Podcast · Tech & Science

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

by Lenny Rachitsky · English · Tech & Science

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 31 min
Latest: 4 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

4 Oct 2026 · 37 minNew

OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT: We’re entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux

Tibo Sottiaux leads ChatGPT and Codex at OpenAI. Under his stewardship, OpenAI has shipped some of its most consequential consumer launches: Codex, ChatGPT Work, and most recently, the new Dots personal agent platform. He joined me at DevDay, hours after his team launched more than 20 new products, to talk about where things are heading. We discuss: 1. Dots, OpenAI’s new personal AI assistant 2. Why most actions on the internet will soon be taken by agents 3. Why loops, graphs, and fine-tuning agent workflows are a passing phase 4. Which skills are trending up and down in the AI era 5. How…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

27 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 34 min

The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham

Molly Graham is back for round two, and this one is even more powerful. Molly has spent more than 20 years helping organizations and the humans inside them navigate growth and change. She’s held leadership roles at Google, Facebook, Quip, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is the host of TED’s WorkLife podcast (which she took over from Adam Grant). She also runs Glue Club, a leadership community for senior operators, and writes a popular newsletter called Lessons . In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why Molly’s famous “give away your Legos” career advice no longer holds true in…
20 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 37 min

90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter Sellis

Peter Sellis was the first product manager at Snapchat, where he spent seven years building one of the most beloved consumer products in history. He went on to serve as Head of Product at Discord, where he helped drive some of the fastest user growth the platform had seen. Having left his role at Discord, he gets to be especially real and unfiltered — nothing to promote, no PR, no comms team. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why Peter designs teams like . . . terrorist organizations 2. What it was really like to manage Nikita Bier 3. Why the median PM is so bad 4. Why Snapchat’s…
8 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 23 min

How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)

Roman Ugarte helped incubate and build Grok Bot, the popular new knowledge-work agent from SpaceXAI. A small, isolated team took it from first line of code to a working internal product in four weeks, and to a hugely successful public launch just three weeks later. Before Grok Bot, Roman led Growth at Cursor, where he helped scale the company from 15 people to over 1,000 before its acquisition by SpaceX. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. The origin story of Grok Bot 2. The key decision to build it from scratch instead of adding it to Cursor 3. Why the team personally onboarded…
6 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 19 min

Why companies are becoming a series of loops | Anish Acharya (a16z)

Anish Acharya is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he has focused on consumer investing. Anish is one of the most insightful, thought-provoking, and in-the-weeds product investors I’ve met, and this conversation will get your mind buzzing. Before joining a16z, Anish was a serial founder and operator: he founded SocialDeck, which he sold to Google, then led multiple efforts inside Google before founding Snowball, which he sold to Credit Karma. At Credit Karma he rose to VP of Product and then GM of the consumer product and the broader credit card business. In our in-depth…
30 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 22 min

AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (Product Lead ChatGPT Work)

Tara Seshan leads product for Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI (alongside previous podcast guest Andrew Ambrosino, who’s her engineering manager). Before OpenAI, Tara spent over six years at Stripe, where she joined as one of the first five product managers. She went on to lead product for Watershed, which Time magazine named one of the best inventions of 2022, and she is also a founder and Thiel Fellow. Most personally meaningful to me: Tara is one of the three inaugural Lenny’s Newsletter Fellows, a program I ran a couple of years ago to spotlight the most exciting up-and-coming product…
23 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel

Jen Abel is the co-founder of JJellyfish and GM of enterprise sales at State Affairs. She is widely regarded as one of the sharpest practitioners in enterprise sales, and for that reason, this is her third visit to the podcast. In our first conversation we went deep on founder-led sales; in our second we mapped the $1M–$10M playbook. This time we do something I’ve never seen on another podcast: walk step by step through the full enterprise sales cycle. Most people think it’s five steps. Jen shows it’s closer to 15. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why the standard five-stage CRM…
16 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

OpenAI’s Head of Design: This is the best time in history to be a designer | Ian Silber

Ian Silber is the head of product design at OpenAI, where he has led the design of ChatGPT, Codex, and all of OpenAI’s product experience for the past three years. Before OpenAI, he was at Artifact, the AI-powered news app built by the founders of Instagram. Prior to that, he spent eight years at Instagram, where he worked on products including Reels. Ian is one of the most consequential designers working in AI today, and he takes us inside how OpenAI designs ChatGPT, Codex, and the future of how we will interact with AI. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why Ian believes this is…
9 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

The playbook for building high-talent-density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor

