In short
Episode Summary: Naomi Gleit on Lenny's Podcast
Podcast Overview
- Podcast Title: Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
- Host: Lenny Rachitsky
- Guest: Naomi Gleit, Head of Product at Meta
- Episode Title: Meta’s Head of Product (and 29th employee) on working with Mark Zuckerberg, early growth tactics, why PMs are like conductors, and more
Key Topics Discussed
- Naomi's Journey at Meta
- Joined as employee #29
- Involved in foundational products and early growth strategies
- Working with Mark Zuckerberg
- Insights on Zuckerberg's leadership evolution
- The concept of 'small groups' for managing a large organization
- Facebook's Growth Team and Metrics
- Evolution of growth team and focus on retention
- Importance of activation metrics like "7 friends in 10 days"
- Leadership and "Naomiisms"
- Naomi's leadership philosophies
- Importance of extreme clarity and canonical documents
- Effective Communication and Meetings
- Tactics for clear communication within teams
- Strategies for running productive meetings
- Meta's Teen Accounts Project
- Overview of the project aimed at increasing safety for teens on social media
- Exercise and Personal Well-being
- Naomi's emphasis on exercise for personal and professional effectiveness
Detailed Insights
Naomi's Journey and Role at Meta
- Joining Facebook: Naomi cold-called and persistently visited Facebook's office until she secured a position.
- Career Progression: Moved from marketing to product management after proving her capabilities informally.
- Current Role: As Head of Product, Naomi oversees a large community of PMs and focuses on PM culture and training.
Working with Mark Zuckerberg
- Zuckerberg's Transformation: Known for being a fast learner and improving skills like public speaking.
- Small Group Dynamics: Consists of long-tenured leaders focused on mission-driven results, characterized by 'disagreeable givers'.
Growth Team Dynamics
- Data-Driven Approach: The growth team focused on retention as a key lever and used product features to drive user engagement.
- Activation Metric: "7 friends in 10 days" was a pivotal goal to unify team focus on improving user retention.
Leadership Lessons and "Naomiisms"
- PM as Conductor: Naomi likens PMs to orchestral conductors, harmonizing various functions like design, engineering, and legal.
- Extreme Clarity: Emphasizes shared understanding through canonical documents and clear vocabulary.
- Canonical Everything: Advocates for centralized documents and processes to ensure consistency and clarity.
Effective Meetings and Communication
- Pre-Read Requirement: Meetings require a pre-read document sent 24 hours in advance, ensuring informed discussions.
- Option Presentation: Meetings should present three options with a recommendation, using traffic light visuals for clarity.
Teen Accounts Project
- Project Overview: Focused on enhancing safety for teens on Instagram through default privacy settings and parental controls.
Personal Well-being
Exercise
- Importance of Exercise: Describes exercise as non-negotiable for life performance. Sets specific fitness goals like pull-ups to build confidence.
Additional Topics
- Managing Complexity: Naomi's approach involves simplifying complex projects into understandable components.
- First-Party Perspective: Encourages PMs to develop and communicate their own informed opinions.
Resources and Contacts
- Naomi's Website: [Naomi.com](https://naomi.com)
- Podcast Host: Lenny Rachitsky, [Lenny's Newsletter](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com)
Closing
- Feedback Request: Naomi is open to feedback on Naomiisms and suggestions for future discussions. Leave comments on YouTube or relevant platforms.
This episode provides a comprehensive look into Naomi Gleit's extensive experience at Meta, her leadership style, and the pivotal strategies that have driven Facebook's growth over the years. Whether you're in product management or another tech function, Naomi's insights offer valuable lessons in leadership, growth tactics, and personal well-being.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00I really believe in frameworks for things that helps drive extreme clarity. I work on a lot of different projects. A lot of times I'm ramping up mid -project. I'm like, where can I learn what I need to learn about this project? I ask five different people get five different answers. That is unacceptable. Of course, I'm sure there's hundreds of docs associated with the project, but there needs to be one canonical doc. Everyone should know exactly where the canonical doc is. That's the one place I can go to to get all the information I need about a project. And it will link to all the other docs.
0:27Things on the canonical doc are...
0:32Today, my guest is Naomi Glight. Naomi is head of product at Meta. Other than Mark Zuckerberg, she's the longest -serving executive at Meta. She joined what was then called Facebook as employee number 29, and has been at Meta for almost 20 years. She's seen the company scale from 30 employees to the one and a half trillion dollar business that it is today. Naomi does very few podcasts and interviews, and so is really excited to chat with her and have her on this podcast. In her conversation, we dig into the many lessons that she learned from Facebook's early and legendary growth team, her superpower of taking really complex and gnarly problems in projects, simplifying them and delivering results.
1:12We also get into leadership lessons she's learned from Zuck, including his recent transformation, into possibly the coolest CEO in tech. Also, YPMs are the conductor of product teams, some very tactical tips for running meetings, writing docs, working out, getting better sleep, and even had to get more protein in your diet. This was such a fun conversation and such a wide -ranging conversation, and whether you are in product or growth or any other tech function, you will get something useful out of this conversation. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.
1:45It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Naomi Gleight.
1:56Naomi, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. As I told you earlier, I refer your podcast all the time, and so I can't believe I have the opportunity to actually talk on it. Wow, I'm so flattered. I never get tired of hearing that. I appreciate you sharing that. I want to share a couple tidbits about you, because it's pretty crazy when you see this list. Okay, so your meta is longest -serving executive, other than Mark Zuckerberg. You're employing number 29 at Facebook. You've been there for over 19 years. Sorry, at meta, formally Facebook. I do that all the time.
2:37That's what happens when you've been at meta for 19 years, as you can't get the name right. Okay, good. I won't feel bad about that then. And then the last thing is just you've been at the center of some of the most foundational products that meta and Facebook have worked on, including working on the early growth team and thinking about the early growth strategy. Basically, you've been there from employee number 32. One in a half trillion dollar company. One of the largest companies in the world today. Very few people have ever seen this sort of growth and scale from the inside. First of all, I guess let me just ask the other reflect on this and just realize, like, holy shit, what a journey I've been on, how wild.
3:18It's a great question. I would love to say that I reflect on it. The truth is, I think I barely have time to reflect right now. I'm thinking about all the things that I need to do on my to -do list. So I'm pretty in it still. Even after 19 years, I am really focused on the work that I need to do. I do honestly have moments where I get to reflect, for example, on this podcast. Sometimes people do ask me, you know. And I think especially as I approach the 20 -year milestone, my 20 -year face first -series, I'm sure that will give ample opportunity for me to look back. Such a classic product manager answer.
3:57Like, I'm just F too much to do. Too busy. I think about this. Yeah. I've got to hit some goals here. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the only all -in -one product experience platform for any type of application. Tired of bouncing around multiple tools to uncover what's really happening inside your product. With all the tools you need in one simple to -use platform, Pendo makes it easy to answer critical questions about how users are engaging with your product, and then turn those insights into action, also you can get your users to do what you actually want them to do. First, Pendo is built around product analytics.
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5:11Check out Pendo's lineup of free certification courses, led by talk product experts and designed to help you grow in advance in your career. Learn more and experience the power of the Pendo platform today at pendo .io slash Lenny. Pendo. This episode is brought to you by Vanta. When it comes to ensuring your company has top -notch security practices, things get complicated fast. Now, you can assess risks, secure the trust of your customers, and automate compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more with a single platform, Vanta. Vanta's market leading trust management platform helps you continuously monitor compliance, alongside reporting and tracking risks.
5:57Plus, you can save hours by completing security questionnaires with Vanta AI. Join thousands of global companies that use Vanta to automate evidence collection, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. You get $1 ,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta .com slash Lenny. That's v -a -m -t -a .com slash Lenny. Let me start. I want to start about just how you actually landed it, meta as employee number 29, which is a life -changing decision and a life -changing role. And I want to learn if there's something folks can see about what you did. That might be helpful to them when they're trying to find a place to work.
6:36And your start is reading about the story, and it's super interesting. You basically wrote your senior thesis at Stanford about why Facebook was going to win, and why it was going to beat its competitors. And the competitors cited, I have never even heard of. So it's interesting that that was the competitor at the time. You just share the story of how you landed as employee number 29 at Facebook, now meta. Facebook, as part of being an academic, researching Facebook, also being a Stanford student, using Facebook, I was like, I really want to work here. Facebook had just moved to Palo Alto, Marquette, driven across country, I guess, and arrived in Palo Alto, opened up in office at 443 Emerson Avenue, or Emerson Street.
7:15It was right above the Jingjing's Chinese restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. And I just went to the office, sort of cold -called the equivalent of just walking into the office, and seeing if there were any available jobs. There were not. I think I did that maybe five to ten more times. Eventually, there was an opening to interview for Sean Parker's personal assistant. He was at the time, I think, the president. I did interview, and I did not get the job. A few months later, I found out about a marketing role that was available. And one interesting thing I haven't really talked about was I got an offer from Facebook.
7:50I also got a competing offer from LinkedIn. And so at that time, I made the choice to go to Facebook because I was interested in the social networking aspect of it. Why was I so bullish on this website at the time, was www .thefacebook .com? Why was I so excited about this thing? I think it's because I definitely saw that there was product market fit. I saw that students at Stanford were obsessed with it. But it also had a long list of colleges that were really excited and on the waiting list to be accepted onto Facebook. And so there was this product market fit piece and also a huge demand from other audiences, other colleges, but our younger brothers and sisters were also sort of interested about Facebook.
