The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart)

1. 0:00 – 4:28

   Anuj’s background

   1. ARAnuj Rathi0:00

      There are only three reasons why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader, and you could look at a person, and you'd say that either that person can't do, which is a capability issue, or they won't do, which is a motivation or an alignment issue, or they were not set up to do, which is really your problem that you didn't set up the ways of working or design properly. So as a leader, do you have the right people in terms of capability? And if not, is the right answer for us to coach them or to, like, really put them... or mentor them and so on? Or move them to some other place because maybe their capability is suited elsewhere? If they won't do, why won't they? Are they not aligned to you? Do they not agree with your vision? Do they not have enough time? And so on, so forth. So you need to really go deeper there. Why won't they do?

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:49

      (Instrumental music) Today my guest is Anuj Rathi. I've been looking to get more India-based product leaders on the podcast because this podcast has a large audience in India, and when I put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn asking people who I should have on, Anuj was the single most requested person. Anuj is Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Jupiter Money. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Revenue and Growth at Swiggy where he spent seven years. He was also VP of Product at Snapdeal, a Senior PM at Walmart Labs, and the very first product manager at Flipkart where he led the buyer experience team. In our conversation, we dig into how product management is different in India, Anuj's lessons about building product experiences for new users, how he operationalized the working backwards process at the companies he's worked at, why he pushes his teams to explore three divergent directions before settling on a plan, why he thinks product managers and companies should be much more full stack than they are, also a bunch of frameworks and contrarian takes about building product and your career in product. A big thank you to Sayant Mighty and Nikhil Kulkarni for helping me navigate the product scene in India. Look for more amazing India-based product leaders to come. With that, I bring you Anuj Rathi after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Sanity. Your website is the heart of your growth engine. For that engine to drive big results, you need to be able to move super fast, ship new content, experiment, learn, and iterate. But most content management systems just aren't built for this. Your content teams wrestle with rigid interfaces as they build new pages. You spend endless time copying and pasting across pages and recreating content for other channels and applications. And their ideas for new experiments are squashed when developers can't build them within the constraints of outdated tech. Forward-thinking companies like Figma, Amplitude, Loom, Riot Games, Linear, and more use Sanity to build content growth engines that scale, drive innovation, and accelerate customer acquisition. With Sanity, your team can dream bigger and move faster. As the most powerful headless CMS on the market, you can tailor editorial workflows to match your business, reuse content seamlessly across any page or channel, and bring your ideas to market without developer friction. Sanity makes life better for your whole team. It's fast for developers to build with, intuitive for content managers, and it integrates seamlessly with the rest of your tech stack. Get started with Sanity's generous free plan, and as a Lenny's Podcast listener, you can get a boosted plan with double the monthly usage. Head over to sanity.io/lenny to get started for free. That's sanity.io/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Calm, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot-com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today.

2. 4:28 – 8:34

   How product differs in India

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:29

      Anuj, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.

   2. ARAnuj Rathi4:34

      Thank you so much, Lenny. Thank you for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:37

      It's my pleasure. I haven't told you this, but when I put a call out on Twitter and LinkedIn for people's favorite India-based product leaders, you were the single most recommended person. And so I just wanted to start with, how does it feel to be the most loved India-based product leader, at least according to my Twitter followers and LinkedIn followers?

   4. ARAnuj Rathi4:57

      Well, it feels, uh, it feels really good, and I really feel it's, it's come together because I've been doing product management for the longest time. In 2010 when I started, uh, the product management journey with Flipkart, I think that, that was a time when there were not a lot of products being built for India. So I think one part is, is just the tenure, and B is, is I think it's just, uh, a lot of people have known their work.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:20

      Awesome. You're very modest. I wanted to start with a question about product in India, and I'm just curious just how is product management and product building in general just most different in India?

   6. ARAnuj Rathi5:33

      Yeah. I think, uh, that's a very interesting question, and I think about this all the time. Like, uh, when I look at product management in India, and I do have a, like, a lot of friends comparing product management versus, say, in the US or even in Europe versus even in China, Southeast Asia, et cetera, I think India has had, like, a very interesting journey of, uh, products in general and hence product management also. I think till about 2010-ish, uh, there were not really many products built for the Indian consumers in the first place. Like, there were a lot of products being built, a lot of technology being built, uh, but largely because it was... it was a back office so you were... so you had, like, a lot of great engineers.... by kind of working in companies which would build products for, for the American customer, or even for the European customer, and so on. So once these startups started coming in which were thinking about building for the Indian consumers, uh, I think we, we did not really have that talent which could... which you could directly tap into, who were trained into, into product m-... product building. Forget product management as a field, uh, in the first place. There were no colleges which were teaching anything about this. There was no playbooks and so on and so forth. We would go to, uh, to the internet and look at YouTube and, and look at SVPG and all of that, but, uh, what we would understand would not... kind of you could not port directly to the Indian startups. Uh, and the way that they shaped up I think also shaped up the way product management field would evolve in India. So it's, it's taken, like, a bunch of iterations, and there, I think there are, like, two or three different waves that have come in, and we are way closer to how good product management should be done in India. We still have a little bit way to go compared to Ame-... to, say, US. And I also think of it, it, it along, like, for example, in US, the product building culture probably started in 1970s, the modern software product building culture, and you didn't only have product manager, but the entire ecosystem. Look, if you think about a company, like, who is the VP of business, and who is the VP of supply and sales and ops and technology and all of that? That group knew how to work with each other to build software products. They understood how that would be built and what to expect. I think in India, when, when we were in 2010, et cetera, even those different people who needed to come together to build, like, say, e-commerce, uh, they would come from, say, FMCG or they would come from manufacturing and so on, and what they would have seen in their journeys in terms of what to expect is, is a very request response kind of, of understanding, which is, "Here's machinery. If I give this X resources, I expect, with a little bit of variability, Y predictable output to come." And that mentality also kind of moved on to what I expect from product managers or product building journeys and so on. So I think, over a period of time, a lot of those cycles have happened, and a lot more other leaders in companies have, have now seen those cycles and kind of understood and he-... "All right. Now, I understand software is not machinery. Uh, consumers are not predictable as much as we thought." And that has led to now finally, I think, product management coming of age.

3. 8:34 – 14:01

   When modern product thinking started to gain traction in India

   1. ARAnuj Rathi8:34

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky8:34

      You said that in the... I guess in the Bay Area, things started, like, 1970s, something like that. When would you say things started to really ramp up in modern product thinking in, in India?

   3. ARAnuj Rathi8:43

      I think 2010 was kind of when it started because, uh-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky8:46

      Oh, wow.

   5. ARAnuj Rathi8:46

      ... look, there were... there were a few products that were built before that also, and I think, uh, somebody said this clearly that usually when, when modern consumer internet starts coming in countries, it usually starts with travel. So, so you do have, like, basically any country we would start with, which is the first travel company. So I think India started with, with some companies like MakeMyTrip and, and so on, like, way earlier. There were a few very interesting products being built in India which were solving uniquely for the Indian consumers, uh, that were in the matrimony side, which is shaadi.com and bharatmatrimony.com and so on. But, like, what you think about Tinder, like, India's famous for arranged marriages, so, like, a product that would... that would really understand that, "Hey, if you're a parent, if you want to get your kid, uh, you know, up for matrimony, how would you solve for them?" And that marketplace of matchmaking, et cetera started. So a few blips here and there which were solving uniquely for India, but I think 2010 was a decadal time when I can, like, very clearly imagine. That's where, like, a lot of people started building for India. So I think then Flipkart started that, that kind of journey, but in a couple of years, then there were, like, say, Ola which was in a way similar to Uber, what they were doing elsewhere, and then a whole bunch of other startups that started coming in. So for example, in food delivery, when I was working at Swiggy, that came in, like, say, 2015, 2014 th-... in that timeframe. And, and now you see a whole bunch of startups which are trying to do not only things which are... what could an Uber for India look like, or what would... what could a DoorDash for India look like? Uh, very different and also very innovative. So, so I think now is, is the time when you see a lot more product building around that area.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky10:24

      What are some numbers of just, like, companies in India, people in India, money spent in India? I don't know, things that would be like, "Wow, that is a much bigger opportunity than I thought."

