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The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, FB, Thumbtack, YT)

Noam Lovinsky has had a distinguished career in product, leaving an indelible mark at Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack, and currently as the chief product officer at Grammarly. At Facebook, Noam helped establish the New Product Experimentation team; at Thumbtack, he was chief product officer; and at YouTube, he was one of the early product leaders overseeing the consumer experience. In our conversation, we discuss: • Challenges and lessons from reviving growth at YouTube and Thumbtack • Lessons from building Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team • Insights into Grammarly’s success • Knowing when it’s time to kill your project • Why diversifying your growth channels is critical • The power of visioning and storytelling in shaping product strategy • How to create space for innovation at large companies • The resilience and motivation of Grammarly’s team in Ukraine — Brought to you by: • Whimsical—The iterative product workspace: https://whimsical.com/lenny • Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny • LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business https://www.linkedin.com/podlenny Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-happiness-and-pain-of-product Where to find Noam Lovinsky: • X: https://twitter.com/noaml • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noaml/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Noam’s background (04:18) Noam’s lack of online presence (08:06) Lessons from YouTube: advocating for what’s best for yourself and the team (14:31) Prioritizing what’s best for the business (19:37) Knowing when it’s time to kill a project (21:47) Lessons from Thumbtack: diversifying growth channels and overcoming challenges (26:24) How Thumbtack turned growth around (31:44) Building Airbnb’s instant booking feature (35:28) Lessons from Thumbtack: team collaboration and product strategy (38:38) Lessons from Facebook: building the New Product Experimentation team (40:43) The importance of starting small and building community density (46:07) Advice for building a startup within a startup (48:52) Having an incentive system (49:34) Lessons from Grammarly: adapting to changing user needs and building for the masses (54:20) The scrappiness and profitability of Grammarly (56:56) The resilience and motivation of the Grammarly team in Ukraine (59:08) General career advice (01:01:02) When to pull back (01:02:58) Closing thoughts (01:03:56) Lightning round Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Lenny RachitskyhostNoam Lovinskyguest
Mar 16, 20241h 9mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Noam Lovinsky on navigating product growth, decline, and reinvention

  1. Noam Lovinsky, currently CPO at Grammarly and formerly at YouTube, Thumbtack, and Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team, reflects on building products across every stage: zero-to-one, negative-to-one recovery, and scaling to massive reach.
  2. He emphasizes optimizing for authentic work that gives you energy, advocating for what’s best for the business even when it hurts your role, and deliberately choosing roles that stretch you the most.
  3. The conversation dives into how YouTube and Thumbtack handled major inflection points, why single-channel growth is dangerous, how to structure startup-within-a-startup incubators, and what makes Grammarly a durable consumer subscription business.
  4. Throughout, Noam shares practical career advice on when to kill projects, when to ask to be layered, how leadership teams should engage in product strategy, and how to build systems that genuinely support innovation inside large companies.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Optimize your career for authenticity and energy, not performative visibility.

Noam is highly successful without tweeting, newsletters, or heavy networking; he focuses on deep work and genuine collaborations, advising others to lean into what feels natural and energizing rather than external pressure to build a public persona.

Advocate for what’s best for the business, even at personal risk.

At YouTube he argued to de-staff his own project and later asked to be layered under another leader; in healthy organizations this kind of honesty is rewarded, and it’s a powerful way to test whether you’re in the right culture.

Don’t rely on a single growth channel; diversify before it’s too late.

Thumbtack’s dependence on SEO led to a brutal downturn when Google changed its algorithms; the recovery required building multiple channels (SEM, Facebook, referrals) and rethinking how to acquire and target demand across thousands of micro-marketplaces.

Growth hides structural problems; slowdowns force necessary clarity.

Triple-digit growth at Thumbtack masked major liquidity and UX issues; only once growth went flat/negative did the organization seriously confront dropped demand, marketplace friction, and a broken monetization loop.

Internal incubators live or die by incentives, autonomy, and time horizons.

Facebook’s NPE learned that using standard corporate performance cycles, infra rules, and process kills zero-to-one work; successful incubators must have different incentives, lightweight infra choices, and realistic expectations (many wins will be “wine,” not “unicorns”).

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Do what you like. You’re generally going to be a lot better at the things that really fill you up.

— Noam Lovinsky

Advocate for what’s best for the team and the organization, even if that means putting yourself in a difficult moment.

— Noam Lovinsky

Growth masks all problems. You don’t really have a true understanding of what’s working well and what’s not when you have incredible growth.

— Noam Lovinsky

If you’re a large organization and you do some performance management process twice a year in your zero to one incubator, you’ve already killed it.

— Noam Lovinsky

We are meant to struggle. Through struggle is how we get better, how good things happen, how bonds form.

— Noam Lovinsky

Prioritizing authentic work and non-public personal branding (not tweeting, newsletters, etc.)YouTube lessons: killing your own project and asking to be layered for the good of the orgThumbtack’s growth collapse and turnaround: dependency on SEO, marketplace redesign, and multi-channel growthDesigning and running Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team (startup within a startup)Structuring incentives, autonomy, and infrastructure for internal incubatorsGrammarly’s long-term growth, product magic, and bootstrapped/profitable cultureCareer strategy: seeking stretch roles, managing personal pain vs. growth, and leadership-team dynamics

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