Hot takes and techno-optimism from tech’s top power couple | Sriram and Aarthi

Sriram Krishnan 0:00 I hate jobs to be done. I think it's a terrible framework. I think no successful company has ever been built on top of JDBD, and if you've picked JDBD, you're probably doomed. And I'll give you an example. When you sign up for Instagram right now, when you signed up for Facebook, uh, for many, many years, Facebook knew that it needed to get you to 10 friends in 14 days. If you got your 10 friends in 14 days, you were probably gonna use Facebook. So they'd be like, "Well, we want to throw every tool we have at our disposal to get you to 10 friends in 14 days." So if you signed on for Facebook for many, many years, you get this little thing called People You May Know, and it'll show you. Then you have this person who just signed up on Facebook, and you're like, "Why do I want to see this person?" It's not because you need a friend, but 'cause they need a friend.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 0:34 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 0:34 So what Facebook did was it made your experience slightly worse to make that person's experience slightly better.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 0:41 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 0:41 This was performing no job for you. It was trying to perform a job for them. (upbeat music)

Lenny Rachitsky 0:49 Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, for the first time ever, I've got two guests, Aarti Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan, both former product managers who between them worked at basically every major tech company, including Netflix, Meta, Snap, Twitter, Microsoft, even Clubhouse. Sriram is now a partner at a16z. They're actually married, and both individually amazing. Together, they host The Aarti & Sriram Good Times Show, which started on Clubhouse, it's now on YouTube, and famously they had Elon Musk on back in the day, which led to Clubhouse's crazy rocket ship growth, which we definitely touch on. This episode is definitely the most fun conversation I've had yet on this podcast. We cover all kinds of areas, including this trend of techno-optimism, building your network, creating content online and how to go about doing that, becoming a product leader, community building, and a hilarious rant at the end about why the jobs to be done framework does not work. I had such a good time chatting with these two, and I know you will enjoy this episode. With that, I bring you Aarti and Sriram after a short word from our select sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth. If your business stores any data in the cloud, then you've likely been asked or you're gonna be asked about your SOC 2 compliance. SOC 2 is a way to prove your company's taking proper security measures to protect customer data, and builds trust with customers and partners, especially those with serious security requirements. Also, if you want to sell to the enterprise, proving security is essential. SOC 2 can either open the door for bigger and better deals, or it can put your business on hold. If you don't have a SOC 2, there's a good chance you won't even get a seat at the table. But getting a SOC 2 report can be a huge burden, especially for startups. It's time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A .com/lenny to learn more, and to claim your discount. Get started today. This episode is brought to you by Dovetail, the customer insights platform for teams that gets you from data to insights fast, no matter the method. There's so much customer data to get through, from user interviews to NPS, sales calls, usability tests, support tickets, app reviews. It's a lot, and you know that if you're building something, hidden in that data are the insights that will lead you to building better products. And that's where Dovetail can help. Dovetail allows you to quickly analyze customer data from any source and transform it into evidence-based insights that your whole team can access. If you're a product manager who needs insights to motivate your team, a designer validating your next big feature, or a researcher who needs to analyze fast, Dovetail is the collaborative insights platform your whole team can use. Go to dovetailapp.com/lenny to get started today for free. That's dovetailapp.com/lenny. (upbeat music)

Lenny Rachitsky 4:16 Aarti and Sriram, welcome to the podcast.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:20 Thank you. Thanks so much for having us, Lenny. We are, you know, this is a bucket list thing, because, you know, we are on Lenny's podcast.

Sriram Krishnan 4:27 I know, long time subscriber, listener-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:31 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 4:31 ... uh, and you know, now, uh, uh, here. Wow, this feels like... I don't want to screw this up.

Lenny Rachitsky 4:36 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:36 First time caller. Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 4:37 Yeah, first time caller. Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:38 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 4:38 Let's not screw this up.

Lenny Rachitsky 4:39 You guys are hilarious. I appreciate it, and feel very flattered. You two are the first duo on this podcast, and I couldn't think of a better two people to start this podcast with. I have so much stuff I want to dig into. I think we're gonna have a lot of fun. So again, thanks for joining me here.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:54 That's awesome. Big fan.

Sriram Krishnan 4:56 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:56 Uh, honestly, yeah. This just-

Sriram Krishnan 4:58 Yep.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 4:58 I'm excited. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 5:00 So I don't know if you remember this. I was thinking about this story. Back when you were doing the Good Times show, you invited me on the Good Times show, and I was like thinking, hesitating, like, "I don't know, that's kind of scary." And then the next day Elon came on, and then it just blew up, and I was like, "Shit, I missed my chance." And then it became really fancy people, and I was like, "I'm not, I'm never gonna make it back on there." And so I kind of look back at that as like, ah, I hesitated too long. That's a lesson.

Sriram Krishnan 5:22 Well, the way you should interpret that is, they couldn't get me on, so their backup choice was Elon. Like, I would have been the main event, and they were like, "Well, oh, we couldn't get Lenny, we'll get..." No, but seriously-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 5:33 (laughs) .

Sriram Krishnan 5:33 ... uh, we've been a, we've, we've been a huge fan. And those are, like, just, you know, uh, the fun times. We used to do the show obviously on, uh, just Clubhouse, and now we do the show on YouTube every, every, wherever you can listen to a podcast. And a lot of people remember us for the Elon episode, but I will tell you this, it is often the folks, uh, who were working technology who are not as famous, you're obviously very famous now, uh, but, uh, but who really connected with the audience. And, uh, but yeah, you know what? You should be able to come back probably be... You know, we have you back on the show now.

Lenny Rachitsky 6:05 There we go, all worked out.

Sriram Krishnan 6:06 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 6:06 Opening act, yeah. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 6:07 Speaking of Elon, I was always curious, how did you actually get him on the show? I remember that was back before he was, like, very vocal in the world, and he was, like, hard to, you know, learn from, and hear from. How did you actually pull that off?

Sriram Krishnan 6:17 ... well, I think it's actually, uh, kind of similar to how, uh, a lot of good things in my career have happened, which is I just had a conversation on the internet. Like, I have this whole thing where I do think a lot of people trying to get, you know, get ahead in their career, especially in technology, should just write cold emails, cold DMs, notes, product content, et cetera, and that leads to good things. In Elon's case, actually, what wound up happening was a few years ago, he DMed me out of the blue.

Lenny Rachitsky 6:45 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 6:45 Uh, at the time, he- I was working at Twitter, and I think he saw something I'd written and wanted something from the company, and I think he kind of went through the org chart and he DMed me, and I was like, "Well, I want to help you," and he sent me his phone number. And I called him, and I was like, "This is surreal." And we had a conversation and we sort of built a relationship after that. And when, you know, this was, uh, when Clubhouse first came on the scene, and I was like, "Well, who do we get on?" And Elon hadn't done a lot of press appearances. I think he's done a lot more since then, obviously. And I texted him, and he was like, "I'm game." And you know, the rest is history.

Lenny Rachitsky 7:20 Amazing. I love that Elon just DMed you. Shreya, I'm so-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 7:23 Slid into his DMs.

Lenny Rachitsky 7:24 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 7:25 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 7:26 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 7:26 You know the crazy part of that story was, uh, I texted him saying, "You should come on the show." And he said sure, and then he tweeted about it. And I will tell you that when Elon tweets about you and, well, even more, maybe now, like, more so now, like, your phone just melts. And then for the entire afternoon, I had like hundreds of thousands of people asking me what's going to happen. Uh, the Clubhouse people-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 7:45 But also on Clubhouse, like if you opened the Clubhouse app that day, there were so many rooms that were trying to collect questions for us.

Sriram Krishnan 7:53 Yeah, I remember that.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 7:54 And help us prepare. And it was just, like there was so much pressure just scrolling through the hallway and trying to, like, look through. It's like, "Oh my God, is this real?" Like, we are the people that they're talking about here. This is crazy. I don't know if you've listened to the actual thing, but it was-

Sriram Krishnan 8:08 No.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 8:08 ... pretty cool because we got to ask him questions we always wanted to ask, like, when do we get to Mars? Like, you know, it was kind of fun. Uh, and then after that, again, it was this like, we got a bunch of people reaching out and being like, "You should have asked this question."

Sriram Krishnan 8:22 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 8:22 "You guys are not professional journalists." And we're like, "No, we're not." Like, what gave it away, you know? We're just like random two people who are just talking to this guy. So uh, it was really fun.

Lenny Rachitsky 8:32 Yeah, I remember that. I remember journalists were like, "They're not actually asking hard questions. How dare they have them on, give them a platform to share things without any criticism."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 8:39 (laughs) And we were like, "We are not those people that you think we are."

Sriram Krishnan 8:43 Yep.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 8:43 Like that, you know, that's just never been our job.