   7. ARAnuj Rathi10:33

      Okay. The... This is, um, a very wide question, so, um, I'll, I'll tell you. Before the opportunity in India, I think I'll talk about the complexity in India, which is... which is very... uh, which, which I think a lot of people don't understand. So India has, what, uh, 1.4 billion people? So there are three waves really that, that happened in India, but also in, in the globe. I think first wave was, like, from desktop to, to mobile, and then even from mobile to smartphones. And from smartphones, there was what we call the Jio revolution. There's an Indian company called Reliance Jio that basically got internet at the cheapest prices for smartphones. So because of this, a whole population came onto the internet which was hungry for newer products, newer content, completely different ways of interacting with each other and using internet for all sorts of different things. That was one of the waves. The other part is, is really what the Indian government really enabled, which is especially in, um, in digitization of a bunch of absolute core fundamental, you know, citizen-related, uh, machinery which is either through digital payments, uh, which is a whole bunch of Indians now started having a bank account by default, and something called UPI. So even if you do not have a bank account or that bank account is linked to your mobile phone number, but now everybody would pay through that, and that brought in, like, a very different kind of revolution. So even if five rupees, uh, that is basically, like, you know, 10 cents or less than that, that would be paid through UPI, a- and people started moving away from cash and so on. And there's something called the India stack that is, like, all of these things coming together, which is social security, identity, payments, and so on.... that a whole bunch of other apps can now use to build their own, um, you know, layers on top of that, so many interesting cases, uh, kind of started coming about. So that's kind of one which is just the number and the, and the infrastructure. Now, the other thing to look at is India's very diverse, and so the number of languages spoken here, even the official languages is, is so high, uh, and they say... there's a l- there's this quote in India like every 15 miles, the language will change, and the people, and their culture will change. And it's a huge country of, of so many people. So your traditional ways of thinking about products also, the "Who am I building for?" is very different. Is, uh, "Are you building for this person or that?" Et cetera. So a bunch of frameworks kind of break down because it's not even that the same language will apply. While English is a language that is used by the people at least who have the money and who have the, the dollar to even, like, give to you, but, but you have to think way more widely. The other thing that about India that is interesting is, uh, the price that people are willing to pay, so... And it generally is, uh, it also look at like the per capita, you know, uh, money that people have is very low. It's in the two, two and a half thousand dollar range compared to US which is maybe four- 30 times more and so on, right? So while there's a lot of people who are going to give you, you know, traffic and (laughs) engagement and so on, but, but the craft of, of actually choosing the right kind of paying customer who will actually come, and engage, and give you money is, is, is at a premium. So a lot harder work needs to be done if you're running e-commerce. Who are the people who will pay me delivery fee? Who are the people who will actually buy this expensive stuff? And so a whole bunch of, of different ways of thinking has evolved in, in this country, and, and that's why it's so vibrant and so different than any, any other global products.

4. 14:01 – 15:07

   How Anuj thinks about new-user experiences

   1. ARAnuj Rathi14:01

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky14:01

      Wow. Fascinating. Uh, I could keep going, but I wanna talk product. I've collected a bunch of questions from people that know you or people that have worked with you all about a bunch of different stuff, so I'm just gonna kind of go a little bit all over the place, and the first area I wanted to talk about is the new user experience. Apparently, you have a interesting insight and kind of a different approach of thinking about new users and new user experiences.

   3. ARAnuj Rathi14:24

      One of the things that I realized once we started working about the products is that product managers and generally companies are too engrossed in thinking about... because they're very close to the product. It's close to their heart, and they're looking at it all the time. They're looking at a lot of minor nuances in terms of how this works and feels, and almost inherent into this is a bias that everybody is thinking about this product all the day all the time and so on, so forth, whereas the reality is most consumers in the country or in your target market, they don't care, and they may have some time heard about your product. The word of mouth is not ever so strong even if you're the strongest brand and so on, so forth, but that is the, the customer that you've got to bring in and then serve.

5. 15:07 – 19:59

   Scott Belsky’s “lazy, vain, and selfish” framework

   1. ARAnuj Rathi15:07

      So there's a very interesting insight that I heard from Scott Belsky, uh, from Adobe, and then now, he's doing, like, very interesting stuff, and that kind of stayed with me and, uh, which was you have to think about users or modern internet consumers having three attributes. So they are lazy, they are vain, and they're selfish. So lazy, meaning, "I don't have time for this, so blow my mind away. Otherwise, I'm not gonna pay attention." Vain, which means, "I have a habit. I'm solving this problem in a particular way, and here you come with your two-

   2. NANarrator15:42

      (laughs)

   3. ARAnuj Rathi15:42

      ... puck product and, and asking me to change my habit. Do you really expect me to do that?" That's second. That's their inherent attitude. And the third one is that they're selfish, like, "Show me what's in it for me." And once you start thinking about users in that vein, and if these users are not even using your product, like, suddenly, you realize, "Oh, my God. It's quite difficult to even... How do I attract this kind of customer? And if my marketing team has done a good job at bringing this user to my product, how do I actually now empathize with this lazy, selfish, and vain customer and build my product in a way so that I can make this be on your side?" Like, this is the thing that, that you have to use. The way you write your copy, the way you build your onboarding, the way you do your first warm welcome, it's- it's gonna make the biggest amount of change in terms of your product success than your core product features that you're going to build for your loyal consumers. So that one insight, and I've seen and applied that multiple times, not only the companies that I worked with, but companies I've consulted and, and spoken with, uh, most neglected. Well, they kind of get user onboarding is important, but just how important is that? Uh, is one. And B, this is a craft of thinking like a user who's lazy, vain, and selfish and basically rejecting all your products with, "This does not work for this kind of customer." It's extremely hard. It's very hard, but it's totally worth it if you put that lens on.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky17:06

      And is there an example of you using this framework at a- on a product you worked on where you're just like, "Here's a thing we really did," I don't know, "had a big impact or really surprised everyone?"

   5. ARAnuj Rathi17:16

      So I've- we use it in, in, like, two different areas, so one is, uh, of course, products where I worked on, so I worked in- in Swiggy for the last seven years, and really when we started working towards this user, instead of thinking about everybody as a- as- as, you know, this is what our onboarding experience looks like, and this is what our product is, so essentially, we used to basically say, "Hey, that it's... We are a food delivery app, we are a, um, a grocery delivery app, and we have, like, these bunch of things." Instead of that, we just started reframing it from the- from the point of view of "What would you want, and how could you use us, and what is it in- in it for you?" And we started connecting all our marketing messages along with the onboarding. So even going out market and thinking, "Where do you actually find us? How did you know about us? It's a reasonably large brand. Why have you not already downloaded us and used us? Have you used us and rejected us in the past?" So kind of building that entire mental model and looking at, uh, uh, a user from the point of view of let's assume that you have heard about us 20 times, and what was that exact situation that brought you to download this app?So right from the entire journey of, of you hearing us, what was the trigger, and what was the marketing message, and what was the promotion that we were running, and how do we continue that journey on your onboarding from your splash, that 200 rupees off, off X rupees if you buy from us. Continuing that entire journey in the language that they understand, and with the user experience that is continuation from the marketing product are the things that we started focusing on a lot more, and it instantly started ch- uh, like, you know, showing us results. But while I'm talking about, like, just a very simple example, and everybody should be doing it, that is true even for, uh, when you have an... have a particular app which has multiple products and many product lines. It's the same principle that applies there, and that's where I think the largest amount of delta that happens that people don't know really why are we not able to cross-pollinate or cross-sell and so on so forth. Right now, I'm working with a company called Jupiter, which is a, a financial services app, and it's a neobank, so we care for personal finance, and it has a bunch of offerings. Like, there's a personal account or savings account. Uh, there's a credit card. There's mutual funds. There is, uh, investments in, in, say, gold, and FD, and, and so on so forth, right? It's a bunch of things. But, uh, when people think about, "E- why are you using us only for one service and just go away?" And actually, the key is to recognize that this user has found value in here, and they are not interested in all the other things that you talked about. So be able to empathize with that user and now thinking about, like, the behavioral science aspects in terms of, "How do I convert this user from one to the other?" That, I think, is, uh, is extremely important.

