How LinkedIn became interesting: The inside story | Tomer Cohen (CPO at LinkedIn)

24:30In fact, I think in many ways that's the most powerful part of LinkedIn. then. How do we make sure that it's professionally productive and safe conversations? How do we reach rate off bad engagement all day long? In fact, when we started shifting the AI objective from, you know, click through into more downstream conversations, Spammers actually took notice as well. So they were jumping over the LinkedIn bagwagon. So we had to spend a lot of time removing bad activity from LinkedIn. But that's been the evolution of this process. That is amazing. There's so much I want to dig into here. Okay. So, this 2 million user carve out that you did basically, everyone is just like, what the hell are you doing to our metrics and goals you're causing all this trouble for the business?

25:12So, why is this team causing hurting our metrics? So that was basically a group that those are 2 million users who the only ones that saw this new updated feed and they were they removed from everyone else's metrics. So they weren't fluctuating as much or as it just. It could be kept in the overall because it wasn't always a small percentage. more than exactly. But for us, there were like the world we were basically able to prove with them. Got it. Okay, that's so smart. Okay, so basically you just decided we're not we're only going to move your metrics a little bit more. If we I tried for this I felt that I tried for a few months to you know play on the overall experience with everybody, but it was you know it was really hard, almost like impossible because you have an organization that is so tied into how things work.

25:55That. I was just hitting walls after walls after escalations and it was just unproductive. And this is before your cheap product officer where you could have just said, we will take this bet. We know this might hurt metric short -term. Yes. Okay. Got it. That makes sense. Okay. The other piece, so just like lessons, I'm taking away from trying something like this that's an ambitious bet within a company is put a PM and a team on it with a goal that feels like a core part of this success of just like somebody's asses online to doing this thing. Always. always, with focus on this one problem. And then there's the way you describe there's this goal for this feed.

26:29But how did you actually try to turn that into like a goal or metric or a KPI? What was that in the end? Was there something there? Yeah, this is an interesting one. So one thing we've done actually, because the feed is the first thing you lend on, I can't just count how many folks engage with the feed because then I'm counting kind of bypassers kind of thing. And by standards, that actually coming into the experience. So we actually started to look at the more, We go a lot into active, engaged, and high value engagement. We go downstream. We put the onus on looking at more downstream engagement there.

27:00We build that as the feed engagement. Really trying to show that we're not just counting some overall, whatever. It's page rules or sessions at the top level. That's not really helpful because any shifts can help there. But really setting targets for that. Obviously, it's a marketplace. There's the creation side. There's the consumption side. making sure that's healthy and engaging. There was so much we went into that, but the best thing was, it's almost like your car about, I think when you do minus one to one, it's really hard unless the CEO says, I don't care about how the company performs for the next two years, we're going to go for it.

27:38If you want to keep the site growing and the experience keep growing, carving out and almost like setting very specific unique metrics, but then could easily be extended out once you show it was in retrospect, they're right way to do it. And then to give people a glimpse into the way your brain works to identify, this is a big opportunity. So you talk about just like, I see there's a lever that we're not investing enough in and I see a huge, this big opportunity to grow up LinkedIn. How did you decide I need to go and bet on this thing and leave this team and I think feed as a huge opportunity?

28:10I start from beliefs a lot. So I start from like, what do I believe this could be? or where like I actually came to LinkedIn this way. In fact, my biggest change in my career was when I moved here and I shifted to more like, what do I care about? What am I excited about? What do I have conviction on? I think it's really hard to be a strong product leader without having strong conviction about something. So I start there and in fact coming to LinkedIn as an example, when I came into lead mobile, LinkedIn was a best up first company. The mobile team was kind of and the offsuits of entrepreneurs I came from a startup that I ran.

28:49And it wasn't a big act like it wasn't, it was like, okay, I'm gonna do more, I'm gonna cast the fine. It's like noise at this point. Same with feed and same when I moved, shifted into ads because I felt really strong about the ability to flip that into a great way for companies to grow. So for me, it starts with a conviction of where things could go. Like where, where did, like, what do I believe? And I believe LinkedIn can be an incredible superpower and daily use case for every professional in the role. I believe knowledge sharing and knowledge exchange is the most amazing way to grow your career and to grow your business.

