Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Rob Snyder is the author of The Power of Pull and writes the newsletter The Physics of Startups. He has advised more than 50 startups on growing from zero to $1 million in ARR, drawing on his own experience as a founder who spent two years pushing a product the market didn’t want before accidentally stumbling onto what actually works. In this episode, we walk step by step through his framework for finding product-market fit, from coming up with an idea to closing your first handful of deals.

We discuss:
1. The PULL framework: Project, Unavoidable, List of options, Limitations
2. Where the best startup ideas come from
3. Tactics for cold outreach and running your first sales call
4. Why Rob advises against design partners
5. Goblin mode: what to do when nothing is working
6. How to apply the PULL framework inside larger companies
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Brought to you by:
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more
DX—Engineering intelligence for the AI era
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Where to find Rob Snyder:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsnyder1
• Newsletter: https://thephysicsofstartups.substack.com
• Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Cic56E1UEbU25P3v14Vkq
• Website: https://robsnyder.org
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Rob Snyder
(01:13) The PULL framework: what makes customers buy
(07:30) The “PULL” acronym
(09:44) How Jump found pull with financial advisors
(13:53) Why pull is discovered, not created
(16:10) Selling to a person, not a company
(17:13) Finding startup ideas through firsthand experience
(22:34) Testing your pull hypothesis with two slides
(26:41) Recognizing real buying intent
(27:24) When solving your own problem works
(29:02) The Hail Mary question that can unlock a pivot
(31:01) Common traps to avoid
(32:50) Quick recap
(34:46) Landing your first customer conversations
(39:18) Outreach benchmarks and diagnosing what isn’t working
(41:27) How to run your first sales call
(46:56) Successful pitch tactics
(49:59) Does your product need to be 10 times better?
(54:08) Closing the deal
(01:00:41) Using the PULL framework to set pricing
(01:02:22) Revising your hypothesis and going into goblin mode
(01:06:56) Designing onboarding to make customers stay
(01:09:28) What churn can teach you about your ideal customer
(01:11:37) Building a repeatable case study factory
(01:16:15) Applying the framework inside established companies
(01:20:03) Lightning round and final thoughts
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Referenced:
• The PULL framework: https://thephysicsofstartups.substack.com/p/the-pull-framework
• The ultimate guide to JTBD | Bob Moesta (co-creator of the framework): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-jtbd-bob-moesta
• How to find work you love | Bob Moesta (Jobs-to-be-Done co-creator, author of “Job Moves”): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-find-work-you-love-bob-moesta
• Jump: https://jump.ai
• Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/linears-secret-to-building-beloved-b2b-products-nan-yu
• Josh Woodward on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwoodward/
• Clearly AI: https://clearly-ai.com
• Emily Choi-Greene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilycg
• Spanx: https://spanx.com
• Floodgate: https://www.floodgate.com
• Snoop Dogg on X: https://x.com/SnoopDogg
• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• Linear: https://linear.app
• “Sell the alpha, not the feature”: The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR | Jen Abel: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-enterprise-sales-playbook-1m-to-10m-arr
• How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-close-100k-1m-deals-step-by
• Teero: https://www.teero.com
• A guide for finding product-market fit in B2B: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/finding-product-market-fit
• Retention is the hard part: https://thephysicsofstartups.substack.com/p/retention-is-the-hard-part
• Mark Roberge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/
• Ali Ghodsi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alighodsi/
• Pride and Prejudice: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414387
• Penguins of Madagascar: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1911658
• Muse: https://muse.ai
• Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-1000-yc-startups
• Lemlist: https://www.lemlist.com
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Recommended books:
• The Power of Pull: What You Need to Know About Customer Demand to Build a Successful Startup (and Why Most Founders Get It Wrong): https://www.amazon.com/Power-Pull-Customer-Successful-Founders/dp/1541705955
• The Nature of Order, Book One: The Phenomenon of Life: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHLGZHHD
• The Nature of Order, Book Two: The Process of Creating Life: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe: https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Order-Book-Two-Creating-ebook/dp/B0F2SMKQT8
• The Nature of Order, Book Three: A Vision of a Living World: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SS62LG
• The Nature of Order, Book Four: The Luminous Ground: https://www.amazon.com/Luminous-Ground-Building-Alexander-Christopher/dp/B00CB5JTI6
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.