Sriram Krishnan 8:46 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 8:46 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 8:47 I have so many questions that spiral from this discussion, but I want to ask one quick Clubhouse question. So, Aarti, you worked at Clubhouse for a while.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 8:53 That's right.

Lenny Rachitsky 8:54 Very tactically, I feel like they're really smart initially with their growth strategy of just getting fancy smart people in there talking and pontificating. They had Naval and Marc Andreessen and then eventually Elon-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 9:05 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 9:05 ... and other people. And that was such a smart way to get people to get in there and want to get in there, to listen to them, to engage with them. What's your take on that as just like a growth strategy to get a social network bootstrapped? And then just generally, I guess, any thoughts on the journey of Clubhouse? You know, it's had a big rise, it's kind of, you know-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 9:22 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 9:22 ... fluctuated a bit.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 9:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all, all good questions here. I think growth strategy, that's a great, like, way to acquire people right at the top of the funnel, right? Like, you kind of treat, like once you've done this a few times you kind of see everything as a funnel and you're like, "Well, are you like retaining people? Are you not? Are you, is it like top of the funnel impressions or do they stick around?" So I think having, you know, people like Marc Andreessen and people like Naval, and they were not doing this out of like any, you know, they- they were really, really interested. Like, when we, we got invited by Marc, and Marc was like, "Check out..." Like, this is way before they, like when A16Z even invested in it. It was like, "This product is amazing." These, you know, these folks are, like, doing something really cool. This is gonna be the future, it's amazing. So, it gave them a platform to go speak out, and live social audio just made a ton of sense, right? I will say, Clubhouse, you know, I feel like they get this unfair attention and criticism. It's a, what, three-year-old startup?

Lenny Rachitsky 10:17 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 10:18 And, you know, I've done two startups. The second one I did, like three years in, we still kind of sort of were like struggling and trying to figure out, like, what we were doing. So I mean, I feel like founders just need some time to like breathe in and kind of figure out what to go do. So I'm bullish on Clubhouse.

Lenny Rachitsky 10:34 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 10:34 I think they'll figure it out. And Paul and Rohan are like great, great founders. They've been doing social stuff for a decade plus, and so they're gonna figure it out. And I know that it's like they get this thing on like, "Oh, they were really hot during the pandemic. Is this is a pandemic fad versus not?"

Lenny Rachitsky 10:49 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 10:50 I don't know. It's, it's a product at the end of the day, and you're going to have to, like, find product-market fit, and I think they'll figure it out.

Sriram Krishnan 10:56 Yeah. I also, I think the broader question of how do social products acquire users, uh, is super interesting. One of my favorite pieces written on this is Eugene Wei's, uh, Status as a Service.

Lenny Rachitsky 11:06 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 11:07 Eugene should absolutely be on your podcast someday.

Lenny Rachitsky 11:09 That'd be awesome.

Sriram Krishnan 11:10 And, uh, I don't know, it's a 10,000-word piece, which is amazing, and highly suggest people read it. But one of the key takeaways from the piece is the idea that when you have a new network, think of it as a new country, you want the high-status people, and high-status meaning they're interesting, people want to be where they are in some shape or form because they have money, they're smart, they're cool, they're good-looking, whatever it may be, and you want to get them onto your network. And there's actually an interesting corollary that they're often underserved by other existing platforms. Uh, and because if they were already well-served, they wouldn't want to move to you. And Eugene doesn't talk about it, but if I look at, say, the history of all the three, four large social media companies, you've seen this pattern. For example, they often each had a breakout set of stars who were unique to the platform. For example, if you look at, say, Snapchat, you had folks like Kylie Jenner, who really broke out first. If you look at Instagram, I would think The Rock, you know, Cristiano Ronaldo, a lot of others are, uh, organic to Instagram. But let's say, let's say you get to TikTok. One of the things you'll see is none of the folks from the Instagram world really moved to TikTok. And there's a couple reasons. One, they didn't really need to, because they were, you know, already popular on some of these other existing platforms. But two, TikTok actually took advantage of a different set of skillsets, you know? People who are really good on video, people who could dance, be funny. And so you saw the rise of Charli D'Amelio and Addison and, you know, um, so many others who were different. So you, every single time, I think you need to go after a set of people who are high-status who are also underserved. So, kind of tying it back to Clubhouse, I think one of the interesting things is like, I think the celebrities are super interesting. Uh, but what is more interesting for me is all the homegrown folks. I actually consider us as a part of that. We would not be here doing this show if it wasn't, uh, for Clubhouse. There are many folks, uh, who kind of had that original launch using the platform.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 12:55 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 12:55 So I think if we, if, for folks here who are thinking about social platforms, it's kind of interesting about, okay, you need interesting people from elsewhere, but you also need homegrown talent. And by the way, you...... are a perfect example of this phenomenon because, you know, you are Substack's homegrown talent.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 13:10 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 13:11 Uh, and, uh, and I think you bring a lot of value to Substack and, you know, and there're a lot of people with huge newsletters, et cetera, but I think you, you, your rise and, you know, your sort of popularity is so tied to, uh, Substack now, and that's, I think, a great example of all of this.

Lenny Rachitsky 13:25 Yeah. It reminds me of the founder of Musical.ly, who, you know, turned into TikTok, had a great story. I think you've heard him talk about this, how the way he thought about it is like there's all these successful people in Instagram, like that's Europe, and the people you can convince to come to America are not like the kings of Europe but they're like the peasants that are like-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 13:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 13:43 ... "Oh, I have a new opportunity to rise and become a king or a queen."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 13:47 Right. Right, right.

Lenny Rachitsky 13:47 And so those are the people you pull in, the people not doing well on other platform that-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 13:50 Totally.

Lenny Rachitsky 13:50 ... want to do well, versus like the people already killing it.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 13:53 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 13:53 But let me just call in for the king of Substack right there.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 13:55 Yes, I know. You're the king. You're the king of Americas.

Sriram Krishnan 13:58 I'm just trying to give you clippable moments on video.

Lenny Rachitsky 14:00 I did just find out that I think I have the fourth-largest Substack newsletter on all of Substack, which is pretty cool.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 14:05 That's amazing. Wow.

Sriram Krishnan 14:06 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 14:07 That's amazing.

Lenny Rachitsky 14:07 Yeah. Yeah, we saw the numbers now.

Sriram Krishnan 14:08 And number three, number two, and number one, Lenny's coming after you.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 14:11 Take k- take k- take them out.

Sriram Krishnan 14:11 Better watch out.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 14:12 Take them out.

Lenny Rachitsky 14:12 Yeah. Definitely they're up, they're up there.

Lenny Rachitsky 14:14 So you mentioned the chat with Elon and how you're very like tech positive, and I think that's something that you two are at the forefront of is this kind of trend, I don't know if it's called techno-optimism, or maybe there's another term for it, and I'd love to hear just like why, 'cause I know that's important to you two, why that's important to you and just what is this kind of movement of tech optimism, techno-optimism?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 14:33 Let me take a small stab at it. Uh, look, I think it's also very personal to our context and upbringing, right? Like, you know, for us, Sharam and I came from a fairly middle class family in India, like this city in India that most people here wouldn't probably know, and, uh, we kind of grew up really liking computers but didn't have access to a computer for the longest time, right? Like in our both our, in our both our cases, our parents bought us our first computers off like saving money for it and it was like a hard thing, and, uh, you know, when we eventually got onto it and started learning to write code, we, we l- met each other online. We met on... we're dating ourselves now, but we met on Yahoo Messenger back in the day.

Lenny Rachitsky 15:12 (laughs) That's amazing.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 15:13 And we worked on this like nerdy coding project. That's kinda how we connected.

Lenny Rachitsky 15:17 Wow.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 15:17 So, like technology and computers have given us everything. Our first jobs were at Microsoft. We built developer tools and platforms. And so it's for, like coming from... if you were in our shoes, you would feel the same way too. Uh, tech has given us so much, and so for us to come here all the way from India through like multiple cities, we lived in Seattle and then here at the Bay Area, I've started tech companies, it, it is a bit frustrating to see the other viewpoint because you can kind of see how much it has like uplifted people, careers, lives, but also just from like what we, what we have be- been able to work on, what we've seen our friends work on and ship and put out there, it has dramatically moved the needle. And so for us like we are the living testament of like tech actually helping us and help us do better, so I don't even see the other viewpoint, right? Like from like why wouldn't you be optimistic about technology?

Lenny Rachitsky 16:09 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 16:09 I don't get it.