29:25So that needs to be a strong pillar of the experience that didn't exist before. And what is better than the field experience, the home of field is to actually build it. So I don't get attached to what have did not work in the past. That's not, I don't know, maybe it's a mistake sometimes, but I don't, that doesn't stop me from thinking about the future. How do you actually make time to think like this? You know, a lot of people are listening to this like, okay, I wanna think about what could this become? Do you just, is this just way of brain works? I'm always thinking, you're always thinking, how big, what could this be?

29:56You set time aside to think like orderly or yearly. What could this be if we really made this amazing? It's a good question. I haven't thought about it as a, it's like a process I do. I don't set time aside for this, But I'm very reflective. I try to focus, love the conversations on the dream, like what ultimately are we trying to achieve. I think LinkedIn has a great process called vision to values that started from our former CEO Jeff Wiener, which is like if you said this is for company or for a product, which is if you're successful, what change would happen in the role, which I love, it's just a great phrase, it's just a great empowering phrase.

30:36So I actually tend to spend a lot of my time there. I'm also very optimistic in nature. Again, sometimes it's probably not. I'm not best for any role perspective. You want somebody to be more optimistic about the future, but I tend to lead with beliefs versus evidence. I try to prove my beliefs with evidence, but I only lead with evidence. Awesome. And then maybe just one more talk. I took a question about this shift that I wish I could spend like hours on because it's so interesting the success you had making the feed so engaging. Is there anything tactically that would just like wow that really made a big dent in people wanting to come here and post and share interesting content like a feature or a part of the strategy that really made the feed social.

31:21I think the lesson would be for me that was the biggest learning going into AI for us that gave me the wise AI so core and why I got to make it a priority all the way to my role today to make sure the rest of the organization thinks AI first. The understanding is, is that in a marketplace, if you're, if I'm able to satisfy your need on the other side, then I have, it's magic. So ultimately it came down to AI is the ultimate matchmaker. It's underutilized. It's misunderstood. It's run separate from the team. And in a marketplace, it's all about value exchange. And if I'm able to do value exchange really well, then people will come back and they do and they engage.

32:01And they actually, they come back even more and they spend more time. So for me, it was that depth into AI first as the engine that moves the whole organization forward. Yeah, it's essentially making sure the content you're seeing is the most engaging you could see based on using AI to make the algorithm really smart. On both sides, if you play a few of the creator, if you're the person sharing, remember this was a while back, I think it's about the former Olympics. and a person shared like, you know, a shared like an article on LinkedIn about how they should not call it Olympics, they should call it like the commercial Olympics because it's all about commercials and less Olympics.

32:40And then they sent me this amazing screenshot about how, you know, NBC execs were covering the Olympics were rearing the post. This first them was gold. It was like, oh my god, my content is influencing people. people are seeing it, people that matter. So that's what's really key, making sure that when you share something, you share your expertise, the right people on the other side are relevant to your content and they see it, that could make your day or your week or actually it could make your living in many ways. And then on the receiving side, when I come in, it's the things I'm excited about seeing, it's the things that are relevant, I can actually, the reason your content resonates so much to put on people, I can actually take your podcasts and I can apply them at work.

33:26What could be a better way to learn? I'll give you another example, which was very, very recent. I met with a known professor in his field, and he shared with me how over the last year and half he started using LinkedIn, because somebody told him, you have a great content, why don't you just post it? He's like, I don't want to post on social media. I'm like, how LinkedIn is different, share on LinkedIn. And he was like, I post daily, I have so much content over the years, I post daily. And he was like, he basically told me this is unbelievable in terms of economic opportunity I'm getting. He was like, I'm getting speaking engagements that are roughly half the salary I make in a year here at the university just by people seeing this going in and building it, getting to the right people.

34:07I was invited to advise prime ministers on their investment strategy for the country. and I've been teaching for 20 years, but this platform just completely elevated my ability to reach an influence, people. That's the magic, and that's the value exchange, and that's the kind of matchmaking at scale. Amazing, that's an awesome story. This episode is brought to you by Merge. Product leaders, yes, like you, cringe when they hear the word integration. They're not fun for you to scope, build, launch, or maintain, and integrations probably aren't what led you to product work in the first place. Lucky for you, the folks at Merge are obsessed with integrations.