To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Emmanuel Ameisen is an interpretability researcher at Anthropic, where he looks inside LLMs like Claude to understand how they think. Before joining Anthropic, he spent years in applied ML at Stripe and Insight, and is the author of Building Machine Learning Powered Applications. His research has produced some of the most striking findings in the field: that models form general representations of concepts, plan many tokens ahead without stating those plans explicitly, and may exhibit something structurally similar to the distinction between conscious and unconscious processing in humans.

We discuss:
1. Why the “next-token predictor” framing undersells how models actually plan and think
2. Why anthropomorphizing AI can actually be the right approach
3. Why models are “grown,” not built
4. What the “J space” reveals about model self-awareness
5. The smooth scaling curve behind what look like sudden capability jumps
6. How interpretability connects to AI alignment and safety
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Brought to you by:
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more
DX—Engineering intelligence for the AI era
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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-mind-expanding-conversation-on
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Highlights: https://lennyspodcast.com/mostreplayedmoments
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Where to find Emmanuel Ameisen:
• X: https://x.com/mlpowered
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameisen
• Website: https://www.mlpowered.com
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Emmanuel Ameisen
(01:30) Why AI models are grown, not built
(05:57) Why next-token prediction is harder than it sounds
(11:49) How models represent concepts and understand the world
(17:06) How LLMs plan ahead
(23:10) Could AI be conscious?
(24:44) Scaling laws and the power of text
(28:29) Why smooth progress creates sudden breakthroughs
(32:59) Why watching AI isn’t enough to solve alignment
(38:21) The Golden Gate Claude experiment
(39:01) Why Anthropic takes AI safety seriously
(42:06) When anthropomorphizing AI is useful
(48:06) What AI can teach us about intelligence
(51:44) Reasons for optimism about AI alignment
(55:43) Are we living in a simulation?
(59:00) Jev, decision models, and AI’s gut instincts
(01:01:37) Two more surprising findings about how models think
(01:03:33) How to get into interpretability research
(01:04:55) Lightning round and final thoughts
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References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-mind-expanding-conversation-on
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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.


To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Josh Woodward is the head of Google Labs, the Gemini app, and AI Studio. He has spent over 17 years at Google and oversees its longest-running and largest labs team, whose products include NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook), Project Genie, and Flow. His job is to find, experiment with, and scale new AI products, and he has built one of the most distinctive product cultures in the industry for generating ideas, running experiments, and, even more importantly, knowing when to quit.

In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:
1. Why every company now needs to think and operate like a labs team
2. Where the best ideas really come from
3. The “almost possible” framework
4. How to recognize genuine product-market fit early
5. When to kill an idea
6. What skills are rising in value in the AI era
7. Why roles are not actually blurring into one universal builder role
8. How to set up your internal labs team
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Brought to you by:
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more
DX—Engineering intelligence for the AI era
—
Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-every-company-now-needs-to-think
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Highlights: https://lennyspodcast.com/mostreplayedmoments
—
Where to find Josh Woodward:
• X: https://x.com/joshwoodward
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwoodward
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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) Introduction
(02:53) Why every company now needs to think like a labs team
(05:43) Where great ideas come from
(07:43) The “almost possible” framework
(11:52) Finding product-market fit
(16:09) Falling in love with the problem, not the solution
(17:57) When to kill an idea
(19:35) Overseeing Google Labs and the Gemini app
(22:21) Next consumer AI breakthroughs
(24:32) Google’s vision for a personal assistant
(27:18) What is overhyped and underhyped in AI right now
(31:36) Skills rising in value: unlearning rate, explosive endurance, trust
(35:45) Why roles are not blurring into one universal builder role
(38:59) Explosive endurance rhythms
(41:31) How planning has changed: rolling windows and 100-day milestones
(43:37) Labs lifecycle stages
(47:37) Tips for setting up an internal lab
(54:00) The future of products in an AI world
(56:26) Google Labs culture, rituals, and closing thoughts
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References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-every-company-now-needs-to-think
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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.


