on a quick call last minute or try to unblock someone or, you know, have some like internal stakeholder discussion to figure out what to go do next. And so I think the challenges, you know, you have a really hard job. There's constant signal. Things are constantly changing. How do you really power through that? So I think that there's really three things I think about there, which are energy, waiting versus wandering, and then amplifying the signal to make a decision.

49:12Yeah, so maybe to even just kick off, energy can... I really think about this, this was maybe one of the most important things I realized like working from our CEO a little bit over a year ago, which was energy can count a lot when you're not sure which direction to go. So, if you kind of show up to a meeting and you're bringing a little bit more of that energy, you'll find that like a lot of friction tends to go away versus if you show up and you're a little bit down or a little bit, you know, not as impose of out an idea. Like people pick up on that and we're still dealing with people today and I think that, you know, even if you just change that mindset a little bit of bringing a little bit of that extra energy, you'll find that back and actually break down barriers and people, like the The conversation feels like it's like flowing.

50:01It feels like a dinner table conversation versus a hard conversation, even if it might be something about something tough. So I think to me, there's this concept of like, when you're, you might still be faced with this challenge of, I'm not sure what the right decision is. And I'm struggling to really kind of do this analysis and really get something going. and I think that accepting that that happens to everyone, it sort of feels like a product block as opposed to a writer's block, if that makes sense. We're like, as a writer, you might be trying to get to that next paragraph, and as a product manager, you're really trying to get to that next idea for that next milestone.

50:45So I can give you an example there as well, which is we had this moment a little over a year ago where we were not sure which direction to take a product feature. And we were kind of faced with this decision that felt pretty existential, which is like, how much do we want to invest in LLNs and the sort of new wave of large language model tech versus what our existing customer base was? And it wasn't immediately clear what the decision should be. And so the energy I just brought was, I'm just going to be our outbound sales person and just start writing LinkedIn messages to people that have the title AI in their LinkedIn profile.

51:25So I just went on it and LinkedIn, I literally just started finding ways to get them on a phone call. So I'd write some copy and iterate on it. And I had to see with our sales team to understand how do you do this? I max out my five LinkedIn messages a day, what are you trying to do here? And I think what that really accomplished was two things. One, I did learn a little bit of what goes into this role in terms of how to message our problem in product more, you know, in a way that actually got people engaged. But two, it also demonstrated to the team that I was like willing to get into the details with them.

52:00I was willing to spend time, you know, even when I was like trying to push on our day job, both, you know, building a product and keeping it growing. And I think that counts for a lot when the team is already feeling, you know, like they're not sure which direction to take something. And so just being that like player coach and just having that mentality of showing up, bringing the energy can move the bar so much higher for the whole team to operate. So that's kind of the example I give of like, you're kind of like being LeBron James, you're telling you coaching people, you're kind of like drawing up the play, but you're also just trying to be, you know, like as involved in, you know, all of the tough stuff as well.

52:36And I see that happen, and I think that really comes from leadership, from RCEO as well. Like, he'll be tired, I can tell, but it's just when he shows up to a meeting, like it just doesn't show it, you just have to kind of bring that energy. So what I'm hearing is there's kind of two things you're sharing here, which is awesome. So one is there's like actual energy in a meeting of staying positive and energetic. And then two is actually just doing the thing to figure helps solve the problem, like getting into sales, like becoming the salesperson, potentially reaching out, doing customer development in a row and kind of go and rogue a little bit.

53:10In that first bucket, what does it look like to bring the energy? Is it just like volume? as it just like being bright. I actually think this depends a lot on the person. Like I think that's actually like a personal thing. So what I mean by that is like, you know, yeah, for me that might mean like, I'm showing up, I'm super enthused, I'm really like, you know, I'm bringing my version of energy, but to other people, that might mean, you know, smaller things like just asking how someone is doing, trying to kind of keep the tone of a meeting more like positive, I think to some degree. So, to different people that might resemble different things, but I actually think this comes back a little bit to an earlier point of, humans are really good at picking up on these subtle signals with other people.

53:54And you kind of want to just be putting out this subtle energy where people feel like you are engaged, you're in it 100%. So I think that's part of it. I think it's like the ideas for other people to feel like, you know, you're bringing the energy level of the room up versus bringing it down. I had a PM I was working with at one point that is they pinning me that every meeting you walks into is just like, self some problems. Oh, let's do this. Like he comes in just positive and energized and that just changes the whole feeling. I remember this like early lift and go to absolute friends from like the earlier days that lift and I think this might have been in a self -driving car division but like they It would literally, I'm not indicating this was like the ritual where they would actually end the meeting with like the phrase, make it happen.