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35:27book and attend a meeting at merge .dev slash Lenny and receive a $50 Amazon gift card. That's merge .dev slash Lenny. I want to shift a little bit and talk about this AI first mindset that you've touched on a lot. So you talked about how at the beginning of this investment, you've already been like focused on AI before it was really, before it was as hot as it is today. And I've heard for many people that you're really big on getting people to shift to this mindset of being very AI first. Clearly, it's worked really well at LinkedIn. I'm curious just what that actually looks like. I know you could be like, hey guys, we got to be AI first.

36:03AI, AI, AI. But it's different to actually make people really think differently. How do you actually, like on the ground, help people shift their perspective and think AI first? I can spend days on this. This is so important. It's actually so important for me. It's a key focus for me. Actually, in your point, long before it became cool to talk about AI in the last two years. And in fact, I think I've learned this on myself. So when it came to the feed, I took the role of the AI product leader. It didn't exist in the company. There was no person that was ever from a product perspective thinking about AI.

36:37I think it started with the belief, like we talked about before. I think every technological revolution has dramatically changed the way we build. And AI arguably is the biggest one in our lifetimes. And when I say I first, it's not about a tech. It's a mindset. it. It's a start with strategy. Like, you know, it's rare. I mean, now you'll see it, but it was where two years ago to see anybody in their strategy talk about the role of AI and how they build with AI. And it goes to the product and then the talent itself you hire, do they actually think this way? The analogy I would give to people is imagine that we were acting about and you have everybody on the sides holding the pedals and adding accuracy, adding speed, but there's the guide on the back and they're holding those two pedals.

37:22Those two pedals navigate pretty much to both and those pedals are AI and the guide better be you. And in most cases in companies, the guide was somebody else. It wasn't the product leader. So then the question is, if we actually is directing your product or success and it's the biggest factor and you as the product leader is not the one holding those two pedals, what are you doing? And then I realized that it was a bit of a lack of education in that. Like there was actually most product used to think of a eyes. It's like black box, magic spells that they don't know how it's working. So they're delegating.

38:01And obviously that's further as further from the truth as possible. But there's so many ways to unpack it. Like when it came to the feet where I push for example, more specifically for the teams, It doesn't stay as an AI first. Like there is the objective, I would ask them, what is the objective of the algorithm? I would challenge you to ask folks, you know, more and the folks are like leading products specifically with algorithms inherited built into them. What is the objective of the algorithm? And can you actually, can you write it down from you on the board? They should be able to do so. Ultimately, it's a mathematical formula.

38:35And then it's like, what features have you added to the algorithm? And this is not user features. This is specifically what parameters to learn on. And then what investment do you have in data collections and find tuning? Now everybody talks about game about find tuning. But again, two years ago, find tuning was something that the product folks thought the engineering team was supposed to do. Now it's the whole organization. In fact, you can build a whole strategy just on data collection and find tuning. And your product will see tremendous success. or you can delegate it and it will never happen.

39:11So in many ways that was bringing into the fold, in our phase one, which really started around 2016 for me, every team I went to, the AI component was the area I spent most of my time on. I hired people for that, product leaders. I spent most of my, back to like, how do I spend my resources? Most of my resources there. And it was my top priority all the way from strategy to talent. And ultimately, with the last couple of years, we've seen this, but a more face of AI in this incredible new wave. And we've done pretty big change there as well over the last two years. I love this. So I took some notes on what you're talking about.

39:52So kind of the big message that I'm taking away so far is as a product leader, you need to think about things that you thought the engineering leader had to think about or the ML engineer was thinking about things like, what is the objective of our algorithm, what are the features that we're building into it? What is the data collection strategy, how are we fine -tuning it? As a PM, you should be asking these questions. In fact, you should go all the way to infrastructure. You can have massive lifts in your product outcomes and goals if you probably enhance your infrastructure. How many product people talk about the infrastructure they have?

40:24Right. Not many. Influences. Like those are things ultimately your goal is to win with your products and build a much layer of experience to your members and customers. Literally just changing the infrastructure and top of your budget build that could be the biggest lever than you building another button or experience for your free members on the top of it. So let's say the PM's are linked in. Are you encouraging them all to like is it like how is AI integrating into what you're doing? How do you just like set this up so that teams do this well within LinkedIn? Yeah, so coming into this role in early 2020, we basically established an AI Academy.

