Peter Deng

“Peter, we used to have meetings for what we should buy, and my pitch was always that the Facebook should buy the DMV.”

“So I think it's going to be a pretty tough road for something like a router. I just, I feel like either roll your own or you've got to find another way to make a model your own.”

“My take on this is it's actually a feature, not a bug. It's a feature of having insanely great talent. I think Sam is N of one at recruiting with really ambitious, talented people. And in a time when you can build anything, you should expect the churn.”

“I don't actually think he's gonna have to code when he grows up. I think that's gonna be a solved problem, but it's a very, very valuable skill because I think learning to program is learning how to think structure in a structured way, right?”

“One thing I'm going to be, I think it's going to be really important in the future is being able to figure out how to ask the right questions. You know, we humans are inherently inquisitive, but, you know, being inquisitive and turning that into the right ques…”

“Crafting is really important when you're working in product, because if you're sitting down and you're writing a vision doc or you're writing a PRD, and if you don't pay attention to the words you use and you're not intentional about it, those have downstream …”

“The data flywheel thing is really interesting because, you know, the models will get really good at whatever data you show it. And that's one of the things that people just think that AI is such a magic wand, but no, it's like, if it's been trained on the righ…”

“Before I would say, 18 months ago, it's like, oh, well, who has the best model? But then coming forward, it's like really who has the best workflow and who has the best product. And we humans are just demanding. We want the best. And so when that, when someone…”

“When you go to one to 100, I think one of the things that. You really got to take into account is that you have to plan your chess moves out in advance. You have to really think before you act and build systems that we're going to let you go sustainably faster…”

“We grew that product from zero to 4.7 billion messages sent per day in about two and a half years.”

“And I think that the reason why growth team is, is, is the advice I would go with rather than to build an analytics team is because if you build an analytics team or a data science team, it's possible that no one's going to listen to them. Right. It's like, oh…”

“You gotta have the counterbalances, right? And it's really important to give two people on your team different charges. One is like, go grow the product. And the other one is, Wait, maintain that design, that beautiful aesthetic, that, that the craft that your…”

“And I start with these two in the framework because they're actually really different. Right. When it's like, I have vibe. I feel the vibe. This is better. And the other one's like, no, I don't believe you. We should test this and prove it. And that's like a r…”

“I call the platform PM, which is someone who's like really deeply wired to kind of build tools for other people. And at Uber, we had like internal platforms for like messaging or for, you know, building internal tools. And oftentimes these folks are overlooked…”

“In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person.”

“Growth mindset's one of those things, Lenny, that feels really hard to teach at a certain age.”

“Whenever I go to, it seems like chat GBT or Uber, when I'm always the final interview for someone in my org, And I partner with recruiting and developing that the rubric. I always insist on doing the last interview and I do not product sense. I don't do design…”

“The question I asked is, it's been the same one I've asked for years and you can really, you know, kind of suss it out from this, which is I asked them, Think about the, one of the biggest mistakes you've made, like truly the most, the more painful, the better…”

“So let me take a step back. So one, say what you're going to do. And then in that. Exercise. You're going to be able to calibrate with your manager, again, with anyone, right? What is it that we're going to do? And it's, I think the words are really important …”

“I think there's a lot of people who are kind of introverted and don't want to draw attention and, Don't have the hero complex. And I think that those people tend to get lost in, in organizations. So if that describes you, just remember to say what you did.”

“I think that if to anyone out there who's like doing user interviews and then saying, Hey, chat GPT, summarize the takeaways, you're missing the point. You can't empathize with the summary. You have to be in the room, fully immersed, no phones, just actually h…”

“Having a strong point of view is really important because like, you know, there's a saying that Mike and Kevin had it at Instagram, which is we may not be right, but at least we're not confused. I think that just, it was, it's a beautiful phrase. I thought, be…”

“You can really have the best team in the world with the best product taste. And you can't really predict what's gonna hit on the first go.”