6. 19:59 – 22:30

   Why PMs must understand category consumers

   1. ARAnuj Rathi20:00

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky20:00

      So a couple of things I'm hearing here. One is the importance of focusing on not people, like, currently using your product, but this idea of maybe the marginal user or the adjacent user. Like, the next state of users is who you should be thinking about when you're trying to optimize onboarding the user experience.

   3. ARAnuj Rathi20:17

      Okay.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky20:17

      And then two is something that sounds like you've had a lot of success with is picking one value prop, maybe one positioning statement, and then following that through their entire journey, versus, like, "Here's all the things we do." Is that right?

   5. ARAnuj Rathi20:31

      That's absolutely right, and let me give an example of, uh, of this one, right? Like, uh... And one of the reasons why I really feel product managers must, if not better, but equally understand, uh, category consumers which are not in market or which are not really looking or which are not buying your products just yet as good as the, the marketer or the, or the brand expert in your team does, because they really are tasked with, "What is that one message that I can say that will make the user take attention," or, or get to, like, "Oh, this interesting," and, and, and direct attention towards your product? And if the product managers are able to do that, then they will choose that positioning and essentially understand, "What is my hook product? And what is the hook that will at least get them to try my f- my app or, or, uh, or any of those things," right? So if they understand it as well as a marketer and then understand over a period of time, "What is the right time when I introduce them to this other one rather than being, you know, very greedy about, like, l- letting the new user try everything?" So that's one. Uh, the other thing that I feel is, is a lot of product managers don't do right is, "Forget about everything. Here's my app. Go figure," is, is, is, is how most of, of the products are designed unfortunately. Uh, that automatically these things will happen without any intervention. "I have created something which is so beautiful, and once you tap that icon, everything inside that is my product that is so working perfectly." Uh, but they don't really think about, "At what moment do I actually get this user here, and why will they use it?" Well, this user is lazy, and vain, and selfish.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky22:09

      That phrase reminds me of something I always think about with Marc Andreessen had this great quote that your users' time is already allocated. They're not, like, looking for more apps to download. They already have a plan for the day basically, and they have things to do. They're not like, "Hmm, what's another iPhone app I'm gonna check out right now?" And so somehow you have to convince them this is worth your time, and I like this, this framework.

7. 22:30 – 23:59

   Anuj’s philosophy on the PM job

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky22:30

      Is there, like, an example of, like, a phrase you found really effective in others, either at Swiggy or Jupiter or Flipkart or anything just like, "Here's a really quick example of something that had big impact on either simplifying the value prop?" Or if you don't have an example top of mind, what was kind of the impact you saw from implementing some of these ideas?

   2. ARAnuj Rathi22:48

      I'll talk about, like, a phrase that, uh, that, um, now I use with, with product managers a lot to kind of simplify how they should be thinking. I think one thing is... Uh, and that's not only for the consumers but even, like, how we operate. Uh, we are product managers, and we are in the business of influence. Uh, users are doing something, and now we want them to do something else. Our engineers are doing something, and now we want to influence them into building something fast. Our le- leadership has some plans. We have to influence them to essentially look at a plan, and, like, basically sign off and do something else. We are in the business of influence, and you are doing this all the time internally. Otherwise, you are... And you are not successful even in shipping. Now we have to extend this to our users and really think about it from that point of view, and so you are a full stack influencer and not only an external influencer. So you've got to think like more like sales, more like marketing, more like influencers.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky23:42

      One of the most important skills of a product manager is influencing people on your team, and I like the point that you're also trying to influence your user. That's interesting. Just more reason to get really good at influence, so I actually have a newsletter about how to get better influence based on, uh, Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings. We'll link to that in the show notes.

8. 23:59 – 28:36

   How Anuj applies the working-backwards framework

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky23:59

      Okay, let's shift to a different topic. You have a really concrete way of actually implementing the working backwards process. We had one of the authors of the book Working Backwards on recently.

   2. ARAnuj Rathi24:11

      Yep.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky24:11

      And I'm excited to just hear what you've learned about how to actually put this into practice. It's easy to hear about, "Let's work backwards," but doing it is a different beast. And so I'd love to hear what you've learned there.

   4. ARAnuj Rathi24:20

      Well, I think the, the people who invented working backwards is, is clearly Amazon. I think they, they started this entire process, which are like, "Hey, why don't you write a press release and-"... with that press release. We'll work backwards from, from, from that one. And I thought that was a very cool idea, and I was trying to dig down into like, "Hey, how, why does it work?" Um, my insight or at least my, the way that I thought about this one is it's not working backwards only from a customer value proposition. Will our customers love, love it, and will they pay for it, and is it noteworthy, and is it something that we should even be working? While that is one of the most important things, uh, that the working backwards framework teaches us. But essentially, what you're working backwards from is, is an entire machinery at a particular day that is working for, for that date of GTM. What do we need to do from here till that particular day so that that GTM is successful, but also what will be the machinery we would have created so that this product is successful? Uh, now because you're already talking about GTM, you're already thinking about how will users love it, what is the money that we'll spend, what are the alternatives that we will... routes that we have explored that finally we have zeroed in on, and all of those. So they are all going to be a part of a PR FAQ. If I take a slightly open stance on this one, what is a press release? A press release is you have a one-pager which talks about, "What are we building? What is the particular date? Why? What is the exact value proposition? What will consumers say? What is the, what will the business manager say? What will, uh, how will they respond? How will they, uh, use it?" But the one thing that comes out from this framework is that you can use it for a whole bunch of other things. You can use it for negotiation, for example, because you start with a date, and then you say, "This is the one-pager that I need to ship, and I want consumers to say that." And you can use it to now go to our VP engineering and say, "By this date, can we build all of this?" Now, they do not have all the PRDs and everything, but they can give you a sense that, you know, this is too aggressive, or this is not, and so on. We can also use the quotes here to actually find alliances or find, like, people who are going to actually derail this. So you actually use the customer quote to basically say, "I want my customers to say this. From marketing and from my, uh, pricing team, can we actually ship this so that consumers will say that?" And then from the business owner's quote, you actually say, "This is what we are shipping, but what are your goals? Can you say that within three months, we would have achieved this much?" And so using that to kind of build one entire picture is, is, is one way that I found it really powerful because if you find disagreements here and say, "I can't ship it," then you change the date and, and then you change the goals because all of these things are changing together. So instead of one, you find the other set of all the things that need to come together t- for that press release to go live is the real value. The other part that I found interesting here is that I really truly believe in the power of three. So I'm, I, I actually ask my teams to write three press releases, alternative and divergent. Like, what if we... So suppose you're launching a membership program. So instead of two tiers, let's do three tiers. And, or, or for example, let's take another one which says, "Instead of, uh, you know, building a membership, let's build a tiering pricing program which with membership points. And instead of this segment, we'll, let's use another segment, let's say, uh, within these three." And they all need to be fully thought through, and that kind of helps the leadership choose. So the two things that help, uh, that work here. Well, when you are in the, in the product discovery phase, you would have heard from a lot of folks. And, and finally, if you show them just one roadmap, uh, it feels like, "Hey, this person didn't... They listened to my interesting point, which was valuable, but they didn't include it." But when you're doing these three PR FAQs, by just saying that, "I considered this, and this added up to a story that eventually is valuable. This alternative route, I considered your point of view and I created a story, but unfortunately, it is not adding up so we rejected it." So now people can compare and contrast, and that's a very powerful leadership tool, and that actually is a very powerful, powerful tool even for CXOs. When they say, "Let's build this," you can say, "Here are three ways we can build this, and here's the reason why I'm not building what you said, because you will like these two more."