8:44And it seemed like it had this much broader appeal. So that's what happened. I got the marketing job. But Cheryl also talks about when you are getting on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. That was my foot in the door. And here we are 19 years later. I was just going to say that that's such a good example of what she recommends. If you can get a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask which seat. And I love the Sean Parker piece. I did not know that that's hilarious. Different life would have been if you got that job and went down that track. So a couple of takeaways here for people that are trying to pick where to work.
9:22What I love about your story is one is just like you had so much, you just had confidence that this business would work. And you just knew that you wanted to get on this rocket ship. You saw attraction. So I told you, give you, I guess, that added to this confidence that this is going to work out. And then you said that you walked into the office kind of cold. Not even cold emailing or calling, but cold arriving five to 10 times, you said? Yeah, it was pure, pure sort of just like refusing to quit. I think I just walked into the office. I talked to the person at the front desk. Is there anything that I can do?
9:57They weren't hiring non -technical people. I didn't have a computer science degree. I wasn't technical. I had this bachelor of arts degree. And that's why the personal assistant and the marketing role eventually did open and was something that I thought it could be qualified for. Cool. I think that's such an empowering lesson. If you look at someone like you and they're like, oh, she's so early at Facebook, how lucky clearly wasn't luck. You knew you wanted to work at this company. You put a lot of effort into making it happen, no matter the job. I think that's a really good takeaway in lessons.
10:28So if there's company today that you're excited about, this is going to be a massive success. What I'm hearing is just do everything you can to try to land a job there. And eventually you'll be in a role you actually want. It doesn't have to start there. When I got to Facebook, I knew I wanted to build. As someone who was that really technical, I wasn't going to be an engineer or a coder. I wanted to work with the engineers and the coders to build products. I thought product management was the right function for me. And so my dream was always to be a PM. And it wasn't luck as to how I ended up becoming a PM.
11:01I sort of took the same approach showing up at the office asking if there were any roles. By then we had moved to 156 University. And all of the PMs and engineers worked on the second floor. And I was working in marketing, like I mentioned. Then I worked on the third floor. And all the business functions worked on the third floor. And my goal was to be a PM. I ended up going sort of the analogy I went to the second floor. Most days after work asked if there were any projects that I could help out with. It was very early days. There was always more to do than people to do it. And so eventually I picked up a few projects helping with program management, giving my product feedback.
11:47And by the time that I actually applied formally to be a product manager, I had been doing the job voluntarily almost informally for a few months. And I remember this because I had a seat on the third floor. I picked up all the stuff on my desk, put it in a box, walked down to the second floor once I got the job to become a PM. And when I got to the second floor, I distinctly remember everyone on the second floor standing and clapping. And so it was a big standing ovation. I'll never forget Bos was there by the way. I know Bos has been on your podcast. But even Bos was there sort of standing and clapping.
12:28And so I guess, you know, to the lesson that you were trying to extract from my story, I do think I sort of tried to create the luck by not giving up and just repeatedly cold calling or cold showing up or cold volunteering until I sort of, you know, was able to make it happen. Amazing. Again, very empowering. It's not just like, oh, there's these people. They just get lucky in the eye in this PM job. It's like you landed at the company. I want to be a product manager, which is interesting. Most people don't like grow up in like, I want to be a product manager. That's like a rare, a rare thing people even want, especially that early on.
13:07So it's interesting that you're already you that, but you basically did the job. You did the job of PM before you had the job. And by the time you actually asked for it, you've been doing it for a long time and you could show, hey, look, I'm actually good at this. I can do this job. Awesome. By the way, I love the Bos connection. I'm finding that Bos is connected. The most guest of this podcast in so many different ways. Really curious. Yeah. Like, Ami and, oh, yeah. And a few other people, it's just interesting. There's like a Bos spider web of connections throughout this podcast so far. Okay.
13:40So, I'm going to fast forward to today. So your role today is head of product. Yes. META. Yes. What does that mean? What does what do you do at META today? How would you describe your role? So, you know, there are a few thousand PMs at META. They do not all report to me. I would say a few hundred of them report to me on the teams that I directly manage, but I feel responsible for the entire PM community at META. There are things that we do centrally, things like PM performance, PM culture, PM onboarding and training. And that's the kind of thing that I look out for. You know, obviously I wanted to be a PM head of product is my dream job.
14:20I am, you know, deeply supportive of the PM function. And so I really care. And I think it's PMs are a huge point of lever leverage in a company for how we can actually, you know, get stuff done and help accomplish the company's goals. And so that's I sort of focus on PM as like a really important exponential lever for doing that. I love that. Okay. I'm going to come back to what you've learned about what makes super successful PMs and what makes you really successful. I want to take a tangent to Zuck. Yes. Okay. So you've, you've known Zuck for over 20 years at this point. And I just have to ask a few Zuck questions because people always curious to learn from what is so well for him.
15:06The first question is just there's been a pretty profound transformation in in Mark over the past years, both in terms of how he leads and also Justin is like coolness and by backter. What are your thoughts and just this transformation and how he's able to been been able to pull it off? So I've always said that there is the biggest gap of anybody I know between what people think of Mark and who Mark really is. And so I think this is the mark that I've known for the past 20 years and the world is finally getting to see what I've been lucky enough to see. And that gap that we've talked about is really, is really starting to close.
15:46How did we get here? I always say Mark is a learn it all, not a know it all. He is the fastest person at upskilling of anyone I've ever met. He used to do these annual challenges. One year I did them with him. It was learning Chinese and within a year he was able to basically achieve an eighth grade fluency in Chinese. And that's just one example. Obviously he's gotten incredibly great at guitar, MMA, a lot of his passions. But he's also gotten a lot of a lot better at some of the professional skills. And I think negotiation, public speaking is one of those. I think before in the early days it just wasn't something that he was very comfortable with.
16:26He's talked himself about coming across as little scripted. I think he was not confident and pretty careful about how he showed up. And he's upskilled here. He's just gotten a lot more comfortable. And so people are able to see who he who he really is. He was also like, I don't know, 20 something when he started Facebook. And now he's learning 80 ,000 person org. I could see. I think he might have been 19 or 20 when I had that's insane. So yeah, I could see why so I don't change. I was at the the choir podcast chase event with him being interviewed. And he's just like such a cool dude now. He just has these big shirts with his own like letters on it, his own like phrases.
17:11His chain. His long hair. His long hair. His watch. Yeah. I was at that event too. I thought it was great. I think, yeah, that's that's the no gap between who Mark is and what the world sees. I love that. Is there something about Zuck that you know that most people don't know? Something that would surprise us. The one thing I would say about Mark is I think people people know he's married. He has three daughters. He's a really great dad. He's a really great husband. I would say he's also a really good friend. Maybe that's something that I can sort of speak to from experience. He's just an incredibly thoughtful friend.
17:54There was a period in my life, I think, it's 20, 40, 10 years ago when I was going through just sort of like a really hard time. I had come out of a breakup. But Mark saw that I was having a hard time. He asked me if I wanted to volunteer to teach a class in East Palo Alto after after their school day. And in retrospect, it's pretty funny. But Mark and I taught a class about how to build a business. So you had the CEO of meta teaching this class to a bunch of middle school students. And we got really close to them through that process. We made some important mentorship connections for years. We met with them.
18:34I think we still continue to, even though they have now at this point graduated from college and have real jobs. But one of the lessons that we taught during that class that I remember Mark distinctly writing on the white board or not the white board, the actual was a chalk with chalk on a chalkboard with the four life lessons that was one. And I kept these for myself as well. Love yourself. Two, only then could you truly serve others. Three, focus on what you can control. And four, for those things never give up. And that was sort of his life lessons. Four steps to how to approach life. And we actually made stickers for these four steps that the students could actually put on their composition notebooks as a reminder.
19:26And I think obviously that has really helped me over time. But I think that in that you can see some of what I think we all see in Mark. For example, for those things never give up. That aspect of him and it makes sense. For me number three is really the hardest, which is focus on what you can control. Because I think I probably think I can control more things than I actually can. So do we all. I love that he was sharing that in like a class on how to start a business. There's like life advice. That's amazing. I want to chat a bit about. So at this point, meta is 86 ,000 employees, something like that.
20:11That's what I found online. So he has to run this massive org as this CEO, one person. I know that one way that he does this is he has something called the small group. Is that the term? Yes, small group. Okay, cool. So he's got the small group that he calls it. And it's essentially like core execs. And this group meets regularly. And that's kind of how he's able to manage the entire org through this small group. Four people that are struggling to run an increasingly larger org. Are there any tidbits from how Mark and the small group operate that might be helpful to folks? Sure. So I think the first thing is small group is sort of the leadership team.
20:53It's the leaders working on the most important projects at the company, sort of independent of reporting structure and stuff. It's like who are the leaders on the big, on the big most important projects or functions. They will be represented in small group. What makes this group unique? A lot of them are people like me, sort of people that have been there for a very long time. So I think sort of the tenure of small group is really rare. Why I think that's important is you have a lot of people that are motivated by mission rather than sort of climbing the corporate ladder at this point. And so there are a lot of what I call disagreeable givers.