Sriram Krishnan 16:10 Yeah. Uh, I think the personal part of it is really core. I think there's generally two schools of thought. One school of thought I would broadly put, uh, you know, uh, right of as, you know, things are getting worse. Uh, technology is making things worse, and we should all do less, build less. And then the other school of thought, which I think I subscribe to is technology is not perfect. You know, the impact of technology is definitely uneven, but pretty much most of the good things in the world over the last 100, 200 years are responsible for it. And we can have a whole long discussion about the evidence why and we have lots of very fancy sounding intellectual theories as to why-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 16:41 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 16:41 ... but at the heart of it is what Aarti said. If it wasn't for tech, we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be doing this. I suspect a lot of folks who are listening to this wouldn't be able to listen to it, wouldn't have the opportunities, uh, uh, they have or have the opportunities we have. It is a great level. My dad, uh, pretty much had the same job for his entire like, uh, life essentially, from age 25 to, to the time he, uh, retired, and there was really no easy path out for him. And I, I miss like, hey, if it's 140 years later and you had a laptop and an internet connection and, you know, could get on GitHub, your opportunities that, you know, would be just impossible even like 30, 40 years ago, and that's all from technology. So, uh, I think that's at the heart of it. It's, uh, it's the best thing we have of getting ahead.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:21 It's such a refreshing perspective on tech. You know, in, in traditional media, all you ever hear about is all the problems that tech is causing and all the dangers and how we're all screwed, and so it's... it's like you almost forget that there could be really positive stories about what's happening with tech and it feels like there's a small number of people that are doing this at scale, and it's great.

Sriram Krishnan 17:40 Oh, yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:41 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 17:42 Uh, I'll give you one small example.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:43 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 17:43 If we, you know, you made a joke about kings from Europe, et cetera.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:46 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 17:46 If you just go back 100 years, uh, you know, uh, the piece of hardware that a king or a royalty would use or a rich person would use, it would be so different from what a peasant would use, but you know what? Like I suspect the phone that you and I have is probably the same phone that... actually, I know it's the same phone that, you know, Elon Musk uses, the richest person in the world. It's probably the same phone I know a lot of folks in India who have like very high end Android device, they have access to the same internet. You go to google.com, google.com doesn't know your net worth, it gives you the same results. ChatGPT doesn't know how rich you are. Uh, it may not like you, but uh, uh, you know, it, it doesn't care how rich you are.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 18:16 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 18:16 And that is, you know, uh, that just, i- i- if you just think of all these, uh, uh, concepts, they're just impossible technology. But anyway, that's a whole other conversation.

Lenny Rachitsky 18:23 Yeah. I, I, I love that, that the richest people have the same phone as me and nothing they can do about it. Something else you two are really good at is building a network, building community, building personal brands. I know a lot of people listening are either often told you need to build a audience online, you build a brand, you got to build a network and all these things, so I guess, hmm, I'd love to know just like what advice do you give people that come to you and are like, "Hey, I want to build a brand, a personal brand. I want to build a network," just like how to go about doing that, what's worked well for you two?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 18:53 Sharam has like way more structured thoughts on this, and honestly, he's like way better at this than I've ever been. He's basically slowly corrupted me and brought me to the dark side.

Lenny Rachitsky 19:02 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 19:02 But, you know, what I have come to believe and what this is dif- this differs from what I used to believe is, you know, especially if you're working in, in a big company, you are one of the many thousands of employees, and there, generally, what you get told is like, "Hey, you know, just ship really good products, put your head down, go to work. The products will speak for themselves."... that's just how it's gonna work. Don't do this, like, whole personal branding and all of that stuff. It's such a distraction." And, you know, th- that's generally what you're told. And I've j- you know, most of my career, I was like, "Yeah, of course, that makes sense." You know, uh, that's kinda what you do. But I've come to realize that that is just not true. And this might be a controversial opinion, but you have to get out there and build your own brand. You have to figure out what you stand for, what your core values are, what you believe in, what you, you think you want to do, what your next career trajectory is gonna look like.

Sriram Krishnan 19:58 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 19:58 All of that is just up, up to you. It is a... It's not up to the company to figure it out for you. It's not up to anybody else. It's just up to you. And, uh, I think building a personal brand is looked upon, looked down upon so much-

Sriram Krishnan 20:11 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 20:11 ... that people think of it as, like, a dirty word. It's like, "No, you can't do that. Oh, look at this person who's, like, branding themselves," kind of thing. But I almost sees it, see it as, like, what distinguishes you from everybody else. And, and that is not so much, like, saying something that you're not good at or touting yourself more. It's really about, like, highlighting, "I'm really good at this thing, and I want to talk about this thing, and I want to, like, do videos about it, or write about it, or tweet about it." Like, whatever is your forum, you have to put yourself out there.

Sriram Krishnan 20:42 Yep. Uh, I, I mean, this is probably one of the most important things that somebody can do. And, uh, I spent, you know, we spent years slowly climbing the corporate ranks, right? Like, we were, you know, junior product managers, IC product managers, senior product managers, you know, kind of, like, slowly climbed the ranks and ran teams, et cetera. And I spent years just thinking that all you do is kind of put my head down, you know, do my job well, and that was that. But then I looked around, and I suspect a lot of listeners here probably have the same feeling, that some set of people are getting way more opportunities, some set of people are way farther ahead, even though I was demonstrately sure that somebody else was doing a better job. And I was trying to understand why. And I think building a network, which I'll kind of try and define because I think a lot of people have an assumption of what it is, is at the heart of this. So, building a network is very simply having relationships with human beings. And let's start off by saying, first of all, these have to be authentic, genuine relationships. You know, one of the things that drives me crazy is when somebody will come and say, "I'm here to network." I'm like, "I don't know what that word means." (laughs) Right? Like, you know. So, all you're trying to do is have authentic, genuine relationship with people and expecting nothing in return.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 21:40 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 21:40 So, that's great. And then people are like, "Oh, well, that's awesome, but I'm a senior..." For example, I was a senior, uh, uh, PM at Microsoft for a bunch of time, and then kind of similar at Facebook for a bunch of time. They're like, "Well, what does it mean? Like, I'm here, I'm going to my meetings, I'm kind of doing my day, like, only so many hours." I'll be like, "Well, let's start off with, uh, you know... Go and meet every single peer that you have who you don't directly meet with. Go get coffee with them and ask them, 'Hey...'" And, you know, uh, you know, have no agenda. Just ask them what's going on in their life, who are they, what their life story is, and then who are a couple of interesting people that you should meet with, right? Go talk to your bo- your manager, and go talk to their peers. Super important, by the way. Your manager and peer relations, they are super important. Go have a coffee with them and they'll be like, "Great, I'd love to meet this person." Then when I was at, when I joined at Facebook, I was notorious for being the person who sent a cold email to every single Facebook leader. And I'd be like, "Hey, I'm new here. I want to meet. Let's grab coffee." And everybody will say yes. Everybody wants a new person. And I always ask them the same thing, which is I'll be like, I show up, I'll tell them my story, I'll ask about their story. I'll be like, "What are you folks focused on? How can I help?" Again, no expectation of anything in return, so. And then I'll be like, "Who else should I talk to?" You do this, you do two coffees a week. I literally just ask people, two hours a week. Everyone has two hours a week. It'll start compounding over time and time. And then as the years go by, you keep in touch with the people you used to work with. You, you... These folks will go to other places. Five years, six years go by, you start in your mid-20s or late 20s, and you know hundreds of people all over. And the important thing about this is that it is a, it is a resource in so many different ways. For example, one, if you ever need, uh, help, right? You're trying to look for a new role, or you're trying to be like, "Hey, I, I want to hire this person. Who knows something about this person?" Or, uh, "How do I..." Or, "I want a new role." Like, "Who's looking for something?" That network kind of becomes your key resource. Now, what I think a lot of people don't do is just simple things. Number one is often people just have a great meeting with a peer, and then they will never, ever follow up. I'm sure a lot of us had the amazing first introduction email, then never followed up. Don't do that. I try and make it a point to make sure... Like, I always meet them once a year, once every six months. Mm-hmm. Or just let them know, "Hey, what's up?" And the other key part is expecting nothing in return. Like, you really have to go and genuinely... People, people are very good at treating other people. And if you go and being like, "Hey, I just want to meet you because I want a job," or, you know, or, "I'm here to network," whatever that means. They don't want to meet you. Like, just go and be very curious about who they are and try and help them. And you'll be surprised if you, you know, wherever you start, within a year, two years, you will know hundreds of people who you can tap into. So, I think that is super powerful. That's just building relationships. The other part is brand building. Both Aarthi and I at different points in our career have gotten feedback, you know, in our jobs, saying, "Oh, Shriram, Aarthi ex- brand build too much," et cetera. I have learned, like, that is terrible feedback and to totally ignore that. And if anybody who isn't receiving that, just totally ignore that. Like, uh, the things that work well for me, and a lot of others, is putting yourself out there. And that can be anything. That can be like, you make a presentation internally, you write tweets, you do, you write... you know, you're prolific on GitHub, you make a YouTube video. It doesn't really matter, but put yourself out there because the internet rewards people being out there. And what happens when you put yourself out there? It's a bat signal. It's telling people that, "Hey, I, uh, I'm here. This is my body of work." And you know what the internet does? It will send amazing people to you. Uh, you'll be amazed how often, like, somebody just have a random great Twitter thread with no followers, and somebody super interesting will email them, and that leads to amazing things happening. It encourages serendipity. So, I, you know, over the years, I- I wish I had listened less to people who said I should, I should not do this, and listened more to the people who said I should do this more, so.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 25:01 I also think, you know, Shriram keeps saying, "Expect nothing in return." I think the other way I, I see it is, this is again an extension of optimism for us. Generally, we think people like to help each other out. That is just in their true nature. It's just, it's not meant to be transactional, it's not meant to be, "If I know them, they will somehow, like, do something for me down the road." It's not that. Just the way we are all building communities and are a part of this, like, broader community, the way we work is we all want to help each other and help them be successful.