9. 28:36 – 30:10

   The importance of FAQs

   1. ARAnuj Rathi28:36

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky28:36

      That's a really cool idea of just using the PR FAQ and working backwards process to think very differently, partly to make sure you've explored all the options, partly to just, like, think through things that are kind of in the back of people's minds and see if there's something there before committing to the one direction.

   3. ARAnuj Rathi28:52

      So the FAQs also are very important to kind of set processes in the system. For example, if now we are Jupiter, we are a financial services app. So every FAQ will mandatorily have how we're going to make sure that it is fully compliant. Uh, "Have you gotten sign off from, from ABC people? Have you actually thought about legal aspects?" And so on and so forth. So for example, you can use the FAQs very effectively here. Uh, versus, for example, when it was Swiggy, and it is, uh, it's a three-way marketplace. You have consumers, delivery executives, and restaurant partners. Now, any small change that you do on, on, say, delivery partners, for example, if you're working on optimizing their earnings per hour, which will lead to some changes in cost per delivery, but that may have a completely different i- impact on delivery fee. Sorry. I'm just making this up. But, uh, now because of so many moving parts in your FAQs, you're explicitly asking, "Have you thought about what are the implications on restaurant partner? Have you thought about what are implications on delivery partners?" And we in fact used to have that PR FAQ in terms of we'll write down the different segments of, of delivery partners, and sometimes it will have extremely weird correlations because there's product managers on one side of the equation have started thinking or at least consulting, uh, the other part of, uh, of the marketplace. What could this mean for you? And just it gets everybody together to, to create very crisp products that work for all sides of the marketplace.

10. 30:10 – 33:06

    The full-stack PM mindset

    1. ARAnuj Rathi30:10

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky30:10

       One thread I'm pulling out of a few of your stories so far is you often come back to this, like, full stack approach to many models. So and you talked about how PM is like an influencer, but also they're influencing users. It's a cool way of thinking about it with this working backwards process. You can use it to think about the full stack of launch, not just what features you're gonna build. I know you also have some strong opinions about product managers and they should be much more full stack than most PMs.... does that ring a bell? And if so, can you talk about that?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi30:39

       Yes. Uh, no, I think it's, it's, it's the same thread that is connecting the first and the second. Uh, I think product managers have to be... have to own outcomes, and, and not only features and, and parts of the problem. While they will own some parts of the problem fully, but if they need to work with everybody to make sure that eventual product that they launch is successful, and, and not only successful from the point of view of, "Hey, we launched something that works for users," et cetera. That's not the definition of success. Did it work in the way that it really changed the behavior of the kind of user that we want it to? Did it achieve a business outcome? Did it build a capability that is important for us? All of those things combined will not happen if the product manager is only thinking about their part. So they have to think about external users. They have to think about competition. They have to think about other product managers and product leaders, about engineering, about marketing, and so on. Because it's such a diverse field, unless you really... and I'm not saying you need to be an authority of that. Unless either you, you are very, very good at that, or you have built partnerships and have run your ideas or, or product through those people and gotten (...) from them, and finally made a decision around that part, I don't think you'll be very successful. So in my opinion, the full stack product managers are the ones who are going to be more successful rather than, uh, product managers who are doing very good at one particular area only. If... So there's one book which is Range, right? I'm, I'm sure, like, you may have heard about it, right? Even the first chapter, what they talk about, uh, is they take two examples. One is the example of, uh, Federer, Roger Federer. So with Roger Federer, for example, I think I'll just continue on that, that till 18, he played, like, a bunch of racket sports, uh, and this wasn't even tennis. But then you bring in, you know, ideas from one racket sport to the other, and second to the third, and so on and so forth, and now you have such a range of ideas that you can connect a lot more dots and actually ship it. Like, I think that's the- that's a better playbook for being more successful in product.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky32:42

       I was just watching a documentary on, I think it was called Greatness, and they had Wayne Gretzky, and he had this- exactly the same experience actually when he was young. He played hockey just during winter times, and during summer, he played other sports, and hockey was just like si- like a sport, one sport he played, and then eventually he started to focus on it, and they talked about how people that play different sports in their childhood actually ended up being much better at that one sport they chose, so a lot of

11. 33:06 – 36:19

    Anuj’s “show don’t tell” framework

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky33:06

       parallels. I know you also have a lot of interesting ways of thinking about coming up with roadmap ideas and ideating and building a roadmap backlog. So you already talked about this idea of going in very divergent directions and seeing if that leads anywhere. There's a couple more I- someone shared. Uh, one is you have this idea of show, don't tell. What is- what is that?

    2. ARAnuj Rathi33:27

       Actually, show, don't tell is, is an idea which is an extension of what we were talking about is, uh, from working backwards. When we're, when we're talking about working backwards, uh, one is a PRFAQ, which is like a written documentation of what we're trying to achieve. Show, don't tell, is essentially a way in which the product manager starts ideating with the entire experience, and they actually create all the collaterals, collaterals together of a user's journey to begin with, if you're working on a single player product, which is a single user product. And then, you actually start bringing together your marketers and others in terms of what is literally the first screen, and how is my user getting here? And it's not as simple as we imagine somebody who will be doing this and reaching here. We try to recreate an exact situation. Uh, there's a concept of person, not personas. So while we talk about personas, but we try to go to, all right, no, don't think about a generic user. Let's say Lenny, 30 years old, doing ABCD things, earning this much, et cetera, et cetera. His relationship with this category of food delivery is X. These are the things that he has done in the last month. In the last three days, here were the needs, desires, aspirations, fears, frustrations, et cetera, et cetera. We take, okay, it's 11 o'clock. What's happened? Why is this user open, or what triggered this particular app, and then what happened? So you literally start from there, and I think 50% of my product reviews are, are around that part. And then when we say, "All right, then this app got opened, do we have the right kind of way forwards for Lenny to actually achieve what he came here for?" And literally, each pixel and each copy and each word is, is going to be in service of, of that part. So that's kind of showing the entire journey rather than just saying and assuming, uh, so that is something that I've found really powerful with respect to even designing products or even thinking about why are we building something? What it also helps is when we are building complex products, especially in marketplaces, because once you're building this for the user, simultaneously, something is happening on the other part, if it is simultaneous, if it's a real-time marketplace or something like that. So you're building something for the user and saying, "All right, if this guy ordered, now there's a 30 minutes time when our delivery executors will, uh, will, will come to, uh, come to the user with food." What is happening? What's the emotional state of the user? And let's plot out the 30 minutes time, and let's create, like, various scenarios, which is like, hey, maybe he went to the restaurant, and, and the food was delayed, or the dude on a bike, uh, his bike got punctured, et cetera. Now, what is the consumer thinking at this time? So you show all of those things in real time, and that kind of cuts out a whole bunch of, um, of, you know, random ways in which the product could have looked like if you're creating even a chatbot. So just having that showcase of all journeys coming together, uh, helps a lot in building your products in the right way.

12. 36:19 – 39:14

    How to use the show-don’t-tell framework

    1. ARAnuj Rathi36:19

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky36:19

       So essentially, just getting very detailed and very concrete with the product experience that you're building, thinking about the user experience. Sounds like a lot of work. I can't imagine you do this often. Is the advice here to do this once a year or once and just kind of keep it updated? Sounds like you did this at Swiggy, and that was a really impactful way of building the product.