21:34So just to back up, I don't know if you've heard this framework, but I think I learned this from Adam Grant during like a executive learning development session. And he was saying that there are, if you think of a two by two, there is people who are agreeable and disagreeable. And then there's people who are givers and takers. And the most dangerous kind of person to have an organization is an agreeable taker. And what that means is an agreeable person super nice ever and likes them really easy to get along with. But they're a taker. And maybe their motivation is more self -interested rather than what's best for a company for the company, which is what how I would define a giver.
22:12And the most, the most precious person in an organization is the disagreeable giver. Those are the people who are really motivated to do what's best for the company. But they can be a little bit disagreeable in the sense that they may not say what you want to hear. They may push back on things. They may fight for things. And so I think small group is characterized by a lot of disagreeable givers. And I think that's really important for an organization. One thing I think Mark has done really well in general is just have a culture, including on his leadership team of people who give him feedback.
22:51I think a lot of times as you get more successful or as you have more fame or if you have more wealth, you lose having an accurate feedback loop. And people may not want to be 100 % honest with you for various reasons. And Mark has tried to ensure that he himself has an accurate feedback loop. Or we as a company have more of an accurate feedback loop by surrounding himself and our leadership team and creating a culture of giving direct and honest feedback. So that is, that's, you know, some of the unique properties of small group from a process perspective. We have one weekly sort of strategic meeting.
23:30It's more open -ended. There is time for discussion. It's longer and it's sort of more unstructured. We also have one weekly operational meeting, which is highly structured. We go through all of the priority projects. The person who owns each of the projects will actually speak to the weekly updates for that project and, you know, it's very operational and tactical. Awesome. I just love this name small group. It's like such a, just like a scosy name. It's not like executive staff or East Fathom, or all these terms people always use. And that's just their small group. Totally. And then this framework you described, it sounds a lot like radical candor of challenging directly but caring deeply.
24:15Yes. For it being disagreeable, but being constructive and additive. Is that the term? Disagreable, but a giver. Giver. Yeah. Yes. That's great. Yes. If there's nothing here, totally cool. But is there something that you changed Mark's mind about? You've talked about he's good at seeing new data and being like, okay, I see. I see. Or it is anything that you were successful there that is an interesting story. One of the things that we did in the early days on the growth team, because I'm not sure that necessarily when we talk about this sort of legacy or the history or the the lore around the growth team.
24:59And then this may not be a direct answer to the question, but it didn't really necessarily come from Mark Mark was like, you guys should create a growth team. Here's how you should operate. And so I think in some ways we established and grew growth team and you know, Mark's or got on board or saw the value in it and was a huge proponent of it. But I'm not sure it necessarily originated with him. And indeed, I think sometimes the focus on being so data driven might have been something that, you know, myself, Alex Schultz, Hobbie or Olivon, these are some of the original people that were on the growth team and that are my closest co -workers now, may have really pushed on and highlighted the value of a four mark.
Read the full transcript
25:48I'm happy to talk about the growth team, which is something I get asked a lot of questions about if you want. Yeah, I'd love to. That's exactly where I was about to cycle since you brought that up. So the Facebook growth team, it's a legendary team. I think it was probably the first real growth team in tech. The team developed some of the most core growth levers and techniques that companies use today. And so I'm really excited to chat a bit about this and what you learned from that time. One thing I wanted to start with is there's this kind of this legendary activation metric they all had of the goal was get, I think it was seven friends in 10 days or something like that.
26:24Is that a real thing? Is that what you guys actually did anything more there for folks that are like, oh, we got to come up with something like this. Sure. So yes, seven friends in 10 days was a thing. 10 friends in 14 days was also a thing. They're kind of the same thing. They're just different points on a retention curve. I would say the key insight here is when we start the growth team, I think we're pretty focused on acquisition. We had a notion though of growth accounting, which looks at how many, what's our net growth every day? And that would look at the number of new users that registered minus the number of users that actually went sales.
27:00So after a 30 day period, that's how we define it. They no longer logged in. And then plus the number of users that resurrected, which is after 30 days, they came back. And what we found was the churn and resurrection lines were actually much larger than the user line, which implied to us that retention and driving those two lines was actually our biggest lever to drive net growth. And so while we were focused on acquisition, a lot of our focus shifted to being around engagement and retention, how do we drive engagement and retention? We look at the variables that correlate most with that outcome, what we found was trending.
27:38And so those two magic moments, having seven friends in 10 days or 14, 10 friends in 14 days, really just map to when we feel like your likelihood of being a retained user goes up because you've seen sort of the value in Facebook. And it kind of makes sense like Facebook is much more compelling if you have 14 days or 14 friends. And the other thing around 10 or 14 days is we wanted to happen quickly. We wanted to have you experience the magic moment soon after you had registered on the site to prevent you from churning and then us having to resurrect you again. One of the most interesting kind of lessons from this activation metric that people talk about, like right now it runs like, yeah, of course retention is how you, what you need to focus on, that's what product market fit is.
28:28Like I think right now it's like that's what everyone knows. I love that that was you guys basically figured that out. It was one of the first times of like, here's how we understand if our product will last and how to grow retention matters most. And retention co -work curves I think was one of the innovations you all thought about early, I've just like here's how we track retention, people joining it a certain time out on the they stick around. Totally. And that was Danny Feronte, who really came up with the growth accounting framework, which I guess is quite obvious, but like the plus new minus stale plus resurrected.
29:00The thing that I feel like, you know, maybe valuable for PMs and is one of myneomiasms is I think what the growth team really pioneered was being data driven and product driven, especially in a area that was historically more of a business function. So I think at that time a lot of the growth in new users was expected to come from like marketing or comms, whereas the insight that we had is actually the product is the biggest lever to drive growth. And that means we should have a product and engineering team working on optimizing things like the registration flow, the invite flow, the user onboarding, getting you seven friends in 10 days.
29:42One of myneomiasms is really understand, identify and execute. That framework came from 2009 where the growth team at the time was sort of fledgling and it just started was focused on only instrumenting data. And Alex often wears a shirt that says, I guess when you can know, we just didn't have the data that we needed to make informed decisions to know really what were the biggest levers to drive growth. And so in 2009 in January, we basically stopped doing anything on our roadmap, except data instrumentation. And that's when we, you know, instrumented every step of the registration flow, instrumented every step of the news or onboarding experience.
30:25We knew where there was drop off. And so we understood which allowed us to identify what were the key opportunities to drive growth. And maybe it's like, you know, increasing funding in the the news or experience or 20 % drop off on registered users at the email confirmation step. How can we address that? These are the opportunities that we identified. And then we would execute by building products. So having this data driven product driven approach to what I think historically was more of a business responsibility at a company was sort of what the growth team, the special sauce of the growth team.
31:02We eventually extended that approach. I think that approach started with the growth team, but we extended to other areas. So for example, one of the products, our projects that I took on after growth was social impact. And instead of what I think a normal company might do, which is start a corporate social responsibility wing, we decided, hey, no, we're doing a foundation that's distributing money. We're going to build a product that actually raises money from our community. And you know, many years later, we raised billions of dollars from the community for charity. So that's sort of the approach that I think is unique about the growth team that expanded to other areas.
31:47And that I think that the company, you know, in many ways, has taken to most of the problems that we face. That's such a good point. And I almost took that for granted, but there was such a huge shift that you all started from moving from marketing, being the driver growth to product and data and experiments and all that stuff. And so I think that's such a good reminder of that. Fun fact on the social good team, I'm really close friends with the designer that was on my team's name is Mickey. He was on that team for a while and really enjoyed and yeah, really enjoyed working with you. Oh, that's so great.
32:23I remember Mickey. What is his last name? Ah, settler. Okay. Yes, I definitely remember this. I mean, I, yes. And social impact is just one thing that I think I'm really proud of. And again, remember, social impact used to be a business thing. You would, you would create this corporate social responsibility part of the company that was very separate from the product and engineering, engineering team. Another thing that we did in the early days was, you know, there was a juncture where it was like, how are we going to translate this site? And I think we could have taken more of a non -technical traditional approach and had professional translators translate the entire site into the different languages.
33:06And instead, sort of what the growth team suggested was, why don't we build a version of Facebook that allows you to make translations in line? And so the community of people using Facebook at the time who actually knew the product the best could actually insert translations. And there's a whole system that we built around how to like, upbring the best translations and downring, you know, sort of like Wikipedia. And into this day, we have over 100 languages supported. So we're always trying to find these like product technology solutions to these, these sort of traditional problems. I totally remember that word.
33:40It's like you ask your users to help translate the site. Yes, yes. I want to come back real quick to the activation metric because it's something that a lot of people somewhat misuse and think maybe incorrectly about. So to come up with an activation metric, as you describe, you basically figure out what's like the regression of if someone does X, here's retention increases. And so let's focus on getting them there. And a lot of people struggle with coming up with that metric. Do you have any thoughts on just like how important it was to have that very specific activation milestone of like seven exact friends in exactly 10 days versus the value of just having anything that is a rallying point for everyone to focus on and drive?
34:20I think the majority of the value is in the latter is just having extreme clarity around the goal. And that allowed everybody to work towards optimizing the same goal. You're right. Like we did sort of just pick a point on the curve. I think it could have been many of those. And indeed, I as part of preparing for this, I was like, was it seven friends in 10 days? I had to go back and I asked a few people that I worked with back in the day. And they're like, well, I thought it was 10 and 14. I mean, I think it just, it doesn't matter. It's just that we picked one of them. And what mattered there was we had the same goal.