25:33 And if that is, like, in your nature, it's hard to not feel like, yeah, of course I want to reach out to them. I want to see what I can do to help them. Maybe, you know, something good will happen, we'll collaborate on a project together, like, whatever, right? So, it's not... The- the core tenet being, like, don't expect stuff in return, don't do it on a transactional basis, I think is really important.

Sriram Krishnan 25:52 Yep.

Sriram Krishnan 25:53 What this reminds me of is, Naval has this tweet that proved to be so true, which is, "Don't network. Instead, create amazing things, create value, do good work, and then people will want to network with you."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:04 Yeah. Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 26:05 And that's really stuck with me, and it kind of saves you from going to network events. Like, instead, just go work hard-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:10 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 26:10 ... do awesome stuff, and people are gonna want to meet you.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:12 I mean, you will not believe the number of times we've shown up to, like, some meetup or some founder thing or something, and then somebody would come up and be like, "I'm here to network. What's your name?" And I'm like, "W- no, you can't do that."

Sriram Krishnan 26:23 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:23 Like that's... it just doesn't... not how that works.

Sriram Krishnan 26:26 I actually say... I actually disagree with Naval on this. Because, often, when you're in a... when you're part of a large organization, like, it's really hard to do great work and get recognized for it. Uh, w- you know, you're part of a team, which is great, but it's- it's not the same as saying... having a newsletter by yourself or having a piece of content by yourself. So, you know, uh, when I was younger I'd be like, "Great, I'm part of a large part-"

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:47 I- I don't know. I mean, you guys are saying the same thing. It's just like saying create value and put it out there. Like, I don't think it's...

Sriram Krishnan 26:52 Yeah, yeah. I think the putting it out there part-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:54 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 26:54 ... is super interesting.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 26:56 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 26:56 And, uh, also, I would just say, like, you know, don't wait to create amazing things. Like often just the act of putting yourself out there can just spur amazing things in itself.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 27:05 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 27:05 Yeah. I think that... And I think especially early in your career, you're not going to create amazing things

Sriram Krishnan 27:09 immediately, so there's a lot of value to reaching out and meeting people.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 27:12 Right. Right, right.

Sriram Krishnan 27:12 There's a couple of directions I want to go here. One is... So you gave this, I don't know, just mini masterclass on building a network and networking and things like that. I think what'll get people to rewind and listen to that again is... I don't think people realize just how connected you two are. Like you're at the center of so many micro-communities of the most incredible people. I don't know if you talk about this, but you kind of run all these micro-communities of incredible people in like, I don't know, creator land, and investors, and product people, and all these people. And so, like, it actually has worked. Like you may be the most network person there is (laughs) . And I don't know if people know that.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 27:47 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 27:47 Oh wow. Uh, uh, is that a good thing? I- I don't know.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 27:50 It's a good thing.

Sriram Krishnan 27:50 It's a good thing. I- I... Well, I- I... Okay, I like that. I'll go with that.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 27:53 I think the thing that... At least with Sreeram, or like outside of all of the masterclass stuff, which I think he's, like, particularly good at... I think the thing that Sreeram... people don't r- realize about him is he's just inherently incredibly curious about people. Like he's just... really just wants to know what somebody else does, who they are, what their story is. And this is not some like, "Oh, I'm gonna spend 10 minutes letting them talk, I'm gonna spend t-" He often never lets the other person talk, but when he does, he's truly- (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 28:23 Hold on a second, right there. (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 28:25 But he is truly curious about who they are, what their story is, and he will ask these, like... And I've seen them... You know, by now we've known each other for like 20-ish years, and this is every dinner, every event. This is just how he's wired. And so you just can't, like, fake that in, like, building out a network. He just... he tr- he builds a network by just wanting to know who these people are.

Sriram Krishnan 28:49 Thank you. Thank you. Uh-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 28:50 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 28:50 ... uh- That's beautiful.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 28:51 Yes.

Sriram Krishnan 28:51 ... the woman I married, ladies and gentlemen, right there. Um, f- you know, uh... Y- you marry the right person, everything else becomes

Sriram Krishnan 28:56 ******.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 28:56 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 28:57 Uh, I haven't really talked about this before, but... and I- I'll keep some of this slightly hidden, but I think the heart of it is, uh, I'm just curious about people, I'm just dumb about a lot of things. And I don't mean this sort of as this false modesty way. I'm like... I know a lot of folks that's ******. Like Lenny, obviously, is so much smarter than me at writing a Substack newsletter, right? It's just evident. Andrew Huberman is great at like, you know... Brian Armstrong is good at building a crypto company. All these folk is evident. And, what I... But what I realized is, a lot of folks sometimes just want to be with other amazing peers. And one sort of hack I, you know, I built over the years was like, all right, let me just bring interesting people together. So I bring them in, let's just say, various kinds of online communities, and there are probably over, like, 100 at this point. And I say, "Okay, you know, I... I'm... You trust me, you trust me, and, you know, I make the rules." I have... No one's... You know, everyone kind of keeps some level of confidence, everyone's a peer, they're all accomplished in their own way, no one's rude or mean or goes off the rails. And so I kind of... I'm- I'm a party host, so I'm like, "Okay listen, nobody's gonna get super crazy over here." But I'm also curating. I'm like, "Well, I need somebody super thoughtful, I need somebody who is a little controversial, I need somebody who's funny, I need somebody who's, like, a celebrity." I- I'm trying to put together... engineer an... uh, um, the right vibe or the right atmosphere, but digitally. I'm very antisocial in person. (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 30:19 And then, you know... And some of these just happen over time, right? You put together a group of people and they hang out online. And over times, you know, you have a very famous CEO getting... becoming best friends with somebody in their early 20s who's like, you know, just getting started, just because they are in the same space together. So I love creating those online spaces. And it just... And I think it's kind of, like, something that l- anybody here listening can do, right? Like just take some of your favorite people, you know, stick them in a WhatsApp group or a Telegram group or a Slack channel which... By the way, Lenny's Slack, highly, highly recommend it. Uh, Lenny's great at that. But yours has hundreds of thousands of people, and I think sometimes there's an intimacy from having smaller groups, like five people, 10 people, like a shared space.

Sriram Krishnan 30:59 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 30:59 And then kick it off. And you'll be amazed of after a year or two of how much intimacy and how much connection where I... you know, sometimes people open up about, you know, like losing their jobs, or having a divorce, or something really personal and intense just because of the shared trust. And, you know... And I think there's something very heartwarming and fulfilling about being able to facilitate

Aarthi Ramamurthy 31:20 some of that.

Sriram Krishnan 31:21 I want to dig into that a little bit more. You've built these incredible communities and you talked about a couple. And Arthi, I know you also built, like, Facebook's early community products, and Clubhouse obviously. If you had to pick like one or two things you got to get right with a new community that you're just forming, what do you think those two things are? Or one or two things?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 31:38 ... find the niche. Like-

Sriram Krishnan 31:39 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 31:40 ... start really small and find the niche. Like, I think oftentimes I've seen founders, other startup founders, and I invest and advise in a lot of, like, m- early-stage companies. I went through Y Combinator, so I go back to YC as much as I can and, like, go help out folks. But oftentimes, I'll see people starting companies, or founders coming in and being like, "I'm going to build this product that is, like, gonna cater to this community. I'm going to build this, like, world's largest community of this," kind of thing. And it almost, like, starts at this super-scaled version, and then they set themselves up for failure. You're almost better off doing these small, niche, s- n-

Sriram Krishnan 32:19 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 32:19 ... you know, non-scalable things to go find these, like, oddball sort of people who are doing this or i- and really interested in this one thing, and kind of-

Sriram Krishnan 32:28 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 32:28 ... scale from there and grow from there. And I think that's, like, one big thing that when you're starting to build a community, don't start to build this super-scale community. Start with, like, few people who are passionate about a particular problem and want to get together, kind of thing. Start there. Two, I think pe- and this might be, like, a controversial thing, but I often think people don't think through monetization.