41:02Every PM had to go through training just like we did mobile in 2014. We kind of moved the whole organization to be mobile first. So everybody had to go through this process. I spent a lot of time in my reviews on the AI strategy, the objectives. We make sure there's actually AI practitioners on the product side who are strong, who can teach. So we kind of like, you know, in wave started to build more of like expertise and kind of distinguished leaders across that can actually bring this learning across the board. And then, you know, in fall 2022, when we all know what happened, at least a few months after, but we started early, we completely changed our entire, almost like product operations and portfolio.

41:45So we can focus on this new web of AI with LLMs in the front. So LinkedIn has been working with AI very closely since the early days. But mostly as a matchmaker. So it was the matchmaker for a marketplace. Somebody looks to hire this dream candidate, and then you have a candidate looking for a dream job. And AI would be the one doing the matchmaking. You talked about the knowledge sharing on the feed. It happens in our commerce platform as well. But the AI was kind of in the background. It never saw it. It was kind of making those matches. And then with the new UI of the UI, We actually brought AI from the back of our marketplaces, really as the matchmaker to the front.

42:28And one of the things we've done there was really asking the teams to completely revisit their entire roadmap. This is this is fall of 2022. The world will learn about Jatchy PT for several, you know, in March 2023. So we kind of had like a nice beginning there in terms of getting started. And the goal there was let go of what you've built. Let go of your roadmap, go back to the drawing board with what are you trying to solve for better than you have like clarity on your problem statement and now tell me what's the solution. That's very much AI first. It reminds me so when the folks I pinged about you, Shira Gassarch, she used this quote about you.

43:09Maybe you were made for such a time as this. And it connects a lot with what you're talking about where you've been thinking a lot about. And back then it was called machine learning, right? Like it wasn't called the high for a long time. And now the fact that you've been on this so long is just like a perfect synergy for now it's working its way into everything. Here's like an example that I think sometimes to bring it to people in the more, we're going to a visceral way if you've been building products. Product leaders are used to very much dictate the experience they're building. I want this experience to be exactly like this.

43:41Like I want the member to come from here and this is the options they have and I want them to be able to select this and this will be my default and I want the onboarding to progress this way. And I think this is one of the biggest shifts with this when you become an AI first kind of leader is that there is a realization that you don't control the experience anymore. You can fold the ingredients. It's like almost like being a chef at a restaurant and you're used to like the side every part of the dish, right? You're like deciding everything from the ambiance to the temperature of the broccoli.

44:14And then you know this new technology comes in and says just give me the ingredients, give me the guidelines of how you cook. And I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. It's from many folks this is a very scary feeling. They're not used to kind of letting go of the control. Obviously you build safety guards and responsible AI around it and that's super critical. But at the essence of it, AI is not deterministic. So giving it the rope to learn and do that experience for you ultimately we'd become much better. You have to have that belief going into it. So along those lines, I'm curious if there's anything you do to avoid.

44:53You know, everyone's like cool AI and everything and then the all these stupid things ship that no one wants. I saw this hilarious meme of like, oh wait, we built like a kind of dumb artificial person. Let's integrate it into everything. Now it's everywhere. Is there anything you've learned about just not to ship stuff that like isn't great? You know? I guess there's what you've done here and I've been, we've felt a lot but we learned so much along the way. When we started it in fall 2022, literally started with me calling the leaders coming to the room and we talked about, okay, let go of your road maps.

45:26like what we've done is great, but I want to let go of the road maps and I want to instead go back to what are you trying to solve for and let's meet in a couple of weeks and tell me how you're thinking differently about what you're trying to solve for knowing we have this technology in a wall for us. So that was like a starting point around just setting out some ground, some ground and principles around it, but we didn't start with like new objectives to solve. So it wasn't like, oh, we have this cool technology, what can we do with it. It was like go back to the objectives you were trying to solve and now a distinct biology how can you do that objective better.

46:00The second part is we actually allowed teams to run to really inspire creativity. I didn't want to contain them. I went away with them, we get them really excited about the potential here and even some things were building duplicates for for a while of like you know similar ideas but undifferently because part of it was I was learning I was very excited to see if people would come up with and and see how they can do it. And there was no playbook for building this really, really well. And in many ways, we were writing the playbook. Like, Prompt Engineering became a playbook internally for us, which every day was amazing.

46:32How do you cognitively, I know, a reverse and junior to brain a little bit? That was incredible. In fact, a lot of things we've learned so much ahead of the market and even shared with OpenAI and shared with Microsoft. But then after that period of just everybody getting excited and building, we basically brought it down and we did like top -down got it. So we basically picked the, back to the objectives we had, out of everything that we've seen, those for us look like the best kind of four, biggest best we want to win an aim for, and then we want to converge, resourcing across it. So no more, everybody's building whatever they want.