34:55What mattered was that it was retention, goal or an activation metric. And one of the most important things that actually came out of having that goal was building a news or experience. Believe it or not, you know, when we first launched Facebook, or you know, I wasn't around then, but in the early days of when it was just a college site, we didn't need a news or onboarding. We didn't need to explain to people that they had to find their friends. They were sort of automatically connected to everyone on the college campus and sort of knew how to use this product. It felt very intuitive. Again, we were college students building a product for other college students.
35:31They were sitting next to each other in libraries or at desks and sort of through osmosis understanding how the product worked. It was more when we, you know, we launched the ability for teens to register and then work networks and then in 2006 open registration. When we started getting all kinds of people with any email address, it was before it was .edu or like a Microsoft .com email address that was required in order to sign up for Facebook. Then anyone with any email just could register, including people like my dad and my grandma that we realized, wow, in order to get people to this magic moment, how are we going to do that?
36:10What's the most effective way that insight results in in building like a a news or experience? I remember it was just like step one, upload your profile picture. That was really important so people could find you and know who you were. Step two, find your friends. That's where a lot of the sort of contact importing and people you may know and hear other people at your school, and hear mutual friends. That step in the news or experience ultimately became one of the most important drivers of that activation metric that we talked about. I love that you shared that such a recurring theme on this podcast, the power of onboarding, the value of investing in onboarding and the ripple effects of opportunities there.
36:50I love that you also kind of like we're the first like we need like onboarding. That's a thing. That's the thing that's onboarding. I know. I remember the day where I was like, do we need to explain to people how to use this? Is it not obvious? And it's like my dad's like, I don't understand this whatsoever. My dad would go on to become like Facebook's biggest power user because I always like beta tested everything with him. But yeah, there was that was not obvious to us at the time in 2006 that we had to explain to people how to use Facebook. And again, remember that it's fun talking about this because obviously the product has evolved so much, but the principles are relatively the same.
37:34It was the Facebook .com. Eventually it became Facebook .com, but eventually we built a mobile app. And then it was a mobile first product and then it was about mobile photos and then it was about mobile videos. So over time the technology has really changed, but the core use case that we really need to educate people on, which is like how to connect with their friends on Facebook and whatever iteration or product is the same. And so obviously we still have an onboarding today. And it's relatively the same principles like get a profile picture and find your friends. All in the same lines, just maybe a last question around the growth stuff that you worked on, four folks that are thinking driving growth, working on onboarding maybe specifically just, are there any lessons from things that worked super well when you were looking to accelerate growth of the Facebook early on that you think people are maybe sleeping on as lepers and tactics that worked back then that might still be really powerful today.
38:35Well, definitely the understand identify execute I would I would just ask yourselves, do you have the data that you need to know what you need to do on growth? And if not, definitely take the time to instrument that data. The thing that, you know, I think we were relatively lucky. I talked about why I was bullish on Facebook in 2005 even was because there was product market fit. And so for us growth, you know, as much as credit as we give to the growth team, I'm actually not sure how much credit we deserve and how much incremental growth we drove above and beyond the fact that this was a product that had product market fit.
39:16And we benefited in a huge amount from having high demand for the product. So at every step and I talked about the growth team, the projects that we were working on were really at a high level around removing barriers. There were macro barriers like the first project I worked with worked on was high school students on on Facebook, which is an interesting story in it up itself because at that time we almost created a separate website called Facebook Hi just to keep them separate from the college students. But at that time, we were like, no, this is one graph, this is one community college students have friends and people they're connected to of all different ages.
39:56Why by for Kate the graph. And obviously we've maintained that principle ever since. But it was about removing barriers. So you had to be a college student, then you had to be a high school student, then you had to be in a work network, then you had to have any email address. One of the next projects I worked on was not everyone has access to a smartphone. How can we remove the barrier of having access to a smartphone and building more of a rich Facebook experience for someone that was using a feature phone or a lower end device. Internet org, what about removing the barrier of having access to the internet or being able to afford a data plan.
40:34And so those are the macro barriers that the matically the growth team has worked on. What I would say is maybe applicable is really the micro barriers. All of the work that we did on growth around optimizing the flows were really about removing micro barriers. One of the things that I thought was just so elegant was after we did that 2009 instrumentation of all the the flows, the product, the product flows relevant to growth. What we found is 20 % of people aren't actually confirming their email. We tried sending them an SMS. So maybe they would confirm the SMS instead. What we found was a lot of people are actually still clicking on notifications that they're getting, but because it wasn't the specific confirmation email, we weren't able to confirm the account.
41:21And so what we did was allow people to get notifications even as an unconfirmed account. And then if they clicked on any of those notifications, that would count as a account confirmation as well because they proved ownership of the email. It's just removing a micro barrier of having to like go find the confirmation email, click it before you can do anything on the site. So I do think we've been relatively lucky and having like a lot of high demand that meant that we could focus on just removing micro macro barriers. And then on the growth team, a lot of the iterations and optimizations were about removing just sort of friction.
41:56I love that framework of like micro barriers and macro barriers, just thinking about ways to make the successful to more people and also just getting helping them get through the flow faster. I also love your point about how a lot of growth teams get a lot of credit for growing a business when really in many ways it could have done really well, even without that team potentially, because product market was so strong, I think about this with there being be honestly, it was just such like after it gets to certain points, such good product markets fit that who knows what would happen if there was no one working on growth.
42:25It probably would have been okay for a long time. Totally. And then, you know, maybe where we do sort of see the impact is maybe something like the translations thing that we talked about. We would the macro barrier removing the language barrier. And so maybe the approach we took meant that we supported 100 plus languages instead of whatever the professional translators, you know, there's just sort of we have the long tail of languages. So that last person who's still speaking, you know, whatever sort of near extinct language can still use, use Facebook. But yeah, I think that's right. I sometimes think that maybe some of our efforts were really more on the margin of a bigger trend around product market fit.
43:05Finally, the whole thing I just want to highlight again, but you said that I think it's so important and I've always thought it's true. And I love that you confirmed it is that the activation metric that you all rallied around the more the biggest value of it wasn't this is exactly the right regression connection to retention. It's more that we have something we are all going to focus on. And that is where most of the impact comes from is let's get more people to that point, whether it's perfectly right or not, it doesn't really matter. Yes. I think that's really freeing to a lot of people because they're like, oh, we don't know if we're going to be as perfect about this versus just let's just drive some growth and get people to argue enough thinking on that.
43:43Okay, great. You mentioned Naomi's I'm I want to segue to that. So let me first read a quote. So I asked Adam Asari who's head of Instagram what to ask you. I know you guys work together and a bunch of stuff. Here's how he described you. Naomi is called the conductor here at meta. She has an incredible ability to handle the most complex projects and problems and bring the right people together to simplify and solve them. She's very firm yet kind. Her standards are extremely high and she sets the bar. Also, many other people that I message said very similar things about you but how you're incredibly good at taking very complex problems and getting should done, getting them done, simplifying them and getting them done.
44:27So I want to spend some time understanding what you've learned about how to do this. Well, what are kind of like the skills you've collected that allow you to take really complex problems and get to a solution, stay kind, but firm and take on these really hard challenges. So maybe just broadly, I'm curious, what are some of these skills that you have built that allow you to do this? Yeah, well, also that's very kind of Adam. I adore Adam. Obviously he's one of the 10 -year -old people in small group and I've actually gotten the opportunity to work even more closely with him than usual. We recently launched something called Tina Counts in Adam and I worked very closely on that.
45:10In terms of how I do the things people say that I can do, I really rely on Naomi -isms. Like I said, I refer your podcast out a lot because there isn't just a PM university that I can send people to. There isn't a formal training that people can get to become a product manager and that's where Naomi -isms came from. It was stuff that I learned on the job from other people including from Adam that I found myself repeating over and over again. The good PM looks for a way to make that more efficient for me that was writing them down. People start calling them Naomi -isms. I started sharing them internally and then I think two years ago I also started sharing them externally.
45:51Adam referred to me as a conductor. That's one of the Naomi -isms in my role as head of product. I want to educate the PM community about what is PM?
46:11It's the most I say is a PM as a conductor. It says though the team that you are a PM on is in orchestra. There are many different functions in your team that includes legal policy, columns, data, analytics, or sorry, analytics, engineering design, much like there are many different instruments in an orchestra. As a PM, your job is to make sure everyone's playing their part correctly. Every section in the orchestra is playing their part but at the same time they're playing together. They're unified in the music that they're producing and that they're playing at the right tempo. A lot of times I think people use music analogies or vocabulary to describe the work and that includes things like people being in harmony.
46:58A good team, a good PM, a good orchestra is in harmony. They're in sync. They're at the right tempo. They have the right cadence. That's how I imagine. What a PM does that work. Important characteristics are the PM is not the star of the show. Indie conductors don't even say anything during the performance. I would at the same time give PMs like little metronomes and conductor ones. This was something that I used to do when we were smaller just to take the analogy way too far. That's so funny. You actually gave them conductor ones and just to wave around. I would love a conductor one. This episode is brought to you by Epo.