54:45And I thought that was so powerful because it's so simple, but it's like, all right, we're going to do this. It was like one of their values and we're going to, you know, we walk away from a decision and we're going to make it happen. And I think even just as something as small as that could be like a contribution back to the culture for your team. I mean, there's like a point there of like building culture too. like you get to determine the culture of the people around you. You get to build a culture of the team and that can really work its way out. Like there's top -down culture, there's values, but you get to kind of drive what people in the room are feeling.

55:18And I think that's really, really powerful, especially in the role of a PM where everyone kind of looks to the PM for making a decision or solving a problem, even if it's a tough one to make, but you get to kind of drive the energy that you're bringing to that. So absolutely. So, okay, so your first piece of advice for doing well and doing and thriving as an ICPM is essentially that energy can count for a lot, that if things aren't actually going smoothly, you can pull people through that by bringing energy, which is both like meetings and being positive and bringing energizing folks in discussions and also just like doing the work yourself to get to the core problem and helping people see that you're actually putting in your own effort and time to solve the problem.

56:07Yeah, and I like, even just a riff on that second point, I think that there's a component of when you are doing the thing with someone and you care with them on a problem, you have a lot more empathy for what they do as well. Because they'll describe to you what's challenging or what's hard about that job. And I think that there's this feeling that, at least, I've been a part of where there is no job that isn't important. And so you kind of, as a PM, I think if you're spending that time with someone, that means that you're learning something from them and you're learning, you're learning and for what they might be doing day in and day out, but you're also pushing back and contributing and trying to make the whole team push long better as well.

57:00Awesome. So let's keep talking about other things you found helpful and helping you be really successful. I, and I CPM, you mentioned this term wandering versus waiting, maybe a good med direction or if there's anything else. I actually, I think this one is so, so powerful, which is like the concept of waiting versus wandering. And like, to me, this is super relatable again from the standpoint of trying to figure out what to go do next. So we kind of talk about like energy, bringing energy, but that still doesn't actually solve the problem of where should we go. That's just the latent energy you're going to bring to solving a problem.

57:36But like at the end of the day, you as a product manager have to figure out where do things go. What's the problem to be solved and how do we solve it, really, for a customer? And I like, there's this thought exercises, like zoom out of it, you know, it kind of feels a little bit like, you know, if you're all kind of like at a camp where you're trying to figure out, okay, where do we go send the scouts to go like, take the rest of the camp and like move things along. And like, there's definitely this, this, you know, inclination towards executives and companies, like, especially broader companies to sort of do what's been working so far.

58:15And that can often mean the like, let's just wait and see. And I think that's super interesting from the concept of AI, right? There is this feeling of should we wait and see where things go? Or do we go and try and figure out what direction to move our team? And most companies will maybe wait, you know, might lean towards waiting to see how things pan out. And we're seeing that even with AI. They're like, oh, we'll just wait for the next open AI model to come. And then we'll go like build a product around that. Like, this one, I keep hearing that there's like this rumor of like some other model or we're gonna wait and see like, but I think at the end of the day, there's times when waiting might make sense to see what technologies get built initially.

58:58But then there's also this component of wandering and trying to figure out where should we go, where should we take the team. And to me, I actually think the role of a PM is to be that wanderer. And I have this story of like, we, you know, there was this moment in the company's history where I was like, I was like grabbing a beer with one of my or engineering managers and he was like, look man, like, I kind of show up and I'm like, maybe I wasn't bringing a 100 % of my energy, you know, at the end of the work day. And I was like, oh, I like, I just, I'm just not sure where to take things and like, what we're doing right now.

59:36And it was so interesting to hear his perspective of in his world, everything was actually going pretty He recently, well, we kind of knew he had his roadmap. He knew what to go build. He had the next feature, the next three weeks of Sprints planned out or something like that. And he was like, oh, the team's actually doing really great. The morale is really high. And yet on the product side, we were confused. We were not, we were really unsure about what to do. And I think it can be hard to be that wandering. It felt really tough to be out there, the unknown, and just trying to find any sort of signal that we could bring back and say, okay, here's where we need to go and take the next features and the next part of the company.