Sriram Krishnan 32:47 Hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 32:47 If you're, like, a community builder early on, start thinking about, if you're, like, truly focused on this as a business, how would you actually make money off of it?

Sriram Krishnan 32:55 Hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 32:55 Oftentimes, they'll, like, hit some sort of scale and be like, "Crap. Now what do I do?" And then they'll, like, try all these options, they will have some churn, and then they're like, "Oh, no. That, but I thought this was a very sticky community." And like, yes, but it's n- not as sticky as this particular price tag. And so you have to kind of start thinking through, if we hit a particular velocity, what is that going to look like? What are the things that I'm going to unlock? And think through monetization a little bit ahead of time-

Sriram Krishnan 33:20 Hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 33:20 ... before it comes in and becomes a crutch rather than a weapon that you can go leverage.

Sriram Krishnan 33:24 Yeah. But I want to say, A- Aarti, you know, is kind of, uh, the creator of Facebook Stars and of so much of the thinking there, and I can see her go super deep on this. I have like a, I cosign everything she said. I have a slightly different framework. First of all, I- I really don't like the word community-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 33:36 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 33:36 ... because the word community, like the word networking, like the word platform is a little abstract and it can mean a lot of things. And I like to think of things like a dinner party, or church, or things which seem like more tangible and people know ex- okay, I know exactly what that is. So when I think of a community or starting one, I think first of all, it's like a party. And you're first starting off with like, all right, what is the vibe, all right? In the sense of, uh, uh, you know, for example, and this also for every social media platform where if you can be a, a crazy, people are dancing on bars, uh, you know, having a great time, getting really drunk party, or you can have a really formal dinner where everyone's seated, there is plates with name tags and, you know, there's a clinking of glasses, um, and-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 34:15 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 34:15 ... you have to dress up. And they're both fine, they're both, you know, fun in their own way, but you need to tell people as a host which one it is. And by the way, I think one of the things that Twitter didn't like get right in the original days, which some of the other apps did, it never told people what kind of party it was. It was like, are we going to-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 34:29 Hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 34:29 ... a Michelin star restaurant where it's sit down or, or it's a, a sports bar after the Super Bowl and you can go crazy. And if you don't do that, people make up their own rules. That's number one. The second part is, as the host, you have to curate the original set of people-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 34:41 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 34:41 ... and you need a mix. This is super important. I think sometimes people do this thing where they either, uh, optimize for, quote unquote, interesting famous people-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 34:49 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 34:49 ... or they get, you know, the most talkative out people. You know, and I actually read a bunch of books on, like, hosting great dinner parties, actually have some interesting suggestions there. And it'll say like, "Well, you need a mix," right? You need, uh, you know, for example, in any organization, like let's say you're the VP that everyone knows about, right? But that VP doesn't have the time to maybe participate on a WhatsApp channel or a Slack channel and, you know, chitchat all the time or show up at everything. And then maybe you need a really boisterous, young BD exec who's out and about and meeting everybody. You need that person. You need somebody who's quiet and thoughtful. You need to merge different kinds of energy. And that's almost an alchemy, and that's a, that's more art than science. You have to start there. Third, I think is, as the host, you have to have a sick sense of, how is the community feeling at any given point in time?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 35:33 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 35:33 Are two people dominating the conversation? That person hasn't said anything in a while. So one of the things I like to do when somebody joins a group or one of these places, I'm like, I try and get them into a question which they will feel happy about. Because you know what happens the very first time you walk into a party? You look around, you're like, "I don't know anybody here. Oh gosh, okay. I know this one person and, uh, you know, I'm gonna go, uh, like talk to them." And you just feel nervous, sound like I'm trying to break that. I'm like, "Hey," you know, for example, if you walk into a place and nobody, you don't know anybody, Lenny's actually very, you know, good at, uh, being social. But I'll be like, "Hey, Lenny-" Feel seen.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 36:01 "... Lenny has one of the most popular-"

Sriram Krishnan 36:02 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 36:02 "... things on Substack." And he just wrote, li- and I'm just giving you an opening to, you to feel comfortable. And that's another part. The third part I love is, like, rituals. And, you know, religions do a great job of this, which is do something every month. I used to, like, there's a little group I host with some of my friends, and during all of COVID, we did a Zoom meeting every Tuesday evening. And that was a ritual. It does nothing, it's just Zoom meeting with a bunch of friends. People can share- And people would just bring, like, their glass of wine or bring their kids in, and there's no, like, structured agenda, but-

Sriram Krishnan 36:28 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 36:29 ... people started looking forward to it through the pandemic and stuff. And we would be, we would be like, "Oh my god, it's Tuesday, like, you know, this, uh, this evening we are gonna go do this thing." And, uh, it was a really great way to go build that community, and I totally agree with that.

Sriram Krishnan 36:43 Yeah. Uh, I, by the way, Lenny's done an amazing job on it, on his Slack. I see it.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 36:46 Yeah, Lenny.

Sriram Krishnan 36:46 Uh... The other interesting tension and challenge is how to grow it, because I think that an interesting point, like a four-person dinner, very different from an eight-person dinner, you know?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 36:56 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 36:56 Uh, very different from a 20-person thing where people hang out, very different from once you start getting to hundreds of thousands. Right? The things you're willing to share, worrying about being judged. So always trying to create more intimate, different spaces, um, and that's a whole nother topic. So I, I think y- y- you know, if you're trying to start a community though, I would say picking the right people, setting the tone, being really part of it yourself, like, that's most of it. Amazing. There's so many little nuggets of advice there. Feel like we could do a whole nother episode on just community building strategy. Today's episode is brought to you by LMNT. I just recently discovered this stuff actually from another podcast, and it is such sweet, salty goodness. LMNT is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with a science-backed electrolyte ratio. And unlike most electrolyte drinks, there's no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, gluten, or any other BS. Getting enough electrolytes helps prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency.

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Lenny Rachitsky 38:36 I want to go back to a topic we touched on that I think is really interesting, which is building a brand and putting content out and that kind of thing. I think a lot of times people hear that, like a first-year PM, and they're like, "Yes, I'm going to start tweeting," and then it's like s- such cringey, useless stuff, and nobody needs to hear from them because they haven't done anything. And I guess I'd be curious your- for your take on like, what is your- at what point should people start to put things out? How do you know if, like, this is cringey and like nobody wants to hear this stuff? Like, "Great PM ship." Like these very cliché things come out, you know?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 39:08 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 39:08 There's like hundreds of Twitter accounts, people are just tweeting these things like... All right. Like how do you think about that- that phase?

Sriram Krishnan 39:14 I actually disagree with you, right?

Lenny Rachitsky 39:16 Mm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 39:16 Mm.

Sriram Krishnan 39:16 Uh, uh, and I actually think everyone should... Well, disclaimer, uh, I work for a firm which invests in Twitter, but I swear that's not why I'm saying this. People have heard me say this for years.

Lenny Rachitsky 39:24 And Substack.

Sriram Krishnan 39:25 Uh, yep. E- everyone should tweet or everyone should post on YouTube or post on Instagram or, you know, on And it doesn't matter how young you are. Because I actually disagree with a few things which you said, which I think is a great point, which I think a lot of people feel this. One is that you need to hit a certain bar of accomplishment or interestingness to say something. Strongly disagree with that. Second, that things are cringey. I don't think anything is cringey. I strongly disagree with that too.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 39:48 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 39:48 Right? Uh, and I think these are both interesting.

Lenny Rachitsky 39:51 Aarthi's face is great.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 39:53 Wait, I- I feel like Param's bar is so low for like... (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 39:56 Yeah. No, no, this is really important because I think what stops a lot of people is... I'll... I've had probably 100 plus conversations where somebody who's interviewed on the company will come to me and they'll be like, "Hey, I want to do... get on Twitter. I want to, you know, write content or I want to start a Substack or I want to do a podcast." I'm like, "Great." They're like, "But I... I don't know what to say. I'll look dumb. I don't... I- I don't want to get judged and, you know, I..." But I'm like, "No, you're so accomplished." And it is the fear of being judged that so often stops people. So whenever I hear that word cringe, I'm like, "No, no, no, that's actually fine. You're fine. You'll figure it out."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 40:29 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 40:29 And here's why I say that. Number one is what the most important thing... And if anything, if you just remember one thing from this whole thing is just get started-

Lenny Rachitsky 40:37 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 40:38 ... and do something every single day. And this sounds so basic, like Aarthi and I have this running joke where somebody... It's like- it's like diet and exercise is what we say.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 40:44 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 40:44 It's like when, you know, we are talking to people about how do you get healthy and do you have like, you know, so many like, you know, the 100 different, you know, things you can do or podcasts you can listen to, but most of us are like, "Oh, diet and exercise." Right? So... And with creating content, diet and exercise is you just create a piece of content every single day, right? Because what's going to happen is it builds muscle, it gets you familiar with the medium, and you start understanding what works in that medium and what doesn't, and you start building reps. You know who never f- well, works out, in my opinion- opinion? Is somebody like who'll think for weeks, build up an amazing tweetstorm, blog post, newsletter, whatever it may be-

Lenny Rachitsky 41:16 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 41:16 ... and then stops. Because, you know, the effort is so high. So I'm like, one, do something every single day. And the second part of it is, I actually think there's not... that you don't have to talk about what you accomplished, you only have to talk about you. And by the way, this is going to sound very fru-fru, but you are the best you out there. Uh, and so for example, right?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 41:33 Wow. Okay.