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48:56So PM as conductor is sort of how I describe the product management function. But one of the key Naomi's that I think is really critical to getting stuff done is what I call extreme clarity. I think our jobs are super hard. Extreme clarity means everyone's on the same page. It definitely doesn't mean that they all agree with each other but they just have the same understanding of the facts. So we can disagree but we all believe in the facts which is that there's ABC, our options are XYZ and here are the trade offs, you know, one, two, three. That kind of shared understanding is what extreme clarity is.
49:36That came from a place of just being in many meetings on many emails in many situations where I felt like we actually agree on something. The nature of this conflict is a result of misunderstanding and that seems like an incredible waste of time. And so we want to have extreme clarity so we can just focus our conversations on things when we actually agree not when we are misunderstanding each other. There are a lot of tactics that I use to do. Yeah, I was going to ask how do you do that. That sounds great. How does one get to extreme clarity? So another Naomi is in this canonical everything. So that includes canonical nomenclature.
50:12I often talk about canonical nomenclature. One way to ensure extreme clarity is we have the shared vocabulary. I've been a lot of situations where people are using the same or different words to describe the same or different things which results in talking past each other. One of the most egregious examples of this is when I was working, I was in a conversation around how our reviewers and global operations were performing and we were using consistency and accuracy and are changeably a consistency refers to how often different reviewers agree on the decision accuracy refers to how often the decision is correct according to ground truth.
50:48Those are very different things. We don't want to optimize for consistency because you could be consistently wrong. We want to optimize for accuracy and so that is what canonical nomenclature is is literally writing out all the words and their definitions. So when we communicate, we're using the same vocabulary. I really believe in visuals. I think sometimes just having a conversation or a big meeting where people are talking. I'm just not very auditory. I'm a very visual person. It's hard for me to follow along just by listening. I will often have a visual in a meeting. I will leverage that visual to literally real -time edit.
51:25What is being decided? So for example, if we have multiple options, I will edit the slide that's being projected to say we decided on option one. Here are the next steps. One, two, three. A lot of times people are saying that's not what I heard. I heard this as a next step or I heard that as a next step. I love that because that avoids leaving the meeting and being like, I don't know what we agreed to. I heard this. You heard that. No, actually, we haven't agreed upon set of decisions and next steps that we all real -time edited and looked at together. Just a double click on. I want to move on.
51:55What you're describing for the visual is you're presenting. Here's our options. Here's the three options on a slide. Yes. You all decide we're going to go with option two. You edit the slide with a star. Here's what we chose. Yes. Maybe change and stuff. This is exactly to your point of extreme clarity. People can see clearly. This is what we're choosing. If they disagree and don't realize that's what's happening, it'll be really clear. Totally. One thing people make for me a lot for, but I think is just a great example of extreme clarity is I never use bulleted lists because you can never refer to a bullet.
52:30I always use numbered lists because you can always individual in a meeting as referenced in number two. I have feedback on that versus the third bullet, two up from the second, whatever. That is not extreme clarity. It's very, very small tactical things to bigger things like canonical, everything. But yeah, I can be a little bit. I love that very tactical tip. That is awesome. That's exactly the stuff I look for. Is there any other very nuanced tip along those lines that is helpful in extreme clarity or canonical, everything? canonical, everything. Stop me if I'm getting too wonky. I can really get into this.
53:16We got a ways to go. When I had a face first read along the years, people have given me posters. And the posters say these Naomi is so extreme clarity is one. canonical, everything is another. I think people really associate me with canonical, canonical, canonical. I always want a canonical doc. This came from a place of like me. I work on a lot of different projects. A lot of times I'm ramping up mid -project. I'm like, where can I learn when I need to learn about this project? I ask five different people, get five different answers. That is unacceptable. Everyone should know exactly where the canonical doc is.
53:50That's the one place I can go to to get all the information I need about a project. And it will link to all the other docs. Of course, I'm sure there's hundreds of docs associated with the project, but there needs to be one canonical doc. That canonical doc really has to have the basic information that you need to know. For any project, the basic information that you need to know is what are the discrete areas of work? I call those workstreams. This is pretty obvious. Who are the owners on those workstreams? So for every workstream, there's an owner. Again, it seems pretty obvious. Sometimes it's like in like who's working, who's owning this?
54:23It's like people don't know. That's why I think it's very important to have a single threaded owner. We used to call this a directly responsible individual or a throat to choke. We obviously don't say that anymore. Single threaded owner. Every workstream has a single threaded owner. Sometimes workstreams are really big. You have sub -workstreams underneath them. Everything canonical needs to recur. So you should have an owner or an STO for the sub -workstream.
54:51The other the people on this team work together. I hate pairwise conversations. I feel like they're a waste of time. I feel like you could have four conversations with four different people or one conversation with all four people. Everyone has the same context. Ideally, there's a visual one that meeting and you real -time edited it. There is extreme clarity. The canonical doc will have what is the canonical meetings that people have? What is the canonical email list that you're going to use? What is the canonical workplace chat? Let's not reinvent the same audience 10 different times with different permutations of the people on the working team.
55:27Let's just have one canonical chat. Then often the canonical doc will have the canonical nomenclature. I really believe in frameworks for things that helps drive extreme clarity. A framework is best understood when there's a visual representation of the framework in my mind. So we'll have canonical visuals. That's sort of what I mean by canonical everything. Anytime I start on a new project, everyone knows to send me the canonical doc. I love this. If you come into a project that you're given, that's really gnarly and complex. What do you find are the first couple things you do that make a big dent on helping everyone align and understand what happens, what they should be doing, and what canonical doc.
56:16I'll go through the process of creating that. I think that really falls under this simplification thing. I often go into a project. Everyone's operating at a PhD level. I'm coming in at a kindergarten level. I need to understand, it's almost like all of this complexity we're at a PhD level. I need to create the curriculum. Go back to basic building blocks for the kindergarten level. How do I explain and understand this project at a kindergarten level? It doesn't mean I want to oversimplify. That's not what a simplifier does. They're not oversimplifying, but what they are doing is identifying the most basic building blocks of a complex problem.
56:58And then unfolding or revealing or building on top of them additional complexity and details as you go along. Sometimes I talk about a school pyramid, but I need to establish the kindergarten curriculum and then the elementary school curriculum and then the high school curriculum and then the college curriculum. And then we can operate at the PhD level. But oftentimes people at different, you know, on the project are really different levels of understanding or complexity. And until we have what we call the school pyramid, the curriculums for every level of the project, it's really hard to, it's really hard to make progress.
57:36A lot of times that process of simplification will often identify what are the most important things to deal with on the project. And so what I'm hearing is when you come into a project and the way you simplify is you start putting together a doc that describes these things you're talking about. Here's the work streams, here's the owners, here's the process, here's our canonical meeting style, and that reveals, here's what matters most and where there's confusion. Yes, yes, yeah, that is, and a lot of times what needs to happen in the project is sometimes there's a strategy or an execution issue and sometimes there's a people or a process issue.
58:22I would say 80 % of the time I think it's a people or process issue and that refers to not having the right people on the project or not having the right people but not having the right process by which they work together. A strategy or execution issue, when we get to that, I first try to tackle those or in general I think it's really important to have perfect execution. I want to make sure a project is perfectly executing because only then can we really really reevaluate whether or not the strategy is right or wrong. We're sort of in the worst of all worlds where we are imperfectly executing and therefore at the end of the day the project might fail but we don't know why.
59:02Is it because the strategy was right or wrong or is it because the execution was poor? The ideal case is the strategy was right and you perfectly executed on it. The next best case scenario is the strategy was wrong but you perfectly executed on it because then you learned the strategy was wrong. Re -bamp the strategy and try again. You're really tickling the PM part of my brain. I feel like most PMs listening are like, it has clean documents, really simple processes. The one first of charge links to everything and it just feels good. Totally. Again, sometimes I feel the need to defend that the process is not for process sake.
59:42It's ultimately to help us all move faster and work better. Hopefully that comes through but I deeply believe that it is through this approach that we can move faster and and I have to prove that nobody wants more process and more meetings and more but my goal is that with this we're actually simplifying process and getting less meetings and just making things clearer and ultimately moving faster. I'm going to read another quote from another one of your co -workers, Charles Porch. He's vice president of Global Partnerships and Instagram and he basically said what we've been talking about. Some of the biggest strategic bets and biggest swings meta has made have had Naomi at the helm.
1:00:22No one can hurt cats, drive clarity and get outcomes more seamlessly than she can. She's legendary within meta for her canonical documents.
1:00:33Great. If maybe just like following this thread a little bit further, what's the gnarliest project that you've worked on that would be a good example of you coming in and helping simplifying it over the finish line? Well, Charles, maybe thinking of the most recent project that we've worked on. I don't know if it's necessarily the gnarliest but it's definitely one of the most cross -functional projects that I've worked on before. Basically every team at the company in some way works on youth and last week we actually launched Tina Counts which was a very complex project. Again, like it involved the Instagram team, the Central Youth team, the different teams working on various aspects of this, every function, legal policy, comms, marketing, product.
1:01:27I think we definitely leveraged a lot of these Naomiisms and just to give you a sense of what Tina Counts is, it was basically putting all teams into the safest settings by default on Instagram. The reason I'm working on this, I work across multiple teams at Facebook. Obviously Adam is the head of Instagram and I work closely with him on this. I was referring to yesterday but this is something, these teen accounts is something that we are thinking about how we expand to the other apps that we have including Facebook and WhatsApp and threads. I tend to work on projects that are across our family of apps and future platforms and that's why I was involved in this.