47:10We also, you know, capacities also constraint, the cost is a constraint, we want to start bringing them together. So we really much allowed people to, I would say, many were just diverge. But then it's several weeks after converge, but we had a lot more excitement and understanding about how these things work and what we can actually do with it. Well, that advice. Basically, give people a bunch of time and space to explore experiment R &D and then, like, as a top -down strategy. Then we did top -down. We were like, there was, literally, usually, do product gems for every multiple topics we have throughout the corner.

47:47I just did every week. I just reviewed the five kind of bets we had on a reputed basis, nothing else because it was so important for them to understand that this is what I care about and we had to be focused about it. It feels like that space to exploring go crazy is important because otherwise people at the company are going to be like, I wish there's so many this thing I want to try with AI, I wish to try it. And that'll just be pissed because they don't have time to work on it. It's a great point. It wasn't my intention, but I love that you say it. It's a great point because I think it gives them that.

48:16I was actually, for me sometimes, almost in maybe too much, but I tried to focus on learning. I was trying, I knew just going like this, we weren't going to learn a lot, but having people come back and like trying different things and slightly going crazy and going, you know, pushing the boundaries we would learn so much. So for me it was learning, but I love the motivation, and we're also allowing them to have the energy. It relates to another point that a recent podcast episode had with Brian Chesky, where he introduces chaos sometimes when things are feeling too comfortable and roadmaps, everything's calm, everything's on schedule.

48:50He's just like, how do we do this in one day versus in two weeks? Let's just see what happens. Yeah, because I think people get, like, there is just inertia. Right, people get into their, it's human behavior. People get into their lanes. They start to feel really comfortable with their lanes. and then they don't know that there's a different way to do things. And you have to like almost like externally invoke that or trigger that. So if we think about just your career arc, I'm zooming out a little bit. You help to create the mobile experience on LinkedIn. You help you build the feed initially and that you're in front of AI.

49:23I could see why you're so successful at LinkedIn. I was talking to folks about your career arc, at LinkedIn and you basically went from senior PM to senior PM number two to group PM to director to senior director to VP to CPO in like not that many years. It's a pretty meteoric rise. I wanted to spend a little time here and I want to maybe start with the question of just like if you could give one specific piece of advice for someone looking to advance in their career based on what you found to be really effective, what would that be? I realize everybody's in their if in the stage in their career and they have different ways to think about the role than what they need.

50:00Maybe I'll just share about my journey what worked for me instead of giving kind of more of a general advice. First of all, I feel super fortunate. Like, I'm building. That's what I love doing. I love building. I love working with builders. Sometimes I'm like, I get paid for this. This is insane. But I love my craft and I love getting deep into it. So in many ways, I think like, the things I'm excited about is the things I'm doing. When people are starting off, I usually like really focus on learning from great people. Like, people you talk to or have like amazing mentors and managers. Some of them don't even know their revomentors.

50:40Like, it's not like a mentor officially. Like, I try to like pick up things from people all the time. And that's been just a remarkable experience like working with great people. And in many ways, a lot of those great people actually allowed me or empowered me to take on some bigger challenges. So I could, you know, I can see forks in the road were if it wasn't for that person saying it's very specific, probably would have done something differently and it just made me think a lot. So I really tried to absorb learning from great people. But by far from me personally, again, this is very personal versus a generic advice.

51:16It was when I moved here, I was an engineer for many years before I moved here for Graduate School in 2008. And I always loved building that was all there over there from a young age. But when I moved here, I realized my career path was very much dictated by one thing. It was like, what's most in demand? What's most challenging? And how do I do that? It was very childish in many ways. It was not dictated by me. It was in a way I really clandered my society. So what's the toughest and geniving role? What's the best company to go into? What's the best army unit to serve in? And I felt a lot along the way, but I always kept going.

51:57And then when I came here, there was a really big challenging for me personally around like, what do I care about? What matters most to me? And that was, again, it's very personal in many ways. It was very much for me an impact on learning and actually how do I create impact more broadly? And I shifted 180 and how my thought process used to go. It was less about what was out there and exciting and in demand and challenging. And it was more about like where did I have strong conviction on? What was I passionate about? And where did I feel I could make a dent and learn? And that was my path forward.