1:00:18And that part was really tough, but I actually think that's where, you know, I kind of tear it to an earlier kind of like part of the discussion where an AIPM can really stand out is in being a natural wanderer and naturally feeling a little bit like their role is to push the boundaries of what the company thinks is even possible. And to do that, you sometimes have to be in this space that feels really squishy. And I remember talking to our founders of, I'm not sure what we should be going and doing next. And it was actually really reassuring to hear from them. I remember having this conversation and Apara, our chief product officer, was like, that's what buildings you're to want really feels like.

1:01:04It kind of feels like you're not sure what the right decision is or where the right decision, you know, where the right direction to go is, but at the same time you kind of know when you get there. And so you just have to keep wandering and iterating until you feel that drag of like the product pulling you in that direction. And so I think there's just this like feeling comfortable with not being sure what the right decision is and just wandering and trying to figure things out while the rest of the can't might have to wait and see what that next move is. So that's what I thought was like this really visceral feeling of, you know, like where do we go?

1:01:41Where do you go from here? So we take away here is if you're feeling like you have no idea where your product is going to go, maybe be okay with that. And in your experience, you eventually find the path as you wander. And with AI tools making it much easier to prototype and design an ID8 theory makes that a little less stressful because you can actually just try stuff. Yeah, and I think that's like that amplifying the signal with like through the noise with AI. Like the signal can be super sparse you get back at times too. And then what you can do is like, you know, there's really powerful tools like we use Gong for instance to like understand like what are maybe prospects or really engineers to me.

1:02:23It's like potential customers. What are they talking about? What is their pain point? And I can't go be in like 100 meetings, right? Like every single week. But what I can do is take those transcripts and we literally did this. We fed them into some of these large language models that have super long context windows now. And what you can do is actually pull out what's some of those common problems that come up, you know, having a conversation around that can be really powerful too. Now you can do it with voice too. So you can like pull all of that in. Maybe you want to turn it into a notebook LM episode.

1:02:54But what you can do is actually just find ways to find signal through the noise. And that kind of gives you an ability to almost have like a superpower because you can be in so many places at once and you kind of use technology or advantage to get that signal back. So I would really try to find ways to scale yourself up with AI and come back with that signal. Anything else lines lines of things that have helped you be really successful as we wrap up and approach our very exciting lightning round. Product management can kind of feel pretty serious. There are some big decisions as I sort of weigh on your shoulder.

1:03:33But honestly, I remember having this discussion with one of our board members, and he's a serial entrepreneur or a standing company's public. And I was like, what advice do you have for me? It's like a PM early in this company. And I was so surprised by the feedback he had, which was just have fun. And I think if you let that drive you and you keep learning and you're kind of keeping this curiosity and building products for customers that you care about, it's just going to help you go so much further. And I just think it's just more fun to have, to be like high energy. It's just more fun to really care about the thing that you're working on.

1:04:13And I think if you're constantly learning and having fun, you're going to iterate so much faster too. So that's really my my note is like just just have fun along the way. It really is about that journey. And yeah, sometimes you're wondering, but have fun with that too. I love that so much. And it resonates so deeply with me as I've shared a couple of times on this podcast to folks that listen, probably have heard this, but I have this little post it that I put right in front of me. As I do podcast that just says, have fun. Yeah. And it's like the latest little post it. Is it like really tore it up at this point from where is it like so?

1:04:45I just bent a post it in half and just rode half one on the edge and then it just hits here. I don't know, Post -its are meant to stick to self, but this is how I decided to use it. This also came up recently in this episode that I think is going to come out right before this around public speaking. This course that I took all of you speaking, the biggest piece of advice they have is speaking should be fun. So just think about how do you have fun while you're doing this, even though it feels really scary. And that works really well. So I really love that. but it's just more fun than not having fun.

1:05:16That's hard. That's like a really silly lie. Yeah, that's it. And even if it's like very stressful and scary, just reframing it too, how do I have fun? Most cases, the end of the world, the end of my career, the end of something really serious. Most of the time, you can have fun. Totally. Awesome. Well, Aman, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. There's a ding that comes that we overlay. I know. I always have to resist not saying ding, ding, ding. I know. Oh, yeah. Yep, I'm ready. Let's do it. First question. What are two or three books you recommended most to other people?