Sriram Krishnan 41:34 Like let us say you're a 21...

Lenny Rachitsky 41:35 We grow. We learn.

Sriram Krishnan 41:35 Let's say... Let's say you are a 21-year-old, uh, PM, fresh out of school, first year. Like, by the way, we were all there, right? I was a 21-year-old PM at one time. I... You know, Lenny would have been too, lots of others. First, there's a lot of people who have been through a journey and there are others like you. Second is, you just talk about your journey. Talk about what you're doing, talk about what you're learning. Because what often you're trying to do when you're creating content is to build a relationship with people. So when Charli D'Amelio dances on TikTok, she's not saying she's a professional dancer, she's saying like, "I'm relatable, I'm like... just like, you know, somebody you would be friends with next door. I'm just like you." And so then people start connecting with you on that front if you're authentic and you're doing a good job. And so everybody listening to this should be able to create content.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 42:17 Okay, so the only place where I disagree... I think this is all right, but this is a bit like, you know, you know, we- we are Asian, we are, you know, we have this very Asian parent thinking. There are no participation trophies.

Sriram Krishnan 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 42:30 So if it is cringey, you should at least acknowledge that it is cringey. It's okay. Like you... I think at the end of the day, you have to persevere. Like I think I give a lot more votes to like people who are just persevering and showing up every day. But I do think there should be a level of self-awareness for people where it's like, "Man, this is not great. I'm- I'm not getting any traction. Like, I need to improve on things and keep building on it." As opposed to being like, "I am the best me ever," and just keep putting out garbage. Like, don't do that.

Sriram Krishnan 42:57 Yes. (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 42:57 Like, improve on stuff, because there is such a thing as bad content, like... (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 43:01 I- I- I- you know, I- I- I agree with you, I agree with you, but I think when people mean cringey... Okay, I'll say this, right? What people men- think when they say cringey is like our peer group thinks that this content is too basic.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 43:11 But everybody has that, whether you say it out loud or not.

Sriram Krishnan 43:14 Well, I'll give you a story, right? So I spent years, I'd be like, "I'm a PM leader," right? "I run an organization, I should write smart PM things," right?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 43:21 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 43:21 Like I should write the kinds of things that Lenny writes. For example, I will say that Lenny's post the other week from Duolingo is

Lenny Rachitsky 43:26 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 43:27 I was like so jealous. I was like, "Man, like this is the kind of content I would dream of." It's amazing. Banger post, right?

Lenny Rachitsky 43:31 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 43:31 And... But the problem was when you start doing that, you start censoring yourself. And I would say I've written a lot of gr- a lot of posts over the years and I would try and sound smart, have a great intellectual framework in some of this work. But you know what my most popular post and tweet storm of all time is? It is how to write a cold email.And you know, when I wrote that tweet, Shriram, I- I was like, "Man, I'm going to sound so dumb," because everyone, Lenny doesn't need to know how to write a cold email and neither does the VCs I work with. Everyone knows that. But the thing is, what is obvious to you and may seem cringey to your peers is definitely not obvious to a lot of people, and they will connect to you, they will relate to you. So whenever, you know, when somebody says like, "Well, I might think this is too basic, how do I get started with my job?" I'm like, "No, there's a lot of people who this is not obvious to," and I'll try, I just put myself out there. And what's the worst thing? Somebody thinks you're a moron? That's fine, you know, you just, you put some new piece of content out there the next day and

Sriram Krishnan 44:22 they'll fix it, or you can just ignore them.

Lenny Rachitsky 44:24 I think there's a lot of really good nuggets here. I think the only area maybe we disagree, and we can, we should move on, but this is some good, crazy stuff.

Sriram Krishnan 44:29 Let's disagree, Lenny, come on. Your podcast is too friendly otherwise. Let's disagree.

Lenny Rachitsky 44:32 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 44:33 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 44:33 I just... My feeling is I think for like helping you do better work kind of content, like entertainment anyone could do, no problem, you know, you could be awesome at it, is I feel like you need to do something in your career first before you can start speaking to, "Here's things I've learned and here's what works and here's what doesn't work." I think there's a lot... I think I wouldn't spend a lot of time sharing all your wisdom before you've done a thing-

Sriram Krishnan 44:51 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 44:51 ... and been successful in some way.

Sriram Krishnan 44:53 Yeah, I actually think you make a very interesting point, which is I think a lot of people online LARP, uh, live action role playing-

Lenny Rachitsky 44:59 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 44:59 ... uh, as somebody else, right? Which is, and this is very... which is like you trying to project a persona or a career point that you're not at-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:08 Right.

Sriram Krishnan 45:08 ... and he- you know it, we know it, you probably think we know it.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:11 I mean, but, and also for that kind of content you can, you, everyone can tell, right? Like I think it just comes off-

Sriram Krishnan 45:16 Exactly.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:16 ... as like not authentic.

Lenny Rachitsky 45:18 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 45:18 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:18 And so, I mean, I- I feel like the universe figures itself out over time, but I do think there is a level of like, like just because Shriram thinks no content is cringey does not mean people all feel that way. Like, you know, you can't just magically just wipe that out. I feel like everyone just feels that way whether or not you say it out loud. I do think there is a process of iteration and acknowledging that, "Yeah, okay, this is bad, but I'm going to put this out there anyway and you know, we'll just keep working on this and coming back to it."

Sriram Krishnan 45:46 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:46 I really appreciate people who would just do that and just like keep coming back to it every day and-

Sriram Krishnan 45:50 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:50 ... like Rocky style, like chip away at things.

Sriram Krishnan 45:53 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 45:53 I really have appreciation for those folks because it's hard. Like everyone's... I've realized over time that everyone is deeply feeling l- as if they're imposters. And we talked about this, right? You know, imposter syndrome is so real, it is so gut wrenchingly real that it's not just like every, like one person, it's like most people, I think. So to be able to overcome that threshold and kind of look at your, your amazing peers and your seniors and everybody else and then still be able to put yourself out there, I think we have to like really appreciate that and kind of help them go iterate and just get better over time.

Sriram Krishnan 46:27 Yeah. I'll give you one tiny story before we wrap on this topic, which is-

Lenny Rachitsky 46:30 Okay.

Sriram Krishnan 46:30 ... I was talking to somebody who's sort of, uh, you know, four or five years into their career as a PM and they'd written this post on LinkedIn, which is full of cringey content, by the way. Okay, let me say, LinkedIn has a lot of cringey-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 46:39 Wow, look at, look at Shriram.

Sriram Krishnan 46:40 ... content. Uh, I'm sorry, right? Sorry LinkedIn folks. And it was-

Lenny Rachitsky 46:43 Interesting.

Sriram Krishnan 46:43 ... one of these things where they're like, "How do you set product strategy as an organization?" And I was like, I called him, I was like, "Dude, come on," right? Like, "You're four years into your role," right? Like, "nobody believes that you actually are driving this from a place of actually really knowing it." And that is fine if you're learning, but you know, you're trying to project this person who you're not. But the thing which I was talking to him, I was like, "I know you've done this amazing deep dive on this other niche topic. You've gone out, you read all the posts, go write about that because you are an expert legitimately in something you think is niche as opposed to a fake expert on this other thing you want to be." And so they... This... Uh, he went and wrote this follow-up post on something very niche and that went really popular, because the truth is there's- there's not a lot of great content out there, especially great content from people who actually done the thing. You'd be surprised how niche you can be when you've actually done the work, talked to people, aggregated some posts, you know, you... People come seek you out and you don't have to do it. So, uh, anyway, so yeah, lots of LARPing, lots of cringey LinkedIn content for sure.

Lenny Rachitsky 47:43 Just to close this out, I 100% agree with the idea that people should be just trying stuff, writing, sharing stuff on Twitter, LinkedIn, just like get it out of there-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 47:52 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 47:52 ... don't like, be afraid because that's how you start

Lenny Rachitsky 47:54 down this road. I was going to go in a different direction, but you mentioned imposter syndrome and I'm curious, have you two dealt with imposter syndrome in-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 48:01 Oh, yeah. We- we have and-

Sriram Krishnan 48:03 I have.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 48:03 ... I still, I don't know about Shriram.