52:37So after school with a student visa and massive school debt. I started to start a company, which was not a very intelligent kind of decision based on my economic circumstances, but I didn't care. I was like, this is my new path. And then I got into LinkedIn and applied for a job. I met with who was in my role today, DeepNishar that time. And we talked and I said, this is how I think we should, And you know, this is how LinkedIn mobile should be built. And it was like, okay, how about you come and build it? And I was like, amazing. So it didn't apply to LinkedIn. And then at LinkedIn, I was always kind of like, this is what I want to do.

53:16This is what's exciting for me. And this is the dent I feel I can make. And this is my plan for it. So I don't know if this is a recommendation for everybody, but it for me, it's worked really, really well. It was really pursuing the conviction I had and my excitement and kind of bringing that to the fold with people. I do think that in products, in building products, if you're not genuinely excited about your tool on a build, you know how conviction about it, it's going to be very hard for you to make a big game back. That's also a similar theme from my most recent podcast with Vlad, just if you don't actually buy into the mission of the place you're working on, you're not going to have a good time.

53:54Yeah, there's a product people, it's a very fortunate position. I always tell people like if you're in one of the most fortunate positions you can have, because if you just measure a thing for you, just measure based on your career and so on, people are going to evaluate you based on your actual work. It's a very special place. It's not, I don't know what it cares about your title, who cares? I know what it's not, maybe the company named for some people matters, but for the most part, it's about the impact you created with the products you've built. If I think about some of these resume, I think it was So the product president, it will be the products you build and the impact you had with it.

54:34I don't care about the companies you worked at. I don't care about the logos. I don't care about the titles. It's slightly like, again, not to kind of overextend, but it's something like an artist, right? It's like, whatever your musician, it's the albums you took out and how well they did. And I think for product people, it's a very fortunate place to be that you get measured based on the impact you had. The sounds like a LinkedIn feature idea right there. I feel like if there's any company that can be used, you know, like a LinkedIn feature and make that happen, it had to be you guys. So kind of the, some of the takeaways here essentially is tried index towards what are you actually excited about and motivated to work on and driven by versus where it's the most amazing company to work at and the most challenging problem.

55:16Yeah, I think sometimes great companies have great opportunities for you to have dent at scale, but you need to be the one doing it. Like it's, if you are thinking about a title or that did not, you know, for like once I did the change into my excitement around impact, that's been at least my yardstick. When I look at people that I talk to or interview internally, I did first thing to my mind to me is like, what did you build? And what did you learn and how well do they do? That's what I care about. I imagine there's also people on the other side where all they do is work on things that are really exciting to them and they could use a little pushing towards the other direction of what's actually important in the world.

56:00100%. If you tell me, again, everybody has their different, if you tell me like, hey, you can work on something. So we're exciting, but it's on the kind of the fringes of the company. Where you can work on something which is a bit more grindy, but it's on the core of the company. The latter would like, no, no doubt. Like for me, impact first. Yeah. And just listening to the story, you've told of the things you decided to focus on as a clear example that like you saw, hey, there's this huge opportunity to feed. I'm going to go take tackle that or mobile or yet. So I think there's a lot of, it's kind of this vent diagram is what I'm taking away.

56:32I've just, what's important? What am I excited about? Yeah, this for me. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so I know you got to run relatively soon. So we're going to get to our very exciting lightning round. But before we do that, is there anything else that you think would be interesting or useful for folks to know or leave them with? I know we covered a bunch of things all right. Yeah, one thing that actually I've now built it into a podcast, but something I'm really excited about is I don't think there's one way of building. Remember when the Steve Jobs biography came out? Maybe anybody read it. That's the way to build and that was unique to him.

57:12And one of the things I love a lot is when I look at great builders, they're all very distinct, they're all different. And I used to do this thing internally. I used to invite kind of product builders of different disciplines and have a fireside chat with them. And I saw people across the company join, not just PMs or designers, but folks across. And I built that into a podcast. It's, I love your podcast. Mine is very different. It's more around like, what is their edge a little bit? Like what would, is this is from the co -founder of Pixar, are it cut mold to the sip of canva or Spotify or blocks, but all the way to like a chef Dan Barber who's like, then I'm one chef in the US for many years.