1:05:56I really loved short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson. I don't know if that's a, you know, that book to me is so interesting because I'm a bit of a nerd around like science. I used to read a lot of like fiction growing up too. And I think, weirdly enough, Bill kind of tells this story of the history of science, really, and how we know the things that we know. And he kind of tells it from the perspective of learning about the scientists that discovered these things. So, for instance, you learn that like Newton was kind of an asshole to like the co -workers he had or you know, or like Darwin, was it maybe perceived as like such an amazing scientist at the time?

1:06:36And so a lot of And a lot of these scientists, like their discoveries, don't become famous. It's almost like being an artist. You realize the relevance of a scientist's discovery years later at times. And people don't get credit for things they discovered. So, to me, it was really interesting to hear, to one, listen, to read more about the scale of the universe and how long we've been here. And I think it just puts a lot of things into perspective of our time here, how we spend it and even the age we're living in now with AI, it's such a blip in the cosmic scale. And then you also get these really fun anecdotes from scientists along the way.

1:07:15So that one I recommend to almost everyone because it's a pretty easy read as well. And then I think another one which is maybe a little bit more in the career lens is this book called Designing Your Life, which is written by these actually one of the founders of IDO and these folks are Stanford professors in the design lab. And what's really powerful about this for me is it's actually pretty practical. So it comes with exercises that I remember I did myself as well when I wasn't sure which direction to go in my career that helped me really figure out, you know, the most powerful exercise and like take away from this book for me was basically, and like the first or second chapter I think, you write out one page on the meaning of work to you and like, What does work mean?

1:08:01Is it a way for me to make money? Is it a way for me to feel fulfilled with what I do or how I spend my time? And then you write out one cage on the meaning of life and What's really powerful is this really really hard to do those two things? And then you have to find the overlap between the two And I think that exercise is so clarifying and I recommend it to anyone when they feel like stuck in their career Because it can at least kind of coming back to like the energy point can give you like a direction to go even if you're not sure how to get there just yet. And so I just, I love both of those books because they're really like shifting in from a perspective standpoint.

1:08:36I love the second book. I read it and it was really meaningful to me, but it's been a long go and I forgot it now, but I remember it was really great. And so I'm glad you brought that up. Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show? You really enjoyed it. I don't usually binge watch TV. I'd be honest. Like I'm not a binge watcher, but it's been a little rainy in New York lately, so we've had a little more time inside on weekends. and I've been obsessed with the tour de France documentary on Netflix. I don't know if you've seen that. I don't even know if it gets like pushed up that highly in the Netflix algos, but I think it's super cool.

1:09:09Like, one, I love cycling. So for me, it's like, you really realize that competitive level of cycling is just such another level than I even realized they're gay and predatory. And then two kind of coming back to like the characters in the story. I think they're all just so interesting to hear like what motivates them to be at this extremely high level. And it's actually the same producers as Drive to Survive, which I know people really got into as well around like F1. But yeah, highly recommend it. And it's intense. I'm going to kind of start there. Like I didn't realize when I was going to get to, but it just ramped up in more and more intensity.

1:09:43And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you love maybe an AI product? Maybe not. So I think we talked a little bit about like AI products that help you prototype. Rapplet is incredible. It's so easy to use. You know, V0. And these are all like really, like I think they create really polished products at the end of the day. But the product that really, that I've been like using and having a ton of fun with is WebSyn. I think it creates this like almost playful version of the prototype in the first place you might be trying to build. Or just something so crazy and wacky and zany that you're not even sure it's possible.

1:10:20And it's so hard to describe. I remember even, you know, I see a shop presentation from some of the founders at WebSIM, and you know, an AI meetup here. And even day, when they were like showing how to use the product, they literally just went on Reddit, and they were just looking at the WebSIM subreddit that has like so many posts on it. The presentation was just them like looking at the top, like three or four, and trying to describe what they saw. So I thought I was like super, I've just been obsessed with it lately just to like push the boundaries of what's possible. I also do have another product as well.

1:10:58Initially when I thought about this question, I was like, what's like the product I've been using the most lately? And this one's going to sound kind of weird. But I'm a little bit old school and I actually like to, like you, I like to write notes in like physical notebooks. books. And so I was like, I'm always looking for like, oh, what's like a fun, you know, like a really practical notebook to use. And this was, this was really weird. But I was recently given an notebook from actually like an AI meetup here. And I opened it and it's made from recycled apples. And when you open the notebook, it smells like apples, which is really interesting because like, I didn't think that that would like impact me as much as it did, but it created this interesting feedback loop where I just really love using the notebook because when I open it, I have this positive experience and media, it's like sensory experience immediately that it's like, oh, it just smells so great.