Lenny Rachitsky 48:05 Same.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 48:05 Shriram comes off as so much more confidence and confident and has so much gravitas that nobody ever thinks of it. But yeah, we both do. We both deeply have imposter syndrome. We still, like every single day, you know, anything we do, like, you know, we look at ourselves, we are creators, we have the show on YouTube-

Lenny Rachitsky 48:21 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 48:21 ... and then we look around at everybody else who have like, you know, millions of subscribers and followers and everything and we are like, "Why are we creators? We should just... This is not a thing, like we should not be doing this stuff." I just think people haven't been honest with us on how much we suck, you know? It's like you have these like loops in your head and then every once in a while you'll see a comment being like, "This was amazing. I just had to like stop doing what I was doing to listen to this whole thing. It was so valuable for me." And you're like, "Oh, okay. Like, we're not all that bad, that's-"

Lenny Rachitsky 48:47 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 48:47 "... I think okay." So yeah, we go through this a lot. I particularly had for the longest time, like I had like really severe imposter syndrome through like school, college, you know, getting into like Microsoft. Like even after I got through with Microsoft, which was like, we were like one of the youngest product managers there, we, I still was like, "Oh, you know, someday they're going to figure out that this was all..." Like they'll- they'll know the real me and they'll be like, "Oh man, we made this mistake with her." And it was just a, such a real crippling thing for me. It took a very, very long time to feel like... Even now I feel like maybe it's not 100% true, but I can kind of see the- the gradients there.

Lenny Rachitsky 49:25 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 49:25 So yeah, very real thing.

Lenny Rachitsky 49:27 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 49:27 Yeah. It's so true. I have a hack or a technique of how to get over imposter syndrome, but I'll just say, and this is just, you know, if folks here feel it, every new job I've been in, I've always felt that I didn't deserve to be there. And I mean it generally. When I was at... Joined Microsoft, I was, I was a young student, I was like, "I don't know anything. These folks are professionals. They've been doing this job for years." When I moved to the US I said, "Look, my accent is super intense. I'm Indian. These folks have been doing this for many years, they have very different lifestyles. I don't know what I'm doing here." When I moved to Silicon Valley-... I got no-hired by probably four, five different companies. And one of them told me, "You work for Microsoft, so you don't like... You can't really cut it in Silicon Valley because you're from Seattle," uh, which I'll never forget. Uh, uh, and, uh, you know, I- I look at the person from LinkedIn from time to time, and I very quickly be like, "Well, I've cut it now." Uh, and, uh, and, uh... I'm very petty that way. And then, of course... And then, you know, um, when I started running large organizations, uh, you know, like several hundred people or more, I was like, "I've never done this before."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 50:22 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 50:23 If I'm in a meeting, everyone's looking to me, I, do- do they know that I've not done this before?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 50:26 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 50:26 Like, you know, like, because I've done this before, and I... Can they tell? And it's every step of the way. So, uh, it just puts you every step of the way. And in the... In the beginning, it is quite crippling, but over time, you build things to help you. And I think for those listening, if you feel this way, the thing I've learned to do is you have to kind of retreat to a place where you feel real mastery of. So, for example, when I was at Microsoft, I was like, "Well, I don't speak the language very well, English," and I had an accent, et cetera. But I knew that I was the most online developer person out there. I knew every single online community, I was very plugged into open source. So, in every meeting, when the topic would come to, like, "Hey, what is happening with Ruby on Rails?" The... I was like, "I know this better than everybody else." So... And I learned to put together a presentation because then you're... You start with the base of something that you feel super comfortable in-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 51:13 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 51:13 ... and you build from that. And what you realize when you build from that is you're like, "Oh, actually, you know what? People really respect that, and they, uh, react to that." And I also learned not to do other things. Like, for example, for... There were for years where I would listen to people from, like, a certain academic background or be like, "I wish I could do slide decks like they could," or, "I wish I could, like, you know, have these interesting..." But I was like, "That doesn't really matter." You just need to come from a place where you are confident you've done the work. So, if you folks are listening and you feel imposter syndrome, right? Next time you walk into a meeting, just think about, okay, this is a place where I know I spent so many nights and weekends, and it can be super tiny. It can be, like, one little button, one, one customer, but you've done the work. You've had multiple conversations. It is protein, right? And you start from there, you talk about that, and you build up from that, and you will feel comfortable. So, I've done that in, like, pretty much every role now, and I still catch myself, you know, feeling...

Aarthi Ramamurthy 52:03 I... Yeah, I think for me, when I was a first-time founder, I definitely felt that way. And, uh, you know, there was all this at that time which was conventional wisdom. And look, none of... nobody we knew at that time were, like, founders. Like, it's not our friend circle. They all worked in, like, medium to big companies. My family, nobody has ever been a founder or entrepreneur. It's not a thing. And so, when I started this, I was like, "Oh my God, I'm making a mistake." But then you read all these people tweeting or writing posts being like, "If you're a founder, you'll be really good at, like, fundraising. This is like..." You know, "Best founders learn how to..." I sucked at fundraising. I was so bad at it.

Sriram Krishnan 52:36 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 52:36 It is like... I- it was just like, "Oh, you know, you have to, like, be able to tell your story." I tried. Like, you know, I think we had, like... I emailed, like, 250 founders, took 85 meetings, and, like, 50 plus second meetings, and then got, like, 30 checks. Like, this was, like, my seed round, which took, like, eight months to close or something.

Sriram Krishnan 52:55 Mm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 52:56 And I was like, "Oh my God, I'm so bad at this. I should just give up right now." And, uh, then I was like... I started building this, this startup, and I was like, "Actually, I'm really, really good at understanding customer acquisition and, uh, like, really trying to find creative ways to cheaply acquire customers." And I kind of started, like, putting together playbooks on, like, what I can go do there. And I tried this, I tried this, then I started talking to few of our own investors, and I'm like, "I don't know if your portfolio companies you are finding this useful, but I tried these tactics." And they were like, "Oh my God, I'd never heard of that." And so I realized that that's the one place I could be really good at, and I can grow my business in a really profitable way very quickly. And then, l- like, investors started, like, talking to me about, like, other companies and all of that stuff, and it became, like, a thing.

Sriram Krishnan 53:41 Mm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 53:41 And I was... That helped me get more confidence over time. I was like, "Who cares if I can't do these, like, other things? I can do these few things, and this is really, really important to, like, build a sustainable business, and I think I can do that." And that, for me, like, kind of helped me get over it. It's not anyone telling me, "Don't worry, you'll be good at it."

Sriram Krishnan 53:58 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 53:58 Like, that never helped.

Sriram Krishnan 53:59 Mm-hmm.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 53:59 It was just... I had to do it myself

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:01 to figure it out.

Sriram Krishnan 54:02 It's interesting. Both of your pieces of advice is find the thing you're actually good at, and then just-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:06 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 54:06 ... lean into that as much as possible.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:07 Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 54:07 That's something I learned from an executive coach I worked with once, that you have strengths, you have weaknesses. You can accomplish almost all the things you want to accomplish through the strengths, through the lens of the strengths, without using those weaknesses as much.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:19 Right. Right.

Sriram Krishnan 54:19 And that really was pretty transformative.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:21 Also-

Sriram Krishnan 54:21 W- That's actually a... such a profound point, and I wish somebody had told me that earlier in my career.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:26 (laughs) Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 54:26 Because I would get... Early in my career, I would get all this advice, like, "Oh, Sriram's too loud and too boisterous and..." The thing is, nobody I know has ever become successful by trying to fix their weaknesses. It's just impossible. The only way you, you know, you succeed is, one, you might need to mitigate some of them, especially if they're really, really holding you back. But you have to lean into your strengths, so... Which is kind of a weird thing, because I think when we do performance feedback, it's feedback, and so much time we are like, "Well, these are all the good things, and let's talk about the ways u- you, you can improve." It's almost the flip time. And, like, I think if you're doing performance feedback, be like, "Oh, these are things you're really good at."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 54:58 What do you fight at? Yeah.

Sriram Krishnan 54:59 "Let's make you even much better at that," right? Like, "Let's make you fly faster, run harder," right? Close the deal, write better code. Oh, yeah, and some people are mad at you for these things. You should watch it and maybe fix some of what's really bad. But that's not what's going to pull you ahead. It's the superpowers that's going to really pull you ahead, so let's focus on that. Yeah. The way I think about that is you want to, like... The weaknesses can't be liabilities. You can't just get on stage and melt and explode. But you don't have to be amazing as long as you can, like-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 55:24 Totally.

Sriram Krishnan 55:24 ... email really well, write documents really well-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 55:26 Totally.

Sriram Krishnan 55:26 ... communicate in other ways, if that's a strength. One last trick, while we're on this topic. I was just reading Hunter Walk's blog, and he shared a cool trick for imposter syndrome where you just have to ask yourself, "Am I so good at pretending that people don't see, like, what's actually happening? Like, am I actually that good to being this imposter?" Like, probably not. Like, the people can tell, and it's really unlikely you're actually an imposter. Also, by the way, the reality is, and this is a cliché, is people are just not thinking about you, right?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 55:52 That's true.