57:56And it's just everybody has their craft and they do it differently. It's called building one. I'm excited about it. It's a little bit of a plug right now, Lenny. Please yeah, where do people find it? Let's blow it up. What's the building one? Building one on Apple or Spotify. It's short. And it's really about showing you different disciplines from a chef to an animation director and Really the main learning there is like everybody build differently and you can be very successful But it's very authentic to how they are personally and it's how they push their craft to the limit It's how well they've done their craft.

58:29I love that and something I super believe is just the power of focusing on your strengths and the things that make you a little different versus Trying to become good at everything 100 % that's so cool Okay, build one, rolling to it in the show notes. Building one. Building one. Building one. Okay, amazing. And it's on all the podcasting platforms. Okay, great. With that, we've reached a very setting, lightning round. Are you ready? Yes. All right. First question is, what are two or three books that you recommended most to other people? So I have this close, continuously. This string. I love that you're having a right there.

59:02I love that you're having a right there. I think just tell you about it. They look very pretty. I'm not going to destroy my study. Yeah. So I love fundamentals. I love studying from the mental health. So if there's somebody who's starting your career, my fundamental book is one mindset. It's about growth mindset. It's about basically the ability to continuously grow over time. In one sentence is the whole idea is our skills, our abilities are valuable. We can completely develop them. We can build expertise and craft and mastery. And it's really a mindset change. And Carol Dvecker wrote the book, was also my wife's manager.

59:36and that's how we got into that. So that's kind of like our second religion at home. Second book is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kanaman. I love behavior economics. When I think about products, I think I'll always start from people like what is the member expectation? What are they trying to do? And this is like the Bible for behavior. So if you're building front end products or even like you're thinking about how you rally organization, it's an incredible book. Every page is like a stopper, you have to stop and think. And lastly, on the fundamental side is high output management by Andy Grove.

1:00:18It's like there's so much basics to doing good managerial. It's like, I think after you read this book, your managerial skills will start from a B. And then you can, you know, all the time become an A. But like beginning to a B is just a level of like like putting the effort in and knowing the best practices. So I think like there is a, those are all fundamentally great books that I really like to give to people. Yes, awesome. I love that they're right there behind you. Is there a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoy? Yesterday I saw Blui, you know Blui? I've heard of Blui. My kid is not old enough for yet.

1:00:52Oh, you're in for a treat. Okay. So I love Blui. So Blui is this like animation series from Australia. And it's this, what's beautiful about is I can watch it with my 60 -year -old, nine -year -old, and 12 -year -old. And we're all gonna enjoy it. We're all gonna laugh at the same point, but at the nuance of the jokes. It's like, when I think about the product, now I probably blew his bill. It's built for the whole family, but it's built as layers. There's like layers of dialogue and points that they're trying to get across. and it's all packaged together into one experience. So it's for me, it's amazing that I could six neck to my 60 year old daughter.

1:01:34We were both laugh at this animation, it's just sweet animation kind of things, like a family of dogs. And she would laugh at the nuance of the point of like at a different nuance. For me, it's like that's a genius creation of how you build a product. Speaking of Ed, Katmold Pixar, does that really well as well? Totally. And I feel like the story of Bluey is really incredible too. It's like just like a random little independent group and they just are making tons of money with it. It's just amazing. The dialogue there is like one, it's slightly edgy but not too edgy. It's exactly right. It's just exactly right.

1:02:10Okay, it makes me want to watch it. Okay. Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really love whether it's physical or digital? So I like playing guitar. It's like amateur. I'm not that good, but I love playing it. And there is a combination of done recently I really like there's a spark and I have which allows me to Kind of play with effects easily, but that's not what I use it for I can I can tune my guitar based on a specific song I like So if I want to do Pink Floyd or Metallica or Nirvana or David Bowie I can I can get that tune easily. I don't have to be an expert I can just download the tune to my guitar which is so great And then I coupled that with the it's called the ultimate guitar app and Basically doesn't give you the chords in the tabs.

1:02:56It gives me the other instruments So I can get the drums going I can get the you know, it's a violin going whatever that is that's going in the band As somebody who does not play so well and plays for itself and nobody's supposed to listen to humbling because it's it's really just away from me to enjoy my time. It's just an amazing, I would never get into any band. So this is the closest I can get to get to a band. So I love that combination. I wish we could close this podcast episode with you playing your guitar, but I don't know that will help the ratings of the show. No man, that's amazing.