1:11:53And then you want to keep using it. And coming back to it. So I thought that was really interesting. I created this feedback moving my head of like, I enjoy like using that notebook now. I'm not sure what that means if when I run out of papers in this one, if I'm going to buy another book, that was really funny. I didn't expect it like that one as much. You're making me hungry. I can almost smell it. What is the brand of the Snowbook in case folks want to look it up? It's called AppHeel, a Ganytp EEL. Amazing. Yeah. I need it. I need that. Two more questions. The favorite life motto that you often come back to find useful in work or in life.

1:12:30Feel like you're going to have a good one. There is like specifically one that I ended this essay that I wrote a while back with called, I read a bunch of self -help books you don't have to do and I like share it with my friends It's literally just call that that you are not sure what to do when they're in that next phase of their career as well and the quote is from Steve Jobs Which is your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life and I thought that was so powerful because When you think about it like there's there's always this I feel like there's a lot of like career pressure for some people to like get that next job or start a company or do something super crazy.

1:13:13And at the same time, I think what's been really powerful for me has been to reassess what my goals are and what life I want to live. And not feeling the feeling of what other people's projections of that life are. And so that quote in particular has always been something I've come back to, which is like, what do you, what sort of life do you want to live? And thinking about that really deeply and making decisions along the way, basically, so that's how I truly love that sentiment. And it came up recently in another conversation with Jam Nichols. But let's move on. Actual final question. So as I was researching you, I was googling your name.

1:13:53And when I Google your name, there's a cricket player, very prominently comes up. I'm curious how much that bothers you. That there's this player that is number one on Google in many ways. Oh my God. Tell us about how that feels. It's gonna sound crazy, but I was like, literally I was thinking about this yesterday. It's gonna sound crazy. Because I was like, like, the immediate thought that came to mind was, my parents really didn't optimize my name for SEO. And the only thing I'm gonna do now, I think about when I have kids, they're gonna have some unique names. Because they get so much harder.

1:14:34Like you have to type in like a mod called San Francisco or Berkeley or something to like get that to pop up. So it does bother you. It's my take away here. Yeah, okay. We'll iterate all that for the next one. Or it's a, this is a goal. I feel like you have the chance to beat this guy. Totally, right? Or you know, maybe another way to look at it is like if I, if we still keep using search engines, And it's funny because my partner works at Google. The future might look like, what if we, you know, what if we're using LLM's more? Kind of gives me a second shot here to like be part of the training here in the set in a way.

1:15:06So yeah, amazing. I love the silver lining there. Aman, this was amazing. I think this is gonna be helpful to so many people trying to get into AI, trying to thrive as an AI PM or just wanting to stay down the IC track. We went through so many things. I, there's like my notes were very long and we touch and basically everything. So thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Working folks find you if they want to reach out and maybe follow up on some of this stuff. And how can listeners be useful to you? LinkedIn's probably the best way. I'm not super active on X. So you know, my, my spend a little bit more time.

1:15:40They were LinkedIn easily. And then to that note, how can listeners be helpful? I think like my, my goal is to try to be as helpful for folks that are trying to figure out how to get to this next farther career, whether it's involving AI or they want to fit it into it or they want to thrive as an AI product manager. So, love to hear stories of people letter, interested in this in this part of their career or this career path. And I think like the thought I'll leave people with is I'll respond to anyone that messages me and but I do have one condition there which is like if you're cold emailing, cold messaging, kind of coming back to like how to stand out.

1:16:15I think there's you know this note from John Dory spoke at the college I went to and he put his email up on the board and his like, no, it was, I'll email anyone who emailed me as long as you send me your three top three favorite books, movies, podcasts, or videos that impacted you in some way. And I'll do the same for you. And so I actually did that, emailed him and got back his top three as well. So I want to kind of carry that forward. And you know, would love to hear from folks, send me your top three, whatever pieces of content they might be, and I'll do the same for you. That's an amazing collection you're going to build.

1:16:52I want to see all these things too. I love that idea. It's almost like a mini lighting round. What a clever idea. I'm on. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, Lenny. This has been awesome really, really fun with this one. Same for me. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or 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 Lenny's Podcast dot com.

1:17:28See you in the next episode!