Adam Ward is the Head of Talent at Cursor, one of the fastest-growing developer tools in history. Before joining Cursor, he founded Growth by Design, an independent recruiting and talent strategy firm that helped build teams at the most ambitious AI and technology companies in the world. Adam has spent more than 20 years building elite, high-talent-density teams across the industry and is widely regarded as one of the most effective and creative recruiters in tech. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Inside today’s “tale of two cities” talent market 2. Why the traditional recruiting…
2 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)

Tom Verrilli is the chief product officer at Whatnot, a live shopping platform that’s become the fastest-growing U.S. marketplace business in history, with over $8 billion in GMV. Before joining Whatnot, Tom was CPO at Twitch and director of product growth at Twitter (during one of the most turbulent periods in the company’s history). In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why Whatnot’s product team was founded on the premise “we regret that product management exists” 2. How AI is reshaping the PM role 3. What Tom looks for when hiring PMs 4. The shift toward senior ICs doing the work…
26 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 34 min

Anthropic’s first technical PM on token maxing, the jagged edge, and living in the future | Dianne Penn

Dianne Penn is Head of Product for Anthropic’s AI Research and Labs teams. She joined in 2023 as Anthropic’s first technical product manager, when the entire product team was five engineers, and has since helped ship every model from Claude 2 through Fable, and helped incubate Claude Code, MCP, Skills, computer use, tool use, and reasoning. Before Anthropic, she helped build Alexa’s AI at Amazon and, before that, traded high-yield bonds at JP Morgan Chase. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. What Anthropic’s early days were like 2. The inflection points that turned Anthropic from an…
19 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)

Elizabeth Stone is the Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) at Netflix, where she oversees Engineering, Product, and Design. Since her first appearance on the podcast two years ago—which remained my second-most-popular episode for more than a year—she has expanded her role to lead product, in addition to engineering. Before Netflix, Elizabeth was VP of Science at Lyft, Chief Operating Officer at Nuna, an economist at Analysis Group, and a trader at Merrill Lynch. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why “systems thinking” is now the most important skill she looks for 2. How to…
12 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 36 min

How tech workers actually feel about AI in 2026 | Annual AI sentiment survey (Noam Segal)

Noam Segal is a longtime research leader across Airbnb, Meta, Twitter, Zapier, Intercom, and Figma, a certified coach, AI builder, and my community research lead. Together, we run the annual Tech Worker Sentiment Survey, now in its second year and one of the largest of its kind: a quantitative study of how people in tech actually feel about their jobs, AI, burnout, and the future of their careers. This year’s survey captured responses from thousands of workers across product, engineering, design, research, marketing, data, and sales, and the results are striking. In our in-depth…
9 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

Adam Mosseri: AI is a tailwind for authenticity

Adam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram, where he oversees an app used by over 3 billion people. He also leads the team building Threads. Adam has run Instagram for longer than its founders did, after taking over from Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2018. A designer by training, he spent over 15 years at Meta, starting as a designer on Facebook’s mobile app, rising to lead Facebook’s News Feed, and eventually chosen to lead Instagram. During his tenure, Instagram’s user base has more than tripled. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. How the canonical product team structure is…
28 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

OpenAI Codex lead on the new shape of product work | Andrew Ambrosino

Andrew Ambrosino leads development of the Codex desktop app at OpenAI. Nearly 100% of OpenAI employees—not just engineers—now use Codex weekly. A lifelong builder with a background spanning engineering, design, product management, and founding companies, he is now responsible for turning the Codex desktop experience into what he calls “the best desktop app that has ever existed, full stop.” In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why AI has completely flipped the product development process 2. What “taste” really means as a professional skill, and why it is emerging as the most valuable…
21 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 39 min

What happens after coding is solved? | Fiona Fung (Manager of the Claude Code and Cowork Teams)

Fiona Fung leads the teams behind Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic (overseeing Boris Cherny and the entire engineering and PM team). Before Anthropic, she spent 11 years at Microsoft building Visual Studio and TypeScript and then moved to Meta, where she started Facebook Marketplace (now generating over $100 billion in GMV annually), worked on Meta’s first smart glasses and AR glasses, and led infrastructure, growth, integrity, and safety teams at Instagram. She’s been an engineer for over 25 years and has a unique perspective on how the role of building software is changing. In our…
14 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 39 min

The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga)

Mark Pincus founded Zynga—the company behind Words With Friends, FarmVille, and Zynga Poker—and has arguably created more hit consumer products than anyone in history. At Zynga, eight of 10 major game launches became massive hits, reaching over a billion players. Over the past five years, Mark has been synthesizing everything he’s learned about building successful consumer products and turning it into a book, Life at the Speed of Play , which comes out on June 23. This is the first interview he’s done about the book. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. His “Proven, Better, New”…
7 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

Father of the iPod and iPhone on building taste, judgment, and creativity in the AI era | Tony Fadell