1:03:30Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often repeat yourself find really useful and work your own life, share with folks? For growth, My mind is there's a motto that I really like. It's called becoming is better than being. It's like the moment you think you kind of achieved something is the moment you started to tear your down. It's like you were like, we're really trying to grow as human beings, we're trying to learn, we're trying to evolve. Product is a good example. I think the moment you think you actually master that is the moment that you become obsolete. So I love the idea that becoming is a better goal than continuously trying to read some kind of level.

1:04:05I love that. Final question, just to come back to LinkedIn. Is there like a fun feature of LinkedIn? People don't know about, should check out, is there anything new that's like, oh, that's something you should try here? That's something that might surprise you about LinkedIn these days. Maybe I'll give a couple. So I don't have to like, pick the best right off the bat. With one right now, we're like, heavily invested in video and it's doing so well for those creators, we talked about it. Like a immersive video where you can actually come in, we talked about like for us, where like video is obviously the best practice right now in the industry, but on LinkedIn, the right views really matter.

1:04:41So, highly encouraged creators to kind of think about their video play at LinkedIn. And then I think what we call our coach experience in some cases is so powerful. Like we, for job seekers out there, we have people hired on LinkedIn. There's like seven folks hired every minute. Jobseeking is a lonely journey. I was actually in a session recently meeting with job seekers and I was talking to them and one started crying, midway into the session because they said I cannot share my journey with anybody because I feel like I'm alone in this. People don't get how hard it is. I feel very accomplished but I can't get the job and I wish there was a buddy.

1:05:26I wish there was something that I could talk to brainstorm with who wouldn't judge me. It would just be trying to help me without paying hundreds of dollars to a coach of some sort. I don't have that money. And in many ways, when we walked in through the job seeking experience, like the coach experience, we built this coach aspect where you can go to any job and you can riff on the job with this kind of really kind of this new and real estate, this LLM that is external to you, personalized to you, private to you, everything from your fit to how to best apply, to kind of consulting about different opportunities, to comparing these two others, to feeling supported.

1:06:06So when we talk to people around, you know, we always, I love to measure the impact of our work by emotion. When we talk to job seekers after that, it was basically the sense of, I felt supported. But in many ways, getting to that ability to remove the loneliness is amazing. It's a little bit like people need to, we're making it more and more visible and more and more kind of ramp to everybody at certain point. That's a really powerful way to just humanize the job -sing experience for everybody. Awesome. And to find that, it's just, it's called LinkedIn Coacher. It's in the jobs. If you go to the job stab on LinkedIn, it's actually, we just, a few weeks, we've got ago, we just put it on the top.

1:06:46So you don't have to go to the specific job and find it. You can just start there and engage with it. Awesome. Just a quick give a quick plug to a future podcast that's coming out. There's this book called Never Search Alone that we're going to have the author on the podcast soon. And it's all about the same idea of having a buddy that helps you search for a job. Yeah. When I think about the future of AI in the sense of belief, that relationship is going to be sacred. The relationship between AI and the human is going to be for you. There's a, do you know what number phobia means? No, no phobia.

1:07:14No. That no phobia. No phobia. No, being afraid of it. It's the fear. It's the anxiety of being away from your phone. I have that. Yeah. I think we all. I think we're in for AI of no phobia at one point where you're going to get to a point where your eyes are going to feel so intimate, so personal that it would actually feel concerning to you to be away from it. Yeah, man, there's a rise me a friend .com which is launched in a really fun. I don't know if you saw friend .com their launch video No, I did not oh man check out friend .com. It's like a digital friend that just is with you all the time and you're talking to him and it's an AI Oh, we're just getting started there.

1:07:52It's gonna be it's we're in for incredible relevation there I'm excited and scared at the same time. Tomer. Thank you so much for being here. This was amazing. You're awesome Two final questions, working folks, check out stuff that you're working on. Any of a course salsa, if a podcast, just give people a sense where to find that. Awesome. Obviously, I'm on LinkedIn, reach out anytime. I read everything people send to me. I don't always reply to everything, but I read everything sent to me. And then if you want to go deep on AI first, I have two courses. They're free. I think it's a phenomenal way for you to build or starting to build your expertise, especially if you're in product.

1:08:24It's a great way to go deeper and not just stay kind of on the high level, parts of things. Amazing, we'll link to all those things in the show notes. Toma, thank you so much for being here. Let me thank you, the surprise winner. 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'sPodcast .com. See you in the next episode!