1:02:22Basically what Tina Counts does is put teams in the safest settings. It's super focused on trying to address parents biggest concerns around their teens on social media. This has obviously been a really big topic. We've had a lot of these features and tools. What this launch did is simplify things, standardize things and add a lot more functionality that gives parents controls. I think the thing you really need to know is that for under 16 -year -olds, if they want to change any of these defaults, they're going to have to get their parents permission. It's interesting that we're really going to create an incentive for teens to get their parents involved and to actually set up parental supervision, especially because one of the default settings is a private account.
1:03:04There's tens of millions of teens that currently have public accounts today that we are going to automatically transition to private accounts unless they get their parents permission to state public. It's a relatively big shift of fundamental change for how Instagram works for teens. I would say one of the more complicated projects that I've worked on. Yeah, and it just launched. As a new father, I'm excited for you all to be working on these sorts of things. I don't need it yet, but I'm glad it's going to be there. It's funny how meta and Facebook is in this world where people complain about teens using social media and then you work on making the product better for teens and kids using social media.
1:03:51It's like Facebook is where getting teens on the social media. There's no way to make it feel good to people. No matter what you do, it's if you are going to complain. That's what I mean. Totally. I think the goal of this launch was to orient ourselves. There's a lot of complaints. There's a lot of different voices. I think we just are focused on parents. We think parents know best. Every kid is different and parents know their own kid the best. That has been our north star in terms of their approach here. When I talk about teen accounts, as product people, I think one thing that you would appreciate is the thing that I think is really important when it comes to teens on the internet is really having an understanding of how old someone is when they're using our apps.
1:04:40It's important that we know how old they are because then we can put them in an age -appropriate experience. Now we have teen accounts. We want to put all teens into teen accounts. We all know sometimes teens lie. That's been the biggest feedback that we've been getting. As teens are really smart, they're going to find workarounds. They're going to be creative. They're going to lie about their age. As a product person, the way that I think this should really work is that instead of everyone entering teens use on average 40 apps. Instead of Instagram and the other 39 apps that teens use trying to verify the age of the person using their app, it's for two companies to do this, which is Apple and Google.
1:05:17They do collect the age. They should make that available to developers. We ask for information from the device all the time with user consent. Can Instagram have access to your camera? Can Instagram have access to your location information? Apps should be able to ask, can Instagram have access to your birthday? That would I think elegantly from a product perspective, from a simplification perspective, from a privacy preserving perspective and what's easiest for parents. That would be the right product solution to solve this problem around age that we're all trying to grapple with right now. There's a lot of stuff that we're doing.
1:05:57Part of the reason that this project was so complicated, and I mentioned the age team is like we're building classifiers to try to predict how old people are based on not just the age that they've stated, but based on who they're talking to, what kind of content they're looking at, what the age of the people they're connected to is, do we think that this is actually an adult like they say or is there really a team? We're doing a lot to try to predict age or prevent people from lying about their age, but I think this would be a really big win for the industry. It makes sense to me. Thank you, Lenny.
1:06:38To close out this portion in this chapter of our conversation on Naomi and Naomi's, I know something else that you're really good at that I've heard from a few people is running meetings. Something that a lot of people always want to get better at. Any tips? What have you learned about running grade meetings? A meeting is a high value and high cost sort of amount of time, and then I want to make sure it says productive as possible. What I will do is send an agenda 24 hours prior to the meeting. That agenda will include a pre -read. I've talked to people who, if the pre -read is not attached to the calendar invite or associated with the meeting, at least 24 hours in advance, they will cancel the meeting.
1:07:21That just goes to show we want everybody in the meeting to have full context, have read the pre -read. Often what will happen in the previous 24 hours is because we're all sending pre -reads on Google slides. There will be a lot of conversation and questions that get hashed out leading up to the meeting. During the meeting, like I said, I think it's really important for a group of people to be looking at something and anchoring people on something. If somebody joins the meeting, say five minutes late, they should know exactly where in the agenda you are in the meeting and what is being discussed based on catching up from the visual that's being projected.
1:08:01Usually a meeting can be, and hopefully a meeting is really either, is a decision meeting. So if there is a decision, I need three options and I need a recommendation that should hopefully help focus the meeting. Then, like I said, I will real time edit the visual such that we document and have extreme clarity on what is the option that we agreed on and any next steps that we also agreed to. After the meeting, anyone who wasn't in the meeting, that's fine because within 24, I was post meeting, I will send the notes, reply all to the meeting invite and send the notes. So just like tactically, I use the calendar invite as the canonical unit by which to handle all this communication because a lot of times meetings are one -off, there isn't an existing sort of email or chat thread that maps perfectly to the audience of the meeting.
1:08:55So for me, that is the meeting or the calendar invite. So I'll click on the calendar invite, reply all, include the pre -read, pre -meeting, and then do this like reply all again post meeting 24 hours with the notes and decisions and the next steps. I love this. So many, very specific tactics here. I love it. This is food from my brain. I love the, always have three options in a recommendation. That's such a simple thing to recommend, but such a powerful way of operating as a PM. Just like, here's the options, here's what I recommend, here's what. Oh, one one thing I forgot that I learned from Guy Rosen, he is our chief security officer is when you have three options in a recommendation.
1:09:39In terms of evaluating the options, I don't love pros and cons. It's a flat list of text. It's hard to, you know, just get the big picture from that. Oftentimes, we'll use a traffic light. That means that the three options are three rows. The columns in the table will be criteria by which to evaluate the options. Those could either be functions. So for example, if I have three options as the rows, column one could be the legal perspective. Column two could be the policy perspective. Colp three could be the privacy or product perspective. Alternatively, columns could map to different criteria like what we're optimizing for.
1:10:19So it could be the user experience, it could be the engineering feasibility, it could be the, you know, internal complexity, whatever, whatever are the criteria should be laid out in the columns. And then obviously it should be color coded, red, yellow, green based on how it stacks up against those criteria. And what this allows is to get back to the point of the visual as you can quickly look at the three options. See where's the most red? And sort of roll that out. Ideally, the recommendation has some combination of like, you know, the more green or yellow than the other options. And then obviously within the cells, you can spell out the specific rationale for the coloring.
1:10:59But I think this is a really good way to to run a meeting and just create extreme clarity around how you're evaluating the options in a way that like a flat list of pros and cons just doesn't. What other podcasts would have this level of detail of how to run a discussion on a decision. And this is exactly a people want to hear. So this product market fit for listeners podcast. I love it. I love it. And obviously the reason this is more effective is it's not just like here's a quick sentence on the on the pro and condoms like here's what I actually think if this is good or bad or the things that matter to the business.
1:11:39So that's exactly right. It also gives people a framework to plug into a lot of times the creation of a pre -read for these discussions involves many different people from many different teams and functions. If you have a traffic light, they can own filling out their cell. They can own the rationale behind the legal position on option one, two, and three. And in general, I'm super into frameworks that allow people to plug into and clearly represent their point of view. I love it. Final question. Completely different topic. I saw a Wall Street Journal story about how you exercise and your exercise of regimen and how important that is to your life and career.
1:12:20Now most people don't have a Wall Street Journal story but their exercise regimen, especially a tech worker. And I know this is just important to how you to your work that you and they wrote that this basically helps you become better at your job. Any advice there for folks that want to, I don't know, lean into exercise exercise more for how to actually do that because your advice is this actually makes you better at work and life. I believe that. People are like, what are you training for? And I'm like, I'm training for life. Like I have four musts. It is eat, sleep, alone time and exercise. Those are the things that I need in order to perform in the other areas in my life.
1:12:58It seems pretty obvious but until recently I actually did not prioritize sleep. My boyfriend is actually super into sleep and we have the eight sleep. We have IMS. We have blackout shades. We have like good sleep hygiene. And so I'm getting much better at that. But exercise is something that I've always been on top of. Alone time is also a musty for me because I'm an introvert. I need that time to to recharge. Otherwise, I think I get kind of weird people. In terms of how I prioritize it, I am it's sort of a non -negotiable or table stakes every morning. I have to work out. I am also lucky enough to work in an environment where I can work out close to work which I often do.
1:13:43I think working out is sure the hour of the day that I'm doing my exercise. But I also view like I said, life is a workout. Performing at work is a workout. I need to be able to move. I need to feel comfortable. It's very physical I think, especially if you're trying to really hard to be a conductor running around with like a metaphorical conductor wand. I need to be able to move a while ago. And that's what the Wall Street Journal article was about. I set a goal of doing five pull ups. I read somewhere in an article that less than one person of women can actually do pull ups. I think having a goal is really helpful.
1:14:22That's something that I worked on and anyone can do this. Truly, if you train for it, I think it's potentially more technique for me than like strength per se. And I worked up towards that goal. I think exercise in addition to all of the physical benefits primarily has a mental health benefit, I think for me. And also there are just like a lot of lessons that I think I take from exercise. So for example, I think being able to do five pull ups sort of taught me I can do hard things. In this sort of really narrow measurable way, which gave me confidence in other aspects. At a friend who her goal was to do one push up.