    3. ARAnuj Rathi36:41

       Yeah. I think- I think this is not only, like, one way actually. I think, like, I recommend this every product manager to do a show, don't tell version of their current version, and at the same time, there's a new version all the time so they can compare and contrast and very easily kind of explain everyone why they're doing something. In fact, that wall, so it's called the wall, it also becomes one common place where you can get all the stakeholders in, uh, because it becomes... Instead of just doing the elevator pitch, you can actually do detailed discussions on why I'm choosing this versus something else and so on and so forth. That's the product manager's version of doing this. There's also product leader's version of doing this, Lenny, which is, which I call strategy on a page, and a lot of people call it, like, growth loops. Like, don't show a user's journey. Now, let's see the entire strategy of the company together on one page. So all right, this is what the market looks like and why will we get what kind of users and what is our activation budgets and how- how many of them are we going to get to this next stage and get them to use it? How will we get them to cross-pollinate into different sections? Do we need a membership program? Are there any different levers which will press more or less and so on? So, that also is like a show, don't tell, uh, and not only one, but usually I like to create three of them as well. Like, why would we choose a strategy versus the other? And that, for example, is like a very good way for product leaders to kind of get to one strategy that they're CX or align with and something that they can essentially tell the entire product and other teams, "This is what we're going to follow."

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky38:08

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13. 39:14 – 41:27

    The impact of using this framework

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky39:14

       What kind of impact have you seen from implementing something like this or is there an example of something that came out of this that was a big unlock? And, you know, again, it's probably a lot of work for someone to put together a whole board, keep it updated, screenshots, marketing, funnels of where people are coming from. What sort of impact do you see from doing this either on growth or people, what people think?

    2. ARAnuj Rathi39:34

       I think the largest impact that happens here is on alignment. So how CXOs are thinking, if that is not very clear, and that can be a document and so on and so forth. But for a lot of people, it's not very clear on, "I can see one part of the funnel. I can understand... The marketing team can understand the best why we are requiring those users." But they don't kind of fully see the picture of, "If I attract this kind of users, why will some- these users become loyal and what does that entire thing look like?" Or say some other team which is building a part of the product, "Where do I come in?" And so on. So, I think the largest impact that this show don't tell- tell has, is on basically getting the entire company together on the same page and, and them being able to understand why I'm doing and which part of, of the entire, uh, you know, picture I am working on and why others are working on so that I can actually work with them to solve that part. Uh, that's one. The other thing that, that it helps, uh, Lenny, it's- it also helps in choosing directions. Like I said, like, it's because we are not doing one but three of them and I'm choosing one alternative versus the other, and sometimes these strategic discussions, they can get going, like, all sorts of different ways, and maybe you'll talk about one particular unique point and go deeper, rather than look at the entire picture together and say, "This is good because of all of these five points that we presented in- in- in page one versus the other one."

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky41:01

       I think the other benefit, just, like, one of the benefits of working backwards in Amazon's whole written down memo approach is it forces you to crystallize ideas and not stay superficial 'cause there's so many, like, good ideas in theory, but then when you have to get really concrete, nah, that's actually a terrible idea. Like, basically it's the same benefit in a lot of ways of, like, get very concrete. What are you actually gonna do? And that'll help you identify, okay, this isn't gonna work. What are we even thinking? And so- so I

14. 41:27 – 48:59

    Anuj’s “4BB framework” for product strategy

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky41:27

       like that. Awesome. Okay. Another framework that you have is something that you call the four BB framework for product strategy. Can you talk about what that's all about?

    2. ARAnuj Rathi41:36

       We essentially saw that, you know, um, if- if a startup actually usually wants to do, like, a bunch of- of- of things across the board. Uh, there's always like, "Hey, I should be investing in tech debt or, like, building core platforms that will really help my product in the long term," and that's super important, and that's my engineering managers and largely people asking for that bandwidth. And then there is the product manager themselves who is basically saying, "I want to do feature enhancement, bug fixes, my version tools..." You know, a few areas, experiments and so on and so forth. That's a- a regular product backlog that would work on sprint by sprint, uh, and there's this leadership which will say, "You know what? Now we have a suite of products now. I want to take, like, a large, you know, delta bet that may work. Uh, it may not work, but- uh, but we need to make sure that it works and... But I need work done across teams, and it's not only one person that needs to do it. I need contribution from four or five of- of you that- that come together and deliver that." Or there are places where a company is like just re-imagining their identity, uh, or they're pivoting, which is like, "All right, we were doing X. Now we are doing X plus Y. That's how we want to be known," or, "We were doing X."Now, we want to do very little of X because current consumers, okay, we will take care of them. But now, we want to pivot into Y, right? Uh... So it usually is in, in these, in four of these buckets. And what really happens is it gets down to product managers eventually prioritizing between these four. So I don't think it's a tactical prioritization product manager call. It really is a product strategy call, and the conversation that needs to happen is between, say, the head of product and the CEO or, or even, like, the, the leadership. "Uh, if I gave you 100 focus points, how much will you put in each of these buckets? And what are those four buckets? Those are the four BB buckets. Uh, so what are the ones?" We call them... First BB is brilliant basics. Uh, and the reason why we call it BB, uh, brilliant basic, you need to brand... You cannot brand it as tech debt, so it feels, like, very off.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky43:39

       Mm-hmm. (laughs)

    4. ARAnuj Rathi43:40

       Um, because these are brilliant, these are important. That's what the company is built on, and the company needs to invest, invest in that. So that's one. The second one is bread and butter. So we... That's your backlog. So if, if the product managers had no big ideas, and they just were left on their own, what would they come up with? And in terms of just improving that line of business that, that they're... uh, that they're given. Then there are big bets. And now, that's where your, um, your larger ideas that have come together, but, "How many big bets should we take?" Or, or, "Is this big bet even a big one?" That's where you're working backwards and PR/FAQs start becoming even more important. Uh, because those are the kind of bets that cannot be taken without everybody basically signing up, working backwards, and saying, "We will all make this successful." Uh, and breaking bad, essentially, is a different world altogether. That's where you want to redefine your company. You were doing... Um, for example, in Swiggy, we were doing food delivery. Now, we wanted to do grocery delivery as well. It's like, uh, uh, these are two companies working together. Or from a food delivery company, we wanted to become a convenience company. So that's almost breaking bad. Like we... Again, like I said, we got cheesy. Uh, but the good thing that happens is, is now what you can do is, along with your leadership, take stock. And the head of product essentially can say, "You know what? I can... In this... In the next year, I can invest a lot less on my brilliant basics, and we should, as a company, focus a lot on this breaking bad 'cause that is existential." But then, we should not look back and say, "Why were tech systems a little bit broken this time? Why were, uh... You know, we had a little bit more downtimes." And you can basically blow it out and, and almost showcase what to expect. For example, if you are just working on a whole bunch of bread and butters, so you'll start seeing a lot fewer bugs, customers will be a little happier. You, uh, worked a lot more br- brilliant basics, tech systems are nice, but you didn't create any differentiators. Uh, well, none of your bets went out, and, and your competitors are catching up. So does that sound like a, a better future? These are hard questions, and these prioritization questions I don't think are product management questions so much as product strategy questions. But in a lot of cases, executors don't know what they're trading off against. So if you are able to, um, create the conversation around which buckets do we want to put in and create three alternatives... So I have kind of tried to do that a, a bunch of times. "Let's look at strategy A and D.C., how do we diverge in?" Like, suppose we were putting a, like, lot fewer, uh, you know, focus points in brilliant basics and a lot more on, for example, big bets. Then, there will be a risk that there will be like... We won't have any experiments or very less experiments. We won't have... Your bugs will stay bugs. We w-... But we will get a shot at, like, kind of changing the game. Is that a future that is... that sounds better or something else? Which is like... Because you're pained also by a lot of bugs and, you know, constant downtimes. So... Which is more secure, but we won't build something amazing. So which sounds better? Because you are able to drive that, now the clarity to the product managers is way clearer in terms of what will they do. And also, they would know that if they are... They have been signed up for a big bet, then they will need to contribute to the PR/FAQ. They will need to contribute to the actual, uh, you know, working of that, irrespective of what their product was, but now they're part of something bigger.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky47:03

       Awesome. I love it. Okay. So just to summarize, so people can have a c- just a very short definition of this framework. Uh, brilliant basics is essentially tech debt and, like, things that you just have to do to... Like hygiene, almost. Bread and butter is essentially optimizing the product, existing product. Big bets are big bets. And breaking bad are just, like, future big rocket, like, moon shots, just, like, transform the way the business works.