Tony Fadell created the iPod, co-created the iPhone, and founded Nest (which he sold to Google for $3.2 billion). He’s co-authored over 300 patents, was part of the legendary team at General Magic, and wrote one of the most important and inspiring books for builders, called Build . In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. The heated internal debates about whether the iPhone should have a physical keyboard 2. Why opinion-based decisions are essential for v1 products 3. Why marketing matters as much as the product itself, and how the iPod almost failed 4. Why voice will eventually become…
31 May 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

A rational conversation on where AI is actually going | Benedict Evans

Benedict Evans is an independent analyst and former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he spent years as their in-house “thinker” tracking the most important technology trends. For the past six years, he’s been publishing deeply researched presentations on where tech is heading, most recently focused on AI’s transformation of the economy. His work is read by founders, investors, and operators trying to make sense of a noisy field. His most controversial opinion: AI is as big a deal as the internet or mobile—and only as big. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why we’re in “1997”…
24 May 2026 · 1 hr 34 min

The AI paradox: More automation, more humans, more work | Dan Shipper

Dan Shipper is the co-founder and CEO of Every, a media and software company that’s become a living laboratory for the future of work. Everyone at his company of about 30 people is an AI early adopter; from editors to ops people, they use AI to do much of their work, giving Every a unique lens into where the world is heading. A year ago on this show, Dan predicted that people were sleeping on Claude Code for nontechnical work, which proved to be remarkably prescient. Today he’s back with another set of calls: the SaaS apocalypse is dumb, CLIs are over, the forward deployed engineer is the…
17 May 2026 · 1 hr 39 min

Why we’re at the beginning of the AI hardware boom | Caitlin Kalinowski (ex–OpenAI, Meta, Apple)

Caitlin Kalinowski was most recently at OpenAI helping build their robotics and hardware teams from scratch. Prior to that, she was head of AR glasses and VR hardware at Meta, where she led the teams building every generation of the Quest, Rift, and Orion, and was Meta’s first consumer electronics hire. Before this, she was technical lead on MacBook Air and Mac Pro at Apple, and helped engineer the original unibody MacBook Pro. She’s designed and engineered some of the hardest and most beloved consumer hardware products in history and is now focused on the next frontier: robotics. In our…
10 May 2026 · 1 hr 39 min

How to build a company that withstands any era | Eric Ries, Lean Startup author

Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup , a book that reshaped how a generation of founders think about building companies. His new book, Incorruptible , explains how successful companies are destroyed by failing to protect what makes them valuable, and how to change it. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why 80% of venture-backed founders are ousted within three years of going public 2. The governance structures that protect companies like Anthropic, Costco, and Novo Nordisk 3. The simple legal filing that takes two pages and could save your company 4. Financial gravity: why…
3 May 2026 · 1 hr 27 min

Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)

Max Schoening is head of product at Notion, where he’s been especially effective at getting designers and PMs to ship code, prototype in the terminal, and launch extremely successful AI products. He was previously a PM at Google, ran design at Heroku, was VP of Design (and a part-time engineer) at GitHub, and is a two-time founder. He’s one of the most AI-forward product leaders out there and one of the deepest thinkers on how AI changes how we build and use software. We discuss: 1. What’s most worked in getting designers and PMs to embrace AI 2. Why agency—not skills—is the thing that…
26 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

Snapchat CEO: Why distribution has become the most important moat | Evan Spiegel

Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snap, is one of the very few people in the world who has successfully built and scaled a lasting consumer social product. Snapchat has nearly 1 billion MAUs, and Evan and his team invented some of the most important consumer products and features, including Stories, AR glasses, swipe-based navigation, the camera as the primary UX, and a lot more. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why distribution is now the biggest challenge for creating a consumer technology business 2. How Snap innovates at scale with a 9-to-12-person design team: no…
23 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 26 min

How Anthropic’s product team moves faster than anyone else | Cat Wu (Head of Product, Claude Code)

Cat Wu is Head of Product for Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic, building one of the most important AI products of this generation. Before joining Anthropic, Cat spent years as an engineer and briefly worked in VC. Today, she’s interviewing hundreds of product managers who are trying to break into AI—and seeing firsthand what separates those who thrive from those who fall behind. We discuss: 1. How Anthropic’s shipping cadence went from months to weeks to days 2. The emerging skills PMs need to develop right now 3. Why you need to build products that don’t yet fully work, so you’re ready…
19 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

Why half of product managers are in trouble | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google)