1:15:05One push up. She's like, I want to be able to do one push up. And that was really motivating to her. And she finally got there and then she could do more push ups. That's awesome. Yeah. Similar. I have so many notes here as you were talking. The other is sleep advice. So I'm asked. I have an awesome I'm asked that I'll recommend in the show notes. Please. What is it? Of all the things I've recommended in all the various places. I get the most comments about thank you for this very specific I'm asked. It changed my life. It's like a wow. It's one Tim Ferris is often recommended. Okay. W a o I'll link to it in the show notes.
1:15:39But it's a great wow. Let me look it up real quick because people are going to be like, oh, I'm going to get it. Wow. I'm asked. The one that we have has sort of questions around the eyes such that it's you have is not flush against your eyes. Yeah. This is the same. Okay. Oh great. W a o w a w sleep mask on Amazon 13 bucks. My wife and I both sleep with these eye masks. It's ridiculous until you're like, I can't sleep without one now. Totally. Well, there's a lot of research that even like ambient lighting results in lower quality sleep. So I think that's why the blackout shades and the eye mask just help.
1:16:18In short, it's truly dark. Yeah. I was just watching on podcasts and advice. There was even like your your smoke alarm with a little light is too much light. Like, you need to cover that up to create real darkness. And why not just wear an eye mask? You don't have to worry about any of that. Yeah. Totally. Okay. And then one thing I didn't mention when you're talking about the conductor, the PM as a conductor, that's exactly the matter for I've always used my entire career when people ask me about what is the product manager. So we're like, really? Yeah. I have all these slides of like, here's the PM.
1:16:49It's like a symphony and a conductor standing there. Lenny, do you know how happy that makes me? Because I feel like sometimes people are like, that sounds crazy. But the fact that you actually came to that same conclusion makes me like, like, why did why? Why did you come to that conclusion? I'm just curious. Because as you said, the PM's not like doing the not making the thing. They're just helping each of the people who are the most talented at their very specific skill, do the best possible work. And their back is, you know, to the audience, they're kind of trying to stay out of the way. Even though they come in everyone claps for them.
1:17:29And then in theory, they could like step in a little bit to help out when you need, you know, they can pinch it on like design here and there and research in there, probably not engineering. So those are kind of the reasons and, you know, they're not in charge that, you know, the violin, the Cherwine violinist is the actual person that's making the music and the best at this thing. It's so great to hear somebody else talk about this too. I have to thank you. And I think that that is really how I view my role.
1:17:59And what I do, and I think maybe just hearing you talk about it reminded me why I think I put so much emphasis on just elevating the people on my team and the people around me. And one of the, you know, sort of candidly, one of the development areas for me, and it could be sort of downstream, because I do have this analogy of how to be a PM is that the growth feedback or the constructive feedback for me is really learning when to leave from the front more. Maybe when to be less of a quiet conductor that's really elevating the first -chair violinist. And be more, be more front -facing. I think a lot of my approach and my leadership style is really leading through the people on my team and helping grow them.
1:18:48And a lot of times I think that, you know, they're dedicated, their experts, they know, you know, particular areas obviously as a head of product, I manage it portfolio of different projects of which each of them has the incredible leader on it. And so oftentimes I'm just really trying to lead from behind and help them be as successful as possible. But there is a time and a place when maybe that silent conductor needs to take more of a vocal and front -facing role. And exactly what you mean. I have the same problem when I was a PM, because there's always this like fear that PMs in charge and telling everyone to do.
1:19:24And so I had the opposite of like, okay, and that's not me. I'm like, I'm gonna just let you do the things you think are best. And I'll just make sure the best ideas come to the surface. And I had to learn exactly the same thing. Sometimes people just want you to point them in the right direction and make the decision in the end. And the best PMs are people that have the best opinions about what is gonna work, how intuition of what users need, have strong product sense and all that stuff. I've had this post that I'm trying to work on along these lines where there's this kind of reaction to PMs aren't the CEO of the product.
1:19:56They're just, you know, like, no, don't call yourself that. I think it's the opposite. I think PMs actually should think of themselves as the CEO of the product, not in terms of they are in charge and can fire people and manage people, but they're the closest heuristic for what the CEO and the founder wants. They think what does the business need? What is gonna help the user, the customers, what's gonna help us grow? And I think the PM is the closest to that role. And so I think it's important to think of that role as that, even that you're not, you know, technically in charge. Yeah, and maybe, maybe you could call it something different.
1:20:28But I totally agree with that sentiment. I think there was some, I think we were trying to, you know, push against the criticism that like PMs were sort of bossing everybody around and like, but I actually, there's baggage there. There's baggage there. I call it, there's something called the great non -technical sort of, there was a period of time at Facebook where I think the PMs really had to prove their value to the engineers and show that we were actually not slowing things down with all this extra process you can imagine. And engineer, hearing me talk about like how to run a meeting and all the canonical docs and just be like, what the sense terrible.
1:21:08So yeah, we had to prove that. But I really, I really like, I actually do think the PM is the closest to really channeling what the CEO or the founder wants. And another thing that I've worked on, and then I am working on is really developing a much stronger first party perspective. Like, it's not enough for the PM to run this people in process that we talked about. Obviously, I love that stuff. I lean that that way. But at the end of the day, a PM cannot like outsource their perspective or delegate their, you know, their thinking through people in process. And so for me, that has been a learning curve.
1:21:49And I am trying to, as someone who's very like, sort of consensus driven, I want to hear all the different opinions from all the different people. I can still do that. I can still, through people in process, talk to all the different folks working on a project, hear their first party perspectives, and then use all of that to synthesize my own because it will be unique, given my role on the team and just sort of what I'm trying to optimize for. And really make sure that I both develop that first party opinion and communicate it clearly. And like you said, the best PMs, I think, can do it all. Just to follow this thread, one thread further, because this is something I think a lot of broadcasters work on and are told to work on.
1:22:33Is there anything you found to be helpful in building this skill in yourself that might be helpful to folks that are working on it? I'm lucky enough because I sort of have a big team. I have someone who helps me schedule my time. And I used to goal that person and goal our work together on just being as efficient as possible. But now when I am goaling that person and what we're trying to accomplish here is giving me as much time to develop a first party point of view. And so sort of how do I, what is the most effective way to do that? And for me, it is having, you know, two to three hour blocks of time where I can actually sit, think, have space.
1:23:16But maybe something that's different about me than other people is it's very, very helpful for me to talk to, maybe one or two people. Not being a big meeting with like 40 people sort of trusted people. I have an incredible person on my team that I talk to that I think really helps me clarify my thinking. And so to go back to the beginning, just I'm trying to find blocks in my day that I can spend time thinking and also within those blocks, they don't have to be alone time. They can also be scheduling sort of my chief of staff and like my day head of data to bounce ideas off of as a song board because that is the process that I know works best for me in terms of really developing a first party perspective.
1:23:59So it's a good tip. It makes sense if you're just spending all your day coordinating in meetings, checking things, reviewing things, you have no time to actually think about what you think is the right move and answer and strategy and next step. And so that's a really good tip. If you're finding that you're just spending, that you don't have time to think about what you think is the right solution and the right strategy and the right product decision, find just block time to think about the stuff. I always try to, I have these deep work slots in my calendar. I've written about this a few times where it's three hours and the invite, I don't know if you can do this these days, but it was just, if you book time during the slot, I will slap you.
1:24:41That's amazing. And you know, I think for me, some people might need three hours on their own, I think for me, and I don't know about you talking things through with one or two people really helps me as well. So sometimes it was almost quite challenging for me to think of going into a room by myself for three hours and then I was just going to figure it on my own. This is like a, and I don't know how people think strategically the best, but it doesn't have to necessarily be alone. It's a great tip. Just have a sparring partner or someone like, yes, is just interested in exploring ideas and not just have a clear agenda.
1:25:25I love that. Okay. Naomi, I love this tangent we went on as we were wrapping up. I know totally amazing. There's a lot of good stuff that we covered there, but I know you have to run. So before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you wanted to cover or share? I think honestly, I think I just did it. I didn't even realize I wanted to talk about that, but it just all came out. I love it. I love that. Those are the best nuggets. With that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? I'm ready. First question. What are two or three books that you recommend in most other people?
1:25:59I really love narrative nonfiction. So I like the Eric Larson books. They're a very compelling and page turning way to learn about history. I recently read Devil in the White City, and there is also one about Churchill's first year. By Eric Larson, another book that, you know, just the canonical book that I often recommend is Sapiens. I think she's a great example of what we talk about when we talk about simplifiers. You took a very complex subject, which is all of human history, and tried to pull out the nuggets. You know, I think his thesis that what differentiates humans from other forms of life is really our ability to tell and believe in myths or stories.
1:26:43He cites money and religion as examples. But also, there's a graphic novel version of Sapiens. He almost has the PhD level. Then he literally has the high school level, which is a graphic novel version. He also has unstoppable us, which I think is a kid's version. So clearly, here is someone who is a master. There's a James Clear thing that a friend surely told me about. If you're a beginner, you have ignorant simplicity and intermediate, it has like functional complexity. And then like a master of a topic has profound simplicity. And that's what I feel like knowing you've all her Rari really has because he can go all the way up and down the school pyramid in terms of explaining this really complex topic.