    6. ARAnuj Rathi47:29

       That's right.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky47:30

       I love it. It's also interesting. Another thread that can... comes up again and again in your advice is exploring all the options before committing to one. Like you always-

    8. ARAnuj Rathi47:38

       Yeah.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky47:38

       I think it sounds like you always try to recommend three. I guess, let me say, what I always find is important there is I think it's important for the product manager to recommend one along with that. It's not just like, "Here's three. You tell me which one you do." It's like, "Here's three. Here's my recommendation. Why?" Is that your advice too, or do you see something different here?

    10. ARAnuj Rathi47:54

        100%. 100%. Uh, so when you have explored the three, you essentially have done the work on... that, "I have covered all bases and also crystallized them into, into an, a concrete option. And now, I'm choosing one on the company's behalf on the basis of whatever I know about the market, about the company, about our strategy, and about how we will make it successful." Now, if I miss something, it's also a time where you can actually work with leadership and other product managers to essentially get that knowledge complete. Or if, if there are, like... S- if you're 80% right, you can actually use elements of strategy two and strategy three to bring into one. So that's always the, uh, the way that, that you think that one very concrete option, but because you have these other two, so that you're not missing and bringing it together. But ultimately, you are the one who is going to champion this. Uh, that's where the other, uh, you know, leadership element of Amazon comes in, which is...... disagree and commit, so. But once we have aligned on this one, we'll all commit to, to launching this, and then the leadership should not go back and forth on that part.

15. 48:59 – 50:49

    Contrarian corner

    1. ARAnuj Rathi48:59

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky48:59

       Awesome. I wanna go in a completely different direction. Feels like you have a lot of contrarian opinions about how to build product, and how to build teams, and build companies, and things like that, so I just wanna start broad. What are some things you have contrarian opinions about, things you believe that a lot of other people maybe don't believe or see differently?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi49:19

       So one, for example, excellence and speed. There's always, like, a question around that, "Hey, would you sh- rather ship faster, or would you sh- rather ship better?" In my opinion, when, when you have to make a choice, think more and ship better. Most experiments should be thought experiments, and they should not even be tried out because they're obviously gonna fail, which is contrary to, "Let's try it out, and then we'll... let's see." I think that wastes a lot of company time. If you had, uh, if you had smart people who could do meta thinking, a lot of experiments would just not even be, like... It's not a rule, but it's a preference. I think, uh, speed and excellence are two different axes. Ideally, you should be better at both, but if you had to choose one, choose excellence.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky50:04

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ARAnuj Rathi50:04

       There's another, uh, contrarian opinion, uh, which is I think most, most product managers... and again, I'm probably talking a little bit of, of, of the kind of, you know, people that I worked with and, and, and have kind of interacted with in product... most product managers should not even be product managers. They should think a little bit more around whether this is actually the right field for them, uh, because I think a lot of people from other areas have entered the field without fully realizing what it takes. So there is definitely a way in which you can coach yourself and, and, and, and kind of work your way upwards up that one, but it's... it can make you quite miserable if you're not, kind of... if it's not right for you.

16. 50:49 – 52:34

    Anuj’s “framework of 3” for great PMs

    1. ARAnuj Rathi50:49

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky50:49

       Is there something folks should look for there that'll tell them you probably shouldn't be a product manager, either motivation, or skill set, or background, or anything?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi50:55

       No, I don't think about, like, particular, uh, domains that you come from. I have, like, a, again, a simple framework of three. I think the first thing is, is essentially raw sharps, and that can manifest itself into problem identification and problem-solving. That's one. And also hierarchizing it and all of that. I think that is super important. The second one is what I call drive or grit because I think with that comes a whole bunch of qualities around curiosity, learnability, never giving up, consumer backward thinking. "I really want to solve this," and all of that, that, that comes with that. Third, which is a little different, we talked about that, is influence. You are in the business of influence. And if you can kind of see yourself that, "I'm, I'm built this way," or, "I want to really get better at this," that's when I think this field is, is gonna serve you well.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky51:45

       I love that everything is three. How handy.

    5. ARAnuj Rathi51:48

       Only the s are four. Uh, uh, I, I wish I could compress in three.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky51:51

       (laughs) Yeah. There's too many things to do there. Essentially, these are your p- maybe your perspective on the most important PM skills. Is that a good way to think about it? Influence, grit, and just being smart?

    7. ARAnuj Rathi52:02

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky52:03

       And I think what you said here is not like you have to be amazing at these to get into product and do well. It's you need to be excited about getting better-

    9. ARAnuj Rathi52:10

       Yes.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky52:10

        ... at these skills.

    11. ARAnuj Rathi52:11

        That's right.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky52:12

        Awesome.

    13. ARAnuj Rathi52:12

        Because I think, uh, it's, it's not as if that everybody is born with, like, a lot of influence. Like, of course you can get better at it, but just the prospect of, of that, "Hey, I will need to be influential to succeed at this job," that should excite you and not scare you away, and you should not, like, think, um, that, "Hey. You know what? I can get away from this and still be very successful product manager," because most likely, you will not.

17. 52:34 – 54:00

    How to develop grit and influence

    1. ARAnuj Rathi52:34

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky52:34

       Maybe spending a little more time here, so smart, you're probably not gonna be able to do a lot about. In terms of grit or influence, is there anything you can share about what you've seen most helps people develop at these skills other than just doing the job for a while and then starting to get better at this?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi52:49

       Yeah. I think even, even smartness, I think 80% of that smartness, I think, is something that's, that's very achievable. You don't need to be outstanding at that. Domain knowledge, for example, is something just, like, an average smart person w- person with no domain knowledge versus you with... armed with a lot of knowledge around domain and so on can already take you there where you can take better decisions. I think first one is more about decision-making, problem identification, problem-solving, and all of that. So I think that really can be developed at least to a level where you are very effective. Drive, I think, is, is probably the hardest to coach, probably the hardest. I've not seen people with, with less drive actually eventually turning out with, with a lot of drive, et cetera. But, but they can be inspired, and I think you need to be a person who can, who can think about it that way. But the third one, influence, is, I think, like, there's no negotiation here. You need to really think that "I have to be good at this one." There's another framework that, Lenny, I wanted to talk about in, uh, when I look at, like, product leadership in general and how, how do you think about, uh, you know, different people and, and so on, why is it a... when is it a product manager problem, or your problem, or the company

18. 54:00 – 56:21

    Three reasons why leaders fail

    1. ARAnuj Rathi54:00

       problem? There are only three reasons, again, why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader. Uh, and you could look at a person, and you would say that either that person can't do, which is a capability issue, or they won't do, which is a motivation or an alignment issue, or they were not set up to do, which is really your problem that you didn't set up the ways of working Mm-hmm. ... or design properly, or your OKR structure sucks, and, and so on and so forth. So as a leader, it's almost the opposite of what, uh, like, what we talked about great influence and raw sharps. Like, if the... have you... do you have the right people in terms of capability? A- and if not, is the right answer for us to coach them, or to, like, really put them... or mentor them and so on, or move them to some other place because maybe their capability is suited elsewhere? If they won't do, why won't they? Like, are they not aligned to you? Do they not agree with your vision? Do they not...... does have enough time, and so on and so forth. So you need to really go deeper there. Why won't they do? And there are different answers for that. But if it's a setup issue, then at least I have realized that apart from what product managers can do, almost 70, 80% (laughs) of problems why things don't happen are a setup issue.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky55:17

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ARAnuj Rathi55:18

       Uh, product leaders or other leaders have not thought through what OKRs are doing to my company and not really fully thought through around org design. If you've read the book called Team Topologies, that's, like, one, one interesting book which, which starts with Conway's Law and essentially saying, "Show me an engineering architecture, and I will actually tell you what the org design of, how this company is." But that also manifests itself in products, that you can basically look at a product. In most cases, you will be able to say what was the org design that l- led to this kind of product.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky55:51

       I have heard that book mentioned a couple times recently. I gotta check it out. Just to, uh, the three you just shared, which is another three, I love it. Uh, can do, won't do. What was the third one again? Didn't do?