To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

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 Tibo’s Dot warned him about a production outage five minutes before the launch
6. OpenAI’s approach to AI safety
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Brought to you by:
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more
DX—Engineering intelligence for the AI era
—
Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/openais-head-of-chatgpt-were-entering
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Where to find Tibo Sottiaux:
• X: https://x.com/thsottiaux
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibault-sottiaux-27195366
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Tibo Sottiaux
(01:12) How Tibo uses AI in his daily work
(03:10) The vision for always-on AI agents
(06:15) How AI will continue to change work
(07:32) Bringing Codex, ChatGPT, and Dots together
(08:20) The sci-fi inspiration behind the technology
(09:02) Building AI with the community
(10:13) Understanding the Dots structure
(11:34) OpenAI’s open ecosystem and plugin revenue sharing
(13:39) How plugins get discovered and recommended
(14:39) The research behind Dots
(16:20) Where humans will remain valuable
(17:25) Agent fatigue, loneliness, and context switching
(18:55) The pressure to do more with AI
(20:09) An agent that spotted a production outage before a live demo
(21:42) Agent guardrails and connecting multiple devices
(23:25) The skills becoming more valuable in the AI era
(25:56) Advice for people early in their careers
(27:18) How teams build and ship inside OpenAI
(28:59) Autonomy, trust, and learning from mistakes
(30:45) Building for a future where agents dominate internet activity
(32:41) What Tibo has changed his mind about
(33:55) OpenAI’s approach to AI safety and alignment
(36:15) Moving beyond model pickers toward simpler AI
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Referenced:
• OpenAI Dots: https://chatgpt.com/features/dots
• Her on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70278933
• Star Trek: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060028
• Pi: https://pi.ai
• OpenCode: https://opencode.ai
• Notion: https://www.notion.com
• Figma: https://www.figma.com
• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai
• Peter Steinberger on X: https://x.com/steipete
• Grok Bot: https://x.ai/bot
• Muse: https://muse.ai
• Instinct: https://instinct.com
• Ahmed Ibrahim on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ahmedibrhm
• The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead: https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead
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Recommended book:
• Neuromancer: https://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441007465
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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.


To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

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 an AI world
2. The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now
3. Why delegating to AI is fundamentally different from delegating to a human
4. The fear narrative around AI job displacement, and why it’s overblown
5. Which Legos you should never give to AI
6. What the best managers are doing right now
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Brought to you by:
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more
DX—Engineering intelligence for the AI era
—
Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-grief-loneliness-and-burnout
Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
Highlights: https://lennyspodcast.com/mostreplayedmoments
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Where to find Molly Graham
• X: https://x.com/molly_g
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mograham
• Substack: https://mollyg.substack.com
• Website: https://glueclub.com
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Molly Graham returns
(03:34) What is “Give away your Legos”?
(05:44) The origin story: Google, Facebook, and rapid scale
(11:27) What still holds true in an AI world
(18:13) Engineering’s identity shift: from rowing to steering
(22:09) Loneliness and the collapse of team structure
(24:06) The centaur and the reverse centaur
(25:36) The fear narrative: AI-branded layoffs and overblown doom
(29:20) Survey data: burnout is up to 55%, but half of people are thriving
(35:07) Cleaning up AI slop
(40:01) What’s actually different: delegating to AI vs. giving Legos to a human
(42:02) Why every worker is now a manager, whether they want to be or not
(49:07) Why giving things away creates space for new opportunities
(55:27) Advice for people in the age of AI
(59:38) What Legos you should never give away
(01:03:12) The human sandwich: vision at the top, AI in the middle, humans at the end
(01:05:00) Holding on to the things you love: grief, funerals, and what comes next
(01:09:39) Slow takeoff: why you’re not too late
(01:13:32) The most important skill to build right now
(01:18:58) A message for managers and leaders
(01:24:17) Key takeaways
(01:31:42) Final thoughts
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References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-grief-loneliness-and-burnout
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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.


To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com