Nikhyl Singhal is the founder of The Skip, a community for senior product leaders; a former product exec at Meta, Google, and Credit Karma; and a many-time founder. He’s also one of the most honest, unfiltered voices on what’s actually happening in product management right now. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why the next two years will be the most chaotic period in product management history 2. Why half of current product managers are at risk, and what separates those who’ll do well 3. Why you need to find your “moments of joy” with AI 4. The “smiling exhaustion” he’s seeing…
12 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 23 min

Hard truths about building in the AI era | Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures)

Keith Rabois was an early executive at PayPal (part of the famous PayPal Mafia), COO at Square, VP of Corporate Development at LinkedIn, and an early investor in Stripe, DoorDash, Airbnb, YouTube, Ramp, and Palantir. Currently he’s managing director at Khosla Ventures. Also, he hasn’t touched a computer since September 2010 (he does everything from an iPad). In our in-depth conversation, Keith shares: 1. The barrels vs. ammunition hiring framework (and how to spot barrels) 2. Why talking to customers is actively harmful for consumer products 3. How to identify undiscovered talent 4. Why the…
5 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 53 min

Head of Growth (Anthropic): “Claude is growing itself at this point” | Amol Avasare

Amol Avasare is Head of Growth at Anthropic, which is going through the most unprecedented growth trajectory in history—scaling from $1 billion to over $19 billion in ARR in just 14 months. Previously, Amol worked on the growth teams at Mercury and MasterClass. Before that he was a founder, and he cold emailed his way into the Anthropic role when no job listing existed. Most remarkably, he overcame a traumatic brain injury from a Muay Thai match that meant he couldn't work for nearly a year. In our in-depth discussion, Amol shares: 1. How Amol landed his role by cold emailing Anthropic’s CPO…
2 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 40 min

An AI state of the union: We’ve passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines | Simon Willison

Simon Willison is a prolific independent software developer, a blogger, and one of the most visible and trusted voices on the impact AI is having on builders. He co-created Django, the web framework that powers Instagram, Pinterest, and tens of thousands of other websites. He coined the term “prompt injection,” popularized the terms “AI slop” and “agentic engineering,” and has built over 100 open source projects, including Datasette, a data analysis tool used by investigative journalists worldwide. What makes Simon unique is that he’s made the leap from traditional software engineering to…
29 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 47 min

From skeptic to true believer: How OpenClaw changed my life | Claire Vo

Claire Vo is the host of our sister podcast, “How I AI,” a former product executive and engineer, and founder of an AI startup called ChatPRD. Claire now runs her business, podcast, and family life with the help of nine OpenClaw agents running on multiple Mac Minis and old laptops. In this episode, Claire shares her journey from OpenClaw skeptic (it deleted her family calendar the first time she tried it) to true believer, and gives a masterclass in using AI agents in real life. We discuss: 1. The exact step-by-step process to install and set up OpenClaw (it’s easier than you think) 2. How…

About Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth is a English tech & science podcast from Lenny Rachitsky. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Lenny Rachitsky
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 31 min
Latest episode: 4 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1627920305
Website: lennysnewsletter.com/podcast
Rights: Lenny Rachitsky

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Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Latest episode

OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT: We’re entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham

90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter Sellis

How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)

Why companies are becoming a series of loops | Anish Acharya (a16z)

AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (Product Lead ChatGPT Work)

How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel

OpenAI’s Head of Design: This is the best time in history to be a designer | Ian Silber

The playbook for building high-talent-density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor

This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)

Anthropic’s first technical PM on token maxing, the jagged edge, and living in the future | Dianne Penn

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)

How tech workers actually feel about AI in 2026 | Annual AI sentiment survey (Noam Segal)

Adam Mosseri: AI is a tailwind for authenticity

OpenAI Codex lead on the new shape of product work | Andrew Ambrosino

What happens after coding is solved? | Fiona Fung (Manager of the Claude Code and Cowork Teams)

The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga)

Father of the iPod and iPhone on building taste, judgment, and creativity in the AI era | Tony Fadell

A rational conversation on where AI is actually going | Benedict Evans

The AI paradox: More automation, more humans, more work | Dan Shipper

Why we’re at the beginning of the AI hardware boom | Caitlin Kalinowski (ex–OpenAI, Meta, Apple)

How to build a company that withstands any era | Eric Ries, Lean Startup author

Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)

Snapchat CEO: Why distribution has become the most important moat | Evan Spiegel

How Anthropic’s product team moves faster than anyone else | Cat Wu (Head of Product, Claude Code)

Why half of product managers are in trouble | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google)

Hard truths about building in the AI era | Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures)

Head of Growth (Anthropic): “Claude is growing itself at this point” | Amol Avasare

An AI state of the union: We’ve passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines | Simon Willison

From skeptic to true believer: How OpenClaw changed my life | Claire Vo

About Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

More English tech & science 6

Take it with you