    5. ARAnuj Rathi56:01

       Not set up to do.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky56:03

       Not set up to do. That one's a long... That's a long one. I think what's cool about these are i- they're essentially ways to measure performance maybe of a product manager, like performance reviews. Like, "Ken, did you have the skills to do this? Did you have the motivation to do this? Or is it something not set up for you success..." Like, you weren't set up for success basically.

    7. ARAnuj Rathi56:20

       Mm-hmm.

19. 56:21 – 57:51

    AI corner

    1. ARAnuj Rathi56:21

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky56:21

       Okay. Let's go to AI corner, something I'm trying to do with every guest. Is there anything you've learned about working with AI that you think might be helpful to listeners?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi56:31

       Yeah. I think a couple of things. Um, I think working with AI, many me- ... Many, many teams and companies get too excited about AI, and the possibilities, and so on, and it's almost like a solution ready to find a problem within their companies, which also is fine because now you're thinking about possibilities on, on what, what this particular technology can do for my company. So it's a good way to start, but many people don't actually use it in the best way possible and, and, and force feed it. Instead of that, you can think about, "How do I get AI to work with HI?" And again, it's connecting back with, and this is something that, uh, Swiggy CEO Harsha invented this term called HI just to make sure that everybody understands. Artificial intelligence is, intelligence is important as much as human intelligence.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky57:17

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ARAnuj Rathi57:18

       And if you're not humanly intelligent, you're not gonna be artificially intelligent, (laughs) or AI really help your company a lot. So literally, any product that you're building, even when it is technologically, you know, quite interesting and exciting and so on, it needs to be balanced out and work together along with a great UX, along with behavioral science, and the, and the combination of those two will actually make sure that, that you're getting the best, uh, outcome of that unless you're building something which is, like, completely backend with no human intervention at all. I'm talking about consumer products largely.

20. 57:51 – 1:02:19

    Lessons from building a successful marketplace

    1. ARAnuj Rathi57:51

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky57:51

       You've helped build some of the most successful marketplaces in India and in the world. I'm curious just what may be a lesson or two about building a successful marketplace.

    3. ARAnuj Rathi58:02

       One thing that, that I would, I would definitely want to talk about is when you're thinking marketplaces, it's not as a one plus one equals two. It multiplies. When we are thinking about three-way marketplaces, you almost not need to think like- It's a two-dimensional thing going into three dimension. Like, it becomes that amount of complexity, and your regular product management and, and leadership principles, they will start failing. So a bunch of usual suspects will not, not work. Let me give an example. OKRs will not work. Uh, why not? So fundamentally, OKRs are a way to think about objectives and key results, but the fundamental assumption here is that it is solving for a kind of user. Uh, and that kind of user, you can divide and conquer. And of course, there will be, like, a little bit of tussle between different teams, but you can get them to work with each other. But if it is working for three different kind of users, then all the goals will all the time be in conflict with, with each other.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky59:00

       And what are examples of the three users? There's, like, the delivery person, the restaurant.

    5. ARAnuj Rathi59:04

       End user. So if you have... (laughs) If you have an example of, uh, on the consumer side, we need to collect more delivery, delivery fee, or what does that really mean for those other two? And on the restaurant side, "Hey, we, we need to get more commissions because profitability is a goal." And on the delivery partner side, it means pay them less or optimize a little bit more. So but once you start moving one lever, those two are already stretched towards the other direction, so they're not independent levers in the first place. And, and the way to even model them out, how will it work out if we choose X versus what Ys will change, Y and Z, Z will change, it's almost impossible to do that. So I've seen OKRs fail multiple times when you're running this kind of a marketplace. Big bets work much better. That's when you say, "Hey, hey, we want to take this bet," but it's all going to be... It's all going to come together as if we pull this lever, then something else will change. So the here's the entire story of let's go make this profitable by making delivery fee higher, but maybe not touching earnings per hour, or maybe not touching restaurant commissions, things like that. So I've at least found that's a, that's a better way to, you know, choose strategically which direction we have to go. The other thing is, um, managing multiple empaties together. That's not, not straightforward. So again, Swiggy being, like, a real-time hyperlocal marketplace, and we discuss about that, right? As soon as the order comes, what happens between when user does this and when delivery executor is doing something else, and what are the absolute different kind of scenarios that are going to be faced by the, by the delivery executor? Uh, and at the same ti- same time, how will I really, you know, work with the user to manage their emotions? So, so you need to manage a whole bunch of these things together. Um, and product management here, you cannot have the delivery executive product manager only care about that side-... they also need to be a champion on the consumer side, and vice versa.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:03

       Yeah. I find with marketplaces, Uber went through this, Lyft went through this, where the, like, the supply often just gets squeezed because they need to deliver for the customer. So, like, drivers end up getting hosed. You know, Airbnb hosts kind of get pushed to do things they may not want to do. I imagine delivery people, same thing.

    7. ARAnuj Rathi1:01:18

       Now that you mentioned Uber, for example, one of the things that, uh, that, that companies which were running, uh, you know, taxi businesses, if you have just one limited pool of money, for example, and you want to get the marketplace humming with respect to number of orders per day, uh, how do you decide? Should I incentivize my users, for example, for the first ride, first 10 rides, and so on or put zero money in there but incentivize my drivers that you need to come here? So you have to think about liquidity also in, in, in very different ways, and, and sometimes you need to pull the lever completely, uh, towards the other side. So the experiments also, A/B experiments also don't work, and that's a very unique thing about marketplace. Not work, I mean, not work the way that you would expect them to work, uh, because there are network effects all over. So if you have to run A/B experiments on your driver side, uh, if you put half drivers on A versus half on B, but there is a network effect, uh, between the both of them.

21. 1:02:19 – 1:07:48

    How to balance and maintain stability on all sides of a marketplace

    1. ARAnuj Rathi1:02:19

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:19

       When you're trying to decide which side of the marketplace to focus on and prioritize, do you have any kind of lessons or rules of thumb of just, like, focus on the customer and index towards their happiness versus the supply versus, say, the delivery person?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi1:02:32

       There's one thing that every, that I think marketplaces need to realize is that, A, you need to be operating in a stable marketplace. So all sides need to be stable enough so that they're not going to go away. Uh, so I think that's a starting point, and that's an important point because once we have established that, then after a stable marketplace, then we say that which are the, uh, which is the kind of customer that we are in the service of and which are the customers that we will really focus on? For example, Amazon is very, very clearly a customer-centric company. Uh, and if they have to make a choice, they won't because they need to have a s- stable marketplace. So sellers also are very, as important but slightly more important than the customer. But for example, if you looked at, say, Taobao or, uh, in Alibaba, their way of thinking is w- their aim in life is to create life-changing experience for 10 million Chinese sellers, and they will create a marketplace from the point of view of sellers which can actually sell. Again, they will have the same consumer app and, uh, uh, and a seller, you know, work and so on. They are in, in the service of, uh, of sellers. So you need, really need to, it will derive from the company's vision. I think the way we had thought about it at Swiggy, that we had to clarify in our values that the first value is initially it used to be customer comes first, but that was very c- confusing because everybody is a customer. Even restaurant is a selling customer, um, and so on. We had to clarify that consumer comes first, like the end consumer which is actually eating food because we are a convenience company, uh, that delivers to the end consumer. And when you're thinking about, you know, restaurants or delivery partners, then we work with them because we both are... when you're talking about the del- with the delivery partner, Swiggy and the delivery part, we both are in the service of the customer. So you will build that app also from that perspective, and even the restaurant side also from that perspective that, you know, we both are together in the service of the end customer.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:24

       I feel like you have probably 100 more frameworks and processes and acronyms we can talk about, but, uh, I know you got to go. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on, or is there anything else you want to leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

    5. ARAnuj Rathi1:04:38

       Just last few words that, that I want to revise. Work backwards from an amazing future. So first thing is creatively imagine a future, and then work backwards from that and essentially think what will make that successful, and be paranoid about that, "Hey, everything is going to go wrong, and hence I need to just make sure that it all comes together."

