Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)

... are you proactively trying to challenge your own assumptions? It's extremely important, right? I, as a beginner product manager, as well as a seasoned product leader, if you're not doing enough of that, then I think you might not be listening. If y- there's no conflict, if there's no contention, then, uh, something is missing. (laughs)

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Shweta Srivastava. Shweta is senior director of product management at Waymo, which, if you're not familiar with Waymo, they are building self-driving cars that are already live on the streets in San Francisco, LA, and Phoenix. I actually got to take a ride in one ahead of this chat, and you'll hear all about that in this episode. Before joining Waymo, Shweta was chief product officer at Nauto, an AI startup focusing on driver and automation safety. Before that, she was head of product management at Amazon Web Services for their database and analytic services, and before that she was at Cisco. In our conversation, we delve into what it's like to work as a PM at Waymo, and how it's both different and similar to software-only products. We talk about their KPIs and goals at Waymo, including how they track progress towards a future of self-driving cars, how they build subtle cues and behaviors into the cars to create trust for the rider and also for other cars on the road, plus Shweta's biggest lessons about building products and teams across the many companies she's worked at. I can't wait for a future of every car being self-driving, and it was super fun to learn about what goes into making this all happen. With that, I bring you Shweta Srivastava after a short word from our sponsors. 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 SOC2, 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 SOC2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off of 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. This episode is brought to you by public.com, who want to tell you about their new treasury accounts, which earn a 4.8% yield on your cash. That is higher than a high-yield savings account, while still being backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Treasury yields are at a 15-year high, but buying US treasuries is super complicated. You have to go to a bank, or navigate an ancient government website, or at least that was the case. Now, you can move your cash into US treasuries with the flexibility of a bank account. You can access your cash whenever you want, even before your treasury bills hit maturity. There are no hold periods, no settlement days, just a safe place to park your cash and earn a reliable yield. Public will automatically reinvest your treasury bills at maturity, so you don't have to do anything to continue growing your yield. And you can manage your treasuries alongside stocks, ETFs, crypto, and any alternative assets. Do all your investing in one place, and earn 4.8%, a higher yield than a high-yield savings account. Only with a treasury account at public.com/lenny. Shweta, welcome to the podcast.