1:27:31What I heard about him is that he goes on a one month meditation retreat every year, where it's just him silent meditation retreat. And people ask him, how do you have time to do that when you have so much work to do? He's like, the only way I'm able to achieve these books where I synthesize all of human history into a story is because I do that because I can clear my mind and just be. And many to our previous conversation, that is how he himself and like is best. That's what he needs to do. I might need two to three hours a day and a sparring partner. No, you've all her Rari needs a month in silent meditation.
1:28:06Great point. Everyone has their own way of locking their brain on devil and white city. Fun fact, when I read that, I was like, I need to go to Chicago and see the stuff that they wrote about in this book about the world's fair in style when to Chicago. You did because of that book. Yes. Wow. Have you read this blended in the vile? Yes, that was the about the telegram, right? Yeah, right? Oh no, there's Churchill's first year. But you know, he has like six books. I haven't read all of them. Okay. I think it was even though that one or something about a telegram, I did read it. It was less good, though, is what I find.
1:28:42I found the devil in the white city was the best. Was the best. Amazing. Okay. We'll keep going. Second question. Do you have a favorite movie or TV show you recently watched? Do you really enjoy? We just watch showgun. I thought it was really good. Have you seen it? I have. Yes. I loved it. Very gruesome, but amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it was, I had to cover my eyes for some of it. And then we also the movie that we just watched was June 2. Chris Cox, who's our chief product officer, actually recommended that as one of the, you know, best films that he's seen recently. And I really trust his opinion on that.
1:29:15So we caught up by watching June 1 and then watched June 2. And it was really good. I watched that. And I maxed the Arn't San Francisco. There's like insanely large screen. I highly recommend that. And I don't know if they, I don't think it's still out there. Yeah, ladies ridiculous. Amazing. I think there's another one coming someday. Oh, yeah. Yeah. June 3. June 3. Oh, John, just keep them coming. Next question. Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered? They really love. So I'm going to check out that. I'm asked that you recommended the wall, whoa thing. But I know it's super expensive, but have you tried the eight sleep?
1:29:55I have my wife doesn't love it. She doesn't like the noise. It's like a very slight noise when it, you know, starts up, but she wakes her up. So we don't have it anymore. I, yeah. And I noticed that too. I think maybe the, they just released like the latest edition. One of the features that is the killer feature for me is that it does a vibrating alarm. So that when I wake up at 6 a .m., I do not wake up everyone in the house at 6 a .m. And so it's just, it's a thermal alarm. It makes the bed on my side hotter. And it also slightly vibrates underneath my ear to wake me up. It's under your ear.
1:30:33I remember vibrating the whole, my whole part of the bed. Now, what is that? The new feature. Maybe this is like, I'm on version three. Maybe there's a version four. I don't know. Maybe that was version one. Yeah, that's so funny. Um, nice thing about my life right now is that because I have no meetings or boss, I don't need an alarm. However, it's amazing. However, we have a young kid and he wakes up at 6 to 6 30. So that's my alarm usually. Oh, and then the other thing I wanted to mention, I don't know if you have this problem. But I'm like, I'm trying to get like 100 grams of protein every day.
1:31:06I think a lot of my friends and I are sort of, you know, focused on protein consumption right now. And so my trainer, who helped me actually do the pull ups and the push ups started a protein, protein powder company, protein products company called pro mix that I really love. And he has like this rice crispy treat thing that I usually eat every morning and gives me 15 grams of protein. I just bought that. What? Yes. I was reading Kevin Rose had a his favorite, his like health stack. And I don't know that's the brand, but it's exactly a rice crispy thing with 15 grams of protein. So I'm pretty sure that's it.
1:31:44I'm pretty sure that's it because the rice crispy peak part of it is very unique. So let me let me know what you think. I really like the chocolate chip flavor. I love them. Okay. I just saw a funny TikTok where it's like I never thought when I grew up in being an adult, I'd be thinking thinking so often about protein and how much protein is she eating. Maybe is this maybe this is 40. I don't know. I don't know much for me, but yes, I've been thinking a lot about protein. The other thing I I really like is canned seafood, which has a lot of protein. So something called fish wife has like just sort of hipster like chicken and the sea.
1:32:23Oh yeah, I'm the very cute. Yes, my wife gets those. Another protein tip. They were a former sponsor, but no longer, but it's an amazing protein tip. Maui, Newy, Venison, beef sticks. It's 10 grams of protein and it's a delicious, venison, beef stick. Thank you. Look at what we become Lenny. This protein is zest. It's just going to be so protein rich. Amazing. Okay. What else we got here? Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to and find helpful in work and life? Last month we were watching like it's like two weeks ago, we're watching the US Open and we discovered that as people come through the hallway to come onto the court to play, the players all pass the Billie Jean King sign that says pressure is privilege.
1:33:15And I really loved that because I think just sort of with the Tina Counts launch and just like a lot of the more public -facing stuff that I have done recently, I do like we talked about get nervous and I think pressure is privilege. Just reminds me that a lot of this stuff is a really incredible opportunity that I that I have and to be grateful for it. I can still be nervous, but also recognize and be grateful for it. I love that. Just the remind yourself that you're lucky to be feeling this pressure because I mean something is important. Slightly different version of that is a suck at the event in the chase center that you were also at had the shirt that said in line.
1:34:02Learning through suffering. Learning through suffering.
1:34:08Learning through suffering. I really I like that one too.
1:34:15I mean it's been I think he was you know he spoke a little bit about this being an entrepreneur is really really hard. Yeah they had the Jensen line about how people asked him if he'd start in video again and his answer was like if I knew how insanely hard and stressful this was I would not.
1:34:34Very honest. Okay last question. So Charles your former colleague told me that you're an incredible surfer and that you design your life almost around where and when you can go surf. Yeah. Any story or lesson or I don't know take away from surfing and impact that's out of you. Lessons of that surfing. So I think surfing and life have a lot of parallels. It is an incredibly mental sport for me. The biggest thing that I can do to improve my surfing is to improve my confidence and so when I'm going for a wave a lot of times I will hesitate or pull back or you know instead the best thing that you can actually do in that situation is stand up into your fear like it's to to ride the wave that is the safest thing you can do that is the you know thing that you're actually supposed to do but on every dimension that's the right thing and so it's almost I guess the motto there is stand up into the fear when you're going you're about to catch a wave and actually the things that you can do when you're afraid for example like I said pull back or like throw your board are actually quite counterproductive and actually unsafe and could lead to more more injury and so it's just another reminder that you really need to commit and stand up into your fear.
1:36:04I love it stand up into your fear and pressure is a privilege and learning through suffering Naomi this was so much fun I'm so happy that you agreed to do this two final questions working folks fine you align where they find Naomi's and anything else you want to point folks to and how can this just useful to you. So believe it or not I have Naomi .com I know buzz has buzz .com I bought that URL I think maybe 20 years ago 15 to 20 years ago from a farmer actually whose name was Naomi and or whose wife's name was Naomi rather and his wife was not using it and so they got it for quite quite a steal and I will just say that I've had other fake like you know famous Naomi is much more famous than much more well known than I who would would like to have Naomi .com make offers for this URL but I I really like having just sort of a home on the internet where I can put my Naomi isms they're also available on Instagram Naomi .com.
1:37:02How can listeners be useful to you. I think Lenny I mentioned this before we got on the call I don't tend to do that much sort of public speaking or talking about Naomi isms I did some of it two years ago when we first launched but I as a result of being on the podcast and stuff would love to do more of this and so I think any feedback on what listeners would like to see or hear from me questions that would sort of give me a reason where I felt like it would be useful for me to to do more on Naomi isms would be super helpful. Sweet so if you have any of those Liam in the YouTube comments is usually the easiest place for folks to leave that Naomi thank you so much for being here this was so much fun.
1:37:45Thank you Lenny. 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 see you in the next episode
From the publisher
Naomi Gleit is head of product at Meta, joined as employee #29, and is the longest-serving executive at Meta other than Mark Zuckerberg. She’s been at the center of some of the company’s most foundational products, including Facebook’s early growth team. In our conversation, we discuss:
• How she originally landed at Facebook
• The evolution of Facebook’s growth team and key metrics
• Lessons from working with Mark Zuckerberg
• Insights from Facebook’s activation metric and retention strategies
• Leadership lessons and “Naomiisms” for effective product management
• Tactics for creating extreme clarity in team communication
• Advice for running effective meetings
• More
—
Brought to you by:
• Pendo—The only all-in-one product experience platform for any type of application
• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security
• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments
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Find the transcript and show notes at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/metas-head-of-product-naomi-gleit
—
Where to find Naomi Gleit:
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naomigleit
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-gleit/
• Website: https://naomi.com/
—
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
—
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Naomi Gleit
(01:53) Naomi’s journey at Meta
(06:18) Landing a job at Facebook
(10:40) Becoming a product manager
(13:40) Working as Head of Product at Meta
(14:55) Insights on working with Mark Zuckerberg
(20:04) Small Groups and “disagreeable givers”
(24:28) The legendary growth team
(33:45) Activation metrics and onboarding
(43:44) Naomi’s leadership and PM philosophy
(53:00) Canonical documents
(55:55) Simplifying complex projects
(01:00:33) Teen accounts: a case study
(01:06:37) Running effective meetings
(01:12:10) The importance of exercise
(01:16:36) The role of a product manager
(01:25:49) Lightning round
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
—
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe