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:59

       Only the paranoid survive.

    7. ARAnuj Rathi1:05:00

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:00

       Great advice to leave people with. We've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions for you. Are you ready?

    9. ARAnuj Rathi1:05:07

       Yeah.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:08

        What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

    11. ARAnuj Rathi1:05:12

        One book is Working Backwards. We covered that. Uh, the other one that has shaped my, uh, my beliefs a lot is called How Brands Grow. Uh, it's by a professor called Byron Sharp. There are two parts to it, How Brands Grow I and II. That's both, both very good. Uh, the other book which I really love is... and recently Kunal Shah, who's the founder of CRED, an Indian startup we suggested, is The Luxury Strategy. And, and the reason why I love that book is because it gets into the depth of, of the human psychology beh- behind hierarchies and how lords and kings and, you know, those kind of social hierarchies have shaped how people think about aspirational products and so on. So highly recommend it.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:52

        What's a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?

    13. ARAnuj Rathi1:05:57

        I really like to do reruns of The Office. So, (laughs) so it's... I was trying to think about this, this, uh, "What is a recent movie that I watched?" And like, no, I, I keep on going back to The Office and some other episode and try to derive a lot of, um, you know, stories from Michael Scott.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:13

        And the, uh, okay, the US one, not the British one, or do you watch both?

    15. ARAnuj Rathi1:06:16

        No, I watch both, but, uh, but the US one has, like, a lot more seasons.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:21

        Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates when you're interviewing p- product managers specific?

    17. ARAnuj Rathi1:06:27

        Which are the products where you decide speed is more important versus which are the products where you decide excellence is more important? And I think that gives me, like, a good understanding of their frameworks and why they deciding what, and then we go back into concrete examples where they chose one versus the other, and then go take it from there.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:46

        And then what do you look for in a good answer to that question?

    19. ARAnuj Rathi1:06:49

        I look for essentially their assessment of risk, uh, uh, their assessment of how important have they, uh, or how well have they assessed the market.... and the competition or the competitive products in that market. And if they, if their answer is, "Let's ship something, and we'll find out," and so on, that also gives me basically a point of view that they really don't understand that, uh, this product what they're talking about with this ship speed, uh, is not re- the, the V part of the MVP. It's not viable, or it's not... or I don't know. How do you call that? MLP or, like, whatever. But it's not differentiated enough that it can be marketed. It is not worth enough where, where you can take it to user. It's not gonna work for a lazy and unselfish user. And maybe that's not the answer towards, um, speed versus excellence. Versus, for example, there are some products which are, there's a very clear, competitive differentiation that we can find. There was a clear market gap. I wanted to launch something even if it is half-baked,

22. 1:07:48 – 1:12:28

    Lightning round

    1. ARAnuj Rathi1:07:48

       no problem. I want to go take it out, get user feedback, iterate, and so on. So understanding of the market, A, but, B, also understanding of, uh, their, the core orientation.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:00

       Comes back to your, uh, ongoing advice of being full stack in a lot of ways and, in this case, being a full stack PM and thinking about marketing, launch, and adoption, all those things. Next question. What is a favorite product you recently discovered that you really like?

    3. ARAnuj Rathi1:08:15

       The very recent product that I, that I like is called RISE. It's a, it's a sleep tracking app, and because I am kind of an half-insomniac, and for the longest time, I was thinking about how can I track this so that... What am I doing, and how can I actually get better at this? Uh, so I really like the way that they actually help, help the end user. It's just been a week since I started using it. Uh, would recommend it.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:42

       Has that helped your sleep yet or too soon to say?

    5. ARAnuj Rathi1:08:44

       Uh, it's help, it's helped me track my sleep, so it's... (laughs)

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:48

       (laughs)

    7. ARAnuj Rathi1:08:48

       And now, it's, it's getting into the zone where it is actionable, but I like it.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:51

       Okay. Okay. We'll see.

    9. ARAnuj Rathi1:08:53

       For sure.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:53

        Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, like to share with people, kind of think about in either work or life?

    11. ARAnuj Rathi1:09:01

        Would call it a life motto as, uh, as much, but, but one of the things that I keep telling, like, you know, my, uh, people who work with me, alongside me, and so on, uh, is stop externalizing. That's one. Which also means the, the more artistic way to say that is you are the reason for your own misery. So that's something that I keep using a lot more in a fun way. But if things go wrong, if that leadership meeting didn't happen from that way, if my product bombed, and so on, go back, and let's ask ourselves, "What could we have done better? What I could have done better?" And so on. And of course, because I'm also a poker player, so, so in a way, I understand there is half luck involved and half skill. Uh, but over the long period of time, if it's only luck, and you're failing and failing and failing, you have to go and look back at your skill. So yeah. You are the reason for your own misery.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:50

        I love that advice. Be very em- empowering and be responsible. Final question. I was stalking your LinkedIn. You host an event called The Secret, Secret Soiree.

    13. ARAnuj Rathi1:10:01

        Yes.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:01

        Which is not that secret 'cause you post about it, but I'm curious just what is that all about, and, uh, what got you to do these sorts of events?

    15. ARAnuj Rathi1:10:07

        (laughs) So we just started, like me and, uh, an ex-colleague of mine, Shivangi. Uh, so we, we essentially wanted to meet cool people around. So that's how it started. Like, interesting people, uh, without agenda who can come together and discuss interesting stuff about entrepreneurship, about startups, about products, about connections, and so on and so forth. So it just started like that, and now, we are, we are onto many, many more interesting things that we are bringing in, in terms of cohorts and which will be team-based. So it could be around, around product management, around marketing, around growth, and so on. We are strictly keeping it non- not-for-profit for at least the next year, but, but long way to go.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:51

        Amazing. And so for listeners, this is something they could join? Who should look into this? Who is this for?

    17. ARAnuj Rathi1:10:57

        Absolutely. At that time, probably we'll not call it The Secret Soiree-

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:00

        (laughs)

    19. ARAnuj Rathi1:11:00

        ... uh, once we have expanded.

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:02

        No longer secret.

    21. ARAnuj Rathi1:11:04

        (laughs)

    22. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:04

        Okay. Cool. And then, I guess, is... They just follow you on LinkedIn, right? That's how they can keep up to date with these sorts of events. Okay. Cool.

    23. ARAnuj Rathi1:11:09

        Yes. Uh, on LinkedIn as well as on Twitter.

    24. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:12

        Awesome. Anuj, we've gone through so many topics. We've talked about Breaking Bad and full stack product management, full stack thinking, working backwards, bread and butter, rule of threes. I don't know. So many things. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and follow up on anything we've talked about? And how can listeners be useful to you?

    25. ARAnuj Rathi1:11:33

        Yes. So I'm on Twitter. So on twitter.com/anujrathi. And LinkedIn, you can just search my name. I'm pretty active on both of them. Uh, I do a bunch of, you know, not podcasts, uh, all the time, like you host, Lenny, but, uh, but a bunch of other events as well as, uh, as talks. So I keep on posting on Twitter. We can find me there.

    26. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:55

        Amazing. Anuj, thank you so much for being here.

    27. ARAnuj Rathi1:11:59

        Thank you so much, Lenny, for hosting.

    28. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:01

        It's my pleasure. Bye, everyone. (upbeat music) 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 leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

Episode duration: 1:12:29