Sriram Krishnan 55:52 Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 55:52 Yeah, you're giving yourself... You're giving other people too much credit that they're... Everyone's focused on somebody else. Everyone's so busy focusing on themselves and their own insecurities and fear and just, like, living life. And, like, you know, like, think about o- ourselves, right? When's the last time we thought about somebody and were like, "That person..."Probably an imposter.

Sriram Krishnan 56:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 56:10 Like, we- we just don't have the time for it.

Sriram Krishnan 56:12 I've been thinking about me this whole time. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 56:14 (laughs)

Aarthi Ramamurthy 56:15 I am not surprised. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 56:18 It is really ous. This, um... There's something I want- actually along these lines I was gonna ask you about. I remember, Shriram, when you were just getting out of the companies you worked at.

Sriram Krishnan 56:26 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 56:26 You kinda made this point that you- you were like an IC, and you're in these meetings where people are reviewing your work, and they're, like, making decisions, and you're the person presenting. And then all of a sudden you're the person reviewing all the work and making the decisions, and no one trained you to be that person where you're like, "Oh my God, I'm that person they're all looking for, for all these answers?" And I'm curious just how you worked through that and what advice you'd have for people that are maybe going through that transition.

Sriram Krishnan 56:49 Yeah, it's a good question. First of all, it's kind of a jarring change, because it- you realize, "Well, I have power, but I'm also, like, called upon to do a bunch of things." Because no meeting... Let's- let's call it an executive review. Let's say-

Lenny Rachitsky 56:59 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 56:59 And you as the exec as presenting to, right? It doesn't really matter what your title is. You know, all of a sudden you're having to do a bunch of thing. You're making decisions, but you're also providing feedback, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. You might piss off somebody by naming somebody and not naming the other person.

Lenny Rachitsky 57:13 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 57:13 You might piss off somebody by not inviting them to the meeting. You might have to feel like, "Well, I really want to overrule this person, but if I do, they might get mad at me." And there are so many different things which you have to, you know, keep in your head as well as, like, is this a right path for the team, for the company or whatever the situation is? And it can be really overwhelming.

Sriram Krishnan 57:30 And, you know, I learned a lot of how to do great exec reviews from my time at Facebook from Zuck and from Andrew Bosworth. Andrew Bosworth, Boz, has some great posts on his site, boz.com, about how to do reviews, and-

Lenny Rachitsky 57:40 I'm trying to get him on this podcast, by the way.

Sriram Krishnan 57:42 Oh, that's-

Lenny Rachitsky 57:43 Oh, great.

Sriram Krishnan 57:43 ... awesome. He's great. He's fantastic. Uh, let me know when you have him. I have some questions, uh, I-

Lenny Rachitsky 57:46 Mm-hmm. Sure, sure.

Sriram Krishnan 57:46 ... want to ask- get you to ask him. But, uh, Boz had a few ways of thinking. First of all, let's start with Zuck. The thing I loved about Zuck's executive reviews was that it was clear when he walked in the room that you are talking to one of the most powerful people on the planet, right?

Lenny Rachitsky 58:00 (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 58:00 But, what he did, which not a lot of other people in his position do, is he would tell you what the rules of engagement were for every meeting or every ... situation. He'd be like, "Look, I'm gonna give you a spectrum of, A, how much I care about this topic. Everything from I don't care, I don't even know why you're talking to me, to I ca- kind of care a little. I kind of care, so I'm- I'm happy you're getting this update. To, I really want you to do this, but you know what? If you overrule me, that's fine. All the way to like, I'm the founder and the CEO, just do this." Right? But he will make it clear where he stood on the spectrum. The second thing he would make clear is why he believed the things he did. Like, for example, uh, you know, the very first time I pitched him on what is Facebook Audience Network, um, and, uh, which grew into, like, probably one of the largest ad networks on mobile.

Lenny Rachitsky 58:40 Oh, cool.

Sriram Krishnan 58:40 He had all these sort of, I- you know, ideas. He was like, "Well, I don't..." I... He was like, "We shouldn't do an ad network, because..." And he had all these opinions on, "Well, mobile ads are- look terrible."

Aarthi Ramamurthy 58:49 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 58:49 "They're spammy, X, Y, and Z." But he was very good at articulating those to you, and also saying like, "Well, if you can prove me wrong on these legs of my logic tree, I will let you overrule me. Unless, you know, I have a strong opinion." So, you could, when you walk into a meeting you're like, "Well, I know the framework. I know what the dance is to convince him." Or maybe there's no shot of convincing him, and that's fine. Uh, his na- he's the CEO, and that's fine too. So, I didn't ... know tech so it's so important to clarify for your team the framework they're operating in with you, and it's also maybe a clarifying function for you as well. So, how do you actually feel about this and why do you feel different? That's number one. The second part of it is, uh, inside a meeting is- there's a few things I think you need to do, which is like clarify what kind of meeting is it, right?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 59:28 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 59:28 Is it just an update? Great. We're just gonna get an update. I'm gonna listen to you. I'm gonna applaud you for a job well done. I'm gonna send you on your way. Or is it a- a decision? In which case, what are the pros, cons, uh, et cetera? The- there are some real big failure modes where one kind of meeting slides into another kind of meeting, where somebody's like, "Why are we doing that?" You know, "Is that a thing?"

Aarthi Ramamurthy 59:45 Yeah. (laughs)

Sriram Krishnan 59:46 And then somebody will start spiting on-

Aarthi Ramamurthy 59:47 It becomes a product brainstorming thing.

Sriram Krishnan 59:48 ... and people are like, "Oh, gosh. Like, we shouldn't have brought this topic at all." And it's a wh- e- everyone listening to this has probably been to one of those meetings.

Lenny Rachitsky 59:53 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 59:53 There's also something else which teams sometimes like to do, which is they'll be like, "Hey, we have a hard problem, you don't know what to do." And they'll be like, they're trying to kind of push the responsibility of the decision from them to you. Which may be fine, but if you wanna, you want to be like, yo- you should be like, "Hey, are you saying that you can't make up your mind and you want me to make up your mind for you?" You don't need to be explicit, right? Because often you, like, uh, b- I've seen this when there are hard decisions, teams are like, "Uh, the execs feel strongly. We don't know what to do." And they kinda want to push the accountability to you, and you got to be watch out for that a lot. Uh, uh, there are a lot of hygiene things we think are very important. For example, set up the pre-read before. Make sure it's the right kind of people, the right people in the room. Not everybody, but not missing out key people. Make sure you're paying complete attention. Make sure everyone gets a- a chance to talk, which I, by the way, was really bad at.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:00:40 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 1:00:41 Um, and, uh, you know, those things get- go a really long way. Oh, and one final thing. Have a regular rhythm to those. So you're doing this like every month, et cetera. What I hate, I stole this line from Gokul Rajaram, is the phrase hero meetings. Right? All of us have been this, right? Which is like there's a big thing, there's a big review. It's probably a go, no-go. Maybe it's carrier limiting. Maybe it'll get our team funded and everyone's stressed out. You spend two weeks working on a deck and the first 20 minutes of conversation goes totally sideways because the exec thought of something. Every one of us has been one of those. Those are bad, right? Like, the way to fix that is to have like a regular checking, so you're meeting every single week and becomes like-

Lenny Rachitsky 1:01:16 Mm-hmm.

Sriram Krishnan 1:01:16 ... you're not spending weeks. It's, you know, muscle, it's rhythm of what you do and those things. Or, uh, sorry, I

Sriram Krishnan 1:01:20 went on a bit of a speech there, but yeah.

Aarthi Ramamurthy 1:01:21 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:01:21 What I was thinking about is, you two have worked at basically all the big consumer companies. And coming back to imposter syndrome briefly, what's, like, the worst product you've built or the biggest failure you've- you've each built, and what did you learn?

Aarthi Ramamurthy 1:01:34 Oh, man. Um, startup style, uh, start- if we're at a startup, I tried all kinds of things, right? Like, we just like kind of grasp at straws and bailed whatever. So I remember... And also I think you- I felt kind of victim to, like, a lot of startups do this where they'll see some theme that has become a meme with investors and they'll be like, "I'm gonna go build that company." Like, "I'm just gonna, like, take their technology, adopt it," and now, like, you're kind of startup seeing that with like AI now, where it's like everything's now an AI company. Of course, like everyone's incorporated AI. Like, part of it is like you get it, like

Aarthi Ramamurthy 1:02:08 you kind of sort of, like, want to be in the game and be cool. But if it doesn't really fit with your product hypothesis and thesis and what your customers are asking for, don't fall for that fad. And I did stuff where I totally